Boston Police Strike Research Paper

* The crowd pushed a streetcar over  one man killed 30 injured  Bloody Saturday

A strike is a collective decision of the union members not to work until certain demands or conditions are met (Noe, 2003). If the majority of the union members vote to strike, the union will strike. Most strikes usually have union employees not show up to work to perform his/her day-to-day duties but rather have the union employees picket outside the organization. While the union employee is on strike, the employer does not pay the employee his/her wage. In many strikes, the unions help the employees compensate their wages while they are on strike. The purpose of a strike is to make the employer lose production because the regular employee 's do not show up to work. The vast majority of labor-management negotiations do not result in a strike, and the number of strikes has plunged since the 1950s (Noe, 2003).

The Pullman Strike of 1894 was the first national strike in American history and it came about during a period of unrest with labor unions and controversy regarding the role of government in business.5 The strike officially started when employees organized and went to their supervisors to ask for a lowered rent and were refused.5 The strike had many different causes. For example, workers wanted higher wages and fewer working hours, but the companies would not give it to them; and the workers wanted better, more affordable living quarters, but the companies would not offer that to them either. These different causes created an interesting and controversial end to the Pullman strike. Because of this, questions were raised about the strike

After the war, Canadian factories that manufactured war supplies were permanently closed. This produced a lot of unemployment and bankruptcy. The cost to live was increasing dramatically and many people (who were still employed) could not compete with the inflation.(CBC, N/A, 1). WW1 veterans who had returned home after the war found that the wages were far too low.(School Work Helpers, 2016, 1). Some people wished to be employed, while others wished for better working conditions.(CBC, N/A, 2). On May 15, 1919, metal and building workers and the trades and labor council declared a strike. In a few hours, 30,000 left their jobs to participate in the strike.(Reilly, 2006, 3). One Big Union (OBG) was designed to speak for the workers.(School Work Helpers, 2016, 1). The House Of Commons had modified the Immigration Act so that any individual who was not born in Canada would be deported.(School Work Helpers, 2016, 2). The government feared that this strike would create a revolution, so they interfered. Workers were told to either go back to work or be fired.(Reilly, 2006, 6). On June 21, 1919, otherwise known as Bloody Saturday many people engaged in a silent protest. 2 people were killed that day and many sustained injuries. Several of the union leaders were arrested.(School Work Helpers, 2016, 2). Strike leaders were afraid that more people would be killed so on June 25, they went back to work.(Reilly, 2006, 3).

Despite being able to cause a small improvement in workers’ pay and hours, labor unions ultimately died out by the 1900s due to their methods. Unable to truly focus on the plight of skilled workers, most labor unions instead focused on that of unskilled workers, pushing aside the skilled workers. (Doc D). The actions of labor unions ended up being counterproductive, forcing companies to wage war against the labor unions. These stricter contracts such as that of Western Union Telegraph Company, forced workers to affiliate themselves against labor unions. (Doc E) One important thing to note is that the workers’ rights advocates were never able to coincide on one factor. As evidenced in an illustration in 1887, labor unions had to compete with other movements such as socialism, anarchism, and other labor unions. (Doc F). Because of this, the media, although recognizing the labor union movement, began viewing the labor unions as dangerous entities. Although the initial strikes such as the Wabash strike were successful, the ones that followed proved detrimental to the movement, and caused the steady decline of the labor unions. Because some of the strikes were dangerous, many strikes resulted in the deaths of those involved, such as the Homestead Crisis, and Pinkerton (Doc G). Combined with events such as the Wildcat strike, Haymarket strike, the Pullman Strike, the public began to associate a negative

The Boston Police Strike of 1919 was the result of the intolerable conditions under which the police officer’s worked and the refusal of key city and state officials to act to improve those conditions. On the day of September the 9th 1919, almost three quarters of Boston 's police force failed to show up to work. The police strike was a political windfall for the governor of Massachusetts and was fodder for the anti- union stance of government and business of the day. The backlash resulted in police departments across the country not to be afforded the right to organize for the next twenty years.

The workers demanded an eight hour workday for which the average work week was sixty hours or more. The company hired strikebreakers which were often used by this era. On May 3rd, 1886 as a protest resulted in the killing of an individual by the police, and on May 4th a mass meeting was called to take place in the Haymarket Square to protest what was seen as police brutality. At the meeting there were approximately 1500 people as radical speakers addressed the crowd. As the mood of the crowd began as a peaceful meeting that quickly turned confrontational when the police began to break up the crowd. As fights broke out, a powerful bomb was thrown. The police began to use their guns. Seven police officers lost their lives which was later proclaimed that they were not killed by the bomb but however from the bullets from other police officers from the chaos of the event. Four citizens were killed and over a hundred were injured. The public was outraged because of the event. Within the next two weeks, on the cover of a magazine, illustrations were drawn of the bomb thrown into the crowd, cutting down police officers, and a priest giving last rites to a police officer at the local police station, thus leading to the blame of the riot on the labor movement and particularly the Knights of Labor.

As a result of this "threat" of entering a labor union, the commissioner of police, Edward Curtis, told the men that no policemen were to join a union. After men decided to join the American Federation of Labor, Curtis decided to suspend those men. Leaders of the union were angered by this action and told the commissioner not to punish the men or else all union members would go on strike. Compromises were brought the Curtis, but none were accepted. Soon, a vast majority of the police department was on strike. It did not take long for violence in the streets to set in. Many volunteers were put in the line of duty. Angry mobs ran the streets, and many newspapers ran articles such as, "Riots in Boston", "Terror Reigns in City". This was a disgrace to the city of Boston. After eight deaths of seventy wounded, and thousand of dollars of damage done, the cities order was finally restored. The officers were given the raises that were requested and no longer had to pay for there uniforms.

One strike that helped to further this feeling was the Pullman strike. When the workers shut down the railroad it shut down the western half if the country and stopped the economy. This brought dislike from government, businesses, and the people. Document A shows one side of the story, with an editorial from the New York Times. Within this article it said that the riots were nothing but “rash and spiteful demonstrations.” This editorial also showed the other side of the argument calling the workers bold and determined for standing up and trying to make their lives better. Many people did not agree with the stikes and the violent scenes that often took place after. Most disagreed with the sentiments of Samuel Gompers and the leaders of other unions. In Document H, Samuel Gompers talks of how the factories are constantly changing and making improvements and if the employees do not strike how they will be left behind and walked upon. He talks of how the United States was not created without suffering and struggling and so the workers must fight for what they wanted. Finally, as shown in Document E, the people did not take kindly, to the labor unions and what they were trying to do. They saw that they all had different goals and were all trying to get

In 1919, many problems need to be deal with high goods, high employees and these labors; The United States is Judge Elbert Gary have these tensions with the steel to the strike. Thus, the United States Steel employers quit the job over 250,000.4 Furthermore, these meetings in the strike were breaking up, and the police were riding down in the towns. These issues had as much as complicated when in Farrell, Pa., it has one striker to be killed and also twenty people were injured. This violence was appeared and labors were death with many reasons at this

“Upwards of 250,000 workers in Chicago were on strike, threatening to strike, or locked out by late July 1919.In other words, one out of every three or four men and women in wage-earning fields in which there was the slightest union activity was a participant in a labor

contributed a strike dictating higher wages and cut on hours with an acknowledgment of their union by

     At the time, before labor laws or standards, this strike showed the tendency of the federal government to offer moral support to the companies and use military force to break strikes. The injunction, usually issued immediately by compliant judges at the request of government officials, became a prime legal weapon against union organizers and actions.

Then, on April 28, a plan to set off a bomb was discovered, meant for Mayor Hansen and others. It was presumably because of him ending the strikes. On May 1, there were rallies and riots occurring throughout the cities. Later, on June 2, there was yet another plan for a bombing, with a similar effect. People did not know who was doing this so they blamed the closest ones, the workers who went on strike.

Hundreds of thousands of workers from many different unions were not happy with the pay and working conditions. The members of the unions went on a five day strike wanting higher pay after it had been lowered for two years because of World War I. In the same year, in September 1919 Radical William Z. Foster, who served as the General Secretary of the Communist Party, made an effort to organize the steel industry. This resulted in over three hundred thousand steel workers walking off the job. The police of Boston also went on strike in the September as well. Just as the union workers the Boston Police also wanted higher wages and shorter working hours. However, the police commissioner did not want to organize a police union and suspended the leaders from the force. The result of the commissioner not giving the officers what they had asked for frustrated many officers and thousands of police officers went on strike. Once the city got wind of what happened. “When the Boston Police went on strike on September 9, the country’s leading newspapers sounded the alarm bells.” This forced Governor Calvin Coolidge to call out the National Guard to restore order in the