Hello, the thing with this question is that the rise of "Worker Strikes" and the need of massive millitary logistics are relatively new concepts inspired by Industrialization and the larger scale warfare inspired by the Napoleononic Wars. While Peasant Rebellions and the like did happen these were often only local affairs with no connection to other places. So the thing was that the past had less of a need for communication across great distances. The Industrial Revolution also gave the means with the telegraph and the like for fast long distance communication.

So there is actually only a really short window where there were labor strikes or mass mobilization without the means of mass communication.

To actually answer you question, the answer I would give is simply by a lot of horse rider messengers and allowing for local autonomy.

There would be legions of horse riders dispatched with orders to a local organization to either mobilize, put down a local rebellion, send supplies or etc. The would then tell them to send these mobilized men to a location to organize an army.

In short the Central government would set a demand for something and local organizations were to fill out there demands or face consequences.

The thing with mass communication is it didn't change really the way supplies were gathered much but rather the speed they could be gathered without mass amounts of effort.

What changed the way supplies were gathered were Nationalism and The Professionalization of Militaries. With the advent of Nationalism, many governments substituted local feudal or local organizations with governmental ones responsible for collecting war material, conscripts and such. It was done for the Central Government by Central Government. This was to get rid of middle men who had their reasons to deprive the state of what it needed.

The Professionalization of Militaries made it so that that such feudal and local levels of collection were straight-up unworkable for many militaries as a soldier needed to be loyal more to his country than his lord. If the country hired the soldier then no lord was there so there was no conflict of interest. They also needed fully consistent supplies for these massive Professional Militaries. In which made usually (but not always) consistent supplies unworkable too.

As to the way supplies were gathered changed, we can more blame the centralization of states under nationalism than the progress of technology. With Nationalism providing the way governments could centralize and the Professionalization of the Military provided the need to do so.

In Conclusion, there wasn't a large need for Mass Communication before the Industrial Revolution because affairs were mostly only concerned with local things. Pre-nationalism, If there was a need for mass logistics, response to a war or crisis the Central Government would send orders to local authorities to let them deal with it and gather what they had. During the Industrial Revolution governments centralized as so to provide for the new armies and nations they were building. After Nationalism and The Professionalization of Militaries it changed to government officials rather than other organizations doing the organizing of material and manpower.

In reality, the only thing the communication technology did was speed up the communication. Who was doing the talking had changed well before that.

Anyway I hope that answers your question and I will be answering any relevant questions asked in the comments. Thanks for reading.

Seth,