The Origin of the Sacco-Vanzetti Case

For the first time in the thirty-three years since Sacco and Vanzetti were executed, on August 23, 1927, there has appeared an apologia for the Commonwealth of Massachusetts. The work bears the title: Sacco-Vanzetti: The Murder and the Myth. The author is Robert H. Montgomery, a Harvard Law School graduate (1912) and a corporation lawyer in Boston for nearly fifty years. His clients include textile mills, such as the American Woolen Company (center of the famous Lawrence Strike of 1911), New England Telephone & Telegraph Co., and large electric power interests.

The approach of Attorney Montgomery to the Sacco-Vanzetti case can be gauged from his political and social philosophy, suggested by his half-century of absorption in the affairs of large corporations. Since the author obviously considers himself the ultimate authority on the case, it is curious that the book should end on a note of despair: "The truth is mighty, but it will not prevail against a Great Lie, and the Sacco-Vanzetti Myth is the greatest lie of them all."'