He "Massachusetts... has blotted out the fishmonger and the cobbler... who in the minds of multitudes will take for the moment their places with the Carpenter."

Thus did the overwrought Nation begin its obsequies over another long-lost cause. In Boston, less hysterical people than the Nation's editor went about the sorry business of disposing of the bodies of Messrs. Sacco & Vanzetti and the practical business of keeping martrydom alive with yet more litigation.

The Defense Committee denied a report that it was planning to take the embalmed bodies on an agitating tour of U. S. industrial centers. A state law required that the bodies be burned or buried before sunset the Friday following Execution Tuesday. Boston health officials extended the time to Sunday. When the brains and hearts of the corpses had been removed for examination by Harvard medicos, Massachusetts returned what remained of its prisoners to their friends, who straightway sought a public hall for a public wake. But Boston hall owners refused to lease their property. Owners of the building in which the Defense Committee had offices caused a stout joist to be nailed in the building's doorway so that no coffin might be carried in. The Defense Committee had to be content with a small mortuary chapel in the Italian section of Boston. The mortician, an artist in his way, wanted to dress the bodies in dinner jackets, but the Defense Committee said no, let them lie in their plain laboring-men's Sunday best - black cloth suits, black four-in-hand ties, un- comfortable black shoes. Let the coffins be of plain mahogany draped with Red, banked with odorous Red flowers. So it was, and their neighbors saw them as they had often seen them.

First came the three leading members of the Defense Committee - Gardner Jackson, Aldino Felicani, Mary Donovan. Each kissed the brows of the dead. An uncountable crowd, pushed and prodded into line by police, shuffled stuffily after to scowl, weep or gape. Miss Donovan was arrested when she tried to insert an anti-Judge Thayer placard among the funeral flowers. She was later sentenced to a year in jail, appealed the case. Artist William Gropper of the New Masses was not admitted when he came to make bier portraits.

A windy drizzle swept in upon the two hearses and their strange following of limousines, rubberneck busses, taxicabs, shabby family cars. The foot crowd marched 40 abreast with arms linked when wide streets were reached, swelling to 5,000 strong. Many wore Red armbands, lettered "Remember - justice crucified - Aug. 23, 1927."

Police lines kept the procession from passing the State Capital house. When the motorcade drew ahead of the bedraggled marchers and vanished in the distance, mounted police charged the marchers, who had grown noisy and quarrelsome. A remnant plodded on to Forest Hills.

Back in Cambridge, incendiaries had fired five buildings. In the cemetery, another fire blazed, its smoke trailing thin and mournful from the crematorium's high smokestack. The limousines were parked there, one with its shades drawn to hide the prostration of Miss Luigia Vanzetti, Mrs. Sacco and her son Dante. Mary Donovan and Gardner Jackson of the defense committee had the hardihood to follow into the crematorium after Miss Donovan had read a last eulogy to the dead. They peered through a glassed peephole at the coffins flaming in the vault. On the rim of the surrounding natural amphitheatre, the crowd watched the wisp of smoke until nightfall.

Although Tugwell's tongue won the Brain Trust fame with the public, another, even more voluble tongue, won the Brain Trust fame in many a Washington drawing room - the tongue of Jerome Frank. That restless young Jewish lawyer - who was a brain truster to Mayor Dever's Chicago reform administration; whose early drawing room sallies were in the homes of such Midwest literary liberals as Floyd Dell, Sherwood Anderson, Harriet Munroe; whom Communist Emma Goldman calls "Jerry"; whose shrewdness won him a place in the Manhattan law firm of Chadbourne, Stanchfield & Levy; whose brilliant articles on judicial psychology led him to friendship with Felix Frankfurter - was like a can of TNT dropped into a Washington drawing room. He turned his deep burning eyes on his fellow guests and unleashed his facile tongue for the sport of bating reactionaries. Nothing did he enjoy more than predicting the swift destruction which the Administration would wreak on the established order. When he passed, Tory hearts lay beneath their starched shirt fronts palpitating and bleeding. He was the making of many a party.

As counsel to AAA he was also a thorn in the paw of sturdy George Peek, his boss. Mr. Peek protested to Secretary Wallace. In vain, for Counsel Frank had Felix Frankfurter's approval and the support of Dr. Tugwell. So Mr. Peek, instead of using his legal counselor, hired his own lawyer out of his own pocket. But Thorn Frank was too pointed for his flesh. The time came when Mr. Peek gave Mr. Wallace the choice of accepting his own resignation or Frank's. With the advice of Dr. Tugwell and the consent of the President, Mr. Wallace accepted Mr. Peek's .

At In Mr. Peek's place, Chester C. Davis took charge of AAA. "Chet" Davis is not a man of Mr. Peek's sort, not a man of Mr. Frank's. Economically he stood somewhat closer to Jerome Frank, but he was a middle-of-the-roader in economics and in disposition. In AAA's legal department Frank and his satellites, including Francis Shea, Lee Pressman, Victor Rotnem, flashed their rapiers, determined to slice the profits off processors and middlemen and present them to the farmers. In AAA's Information Division, Consumers' Counsel Frederick C. Howe and Gardner Jackson slashed about them in the name of the consumer. Slow and steady Mr. Davis was not at home among such assistants, was not prepared to go their radical lengths. He held his hand, but the time came when the ax had to fall.

One murky evening last week a mimeographed sheet announced a reorganization of AAA. Mr. Frank, who had shocked so many Tories, was shocked. He and his friends were fired without warning. Frederick Howe was demoted. The Brain Trust was so completely taken by surprise that it had no rebuttal. And Dr. Tugwell, alas, was in Florida. Only next day did the full significance of the event dawn upon Washington.

Secretary Wallace and Administrator Davis received a hundred newshawks. For an hour the two were cross-examined. They spoke with circumspection but they denied nothing. The Brain Trusters of AAA had been ousted because Messrs. Davis and Wallace had had enough of them. The action had been discussed for two months.