* The wartime prohibition act had not reached down to the level of Boston’s bars. These would survive for a few more months until the National Prohibition Amendment went into effect on January 16, 1920.
LAW AND ORDER
Regrettable as the destruction and deaths of the last two nights had been—and no one regretted them more than the mayor of Boston—Peters could not conceal his self-satisfaction on Thursday morning. With corporation counsel Whiteside at his right hand and General Cole at his left, his city with its police was firmly under his control. Blame for the disorder he placed on Curtis. But order had been restored, and he could say he had been chiefly responsible for restoring it. Unless there was a declaration of martial law, the state guard under General Parker remained an auxiliary force subject to the mayor’s command. Peters had been worried that the governor might indeed declare martial law, but Whiteside informed him, to his relief, that only the legislature was legally empowered to do this. Restoration of order came first, he told reporters authoritatively. Adjustment of the strike issues would have to come later. His most pervading fear was that the Boston Central Labor Union might stage a general strike before he could reach a settlement with the police. But with the obstructive Curtis out of the way, he felt that such a settlement, along the lines of the last Storrow Committee proposals, was still feasible. However, as a precaution against any general strike, with its renewal and perhaps intensification of disorders, he appealed to the governor to request that federal troops be placed on the alert. Masking his impatience with the mayor, Coolidge telegraphed both the secretary of war and the secretary of the navy:
The entire State Guard of Massachusetts has been called out. 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.
At noon, Peters busied himself with another press release, this time praising the nonstriking policemen, who “remained true to their oath of office.” “They have faced not only physical danger,” the mayor went on, “but, what is harder to a red-blooded man, the reproach of their lifetime associates that they have not stood by them, and they have done this without any hope or prospect of reward, except what comes from consciousness that they have done their duty and from the respect and gratitude which they will be accorded by their fellow-citizens.” Following a lunch, brought in to his desk, the mayor held a conference with the four labor leaders—the AFL’s Frank McCarthy, Boston Central Labor Union President Michael O’Donnell, CLU business agent Harry Jennings, and Councilor James Moriarty—who came to his office directly from the closing session of the Greenfield convention. Much chastened by the state guard’s takeover, they now proposed a strike compromise: all the striking policemen would return to their posts at once; the mayor would dismiss the guard; a final settlement would be left to a board of arbitration. Jennings added that the policemen’s union, even when affiliated with the American Federation of Labor, would agree never to take part in any sympathy strike. Peters, all affability, said he could not agree because he would then be exceeding the authority invested in him by the law under which he took over the police department. If, however, they would drop their demand for AFL affiliation, he thought a settlement might still be worked out. He agreed to speak to the delegates of the BCLU that evening at the Wells Memorial Building, where the entire body would vote on the edgy question of a sympathy strike. After his conference with the labor leaders Peters told reporters that “everyone present” expressed a desire “to avert such a strike.”
Even as the mayor fumbled for ways to conciliate his labor constituents, Coolidge at the State House was preparing to cut the ground from under Peters’s unsuspecting feet. The governor’s sallow face flushed with rage as he thought of Peters now claiming credit for the state guard’s restoration of order, his supplanting of Curtis by his own lightweight authority, and his subordinating General Parker to City Hall. Telephoning the suspended commissioner, Coolidge asked him rhetorically if he did not think the time had come “to take this thing over?” Curtis did indeed think so, as did even more emphatically the shadow at his elbow, Herbert Parker.
Far away in western Massachusetts, Murray Crane had followed the Boston disorders with dismay. Fearful of the effect they might have not only on Coolidge but on the fortunes of the state Republican party, he dispatched his iron-jawed envoy extraordinary, ex-Senator Butler, posthaste to Boston. Butler, Coolidge, and Herbert Parker mulled over the problem at lunch at the Union Club, Butler and Parker doing most of the talking. Finally Coolidge asked the others what they thought he should do. “I said that the governor should take over the situation,” Butler recalled, “… and also take charge of the police affairs of Boston.” Parker enthusiastically agreed. Later, after the three had returned to the executive suite, they were joined by pudgy-faced Attorney General Wyman and former Attorney General Pillsbury. Coolidge at his desk fingered a copy of the Herald with Peters’s remark about receiving no help or practical suggestions from the governor. “I see,” he remarked in his dry waspish voice, “that the mayor has taken a hand in this!”
What Coolidge and his advisers feared was that Peters would give in to the union, that the striking policemen would soon be back on their jobs, cocky and assured, ready to strike again whenever their demands were not met. Then, whatever the terms of agreement, the irresolute mayor might well emerge triumphant as the leader who settled the strike, a possible dangerous rival in the November annual gubernatorial election. The year before, Coolidge had just managed to squeak through with a 16,945 majority out of a total of 412,701 votes cast. This had never been far from his mind all during the strike, had made him at first so reluctant to have any part of it. Now, however, the moment of decision had indeed forced itself on him. He was ready, he told the expectant four, as commander in chief of the state’s armed forces, to take over the state guard. They all but applauded in their agreement. His ensuing proclamation read:
The entire State Guard of Massachusetts has been called out. Under the constitution the Governor is the commander-in-chief thereof by an authority of which he could not, if he chose, divest himself. That command I must and will exercise. Under law I hereby call upon all the police of Boston who have loyally and in never-to-be-forgotten ways remained on duty to aid me in the performance of my duty in the restoration of order in the city of Boston and each of such officers is required to act in obedience to such orders as I may hereafter issue or cause to be issued.
I call on every citizen to aid me in the maintaining of law and order.
Without pause of pen he wrote out Executive Order Number One, through which he assumed control of the Boston Police Department, and he directed Curtis to return to his duties as commissioner, obeying only such orders as the governor might “issue or transmit.” After he had finished preparing the two documents he turned to Butler, the thinnest of smiles breaking through his wintry features. “What further damage can I do?” he asked mockingly. Parker’s legalistic mind was troubled, and he suggested that it might be tactful to inform the mayor what had been done. “Let him find it out in the papers!” the governor snapped.
Some time elapsed before the executive order arrived at City Hall, but rumors of it seeped through the corridors and offices and finally got to the mayor himself. Peters called the State House at once to ask whether it was true, and was shocked to learn that it was. Not long afterward a special messenger arrived at the mayor’s office with the document itself. Peters, Whiteside, and General Cole spread it on the desk and examined it with increasing chagrin. At one pen stroke, the mayor found himself a supernumerary thrust aside by the rush of events, a commander without a command. Just as Curtis had done only two days before, Peters now wrote with ironically formal politeness to the man who had supplanted him, pledging his full support and cooperation. Privately and plaintively he continued to maintain that
the governor had disrupted all his plans for the full restoration of law and order.
Law and order seemed only temporarily restored under the lengthening shadow of a general strike. The key firemen’s union was still breathing fire. On Wednesday afternoon the union’s president, Daniel Looney, after a long conference with Fire Commissioner John R. Murphy, told the reporters: “We are in the hands of the American Federation of Labor. It is for the Central Labor Union to take some action, and what labor demands of us we will deliver!” Commissioner Murphy thought that whatever labor demanded, there would still be enough loyal firemen to provide skeleton crews for any emergency. But Commissioner Curtis had thought the same thing about the police on Tuesday. As the Boston Central Labor Union met on Thursday evening, Bostonians, their nerves on edge, anticipated a sympathy strike that would shut down the city. For if there were no fire fighters, if the telephone service failed, if the electrical workers kept their promise to go along with the rest of labor, no one could guess what might happen in the darkened streets. At eight o’clock more than four hundred delegates representing 125 affiliated unions crowded into Wells Memorial Hall. The mood was militant. Among the most militant were the members of the newer unions; the carmen, the firemen, the “hello” girls, and the electrical linemen. Restlessly they waited the signal from the BCLU’s committee of seventeen.
The somewhat unwieldy committee had been streamlined into a five-member executive committee consisting of President O’Donnell, business agent Harry Jennings, Councilor James Moriarty, AFL organizer Frank McCarthy, and former BCLU President Edward McGrady. Wise in the ways of the strikes, these elders were aware that whatever the inflammatory sentiments of the delegates, the police strike was faltering. What could be salvaged, should be, but it would have to be done discreetly. Cutting through the incandescent oratory, President O’Donnell ordered a secret ballot taken in which the delegates from each local would write down whether or not their union had voted for a sympathy strike. Eighty per cent of the delegates recorded themselves in favor of striking at once. O’Donnell and the executive committee decided to keep the results secret. Falling back on the ingenious excuse that some of the unions—actually fewer than fifty—had not yet committed themselves on the strike issue, the committee recommended soothingly that the BCLU continue “to work in conjunction with the Police Union, to the end that justice be given the members of the Police Union.” To this was tacked the timeserving request that all locals not yet having done so would “have a vote ready for the next meeting of the Central Labor Union,” the following week.
While the Boston Central Labor Union’s committee of seventeen remained resolutely dilatory, Secretary of War Newton Baker reacted promptly to the Massachusetts governor’s request. Major General Clarence Edwards, having emerged from his wartime eclipse to command the Northeast Department, placed the recently returned First Division on alert and ordered his scattered forces to hold themselves in readiness for riot and guard duty in Boston. He also ordered a large wire “Boche” cage to be built at Fort Devens, thirty miles northwest of the city, to take care of “radicals.” The eight hundred men of the Thirty-sixth Infantry, already at Devens, readied themselves to arrive in Boston with Browning automatic rifles on three hours’ notice. Rear Admiral Herbert Dunne, commanding the First Naval District, conferred with Edwards about sending naval detachments to the city. Between them, they assured the governor, they could muster ten thousand soldiers and sailors within twelve hours.
The Boston streets on Friday resumed the calm that was now beginning to appear customary. Most of the debris had been removed; the boards were being taken from the broken windows and new glass installed. State guard detachments continued to arrive, and armories were besieged by would-be volunteers, who to their disappointment had to be turned away. By the day’s end there were six times as many guardsmen on the streets as there had been policemen the week before. Governor Coolidge, preparing for the ultimate emergency, ordered the demobilized Fourteenth State Guard Regiment of Fall River and Cape Cod back into service. He then instructed Brigadier General LeRoy Sweetser to reorganize the fourteen thousand troops of the old Massachusetts Volunteer Militia that had been absorbed by the National Guard in 1917. A number of volunteers, white handkerchiefs round their arms and wearing white hat bands, were still directing traffic, but this task was being turned over to the secretary of the Boston Automobile Association, Chester Campbell, who had organized a squad of fifty car dealers to take charge of traffic generally. Superintendent Pierce was continuing to enroll volunteers at the Chamber of Commerce Building, even though they were now destined mostly to sit round in station houses acting as reserves.
Friday morning also brought Curtis back to his desk at Pemberton Square, his jaw set in bulldog determination, his jowls wedged sternly into his wing collar. First he consulted with Attorney General Wyman, not with the intention of asking advice but for the legal backing to do what he had already determined to do. He then telephoned all his station captains, warning them that none of the policemen who had failed to report on Tuesday or since that time might return to duty under any circumstances nor were they to loiter on station premises. He personally would decide about those reporting back from vacation or from sick leave. The new minimum salary for policemen he now set at $1400 a year. As for the nineteen suspended patrolmen, he issued General Order Number 125, dismissing them from the force.
Coolidge, even though he was organizing some forty thousand reserves to fall back on—guardsmen, militia, and soldiers—nevertheless felt comfortably reassured that a general strike was only the remotest of possibilities. His friend Diamond Jim Timilty, the Roxbury Democratic ward boss, had tipped him off on Monday night, and where labor was concerned Diamond Jim knew what he was talking about. When Coolidge had been elected president of the Massachusetts senate, Diamond Jim—his nickname derived from the large diamond cuff links, stickpins, and rings he always wore—was senior senator. Cal and Jim had had their outward political differences, but privately the senate president granted his Democratic colleague whatever favors he felt he could. Part of Coolidge’s political success lay in his readiness to do favors, while almost never asking anything in return. Among the knife-wielding Democratic smilers on Beacon Hill he grew to be trusted. With the Timiltys of this world he had always felt more at home than he had with the Back Bay Brahmins. When Coolidge was president he placed three of Timilty’s six children on the federal payroll. “I just went in to see my little pal,” Timilty recalled to a Post reporter, “to tell him not to worry about a general strike. You know, I’m president of the largest labor organization in the state, the City and Town Laborers’ organization, with the largest membership of any union in Massachusetts. I just told Cal that ‘We won’t go out,’ and we have more votes in the Central Labor Organization than any of those others. You see, Cal’s my kind of guy, and he’s right about those damned cops!”
In spite of such reassurance, Coolidge with customary canniness ordered a survey of the Boston area public utilities by the engineering firm of Stone & Webster as a guide for action in the event of a general strike. In the late afternoon he held a press conference. By now and almost in spite of himself he had become the key figure in Boston’s time of trouble. Peters was so thoroughly in eclipse that he had not even gone to the BCLU meeting, where he was scheduled to speak. The governor, all hesitancies at last thrust aside, faced the reporters with flinty aplomb, rasping out his laconic answers while at the same time adroitly shifting the responsibility for decisions onto the police commissioner and the law. His wish, he emphasized, was to support the commissioner “in any action he may take.” Would he negotiate with the strikers? No. This was not a strike but—he hammered out the words—a “desertion of duty.” If the police yielded, would they be taken back? “My personal opinion,” said Coolidge, “is that they should not be taken back. You should keep in mind, however, that I have no authority over the matter. My only authority is over the police commissioner and when I have a
ppointed him, it is his duty to administer the department.” The governor said he could not think of any condition under which the police should be reinstated, but that it was a matter wholly beyond his control. As for affilation with the AFL, he continued, “a rule of the police department, which is the law of the Commonwealth, provides that they shall not join any outside organization. That being the law, there can be but one reply to any such demand.” Then, in a formal statement, he explained that in taking command he had acted to eliminate public confusion as to where the responsibility for community protection and the maintenance of law and order lay during the crisis. With stony malice he concluded by telling the grinning reporters that he and the mayor had been working together in “perfect harmony.”
Long before the striking policemen had come to realize their waning fortunes, when talk of a general strike still boiled and bubbled, senior labor leaders elsewhere were developing second thoughts. Most prominent among the dubious was the diminutive sixty-nine-year-old Gompers, the frog-eyed, stubborn-jawed president of the American Federation of Labor for the past third of a century. A practical-minded craft unionist, distrustful of intellectuals and social theorists, he had prudently kept police unions at arm’s length for decades. The present situation could not have arisen, he felt, if he had not been abroad in August at a meeting of the International Federation of Trade Unions in Amsterdam. On the very Tuesday that the Boston patrolmen had walked out, his father had died in the semi-suburb of Dorchester, and he had come to Boston in strictest secrecy to make the funeral arrangements and at the same time to size up the police situation. What he saw from behind his rimless spectacles more than dismayed him. Privately he admitted that the AFL had blundered in giving the police a charter. On Thursday, before his return to New York, his AFL vice-president, Matthew Woll, speaking before the National Civic Federation, sounded the first note of a tactical retreat. Woll blamed the “difficulty in Boston” on those in authority who refused to grant the police their right as Americans to organize and affiliate with the union of their choice, but he added significantly that the federation “discourages all government employees from striking.”
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