Nineteen Nineteen
The Boston Police Strike in the Context of American Labor
Introduction | The A.F. of L. | "Bolshevism" | The General Strike | Conclusions | Bibliography
4. The General Strike
As Chapter 3 argued, previous historians have overemphasized the importance of radical labor organizations and the fear of "Bolshevism" during the Boston Police strike. Their focus on such events as the founding of socialist parties in the United States and the bomb campaign against anti-communists overstates the link between these events and the Boston strike. At the same time, the overemphasis on actions carried out by avowed revolutionaries in effect de-emphasizes and presents a distorted view of two other events of 1919: the general strikes in Seattle, Washington and Winnipeg, Manitoba. Previous accounts of the Boston Police Strike have put the two general strikes of 1919 in the context of radicalism, a placement that leads to a misreading of the attempted general strike in support of the Boston police. The general strike, though perceived by many as a purely radical technique, was in 1919 also a tactic of moderate labor organizations. To understand why a general strike almost took place in Boston, and to understand why it did not, it is necessary to put the general strike in a context of its own.
The general strike had different meanings for different actors. When the Boston Central Labor Union threatened to call a general strike, the minds of both laborers and middle-class citizens recalled the general strikes that had frozen Seattle in February and Winnipeg in June and July. To the laborers, the general strike was a potentially powerful yet largely untested means of forcing employers to meet the demands of one union by involving all the unions in a city in the struggle. To the A.F. of L. leadership, general strikes were for use only in extreme conditions, because the national organization feared that they could get out of hand. And employers and other business interests saw the general strike not only as a serious disruption is business but aa tactic associated with European socialism and radicalism. Of all the events in the Boston police crisis, the nearly successful attempt by some of the more hotheaded unions to call a general strike was in fact the most truly radical. The decision not to call a general strike was critical to the ultimate result of the strike; once the B.C.L.U. definitively decided against a general strike, "any real chance of a successful outcome to the police strike was gone."1
General Strikes before 1919
The idea of a "general strike," which can be serviceably defined as "the strike of a majority of the workers in the more important industries of any one locality or region,"2 originated and was developed in Europe. The essential premise behind a general strike is that labor can bend employers to its will if instead of stopping production in a single industry, it shuts down work in an entire city or region. This concept has its beginnings in the second decade of the nineteenth century in England, and first appeared in that country in 1842.3 This first strike began with a strike by coal miners against a reduction in wages, but developed, through the efforts of labor leaders, into a mass protest by workers in many industries and across several English counties in favor of the People's Charter, a proposal that would have increased the representation of the working classes in Parliament.4 Established trade unions opposed the strike, and it failed after about two months, when hunger and government deployment of troops and artillery forced the workers to return to their jobs.5 Although eight decades and an ocean away from the Boston of 1919, this first general strike already shared certain crucial elements with future general strikes: a grievance in one industry spreading to others, the political nature of a general strike, the refusal of the most powerful national labor organizations to provide support, the military response by the government, and the ultimate failure of the strike.
Throughout the nineteenth century, Europeans associated advocacy of a general strike with radical, revolutionary ideology. From 1864, when the Marxist First International was formed and first supported the general strike, European revolutionaries debated the purpose and advisability of the tactic. The most enthusiastic proponents of a general strike were French revolutionary socialists, but their endless debates did not result in a single major general strike in the nineteenth century.6 In contrast, the major general strikes in Sweden in 1909 and in Belgium in 1913 had strictly reformist goals.7 Both of these strikes were essentially failures. The most successful mass strikes were the revolutionary strikes in Russia in 1905 and March 1917, the latter of which was instrumental in the overthrow of tsarism.8
In North America, as in Europe, support of the general strike was mostly limited to radicals, such as the Industrial Workers of the World. "From its inception at the first convention in 1905, the Industrial Workers of the World had carried as one of its major aims the 'Social General Strike' as the final solution of the class struggle."9 I.W.W. leader William Haywood in 1911 declared that "if I didn't think that the general strike was leading on to the great revolution which will emancipate the working class, I wouldn't be here."10 As we will see, the A.F. of L. was very hesitant to talk about general strikes, yet its central labor unions organized several, while the I.W.W. considered the general strike a central element in its plan, but was unable to begin one.
The first American general strike, the St. Louis strike of 1877, was organized by the Workingmen's Party, a Marxist organization.11 This small faction transformed, through speeches and organization, a strike among railroad workers into a strike by thousands of workers in several industries for the eight-hour day and a ban on child labor.12 This strike collapsed after four days due to disorganization on the part of its leaders, lack of food for the strikers, and the arrest of those leaders by police and militiamen.13 The strike did not accomplish its main goals, though it may have achieved incremental gains for labor.14
The general strike was a component of radical ideology, and was introduced to America by a Marxist group in St. Louis. But later general strikes on this continent were organized by moderate labor unions. The general strike occupied a gray area between the poles of moderate, loyal labor and radical, revolutionary movements. Neither their sponsors nor their opponents were entirely sure what to make of this dual nature. This paradox is essential to understanding the conduct of and reaction to the Boston Police Strike.
The first general strike sponsored by an American Federation of Labor central labor union--the organization of all A.F. of L. locals in a city--took place in 1892 in New Orleans. On November 8, 1892, the Workingmen's Amalgamated Council, the local A.F. of L. central labor union, called a general strike in support of three of its member locals--the "Triple Alliance" of teamsters, scalesmen, and packers--who were trying "to gain a preferential closed shop," among other demands.15 The city's unions heeded the central's call, and "more than 20,000 men, who with their families made up nearly half the population, stopped work for three days."16 The strike committee called off the strike after nine days, when the authorities threatened martial law.
The strike resulted in some improvement for the workers, but it did not achieve the primary demand for a closed shop.17 Had the strike succeeded, it "would have marked the greatest victory of the American Federation of Labor in its early career. . . ."18 The failure may have steered the national A.F. of L., which had supported the strike, away from the use of the general strike.19
Despite the setback in New Orleans, the Philadelphia Central Labor Union in 1910 was willing to call a general strike to support the streetcar operators, who were striking to protest the dismissal of many union members, apparently for union activities.20 On February 27, the C.L.U. voted to call a general strike on March 5 if the streetcar strike had not been settled by then. When the traction company refused the strikers' demands, tens of thousands of workers walked out. By order of strike headquarters, vital services, such as the delivery of milk, bread, and ice, continued as normal.21 By March 9, a convention of the Pennsylvania State Federation of Labor voted to call a walkout of every industry in the entire state in support of the carmen, and there was even talk of a national general strike.22 But the president of the State Federation was opposed to a statewide strike, and he pocket-vetoed the statewide vote on the issue.23 The first defection of striking union workers came on the twenty-second, when bricklayers and textile workers began returning to work. These unions arrived at the decision to return in contrasting ways. The textile workers were ordered by their "Executive Committee" to go back, while the bricklayers' union seems to have been swayed by a desire from the journeymen, at the bottom of the hierarchy, to resume work.24 These defections contributed to the decision not to have a statewide strike,25 and the city's general strike was called off on the twenty-seventh. The Philadelphia strike had been carefully planned and almost succeeded in forcing a settlement when the political boss of Philadelphia took the side of the strikers, but in the end the power of the traction company and the lukewarm support of the State Federation prevented the strike from succeeding.26
The general strikes in St. Louis, New Orleans, and Philadelphia show characteristics that were to reappear in Boston. In the first two cases we see the original dispute in a single, but vital industry (the railroad of East St. Louis and the port of New Orleans were central to those cities' economies.) Although not directly involved in the dispute, other unions joined a general strike because they felt the outcome of the dispute would affect the welfare of all organized labor. Both strikes were organized by a citywide organization, and both the deployment or threatened deployment of state militias contributed greatly to their defeat. Except for the fact that there was no actual general strike in Boston, this model matches the Boston events closely. The Philadelphia strike provides a somewhat different angle, in that the transit industry was not as central to the city's economy27 and the strike failed more due to a collapse from within rather than the intervention of troops.
But by 1919, the St. Louis and New Orleans had faded into the past and were not much on the minds of the major actors in the Boston Police crisis. In contrast, the two North American general strikes of 1919 were obvious points of reference to the Boston Central Labor Union leadership, the government and conservative forces opposed to the policemen, as well as anyone scrutinizing the Boston Police Strike today. An examination of Seattle strike of February and the Winnipeg strike of June and July show what was at issue when the B.C.L.U. threatened a general strike, and provides some idea of what might have happened had the Boston unions gone through with their pledge of a sympathetic strike on behalf of the police.
Seattle and Winnipeg, 1919
The Seattle strike began with a strike by shipyard workers on January 21, 1919. Some of the more radical, I.W.W.-influenced members of the A.F. of L.-affiliated Seattle Central Labor Council used the absence of many of the council's leaders to push through a vote to support the shipbuilders with a general strike.28 After three days of warning, the strike began on February 6. 60,000 workers in all fields stayed home, and the city's economy was paralyzed, though the General Strike Committee ensured that essential services, such as milk delivery and electricity, continued uninterrupted.29 The General Strike Committee even policed the city, using unarmed veterans who were members of unions.30 Partially because of the efforts of these men, there was an almost total absence of violence during the strike. Despite the calm of the city, the strike was denounced nationwide as the beginning of a Bolshevik-style revolution.31 An enormous buildup of police and military force and downright hostility to the strike on the part of the A.F. of L. leadership caused the strike to collapse on February 10.
The Seattle strike, "the first major general strike in U.S. history,"32 in was significant episode in the development of strike tactics and of responses to strikes. The Central Labor Council's decision to support the shipbuilders by having all the unions in the city strike "in itself. . . marked a serious departure from customary American labor tactics."33 An A.F. of L. Central Labor Union, whose duties under the A.F. of L. constitution were largely limited to organizational activities, had slipped its leash and ventured into the unexplored territory of the general strike.34 After the strike was over, the Council was rebuked by the American Federationist, the official organ of the A.F. of L.:
The general strike inaugurated by the Seattle Central Labor Union was an undertaking in violation of the rules and regulations of the American Federation of Labor. The greater number of the local unions did not have the approval and sanction of their international unions and did not receive their moral or financial support. Born in a spirit of insubordination, disregardful of all rules and regulations adopted by trade unions for orderly procedure and the safeguarding of the rights and privileges of their members and jeopardizing the funds of all local and international unions by subjecting them to the will and whim of officers of central labor unions, this strike was bound from its inception to die an early death.35
Despite this condemnation, the Central Labor Council had shown that a central labor union could not only act independently of the A.F. of L.'s national leadership, but could run an entire city for several days without shortages or violence. The general strike had failed, but the Boston Central Labor Union could still see its promise.
Governments also learned lessons from Seattle. The strike showed that a central labor union could shut down a city and restart it on its own terms, but it also demonstrated that a general strike could be defeated by force and determination. The mayor of Seattle, Ole Hanson, embodied this strategy. At the very beginning of the strike, he assembled an army of policemen and troops to deter violence on the part of the strikers. He also promised to call upon, if necessary, "every soldier in the Northwest to protect life, business, and property."36 Backed up by this host, Hanson presented an ultimatum to the strikers, whom he termed "anarchists" and "revolutionists."37 Hanson did not try negotiation; he relied on pure, uncompromising, military intimidation. It worked. The show of force was instrumental in convincing the strikers to go back to work.38 By March, Hanson was viewed as "Seattle's deliverer from revolution,"39 and a national hero.40 Politicians across the country took note of the potential rewards to be reaped by crushing "Bolshevism."
A second general strike began in Winnipeg, Manitoba on May 15 and lasted for over a month. The Winnipeg Trades and Labor Council, which organized the strike, was again the A.F. of L. body responsible for coordinating the various affiliated unions in a city, but not empowered with calling a general strike.41 The Winnipeg council followed mirrored the organizational scheme of the Seattle strike committee, which suggests that it may have consciously modeled its strike on Seattle's.42 The initial conflict in Winnipeg was between three foundries and their workers, who wanted to establish collective bargaining between the foundries and the Metal Trades Council, a coalition of several craft unions.43 On May 6, the Trades Council called for a vote on a general strike to support not only the metal workers but also striking builders, and on May 13 the result was announced: the city's union workers had voted to strike on May 15.44
One component of the Winnipeg general strike was essentially the strike of a unionized police force. Winnipeg's police could not have been A.F. of L. affiliates; no charters were granted to police unions until June, after the general strike had begun. But they had an unaffiliated union, and in April 1919 they had even voted to strike for higher wages, but cancelled their walkout when the city agreed to their demands at the last moment.45 While the raise averted an April strike, it did not win the devotion of the force. A few weeks later, presented with a plea for assistance from the metal workers, the policemen voted overwhelmingly to join the general strike.46 Once the strike began, on May 15, the police took orders from the strike committee, which told them to continue their work, for police work was considered essential, like milk and bread delivery.47 This situation left the police in a very odd position. On the one hand, they were not exactly loyal to the elected government, for they were taking orders from the strike committee. On the other hand, they were doing their jobs as they always had, and proclaimed their readiness to mete out equal justice to striker and strikebreaker alike.48 They hovered between loyalty to the government and a strike.
For a few weeks the police remained on duty, and until May 31 the city was quite placid; after that date, the strikers' angry marches were still attended by little violence.49 But the business interests of Winnipeg, embodied in the Citizens' Committee, did not meekly accept the decision of the police to obey the strike committee's orders. The Committee pressured the City Council to take action against any municipal employees cooperating with the strike.50 On May 26, the City singled out public employees, particularly policemen and firemen, for attack. The council prohibited the firemen from joining any organization to which they might owe allegiance and from ever joining a sympathetic strike. Surprisingly, the Council seems to have been willing to allow the firemen to form an unaffiliated union and even to strike after arbitration had failed.51 Furthermore, the Council approved "the dismissal of all employees in civic services who had struck on May 15."52 On May 29, the same rules were extended to policemen, and on May 30 the police were given 24 hours to sign a pledge not to join an affiliated union and not to engage in a sympathetic strike. The policemen refused, and on June 9 the city government dismissed the police force, replacing it with "special police."53
The "specials" who were hired to replace the police were mostly returned soldiers. While many had combat experience, they lacked the policeman's skills of traffic direction, crowd control, and the use of non-lethal force.54 As would later happen in Boston, men without uniform and with only military training who were attempting to fill the complex role of peace officer proved to be irresistible targets of angry citizens who resented their fumbling or were eager to test the mettle of such an unfamiliar power. At the same time, the specials had not learned the restraint of the regular police, and were apt to respond with too much force to provocation.55 When the specials first appeared on the streets on June 10, they were attacked by mobs that hurled missiles and pulled the mounted specials off their horses.56
The Winnipeg Strike was defeated by the application of massive military force. There nine times as many "special" police as there normally were police, and the specials were paid a higher salary.57 The police were never rehired.58 The national leadership of the American Federation of Labor condemned the Winnipeg unions for seeking "one big union"59 and revoked the charters of some of its affiliates there.60
In the great drama of a citywide strike, the Winnipeg policemen's role attracts little attention, either in accounts of the Winnipeg strike or of the Boston Police Strike. But the events in Winnipeg have great bearing on the Boston Police Strike. In Winnipeg a union council had complete control of the city, including the police force. And the police themselves, as a member organization of the council, had voted overwhelmingly for a general strike. Depending on one's viewpoint, this was an impressive, though ultimately failed demonstration of the power of labor or the beginning of a revolution against lawful government. Like Seattle, Winnipeg remained orderly and secure under the reign of labor. And while the Seattle strike committee had depended on union members who had fought in France to replace the union-busting police force, Winnipeg's committee pulled of the greater fear of commanding the city's police.
The Winnipeg and Seattle strikes appear at first glance to have been ruinous defeats for organized labor, but they were not necessarily perceived that way in 1919. In the spring and summer, the I.W.W. and the A.F. of L. considered nationwide general strikes in support of labor leaders who had been imprisoned for alleged subversion. This strategy--fighting charges of radicalism with radical action--had been raised by the I.W.W. in 1906, when that organization considered, but rejected, the idea of launching a general strike in support of its leader Bill Haywood, on trial for murder.61 In March 1919, Eugene V. Debs, the famous radical leader who had been convicted for violating the Espionage Act, threatened that "by May 1, the day on which I begin my sentence, a general strike will have culminated."62 Debs expected the miners of Indiana to start the strike, but it did not come about. A proposed nationwide general strike in support of Thomas Mooney, who had been convicted of participating in a 1916 bombing was rejected by the A.F. of L.63 Although these strikes never happened, they show that the idea of the general strike did not die in Seattle or Winnipeg.
The history of the general strike in Europe and North America and the events in Seattle and Winnipeg help answer several important questions about the threatened general strike in support of the Boston police. First, why did the Boston Central Labor Union consider a general strike, when general strikes by A.F. of L. centrals in New Orleans, Seattle, and Winnipeg had failed to achieve their goals and had severely weakened the labor movements in those cities? Second, how did the threat of a general strike affect government response to the police crisis before and after the police walkout? And third, what caused the B.C.L.U. and its constituent locals to abandon plans for a general strike, leaving the policemen to their fate?
Preparations for a General Strike in Boston
Before answering these questions, it is necessary to set forth a brief chronological account of the general strike that did not take place in Boston in September 1919. The first indication that other A.F. of L.-affiliated locals might strike in "sympathy" with the police is an August 16 article in the Evening Transcript stating that at police meetings on the previous day,
Policemen were assured that labor would handle their case with the police commissioner and that 80,000 labor union members of Boston would stand by them. There was talk of calling out the Boston firemen, the Elevated carmen and the telephone operators if Commissioner Curtis carried out his threat. No meetings of these three unions have been called, however, to consider sympathetic strike possibilities, but numerous firemen were seen about Fay Hall last night, evidently advising the policemen not to falter.
There was also talk that the teamsters of Boston and the unions of city employees would join a sympathetic strike if necessary, to push the policemen's movement over. The labor leaders [Frank H. McCarthy of the A.F. of L., City Councillor and labor advocate James T. Moriarty, and B.C.L.U. business agent P. Harry Jennings] told the policemen that they must remain firm for organization, for the eyes of the whole country are upon them.64
Two days later, on the seventeenth, the weekly meeting of the B.C.L.U. made the possibility of a general strike slightly more official. "Before a large number of delegates the C.L.U. manifested its readiness to call a general strike of all the organized labor of the city in this fight."65 And the next day, three locals, the Plumbers' Union, Local 12; Machinists' Lodge 391, and Boilermakers' Union, Local 585 "voted full support to the Boston Policemen's Union, even to the extent of quitting work, if necessary."66 On August 24, the B.C.L.U. voted to "support" the police and to call meetings of every local in Boston to vote on support of the police. "The [B.C.L.U.] delegates predicted that every important union in the city would respond to a strike call, if one were issued."67
During the next two weeks, the building police crisis and the frantic efforts of the Storrow committee eclipsed the possibility of a general strike, at least in press reports. Once the policemen had walked off their jobs, the specter of a general strike reemerged. The peak of excitement about a general strike--feverish anticipation among union members and terror among conservatives--came in the days immediately following the police walkout of September 9. On September 11, the Evening Transcript ran above its lead story the headline, "General Strike Impends."68 Unlike the Transcript's misleading ravings about Bolshevism, this article was based partly on fact. It reported:
Boston is threatened with the catastrophe of a general strike. Late this afternoon there appeared to be no way of averting such a misfortune unless the authorities surrender absolutely to the demands of the policemen. Whether a general strike will be called among the bodies affiliated with the American Federation of Labor depends much upon the outcome of a meeting of the Central Labor Union that is in session. The mayor has refused to yield, and labor men have said that there is no hope of averting a general strike.69
On September 13, a sympathetic strike of at least some unions was still likely. The telephone operators seemed particularly inclined to strike in sympathy with the police, and the Labor World reported that
There is also the possibility, which labor leaders consider a probability, that the carmen of the Boston Elevated Railway Company, the stationary firemen, men employed in the building trades and perhaps others will become involved in the strike. The situation is little short of critical, and the next few days may bring a crisis in the city's history. There is some disposition among the members of the fire department to strike in sympathy with the police.70
The article was right about one thing: the next few days were critical.
The winds shifted on September 14. In New York, Guy Oyster, Gompers's secretary, publicly stated his objections to a general strike. At the same time, an A.F. of L. official told reporters that Gompers "does not want a general strike and the Federation does not want a general strike." On Tuesday, September 16, out of submission to orders from above and in the face of replacement fire fighters in the State Guard, the fireman's union became the first to back away from its pro-strike stance. After this pronouncement, other unions declared that they would not strike first.71
A general strike was effectively averted at the Sunday B.C.L.U. meeting on September 21. Most of the labor unions in the city had already voted on the question of joining a general strike. But the B.C.L.U. leadership of the B.C.L.U. decided to keep the results of the vote a secret. They claimed that this tactic was intended to deprive the opposition of advance warning, but the result was to delay the chance of a strike further, as national condemnation of the striking policemen mounted. Tempers cooled and the the chance of a victory for the police seemed more remote. The chance of a general strike quickly faded after the twenty-first.
After the promise of a general strike and a period in which a general strike appeared imminent, and the general strike did not materialize. The B.C.L.U.'s broken promise to support the police with sympathy strikes might be read as simple treachery. In the context of other general strikes, the initial enthusiasm and subsequent retreat is explicable. In the following section, I will first compare the Boston situation with other general strikes and examine several factors that may have made a general strike seem reasonable to the B.C.L.U. Next, I will show that those same strikes suggested tactics that government officials, notably Governor Coolidge, could use to prevent strikes. And finally, I will examine the the critical factor in preventing a general strike in Boston: firm opposition to general strikes on the part of the national leadership of the American Federation of Labor. These different perceptions--of the B.C.L.U., of the government, and of the A.F. of L.--of past general strikes pulled the B.C.L.U. in various directions, resulting in contradictory and inconsistent policies. These inconsistencies should be regarded not as simple perfidy on the part of fair-weather friends, but as the product of different interpretations of complex events in the past.
This brings us to the first question: why did the B.C.L.U. consider a general strike, given the apparent failures of this tactic elsewhere?
To the B.C.L.U., the lessons of past general strikes may not have been as unequivocally discouraging as they appear today. The New Orleans strike did gain some benefits for the unions, though not the crucial ones. The Seattle and Winnipeg strikes, though ultimate failures, were very impressive shows of strength in that they were essentially takeovers of major cities by a workers' government.72 An indication that the B.C.L.U. was contemplating such a takeover, in which the central labor union would provide the city with its basic needs, came during the week of September 15, at a meeting of the Policemen's Union. A Labor World article reported,
had been requested, however, officials of the Central Labor not to strike or declare any intention to do so. As has already been it is the intention of the Central Labor Union leaders to exempt unions from striking in case a general walkout is decided upon. The en's Union is one of these. Another is the Milk Wagon Drivers' Union, and other unions are those composed of men in the city departments. The purpose of this is not to imperil the health and well being of the city. Probably the Boston Street Carmen's Union may also be included in the list.73
This was the sort of practical planning that prevented violence and starvation in New Orleans, Seattle, and Winnipeg and could have enabled a general strike in Boston to last for days or weeks. (In contrast, the Workingmen's Party in St. Louis lacked the resources to feed the strikers or prevent violence.)74 It now seems incredible that a general strike could have increased the public's sympathy for the striking policemen, but the efficiency of the Seattle and Winnipeg unions were only believable because it actually happened. In 1919, the possibilities must have appeared real.
Organized labor would not have come so close to using so powerful a weapon had it not believed that the result of the policemen's struggle would prove crucial to the fate of the city's other unions. In Philadelphia and Winnipeg it is not immediately clear why union members not directly affected by the streetcar and metal strikes, respectively, were willing to risk their jobs for the sake of another union.75 But in New Orleans and Seattle, the issue of union recognition persuaded unions to join a general strike. The New Orleans Workingmen's Amalgamated Council called a general strike not only on behalf of the "Triple Alliance" but also "because the strength of unionism and perhaps its survival depended on the extension of the closed shop."76 Advocates of a general strike among the printers' union circulated a notice that argued that "the issue was not 'one of mere matter of hours and wages, but one of recognition of Unionism.'"77 Likewise, the Seattle C.L.U. had been persuaded to call a general strike in part by a speech in which a representative of the strikers said that if the shipbuilders' union were defeated, the smaller unions could be easily picked off later.78
Two facts in the Boston policemen's dispute may have convinced Boston workers that that strike was as vital to their interests as the Triple Alliance strike had been to the unions of New Orleans and the shipbuilders' strike had been to those of Seattle. First, the police battle was, as the New Orleans printers had put it 37 years earlier, not "one of mere matter of hours and wages, but one of recognition of Unionism." A government victory would conclusively deny police in Boston and elsewhere the right to affiliate with the A.F. of L., and this might deal a serious blow to public-sector unionism in general.79 Second, the Boston unions stood to gain quite a bit if the police were unionized. Beginning in 1885, when the Commonwealth took charge of the Boston police, the force had been used to protect property during strikes.80 "In 1919 [the police] had used an extensive show of force during three separate strikes by the Market Teamsters, the Boston Elevated Railway Employees and the telephone employees."81 Publicly A.F. of L. and B.C.L.U. officials insisted that a unionized police force would be as impartial as ever during strikes. But since it seems implausible that the B.C.L.U. would be prepared to launch a general strike for the sake of just any group of 1300 workers, it is tempting to speculate that the B.C.L.U. hoped that a unionized, affiliated police force would be more sympathetic during work stoppages.82 And although B.C.L.U. officials were to stridently disavow the notion that the police could ever be called on to join a sympathy strike, there was the precedent of Winnipeg, where a central labor union had had a trained police force obeying its orders. There is no direct evidence that the Boston union leaders smiled at night with happy dreams of controlling Boston: police, milk delivery and all. But there is no denying that the police could have been useful allies.
Another important factor in the union's behavior was the emotional power and momentum of the call for a general strike. It was easy for rank and file union members to become excited about the possibility of a general strike without fully considering the consequences. The firemen, who went through a struggle similar to that of the policemen a year before, had an emotional basis for supporting the police. They and the telephone operators, were the policemen's staunchest supporters among Boston's A.F. of L. unions.83 And all A.F. of L. members were encouraged to look upon fellow unionists as allies. The role of emotion was evident when the B.C.L.U. meeting of October 5 was, in the words of the Labor World, almost "stampeded into taking the vote" to call a general strike.84
The government officials on the other side of the dispute were no doubt affected by emotion as well. On September 8, the day before the policemen struck, "Diamond" Jim Timilty, a labor leader and politician, told Coolidge that as the head of a major union, he would see to it that Coolidge need "not to worry over all this mush about a general strike."85 But Coolidge's actions show that he still believed that a general strike was a possibility. As for Curtis, just prior to the police strike he berated Coolidge when the governor considered compromising with the police. Curtis exclaimed, "if we give in now, there will be no army, no police force, no government and this whole great country will fall to pieces--look what happened in Seattle!"86 Curtis never spoke of Bolshevism or anarchism in the strike, but the Seattle strike appears to have made a deep impression upon him. Coolidge and Curtis knew that predictions of proletarian revolution were fanciful. But a general strike could happen.
Both to try to avert a general strike and to cope with one if it could not be diverted, Coolidge took a page out of Seattle Mayor Ole Hanson's drill manual: he ordered in massive military force. 1,117 policemen out of a total force of 1,544 walked out on September 9.87 These men could have been replaced with 1,000 State Guard troops drawn from three regiments stationed in Boston, supplemented with members of the volunteer police force which had been recruited over the past few weeks.88 But instead of calling out these troops alone, Peters, on the tenth, asked Coolidge for 3,000 additional troops.89 Coolidge not only agreed to the extra troops, but upped the ante, mobilizing the entire State Guard of 4,768 men.90
There are several reasons why Peters and Coolidge felt it necessary to mobilize the entire guard. The State Guard troops were not trained for police functions, and so could not have been expected to be as efficient as the striking policemen they were to replace.91 Furthermore, it takes more force to impose peace than to maintain it, and by the time the Guard was mobilized, the policemen's absence had inspired riots and looting that would take days to calm.
The threatened general strike was another important factor in Coolidge's military planning. Fearing the impact of a general strike on a State Guard already struggling to control the city with only one union striking, Coolidge sent a public telegram to Washington, saying,
At the present time the city of Boston is orderly. There are rumors of a very general strike. I wish that you would hold yourself in readiness to render assistance from forces under your command immediately upon application, which I may be compelled to make to the President.92
The Secretary of War complied with Coolidge's request, and soon ten thousand troops were ready on short notice.93 As if this were not enough, Coolidge reactivated a demobilized Guard regiment and ordered that the Massachusetts Volunteer Militia, absorbed by the National Guard in 1917, be reactivated.94 In sum, Coolidge had at hand over 5,000 men--volunteer police and State Guard troops--and was prepared to send up to 25,000 more. In contrast, Hanson had used 1,500 policemen, 1,500 troops, and the threat of "every soldier in the northwest" to quell the Seattle strike, while the Winnipeg strike was crushed with 10,000 civilians, 3,600 special police, and a few hundred troops.95 This is not to say that Coolidge's preparations were an overreaction. Intimidation is as valid a stratagem as stealth, and Coolidge may have been trying to cow the labor unions into remaining at work by threatening them with a troop deployment that would dwarf the forces that had defeated two general strikes that year.
But even as he tried to avert a general strike with noisy, public gestures, Coolidge was making secret preparations in case the general strike went through anyway. One particularly worrisome possibility was the chance that a walkout by the firemen could leave the city vulnerable to conflagration. If any union struck in sympathy with the police, it would most likely be the firemen. In late August, as the police crisis developed, "the superior officers in the Fire Department [were] confident that the firemen would vote to go out on the slightest provocation, and [were] making their plans accordingly."96 The firemen continued to make noise about supporting the police through a walkout of their own.97 Meanwhile their boss, Fire Commissioner John R. Murphy, was writing confidential memos to General Samuel D. Parker, the commander of the State Guard forces. Murphy fretted that the city's fire alarm cable system was vulnerable, and begged Parker to keep the First Motor Corps available for fire protection.98 At the same time Coolidge arranged for a team of electricians to board a naval vessel and steam to Boston's main electrical power house, to maintain the city's power supply in case the workers there were to strike in sympathy with the police.99 The threat of a general strike provoked both stern, public measures and nervous, behind-the-scenes planning among the state officials.
These preparations contributed to the eventual non-occurrence of a general strike. So did the overwhelmingly hostile opinion of the police held by the public and by the press.100 This hostile atmosphere distinguished the Boston situation apart from Seattle and Winnipeg, where the strikers could count on a few allies. Internal factors also contributed to the movement away from the general strike. The structure and internal dynamics of the A.F. of L. and B.C.L.U. acted as a brake on the headlong rush to strike.
Despite the generally enthusiastic welcome the policemen received when they joined the A.F. of L., the Boston unions were not unanimously or consistently friendly to the new union. Some had specific grievances against the police, who had previously been their opponents in many strike situations. A reporter noted that
while the telephone operators give the police credit for the very friendly attitude shown toward them in the recent strike, the carmen have never had the notion that the police were friendly. Frankly, they do not like the police. . . and, while they hope the police will win, they do not favor the prospect of losing their weekly wages to help them.101
Perhaps a history of scrapes with the police inspired labor leader Timilty's comment about "these damn cops." Whether out of dislike of the policemen or a desire to help Coolidge, Timilty used his muscle against a general strike.102 And at the same time it was swaying the populace in general against the police, the rioting may have made other union members ask if the policemen had betrayed the city. Even their friends the firemen had their doubts about the justice of the policemen's cause once the body count mounted.103
The Boston Central Labor Union was not designed to call and run a general strike. After studying dozens of general strikes on several continents, Wilfrid Crook writes, "in the majority of cases so little thought has been given to the matter that no definite aim or strict limit of duration has been set to the general walk-out before it commenced--an oversight that almost invariably has led to disaster."104 The Boston general strike was no exception. From the initial pledge of support by the plumbers, machinists, and boilermakers on August 18, to the policemen's walkout on September 9, the B.C.L.U. had over three weeks in which to plan a general strike and announce its terms for commencing and ceasing a general strike. The failure of the organization to use those weeks effectively left it unready to cope with fast-moving events once the police struck.
The full effect of the lack of a clear structure for calling a general strike became apparent at the meeting on September 21, when the B.C.L.U. pocket-vetoed the strike ballots in a manner reminiscent of the Pennsylvania State Federation of Labor in 1910. If you are afraid of the result of a vote, simply refuse to count the ballots. Labor leaders employed a similar tactic on October 5, when "two representatives of the striking policemen appeared before the delegates and demanded a 'showdown' as to the support the parent body was to give the Police Union."105 Organizer McCarthy silenced the representatives with a parliamentary technicality--they lacked official delegates' credentials and therefore did not have the right to speak--and the police were not heard from again.
Most importantly, the A.F. of L. as a national organization was against general strikes, and this attitude doomed the effort in Boston more than anything else. The A.F. of L. constitution specifically stated that
no Central Labor Union. . . shall have the authority or power to order any organization affiliated with such Central Labor Union. . . on strike, or take a strike vote, where such organization has a national organization, until the proper authorities of such National or International organization have been consulted and agreed to such action. A violation of this law shall be sufficient cause for the Executive Council to revoke the charter.106
This strong provision, written into the very constitution of the A.F. of L., would, if regarded, give the internationals veto power over any general strike. Because of the A.F. of L.'s emphasis on craft unionism, a given central would have to have the approvals of dozens of internationals before it could even ask its constituent member unions to vote on a general strike. No wonder that in August, when a group of city councillors "were prepared to condemn the police when they read in the papers of the threatened strike of 80,000 in support of the newly formed union," they were reassured after reading the provision that the internationals would have to consent to any general strike.107
On the other hand, the A.F. of L. constitution had had a similar provision since at least 1910, and that did not prevent the general strikes in Philadelphia, Seattle, and Winnipeg. This fact made rather hollow the gesture of O'Donnell and McCarthy when they gave Coolidge and Storrow copies of the constitution to prove that "no other union or officer in the American Federation of Labor from President Gompers down would or could direct the Policemen's Union to take action of any kind."108 O'Donnell and McCarthy were trying to prove with a piece of paper that an A.F. of L. central could not direct a policemen's union, though that is precisely what had happened in Winnipeg a few months earlier. The national A.F. of L. may have sincerely wished that it could control its centrals--as indicated by the condemnation of the Seattle Strike in the American Federationist --but it appears unable to have achieved that wish.
Were the Boston policemen betrayed? It is not the intention of this essay to evaluate the behavior of various actors on a moral scale.109 But other authors have, in their zeal to expound their views of honorable conduct, mislaid the responsibility for there not having been a general strike. Russell accuses Oyster, Gompers's secretary, of speaking in "weasel words."110 Koss attacks the A.F. of L. at greater length. He writes, "if the police were the victims, organized labor from Samuel Gompers down is the nearest thing to a villain in the piece."111 Baffled as to why the A.F. of L. "encouraged" the policemen to strike, he concludes that "the A.F. of L.'s behavior is difficult to explain except on the grounds that it was using the Boston police Union for a test of strength."112
The A.F. of L.'s tactics , not their moral culpability, are the subject of this essay. Koss's notion that the A.F. of L. deliberately chose the Boston police for a "test of strength" and then abandoned them to the wolves is dangerously misleading. It presumes that the A.F. of L., "from Gompers down," was a unified body with a single set of goals, and a single base of knowledge. In fact, the A.F. of L.'s alleged duplicity in promising the police a general strike if necessary and then breaking that pledge can only make sense when one understands that the national leadership had much less control over its constituent parts than it wished to or than its constitution indicated. This is the organization that used its own periodical to attack its Seattle affiliate, and had to revoke charters to punish the Winnipeg locals. What emerges from a more careful study is a B.C.L.U. that may well have launched the third general strike of 1919 had it not been reined in at the last minute by the A.F. of L., and an A.F. of L. that was lukewarm to police unions in the first place, and was opposed to public employee strikes and general strikes all along.
However, there was one link between the pro-general-strike B.C.L.U. and the anti-general-strike A.F. of L.: Frank McCarthy, New England organizer for the A.F. of L. As noted in Chapter 2, McCarthy was maddeningly vague in his promises and inconsistent in his attitudes. Just as McCarthy's ambiguous speeches may have helped prod the police into striking, so did they confuse the B.C.L.U. about the advisability of a general strike. Much of the confusion stemmed from the word, "support." When McCarthy promised support, he was probably not thinking of a general strike, but his audiences were.
It is impossible to adequately understand the forces tending toward and away from a general strike in Boston without examining what meaning such strikes had for their adherents, local unions, and their opponents, government officials and national labor leaders. Because of the mixed results of the experimental, largely unplanned, and unauthorized general strikes of the past, it is natural that they would be interpreted differently by different people. And it is because the interpretations of past strikes varied so widely that when another general strike loomed on the horizon, it provoked a variety of responses. This variety should not be understood as cruelty or treachery. Rather, it was the result of subjective interpretations of history.
Next: Conclusions
Notes
1. Francis Russell, A City in Terror (New York: The Viking Press, 1975), 198.
2. Wilfrid Harris Crook, The General Strike: A Study of Labor's Tragic Weapon in Theory and Practice (Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina Press, 1931), vii.
3. Crook, General Strike, 4, 22. In a later book, Communism and the General Strike (Hamden, Conn.: The Shoe String Press, 1960), Crook raises the question of whether the walkout of several unions in Philadelphia in 1835, which was conducted without a guiding strike committee, constitutes the world's first general strike. (19) There is no particular reason to debate the point in this essay.
4. Crook, General Strike, 24.
5. Ibid., 25-27.
6. Ibid., 32-38.
7. Phil H. Goodstein, The Theory of the General Strike from the French Revolution to Poland (Boulder: East European Monographs, 1984), 179 and 203.
8. Goodstein, Theory of the General Strike, 243.
9. Crook, General Strike, 215.
10. Ibid., 216.
11. David R. Roediger, "America's First General Strike: The St. Louis 'Commune' of 1877," Midwest Quarterly 21, no. 2 (1980), 197-98.
12. Roediger, "America's First General Strike," 198-99.
13. Ibid., 202-4.
14. Ibid., 205-6.
15. Bernard A. Cook, "The Typographical Union and the New Orleans General Strike of 1892," Louisiana History 24, no. 4 (1983): 379.
16. Roger Wallace Shugg, "The New Orleans General Strike of 1892," The Louisiana Historical Quarterly 21, no. 2 (April 1938), 547.
17. Cook, "Typographical Union," 380.
18. Shugg, "New Orleans General Strike," 559.
19. Cook, "Typographical Union," 388.
20. Crook, Communism and the General Strike, 27.
21. Ibid., 30.
22. Ibid., 31.
23. Ibid., 31, 33.
24. New York Times, March 23, 1910, 20. It is unclear from the New York Times article whether the "Executive Committee" was a local body or the governing board of the international textile workers' union.
25. Ibid., March 24, 1910.
26. Crook, Communism and the General Strike, 32-5. Crook notes that when his first book on the general strike was published in 1931, "it seemed to be common belief in labor circles that the first general strike in North America had occurred in Seattle in 1919, followed in the same year by that in Winnipeg." (18) In Communism and the General Strike he takes his account of the St. Louis strike from David T. Burbank, and credits Roger Wallace Shugg with having "uncovered" the New Orleans general strike. (22) But for the Philadelphia strike, he cites contemporary New York Times articles directly, suggesting that he did the primary research himself, and I have not been able to find any other secondary accounts. Crook describes the collapse of the general strike, but fails to record what ultimately happened to the striking carmen.
27. Though streetcar strikes were inconvenient, they were fairly common in that period and cities had always managed to survive them. Philadelphia was not structured around its transit industry the way East St. Louis and New Orleans were dependent on commerce.
28. Murray, Red Scare, 59. Robert L. Friedheim, The Seattle General Strike (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1964), 81-2.
29. Murray, Red Scare, 61.
30. Dennis E. Hoffman and Vincent J. Webb, "Police Response to Labor Radicalism in Portland and Seattle, 1913-19," Oregon Historical Quarterly 87, no. 4 (1987), 361.
31. Murray, Red Scare, 65. One of the highest-level officials to speak of the Seattle strike in these terms was Secretary of Labor William B. Wilson, who claimed that in Seattle and other places, "a deliberate attempt was made to create a social and political revolution that would establish a soviet form of Government in the United States and put into effect the economic theories of the Bolsheviki of Russia." New York Times, March 4, 1919, 4.
32. Hoffman and Webb, "Police Response to Labor Radicalism," 351.
33. Murray, Red Scare, 60.
34. See Article XI of the Constitution of the American Federation of Labor, 1919-1920, in Report of Proceedings of the Thirty-Ninth Annual Convention of the American Federation of Labor. (Washington, D.C.: The Law Reporter Printing Co., 1919), xxix-xxx.
35. Matthew Woll, "More Lessons Than One in Seattle Strike" (editorial), American Federationist 26, no. 3 (March 1919), 243-4. Although this article is a signed editorial, Woll occupied a high position in the A.F. of L.'s national hierarchy, and his comments can be confidently assumed to represent the feelings among the top A.F. of L. leadership.
36. Hoffman and Webb, "Police Response to Labor Radicalism," 353.
37. Murray, Red Scare, 63, and Hoffman and Webb, "Police Response to Labor Radicalism," 360.
38. Hoffman and Webb, "Police Response to Labor Radicalism," 361.
39. "Mayor Ole Hanson, Who 'Sat Tight' at Seattle," Literary Digest 60, no. 10 (March 1919), 47.
40. Murray, Red Scare, 65.
41. Crook, General Strike, 528. Although called "the American Federation of Labor," the A.F. of L., like the I.W.W., was really an international organization, representing workers in both Canada and the United States. This is reflected in the names of many of the A.F. of L.'s constituent unions, such as the International Association of Fire Fighters, and in the fact that the A.F. of L. held its 1920 convention in Montreal.
42. D. C. Masters, The Winnipeg General Strike (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1950), 47.
43. Crook, General Strike, 544.
44. David Jay Bercuson, Confrontation at Winnipeg: Labour, Industrial Relations, and the General Strike (Montreal: McGill-Queen's University Press, 1974), 113-14.
45. Ibid., 111.
46. Crook, General Strike, 545.
47. Masters, Winnipeg General Strike, 50.
48. Norman Penner, ed., Winnipeg 1919: The Strikers' Own History of the Winnipeg General Strike (Toronto: James Lewis & Samuel, 1973), 45.
49. Masters, Winnipeg General Strike, 96.
50. Penner, Winnipeg 1919, xv.
51. Masters, Winnipeg General Strike, 74.
52. Ibid.
53. Ibid., 96.
54. Penner, Winnipeg 1919, 128.
55. Ibid., 133.
56. Masters, Winnipeg General Strike, 97.
57. Penner, Winnipeg 1919, 127.
58. Masters, Winnipeg General Strike, 136.
59. The One Big Union movement was a Canadian effort at industrial unionism, much like the I.W.W. There is a parallel between Seattle and Winnipeg in that the A.F. of L. centrals in both city's appear to have been influenced by more radical unions.
60. New York Times, June 8, 1919, 3.
61. Crook, General Strike, 216.
62. New York Times, April 1, 1919, 4.
63. Ibid., June 18, 1919, 5. Murray, Red Scare, 116.
64. Evening Transcript, August 16, 1919, 1.
65. Labor World, August 23, 1919.
66. Ibid., .
67. Evening Transcript, August 25, 1919.
68. Ibid., September 11, 1919, 1.
69. Ibid.
70. Labor World, September 13, 1919.
71. Facts in this paragraph are from Russell, City in Terror, 193-96.
72. History Committee of the General Strike Committee, The Seattle General Strike, (Seattle: The Seattle Union Record, 1919), 62-3. Despite the national perception that the Seattle strike was defeated, this history of the strike prepared by the General Strike Committee tells a different story. It says that of the striking workers, "the vast majority struck to express solidarity," rather than to win any concrete gains in wages, and that "they succeeded beyond their wildest expectations." Moreover, the Seattle strike had advanced the cause of the general strike, by exploring its possibilities. One could argue that this perspective was merely labor's way of putting a good face on a disastrous defeat, but I do not think it should be dismissed so quickly. As the book points out, the logistical feats of the Seattle workers in keeping a large city, safe, fed, and peaceful for several days were and are quite impressive, and in 1919 could have been seen as pointing the way to a more powerful labor movement.
73. Labor World, September 20, 1919. Gaps in the text indicate illegible sections of the microfilm. The article does not indicate which day the plans for exempting some unions were announced.
74. Roediger, "America's First General Strike," 202.
75. See Crook, Communism and the General Strike, 28, and Bercuson, Confrontation at Winnipeg, 110, for accounts of the general strike votes in these cities.
76. Shugg, "New Orleans General Strike," 554.
77. Cook, "Typographical Union," 381.
78. Friedheim, Seattle General Strike, 83.
79. With the exception of a mutiny by the armed forces in time of war (the calamity that hit France in 1917) a police strike is perhaps the most dangerous type of labor stoppage. But the American Federation of Labor unions may have feared that a denial of the policemen's right to organize could be extended to other public employees, such as telephone operators, whose strikes could imperil cities. There were even arguments at the time that railroad strikes should be made illegal because they threatened cities with starvation. As it happened, the policemen's defeat delayed police unionism for decades. I do not know what effect the Boston police strike had on other public sector unions, but since this essay is not about the effects of the strike such a discussion is not relevant here.
80. Bruce C. Johnson, "Taking Care of Labor: The Police in American Politics," Theory and Society 3, no. 1 (Spring 1976), 93.
81. Jonathan Randall White, A Triumph of Bureaucracy: The Boston Police Strike and the Ideological Origins of the American Police State (Ann Arbor: University Microfilms, 1982), 154.
82. White, Triumph of Bureaucracy, 154.
83. Evening Transcript, August 22, 1919.
84. October 11, 1919.
85. William Allen White, A Puritan in Babylon: The Story of Calvin Coolidge (1938. Reprint. Gloucester, Mass.: Peter Smith, 1973), 157. White cites for this event a letter from Boston Post reporter Robert Brady, who was told about it by Timilty years later.
86. Frederick Manuel Koss, "The Boston Police Strike" (Ph.D. diss., Boston University, 1960), 331. Koss cites an interview with Curtis's daughter
87. Claude M. Fuess, Calvin Coolidge: The Man from Vermont (Boston: Little, Brown and Company, 1940), 218.
88. Koss, "Boston Police Strike," 187.
89. Ibid., 195.
90. Ibid., 196.
91. The guardsmen's lack of police training is indicated in a memorandum from Police Superintendent Michael J. Crowley to "All Divisions and B.C.I.," September 15, 1919. Samuel D. Parker Papers, Houghton Library. Contemporary newspaper accounts record numerous instances in which the unfamiliarity of Boston residents with the guardsmen and the guardsmen's inexperience combined to spark violent confrontations where a seasoned police officer could have merely used his voice and facial expression to intimidate the potential miscreant. A tragic example is recorded in the Evening Transcript on September 13. A man tried to snatch a guardsman's rifle and was shot in doing so; the bullet passed through his body, killing him, and continued on to wound a bystander. This demonstrates the inability of even armed troops to instill as much respect for law as the familiar policeman, as well as the inappropriateness of the infantry rifle as a weapon for policing crowded cities.
92. Evening Transcript, September 11, 1919, 3.
93. Russell, City in Terror, 176.
94. Ibid., 177.
95. Murray, Red Scare, 63, and Crook, General Strike, 555.
96. Evening Transcript, August 22, 1919.
97. Koss, "Boston Police Strike," 225.
98. Murphy to Parker, September 16 and 18, 1919. Parker Papers.
99. Calvin Coolidge, Autobiography (New York: Cosmopolitan Book Corporation, 1929), 133. Somehow, this use of a navy ship to control a city seems vaguely reminiscent of the Bolsheviks' use of the Aurora during the November Revolution, begging the question: who were the real Bolsheviks of the Boston Police Strike?
100. Every Boston newspaper, except, of course, the Labor World, and a good many papers outside of Boston condemned the striking policemen in various terms of moral disgust. As for the public, several writers point out that the gubernatorial election of 1919 became largely a referendum on Coolidge's handling of the strike, and Coolidge was overwhelmingly reelected.
101. Evening Transcript, August 22, 1919.
102. White, Puritan in Babylon, 163.
103. Russell, City in Terror, 196.
104. Crook, General Strike, viii.
105. Labor World, October 11, 1919.
106. Proceedings of the Thirty-Ninth Annual Convention, xxix.
107. Labor World, August 23, 1919.
108. Ibid., September 20, 1919.
109. The author's moral compass has become thoroughly demagnetized in his four years at Harvard, and he sees no profit in passing judgment.
110. Russell, City in Terror, 197.
111. Koss, "Boston Police Strike," 340.
112. Ibid.