The daily worker. [volume] (Chicago, Ill.) 1924-1958, 1929-08-07
The DebaCle of Liberalism
By Fred Ellis

sociates. With the Salsedo case and
the carload of literature in mind
they had good reason for all these
acts!
Neither of them had shown any
consciousness of guilt until arrested
and questioned, not about pay roll
robberies, but about their attitude
toward capitalists, anarchism, Com
munism, etc.
Conflicting expert evidence was
presented by the state and the de-
tense on two other bits of circum-
stantial evidence, the question of
whether the mortal bullet could have
been fired from Sacco's gun and
whether Vanzetti's gun had belonged
to the victim of the hold up. There
was conflicting testimony on
whether the cap found at the scene
of the crime was Sacco's. 1t had
tear in it which Sacco's boss said
might have been made by a nail on
which Sacco used to hang it. Later,
the police admitted they made the
tear after they got it, but by that
time the verdict was in.
Vanzetti's alibi, supported by the
damned foreigners" in considerable
number, was that he was peddling
fish on April Is. Sacco's was that
he was visiting the Italian counsel,
conversing with numerous persons
in Boston, to get passport to Italy,
his mother having died. The con-
sulate clerk and the others testified
for him - but they were foreigners
too, and it was Palmer raid time.
Convicted.
Thayer and Katzmann got their
conviction, and then labor began to
take a real interest. The agitation
that followed, surged, and ebbed,
saved these two for seven years, but
never overcame the death grip of
Massachusetts, law, which rules that
the trial judge decides on his own
acts, that Thayer always could rule
whether or not the trial was fair,
and that once conviction was Sc
cured, mere innocence had nothing
to do with the matter. Remember
the Mooney case. Many other Amer
lean states have similar procedure.
The first mass action was that of
the New York needle trades. Various
central labor bodies passed resolu-
tins. The miners union demanded a
new trial. A great demonstration
of workers marched on the Ameri-
can embassy in Rome.
But labor was soon on the defen-
sive in America against the open
shop drive, and in Italy against fas-
cism. With Mussolini gaining in
Italy, there was no such interna-
tional situation as compelled federal
intervention in the Billings
case. The fight that was waged was
too legalistic, until the last moments,
too much in the hands of liberals
and individualists who couldn't get
it through their heads that this was
not case where one could rely on
the legal machinery for justice. This
was frame-up case, the frame-up
system prevailed; the laws, courts
and governor were part of the
frame-up system, and it's sole func-
ton, in the present stage of class
war in America was to kill these two
undesirables. To appeal to it was
like the sheep appealing for justice
to the wolf. Thayer and Governor
Fuller, and the judges of the state
supreme court and the U. S. supreme
court had no conscientious scruples
about this electrocution. They were
defending the interests ofItheir en-
ployers, and "there is no better word
in the English language than 10y
atty said Judge Thayer'in his in
structions to the jury. asss 4ax.
! IA Ito be continue a. III
la1s. y. sssalsasHAExl71zSE1.