SACCO AND VANZETTI.

Grey River Argus, 21 June 1927, Page 3

SACCO AND VANZETTI.

FIFTY MILLION WORKERS JOIN TO SAVE INNOCENT COMRADES FROM ELECTRIC CHAIR. BOSTON, Mass., May 18. With the case of Sacco and Vanzetti about to be reviewed for the Governor of Massachusetts, protests from all parts of the world continue to pour into the Governor’s hands, protests condemning the State, the court, and the general personal of frame-up by which two innocent mon, holding unpopular opinions, have been sentenced to die in the electric chair during the week of July 10th.

More than 110,000 appeals, 200 cablegrams, and over 50,000,000 people have thus far protested against this effort, nt judicial lynching. Not only are workers of all shades of industrial and political opinion making their voices heard for the Italian radicals, but political parties, scientists, teachers, lawyers, miinsters, writers and journalists representing conservative, radical, and liberal views, have joined the mighty demonstration for the liberation of Sacco and Vanzetti. There have been hundreds of meetings held by liberal, farm and Labour organisations. The Wisconsin Legislature was circulated in both houses by a petition asking for a fair and impartial investigation. Sixtysix members, of the Legislature signed the petition, including Lieutenant-Gov-ernor Henry A. Huber and John W. Eber, Speaker of the Assembly. Paul Loebo, President of the German Reichstag, has cabled a plea for amnesty. Half a million members of the Swedish Federation of Labour have sent a petition protesting against the intend ed electrocution. Members of the law faculties of twelve universities have joined in the appeal to save the frameup victims. These are Columbia, Yale, Kansas, Cornell, Illinois, Minnesota, Missouri, Oklahoma, Indiana, lowa, Ohio, and Texas.

A thousand students of Columbia University, New York, voted unanimously to petition Governor Fuller, of Massachusetts for the appointment of a commission to re-examine the entire case. These students met in the McMillan Theatre on May 9th. Celia Polizuk, Secretary of the SaccoVanzetti Students’ Committee, which called the meeting together with the Social Problems Club and Students’ Council of New York, said: “The Sacco Vanzetti Committee sprang up when the students heard Sacco and Vanzetti had been found guilty. Our aim is to work for their freedom. We will work until the prison doors swing open, and they are free.” At the Columbia Students’ meeting, Arthur Garfield Hays, attorney for the American Civil Liberties Union, was given tremendous applause when he said: “ Although I am hopeful Governor Fuller will pardon Sacco and Vanzetti, I will not think the job has been completed until some action has been taken to impeach Judge Thayer.” The National Union of Railwaymen of Great Britain, representing 300,000 workers, has sent an appeal to Governor Fuller to review the case. George Branting, Swedish lawyer and son of Prime Minister HjaJmer Branting, has offered his services to the Sacco-Vanzetti Defence Committee.

Amongst the latest to protest against the execution of Sacco and Vanzetti are Alexander Meiklejohn, former Amherst President and now head of the \X iseonsin University Experimental College, President Glenn Frank of the University of Wisconsin, Bishop William A. Gucrry of Charleston, S.C Dr. Lynn H. Harris, President of Beaver College at Jenkintown, Pa., the Dante Club of West Springfield, Mass., President James A. Burke of Alleghany College, Morris R. Cowen, Professor of Philosophy department of the City College, New York, Professor William P. Montague of the Columbia University philosophy department, and Henry Sloan Coffin, president of the Union Theological Seminary, New York. The belief of this immense number of people crying out against the proposed legalised assassination of Sacco and Vanzetti is that the doomed men were victims of war hysteria, sufferers for their social faith, and that they are innocent of crime. LABOUR HATERS OPPOSE RE-TRIAL. Among those who have taken an opposite view is the “ Dearborn Independent,” Henry Ford’s own self-styled Chronicler of the Neglected Truth.” \ anzetti led the big Plymouth Cordage strike in 1916, and the attorney who then represented that company, John Noble has written to Governor Fuller not to review the case. The cordage concern against which Vanzetti headed the strikers is a powerful firm and one with very feudalistic ideas. It was never challenged by its slaves until 1916 and it has never forgiven Vanzetti. T .A foreman of this company, named Nickerson, was on the jury when Vanzetti was framed up in 1920 for highway robbery before Judge Thayer at Plymouth. John Yahey was then Vanzetti’s attorney, and he has since been exposed for betraying his client, Vahey is said to have been a stockholder in the company.

A great number of competent and conservative investigators who have studied the case- -including Felix Frankfurter of the Havard Law School believe Sacco and Vanzetti innocent. This belief rests in part, on the following facts.

1. Sacco and Vanzetti are radicals, and were caught on the “red” hysteria that followed the war. The report of the trial shows clearly that anti-radical sentiment was appealed to freely by the prosecutor, and was shown by the judge. 2. Of the four persons who identified Sacco at the trial as being an occupant of the bandit car, three positively refused to identify him when he was first arrested, and the fourth was a fugitive from justice, at liberty by favour of the prosecuting attorney. 3. One person identified Vanzetti, saying that ho drove the car. All other witnesses described a totally different man as driving the ear, and 13 witnesses swore that Vanzetti was in Plymouth, peddling fish, on the day of the crime. 4. No money from the crime has been traced to Sacco and Vanzetti, and their conviction leaves the rest of the payroll gang unaccounted for.

5. A man under sentence for another crime has confessed to taking part in the Braintree raid, exonerating Sacco and Vanzetti. 6. This confession and the evidence gathered as a result of it, accounts for part of the money and all the crooks. JUSTICE IN MASSACHUSETTS. “It is not imperative that a new trial be granted, even though the evidence is newly discovered, and, if presented to a jury, would justify a different verdict.” This is the legal doctrine quoted by the Supreme Judicial Court of Massachusetts in the case of Sacco and A anzetti. Just about 70 years ago. the Supreme Court of the United States gave an opinion that made all free states slave states, which aroused Abraham Lincoln in opposition, and made the Civil War inevitable. The negro, ran the phrase that inflamed the whole nation, had “no rights that a white man was bound to respect.” And, to-day, though two men’s lives hang in the balance. “It. is not imperative that a new trial be granted.”— Sacco and Vanzetti Must be Freed!