Seattle general strike

The Seattle general strike lasted from February 6 to 11, 1919. At this time, more than 65,000 workers stopped working in Seattle , Washington . Dissatisfied workers from several unions began a strike, demanding higher wages. Many other local unions, including members of the American Federation of Labor and the Industrial Workers of the World , joined the strike. Although the strike was non-violent and lasted less than a week, the government, the press, and most of the public were convinced that the strike was a radical attempt to overthrow the government. Some commentators raised the alarm and called it the work of the Bolsheviks and other anti-American ideologists, which was the first step towards the start of the First Red Threat .

Content

1 Background
2 strike
3 Life during a strike
4 Radical Views
5 End of the general strike
6 Consequences
7 See also
8 notes
9 References
10 External links
- 10.1 Archives

Background

During these years, an increasing number of workers joined unions. The number of members in trade unions from 1915 to 1918 increased by 400 percent. At the same time, workers in the USA, in particular in the northwest of the Pacific coast, became more and more radical, and many of them supported the revolution in Russia and worked on a similar revolution in the USA. For example, in the fall of 1919, Seattle movers refused to ship weapons intended for the White Army and attacked those who tried to load them ^[1] .

Most unions in Seattle were officially affiliated with the AFL , but the ideas of ordinary workers were generally more radical than their leaders. Local leaders from time to time discussed the policies of workers in Seattle. In June 1919:

I believe that 95 percent of us will agree that workers must control industry. Almost all of us will agree to this, but the methods for achieving this are very different. Some people think that we can gain control through joint actions, some that through politics, and others that through strikes.

One journalist described a propaganda method for revolution in Russia:

For some time, these brochures have been spotted on hundreds of Seattle trams and ferries, read by people from shipyards on their way to work. For businessmen in Seattle, this was unpleasant, it was clear to them that the workers conscientiously and energetically studied how to organize their rise to power. Workers in Seattle have already talked about workers' power as real politics of the near future.

Strike

Front page of Union Record
Monday, February 3, 1919

A few weeks after World War I ended, Seattle's shipbuilding unions demanded an increase in pay for laborers. In an attempt to split the people in the union, the owners of the shipyard offered to increase salaries only for skilled workers. The union rejected the offer, and 35,000 Seattle shipyard workers went on strike January 21, 1919.

Controversy erupted when Charles Pease, head of Emergency Fleet Corporation (EFC) , a federal government-created enterprise and the largest employer in the industry, sent a telegram to shipyard owners, threatening to terminate the contracts if they increased their salaries. A message intended for owners of the Association of the Metallurgical Industry was accidentally transmitted to the union of the Metallurgical Industry. Shipyard workers responded with anger directed at both their employers and the federal government, which, through the EFC, had its own corporate interests.

Workers immediately turned to the Seattle Central Labor Council for a general strike. Members of various trade unions voted almost unanimously in favor of the strike, even traditionally conservative unions voted for it. As many as 110 local unions officially supported the call for a general strike, which began on February 6, 1919 at 10:00 ^[2] .

Life during a strike

During the strike, a public association was created, consisting of rank and file workers and striking local residents, called the General Strike Committee . It acted as a “virtual counter-government for the city” ^[3]. The committee was organized to provide vital services to the people of Seattle during the strike. For example, garbage that posed a danger to others was collected, and firefighters continued to carry out their service. The continuation of the work of individual institutions required the permission of the strike committee. In general, work could not be stopped if it threatened life. ^[3] .

In other cases, workers acted on their own initiative to create new institutions. Drivers of dairy vans, after their employers denied the right to keep dairies, created a distribution system of 35 dairy stations. A food distribution system has also been created. The strikers paid twenty-five cents for food, and the rest of the people paid thirty-five cents. Braised beef, spaghetti, bread, and coffee were handed out for free.

An army of veterans created an alternative police force in order to maintain order. A group called the War Veterans' Labor Protection banned the use of force, did not carry weapons, and used only persuasion. Regular police forces did not make any arrests due to actions related to the strike, and the total number of arrests fell by more than 2 times from their normal number. Seattle-based Mayor John Morrison said he had never seen a city so quiet and calm.

The organization methods adopted by the striking workers were similar to the anarcho-syndicalist ideas, perhaps reflecting the influence of the Industrial workers of the world , although only a few of the strikers were officially associated with the IRM .

Sweeping

Brochure "Russia did it"

Revolutionary brochures were scattered throughout the city. One of them was called “Russia did it”, it read:

The Russians showed us a way out. What are you going to do with this? You are doomed to be slaves until you die or open your eyes, understand that you and the boss have nothing in common, the class exploiting us must be overthrown, and you, the worker, must have control over your work, and through it have control over your life, instead of being a victim six days a week, and they will profit from your sweat and hard work ^[4] .

RUSSIA DID IT

In an editorial in the Seattle Union Record , a union newspaper, activist Anna Louise Strong , tried to describe the power and potential of a general strike ^[5] :

The closure of industry in Seattle, AS A CLOSURE, will not affect gentlemen. They will allow the whole northwestern region to shatter into pieces until it affects their money.

But Seattle’s capital-controlled industries are closing down, while workers are organizing to feed people, to care for babies and the sick, to keep order - this will stop them, for them it looks like a seizure of power by workers.

The workers will not only not close the industry, they will again open new jobs, the industry will be under the control of the appropriate bodies that will do what is necessary to maintain public health and public peace.

OWNED GOVERNANCE

And that is why we say that we go out onto a road about which no one knows where it leads!

Seattle Union Record , Anna Louise Strong

Newspapers across the country reprinted excerpts from an article by A. Strong ^[6] .

End of general strike

Mayor Hanson brought in additional police and troops to put things in order in Seattle, although there was no mess, and possibly to take the place of striking workers.

Trade union officials, especially the older ones and at a higher level of the labor movement, feared that if their tactics failed, their organizational activities would be at risk. Union members, perhaps seeing the power of the government and remembering the problems of their leaders, began to return to work.

On February 7, Mayor Hanson had at his disposal federal troops and 950 marines, which were deployed throughout the city. He added 600 police officers to these troops and hired 2,400 security guards with limited powers, who were mostly students from Washington University ^[6] . On February 7, Mayor Hanson threatened the strikers with releasing 1,500 police and 1,500 military men, but as it turned out, these were just threats. ^[7] The mayor continued his verbal attack and said that “ the solidarity strike was exactly like in Petrograd ” ^[8] . The mayor also told reporters that the troops and the police “will shoot anyone who tries to take on government functions ” ^[9] .

The international departments of some unions and the nationwide AFL leadership began to put pressure on the General Strike Committee and individual unions to end the strike ^[10] . Some locals succumbed to this pressure and returned to work. The Executive Committee of the General Strike Committee, pressured by the AFL and International Labor Organizations, proposed ending the general strike at midnight on February 8, but their recommendation was rejected by the General Strike Committee ^[10] . On February 8, some of the tram drivers returned to their jobs and restored traffic on critical routes ^[11] . Then the drivers and peddlers of newspapers returned to work ^[12] . On February 10, the General Strike Committee voted to end the strike, and on February 11 it ended ^[13] . The reasons for the end of the strike were said:

There was strong pressure from international trade union officials, from the executive committees of the trade unions, from the "leaders" of the labor movement, even from those leaders who still call themselves "Bolsheviks." On top of that, there was pressure directly on the workers, but they were threatened not with the loss of jobs, but with the loss of their place of residence in the city.

The city was virtually paralyzed for 5 days, but the general strike then ended. The strike at the shipyard, in support of which the general strike began, continued.

Consequences

Seattle Mayor Oli Hanson, July 1, 1919

Immediately after the end of the general strike, thirty-nine IWW members were arrested as “anarchist leaders”, despite their extremely small role in the development of events.

The press praised Seattle Mayor Oli Hanson for suppressing the strike. He resigned a few months later and toured the country with lectures on the dangers of “internal Bolshevism”. After 7 months, he earned $ 38,000, which was tantamount to his salary for 5 years of work as mayor ^[14] . He agreed that the general strike was a revolutionary event. In his opinion, the fact that the strike was peaceful nonetheless proves its revolutionary intentions. He wrote ^[4] :

The so-called Seattle solidarity strike was an attempted coup. The fact that there was no violence does not change this fact ... The intention of the strikers was to overthrow the industrial system. True, there were no weapons, no bombs, no killings. The revolution, I repeat, was nonviolent. The general strike, as it was practiced in Seattle, is in itself a weapon of revolution, but more dangerous because it is quiet. To succeed in this, one must stop everything; stop life in society ... This puts the government out of action. But still this is a rebellion, no matter how it is achieved.

Oli hanson

At the Congress, in the US Senate, on February 7, only a day after the start of the general strike, the Overman Commission was expanded to investigate the trail of German spies and Bolshevik propaganda. The committee began the hearing on February 11, the day the strike ended. His sensational report showed in detail the Bolshevik atrocities and the threat of internal agitators to persuade people to revolution and to abolish private property. The workers' radicalism at the Seattle General Strike fits into the concept of American threats to the government. ^[15]

Notes

↑ History Committee of the General Strike Committee , accessed June 6, 2011
↑ Hagedorn, 86-7
↑ ¹ ² Brecher, 122
↑ ¹ ² Brecher, 126
↑ Brecher, 124-5
↑ ¹ ² Hagedorn, 87
↑ Foner, 73-4
↑ Foner, 73
↑ Sobel, Robert. Coolidge: An American Enigma. - Washington, DC: Regnery Publishing, Inc ..
↑ ¹ ² Foner, 75
↑ Foner 74
↑ Foner, 76
↑ Foner, 75-6
↑ Murray, 65-6; Hagedorn, 180
↑ Hagedorn 59,147-8; Murray, 94-8

Especially for Anarcho News

Links

Brecher, Jeremy. Strike! . Revised edition. South End Press , 1997. ISBN 0-89608-569-4
Foner, Philip S., History of the Labor Movement in the United States , v. 8 Postwar Struggles, 1918-1920 (NY: International Publishers, 1988), ISBN 0-717-80388-0
Hagedorn, Ann, Savage Peace: Hope and Fear in America, 1919 (NY: Simon & Schuster, 2007), ISBN 0743243722
Murray, Robert K., Red Scare: A Study in National Hysteria, 1919-1920 (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press), 1955)