Peters served two terms in the
Massachusetts State Senate (1904, 1905). In 1906, he was elected to the U.S. House of Representatives, where he served from 1907 to 1914. In 1914, Peters was appointed to be
Assistant Secretary of the Treasury under
William Gibbs McAdoo in the first administration of President
Woodrow Wilson. He served there until 1918, when he began his term as Mayor of Boston, having defeated incumbent
James Michael Curley in the
1917 mayoral election. He handled the
Boston police strike in 1919. Peters was considered for
Governor of Massachusetts later in the 1920s, but was not nominated. He served as treasurer of a Massachusetts state campaign against
money-hoarding organized at the request of President
Herbert Hoover in 1932, and was named to the Massachusetts Advisory Committee of the
Home Owners' Loan Corporation in 1933. ==Personal life==