<P> The new officers hired in the wake of the strike received higher salaries and more vacation days than the strikers had . They enjoyed a starting salary of $1,400 along with a pension plan, and the department covered the cost of their uniforms and equipment . The population of Boston raised $472,000 to help pay for the State Guards until new police officers could be recruited . </P> <P> In an editorial on the first morning of the strike, the New York Times supported the police commissioner and said that the strikers were "(i) nspired unconsciously by anti-social ideals, or acting by' suggestion' of their London and Liverpool brethren", which had recently seen similar strikes . It said: </P> <P> A policeman has no more right to belong to a union than a soldier or a sailor . He must be ready to obey orders, the orders of his superiors, not those of any outside body . One of his duties is the maintenance of order in the case of strike violence . In such a case, if he is faithful to his union, he may have to be unfaithful to the public, which pays him to protect it . The situation is false and impossible...It is the privilege of Boston policemen to resign if they are not satisfied with the conditions of their employment...but it is intolerable that a city...should be deserted by men who misunderstand their position and function as policemen, and who take their orders from outside...(I) t is an imported, revolutionary idea that may spread to various cities . There should be plain and stern law against it . It is practically an analogue of military desertion...(I) t ought to be punished suitably and repressed . </P> <P> It later called the strike "this Boston essay in Bolshevism" and lamented the attempt of Mayor Peters and the Storrow Commission "to submit to compromise an issue that could not be compromised". Newspaper accounts exaggerated the level of crime and violence that accompanied the strike, resulting in a national furor that shaped the political response . A Philadelphia paper viewed the Boston violence in the same light as other labor unrest and numerous race riots in 1919: "Bolshevism in the United States is no longer a specter . Boston in chaos reveals its sinister substance ." President Woodrow Wilson, speaking from Montana, branded the walkout "a crime against civilization" that left the city "at the mercy of an army of thugs ." He said that "the obligation of a policeman is as sacred and direct as the obligation of a soldier . He is a public servant, not a private employee, and the whole honor of the community is in his hands . He has no right to prefer any private advantage to the public safety ." Elihu Root, a former Secretary of War and winner of the Nobel Peace Prize, told a Carnegie Hall audience on September 17 that the strike was an attack on constitutional government because it represented "the passing of power to enforce laws, the power to punish crime, the power to maintain order from the whole people of the United States" to the 3% of the population represented by the AFL . </P>

Cause and effect of labor unrest after ww1