"Calvin Coolidge, when Governor of Massachusetts, refused to allow a police strike in 1919, the one President Wilson criticized is was an act of great courage, since it could have led to public disorder and chaos. Voters agreed and Coolidge was propelled into the vice presidency and then the presidency in 1923 President Ronald Reagan also fired the federal air traffic controllers in 1981, when they illegally went on strike But these were rare exceptions As the decades passed, fewer and fewer public officials dared to stand up to labor and to government labor in particular"