Nineteen Nineteen

The Boston Police Strike in the Context of American Labor

Introduction | The A.F. of L. | "Bolshevism" | The General Strike | Conclusions | Bibliography

Chapter 5: Conclusions

The preceding chapters have attempted to explain behavior during the Boston Police Strike by putting the events into three contexts. These contexts--the position of moderate labor, the threat of radicalism, and the use of the general strike-- form a a picture of the state of organized labor in America in 1919. Examining them separately clarifies the effect that each had on the Boston Police Strike. But this separation should not obscure the connections between the three. Many Americans interpreted the Seattle and Winnipeg strikes as radical actions. The American Federation of Labor was constrained by the need to distance itself from radical labor. And the general strikes could never have taken place had it not been for A.F. of L. organizations. In the course of examining the Boston Police Strike, I have tried to give a clear picture of the extremely complex position of organized labor in the nineteen teens.

A history organized around these three contexts, though less straightforward than a chronological narrative, can uncover connections and reveal reasons that lie hidden in a history constrained by chronological order. A contextual approach can explain differences in the behavior of various actors in the strike, such as the gulf between Peters's attempts at compromise and the inflexibility of Curtis and Coolidge. Context can also explain inconsistencies that might otherwise be dismissed as mere hypocrisy, such as the broken promise of a sympathy strike. Because of these functions, providing context is an essential requirement for explaining historical behavior.

Context exists in two forms. First, there is contemporary context, which is created in the minds of people as an event is going on. For example, Sen. Myers put the police strike in the context of Bolshevism. Second, there is historiographical context, the context created by historians long after an event. Jonathan Randall White has done this, putting the increased bureaucratization of the Boston police department in the context of a national movement, even though it may not have been perceived that way by the policemen who had to suffer its effects. By pointing out a new context for an event, an historian may provide clues in reconstructing the perceptions held by people at the time. That is, context can reveal meaning. In this vein, I have tried to show, for example, why the unions forming the Boston Central Labor Union may have been tempted to call a general strike. But it is important to keep in mind that the historian's context may bear little relation to the contemporary context. Simply because it made sense in 1955 for Robert Murray to write about the strike in the context of American radicalism does not mean that anyone at the time attributed the same meaning to the events described by Murray. The two forms of context often work together, but they are not identical.

The contexts examined here, plus those emphasized by previous writers, do not comprise a comprehensive understanding of the strike. More work could be done placing the strike in other contexts. Particularly, I would like to see an analysis of the legal issues involved in the strike, since none of the authors I have read provides a satisfactory answer to the question, why did the police try to resolve their dispute in court? It seems that such a tactic would have been hopeless, but it would be worthwhile to discover what legal and historical precedents had made such lawsuits ineffective. Another area where more research is needed is the violence that sprung up in the absence of police as well as the tactics used to extinguish it. A comparison of the Boston riots with other riots in American cities, both in terms of the rioters and the military response, would be very helpful in explaining what Peters, Curtis, and Coolidge had in mind as they dickered about mobilizing the State Guard. ."1

Another need is an analysis of the tactics of moderate labor organizations in the early twentieth century. As mentioned in the final footnote in Chapter 2, there is apparently no study of the American Federation of Labor's methods, either strikes and alternatives to strikes. A fair amount has been written about particular strikes, but what is needed is a synthesis that examines both strikes and situations where a union elected not to strike. And crying for attention is the tactic of the general strike. There has been a fair amount written about general strikes with revolutionary intent in theory and practice. But general strikes by moderate labor organizations, such as those that took place in Belgium, in Sweden, and in North America have been regarded as anomalies by historians who have the preconceived notion that a genuine general strike must have a revolutionary, pacifist, or other ideological content. Four general strikes were led by A.F. of L. centrals in the space of twenty-seven years, and in that same span moderate labor organizations in Belgium and Sweden sponsored general strikes. Meanwhile, Boston was probably not the only instance in which a general strike almost occurred. But these strikes have not been studied, and many questions remain.2 A study that would compare the general strikes by moderate labor that did take place with those that did not would shed light on the nature of moderate labor in the early twentieth century.

The number of questions raised by this essay confirms the claim by Weber and Geertz that no event will ever be thoroughly placed in context because context is infinite. But far better an incomplete account of an event that acknowledges its gaps than one that glosses over the holes. A general strike, or the decision to affiliate with a national labor organization, have never been natural, logical, inevitable consequences of other events. When they appear in the historical record, they must be explained, and that explanation can only be accomplished by further investigation into the record. Putting events in their contexts is a difficult and an infinite process. But in order to understand behavior, it is absolutely necessary.

This essay has challenged the ability of not only of the existing accounts of the Boston Police Strike, but of many conventional narratives, to explain the events they describe. A critical reading of many texts will reveal leaps of logic. For example, prior accounts of the strike tend to introduce the B.C.L.U.'s consideration of a general strike without pausing to ask why this tactic could be considered after the apparent defeats in Seattle and Winnipeg. Of course, there are many problems with the approach I have taken, not the least of which is the necessity to switch back and forth between contextual sections and analyses of the event in question.3 But there are two considerable advantages. First, this organization can provide answers to many questions that arise in the course of trying to understand human behavior. But perhaps more importantly, it can encourage a critical reading of history, a dissatisfaction with accounts that try to be self-contained, or define a single context for an event. Human behavior may be guided by memories of events far removed from the matter at hand. To explain that behavior, to thicken the description, one must investigate the precedents, the context.

Perhaps the most misleading view of context is the suggestion that a given event has a context. It does not; it has several contexts. A study such as White's, which emphasizes only one context, can be extremely valuable, so long as both author and reader are aware that only part of the picture is being shown. Alternatively, several contexts can be offered together, emphasizing the complexity of human events at the expense of chronology. The approach taken in this essay is much like the method used by astronomers to photograph a galaxy. First, one filter is used to photograph the dense central section of the galaxy. A second filter shows the outer parts, which emit different spectra. And a third filter picks up the distant, swirling extremities. No one of these images can provide a clear picture of what the galaxy is like as a whole, but when the images are combined, they form a composite that surpasses any view through a single filter. This essay provides a truer view of the Boston Police Strike than could be created with any one context in mind.

Next: Bibliography

Notes

1. Russell suggests that Coolidge's "instinct that to call out the militia prematurely is political suicide" was largely responsible for the defenselessness of Boston on the night of September 9. How had Coolidge acquired that instinct, one asks. Francis Russell, "The Strike That Made a President," American Heritage, 14, no. 6 (October 1963), 90.
2. A search for literature on general strikes by moderate labor organization, using the Harvard Library catalogs and America: History and Life revealed only those books and articles cited in Chapter 4, plus a few more written specifically about Seattle and Winnipeg. A broader history of such strikes might answer such questions as: Why did unions continue to use this tactic despite repeated failures? What was the role of the internationals--the national craft unions that existed occupied the space between the national A.F. of L. and the centrals--during general strikes? Did the national Federation ever speak positively about general strikes?
3. Ideally this essay, and any other analytical history, would be presented not as a series of paper pages, bound permanently in a fixed order, but as a collection of electronic cards on a CD-ROM disc. A reader could peruse a quick summary of an argument, and, if there were any section she wished to challenge, touch the screen to get supporting evidence and arguments. Were there any point in the supporting level that she wished to know more about, she could touch again and go down to a further level.