Seattle General Strike - End of The General Strike

End of The General Strike

Three simultaneous movements brought the strike to an end. Mayor Hanson increased the police and military forces available to enforce order, though there was no disorder, and possibly to take the place of striking workers. Union officials, especially those more senior and those at higher levels of the labor movement, feared that using the general strike as a tactic would fail and set back their organizing efforts. Union members, perhaps seeing the strength of the forces arrayed against them, perhaps mindful of their union leaders concerns began to go back to work. The General Strike Committee attributed the end of the strike to pressure from international union officers and the difficulty of continuing to live in the shut-down city.

Mayor Hanson had federal troops available and stationed 950 sailors and marines across the city by February 7. He added 600 men to the police force and hired 2,400 special deputies, students from the University of Washington for the most part. On February 7, Mayor Hansen threatened to use 1,500 police and 1,500 troops to replace striking workers the next day, but the strikers assumed this was an empty threat and were proved correct. The Mayor continued his rhetorical attack on February 9, saying that the "sympathetic strike was called in the exact manner as was the revolution in Petrograd." Mayor Hansen told reporters that "any man who attempts to take over the control of the municipal government functions will be shot."

The international offices of some of the unions and the national leadership of the AFL began to exert pressure on the General Strike Committee and individual unions to end the strike. Some locals gave in 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 voted down by the General Strike Committee. On February 8, some streetcar operators returned to work and restored some critical city transportation services. Seattle's main department store reopened as well. Then teamsters and newsboys returned to work. On February 10, the General Strike Committee voted to end the general strike on February 11 and by noon on that day it was over. It stated its reasons: "Pressure from international officers of unions, from executive committees of unions, from the 'leaders' in the labor movement, even from those very leaders who are still called 'Bolsheviki' by the undiscriminating press. And, added to all these, the pressure upon the workers themselves, not of the loss of their own jobs, but of living in a city so tightly closed."

The city had been effectively paralyzed for five days, but the general strike collapsed as labor reconsidered its effectiveness under pressure from senior labor leaders and their own obvious failure to match the Mayor's propaganda in the war for public opinion. The shipyard strike, in support of which the general strike had been called, persisted.