Presidents and Labor: Calvin Coolidge and the Boston Police Strike
In 1919 Calvin Coolidge was Governor of Massachusetts, relatively unknown in his state, and not likely to find his name on his party's ticket in the presidential election that would occur the following fall. But in March of 1921 he would be inaugurated as Vice-President of the United States and in less than three and a half years after that, he would be President of the United States. The event that probably elevated Coolidge's profile and stature nationally was the Boston Police Strike of 1919.
Boston police officers went on strike on September 9, 1919. They wanted recognition for their trade union and improvements in wages and working conditions. Boston Police Commissioner Edwin Upton Curtis took the position that police officers did not have the right to form a union, especially one affiliated with a larger organization like the American Federation of Labor (AFL). Attempts at reconciliation between the Commissioner and the police officers, particularly on the part of Boston's Mayor Andrew James Peters, failed, and as a result Boston suffered through several nights of lawlessness.
In 1895, the Massachusetts legislature transferred control of the Boston police department from Boston's mayor to the governor of Massachusetts, and appointed a five-person board of commissioners to manage the department. In 1906, the legislature abolished that board and gave the governor the authority to name a single commissioner for a five year term, serving at the governor's pleasure. The mayor and the city continued to have responsibility for the department's expenses and for the working conditions of the police, but the commissioner controlled department operations and the hiring, training, and discipline of the police officers.
In 1918, the salary for patrolmen was set at $1,400 a year. Police officers had to buy their own uniforms and equipment at a cost of over $200 (a significant percentage of salary in those days). New recruits received $730 during their first year, which increased annually to $821.25 and $1000, and to $1,400 after six years. After World War I, police salaries did not keep up with inflation. From 1913 to May 1919, the cost of living rose by 76%, while police wages rose just 18%. Police officers grew discontent, especially when they compared their wages and found they were earning less than an unskilled steelworker, and half as much as a carpenter or mechanic. Even Boston city laborers were earning around a third more than police officers.
Police officers had other grievances too. They worked shifts of over ten hours each day and between 75 and 90 hours a week. They were not paid for time spent on court appearances. They took offense to having to perform menial tasks such as delivering unpaid tax bills, surveying rooming houses, taking the census, watching the polls at election, checking the backgrounds of prospective jurors, and running menial errands for senior officers. Their living conditions were poor at the 19 station houses where they were required to live, most of which were built before the Civil War. The Court Street station had four toilets and one bathtub shared by 135 men.
Boston's police officers had formed an association known as the Boston Social Club in 1906. In 1917, a committee of police officers from the Social Club met with Commissioner Stephen O'Meara and asked for a raise. He was sympathetic, but advised them to delay their request. They pressed the issue again in the summer of 1918 and Mayor Andrew Peters offered salary increases that would only benefit about a quarter of the officers. O'Meara died in December 1918, and Governor Samuel McCall appointed Edwin Upton Curtis, former Mayor of Boston, as Commissioner of the Boston Police Department. Peters met with representatives of the Social Club and the issue of a police strike came op. Peters made it clear that in his opinion, police were not entitled to form their own union. Curtis was not as sympathetic as O'Meara. In February 1918 he offered a wage compromise that the police rejected.
In May of 1918, Governor Coolidge announced raises for police officers, but the social club found these to be too small. The Social Club's representatives tried to meet with Curtis, but he delegated the issue to a grievance committee he created to handle management-employee disputes, based on the election of representatives from each precinct house by secret ballot. That committee only met once.
In June 1919, the American Federation of Labor (AFL) began accepting police organizations into their membership. By September, it had granted charters to police unions in 37 cities, including Washington, D.C., Los Angeles, Miami, and St. Paul. The Boston police decided to organize under an AFL charter in order to gain support from other unions in their negotiations. On August 9, 1919, the Boston Social Club requested a charter from the AFL. On August 11, Curtis issued a General Order forbidding police officers to join any "organization, club or body outside the department", other than patriotic organizations such as the American Legion. He saw union membership as being a conflict of interest between police officers' duties to their city and to their union. He said: "If troubles and disturbances arise where the interests of this organization and the interests of other elements and classes in the community conflict, the situation immediately arises which always arises when a man attempts to serve two masters, – he must fail either in his duty as a policeman, or in his obligation to the organization that controls him."
The Boston Police received their AFL charter on August 15, 1919. Curtis refused to meet with the eight members of the police union's committee. He suspended them and 11 others who held various union offices and scheduled trials to determine if they had violated his General Order. Mayor Peters tried to mediate the dispute by appointing a Citizen's Committee to review the issue of union representation. He chose a well-known local reformer as its chair, James J. Storrow. Storrow's group recommended that Curtis and the police agree to a police union without AFL ties and without the right to strike. They proposed that Curtis would recognize the police union and the union would agree to remain "independent and unaffiliated". Storrow's group also recommended that no action be taken against the 19 men that Curtis had suspended. Four of Boston's five newspapers expressed support for the compromise, and so did the Boston Chamber of Commerce.
But Curtis had the support of Massachusetts Governor Calvin Coolidge. He rejected the Storrow Commission's proposal and proceeded with the trials of the 19 he had suspended. On September 8 the men were found guilty of union activity. Rather than dismiss them from the police force, he extended their suspensions, stating that he was giving them an opportunity to reconsider their actions and avoid discharges. The police union members responded that same day by voting 1134 to 2 in favor of a strike and scheduled it to start at evening roll call the next day. Their main grievance was the Commissioner's denial of their right to ally themselves with the AFL.
When news of a possible strike broke, all of Boston's newspapers urged the police to reconsider their decision, and predicted dire consequences. Police actions were compared with Russian Bolshevism. But despite a lack of popular support, the Boston Police officers went on strike on September 9, 1919 at 5:45 p.m. Of the force's 1,544 officers and men, 1,117 (72%) failed to report for work.
In response, Governor Coolidge assigned 100 members of the state's Metropolitan Park Police Department to replace the striking officers, but 58 of them refused to do so. They were suspended from their jobs. Commissioner Curtis assured Mayor Peters and Governor Coolidge that Boston would be protected on the first night of the strike, but in fact olunteer replacements were still being organized and not scheduled to report until the next morning. Many of those who filled in for the police were students at Harvard University.
Over the night of September 9th and the morning of the 10th, the city witnessed an outbreak of looting and vandalism. Some youths threw rocks at streetcars and overturned the carts of street vendors. Store windows were smashed and the stores were looted, with the activity restricted maily to certain parts of the city. According to a New York Times report, "throughout the greater part of the city the usual peace and quiet prevailed."
The next morning Mayor Peters asked Governor Coolidge to send in State Guards and Coolidge promptly agreed, sending almost 5,000 men. The local papers reported that following the first night's violence, citizens were referring to striking police as "deserters" and "agents of Lenin." Violence reached its peaked the next night, September 10–11, but businesses were better prepared. Shops were boarded up and others stayed open all night with armed guards visible. Gunfire in South Boston left two dead and others wounded. One person died in a riot at Scollay Square. Nine people died in strike-related violence. Despite the disruption, schools remained open. Later claims against the city for losses incurred during the two nights of disorder ran to $35,000, of which the city paid almost all.
Coolidge called the strikers "deserters" and "traitors". The Boston Police Union responded with a statement which read:
"When we were honorably discharged from the United States army, we were hailed as heroes and saviors of our country. We returned to our duties on the police force of Boston. Now, though only a few months have passed, we are denounced as deserters, as traitors to our city and violators of our oath of office. The first men to raise the cry were those who have always been opposed to giving to labor a living wage. It was taken up by the newspapers, who cared little for the real facts. You finally added your word of condemnation. Among us are men who have gone against spitting machine guns single-handed, and captured them, volunteering for the job. Among us are men who have ridden with dispatches through shell fire so dense that four men fell and only the fifth got through. Not one man of us ever disgraced the flag or his service. It is bitter to come home and be called deserters and traitors. We are the same men who were on the French front. Some of us fought in the Spanish war of 1898. Won't you tell the people of Massachusetts in which war you served?"
On the evening of September 11, the Central Labor Union met to consider calling a general strike in support of the striking police. It had earlier expressed enthusiasm for a general strike, as an expression of solidarity. But seeking the effects of the strike caused the group to hesitate. AFL President Samuel Gompers, who had very recently returned from Europe, assessed the situation and public sentiment. On September 12, he urged the strikers to return to work, asking the city to agree to defer a decision on whether to recognize the police union. In a telegram to Mayor Peters he referred him to what was done in Washington, D.C., where, at the suggestion of President Wilson, the city suspended its regulation forbidding police officers to join a union affiliated with the AFL until a conference scheduled for October 6. The police accepted Gompers' recommendation immediately.
Coolidge took a hard line in his response. Gompers telegraphed Coolidge again, blaming Commissioner Curtis for the crisis. Coolidge said that this was irrelevant, stating that nothing could justify the police walkout. Coolidge famously said "There is no right to strike against the public safety, anywhere, anytime." Coolidge had originally hoped to reinstate the officers, stating in a telegram to a labor convention, "I earnestly hope that circumstances may arise which will cause the police officers to be reinstated". Meanwhile, Commissioner Curtis announced on September 13 that he planned to recruit a new force. He fired approximately 1,100 officers and hired 1,574 replacement police officers from a pool of unemployed World War I veterans. Members of the United Garment Workers refused to sew uniforms for the new hires, who had to report for work in civilian clothing. The new officers received higher salaries and more vacation days than the strikers had. They enjoyed a starting salary of $1,400 along with a pension plan, and the department covered the cost of their uniforms and equipment.
President Woodrow Wilson, speaking from Montana, called the walkout "a crime against civilization" that left the city "at the mercy of an army of thugs." He said that "the obligation of a policeman is as sacred and direct as the obligation of a soldier. He is a public servant, not a private employee, and the whole honor of the community is in his hands. He has no right to prefer any private advantage to the public safety."
The strike gave momentum to Coolidge's political career. In 1918, he had narrowly been elected governor. In November of 1919 he won 62% of the vote when running against an opponent who favored reinstating the strikers. He failed to carry Boston by just 5,000 votes, but that was quite an impressive showing for a Republican in a strongly Democratic city. Coolidge himself later admitted, "No doubt it was the police strike in Boston that brought me into national prominence." After his victory in the election, he received a congratulatory telegram from President Wilson who wrote: "I congratulate you upon your election as a victory for law and order. When that is the issue, all Americans must stand together." Year later, when Coolidge succeeded to the presidency in 1923 upon the death of Warren Harding, the New York Times headlined its biography: "Coolidge Firmness Won Recognition; His Suppression of the Boston Police Strike Made Him a National Figure".
The strike contributed to public anxiety during the period known as the Red Scare of 1919–1920. The failure of this and other strikes in the years following World War I contributed to declining union membership in subsequent years. The American Federation of Labor responded to political pressure experienced during the strike and revoked the charters it had granted to police unions. Police would not try to organize until the 1940s. No police officers in the U.S. went out on strike until July 1974, when some Baltimore police, estimated at 15% to 50% of the force, refused to report for work for several days as a demonstration of support for other striking municipal unions.
Boston police officers went on strike on September 9, 1919. They wanted recognition for their trade union and improvements in wages and working conditions. Boston Police Commissioner Edwin Upton Curtis took the position that police officers did not have the right to form a union, especially one affiliated with a larger organization like the American Federation of Labor (AFL). Attempts at reconciliation between the Commissioner and the police officers, particularly on the part of Boston's Mayor Andrew James Peters, failed, and as a result Boston suffered through several nights of lawlessness.
In 1895, the Massachusetts legislature transferred control of the Boston police department from Boston's mayor to the governor of Massachusetts, and appointed a five-person board of commissioners to manage the department. In 1906, the legislature abolished that board and gave the governor the authority to name a single commissioner for a five year term, serving at the governor's pleasure. The mayor and the city continued to have responsibility for the department's expenses and for the working conditions of the police, but the commissioner controlled department operations and the hiring, training, and discipline of the police officers.
In 1918, the salary for patrolmen was set at $1,400 a year. Police officers had to buy their own uniforms and equipment at a cost of over $200 (a significant percentage of salary in those days). New recruits received $730 during their first year, which increased annually to $821.25 and $1000, and to $1,400 after six years. After World War I, police salaries did not keep up with inflation. From 1913 to May 1919, the cost of living rose by 76%, while police wages rose just 18%. Police officers grew discontent, especially when they compared their wages and found they were earning less than an unskilled steelworker, and half as much as a carpenter or mechanic. Even Boston city laborers were earning around a third more than police officers.
Police officers had other grievances too. They worked shifts of over ten hours each day and between 75 and 90 hours a week. They were not paid for time spent on court appearances. They took offense to having to perform menial tasks such as delivering unpaid tax bills, surveying rooming houses, taking the census, watching the polls at election, checking the backgrounds of prospective jurors, and running menial errands for senior officers. Their living conditions were poor at the 19 station houses where they were required to live, most of which were built before the Civil War. The Court Street station had four toilets and one bathtub shared by 135 men.
Boston's police officers had formed an association known as the Boston Social Club in 1906. In 1917, a committee of police officers from the Social Club met with Commissioner Stephen O'Meara and asked for a raise. He was sympathetic, but advised them to delay their request. They pressed the issue again in the summer of 1918 and Mayor Andrew Peters offered salary increases that would only benefit about a quarter of the officers. O'Meara died in December 1918, and Governor Samuel McCall appointed Edwin Upton Curtis, former Mayor of Boston, as Commissioner of the Boston Police Department. Peters met with representatives of the Social Club and the issue of a police strike came op. Peters made it clear that in his opinion, police were not entitled to form their own union. Curtis was not as sympathetic as O'Meara. In February 1918 he offered a wage compromise that the police rejected.
In May of 1918, Governor Coolidge announced raises for police officers, but the social club found these to be too small. The Social Club's representatives tried to meet with Curtis, but he delegated the issue to a grievance committee he created to handle management-employee disputes, based on the election of representatives from each precinct house by secret ballot. That committee only met once.
In June 1919, the American Federation of Labor (AFL) began accepting police organizations into their membership. By September, it had granted charters to police unions in 37 cities, including Washington, D.C., Los Angeles, Miami, and St. Paul. The Boston police decided to organize under an AFL charter in order to gain support from other unions in their negotiations. On August 9, 1919, the Boston Social Club requested a charter from the AFL. On August 11, Curtis issued a General Order forbidding police officers to join any "organization, club or body outside the department", other than patriotic organizations such as the American Legion. He saw union membership as being a conflict of interest between police officers' duties to their city and to their union. He said: "If troubles and disturbances arise where the interests of this organization and the interests of other elements and classes in the community conflict, the situation immediately arises which always arises when a man attempts to serve two masters, – he must fail either in his duty as a policeman, or in his obligation to the organization that controls him."
The Boston Police received their AFL charter on August 15, 1919. Curtis refused to meet with the eight members of the police union's committee. He suspended them and 11 others who held various union offices and scheduled trials to determine if they had violated his General Order. Mayor Peters tried to mediate the dispute by appointing a Citizen's Committee to review the issue of union representation. He chose a well-known local reformer as its chair, James J. Storrow. Storrow's group recommended that Curtis and the police agree to a police union without AFL ties and without the right to strike. They proposed that Curtis would recognize the police union and the union would agree to remain "independent and unaffiliated". Storrow's group also recommended that no action be taken against the 19 men that Curtis had suspended. Four of Boston's five newspapers expressed support for the compromise, and so did the Boston Chamber of Commerce.
But Curtis had the support of Massachusetts Governor Calvin Coolidge. He rejected the Storrow Commission's proposal and proceeded with the trials of the 19 he had suspended. On September 8 the men were found guilty of union activity. Rather than dismiss them from the police force, he extended their suspensions, stating that he was giving them an opportunity to reconsider their actions and avoid discharges. The police union members responded that same day by voting 1134 to 2 in favor of a strike and scheduled it to start at evening roll call the next day. Their main grievance was the Commissioner's denial of their right to ally themselves with the AFL.
When news of a possible strike broke, all of Boston's newspapers urged the police to reconsider their decision, and predicted dire consequences. Police actions were compared with Russian Bolshevism. But despite a lack of popular support, the Boston Police officers went on strike on September 9, 1919 at 5:45 p.m. Of the force's 1,544 officers and men, 1,117 (72%) failed to report for work.
In response, Governor Coolidge assigned 100 members of the state's Metropolitan Park Police Department to replace the striking officers, but 58 of them refused to do so. They were suspended from their jobs. Commissioner Curtis assured Mayor Peters and Governor Coolidge that Boston would be protected on the first night of the strike, but in fact olunteer replacements were still being organized and not scheduled to report until the next morning. Many of those who filled in for the police were students at Harvard University.
Over the night of September 9th and the morning of the 10th, the city witnessed an outbreak of looting and vandalism. Some youths threw rocks at streetcars and overturned the carts of street vendors. Store windows were smashed and the stores were looted, with the activity restricted maily to certain parts of the city. According to a New York Times report, "throughout the greater part of the city the usual peace and quiet prevailed."
The next morning Mayor Peters asked Governor Coolidge to send in State Guards and Coolidge promptly agreed, sending almost 5,000 men. The local papers reported that following the first night's violence, citizens were referring to striking police as "deserters" and "agents of Lenin." Violence reached its peaked the next night, September 10–11, but businesses were better prepared. Shops were boarded up and others stayed open all night with armed guards visible. Gunfire in South Boston left two dead and others wounded. One person died in a riot at Scollay Square. Nine people died in strike-related violence. Despite the disruption, schools remained open. Later claims against the city for losses incurred during the two nights of disorder ran to $35,000, of which the city paid almost all.
Coolidge called the strikers "deserters" and "traitors". The Boston Police Union responded with a statement which read:
"When we were honorably discharged from the United States army, we were hailed as heroes and saviors of our country. We returned to our duties on the police force of Boston. Now, though only a few months have passed, we are denounced as deserters, as traitors to our city and violators of our oath of office. The first men to raise the cry were those who have always been opposed to giving to labor a living wage. It was taken up by the newspapers, who cared little for the real facts. You finally added your word of condemnation. Among us are men who have gone against spitting machine guns single-handed, and captured them, volunteering for the job. Among us are men who have ridden with dispatches through shell fire so dense that four men fell and only the fifth got through. Not one man of us ever disgraced the flag or his service. It is bitter to come home and be called deserters and traitors. We are the same men who were on the French front. Some of us fought in the Spanish war of 1898. Won't you tell the people of Massachusetts in which war you served?"
On the evening of September 11, the Central Labor Union met to consider calling a general strike in support of the striking police. It had earlier expressed enthusiasm for a general strike, as an expression of solidarity. But seeking the effects of the strike caused the group to hesitate. AFL President Samuel Gompers, who had very recently returned from Europe, assessed the situation and public sentiment. On September 12, he urged the strikers to return to work, asking the city to agree to defer a decision on whether to recognize the police union. In a telegram to Mayor Peters he referred him to what was done in Washington, D.C., where, at the suggestion of President Wilson, the city suspended its regulation forbidding police officers to join a union affiliated with the AFL until a conference scheduled for October 6. The police accepted Gompers' recommendation immediately.
Coolidge took a hard line in his response. Gompers telegraphed Coolidge again, blaming Commissioner Curtis for the crisis. Coolidge said that this was irrelevant, stating that nothing could justify the police walkout. Coolidge famously said "There is no right to strike against the public safety, anywhere, anytime." Coolidge had originally hoped to reinstate the officers, stating in a telegram to a labor convention, "I earnestly hope that circumstances may arise which will cause the police officers to be reinstated". Meanwhile, Commissioner Curtis announced on September 13 that he planned to recruit a new force. He fired approximately 1,100 officers and hired 1,574 replacement police officers from a pool of unemployed World War I veterans. Members of the United Garment Workers refused to sew uniforms for the new hires, who had to report for work in civilian clothing. The new officers received higher salaries and more vacation days than the strikers had. They enjoyed a starting salary of $1,400 along with a pension plan, and the department covered the cost of their uniforms and equipment.
President Woodrow Wilson, speaking from Montana, called the walkout "a crime against civilization" that left the city "at the mercy of an army of thugs." He said that "the obligation of a policeman is as sacred and direct as the obligation of a soldier. He is a public servant, not a private employee, and the whole honor of the community is in his hands. He has no right to prefer any private advantage to the public safety."
The strike gave momentum to Coolidge's political career. In 1918, he had narrowly been elected governor. In November of 1919 he won 62% of the vote when running against an opponent who favored reinstating the strikers. He failed to carry Boston by just 5,000 votes, but that was quite an impressive showing for a Republican in a strongly Democratic city. Coolidge himself later admitted, "No doubt it was the police strike in Boston that brought me into national prominence." After his victory in the election, he received a congratulatory telegram from President Wilson who wrote: "I congratulate you upon your election as a victory for law and order. When that is the issue, all Americans must stand together." Year later, when Coolidge succeeded to the presidency in 1923 upon the death of Warren Harding, the New York Times headlined its biography: "Coolidge Firmness Won Recognition; His Suppression of the Boston Police Strike Made Him a National Figure".
The strike contributed to public anxiety during the period known as the Red Scare of 1919–1920. The failure of this and other strikes in the years following World War I contributed to declining union membership in subsequent years. The American Federation of Labor responded to political pressure experienced during the strike and revoked the charters it had granted to police unions. Police would not try to organize until the 1940s. No police officers in the U.S. went out on strike until July 1974, when some Baltimore police, estimated at 15% to 50% of the force, refused to report for work for several days as a demonstration of support for other striking municipal unions.