Explore "A People's History of the United States" by Howard Zinn on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
The war was hardly over, it was February 1919, the IWW leadership was in jail, but the IWW idea of the general strike became reality for five days in Seattle, Washington, when a walkout of 100,000 working people brought the city to a halt.
It began with 35,000 shipyard workers striking for a wage increase. They appealed for support to the Seattle Central Labor Council, which recommended a city-wide strike, and in two weeks 110 locals-mostly American Federation of Labor, only a few IWW-voted to strike. The rank and file of each striking local elected three members to a General Strike Committee, and on February 6, 1939, at 10: 00 A. M., the strike began.