Comparing The 1919 Boston Police Strike - 937 Words

The 1919 Boston Police Strike took place against the backdrop of general distrust of unions. The AFL, the union that the police were part of, were in their own struggle for acceptance as a legitimate organization by the public. Unions were relatively new and they were associated with the violence that striking workers perpetrated, creating suspicion about unions in general. The Boston Police Strike, unfortunately, brought so many issues of the day to head: Communism which was an issue to Americans because of the Russian Worker s Revolution and their efforts to spread communism throughout the world, anti-police attitudes and anti-union sentiment. WWI ended in 1918, and in 1919 the largely Irish-American police force in Boston voted to†¦show more content†¦Many, many streets of people running around, taking things out of stores, busting windows, going into stores and taking all the shoes; bayonets and bullets and fear and trampling; altercations with crowds and they shoot into crowds — what started out as mean mischief ended up being riots and then death, Shlaes said. The shots that Shlaes refers to were not fired by police but by the state guard. At the time, there were no police on the streets of Boston. The striking police took a beating in the press. They were called deserters and worse, Bolsheviks. And so the AFL brought out their biggest gun. Sam Gompers, the old union man, the wise man, the one who has been to Paris with the president, Shlaes said. So, you want to imagine someone very respected nationally asks Coolidge to please negotiate. But Coolidge would not be dissuaded and Cranky Cal told Gompers as much in a now famous telegram. Coolidge had deliberated at length on the matter, and had come to a steadfast conclusion, which he expressed in a single, cutting sentence.( https://news.wgbh.org/post/boston-police-strike-impacted-labor-generations) On the following day, Mayor Andrew J. Peters summoned local militia units, and they restored order. Everyone was going on strike in the United States in 1919, Coolidge biographer, Amity Shlaes said. Earlier in the year, the telephone workers and trolley men had gone on strike. Police believed that by affiliating with Samuel Gompers’