Erik Visits an American Grave, Part 1,909

This is the grave of Edwin Upton Curtis.

Born in 1861 in the Roxbury neighborhood of Boston, Curtis was old old Boston, going back to the early Puritan days. That meant hating the Irish, which was key to his later life. He went to all the good schools and then Bowdoin for college. The law was his future. He studied with William Gaston, the former governor of Massachusetts. Curtis was a rock ribbed Gilded Age Republican, as was Gaston, and he would hold those values over his life, as awful as they were. The law was a path to politics, like so many of the people this series covers in the 19th century. He became active in local Republican politics and was well-connected. He was named the city clerk of Boston in 1889. He only did that for about a year, but he became better known and was a good machine guy and so he was elected mayor of Boston in 1894, despite only being in his early 30s.

These were only one year terms at this time, so there are lots of mayors of Boston. His term was 1895. Thus, there’s not really a whole lot to say about him in this role. He supported creating parks and he was very big in reducing government spending at the municipal level. What this probably meant was reducing patronage. But it didn’t matter much because, again, these were one-year terms. Moreover, Boston was changing. The rapid growth of immigration and turned Boston into a fundamentally Democratic city, as the Republicans were not exactly welcoming to the Irish, or most other groups for that matter. So Josiah Quincy ran against Curtis in late 1895 to become mayor for 1896 and he defeated the incumbent. Curtis was definitely not done and ran again the next year, but Quincy beat him again. Quincy would stay in office through 1900, a fairly long run for this time and place.

For a long time then, Curtis was a Republican functionary in Massachusetts. He didn’t have the juice to run for bigger office, but he was someone you took care of. Boston might have turned to the Democrats, but the state of Massachusetts certainly had not. So there was plenty of good patronage to give out to guy like Curtis. He was named assistant U.S. Treasurer in Boston, showing that his standing was enough to get federal patronage. He later became Collector of the Port of Boston, a plumb position.

In 1918, Curtis took a new job. The state controlled the Boston Police Department, not the city. So Governor Samuel McCall named him commissioner of the BPD, shortly before leaving office for the newly elected Calvin Coolidge.

Now, this was a moment when Boston cops were very angry. They were legitimately treated terribly. The police had basic demands. They wanted union recognition, a pay raise, and improved working conditions. Boston police had not received an effective pay raise since 1854, with the starting salary for new officers the same as it had been 65 years earlier. Cops made only about half an average worker’s salary in 1919 and had to pay for their own uniforms. They worked between 75 and 90 hours a week and did not get paid for time they spent in court. Police stations were dilapidated and unsanitary. In other words, it was a bad job.

The officers’ first response was to petition to join the American Federation of Labor. The AFL first accepted police officers in June 1919 and cops around the nation immediately signed up. Soon, there were 37 police locals around the nation.

Curtis was extremely unhappy. He stated the cops had no right to form a union. Moreover, they were mostly Irish and Curtis had total contempt for the Irish. He and Coolidge and the Boston employer class saw this as a serious attack on order. They also worried whether unionized police would continue to break strikes upon orders from their superiors. Curtis and Boston Chamber of Commerce argued that police could not be unionists because it would create “divided loyalty,” a phrase clearly demonstrating their fear that the cops would no longer be a force dedicated to defending the interests of capitalists and busting the heads of those who challenged those interests. Curtis responded to its police joining the AFL by ordering them to disassociate with it. When the officers refused, the police moved toward a strike. After the police commissioner suspended 19 men on September 7 for union activity, the police responded by voting to go out on strike on September 9. By a vote of 1134 yes, 2 no. They were all fired on September 13.

And what would happen if cops went on strike? Would anarchy result? The answer was sort of. There was a rise in assault, public gambling, and robbery. Moreover, the poor of Boston saw the strike as the class warfare it was, attacking the property of the rich and stoning a group of reserve police with chants of “Kill them all.” After the second night, state police opened fire on a crowd, killing 9.

In response, Massachusetts governor Calvin Coolidge called out the state guard to restore order in Boston and urged the Wilson Administration to prepare to send troops if needed. The guard busted the police strike and Coolidge fired all 1147 striking cops. Coolidge had opposed the police union from the beginning and completely rebuffed efforts from the police officers before the strike started to help mediate the situation.

Curtis was thrilled about the firings. In fact, they threatened his job. The mayor had relieved Curtis of duties when he called up the National Guard to run the city’s policing. The mayor had urged Curtis to take this slow and try to talk to the union leaders, but Curtis fired them all instead, angry that they would dare consider a union. But Coolidge put him back. Coolidge and Curtis both agreed that all the cops should be fired and a new police force hired, which is what happened.

Curtis remained police commissioner for the rest of his life. But he died suddenly in 1922, at the age of 60. I’d guess heart attack, but I don’t actually know. The state immediately decided that Curtis needed to be honored with a memorial along the Charles River for saving Boston and the state of Massachusetts from the horrors of public sector unionism.

Edwin Upton Curtis is buried in Forest Hills Cemetery, Boston, Massachusetts.

If you would like this series to visit other police commissioners, you can donate to cover the required expenses here. Soon I can visit Bernie Kerik’s grave and that’s good because he’s dead. David Hennessey is in New Orleans and Michael Codd is in Queens. Previous posts in this series are archived here and here.