Читать книгу The Goose-step: A Study of American Education онлайн

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The climax came with the Boston police strike in the fall of 1919. This was a very curious illustration of the part which the Harvard plutocracy plays in the public life of Boston, so pardon me if I tell the story in some detail. You know how the cost of living doubled all over the country, while the wages of public servants increased very little. The policemen of Boston were not able to live on their wages; they begged for an increase, and the police commissioner promised them the increase if they would wait until after the war. They waited; and then the police commissioner tried to keep his promise, and the mayor and the Democratic administration worked out a settlement. But the Harvard plutocracy, which runs the government of the state, decided not to permit that settlement, but to force a strike of the policemen, so that they could smash the policemen’s union. The late Murray Crane, senator and millionaire, holder of a Harvard LL. D., planned the job in the Union Club of Boston, together with Kidder, Peabody & Co., the bankers. Governor Coolidge, the tool of Crane, upset the arrangements made by the mayor of Boston, and the mayor was so furious that he “pasted the governor one in the eye”—the inside reason why Coolidge disappeared so mysteriously during the strike. But the newspapers of the interlocking directorate celebrated him as the hero of the affair, and he became vice-president of the United States on a wave of glory!