Nineteen Nineteen

The Boston Police Strike in the Context of American Labor

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

2. The American Federation of Labor

At the center of the controversy which led to the Boston Police Strike were the policemen's wish to form a union affiliated with the American Federation of Labor (A.F. of L.), and the insistence of forces inside and outside of government that the policemen would not be allowed to do so. This statement immediately raises several questions. First, what perception of the A.F. of L. did the policemen have (in Weber's terms, what meaning did they attach to it) that made them want to join it, and made them think they could? Second, what meaning did the A.F. of L. have for those who sat at the other end of the negotiating table from the police, particularly Mayor Andrew J. Peters and his Citizens' Committee? The police believed that affiliation would solve their problems, while the mayor and his supporters considered affiliation intolerable. But despite this difference in interpretations, the policemen and Peters referred to the same set of events when considering the issue of affiliation.

Because they shared a familiarity with the A.F. of L. and because their interpretations of its history were not entirely different, the policemen and Peters could use the men's desire to affiliate as a sort of lingua franca. Both knew that the A.F. of L. had been continually active in labor disputes and negotiations since the end of the war ten months earlier. The policemen were primarily concerned with the A.F. of L.'s proven record of success in resolving labor disputes to the benefit of the workers. Mayor Peters and James J. Storrow, chairman of the Citizens' Committee, had negotiated with affiliated unions before, and to them the American Federation of Labor was an old acquaintance which they knew to be moderate in its aims and reasonable in its negotiations. They did not believe or pretend to believe the charges of "Bolshevism" that are discussed in the next chapter. The establishment leaders did note that that the A.F. of L.'s had often achieved success by means of strikes and were wary of allowing any public employees, particularly policemen, to affiliate. But although their interpretations of past labor disputes were at odds, the two sides did share a common framework: the recent history of actions by the moderate--not radical--A.F. of L. Though their interpretations varied, this shared context contributed to their ability to forge a compromise, the compromise that was undermined by Police Commissioner Edwin U. Curtis. His rigid personality and inexperience with negotiation led him to take an inflexible posture and veto the settlement.

To explain how interpretations of the A.F. of L.'s history affected the actions of Peters, his Citizens' Committee, and the policemen, I will first sketch out the A.F. of L.'s position of proven patriotism and moderation, but also some vulnerability to charges of socialism, in August 1919, when the policemen received their charter. Then I will examine the responses by Mayor Peters and Chairman Storrow to the policemen's decision to affiliate, in light of events in the Federation's history and in their own experience. Finally, I will examine the tangled relationship between the policemen and the A.F. of L., showing how vague and contradictory Federation policies helped lead the men into the fatal decision to strike.

The American Federation of Labor in August 1919

In August 1919, when the policemen received their charter, the American Federation of Labor was an established and powerful force in the country. The A.F. of L., as it was popularly known, was founded in 1886 as an organization to further the interests not of laborers in general, but of craft unions composed of skilled workers.1 The Federation grew gradually during its first twelve years, but experienced rapid growth beginning in 1898.2 Between this point and 1917, when the United States entered World War I, the Federation sought not only to secure better wages, hours, and working conditions for its members, but also to achieve respectability in the eyes of the nation as a whole.3 To do so meant disassociating the Federation both from violence, then a common factor in labor disputes, and from socialism, as represented by socialists within the Federation, socialist politicians, and the Industrial Workers of the World. The A.F. of L. gained in power and respectability with the 1912 elections, which put Democrats in both the Congress and the White House.4 President Woodrow Wilson, who was quite sympathetic to organized labor,5 signed legislation which gave official sanction to labor unions' activities, which previously had been of questionable legality.

World War I marked a rise in the A.F. of L.'s status. Largely due to the personal beliefs of Federation President Samuel Gompers, the Federation leaned away from pacifism and toward support of the Entente Powers as early as 1915.6 In March 1917, the deeply patriotic Gompers 7 led the Executive Council of the Federation in announcing a "declaration of loyalty," which sought to establish a role for organized labor during wartime while assuring the nation that the unions would not undermine the war effort.8 After the United States declared war in April 1917, Gompers moved to define that role. Still worried about socialist and pacifist feelings among American labor, Gompers was instrumental in founding and sustaining the American Alliance for Labor and Democracy, which again pledged labor's loyalty to the government.9 In recognition of these efforts, President Wilson publicly praised Gompers's "patriotic courage, his large vision, and his statesmanlike sense of what has to be done," thus indicating his approval of the A.F. of L.'s activities.10 The Administration's trust in the Federation was again demonstrated in 1918, when the government sent A.F. of L. "labor ambassadors" to Europe via military convoy on a mission to encourage European labor leaders to accept Wilson's Fourteen Points, rather than the program of Bolshevik Russia, as proper war aims.11

In addition to supporting the war in general, Gompers was active in the efforts of business and labor to prevent industrial disruptions which might hinder the war effort. In 1916, Congress, recognizing that the United States might become involved in the European conflict, had established the Council of National Defense to assure American preparedness.12 As chairman of the Council's Committee on Labor, Gompers enjoyed a quasi-official status as representative of organized labor.13 But the Council proved ineffective at averting labor disputes, and in 1917 strikes in the lumber, copper, and shipbuilding industries directly hampered war production.14 After devising and experimenting with various committees and boards, the government eventually created the War Labor Board, composed of representatives of labor, industry, government, and the public. This Board established standards for the hours and conditions of labor and guaranteed the right to organize, in return for a promise by organized labor not to strike during the war.15 Under this regime of legitimized unionism, union membership increased dramatically during the war.16 By participating on these boards and putting "aside their roles of organizers and strike leaders to become conciliators and mediators," Gompers and other A.F. of L. leaders attempted to gain the confidence and respect of government and industry, perhaps at some expense to the workers.17 But these labor leaders may have overestimated the degree to which they had succeeded; when the Armistice was declared, many employers and citizens had yet to be convinced of the value and trustworthiness of organized labor.18

During the war, the A.F. of L. had risen from an organization whose significant growth was still recent to a semi-official body with the president's ear that had secured some benefits to its members while safeguarding the national interest. The Federation's "power and prestige. . . had reached a new high."19 But this fairly impressive war record was not enough to protect the Federation from attacks by employers and conservatives after the Armistice, nor was the Federation able to sustain the wartime climate of cooperation between capital and labor. In January of 1919, the Seattle General Strike led many to associate the A.F. of L. with radicalism, a view that is discussed in Chapter 4.20 But even many well-informed businessmen who understood that the A.F. of L. was for the most part quite uninterested in overthrowing American capitalism were eager to dismantle the wartime regulation of industry. Many workers and labor leaders, thinking that they could fare better without government intervention, also wanted a return to prewar haggling.21 Meanwhile, throughout the spring of 1919, the government regulatory boards were dismantled, a development which "was generally accepted by labor and employers as the end of the industrial truce."22

The rapid disappearence of government regulation of wages and prices, the cancellation of government contracts for war production, and the return of millions of soldiers and sailors to the civilian labor market made 1919 one of the most chaotic years in the nation's economic history. There were over 3,600 strikes in 1919--more by far than in any other year in American history.23 Some of these strikes, such as the steel strike of September, were the results of long planning and consideration by the leadership of the A.F. of L. and its affiliates.24 But other strikes, such as the railroad strike of April, were initiated by rank and file workers in direct disobedience to the leadership of their unions.25

Losing its wartime respectability and membership, unable to control organized labor, radical or not, yet having positioned itself as the dominant voice of labor and still vital enough to plot an expansion into the steel industry, the A.F. of L. in August was redefining its role as an institution. It had not fully shed its spirit of cooperation with the government, but it was aware that the war was over and with it the expectation that industry and organized labor shared a common set of goals. It had established its bona fides as a patriotic American body but was still vulnerable to allegations of socialism and worse. So when the Boston police applied for their charter and later staked a great deal to keep that charter, the meaning of A.F. of L. affiliation was far from clear-cut.

Municipal Employee and Police Unions

The vast majority of A.F. of L. members were skilled workers--such as miners, carpenters, and shipbuilders--employed by private employers, often large corporations. But as the Federation and the union movement grew, government employees began to unionize as well. Although the A.F. of L. did not grant charters to police unions until 1919, other types of municipal employees had marked a path for the police to follow. Municipal employees formed there first unions soon after the turn of the century. Urban reformers regarded these unions as a weapon in the struggle against political corruption in city government.26 Unions offered a pathway of complaint independent of ward bosses, who had previously acted as city employees' only voices. Strikes by public employees were rare, though sanitation workers in a few cities were able to win concessions by striking.27

Teachers were the first group of municipal employees to affiliate with the A.F. of L., beginning in 1902.28 More relevant to the policemen was the success of fire fighters in organizing. The Federation granted its first charter to fire fighters in 1903. City governments, though wary, tolerated the organization of fire fighters. Furthermore, fire fighters launched a series of successful strikes in 1916.29 In 1918, the various fire fighters' locals in the Unites States and Canada formed the International Association of Fire Fighters (IAFF), which by 1919 represented half of the uniformed fire fighters in the United States.30

Police officers in big cities began organizing associations--not unions-- in the last decade of the nineteenth century.31 "Many of these early organizations were formed to provide what we now term fringe benefits (death benefits, welfare insurance), to lobby with the employer for more pay, and to fulfill fraternal-social needs."32 1917 marked the first concerted efforts of policemen to establish affiliated unions. America's entry into World War I raised private wages and the cost of living while public employees' wages remained fixed by law.33 Other public employees, such as federal employees and letter carriers, decided to affiliate with the A.F. of L.34 In response to numerous requests for charters, the A.F. of L. at its 1917 convention decided for the first time to consider allowing public police forces to affiliate.35 At the 1919 convention, held in June, the Federation voted to grant charters to municipal police unions. The response was enthusiastic. Gompers later commented that in his thirty-six years as A.F. of L. president, "I have never seen or heard nor has there come under my observation in any form so many appeals, so many applications for charters from any given trade or calling, business or profession, in so short a time as were received by the American Federation of Labor from policemen's unions."36

In theory, at least, unions of government employees differed from their counterparts in the private sector in that they were pledged not to strike,37 but this prohibition did not always prevent walkouts. Even public employees who were not affiliated with a union or the A.F. of L. occasionally struck. In September of 1918, the Cincinnati police, who had not been previously unionized, struck for three days. At issue were several of the same matters as those in Boston: a pay raise, a fear of disciplinary action if complaints were made, a prohibition against organizing, and the reinstatement of officers dismissed for their organizing activity.38 Because the striking officers were quickly replaced by the Cincinnati Home Guards, a militia organization, there was none of the unfettered looting and violence that was to characterize the Boston strike. The mayor of Cincinnati was able to effect a compromise: the striking officers would return to work, the dismissed officers would be allowed to petition for reinstatement, the police would form an unaffiliated welfare organization within the department, and the question of pay would be decided later.39 Despite some fierce rhetoric on each side, enough mutual trust survived to allow a negotiated settlement.

Boston was no stranger to either public sector unions or public sector strikes. In August 1919, one of the policemen's negotiators could claim that "almost every other employee of the City of Boston is organized in some union which is affiliated with the American Federation of Labor."40 The Boston fire fighters had formed a union and had affiliated with the IAFF, which was part of the A.F. of L. In the fall of 1918, they demanded a pay raise, voting to strike if their demands were not met. They got the raise.41 In April of 1919, 20,000 employees of the New England Telephone and Telegraph Company, then under government control as a wartime measure, ignored warnings from the postmaster general that it was illegal to strike against the government and struck for six days. Aided by a sympathy strike by electrical workers, they succeeded in shutting down telephone service in New England, and were granted a raise almost as high as their demands.42 That two unions of public employees could use strikes or the threat of strikes to achieve pay raises was not a lesson lost on the Boston police.

To one familiar with the history of the A.F. of L. and public sector unionism, the police situation in August and even early September of 1919 represents yet another labor dispute in a strike-ridden year when even children were striking.43 And indeed, Mayor Peters, Chairman Storrow, and labor leaders saw it in this light. As a result, when they began their attempts to resolve the situation, they were not thinking in the broad strokes of anarchism versus law and order, or freedom of association versus autocracy, but in terms of a pragmatism that was the product of experience in these matters. As a result, their tactics were more moderate and more aimed at compromise than those of the extremists.

Peters and the Citizens' Committee

Boston Mayor Andrew Peters stands out as having made the greatest efforts to settle the police situation amicably, despite the legal limits on his ability to intervene in a matter concerning the police. While he had many reasons for wanting to negotiate a compromise, Peters's confidence in the overall benignancy of organized labor, his general familiarity with labor disputes, and his own experience in mediating disputes, including the fire fighters' threatened strike the previous fall were umdoubtedly key factors. Peters's attitudes and, to some extent, his experiences were shared by James Storrow, whom Peters appointed as the chairman of the Committee to Consider the Police Situation. These two men, seasoned in politics, negotiation, and labor matters, provided a note of moderation to the proceedings.

Peters tackled the problem of a disgruntled police force with two initial presumptions that were to color his tactics. First, he was generally sympathetic to labor and unions, though he did not feel that an affiliated union would be appropriate in this instance. Even as he announced his position that the policemen should not be allowed to affiliate, he was at pains to point out that "I am in entire sympathy with the fundamental aims of the A.F. of L. and believe it to be a wisely administered and progressively conservative organization" which could protect the country from both plutocracy and Bolshevism.44 Storrow shared his faith in the A.F. of L. and referred to the Federation's conduct during the war. As Storrow put it, "As our Government advanced to exert its utmost force in the mightest [sic] war of all ages, the American Federation of Labor stood absolutely behind the Government and contributed every ounce of strength it possessed to make that force the knockout blow to Germany."45 Both men were familiar with the Federation's history, and they were confident that the union was not out to destroy the country.

Yet they were quite determined that the police should not be allowed to affiliate with what Peters called a "bulwark of patriotism and strength to our country."46 Why? Peters and Storrow were not overly concerned with the specter of a police strike. Nor were they averse to the principle of collective bargaining for the policemen; the Executive Committee and the policemen's lawyers specifically agreed to a settlement that recognized the right of the police to be represented in negotiations over pay, hours, and working conditions by the Boston's Policemen's Union, so long as that union remained independent of the A.F. of L.47 What Peters and Storrow feared was police partiality towards A.F. of L. strikers in the event of violent strikes. Peters delicately referred to "complications," while Storrow bluntly hypothesized that an affiliated police force might favor strikers over strikebreakers in arresting or testifying against suspects.48 Such worries were in fact moot, since pro-labor police, unionized or not, could and did favor organized laborers.49 But here too Storrow and Peters were drawing on a long familiarity with strikes and an understanding of the policeman's role in them.

James J. Storrow, a Harvard-educated, patrician banker, had experience as a labor negotiator.50 His greatest triumph had come in 1913, when he had settled a tense dispute between the Boston Elevated Railway and its unionized employees. The carmen had struck in 1912, and as part of the settlement of the strike both the company and men had agreed to submit to arbitration in the future. When a dispute arose the next summer, the settlement was invoked. Each side chose an arbitrator, the third and decisive vote on the three-man panel being reserved for a neutral person. Storrow's reputation for fairness made him acceptable to both parties to the dispute, and he joined the panel. Despite a recent operation to remove a tumor from his neck, Storrow worked 14-hour days for weeks, confined to a hotel room and subsisting on sandwiches. Minutes before deadline, he and the other members of the panel produced a 136-page settlement that occupied a middle-ground between the competing sides.51 This affair may have taught Storrow that would have been that hard work and last-minute negotiation could resolve even thorny conflicts. Moreover, in the course of the arbitration Storrow worked with the two labor lawyers who were to represent the police in 1919: James P. Feeney and James H. Vahey. The former had served as legal counsel to the carmen, while the latter had been cooped up in the hotel as labor's chosen arbitrator.

Mayor Peters also had experience settling union disputes. Much of his hope for a peaceful, amicable resolution of the police situation could conceivably be traced to his successful defusing of a threatened strike by Boston's fire fighters a year earlier. On September 4, 1918, the Russell Club, City Firemen's Union--an IAFF-affiliate to which almost all of the city's fire fighters belonged--voted to strike if the firemen's demands for wage increases were not approved within six days.52 To avoid the no-strike clause in their union charter, the men referred to a mass "resignation."53 In this case, no state law put the fire department or its commissioner under the authority of the governor, so Peters was in charge of the crisis. He handled it well. First, he met with the head of the IAFF, and arranged for a one-day grace period in which to negotiate. Second, rather than taking a hard line, the mayor proved willing to discuss salary increases, but made efforts to avoid the appearance that he had been coerced by the threatened walkout.54 At the same time, he prepared for the worst, arranging with the governor to have State Guard units replace fire fighters in the event of a strike.55

After a tense round of negotiations on September 6 during which Peters met representatives of both the fire fighter's union and the Boston Central Labor Union, it seemed that the strike was imminent.56 Meanwhile, the fire commissioner smoldered, calling the threat "damnable" and muttering about the danger of fire amid the munitions being readied for shipment to France, the firemen's lack of patriotism, and his joyous expectation of being able to break the union.57 But on the evening of September 8, the night before the strike was to begin, the union acceded to Mayor Peters's proposals and his explanations of why he simply could not grant the requested raises. The union leadership condemned the fire commissioner, but praised Peters as "a keen sympathizer with the underpaid workers of this city" and "a perfect gentleman," although the pay raise he promised was far below their expectations.58

In essence, the fire fighters' wage dispute had given Peters a perfect dress rehearsal for the police strike of the following year. (By coincidence, the policemen walked out on September 9, exactly one year after the firemen were scheduled to "resign.") And given that Peters had weathered the earlier storm without either endangering the city or emptying its purse, it is no surprise that he should have attempted to employ the same tactics when confronted with an angry, unionized police force. In 1919, as in 1918, Peters obtained a postponement of action, to allow more time for negotiation, on the grounds that "a solution may be found."59 And, in 1919, he tried to be sympathetic to the policemen's financial concerns. Practically his first statement on the growing police crisis was to explain the lack of funds available for a raise, just as he had opened up the books to the firemen in 1918.60 Peters's gentlemanliness and his sympathy for city workers is made evident by the warm regard for him that comes through in the generally angry account of the strike by the policemen's lawyers, Vahey and Feeney.61

What is tragic about Peters's attempt to resolve the police dispute on the model of his previous success with the firemen is that it almost worked. The citizens' committee he created, led by Storrow, did its work, and by September 6, 1919, it had negotiated with Vahey and Feeney and produced the five- point "basis of settlement," which provided for an unaffiliated union.62 Written by the policemen's lawyers, amended by the committee, endorsed by Peters and all but one of the morning newspapers, the plan almost certainly would have been approved by the policemen.63 Only Commissioner Curtis's lawyerly stubbornness made what would otherwise have been a drop in the ocean of 1919 labor disputes into one of the most famous strikes in American history. Remove Curtis from the scene, and the whole affair becomes just another job for Peters and Storrow.

The Attraction of Affiliation

The decision of the Boston policemen to abandon their 13-year-old unaffiliated association, the Boston Social Club, and form in its place a union affiliated with the American Federation of Labor was the critical decision in the police crisis. Perhaps a strike could have erupted over substantive issues, such as wages, even without the issue of affiliation. But as it happened, affiliation was the issue that caused the men to walk out. Despite its importance, the decision to affiliate has not been well understood. Koss merely reports the men's decision to seek a charter from the A.F. of L.; he does not ask why that decision was made.64 White sees the issue as one of alliances. He writes that the police "were forced to turn to organized labor and to identify with the labor movement in order to achieve economic success."65 But he does not explain the mechanism by which organization would provide economic success, either from the historian's viewpoint or from the policemen's. Russell refers to "the compulsive union enthusiasm of 1919," as if the policemen joined the American Federation of Labor due to a psychological disorder.66 But the policemen's decisions, first to affiliate, then to strike, were not irrational. They may not have been wise decisions, but in the context of the American Federation of Labor's position in 1919, the reasoning behind those decisions becomes much clearer.

To establishment figures, the A.F. of L. signified both a chance at a negotiated settlement and the danger of a biased police force. At the same time, it held a strong attraction for the Boston policemen. Although at the moment of compromise, the police were willing to give up their charter, they felt strongly enough about it to consider disbanding the Boston Social Club, i.e., burning their bridges behind them.67 And, as noted above, police forces all over the country jumped at the chance to get A.F. of L. charters after they were first offered in the summer of 1919. Affiliation with the A.F. of L. offered several advantages to the Boston force. First, it could help create a strong union of previously unorganized men. Second, it could facilitate the resolution of grievances within the department, both by establishing fair mechanisms of complaint and by providing legal and political support to unhappy officers. And if those mechanisms failed, the A.F. of L. was set up to provide support for striking locals.

Although during and after the strike A.F. of L. officials claimed that the Policemen's Union was to be prohibited from striking, the nature of the A.F. of L. at the time made the strike an indispensible weapon in the hands of a local and made strike support an essential function of the Federation and smaller groups of unions. The policemen could claim that they wanted a non-striking A.F. of L.-affiliated union, but no one was sure what this meant. Other A.F. of L. locals, including the carmen with whom Storrow had negotiated and the firemen with whom Peters had met, had only gotten their demands when they threatened to strike. Despite the policemen's claims to the contrary, the nature of the A.F. of L. gave Bostonians cause to fear a police strike were the men allowed to affiliate, and of course, the affiliated union did strike shortly after its formation. No matter what the hopes for the future, the past history of the A.F. of L. meant that affiliation could, and did, add momentum to a movement toward a strike.

Prior to affiliation, the Boston policemen belonged to the Boston Social Club, a fraternal organization of police officers that had been created in 1906, when the popular Stephen O'Meara was police commissioner. Although the Social Club collected dues and elected officers, it did not provide insurance or other benefits.68 When the policemen tried to use the Social Club to express grievances, particularly about pay, but also concerning hours and working conditions, it proved ineffective.69 When Curtis became Commissioner following O'Meara's death in December 1918, he "refused to recognize the Social Club and substituted for it a plan of his own for dealing with union grievances."70 According to Curtis's system, the police would voice their complaints through a "grievance committee," composed of one representative elected from each station. But President McInnes of the Policemen's Union claimed that in practice, some of the men on the committees were fraudulently elected, while others were afterwards punished for serving on the committee.71 By August of 1919, most police officers thought that the Social Club "had never been able to accomplish anything."72

Having experienced frustration with the officially-sponsored Social Club, the policemen looked about for another means of gaining relief. They chose the American Federation of Labor. What was it about the A.F. of L. that was so attractive to the police? What made them choose to affiliate almost as soon as charters were offered to police departments? What made them defy Curtis's amendment to Rule 35, which, after they already had their charter, forbade membership in the A.F. of L.? And why, even after their walkout had earned them the condemnation of most of the city, did the policemen still insist on the right to affiliate with the American Federation of Labor?73

The primary consideration was the A.F. of L.'s proven ability to better the lot of workers in general and government workers in particular. While the Social Club struggled to coax a pay raise out of the mayor or the police commissioner, "the [policemen] looked about them [and] found that those who had been able to make their wages go up somewhere commensurate with the cost of living were those who had organized labor behind them."74 In Boston, affiliation had, in the words of A.F. of L. organizer McCarthy and B.C.L.U. president O'Donnell,

been done by employes [sic] in the fire department, treasury department and a score of other departments, the employes in which have their unions affiliated with the American Federation of Labor for years past, and are now in existence, and are and have been working harmoniously with the heads of all their departments. The Boston policemen simply wish[ed] for the same liberty of action in promoting their economic interests.75

Interestingly enough, considering Mayor Peters's experiences, the police looked particularly to the already unionized fire fighters as having blazed a path for them to follow. Just as the police in Jersey City had organized a union after seeing the firemen of that city gain power by unionizing, so did the Boston police observe the firemen's experience and expect to be allowed to affiliate.76

Besides the bread and butter issues of pay, hours, and conditions, an affiliated union would offer the patrolmen a degree of independence from their superiors in the department. As noted above, part of the attraction of municipal-employee unions in general was that they served as a counterweight to the corruption that was so characteristic of urban government in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. At the August meeting in which the police voted to affiliate,

many patrolmen...referred to alleged petty persecutions by superior officers in the department and urged that the proposed union do something to stop these practices. Some of the men stated that they were afraid to make formal complaint as they feared that charges of some kind would be made against them and that dismissal would follow.77

The men hoped that an affiliated union would give them a power base of their own. As one of them put it, "the men are tired of supporting an organization such as the Boston Social Club which it has been demonstrated has no 'punch.' The men want a red blooded organization in which they can formulate their own policies and not be subject to the dictates of the police commissioner and his assistants."78

But how, exactly, would affiliation with the A.F. of L. help the police? Frank McCarthy, New England Organizer for the A.F. of L. and the Federation official who was to spend the most time working with the police, was frequently vague in his descriptions of Federation plans.

What the future has in store, we do not know...we want to arrange matters to handle any situation that may arise...we must be prepared to exercise our rights and...call the attention of organized labor to the importance of this issue...We must maintain the principle of bargaining on labor and this direct challenge we must take up and assume an attitude that will make impossible the wresting of these principles from us.79

Later on, McCarthy assured the Policemen's Union that "the American Federation of Labor, from President Gompers down, is solidly behind the policemen of this city in their fight for the right to belong to a union affiliated with that body."80 "Being behind" and "assuming an attitude" are mere mental activities, and it takes a good deal of faith to risk one's job on a promise that an ally will "exercise rights" and "arrange matters." McCarthy's vagueness took a somewhat sinister tone after the men walked out. At a B.C.L.U. meeting in early October, he tried to silence two police officers, telling them that "while the policemen have had the undivided support of organized labor, the manner in which it will be given will be determined by the committee in charge of this strike."81

What McCarthy seems to have meant by these promises is that the A.F. of L. would provide what the 1990s would call "technical assistance," or what was known then as "wisdom and experience."82 Like Peters and Storrow, A.F. of L. leaders were veterans of many labor struggles. They knew how to negotiate. The Boston fire fighters in 1919 had been represented in their negotiations by Thomas G. Spellacy, president of the International Fire Fighters' Union.83 The policemen had as their chief negotiators James Vahey and James Feeney, experienced labor lawyers whom they retained on their own and not through the A.F. of L., but who were quite familiar with A.F. of L. disputes.84 In addition, the policemen had extra help in the negotiations by McCarthy himself and officers of the B.C.L.U.85 The B.C.L.U. also flexed its political muscle on behalf of the policemen, at least until the violence of September 9 forced it and the national organization to back water rapidly. The B.C.L.U. sent its officers to Coolidge to demand Curtis's dismissal;86 had they been successful in replacing the police commissioner, the policemen might have been victorious. Surprisingly, the A.F. of L. did not provide the police with legal counsel, though had their case been taken to court it might have been an important test case in labor law. Perhaps the organization felt that the men were in good hands with Vahey and Feeney and did not need more help, or perhaps the relatively early legal surrender of Vahey and Feeney meant that the case would not reach a level where an important legal precedent would be set.87

The one thing that the A.F. of L. did not want was a police strike. Despite the threats from the fire fighters, the many unions of government employees in Massachusetts had previously avoided strikes.88 That any strike of public employees was against A.F. of L. policy was reiterated by the A.F. of L.'s vice president in October.89 The editorial page of the Boston Labor World, the official newspaper of the B.C.L.U., repeatedly tried to dodge the issue of a police strike by insisting that the responsibility for the strike belonged to the police commissioner.90 "One cannot imagine a striking police force, and so long as they are treated properly there is no necessity for such," the paper editorialized in August.91 But according to this logic, the chance of an industrial strike is also minimal, which was clearly not the case in 1919.

A different understanding of the likelihood of the police strike was revealed in another Labor World editorial, written after the walkout of September 9. In describing the buildup to the strike from the viewpoint of the patrolman, the newspaper puts the case to its readers:

After [the patrolman] and his fellows have thus compromised themselves beyond all chance of retraction [by affiliating], the head of the department suddenly strikes, like a snake in the grass. What is he to do? He and they can but carry out their plans to a logical conclusion. But in doing so they will leave the city unprotected.92

The official voice of the B.C.L.U. said that the "logical conclusion" of affiliation was a strike. And indeed, the very act of affiliation with the A.F. of L. created a momentum toward striking that was greater than union officials were willing to acknowledge. For while the A.F. of L. could provide moral support to its constituent unions, and could send negotiators, organizers, lobbyists and lawyers, the strike was a central weapon in its arsenal. Years before, Gompers had written that "the strike is the most highly civilized method which the workers, the wealth producers, have yet devised to protest against the wrong and injustice, and to demand the enforcement of the right."93 Article XIII of the A.F. of L. constitution limited legitimate strikes to those authorized by the president and executive council of the national Federation.94 But this provision was ignored not only by the Policemen's Union, but also by the constituent unions of the B.C.L.U., which provided financial support to the striking policemen in violation of the constitution.95 And McCarthy, the A.F. of L. representative, initially responded to the policemen's walkout with satisfaction, not condemnation, though his approval did not last long.96 The A.F. of L. clearly did not always abide by its guidelines.

Despite the A.F. of L.'s official position of not allowing affiliated public employees to strike, and despite the previous record of no public employee strikes in Massachusetts, the notion that an A.F. of L. local could win benefits for its members without being allowed to strike or threaten a strike seems a bit dubious. It is not impossible to imagine an effective union without that weapon; by giving the men an organization safe from Curtis's meddling, the A.F. of L. could have provided a great service to them, had their employer been willing to negotiate. But the employer, Curtis, was not willing to negotiate. And in the face of his determined opposition, the police were faced with the options of a humiliating surrender, an appeal through the courts with little chance of victory, or the use of that characteristic A.F. of L. tactic, the strike. By affiliating with the A.F. of L. as a non-striking union, the policemen had put themselves in the position of a non-combatant soldier: exposed to danger, provided with logistical support, but prevented from defending himself. That they felt it necessary to strike casts a shadow of doubt on the realism of the official A.F. of L. vision of a union without the strike.

In this chapter I have set forth the history of the American Federation of Labor prior to 1919 and examined what significance that organization held for two parties in the Boston police crisis: the team of Peters and Storrow, and the policemen themselves. When the policemen chose to affiliate, there were clear precedents showing Peters and Storrow how to negotiate with a moderate labor union. Of course, each case is different, and the actions of these two men were by no means knee-jerk responses. But the parallels are impressive. As time ran out on the weekend of September 6 and 7, the days before Curtis was to sentence the 19 policemen he had tried, surely Storrow thought back to the day when he had signed the Elevated arbitration agreements with four minutes to spare. As Peters tried to navigate between the legitimate demands of government employees and the compelling need for public protection, the firemen's dispute must have entered his mind. And there had been many other conflicts with the A.F. of L., in Boston and nationwide, that had ended in negotiation. The A.F. of L. was also influential in determining the policemen's strategy. It held out to them a promise of immediate relief and more power in the future. But had they examined the organization's history more critically, they might have reached the conclusion that behind the A.F. of L.'s decision to extend charters to police unions, there remained unresolved contradictions. Particularly worrisome was the notion of an A.F. of L. local that would be banned from striking; such a union would be weak, if indeed it could exist at all. But the policemen's understanding of the A.F. of L. was imperfect, and they learned a hard lesson as a result.

Next: Chapter 3, "Bolshevism"

Notes

1. Lewis L. Lorwin, The American Federation of Labor: History, Policies, and Prospects (Washington, D.C.: The Brookings Institution, 1933, 22.
2. Ibid., 59.
3. Ibid., 104.
4. Ibid., 117.
5. Ibid., 136.
6. Ibid., 141.
7. Florence Calvert Thorne, Samuel Gompers--American Statesman (New York: Philosophical Library, 1957), 146.
8. Lorwin, American Federation of Labor, 143-45.
9. Ibid., 150.
10. Frank L. Grubbs, Jr., The Struggle for Labor Loyalty: Gompers, the A.F. of L., and the Pacifists, 1917-1920 (Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press, 1968), 91.
11. Ibid.,110.
12. Philip Taft, The A.F. of L. in the Time of Gompers, (New York: Harper & Brothers, 1957), 343.
13. Ibid., 348.
14. Lorwin, American Federation of Labor, 160.
15. Ibid., 165.
16. Jeremy Brecher, Strike! (Boston: South End Press, 1972), 103.
17. Lorwin, American Federation of Labor, 170.
18. Ibid., 172.
19. Richard L. Lyons, "The Boston Police Strike of 1919," The New England Quarterly 20, no. 2 (1947): 147-68.
20. Grubbs, Struggle for Labor Loyalty, 134.
21. Lorwin, American Federation of Labor, 176.
22. Ibid., 176.
23. Robert K. Murray, Red Scare: A Study in National Hysteria, 1919-1920 (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1955), 9.
24. Taft, The A.F. of L. in the Time of Gompers, 388.
25. Brecher, Strike!, 129.
26. Hugh O'Neill, "The Growth of Municipal Employee Unions," Proceedings of the Academy of Political Science 30, no. 2 (1970): 2.
27. Ibid., 2.
28. Ibid., 3.
29. Ibid., 4.
30. Ibid., 5.
31. Henry A. Juris and Peter Feuille, Police Unionism: Power and Impact in Public-Sector Bargaining, (Lexington: Lexington Books, 1973), 15.
32. Ibid.,
33. Ibid., 16.
34. Allen Z. Gammage and Stanley L. Sachs, Police Unions, (Springfield: Charles C. Thomas, 1972), 32.
35. Ibid., 33.
36. Ibid., 37.
37. Boston Evening Transcript, Aug. 30, 1919, Pt. III, 3.
38. David Ziskind, One Thousand Strikes of Government Employees, (1940. Reprint. New York: Arno & The New York Times, 1971), 35-39.
39. Ibid., 39.
40. James Vahey in Boston Evening Transcript, Aug. 26, 1919.
41. Gammage and Sachs, Police Unions, 34.
42. Boston Evening Transcript, Aug. 9, 1919, 5.
43. Ibid., Aug. 9, 1919. To express its exasperation with the perceived tendency of labor to strike as a first, rather than last, resort, the Evening Transcript pointed out that even children hired to deliver lunches to factory workers now saw the strike as the most efficient means of improving their lot.
44. City of Boston, Documents of the City of Boston for the Year 1919 (City of Boston Printing Department), Vol. IV, Doc. no. 108; "Report of Committee Appointed by Mayor Peters to Consider the Police Situation" [Storrow Report], 12.
45. Ibid., 13.
46. Ibid., 12.
47. Ibid.,19.
48. Ibid.,12, 15.
49. Bruce C. Johnson, "Taking Care of Labor: The Police in American Politics," Theory and Society 3, no. 1 (1976), 98.
50. Storrow was not the only Brahmin to settle labor disputes. Henry B. Endicott was consulted about both the firemen's and the policemen's complaints.
51. This account is drawn from Henry Greenleaf Peterson, Son of New England: James Jackson Storrow, 1864-1926 (Boston: Privately Printed, 1932), 174-86.
52. Herald, Sept. 5, 1918.
53. Ibid., Sept. 7, 1918.
54. Ibid., Sept. 5 and Sept. 6, 1918.
55. Ibid., Sept. 6, 1918.
56. Ibid., Sept. 6, 1918.
57. Ibid., Sept. 5, 1918.
58. Ibid., Sept. 9, 1918.
59. Storrow Report, 18.
60. Frederick Manuel Koss, "The Boston Police Strike" (Ph.D. diss., Boston University, 1960), 106, and Herald, Sept. 6, 1918.
61. Herald, Sept. 26, 1919.
62. Ibid.
63. Storrow Report, 7.
64. Koss, "Boston Police Strike," 2-3.
65. 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.
66. Francis Russell, City in Terror (New York: Viking, 1975), 234.
67. Christian Science Monitor, Sept. 3, 1919, p.5.
68. Labor World , Sept. 6, 1919, p.1.
69. Koss, 28-33.
70. Vahey and Feeney, quoted in the Herald, Sept. 26, 1919, p.8.
71. Herald Sept. 9, 1919, p.2
72. Ibid., Sept. 1, 1919, p.2
73. McInnes, quoted in the Herald Sept. 14, 1919, p.2
74. Vahey and Feeney, p.8
75. Labor World, Sept. 20, 1919, p.2.
76. Ibid., Aug. 9, 1919, p.2, and Vahey and Feeney, p.8.
77. Ibid., Aug. 9, 1919, p.1.
78. Ibid., Sept. 6, 1919, p.1.
79. Ibid., Aug. 23, 1919, p.2.
80. Ibid., Sept. 20, 1919, p. 1.
81. Ibid., Oct. 11, 1919, p.1.
82. Ibid., Sep. 20, 1919, p.8.
83. Herald, Sept. 7, 1918, p.1
84. Vahey and Feeney, p.8.
85. Herald Sept. 7, 1919, p.6.
86. Labor World, Aug. 23, 1919, p.1
87. Herald, Sept. 19, 1919, p.4
88. Labor World, Sep. 20, 1919, p.2.
89. The Public, quoted in Labor World, Oct. 11, 1919, p.7.
90. Labor World, Aug. 9, 1919, p. 8 and Aug. 23, 1919, p.8.
91. Ibid., Aug. 9, 1919, p. 8.
92. Ibid., Sep. 20, 1919, p.8.
93. Mollie Ray Carroll, Labor and Politics: The Attitude of the American Federation of Labor toward Legislation and Politics (1923. Reprint. New York: Arno & The New York Times, 1969), 67.
94. A.F. of L. Report of Proceedings of the Thirty-Ninth Annual Convention of the American Federation of Labor. (Washington, D.C.: The Law Reporter Printing Co., 1919), xxx.
95. Labor World, Sep. 27, 1919, p.8.
96. Ibid., Sep. 13, 1919, p.2.