On this day, 6 February 1919, perhaps the most spectacular strike in US history took place: the Seattle general strike. Nearly 100,000 downed tools in support of striking shipyard workers but, more importantly, then elected a general strike committee and began running the city and essential services themselves.
While the shipyard workers did not get their pay increase, the five-day general strike was a historic and successful experiment demonstrating that workers could run society themselves.
After the strike ended, the newspaper of the Central Labor Council, the Union Record, explained its importance:
“We see but one way out. In place of two classes competing for the fruits of industry, there must be, eventually only one class sharing fairly the good things of the world. And this can only be done by the workers learning to manage.
"When we saw in our General Strike: The Milk Wagon Drivers consulting late into the night over the task of supplying milk for the city’s babies; The Provision Trades working twenty-four hours out of the twenty-four on the question of feeding 30,000 workers; The Barbers planning a chain of co-operative barber shops; The steamfitters opening a profitless grocery store; The Labor Guards facing, under severe provocation, the task of maintaining order by a new and kinder method; When we saw union after union submitting its cherished desires to the will of the General Strike Committee: then we rejoiced. For we knew it was worth the four or five days pay apiece to get this education in the problems of management. Whatever strength we found in ourselves, and whatever weakness, we knew we were learning the thing which it is necessary for us to know.
"Someday, when the workers have learned to manage, they will begin managing. And we, the workers of Seattle, have seen, in the midst of our General Strike, vaguely and across the storm, a glimpse of what the fellowship of that new day shall be.” https://www.facebook.com/workingclasshistory/photos/a.296224173896073/1646543442197466/?type=3