To me those words are particularly poignant. For I am an Italian, and
proud to be of the same people that produced such a great spirit as
Vanzetti, the descendant of Garibaldi, the forerunner of those heroic
anti-fascist brothers who are today fighting Fascism and Mussolini in
Italy and in Spain.

Nicola Sacco and Bartolomeo Vanzetti were poor Italian workers. Both came
to this country like all our countrymen in search of peace and work and
plenty. Both found only hard work and hard knocks. Sacco was a
shoe-worker. Vanzetti had followed many trades after his arrival here in
the summer of 1908. He worked in mines, mills, factories. Finally he
landed in a cordage plant in Plymouth, Massachusetts. That was the last
factory job he held. For here, as in all the others, he talked union and
organization, and organized a successful strike. After that, he was
blacklisted for good and had to make a living peddling fish to his Italian
neighbors in the little town known as the cradle of liberty.

During the years 1919 and 1920 two phenomena made their appearance in the
state of Massachusetts. One was national, the other local. The first was
Mitchell Palmer's red delirium which caused him to hunt radicals with the
same zeal but much more frenzy than the old Massachusetts witch hunters in
every corner of the land. The second was a wave of payroll robberies
obviously executed by a skilled and experienced gang of bandits.

In April, 1920, both these currents crossed the paths of Sacco and
Vanzetti. Their friend Andrea Salsedo was arrested by Palmer's "heroes,"
tortured, held incommunicado for 11 weeks and thrown from the eleventh
story of the Department of Justice office in New York City to his death.
This happened on May 4, 1920. Early in April the Slater and Merrill Shoe
Factory paymaster was murdered in Bridgewater, Massachusetts, and some