Where de Blasio is right

Critics outside Boston also were not placated. President Woodrow Wilson had openly shown favor to Samuel Gompers, the labor leader with whose union the Boston police had affiliated. Gompers’s American Federation of Labor was famously moderate, and conventional wisdom said public officials should befriend Gompers, or else the hardcore union, the Industrial Workers of the World, would win a greater following. Yet when Gompers, de Blasio–like, made a plea for moderation and more negotiation, Coolidge simply hardened, wiring, “There is no right to strike against the public safety by anybody, anywhere, anytime.” Then, as now, it was tough for a politician to make such a categorical statement, especially when Wilson was close to Gompers. Coolidge feared the price he would pay for his stance would be to lose the gubernatorial election two months later.

This line has reverberated down the years. And as it turned out, Coolidge’s disciplined reaction to the Boston police strike played out well for him — and the country. After Coolidge took his stand for what he called “the reign of law,” others followed him. Though some Irish voters fell away, other citizens replaced them and Coolidge was reelected. Indeed, voter admiration for Coolidge’s hard line proved national, rendering the Bay State politician material for a national ticket overnight. The shocked governor himself later acknowledged this: “No doubt,” Coolidge wrote in his autobiography, “it was the police strike of Boston that brought me into national prominence.” And now even President Wilson backed Coolidge up.