Corpun file 22383

The New York Times, 9 May 1913

School Strikes Spread

But Slippers and Straps Are Expected to Cow Boston Youth.

Special to The New York Times.

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BOSTON, May 8. -- The strike for shorter hours which began in a Cambridge Grammar School on Tuesday, spread to-day so that disturbances took places in most parts of Boston, some 1,500 boys manifesting a disposition to enforce their "rights" by means of stones, cries of "scab!" &c. In several instances, too, girls took part in the demonstration.

In both Cambridge and Boston the school authorities, with the aid of the police, bent every effort toward ending the strike before it should have ruined discipline in practically every school in Greater Boston. In Cambridge, the police under Mayor Barry's order practically read the riot act to the strikers, and in Boston the defiant attitude of pupils led to the placing of police guards at many of the schools, particularly those in South Boston.

Additional squads of police were ordered from the various station houses for duty to-night to prevent parades by boys and girls or the hurling of stones and other missiles at the school buildings. In several schools, where the boys exhibited a vindictive spirit, spanking of the old-fashioned sort was administered by the masters and their assistants with quieting effect.

Franklin B. Dyer, Superintendent of Boston Schools, made an appeal this afternoon to the mothers and fathers of Boston to take a hand in the strike and see that their children were properly controlled. The school authorities said that there was evidence to-day that many parents had already applied such old-fashioned remedies as slippers and straps, while others assisted the police in rounding up would-be truants and dragging them off to school. Quiet is expected to be restored by the beginning of another week.