The daily worker. [volume] (Chicago, Ill.) 1924-1958, 1926-06-02
Greatest Soul in Jail"
Story Of Massachusetts

sounding and strange: De Amicis and
st. Augustine and Dante and Kropot-
kin and Cork and Labriola and Renah,
Hugo, Tolstoy. lola and Carducci.
After giving this list Vanzetti ex-
plains:
do not believe me, my dear reader.
prodigy of-science; that would be a
mistake. My fundamental instruction
was too incomplete, my mental powers
insufficient, to assimilate all this vast
material.
Then it must be remembered that
| studied while doing hard work all
day, and without any congenial ac-
commodations. All, how many nights
I set over some volume by the flicker
ing gas jet, far into the morning
hours. Barely had laid my head to
the pillow when the whistle sounded,
and back went to the factory or to
the stone pits"
In the beginning Vanzetti had been
devout catholic. "He had even got
into fist fight with one of his fellow
workers who had ridiculed the cath
Ole faith. But little by little, under
the pressure of his sufferings, the
idea had dawned upon him to work
for human brotherhood here and now.
He already had this idea when he
came to America, and his experience
in the rich club" and in the famous
Bohemian restaurant did not change
him. He became teacher of human
brotherhood here and now.
1t happened that the department of
justice agents seized an Italian radical
by the name of Salesedo and held him
incommunicado for five weeks in an
office building in New York City,
torturing him to try to make him con-
fess, the outcome being that the man
jumped from a History window.
Vanzetti, not being thoroly Ameri-
canized, thought there was something
wrong about this, and at Christmas
time, 1919, when he was cutting the
ice and digging the bitches and shovel
ing the snow and digging the clans,
he was also working to organize pro-
test meeting among the Italians of the
neighboring towns. So the department
of justice, arrested him, with a friend
named Sacco, accusing them of being
dangerous reds" They were held
some time on this charge, and ap-
parently no evidence was available:
but there was another crime lying
handy. A year or so previously four
or five automobile bandits had held
up a paymaster and shot and robbed
him. So 1t was decided to hang Sacco
and Vanzetti upon this charge.
l have been studying this case for
the last two years, and it has never
been my fortune to encounter a more
obvious frame-up. Not merely did
some 40 witnesses testify that Van
zetti had been selling them fish all
that day when the robbery took place
and at a distance far from the scene
Of the murder, but nearly all the wit
nesses who identified vanzetti as one
OF the automobile bandits have since
confessed to perjury.
Nevertheless, this Italian idealist
has been under sentence of death for
five years, and with unflinching pa,
thence and sweetness of soul he has
done his eight hours work everv dav
IN Jail and continued to read the
worlds great literature in his spare
hours.
Now he has written the story of his
life, and having studied it carefully
| am ready to give my testimony as
an expert in social idealism that there
is a thousand times more likelihood
that l committed that payroll murder
than that Vanzetti did.
But, alas, this kind of expert testi-
mony is not accepted in American
courts! So all that l can do is to
recommend to you 1.-THE Story Of n
Proletarian Life"
The story Of Vanzetti's-life referred
to by Sinclair will be run in The
DAILY WORKER at an early date
in several installments.