By Professor Barry M. Stentiford
The Massachusetts Home Guard, as the force was originally named, was created on 5 April 1917, as the United States entered the First World War. Its purpose was to respond to local crises while the National Guard was away from the commonwealth in federal service. The foresight of the leaders of the commonwealth in the spring of 1917, and the enthusiasm of individual Home Guardsmen throughout Massachusetts, gave Governor Calvin Coolidge an option during a particularly difficult episode of urban unrest not shared by many governors. As a relatively wealthy and compact state with an extensive streets car system, Massachusetts was able to create a uniformed and trained force that largely mirrored the departed National Guard, although due to federal conscription, Home Guardsmen tended to be older than their National Guard counterparts. State law set the minimum age for enlistment at 35, unless otherwise disqualified for federal service. The Home Guard was organized into 11 Infantry regiments, a Motor Corps with four companies, a troop of Cavalry, and a Medical Department. Additionally, the force contained a Dental Corps, a Nurse Corps, a Veterinary Corps, and a Sanitation Corps, for a total of authorized strength of 725 officers and 10,800 enlisted men. Shortly after its formation, the Home Guard paraded through the streets of Boston. To the Bostonians, the sight of so many older soldiers in ill-fitting uniforms may have seemed amusing, but the day would come when law abiding people of Boston would appreciate these enthusiastic part-time soldiers.
Throughout the war years most Home Guard companies performed few services other than marching in annual Decoration Day parades. Two companies spent eighteen days on active duty in December 1917, guarding areas of the waterfront in Charlestown and East Boston designated as a “barred zone” by President Woodrow Wilson. In February 1919, the company in the town of Franklin responded to an explosion in that town, and that summer returned to Franklin to suppress a threatened riot. Most of the Medical and Transportation Guardsmen participated in the response to the Influenza Epidemic. Aside from those incidents, Home Guard companies provided pre-induction training to those subject to conscription, training that often placed them in good stead if actually called. The response to the explosion in Halifax, Nova Scotia in December 1917 was the major event of the war years, although that mainly involved Medical units and the Quartermaster. Still, the presence the Home Guard added a level of security should unrest, disaster, or other major problems arise. On 2 May 1918, its name was changed from “Home Guard” to “State Guard,” to better reflect the state-wide responsibilities of the force.
While the year and a half the United States was at war was relatively peaceful in Massachusetts, the years immediately after the war were a time of readjustment and unrest. Police strikes in Montreal, Liverpool, and London increased the fears of Bostonians of what could happen if their own police were to strike. The northern Massachusetts industrial town of Lawrence, the scene of strikes and other labor unrest before the war, again exploded in ethnic and class violence in February 1919. In the months after the November 1918 Armistice, many Americans became concerned over Bolshevik influence. City leaders feared any labor troubles as the work of communists and other subversive elements. Organized labor sought a middle ground—opposing communism but striving for a better deal for workers. At its annual convention that summer in Atlantic City, the American Federation of Labor (AFL) voted against recognition of the Soviet Union. At the same convention, however, it voted to extend charters to unions of police—a group often seen as the enemy of labor.
Boston policemen served through the war years without an increase in pay while inflation ate away their buying power. In 1919, the average patrolman worked more than seventy hours a week and took home less pay than a trolleyman. The Boston police, like most police departments in the United States, had a social club but no union. Police Commissioner Edwin U. Curtis stated that he would not allow a police union affiliated with a national union, generally understood to mean the AFL. City leaders feared losing control over the police. In the tense days of August 1919, leaders of Boston’s other unions pledged sympathy strikes in support of the police. Sympathy strikes, if carried out, would bring on the dreaded general strike and cripple the city, and with it much of Massachusetts. But the AFL did not exercise executive control over member unions. Only the membership could vote for a strike, and when the policemen of Boston walked off the job, many Boston workers used the opportunity to settle old scores with former antagonists rather than vote for working-class solidarity. For years, city and state police had been replacing militia in breaking strikes in the more industrial areas of the United States, increasing a sense of antagonism between police and organized labor. The bitterness many workers felt towards policemen would bear rotten fruit during the strike.
Rumors of an impending strike by the Boston Police had reached the mayor’s office during the first days of September 1919. Commissioner Curtis believed he had the situation under control. Advertisements for volunteer policemen appeared in the city’s newspapers. Curtis estimated that eight hundred policemen would remain on duty in the event of a walkout. He was quite wrong. Of the 1,544 policemen on the force, only 427 remained after the walkout that followed the afternoon role call on September 9, 1919. The Commissioner assumed that the Parks Police would supply about one hundred men for the emergency in Boston, but more than half refused to serve as what they saw as strike breakers. The Parks Police later came under criticism from the commissioner for their lackluster performance during the strike. The State Police, still in its infancy, sent sixty policemen. The State Police were more efficient but also a relatively new institution and lacked the manpower to assume completely the police duties of the largest city in the commonwealth. The mayor asked the governor to mobilize units of the State Guard, but the governor did not yet see that the situation demanded such a response and he refused. Newspapers indicated that the city was without any police on its streets, attracting various nefarious elements from the region hoping to profit from the lack of law enforcement.
In the days before the strike, the state’s Chief Quartermaster took the precaution of collecting equipment to support the 10th Regiment of the State Guard, which was based in the city, should it be needed. He prudently stockpiled cots for sleeping and cooking utensils as well as ammunition. He originally planned to collect the equipment at Boston’s East Armory, but later chose Commonwealth Armory so as not to cause unrest by the sight of military preparations near a busy street. The First Motor Corps, and the First Troop Cavalry, which were holding their normal weekly evening drill in the city, were ordered to stay on duty as a further precaution, although the men were released late in the evening.
Shortly before midnight after the walkout, unrest spread throughout the city. Crowds began forming in several squares and fighting erupted. Numerous businesses and homes were broken into by groups intent on taking full advantage of the lack of police on the streets. Looting became widespread. Businesses were robbed and innocent people accosted. Striking policemen often encouraged the violence to pressure the city leaders to settle with the strikers. On the morning of September 10, the volunteer police, consisting mainly of middle-aged men from the upper-classes, reported for duty but soon found themselves overwhelmed by the disorder. That morning, Commissioner Curtis fulfilled the letter of the law in such situations by informing the mayor that “the usual police provisions [were] at present inadequate to preserve order and afford protection to persons and property.” The same day, the mayor took control of all units of the State Guard in the city, mainly the Cavalry troop and Transportation Corps, justifying his actions with a statute passed in 1917, which allowed a mayor to use the State Guard units in the city to assist civil authorities when order broke down.
The impact of the arrival of State Guard forces in the city was immediate. As a large mob had shut down traffic in Scollay Square and the volunteer policemen who responded were soon overwhelmed and several attacked. Fortunately, the First Troop of Cavalry arrived on the scene, and after a brief discussion with officials, the troop commander formed his cavalrymen in line, and with sabers waving, cleared the square and rescued the volunteer police. Above the din of the late afternoon charge could be heard the cheering of some of the residents, demonstrating that many were glad to see the State Guard start to restore order to the city. He then sent a message to Governor Coolidge asking him to mobilize no less than three Infantry regiments equipped for field service to perform duty in Boston. In response to the request Governor Coolidge ordered the entire State Guard to state active duty for service in Boston.
The remainder of the State Guard that began arriving by truck, streetcar, train, or march had changed a great deal since the Armistice some ten months earlier. Following the return of peace to Europe, the old, tattered uniforms and lack of purpose created among many members a desire for a quiet disbanding of the force. Most units suffered an exodus of members after the war ended and the wartime enthusiasm receded. With the war over most men did not reenlist. The State Guard’s summer encampment for 1919, held at Camp Robert Bancroft in Boxford, came after expiration of the original two-year enlistments. Few companies arrived at the camp with a full complement of three officers and sixty-one enlisted men. Many who did go to camp were recent recruits. As a result, companies included many younger men. Officers tried to practice regimental drill before many of the men knew how to march with their company. Thus in the summer of 1919, shortly before the years of drill and rifle practice would be put to use in the Police Strike, the efficiency of the Massachusetts State Guard as a whole fell to its lowest point.
In the morning of September 10, State Guard companies across the commonwealth began receiving orders from their regimental commanders to assemble at their armories for service in Boston. Many men previously discharged came to their local armory to be sworn in so they could rejoin their companies, but shortages remained. By 1:30 PM, the company from Wakefield, about ten miles north of the city, departed for Cambridge to join the rest of its regiment. At Cambridge, one lieutenant and thirty-nine men from a badly understrength company were attached to the Wakefield company, bringing its strength up to four officers and ninety-three men. The company then went by truck to the Brighton section of Boston where they occupied Police Station Number 14. Shortly after they arrived, in consultation with the local police captain, the State Guardsmen dispersed a mob blocking Market Square and the adjacent streets. After restoring quiet to the area, the Wakefield men set up posts at key positions along the streets and began to enforce order in their district, which ran from Market Square to Oak Square, and thence to the Charles River. In addition, they patrolled the “more quiet residential sections adjoining Brookline.”
As with the men from Wakefield, the men of the State Guard company from Concord found great satisfaction in their service during the Boston Police Strike. The call-up on the 10th brought new life to the company. For the Concord company, service in Boston began on an ominous note: a rifle misfired and the bullet hit a police captain in the thigh. That proved to be an isolated incident, although the condition of the weapons reflected the general state of most of their equipment. The men’s uniforms consisted of little more than a combination of personal clothing and surplus state-supplied stocks, much of that from old federal uniforms. The Concord company relied on their friends and neighbors to donate the socks, gloves, and blankets that the commonwealth could not supply. The company became the military expression of their home community sent to the big city to restore order. The old-stock Yankees of a prosperous rural community like Concord had little sympathy with the striking police of the big city. The company’s supply sergeant would later refer with disdain to the police who regarded themselves as “mere laborers who had a right to stop work when their trifling grievances were not immediately redressed.” If the police in Boston were going to strike, the State Guardsmen were proud to find a mission.
On the afternoon of the 11th, Governor Calvin Coolidge took responsibility for restoring order in the city from the mayor and assumed direct command of the State Guard, arguably after the worst of the crisis had passed. One historian, writing almost three decades after the strike, credited the arrival of the State Guard as the turning point, when order began to be restored to Boston. Regaining control of the city was not without bloodshed. In South Boston one Guardsman, apparently fearful of an advancing crowd, fired his rifle and killed a man. Despite, or perhaps because of, this use of deadly force, the crowd quickly dispersed. On Boston Common, a merchant seaman was fatally shot by a Guardsman when he charged a group of them, being unimpressed by the warning shots the Guardsmen had fired into the air. The seaman had been participating in various dice games that were being held on Boston Common. As gambling was illegal in the city, some of the crowds used the opportunity of the strike to set up games of chance in various public places. The Guardsmen had come to put an end to this seemingly minor but nevertheless open flouting of the law. As word spread that the Guardsmen were not above using their rifles for something other than simply to hold a bayonet or to club recalcitrant troublemakers, many people found cause to return to their homes. In an official report written after emotions had cooled, these two deadly incidents were credited with the newfound respect given to Guardsmen, as people started obeying their commands promptly. By the afternoon of the 11th, a Thursday, some 7,000 Guardsmen were patrolling the city, discouraging those who had hoped for a second night of open lawlessness.
On September 13, the Adjutant General’s Office increased the authorized strength of each State Guard company to one hundred men. Companies sent small recruiting teams back to their hometowns to bring in new members. The Wakefield company detailed a sergeant and clerk to the hometown for recruiting. The first day eight men enlisted, including veterans recently returned from Europe and without employment, or boys still in their teens who had been too young to be drafted during the war. One small boy who witnessed the State Guardsmen in their role policing Boston later remembered that
[t]he aspect of these overage and underage guardsmen was ludicrously unmilitary. They scarcely knew the manual of arms, and they still wore the laced gaiters and felt campaign hats of the Mexican Border Campaign of 1916, which had been replaced in the American Expeditionary Force by spiral puttees and overseas caps.He also recalled that nevertheless, the uniforms, rifles, and bayonets were exciting to a small boy and made every day seem like Memorial Day.
By the end of September, the situation in Boston had stabilized to the point that a general strike was no longer feared. In mid-October, the state headquarters ordered the discharge of all State Guardsmen under twenty-five years of age. Companies “lost some of [their] most willing soldiers, whose absence…could not be [made] up.” By October 25, the situation in Boston had stabilized enough that half of the State Guardsmen were relieved from active duty and returned to their homes. From then until the final removal of all remaining State Guard forces from the city on December 18, units in the city underwent constant restructuring as reductions in men continued. Most companies allowed members with pressing business to return home first. By the end of the State Guard’s involvement in Boston, only men who really wanted to remain on state duty were required to do so.
By the end of December, Boston had recruited much of a new police force and the National Guard was reforming. The State Guard was becoming unnecessary. During its existence, the State Guard provided the commonwealth with a competent force that, unlike most states, Massachusetts needed at full strength. The existence of the State Guard allowed Governor Coolidge to respond effectively to the strike using the forces of the commonwealth, without the need of federal assistance. After the strike, State Guard companies continued armory drills into 1920, but interest waned. New National Guard companies were forming, and eligible men who wanted to continue in a part time military force transferred into it. Drills following the strike were lightly attended. Company and regimental officers spent much of their time trying to file all the paperwork the commonwealth required, while one supply sergeant later wrote of spending an “unholy time trying to account for shoes, o’ds [olive drab uniforms], overcoats, ponchos, and a single missing rifle.” The remaining State Guardsmen were mustered out on November 1, 1920, in a ceremony in Boston, and the Massachusetts State Guard went into hiatus. A few years later, a former sergeant wrote a brief history of his State Guard company for a reunion dinner. In it, he mentioned the strike as a moment in his life of which he, and his fellow former State Guardsmen, were most proud. For the strike showed that the entire Massachusetts State Guard, “had not been mere figureheads, even when we seemed least capable of real service. When at last we were needed, we were there.”
Sources:
1 Chapt. 148 of the Acts of 1917, approved April 5, 1917, “To Provide for the organization of a Home Guard in Time of War.”
2 Ibid., Section 1.
3 George A. Craig, “History: Massachusetts State Guard and Massachusetts State Guard Veterans” (1931), p. 8. The regiments were numbered the 10th through the 20th, so as not to be confused with the regiments of the Massachusetts National Guard.
4 Putnam, Eben, ed., Report of the Commission on Massachusetts’ Part in the World War History Vol. I. (Boston: Commonwealth of Massachusetts, 1931), pp. 162-63.
5 Chapt. 188 of the Acts of 1918.
6 Francis Russell, A City in Terror: 1919–The Boston Police Strike (New York: The Viking Press, 1975) pp. 48, 99.
7 “Public Document No. 49,” Fourteenth Annual Report of the Police Commission for the City of Boston: Year Ending November 30, 1919, (Boston: Wright & Potter Printing Co., State Printers, 1920) p. 10.
8 Ibid., pp. 5, 18.
9 Richard Lyons, “The Boston Police Strike of 1919,” The New England Quarterly, vol. xx, no. 2 (June 1947), p. 161.
10 “Public Document No. 49,” p. 19.
11 Ibid., p. 18.
12 Putnam, Report of the Commission on Massachusetts’ Part in the World War History, p. 163.
13 Commissioner Curtis to Mayor Peters, September 10, 1919. In the Report of the Citizen’s Committee Appointed by Mayor Peters to Consider the Police Situation. Included in the Fourteenth Annual Report of the Police Commissioner for the City of Boston: Year Ending November 30, 1919. (Boston: Wright & Potter Printing Co., State Printers, 1920).
14 General Court of Massachusetts, General Acts Passed in the Year 1917 (Boston, 1917), Chapt. 327, Sec. 26.
15 Committee appointed by Mayer Peters to Consider the Boston Police Situation, Report (Boston, 1919), City Document #108-1919, p. 30.
16 History of the Richardson Light Guard of Wakefield, Mass.: Covering the Third Quarter-Century Period 1901-1926 (Wakefield, Mass: Item Press, 1926) p. 105.
17 “A Sketch of the Concord Company, Massachusetts Home Guard. 1917-1921,” p. 9. From “Collection of Materials Relating to the Concord Company of the Massachusetts Home Guard,” at the Concord (Mass.) Free Public Library.
18 Fourteenth Annual Report of the Police Commissioner for the City of Boston, “Governor Coolidge’s Proclamation, September 11, 1919.”
19 Lyons, “The Boston Police Strike of 1919,” p. 163.
20 Francis, A City in Terror, pp. 163, 166-67.
21 Putnam, Report of the Commission on Massachusetts’ Part in the World War History, p. 164. The Boston Herald of September 11, 1919, reported three people killed by State Guardsmen in total.
22 Lyons, “The Boston Police Strike of 1919,” p. 163.
23 Francis, A City in Terror, p. 5.
24 Ibid.
25 “A Sketch of the Concord Company,” p. 15.
26 Ibid., p. 16.
27 Ibid.
