The Sacco-Vanzetti Case and the Grim Forces Behind It

By ART SHIELDS

way robbery and murder. They are accused of killing a guard and paymaster and escaping with an $18,000 payroll belonging to the Slater and Morrill Show Company at South Braintree on April 15, 1920. Men found guilt of murder in Massachusetts are sent through a little green door to the electric chair.

Many Bandits Escape Police

The evidence on which the two were indicted for this crime is no more tangible than that which convicted Vanzetti. Both men were miles from South Braintree when the murders were committed, as the defense conclusively proved. Since their arrest numerous similar hold-ups have been committed throughout New England, obviously the work of professional criminals; and invariably the robbers get away.

Sacco and Vanzetti are high-minded men, known intimately by hundreds of people. Looking at them talk, it would be hard for an intelligent person to conceive of their robbing or murdering of anyone. And their records are clean. Their real sin is that they resisted exploitation when other backs bowed. Forms of law are being used against them, as forms of law were used against Ettor, Giovannitti and Caruso during the bitter Lawrence strike of nine years ago -- and for the same reason.

Vanzetti Active in Big Strike

Vanzetti's activity in the big cordage strike at Plymouth in 1916 was the first biographical fact noted by the newspapers after his arrest, but this was just one incident in years of initiative in solidifying the working-class. Sacco and Vanzetti were practically the last of the well-known Italian radicals in New England to be silenced; all the others had been

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