Editing Seattle General Strike (section)

==Aftermath==
[[File:Armed response to Great Seattle Strike 1919.jpg|thumb|alt=B&W photo of police and soldiers with a machine gun|Newspaper caption, "How the Great Seattle Strike was broken - Our photo shows machine gun crews ready to fire upon the strikers. Police, soldiers and armed civilians were used by Mayor Hanson"]]
[[File:Seattle Mayor Ole Hanson 1919.jpg|thumb|right|Hanson, July 1, 1919]]
Immediately following the general strike's end, thirty-nine IWW members were arrested as "ringleaders of anarchy".<ref name="Zinn370-1"/>

Seattle 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.<ref>Murray, 65–66; Hagedorn, 180</ref> 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:<ref name="Brecher, 126"/><ref name="Zinn370-1">Zinn, 370–371</ref>

<blockquote>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.</blockquote>

Between the strike's announcement and beginning, on February 4, the [[U.S. Senate]] voted to expand the work of its [[Overman Committee|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.<ref>Hagedorn 59, 147–148; Murray, 94–98</ref>