Seattle, 1919: Labor Under Its Own Management

The first recorded labor strike occurred in 1159 BCE when ancient Egyptian builders threw down their tools and refused to work until their overdue wages were delivered, (Mark). More than 3000 years later, the strike remains one of the most powerful actions at the disposal of organized workers. Most work stoppages involve employees of a specific company or industry fighting for the needs of their own workers, but in the early 20th century interest was building for a general strike: a mass work stoppage across all industries. The Seattle general strike of 1919 was a bold attempt to show that general strikes could empower the working class in ways exceeding that of more traditional strikes.

In January of 1919, shipyard workers went on strike to fight for a living wage. Their unions (the Seattle Metal Trades Council) appealed to the wider Seattle Central Labor Council to call a general strike (a radical tactic rarely seen in the U.S. labor movement) to lend strength to their negotiations. The SCLC was a group of 110 unions in the Seattle-area affiliated with the American Federation of Labor. In “How Many Machine Guns Does It Take to Cook One Meal? : The Seattle and San Francisco General Strikes”, Victoria Johnson details how Seattle’s labor culture in the early 20th century had developed “an unusually strong ethos of rank-and-file control within the union, which was fueled by disdain for centralized authority”. This democratic culture frequently clashed with the moderate leadership of the AFL, who would make unilateral agreements at the national level that the local unions did not support but were nevertheless bound by, including a pledge not to strike during the First World War, (Johnson 45). After the Armistice, the Central Labor Council felt free to flex their collective power regardless of AFL objections and on February 6th the general strike commenced with popular support from the rank-and-file. Officially, it was a “sympathy strike” to support the shipyard workers’ ongoing strike, but the rhetoric being used reveals a deeper motivation. As one organizer explained: “I am confident that the shipyard workers could win alone. […] But if we win with a universal strike, every union in the city will get the benefit of the victory”, (All Seattle Unions). More than just a fight for a wage increase, the general strike had potential to be an evolution of worker power beyond singular fights for singular concessions into a mass movement where all workers stood in solidarity with each other, regardless of trade. They were risking significant backlash, but the potential rewards were too great to ignore. They did not simply cease all work; the General Strike Committee resolved to maintain essential services under their own authority. “Garbage was collected, the hospitals were supplied, babies got milk, and the people were fed, including some thirty thousand a day at the strikers’ kitchens”, (Winslow). For five days, workers proved that they could control the city. When it came, the backlash was severe and came from all sides: the media, the government, and the AFL. By February 11th, the general strike had lost significant momentum and was brought to an end by the General Strike Committee without having secured a wage increase for the shipyard workers. The general strike in Seattle was understandably labeled as a failure in the context of the shipyard strike, but with it the overall concept of general strikes was labeled a failure as a tactic in the arsenal of organized labor and to this conflation I vehemently object. This was an inspirational display of solidarity across multiple lines of society at levels rarely seen in the U.S. at any point in history and to claim that one unsuccessful strike negates the utility of strikes entirely is ridiculous.

The Seattle Central Labor Council was a broad organization of unions across varied industries and it is estimated that “striking workers and their families constituted approximately half of the population of Seattle”, (Ferguson). Over 100 unions took part in the general strike and sent representatives to the General Strike Committee including longshoremen, plumbers, hotel maids, and many more. The critical mass of trades involved was vital for the General Strike Committee to be able to shut down enough of the city to make a statement, as well as allowing them to reopen businesses that were necessary to maintain order. This diversity of trades did not erase the racist and sexist divisions of 20th-century America (the reality of the day was that non-white workers were excluded from most unions). However, class solidarity did manage to break down some barriers. For example, Seattle’s large population of Japanese workers had formed their own unions which joined the strike of their own volition and were welcomed into the movement, (Winslow). The union-owned newspaper The Seattle Union Record played an important role as a “network for the communication of workplace-democracy narratives among laborers”, (Johnson 44). Before the strike, it had been an avenue for the populist sentiments that gave rise to the general strike, and once the strike was underway it served as a mouthpiece for organizers to explain their goals and rebut attacks from the anti-labor mainstream press. Anna Louise Strong was a particularly influential Union Record journalist. The day before the general strike began, she declared in a widely publicized front-page column “Labor will not only SHUT DOWN the industries, but Labor will REOPEN […] UNDER ITS OWN MANAGEMENT”, (Strong). With this, she neatly summed up the ideals inherent in the general strike: that organized labor had both the will and the ability to remove the capitalist parasites from the economic equation entirely and that society would continue to function. The capitalist parasites predictably objected. The mainstream media (along with Seattle’s mayor, Ole Hanson) painted the strikers as “a Bolshevik revolution to overthrow the Government of the United States” and various claims of corruption were leveled against union leadership in attempts to sow dissent among the strikers including that “one purpose of the labor leaders in calling all these strikes at this particular time is to loot the Union treasuries” (Selvin). Troops from the National Guard were dispatched to quell the revolution, but the violence never came. “The streets were safe — rarely safer — patrolled by an unarmed labor guard. It was reported that crime abated”, (Winslow). The hysterical establishment’s claims of impending chaos were disproven by the dedication of the General Strike Committee. Rather than acknowledging the impressive organizational power the general strike represented, the AFL sent members to Seattle to break the strike and condemned it as unsanctioned and insubordinate, (Johnson 65).

In the aftermath, all parties (except the shipyard workers) claimed victory. The media hailed Ole Hanson as a hero who had defended American democracy, (Johnson 66). The president of the AFL claimed that they had defeated the revolution and “pledg[ed] to rid the unions of the radicals”, (Winslow). The negative reaction to the general strike has been blamed for the labor movement’s ensuing decline in power, but Kathy Ferguson argues in “Creating a City to Resist the State: The Seattle General Strike of 1919” that this decline “would in all likelihood have happened with or without the Seattle general strike” due to nation-wide economic and political trends of the 1920’s, (Ferguson). With no specific gains made, the general strike was widely dismissed as a failure. But the architects of the general strike also claimed victory. They wanted to add a new weapon to the arsenal of tools at labor’s disposal for the benefit of all workers. One post-strike editorial plainly stated “The details of our experiences will be a textbook for the labor movement of the country, to study what can and what cannot be successfully done in a General Strike”, (When the Smoke Clears). They had aimed to demonstrate a new method by which workers could fight back against the oppressive ruling class and in that regard, I assert that they succeeded. The workers had shut down the city–without violence!–and made national news doing so. They put forth the template and it was up to the rest of the working class to follow it. The fact that general strikes didn’t catch on was not the fault of the workers in Seattle. For the better part of a week, they had proven that common workers had no need of their employers. That if the entire working class could band together, they could run a city themselves. The failure happened in the minds of the labor organizers across the rest of the country. The radicals who were meant to follow failed the general strike because they couldn’t realize the incredible power that had been demonstrated. Moderates such as the AFL failed the general strike because they refused to accept that power could be exercised in this way. Whether they realized it or not, they were rejecting the truth at the heart of all labor unions: if the workers refuse to work, the acquiescence of the ruling class is inevitable.

The Seattle general strike of 1919 was not a fight for the workers in Seattle to gain more power, it was a fight for workers across the country to realize the power they already had. Regardless of the outcome of the metalworkers’ initial dispute, the general strike was a successful display of organization and class solidarity. At a time of staggering economic inequality and depressingly low union membership, we need radical action now as much as ever. While it is disappointing that the tactic did not catch on in the 20th century, we must not allow setbacks like this to impede our march toward liberation. Change is possible. Join a union and together we can breathe new life into the American labor movement!

Works Cited

“All Seattle Unions Are Asked To Strike.” Seattle Union Record, 25 Jan. 1919.

Ferguson, Kathy. “Creating a City to Resist the State: The Seattle General Strike of 1919.” Theory & Event, vol. 22, no. 4, 2019, pp. 911-950. ProQuest, http://168.156.198.98:2048/login?url=https://www.proquest.com/scholarly-journals/creating-city-resist-state-seattle-general-strike/docview/2314049230/se-2.

Johnson, Victoria. “A NEW POWER AND A NEW WORLD: The Seattle General Strike, 1919.” How Many Machine Guns Does It Take to Cook One Meal?, University of Washington Press, 2011, pp. 31-68.

Mark, Joshua J. “The First Labor Strike in History”. World History Encyclopedia, 4 Jul. 2017. https://www.worldhistory.org/article/1089/the-first-labor-strike-in-history/. Accessed 19 Mar. 2024.

Selvin, Edwin. “Real Cause of the Strike.” The Post-Intelligencer, 1 Feb. 1919.

Strong, Anna Louise. “On Thursday at 10 A.M.” Seattle Union Record, 4 Feb. 1919.

“When the Smoke Clears Away.” Seattle Union Record, 11 Feb. 1919.

Winslow, Cal. “When Workers Stopped Seattle”. Jacobin, Jul. 2019. https://jacobin.com/2019/07/seattle-general-strike-1919-union-organizing. Accessed 19 Mar. 2024.