The Boston police strike occurred on September 9, 1919, when Boston police officers went on strike seeking recognition for their trade union and improvements in wages and working conditions. Police Commissioner Edwin Upton Curtis denied that police officers had any right to form a union, much less one affiliated with a larger organization like the American Federation of Labor (AFL), which some attribute to concerns that unionized police would not protect the interest of city officials and business leaders. Attempts at reconciliation between the Commissioner and the police officers, particularly on the part of Boston's mayor, Andrew James Peters, failed.
During the strike, Boston experienced several nights of lawlessness. Several thousand members of the Massachusetts State Guard, supported by volunteers, restored order by force. Press reaction both locally and nationally described the strike as Bolshevik-inspired and directed at the destruction of civil society. The strikers were called "deserters" and "agents of Lenin". Samuel Gompers of the AFL recognized that the strike was damaging the cause of labor in the public mind and advised the strikers to return to work. Commissioner Curtis refused to re-hire the striking policemen. He was supported by Massachusetts governor Calvin Coolidge, whose rebuke of Gompers earned him a national reputation.* Howard J. Zibel, "The Role of Calvin Coolidge in the Boston Police Strike of 1919," Industrial and Labor Relations Forum 6, no. 3 (November 1969): 299-318.
Nine civilians were killed in several days of civil unrest and the threat of a general strike. Eight of the nine were fatally shot by members of the State Guard. The police strike ended on September 13, when Commissioner Curtis announced the replacement of all striking workers with 1,500 new officers, given higher wages. The strike proved a setback for labor unions. The AFL discontinued its attempts to organize police officers for another two decades. Coolidge went on to win election as the Republican nominee for Vice President of the United States in the 1920 presidential election and became president in 1923 upon President Warren Harding's death.
Background In 1895, the Massachusetts legislature transferred control of the Boston police department from Boston's mayor to the governor of Massachusetts, whom it authorized to appoint 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 to a term of five years, subject to removal by the governor. The mayor and the city continued to have responsibility for the department's expenses and the physical working conditions of its employees, but the commissioner controlled department operations and the hiring, training, and discipline of the police officers.Philip S. Foner, History of the Labor Movement in the United States, v. 8 Postwar Struggles, 1918–1920 (NY: International Publishers, 1988), , 92-3
In 1918, the salary for patrolmen was set at $1,400 a year ($ in ). Police officers had to buy their own uniforms and equipment which cost over $200. New recruits received $730 during their first year, which increased annually to $821.25 and $1000, and to $1,400 after six years.Francis Russell, A City in Terror: Calvin Coolidge and the 1919 Boston Police Strike (Boston: Beacon Press, 1975), , 48 In the years following World War I, inflation dramatically eroded the value of a police officer's salary. From 1913 to May 1919, the cost of living rose by 76%, while police wages rose just 18%. Discontent and restiveness among the Boston police force grew as they compared their wages and found they were earning less than an unskilled steelworker, half as much as a carpenter or mechanic and 50 cents a day less than a streetcar conductor. Boston city laborers were earning a third more on an hourly basis.
Police officers had an extensive list of grievances. They worked ten-hour shifts and typically recorded weekly totals between 75 and 90 hours. They were not paid for time spent on court appearances. They also objected to being required to perform such tasks as "delivering unpaid tax bills, surveying rooming houses, taking the census, or watching the polls at election" and checking the backgrounds of prospective jurors as well as serving as "errand boys" for their officers.Russell, City in Terror, pp. 50–522 They complained about having to share beds and the lack of sanitation, baths, and toilets at many of the 19 station houses where they were required to live, most of which dated to before the Civil War. The Court Street station had four toilets for 135 men, and one bathtub.
Boston's police officers, acting with the sponsorship of the police department, had formed an association known as the Boston Social Club in 1906. In 1917, a committee of police officers representing the Social Club met with Commissioner Stephen O'Meara to ask about a raise. He was sympathetic, but advised them to wait for a better time. They pressed the issue in the summer of 1918 and, near the end of the year, Mayor Andrew Peters offered salary increases that would affect about one-fourth 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.Russell, City in Terror, pp. 43–6
After another meeting where representatives of the Social Club repeated their salary demands, Peters said: "while the word 'strike' was not mentioned, the whole situation is far more serious than I realized."Russell, City in Terror, p. 49 He also made it clear to the rank and file that they were not entitled to form their own union.Joseph Slater, "Labor and the Boston Police Strike of 1919," in Aaron Brenner, Benjamin Day, and Immanuel Ness, eds., The Encyclopedia of Strikes in American History (Armonk, NY: M.E. Sharpe, 2009), 239–51, esp. 245 Curtis did not share his predecessor's or the mayor's sympathy for the police, but in February 1918 he offered a wage compromise that the police rejected.Russell, City in Terror, p. 55 In May, Governor Coolidge announced raises, which were also rejected.Russell, City in Terror, p. 56 When the Social Club's representatives tried to raise grievances with him, Curtis set up his own grievance committee to handle management-employee disputes, based on the election of representatives from each precinct house by secret ballot, and it met just once.
A few months later, in June 1919, the American Federation of Labor (AFL), responding to repeated requests from local police organizations, began accepting police organizations into their membership.Slater, "Labor and the Boston Police Strike of 1919," 243 By September, it had granted charters to police unions in 37 cities, including Washington, D.C., Los Angeles, Miami, and St. Paul,Foner, History of the Labor Movement, v.8, 93, 97 though not without protests from some city officials, who opposed the unionization of police, firefighters, and teachers.Slater, "Labor and the Boston Police Strike of 1919," 244
The Boston police organized under an AFL charter in order to gain support from other unions in their negotiations and any strike that might ensue. 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", making an exception only for patriotic organizations such as the newly-formed American Legion. His administration argued that such a rule was based on the conflict of interest between police officers' duties and union membership:"Annual report of the Police Commissioner for the City of Boston, Year ending November 30, 1919", 10–1
Some attribute the concern from Commissioner Curtis, which was shared by the chamber of commerce, to the fear that unionized police would align with workers and not continue to protect the interest of capitalists. On August 15, the police received their AFL charter. On August 17, the Central Labor Union of Boston welcomed the police union and denounced Curtis for his assertions that the police had no right to unionize.Foner, History of the Labor Movement, v.8, 94 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. At this point, Curtis was a hero to business interests. Late in August, the New Hampshire Association of Manufacturers called him "the Ole Hanson of the east", equating the events they anticipated in Boston with the earlier Seattle General Strike.Slater, "Labor and the Boston Police Strike of 1919," 248
Mayor Peters sought to play an intermediary role by appointing a Citizen's Committee to review the dispute about union representation. He chose a well-known local reformer as its chair, James J. Storrow, whose group recommended that Curtis and the police agree to a police union without AFL ties and without the right to strike. Curtis would recognize the police union, which would agree to remain "independent and unaffiliated" and no action would be taken against the 19 men Curtis had suspended. Four of Boston's five newspapers backed the compromise, with only the Boston Transcript holding to a consistent anti-union position.Foner, History of the Labor Movement, v.8, 94–5 The Boston Chamber of Commerce backed it as well.
Curtis, with the backing of Massachusetts Governor Calvin Coolidge, rejected the Storrow Commission's proposal. He proceeded with department trials of the 19 and on September 8 found them guilty of union activity. Rather than dismiss them from the police force, he extended their suspensions. He later explained that he was giving them an opportunity to reconsider their actions and avoid discharges, which would have been irrevocable."Annual report of the Police Commissioner for the City of Boston, Year ending November 30, 1919", 13 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 stated grounds omitted wages and working conditions. They said the strike's rationale was to protest the Commissioner's denial of their right to ally themselves with the AFL.Foner, History of the Labor Movement, v.8, 95
In anticipation of the strike, all of Boston's newspapers called it "Bolshevistic", pleaded with the police to reconsider and predicted dire consequences. One also warned the police that their eventual defeat was guaranteed, that they would lose because "behind Boston in this skirmish with Bolshevism stands Massachusetts, and behind Massachusetts stands America."
Strike
On September 9, Boston Police Department officers went on strike at 5:45 p.m. Of the force's 1,544 officers and men, 1,117 (72%) failed to report for work. Coolidge assigned 100 members of the state's Metropolitan Park Police Department to replace the striking officers, but 58 of them refused to participate and were suspended from their jobs. Despite assurances from Commissioner Curtis to Mayor Peters and Governor Coolidge, Boston had little police protection for the night of September 9. Volunteer replacements were still being organized and due to report the next morning. Many of the strikebreakers were students at Harvard University.