No Right to Strike: Calvin Coolidge and the Boston Police Strike of 1919

The vexatious wave of de facto strikes by absentee Wisconsin public school teachers and Illinois-bound state legislators that has greeted newly-elected Badger State Governor Scott Walker’s vigorous attempts to rein in unsustainable public spending inevitably summons to mind the case of a once-obscure, first-term Massachusetts governor and a more overt public employee strike of nine decades ago. The governor in question: the famously taciturn Silent Cal Coolidge. The work stoppage in question: The Boston Police Strike of 1919