UPTON SINCLAIR ON PRESIDENT COOLIDGE

Maoriland Worker, Volume 13, Issue 36, 5 September 1923, Page 3

UPTON SINCLAIR ON PRESIDENT COOLIDGE

The Valiant Strikebreaker

The capitalist cables have told Us what a paragon of virtue is Mr. Coolidge, the gent who'stepped into President Harding's shoes, and among his great achievements they have placed his use of military to smash a police strike in Boston. On page 83 of " The .Gpose-S-tep," that crushing exposure of the corruption of the U.S. Universities by millionaires, Mr. Upton Sinclair gives some interesting facts about Coolidge and the strike as follows:— "The policemen of Boston were not able to live on their wages; they begfged for an increase, and the Police Commissioner promised them the increase if they would wait until after theswar. They waited; and then the -'Police Commissioner tried to keep his promise, and the Mayor and the Democratic admlnistrationworked 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 uhe 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, and. 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."