r and Merrill Shoe
Factory paymaster was murdered in Bridgewater, Massachusetts, and some
$15,000 carried off. On May 5, Sacco and Vanzetti were arrested in South
Braintree, Massachusetts, and held on suspicion of being the guilty
bandits. After he nabbed them, Chief of Police Stewart discovered, with
the aid of Department of Justice agents, that he had two dangerous
radicals marked for "_watching_" in Department files in Washington.

What happened after that, though it lasted seven long and torturous years,
is fairly familiar to the American people. It ended ten years ago in the
electric chair at Charlestown Jail in Massachusetts. The finest minds in
the world, the greatest masses of workers and their friends, made their
protest known to the American government, through its embassies, before
its government buildings, in the streets and roadways of America.

But Judge Webster Thayer, who bragged, "_Did you see what I did to those
anarchistic bastards_," disregarded all the evidence proving their
innocence, poisoned the minds of the already hatred-ridden jury against
them, with speeches about the soldier boys in France, the flag,
"consciousness of guilt," the perfidy of "foreigners." The witnesses for
the defense proved the innocence of Sacco and Vanzetti beyond the shadow
of a doubt. Italian housewives told of buying eels from Vanzetti on the
day of both crimes with which he was charged (another payroll robbery
committed on Christmas eve, 1919, was thrown in for good measure against
him, to secure that conviction first and bring him to trial for murder as
a convicted payroll robber). Sacco had an official from the Italian
Consulate in Boston to testify for him. He had been in Boston on the day
of the Bridgewater crime enquiring about a passport to Italy for himself,
his wife and child. The official couldn't forget him, because instead of a
passport photo he brought a big framed portrait of his whole family with
him!

Ballistic testimony from an expert who was a state witness was brought to
show that the fatal bullet was not Sacco's, but to no avail. New trials
were denied. The State Supreme Court upheld the murder verdict. The
governor upheld it. He appointed a special commission of professors headed
by President Lowell of Harvard, and they upheld it. Four justices of the
United States Supreme Court were contacted for a stay of execution. All
refused.

On August 22, 1927, Sacco and Vanzetti were legally murdered by t