Page 27 - Garda Journal Winter 2019

GARDA HISTORY | The Boston Strike
Walkout:
The Boston Police
Strike Of 1919
A look at the causes and effects of the Boston Police Strike of 1919, a mix of mismanagement, religious prejudice and union recognition.
STRIKES AND THE RED SCARE
In 1919 America was still recovering from from the Great World War. Price inflation and the cost of living had increased far beyond wages. Men back from the war flooded the labor market which further diminished workers’ earning power. During this year, one fifth of the country’s workers would strike. The year started with New York’s harbor workers striking in January, followed by dressmakers. In February news headlines reported a “prelude to revolution” when a general strike in Seattle closed all business February 6 to 11th.
Bombs were mailed to the mayor of Seattle who broke the strike, and in April, forty more mail bombs were found en route to other public leaders for May Day. With the backdrop of apparently spreading communism, many patriotic Americans believed they were on the verge of a workers revolution.
In Massachusetts, textile workers in Lawrence walked out in protest of six day, nine hour work schedules. Boston telephone operators interrupted much of New England’s phone service in an April, and in July Boston’s elevated train workers went off the job in their own protest. Boston’s political and business leaders could see this national trend of strikes disabling their own businesses and communities, and they were alarmed.
POLICE DISCONTENT
There is no doubt that Boston’s police had grievances, which they expressed as early as 1917. New officer pay had not risen in sixty years, since 1857 when new recruits received two dollars daily. Officers worked seven days per week, with a day off every other week during which they couldn’t leave town without special permission. Depending on duty, officers worked between 73 and 98 hours weekly, and were required to sleep in infested station houses kept in deplorable condition.
Since 1885, the Boston police were under the command of a commissioner appointed by the state governor. Though Boston’s mayor controlled their budget, their operation and
how they used the budget was controlled by a commissioner appointed by the governor. This placed the mayor, Andrew Peters in a difficult position. His city was protected by a force not in his control. When they would succeed the state took credit, when there were problems he was closet to them.
There was also an ethnic overlay. Protestants Yankees sought to control the Irish-Catholic rank and file of the Boston Police Department. This made the dispute about more than wages or work conditions, it quickly broke along lines of ethnicity. By June of 1919 the grievances made by the police had not been addressed. They turned to the American Federation of Labor to consider unionization. Police Commissioner Curtis was outspoken in his condemnation of the movement to unionize.
In August they would be granted a union charter, which Commissioner Curtis would oppose on the grounds that police were not “an employee, but a state officer.” Mayor Peters was unreachable on an extended vacation in Maine, but Governor Coolidge and Attorney General Albert Pillsbury put forward legislation to make unionization illegal for public employees. Pillsbury would note that the “organized work
GARDA JOURNAL 27