On Appeal: Sacco and Vanzetti

Bartolomeo Vanzetti 

 “The blood of martyrs is the seed of liberty.” –St. Augstine.  Vanzetti learned this quote as a youth and carried it with him throughout his life.

 Vanzetti was born in Villafelletto, Italy in 1888 to a a very loving mother and a fairly prosperous farmer who would later open a café.  He loved his parents very much and did as much as possible to win their affection and approval.  He was a bright and spiritual lad who William Thompson, his lawyer decades later, said would have been a Harvard professor had he received an education.  Instead, his father took him out of school in 1901 at the age of thirteen to begin an apprenticeship.  His father apprenticed him to one Signor Comino, the owner of a pastry shop.  Vanzetti worked fifteen hour days, seven days a week, with three hours off every other Sunday. He hated the job but continued at it to please his father. 

 After seven years of work in the pastry shop, Vanzetti was afflicted with pleurisy, a condition that inflames the membrane around the lungs and makes breathing very difficult.  In 1907, while convalescing, Vanzetti read voraciously, particularly philosophy and religious works. 

 Almost immediately after recovering, Vanzetti’s mother contracted cancer and died in Vanzetti’s arms.  Vanzetti never truly recovered from his mother’s death and was never emotionally close to another woman the rest of his life.  To deal with the pain, Vanzetti set out for the United States in 1908.  He arrived in New York city and began working in restaurants and clubs throughout the city.

 Vanzetti left New York in 1909 to seek work in the countryside, eventually making his way to Springfield, Massachusetts and working in a brick factory.  He then bounced around Connecticut and Massachusetts, all the while working at various jobs and living a solitary existence.  In 1909, he went back to New York and worked as a pastry chef at various New York eateries where he was at the mercy of head chefs and employment agencies.  The chefs and employment agencies had agreements whereby chefs would fire workers so the workers would be forced to go to an employment agency for a new job and the agents and head chefs would split the fee. 

 Living in New York, Vanzetti went five months without a job and was forced to sleep outside and put newspaper in his clothes to stay warm.  In 1912, however, Vanzetti found an employment agency that sent him to Springfield, Massachusetts again, this time as a pick-and-shovel man.  Though it was hard, back-breaking work, it was outdoor work, which Vanzetti far preferred over working inside. 

 Vanzetti continued to read.  After reading books on poltical philosophy, he moved toward anarchism.  He soon found his first anarchist comrades and began receiving the Cronaca Sovversiva, the same anarchist newspaper that Sacco read and wrote for. 

 Vanzetti moved to Plymouth, Massachusetts in 1913 where he lived with Vincenzo Brini and became a virtual member of the Brini clan.  He stayed in Plymouth until 1917, when he and some of his fellow anarchists left for Mexico to escape the draft.  Strangely (for an anarchist who does not like government or the idea of  “country”), he applied for United States citizenship May 5, 1917, just a short while before leaving for Mexico.  While in Mexico, he supported the group by once again practicing the trade he hated—baking—and grew his now famous long, droopy mustache. 

 Vanzetti left Mexico in September of 1917 and moved around the Midwest for a time before he found his way back to the Brinis in Plymouth, Massachusetts.  He took up fish peddling, a profession which allowed him to be in his beloved outside all day long, and continued his anarchist activities.  He continued living this way until his 1920 arrest with Sacco.