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Hellraisers Journal – Friday January 24, 1919
Seattle, Washington – Seattle Workers Threaten General Strike
From The Seattle Star of January 22, 1919:
From The Butte Daily Bulletin of January 23, 1919:
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(Special United Press Wire to The Bulletin.)
Seattle, Jan. 23.-Seattle labor unions are today commencing a referendum on the question of a general strike here Feb. 1, in sympathy with the walkout of 30,000 shipyards workers. The central labor council last night passed resolutions calling on all unions to take a ballot of their members. Numerous leaders made appeals for the elimination of craft lines, organized labor declaring that the revolution within the labor movement will not reform labor activities.
A great organization of the country’s workers that could dictate to the government was freely predicted as the outcome of the present labor unrest.
Alleged I. W. W. who crowded the gallery attempted to break into the meeting on numerous occasions, being repeatedly threatened with eviction by the angry delegates on the floor.
Mention of the Russian bolsheviki at one time brought storms of cheers from both the floor and the gallery.
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LABORERS OF TACOMA PROPOSE A COUNCIL
OF WORKERS AND SOLDIERS
—–Tacoma, Jan. 22.-A local workers’ council, composed of soldiers, sailors and workmen, will be organized at a special strike meeting late this afternoon, the shipyards strike committee this evening announced.
Action will be taken at the meeting toward extension of the strike to include all trades and crafts in the city, with the announced intention of completely paralyzing Tacoma industry.
It is learned through official official sources that the government’s attitude in the present controversy will be to allow ship construction of Puget Sound to come to an indefinite standstill rather than assume the increased cost of construction entailed by the increase ini wages demanded.
Secretary Sutton of the strike committee declared that if such position is taken it will not only be answered by a general strike here but by a demand of the government to immediately provide employment for all men made idle by the walkout.
Announcements of the proposed workers’ council of soldiers, sailor’s and worker’s included the strike committee’s statement that the demands of the working class would be “made as a class” and that “we put ourselves on record as demanding some of the democracy harped on so glibly during the war, the first principle of which is more money in order to live.”
From “The General Strike” by Big Bill Haywood
-Speech for Benefit of the Buccafori Defense
-New York, New York, March 16, 1911:
There are vote-getters and politicians who waste their time coming into a community where 90 per cent of the men have no vote, where the women are disfranchised 100 per cent and where the boys and girls under age, of course, are not enfranchised. Still they will speak to these people about the power of the ballot, and they never mention a thing about the power of the general strike. They seem to lack the foresight, the penetration to interpret political power. They seem to lack the understanding that the broadest interpretation of political power comes through the industrial organization; that the industrial organization is capable not only of the general strike, but prevents the capitalists from disfranchising the worker; it gives the vote to women, it reenfranchises the black man and places the ballot in the hands of every boy and girl employed in a shop, makes them eligible to take part in the general strike, makes them eligible to legislate for themselves where they are most interested in changing conditions, namely, in the place where they work.
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SOURCES & IMAGES
The Seattle Star
(Seattle, Washington)
-Jan 22, 1919
https://chroniclingamerica.loc.gov/lccn/sn87093407/1919-01-22/ed-1/seq-1/
The Butte Daily Bulletin
(Butte, Montana)
-Jan 23, 1919
https://chroniclingamerica.loc.gov/lccn/sn83045085/1919-01-23/ed-1/seq-1/
The General Strike by Big Bill Haywood
https://www.iww.org/da/history/library/Haywood/GeneralStrike
See also:
The General Strike
-by William D. Haywood
IWW Publishing of Chicago, 1915-1917?
-after the Christmas truce of 1914
-before Chicago IWW trial of 1918
https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=mdp.39015079009182;view=2up;seq=1
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Workers of the World Awaken
If the workers take a notion,
They can stop all speeding trains;
Every ship upon the ocean
They can tie with mighty chains.
Every wheel in the creation,
Every mine and every mill,
Fleets and armies of the nation,
Will at their command stand still.
-Joe Hill