Seattle General Strike - Aftermath

Aftermath

Immediately following the general strike's end, 39 IWW members were arrested as "ringleaders of anarchy", despite their playing a marginal role in the development of events.

Seattle's mayor Ole Hanson took credit for ending the strike and was hailed by some of the press. He resigned a few months later and toured the country giving lectures on the dangers of "domestic bolshevism." He earned $38,000 in seven months, five times his annual salary as mayor. He agreed that the general strike was a revolutionary event. In his view, the fact that it was peaceful proved its revolutionary nature and intent. He wrote:

The so-called sympathetic Seattle strike was an attempted revolution. That there was no violence does not alter the fact... The intent, openly and covertly announced, was for the overthrow of the industrial system; here first, then everywhere... True, there were no flashing guns, no bombs, no killings. Revolution, I repeat, doesn't need violence. The general strike, as practised in Seattle, is of itself the 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.

Between the strike's announcement and beginning, on February 4, the U.S. Senate voted to expand the work of its Overman Judiciary Subcommittee from investigating German spies to Bolshevik propaganda. The Committee launched a month of hearings on February 11, the day the strike collapsed. Its sensational report detailed Bolshevik atrocities and the threat of domestic agitators bent on revolution and the abolition of private property. The labor radicalism represented by the Seattle General Strike fit neatly into its conception of the threat American institutions faced.