(Part 1/2)

In 1920, Ole Hanson toured the country promoting his book, Americanism versus Bolshevism. In it, he recounts how he personally stopped the wave of leftist revolution which had toppled Russia, Germany, and was at that moment threatening Italy from reaching the United States. How did he do that? Why, as mayor of Seattle.

During WWI, the Wilson administration had established unprecedented control of the American economy. While this is often remembered as a progressive innovation, it was actually very rough for much of American labor. Seattle had one of the country's most successful labor movements, with two main organizational bases: The American Federation of Labor (AFL) and the Industrial Workers of the World. The former was a conservative, craft-union based organization. The latter was a radical, syndicalist (a form of revolutionary socialism which synthesizes radical union democracy with anarchism) industrial union. Craft unions only organize a very narrow subset of often skilled laborers (for example, all the boilermakers on site will have one union while all the electricians on the same site will have their own union), while industrial unions organize everyone in a given industry. The latter gives the workers more ability to negotiate and especially help the lower-skilled workers, but at this time the national head of the AFL, Samuel Gompers, strongly opposed efforts to introduce industrial unionism. Anyway, the Seattle AFL-based labor movement (which is probably ~x20 times larger than the IWW movement. Numbers are really hard to gauge for them, and many of their members were actually in both unions) tried to gain the benefits of industrial unionization by having horizontal organizations linking the various local craft unions together. They also had ridiculously big craft unions: the "boilermakers" had 15,000 members at its peak (probably the largest craft local in the world) and it was basically everyone who worked on metal ships. The Seattle AFL was so progressive that its representative to the national, Jimmy Duncan, was the only vote against Samuel Gompers reelection.

Anyway, this labor movement was able to gain huge gains for Seattle workers during the boom times of the WWI. Their goal was to eradicate wages as a factor in competition between businesses: no longer would workers have to suffer wage cuts in order to drive a competitor out of business. However, this is where the Wilson Administration stepped in. A man named Charles Piez, in charge of the Emergency Fleet Corporation, ends up enforcing wages controls across the American shipbuilding industry. The Puget Sound district, which produced the most ships out of any in the country, was hit hardest because it had the most successful labor movement. Lower skilled workers, exactly the ones the Seattle system of horizontal labor organizations (which I am just going to start calling "Duncanism" after Jimmy Duncan) would be hit the hardest. Not wanting to look unpatriotic, the Seattle AFL just sucked it up.

When the armistice was declared, the Seattle labor movement saw its chance: it could demand higher wages without seeming unpatriotic. Piez, the Wilson appointee, refused to allow this on principle (he also had shipping interests so I'm not sure it was entirely on principle). Even when individual shipyards were willing to negotiate (they were going to make a profit even with wage increases), Piez threatened them if they did. Unfortunately, this telegram was "accidentally" delivered to the union not the management. The Seattle AFL movement was shocked: the federal government was conspiring to keep their wages low even over the objections of the businesses themselves. The shipyard workers went on strike, defying the government.

Quickly, it became apparent that the shipyard strike was not likely to succeed. Since shipyard workers made up the largest component of the Seattle AFL (I think just over half of the 40,000 union members but I don't have my books on me right now), it was feared a defeat of them would defeat the whole Seattle labor movement. Smaller unions started to panic, and IWW members (remember them?) started advocating the nuclear bomb of labor: a general strike. [It is important to keep in mind that the cream of the local labor leadership (e.g. Jimmy Duncan) was out of town at an ill-timed conference when all of what happens next.] A general strike is where every worker, across all industries, stops working. Famous examples are the Secession of the Plebs in Rome and the Black General Strike of slaves during the Civil War where hundreds of thousands of slaves "freed themselves" and refused to continue being slaves. What's notable about these examples is that they were ways for economic action to transform into political action. It was also a tool that the IWW and communists such as Rosa Luxemburg thought could be used in the present day. The socialist revolutions in Russia and Germany both began with strikes, so this was not just a theory or history: this had happened the previous two years. Grassroots, spontaneous support for a general strike poured out of even the most conservative unions: if the federal government was going to hobble labor then this was it.

The actual planning of the general strike was a nightmare, but the strike was extremely orderly. Not a single striker would be arrested (an astonishing feat given how violently suppressed the labor movement was used to being). By this point Duncan and his fellow leaders had returned, but were unable to push for the general strike to either have clear goals or (more importantly) a time limit. This was excacerbated greatly when Anna Louise Strong, a progressive in the process of converting to a communist, published this poem in the official labor newspaper:

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 provision trades at low cost to all.

LABOR WILL CARE FOR THE BABIES AND THE SICK.

The milk-wagon drivers and the laundry 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 the 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 WORKERS 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 means 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 millions 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 the 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 heath 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!

Which yeah did not help calm people one bit. Every other paper, especially the Star, printed reports of a coming "Bolshevik" insurrection, with the strikes used as a cover. This is a flagrant lie: there was no attempt at any point, apart from a man distributing pamphlets hilariously entitled "Russia Did It", to seize weapons, create an alternative government, instill fear in the population, coordinate with anywhere else, or any actual step to implement a revolution. The workers just wanted to be allowed to keep their union movement against the enemies they saw surrounding themselves on all sides: the federal government, the manufacturers, the corporate newspapers, the middle classes, and the national AFL (who refused to support any of this).

When the strike began the city of Seattle came to an absolute still with half of the workforce being able to stop the other half, and workers later reported being "in awe" of their own power. Only emergency services, approved by the Seattle Central Labor Council, were allowed to keep operating. They shut down their own newspaper as a show of solidarity during the strike, and that move indicates where this story is going: idealistic but naïve.

(continued)