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In the Boston Police Strike, Boston police officers went on strike on September 9, 1919. They sought recognition for their trade union and improvements in wages and working conditions. Police Commissioner Edwin Upton Curtis denied that police officers had any right to form a union, much less one affiliated with a larger organization like the American Federation of Labor (AFL). Attempts at reconciliation between the Commissioner and the police officers, particularly on the part of Boston's Mayor Andrew James Peters, failed. During the strike, Boston experienced several nights of lawlessness, although property damage was not extensive. Several thousand members of the State Guard, supported by volunteers, restored order. Press reaction both locally and nationally described the strike as Bolshevik-inspired and directed at the destruction of civil society. The strikers were called "deserters" and "agents of Lenin."〔Robert K. Murray, ''Red Scare: A Study in National Hysteria, 1919–1920'' (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1955), ISBN 978-0-313-22673-1, 126〕 Samuel Gompers of the AFL recognized that the strike was damaging the cause of labor in the public mind and advised the strikers to return to work. Commissioner Curtis refused to re-hire the striking policemen. He was supported by Massachusetts Governor Calvin Coolidge, whose rebuke of Gompers earned him a national reputation. The strike proved a setback for labor unions, and the AFL discontinued its attempts to organize police officers for another two decades. Coolidge won the Republican nomination for vice-president of the U.S. in the 1920 presidential election. ==Background== In 1895, the Massachusetts legislature transferred control of the Boston police department from Boston's mayor to the governor of Massachusetts, whom it authorized to appoint a five-person board of commissioners to manage the department. In 1906, the legislature abolished that board and gave the governor the authority to name a single commissioner to a term of five years, subject to removal by the governor. The mayor and the city continued to have responsibility for the department's expenses and the physical working conditions of its employees, but the commissioner controlled department operations and the hiring, training, and discipline of the police officers.〔Philip S. Foner, ''History of the Labor Movement in the United States'', v.8 ''Postwar Struggles, 1918–1920'' (NY: International Publishers, 1988), ISBN 9780717800926, 92-3〕 In 1918, the salary for patrolmen was set at $1,400 a year. Police officers had to buy their own uniforms and equipment which cost over $200. New recruits received $730 during their first year, which increased annually to $821.25 and $1000, and to $1,400 after six years.〔Francis Russell, ''A City in Terror: Calvin Coolidge and the 1919 Boston Police Strike'' (Boston: Beacon Press, 1930, reprinted 1975), ISBN 978-0-8070-5033-0, 48〕 In the years following World War I, inflation dramatically eroded the value of a police officer's salary. From 1913 to May 1919, the cost of living rose by 76%, while police wages rose just 18%.〔 Discontent and restiveness among the Boston police force grew as they compared their wages and found they were earning less than an unskilled steelworker, half as much as a carpenter or mechanic and 50 cents a day less than a streetcar conductor. Boston city laborers were earning a third more on an hourly basis.〔 Police officers had an extensive list of grievances. They worked ten-hour shifts and typically recorded weekly totals between 75 and 90 hours. They were not paid for time spent on court appearances.〔 They also objected to being required to perform such tasks as "delivering unpaid tax bills, surveying rooming houses, taking the census, or watching the polls at election" and checking the backgrounds of prospective jurors as well as serving as "errand boys" for their officers.〔Russell, ''City in Terror'', 50-2〕 They complained about having to share beds and the lack of sanitation, baths, and toilets〔 at many of the 19 station houses where they were required to live, most of which dated to before the Civil War. The Court Street station had four toilets for 135 men, and one bathtub.〔 Boston's police officers, acting with the sponsorship of the police department, had formed an association known as the Boston Social Club in 1906. In 1917, a committee of police officers representing the Social Club met with Commissioner Stephen O'Meara to ask about a raise. He was sympathetic, but advised them to wait for a better time. They pressed the issue in the summer of 1918 and, near the end of the year, Mayor Andrew Peters offered salary increases that would affect about one-fourth of the officers. O'Meara died in December 1918, and Governor Samuel McCall appointed Edwin Upton Curtis, former Mayor of Boston, as Commissioner of the Boston Police Department.〔Russell, ''City in Terror'', 43-6〕 After another meeting where representatives of the Social Club repeated their salary demands, Peters said: "while the word 'strike' was not mentioned, the whole situation is far more serious than I realized."〔Russell, ''City in Terror'', 49〕 He also made it clear to the rank and file that they were not entitled to form their own union.〔Joseph Slater, "Labor and the Boston Police Strike of 1919," in Aaron Brenner, Benjamin Day, and Immanuel Ness, eds., ''The Encyclopedia of Strikes in American History'' (Armonk, NY: M.E. Sharpe, 2009), 239–51, esp. 245〕 Curtis did not share his predecessor's or the mayor's sympathy for the police, but in February 1918 he offered a wage compromise that the police rejected.〔Russell, ''City in Terror'', 55〕 In May, Governor Coolidge announced raises, which were also rejected.〔Russell, ''City in Terror'', 56〕 When the Social Club's representatives tried to raise grievances with him, Curtis set up his own grievance committee to handle management-employee disputes, based on the election of representatives from each precinct house by secret ballot, and it met just once.〔〔 A few months later, in June 1919, the American Federation of Labor (AFL), responding to repeated requests from local police organizations, began accepting police organizations into their membership.〔Slater, "Labor and the Boston Police Strike of 1919," 243〕 By September, it had granted charters to police unions in 37 cities, including Washington, D.C., Los Angeles, Miami, and St. Paul,〔Foner, ''History of the Labor Movement'', v.8, 93, 97〕 though not without protests from some city officials, who opposed the unionization of police, firefighters, and teachers.〔Slater, "Labor and the Boston Police Strike of 1919," 244〕 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Boston Police Strike」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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