W&M ScholarWorks Dissertations, Theses, and Masters Projects Theses, Dissertations, & Master Projects 1990 Police Reform and the Boston Police Strike of 1919 David Joseph Roberts College of William & Mary - Arts & Sciences Follow this and additional works at: https://scholarworks.wm.edu/etd Part of the Criminology Commons, Labor Relations Commons, and the United States History Commons Recommended Citation Roberts, David Joseph, "Police Reform and the Boston Police Strike of 1919" (1990). Dissertations, Theses, and Masters Projects. Paper 1539625618. https://dx.doi.org/doi:10.21220/s2-hj8k-ae11 This Thesis is brought to you for free and open access by the Theses, Dissertations, & Master Projects at W&M ScholarWorks. It has been accepted for inclusion in Dissertations, Theses, and Masters Projects by an authorized administrator of W&M ScholarWorks. For more information, please contact [email protected]. POLICE REFORM AND THE BOSTON POLICE STRIKE OF 1919 A Thesis Presented to The Faculty of the Department of History The College of William and Mary in Virginia In Partial Fulfillment Of the Requirements for the Degree of Master of Arts by David J. Roberts 1990 APPROVAL SHEET This thesis is submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Arts Author Approved, December 1990 7SjUAa\J. Richard B, Sherman Ludwell H. Johi£sdn il DEDICATION For the two from whom I've learned the most: my mother, who taught me to love learning, and my father, who taught me not to quit until the Job is done correctly. ill TABLE OF CONTENTS Page ACKNOWLEDGMENTS.................................................... v ABSTRACT.......................................................... vl INTRODUCTION ...................................................... 2 CHAPTER I. POLICE REFORM IN THE LATE NINETEENTH CENTURY: THE ESTABLISHMENT OF STATE CONTROL........................ 7 CHAPTER II. POLICE REFORM IN THE EARLY TWENTIETH CENTURY: DEPARTMENTAL INDEPENDENCE AND CENTRALIZATION........ 17 CHAPTER III. PROFESSIONALIZATION AND THE POLICEMAN.............. 36 CHAPTER IV. DISSATISFACTION WITHIN THE BOSTON POLICE DEPARTMENT............................................58 CHAPTER V. FORMATION OF THE BOSTON POLICEMEN'S UNION............ 80 CHAPTER VI. THE DECISION TO STRIKE............................... 91 CHAPTER VII. THE STRIKE AND ITS AFTERMATH.......................Ill CHAPTER VIII. CONCLUSION.........................................126 NOTES.............................................................131 BIBLIOGRAPHY.................................... 145 lv ACKNOWLEDGMENTS I would like to express my gratitude to Professor Richard B. Sherman, under whose guidance this thesis was completed, for his assistance and suggestions. I also wish to thank Professors Philip J. Funiglello and Ludwell H. Johnson for the time they took to read and comment on the manuscript. Space does not permit me to enumerate the countless debts that I owe to Christopher R. Mirenzi. It will have to suffice to say that, through his willing assistance, his boundless patience and his unwavering support, he has once again proven himself to be the best best friend that the twentieth century has to offer. D. J. R. v ABSTRACT Police departments in American cities were significantly affected by a number of reform movements during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Like other urban reform movements of the period, these emerged in response to changing social conditions within the nation's cities. The goal of the police reformers was to eliminate the variety of social and political services that the police had traditionally provided and to create a new force whose exclusive function would be to provide efficient and impartial enforcement of the law. Reformers eventually came to believe that adequate levels of efficiency and impartiality could only be maintained if police departments adopted organizational structures that concentrated decision-making power in the hands of a single chief executive and that enabled the department to function with a minimum of outside interference. Furthermore, the new role required that all members of the department commit themselves to a new ethic of professional behavior. Groups whose interests were more likely to be advanced by a continuation of the policemen's traditional role opposed the implementation of the reformers' ideas. In many cities, this led to a period of struggle for control of the police department. In most cases, reformers, with the assistance of other interest groups, were able to gain the upper hand in these struggles, and so, by World War I, many urban police departments had been reorganized along the lines promoted by the reformers. Throughout this period of struggle and reform, however, neither the reformers nor their opponents showed much concern about the interests of the rank-and-file patrolmen. In fact, many of the reforms that were implemented during this period proved to be detrimental to the policemen's interests. This paper discusses the impact that police reform had on the Boston Police Department and the role that these reforms played in generating the conflicts that culminated in the Boston Police Strike of 1919. During the early twentieth century, Boston adopted many of the ideas of the reformers. At the same time that police reformers were promoting Boston's police department as a model to be emulated by other American police forces, however, growing dissatisfaction among the city's patrolmen, much of it caused by conditions that resulted directly or indirectly from the implementation of these reforms, was creating a crisis within the department. Furthermore, the administrative structures that had been adopted in response to the reform movement created obstacles that limited the city officials' ability to resolve the conflicts within the department and to avert the impending crisis. In the end, this crisis resulted in a temporary break-down of the mechanisms upon which the city depended for the maintenance of law and order. vl POLICE REFORM AND THE BOSTON POLICE STRIKE OF 1919 INTRODUCTION During the half century between 1870 and 1920, American society underwent a transformation that resulted in the establishment of an entirely new social order. Just as the rapid growth of American industry forever altered the nation's economic landscape, the accompanying emergence of large urban centers gave rise to social patterns that diverged dramatically from those that had existed previously. The shift to large-scale industrial production and the Increased wealth that this production generated, together with the development of corporations with their hierarchical ackninistratlve structures, created new social classes. Urban life imposed fundamental changes on the ways social groups interacted with one another. The concentration of growing numbers of people in the nation's cities and the arrival of ever-increasing numbers of immigrants injected new values, new outlooks and new ambitions into American culture. A transformation of such magnitude naturally put a tremendous strain on the society. Conflict erupted not only between the old and the new, but also among the various components that made up the new social order. As a result, this period was not simply one of profound change; it was also a time of nearly constant adjustment and readjustment to the new conditions that these changes produced. All of the social groups with interests in the new urban society expected the city police to play a role in this process of adjustment. Since each group pursued a different set of goals, however, each held a different view of Just what the police 2 force's proper role was to be. Machine politicians were quick to recognize that the large number of Jobs available within the police department, along with the policeman's power to determine when and against whom to enforce the law, constituted valuable commodities that could be traded whenever it was necessary to gather votes or financial contributions. Conversely, rural conservatives saw the police as the last bulwark against a complete take-over of municipal affairs by these same "undesirable elements", whose influence grew in proportion to the size of the working-class populations from which they drew their support. To the working class Itself, the police department offered stable jobs and, hence, opportunities for financial security and social mobility. To the industrialist, however, the power exercised by the police force gave it great potential as a means of controlling the working class and defending private property, especially during labor disputes. The middle-class moralists viewed the police force as the most potent weapon in their continuous war on vice, while to yet another group of reformers, the civic reformers of the day, the police constituted an essential component in the new municipal administrative structure that they hoped to create, a structure that they were confident would bring order, efficiency and an impartial distribution of the benefits of society to urban America. While these groups held conflicting views of the policeman's appropriate role In the new urban society and, consequently, made widely divergent demands on the police force, one thing was understood by all: the group that controlled the 3 police department would get to define the departments role. As a result* police history during this period Is largely the story of the competition for control that was waged by the various Interest groups within the urban society. No single