Thursday. Nov. 5. 1953
BOOKS: Case of Sacco, Vanzetti Propagandized by Fast
On Aug. 22, 1927, one of the great causes celebre in American history came to an end when a shoemaker and a fish peddler were electrocuted in Charlestown State prison, Massachusetts.
The two were indicted on Sept. 11, 1920, and were convicted of murder in the first degree. Eight appeals for a new trial followed, but not until 1927 were they executed. In humor many women claimed honesty, and all shades of politics had made of the Sacco-Vanzetti case a symbol of injustice.
THE PASSION OF SACCO AND
VANZETTI; A New England Legend.
By Howard Fast, New York: Blue
Heron Press, 1953. 255 pages.
From this famous trial, and at this late date, Howard Fast has written a rambling, confusing, propaganda-loaded story that is bound to place Sacco and Vanzetti, at least in the minds of some people, on the side of communism. Fast already has served a prison term as an unfriendly government witness, and if he is no Communist, he at least is one of the most misguided thinkers in America today.
Police were on the lookout for men who had taken part in a previously unsuccessful payroll holdup in Bridgewater, Mass., and suspicion rested on Italians, because police had been told that the holdup men seemed to be of that nationality. Sacco and Vanzetti were arrested. Vanzetti was an unarchist who had assisted in some strikes; Sacco was a socialistic radical.
It is a pity that the wonderful, yet terrible, story of Sacco and Van-
The two were Nicola Sacco and Bartolomeo Vanzetti. Their trial stemmed from an incident on April 15, 1920, when a paymaster and his guard were killed in the Braintree, Mass., and the payroll of time Mortell's show factory, amounting to more than $15,000, was stolen.
zetti had to be handled by Fast. All through the 1920s the two were linked with world bolshevism, then as big a worry as world communism is today. The fact that their archistic philosophies were not communist made no difference.
Already the story of the two martyrs to the intolerance of 1920s has been memorialized in other ways. One of the great proletarian dramas of the 1930s, Maxwell Anderson's "Winterstet," was based on the trial and its aftermath. But, like Fast's "Passion," that play resembled beating a dead horse, for there were new issues in the world in 1935, and far better subjects for Anderson to become angry about. And this is not what Vanzetti need not be written. It does need to be written, but not as a distribe against the 1920s. It needs to be written as an example of what can happen when a world is so set on uniformity of thought that any who deviate from established thinking are immediately suspected.
Fast resorts to an annoying practice in the book. Only Sacco and Vanzetti are identified. The others are merely symbols. There is the University President who headed up a committee that backed the findings of the court that found Sacco and Vanzetti guilty (it should be mentioned that prevaluing opinion since the 1920s has been that the two were executed on very filmsy evidence and entirely because of their briefs). What will the University President Lowell of Harvard university? Is the Professor of Criminal Law the present-day Supreme court justice, Felix Frankfurter? Is the Writer the late Heywood Broun? These persons, if memory serves this reviewer, were figures in the case.
"The Passion of Sacco and Vanzetti" deals with the last day in the lives of the two, with the attempts of the Professor of Criminal Law to
gain a stay of execution, with the crowds of pickets in world capitals (obviously Fast was attempting to draw a parallel with last summer's Rosenberg protests) marching back and forth, with the families of the doomed pair, and with the convicted man (here again Fast attempts a parallel —the two who died alongside Christ—but it falls flat).
Readers may recall a previous use of the case, in the Thurber-Nugent play, "The Male Animal," one of the truly enjoyable comedies of our time and one that intelligently included social comment alongside the horseplay. A professor of English, an innocent, unpolitical man, told his class he wanted to read them Vanzetti's last speech in court. He wanted to read it because to him it constituted a beautiful, though illiterate expression. A young campus fireball seized on to the incident, declaring that the professor was speaking out in the cause of freedom. Alumni, board of regents, and angry conformists swept down on the professor, who finally was forced to read the speech, not out of love for its language alone but because he just wasn't going to be beaten down.
"If it had not been for these thing, I might have live out my life talking at street corners to scorning men. I might have die, unmarked, unknown, a failure. This is our career and our triumph. Never in our full life could we hope to do such work for tolerance, for justice, for man's understanding of man, as now we do by accident. Our words, our lives, our pains—nothing! The taking of our lives—lives of a good shoemaker and a poor fish peddler all! That last moment belongs to us—that glory is our triumph."
A group of persons such as this is capable of doing great things to end segregation on the campus and in Lawrence, but they seem to have bogged down in stating a purpose.
That speech is a beautiful thing, and it's included here because it represents so well the whole tone of the case, and its meaning for history:
We think the purpose in this case is fairly well defined. Why waste precious time arguing how the purpose should be stated? What difference does it make what words are used in stating a purpose to end segregation of minority groups?
Student Group to Fight Against Discrimination
-RD
Sunday a group of students met to decide on a purpose and organize an anti-dissemination campaign.
Page 2 University Daily Kansan Thursday, Nov. 5, 1953
To the Editor:
The group could do a great deal through church organization who are solidly back of the drive to get equal rights for Negroes The group could work through the All Student Council in bringin about some positive action among all students. One group can do it alone; they must have the help of the entire student body.
The purpose was already there; that is why the group was organized. Time was wasted discussing the purpose of ending discrimination, when the time could have been used, in planning some positive action.
I think the emphasis in college today is in the wrong place and something should be done about it. Sometime during the year most students ask themselves, "What am I doing in this course?"
When an exam comes up, we cram so we can make that grade. Through-out college we worry if we can make five hours of "B" in this course and three hours of "C" in that course, so we will have a certain average. Graduation itself depends on grade points.
One positive step has been taken by the group in finding out the opinion of the faculty and administration. They have received their backing in the campaign. If they can take the next few steps toward their goal, they may accomplish something in their anti-discrimination fight. Elizabeth Wohlgemuth
Uranium has been known and available in impure powder form for at least a century, but only during the past 30 years has it been purified and put to work. Westinghouse metallurgists report. The strategic metal was discarded as a useless byproduct of radium in America during World War I.
Why does our state University still maintain a system given to us by our grandfathers, a system in which grades are artificially made to be so important? Ask any instructor (not of the old, old vintage, however) what he thinks about grades. Most of them will agree—it's terrible.
It seems to me that it's the college system that makes us "grade conscious," that makes grade points the primary concern. Shouldn't we place our values on the education rather than on the grade? Shouldn't the main idea behind college be learning?
Couldn't KU try a non-grade system like Columbia university in which the students gets a "P" for passing or an "F" for failing? Then maybe we'll get an education here at KU instead of just a degree. I think the real purpose of college has become obscure.
Crude oil as it comes from the earth is a mixture of many thousands of different compounds. It rarely is used in its original state but is refined, or separated, into products, of which the major ones are gasoline, light and heavy fuel oil, kerosene, lubricating oils, wax, asphalt and coke.
Letters
Russell O. Settle Jr. College sophomore.
by Dick Bibler
LITTLE MAN ON CAMPUS
"This is the last time I assign committee reports—The one today just dismissed class to go have coffee."
The Gang's All Here-- But for What Purpose?
While we're thinking of do-nothing organizations on the Hill, why not mention the two political groups, Young Democrats and Young Republicans?
Each fall the groups get out and try to draft new members. Their drawing cards: once in a while a guest speaker from their own party and several "beer busts" each year. During an election year, they may sponsor campaigns to get people out to vote.
Our wonderment about the clubs was expressed the other day by a foreign student on the campus. "What about the person who doesn't know what party he would like to join? He's just reached voting age, maybe, and he isn't sure enough about the principles of either political party to know which to join. Of course, this is assuming that he wants to be enlightened; he doesn't want to be a blind party-line voter.
"So he goes to a meeting of the Young Republicans and learns that they are the top party and hears a pretty story of why only Republicans should rule the nation. 'Fine,' he says, 'I think this is the party for me. But just to be fair, I'll go listen to the Democrats, too.'
"At the Young Democrats' gathering, he changes his mind. From the glowing accounts of those there and their party enthusiasm, he decides to join the Democratic party.
"When he sits down to think the whole thing over, though, certain arguments of the two groups seem contradictory. He isn't even sure what each party stands for now. Maybe there isn't really much difference!"
And so our befuddled student joins the ever-growing crowd of persons who "don't care a thing about politics; after all, it isn't that important since the two parties are so similar."
Highly imaginative, maybe. But why not have a series of debates between our two groups to help the uneducated (or perhaps some of the most ardent and blind followers of each group) to see the issues of each side. There must be some justification for existence besides just enlisting the already-followers. Mary Betz
(Editor's note: Which brings us to how the old, old question again: How would Phi Beta Kappa exist without grades?)
Yes, now we've seen the variable,
well-read man we've heard so much
about—third booth to the left of the door in the Hawk's Nest, alternating reading from the Sour Owl and Upstream magazine.
UNIT PHILIPPINE
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