The Seattle General Strike of 1919

by Larry Kerschner

Protest activity surrounding the World Trade Organization (WTO) Ministerial Conference of 1999, which was to be the launch of a new millennial round of trade negotiations, occurred during the week of November 30, 1999 and put Seattle on the world map. However, the first time 65,000 protesting people in the streets of Seattle were known around the world for a radical attitude was during the Seattle General Strike which began at 10 a.m. on February 6, 1919, and paralyzed the city for five days.

At that time the American Federation of Labor (AFL) was a collection of unions of skilled craftsmen who saw no need to join in labor struggle with semi-skilled or unskilled workers. AFL unions were only interested in the narrow needs of their members. Women and racial minorities need not apply.  The Industrial Workers of the World filled the vacuum left by the AFL. The IWW advocated “industrial Unionism” – that is, organizing all workers in a particular industry into one large union.

I am proud that in my one effort into labor organizing I chose the IWW model. I worked at the small rural hospital, Jefferson General in Port Townsend, WA.  After a three-year effort of talking to each worker about the benefits of being a member of a union, we organized all the various workers at the hospital, for the first time in Washington State, in one unit and obtained a substantial increase in wages and benefits for our first three-year contract. 

For the last two years of the First World War, wages were set by boards composed of select representatives of business, labor, and the government.  Since the government borrowed the money to finance the war, money was devalued causing severe inflation. The cost of living doubled between August 1915 and the end of 1919.

During the war years labor began to understand the economic power they actually had in the control of production. Strikes shut down spruce lumber production and copper mining early in the war. Solidarity began to develop between workers with support for each other’s labor battles. In many worker and employer minds was the recent Russian Revolution and the possible future this could mean for the working class. While many middle- and upper-class Americans viewed the 1917 Russian Revolution with fear, many unionized workers, especially in those early years, hoped it might encourage a working-class revolt in the U.S. 

In 1919 the government ended wartime price controls while allowing corporations to resume union-busting policies. In the ensuing anger among workers, radical militancy increased. Despite their historic differences to organizing labor, in Seattle, the IWW and the AFL Metal Trades Council cooperatively sponsored a Soldiers, Sailors, and Workingmen’s Council modeled after the soviets of the Russian Revolution. When Socialist and former Seattle AFL president Hulet Wells was convicted of opposing the draft and then tortured while in prison, Seattle labor took to the streets in a number of giant street rallies.

Even many Conservative members of Seattle labor supported the possibilities of the Bolshevik Revolution and opposed any U.S. interference.  Tens of thousands of pamphlets explaining the Russian Revolution were handed out in the city.

Seattle labor journalist, Anna Louise Strong, recalled “Already, workers in Seattle talked about ‘workers’ power’ as a practical policy for the not far distant future. Boilermakers, machinists, and other metal trades unions alluded to shipyards as enterprises which they might soon take over, and run better than their present owners ran them.  These allusions gave life to union meetings.” 

35,000 shipyard workers were employed by the Emergency Fleet Corporation of the U.S. government.  Less than two weeks after the end of the war, the shipyards unions voted to authorize a strike which began on January 21, 1919.  The U.S. government representative head of the Emergency Fleet Corporation told all shipyard owners to refuse any wage increases under penalty of losing their government contracts. 

The shipyard workers then appealed to the Seattle Central Labor Council to call a general strike. A resolution to have local unions poll their members about a general strike passed without opposition. Within twenty-four hours, eight local unions unanimously endorsed the strike.  Within two weeks, 110 union locals had endorsed the strike. Many of these local unions were threatened by their national union leadership if they joined the strike. The strike was to be run by the 300-member General Strike Committee consisting mostly of rank-and-file workers.

Workers in various trades organized to cover essential and emergency services. Vehicles authorized to operate bore signs “Exempted by the General Strike Committee.”  Both employers and government officials sought exemptions from the committee. As the strike approached, many Seattleites armed themselves and stockpiled ammunition and supplies in their homes. Shelves were stripped bare in stores as a siege mentality took hold. 

Workers organized 35 neighborhood milk stations after purchasing milk from small local dairies.  A voluntary commissary served 30,000 meals a day to strikers and others in the community. A Labor War Veteran’s Guard was organized to keep peace in the streets. They were to carry no weapons and to use the power of persuasion only.

An editorial in The Seattle Union Record ran the evening before the strike: 

On Thursday at 10 A.M. – There will be many cheering, and there will be some who fear.  Both these emotions are useful, but not too much of either.  We are undertaking the most tremendous move ever made by LABOR in this country, a move which will lead – NO ONE KNOWS WHERE! 

We do not need hysteria.  We need the iron march of labor. LABOR WILL FEED THE PEOPLE. Twelve great kitchens have been offered, and from them food will be distributed by the provisions trade at low cost to all. LABOR WILL CARE FOR THE BABIES AND THE SICK. The milk-wagon drivers are arranging plans for supplying milk to babies, invalids and hospitals and taking care of the cleaning of linen for hospitals. LABOR WILL PRESERVE ORDER.  The strike committee is arranging for guards and it is expected that the stopping of cars will keep people at home. 

A few hot-headed enthusiasts have complained that strikers only should be fed, and the general public left to endure severe discomfort. Aside from the inhumanitarian character of such suggestions, let them get this straight – NOT THE WITHDRAWAL OF LABOR POWER, BUT THE POWER OF THE STRIKERS TO MANAGE WILL WIN THIS STRIKE.

What does Mr. Piez of the Shipping Board care about the closing down of Seattle’s shipyards, or even of all the industries of the northwest?  Will it not merely strengthen the yards at Hog Island, in which he is more interested?  When the shipyard owners of Seattle were on the point of agreeing with the workers, it was Mr. Piez who wired them that, if they so agreed – HE WOULD NOT LET THEM HAVE STEEL.

Whether this is camouflage we have no way of knowing. But we do know that the great eastern combinations of capitalists COULD AFFORD to offer privately to Mr. Skinner, Mr. Ames and Mr. Duthie a few million apiece in eastern shipyard stock, RATHER THAN LET THE WORKERS WIN.  The closing down of Seattle’s industries, as a MERE SHUTDOWN, will not affect these eastern gentlemen much. 

They could let the whole northwest go to pieces, as far as money alone is concerned.  BUT, the closing down of the capitalistically controlled industries of Seattle, while the WORKERS ORGANIZE to feed people, to care for the babies and the sick, to preserve order – THIS will move them, for this looks too much like the taking over of POWER by the workers.

Labor will not only SHUT DOWN the industries, but Labor will REOPEN, under the management of the appropriate trades, such activities as are needed to preserve public health and public peace. If the strike continues, Labor may feel led to avoid public suffering by reopening more and more activities, UNDER ITS OWN MANAGEMENT. And that is why we say that we are starting on a road that leads – NO ONE KNOWS WHERE!

On the morning of February 6, 1919, the city of Seattle stopped. The AFL strikers were joined by the IWW, the separately organized Japanese workers (who were not allowed to vote on decisions made by the General Strike Committee), and 40,000 non-union workers.

Not all members of Seattle media supported the strike. The Seattle Star, generally a labor-friendly newspaper, railed against the radicals: “The general strike is at hand. A general showdown   a showdown for all of us  a test of Americanism   a test of YOUR Americanism. This is no time to mince words. A part of our community is defying our government, and is, in fact contemplating changing the government, and not by American methods.”

Ole Hansen, the Mayor of Seattle, despite the non-violent nature of the strike said, “The general strike, as practiced in Seattle, is of itself a weapon of revolution, all the more dangerous because quiet. To succeed, it must suspend everything; stop the entire life stream of a community. That is to say, it puts the government out of operation. And that is all there is to revolt – no matter how achieved.”

Feeling that the Washington State National Guard was not adequate to the task, the Attorney General telephoned the U.S. Secretary of War to send in federal troops. The next day almost a thousand soldiers and marines arrived from Fort Lewis, outside Tacoma, and were stationed throughout the city. The Mayor added 600 extra police and swore in 2400 special deputies. He then demanded the strike end on Saturday morning February 8.

Heavy pressure to end the strike came from national and international officials of the AFL unions. With the rank-and-file still overwhelmingly desiring to continue the strike, the General Strike Committee voted to end the strike Tuesday, February 11, at noon.  However, it was not the threat of repressive police or military force that was decisive in bringing the strike to a halt, indeed the General Strike Committee ignored the mayor’s ultimatum. It was the intervention of the international unions against the workers that was the key element in the counteroffensive of those opposed to the workers.

As soon as the strike began, the AFL unions bombarded the strikers with telegrams warning of the illegality of the strike, threatening suspensions and urging the immediate end to the strike.  The strike ended, as the General Strike Committee’s history stated, because of  “pressure from international officers of unions, from executive committees of unions, from the ‘leaders’ in the labor movement, even from those very leaders who are still called ‘Bolsheviki’ by the undiscriminating press.”   

The Seattle General Strike placed the American labor struggle within the larger context of the revolutionary struggles sweeping the world after WWI. Against the backdrop of the unprecedented proletarian political ferment of 1919, the U.S. working class did not hesitate for a moment to take up the class struggle at the point of production throughout the country in industry after industry. In all there were 3,630 strikes involving 4,160,000 workers during 1919. 

Again, from The Seattle Union Record, We look about us today and see a world of industrial unrest, of owners set over against workers, of strikes and lock-outs, of mutual suspicions. We see a world of strife and insecurity, of unemployment and hungry children. It is not a pleasant world to look upon. We see but one way out. In place of two classes, competing for the fruits of industry, there must be, eventually ONLY ONE CLASS sharing fairly the good things of the world.  And this can be only done by THE WORKERS LEARNING TO MANAGE …” 

Much of the information for this article came from an excellent book:  the revised, expanded, and updated edition of Jeremy Brecher’s “STRIKE!” released by PM Press this year.  I highly recommend reading this history of American labor from the Great Upheaval of 1877  up to today’s current labor struggles.

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