Seattle, Washington
February 4th, 1919
My dear sister Taylor,
After months of murmuring we’ve received the word. I On the sixth we’re hanging up the phones and walking out. The Seattle Union Record put out notice in their headline yesterday – General Strike
The first that this country has ever seen.
It is all so surreal. Sixty-thousand of us they expect will join. It apparently started with the dock workers union, but then the Seattle International Workers of the World Union broadened the call to all unions in the city. They have broad sway over the Central Labor Council, and now every union worker in Seattle is expected to be marching in the streets on Thursday. My telephone operator’s union, the Parent-Teacher Association, and stenographers’ unions are all joining in, so I expect that all of the ladies in my house will be out there with them.
It’s just all so exciting. I was barely able to contain my giddiness when connecting people on the switchboards at work today. The foreman was glaring at us almost all day, but I struggled to keep from smirking back at him. This could be a monumental moment for Seattle’s workers, much like when that ship from Russia arrived in the harbor a few years back. This could be the movement that we were always told about.
Katherine just came running in this afternoon with today’s Seattle Union Record and I feel I must share this Anise column:
“We are undertaking the most tremendous move ever made by LABOR in this country, a move which will lead – NO ONE KNOWS WHERE! Labor will feed the people. Labor will care for the babies and the sick. Labor will preserve order.”
You can imagine Kat reading it with her signature anarchistic thespian bravado. I swear that woman would have quit her job to join the vaudeville circuit at The Orpheum, were it still running. She’s practically the spitting image of Mary Pickford.
Anne Louise Strong’s columns are always the most inspiring of any in the Union Record, but this must be her best piece of writing yet. It was so strong they moved it out of the magazine section of the paper to the front page. I suppose they felt it didn’t belong next to all of the cooking, fashion, and household advisory writings.
You know I’ve never been completely sold on the International Workers of the World and their anarchistic principles. I remember that you had grown weary of them since they established their presence back in Spokane, given the violence that broke out after that rally, and what that led to. I know personally I lean more towards socialism than anarchism; though I do wonder about what would happen to father’s law practice if the I.W.W. achieved all their goals.
But despite my misgivings, I’ve never been more convinced of anything in my life. Not only can we make waves with the strike, but we must, for all of our sake. You know I’ll always be fine either way. I hate the idea of asking father to send money again, but I can if it becomes necessary. The other women in the house though, they don’t have that luxury. I suppose that might explain why they are so much more radical than me. Despite having the right to vote here in Washington, it’s not as if we can vote our way to having a wage that pays for clothes or food.
The other girls are trying to convince me to go to one of the I.W.W.’s rally picnics tomorrow. I might go simply for the singing and dancing, and we’ll see, maybe I’ll come back convinced and ready agitate for the full revolution like you-know-who. Though I’m not a full-blown anarchist like him, I must admit I share his love of that song book the Spokane Wobblies made – I.W.W. Songs to Fan the Flames of Discontent. Katherine tells me they always sell copies at their meetings for cheap, and it always makes my evening when the ladies all storm back into the house singing “Solidarity Forever” or “Scissor Bill.”
The songs remind us of the time as teens when Uncle David took us see Katie Pharr perform back at those I.W.W. meetings in Spokane. She always had the most amazing voice. I still remember the not-so-subtle radical-socialist skits they put on too. Those were so much fun, though father never would have approved of our being there.
That reminds me, Katherine also tells me that some members of the house are starting to organize a play about “the history of democracy,” which they are hoping to perform to the public later this year. I’ll certainly have to go see it when they are finished, though I do not have high hopes for its quality.
On another note, Taylor you must come visit me soon. The movie theaters here are far better here in Seattle. More extravagant. I went to see the latest Chaplin film, A Dog’s Life, and I swear the musicians are more expressive than even those at the Scenic. One of the theaters even has a full orchestra, I’ve heard, though I cannot afford to attend.
I will have to take the train back to Spokane sometime soon, maybe once the strike is over. I am just now realizing it has almost been two years since I left. You surely remember my misgivings about Spokane with father. I always had problems with his insistence that I marry, but after what happened, I could not wait to leave any longer. In a perverse sort of way, despite the terrible pay and unfortunate circumstances, I am lucky that the war opened up this phone operator job for me. Not only did it allow me to leave town, I now get to participate in something truly important. Something beyond myself. This could be a movement that shakes the state of Washington, and maybe even further.
I’ve no doubt that Seattle Times and the Seattle Post Intelligencer newsboys will be handing out papers that dismiss us as radical and violent, just as they did with the poor souls in Everett. You’ll have to tell me what the writers at the Spokesman is saying back home. Given their hostile coverage of the I.W.W. Free Speech protests a decade ago and the raids of the I.W.W. office, I am not hopeful that we will be positively represented. “The Strike Menace” they called them. Just promise me that you will not believe it.
I likely will not be able to write to you for a while, likely as long as the strike goes on. I promise I will remain safe and distance myself if any violence breaks out during the strike. If the national guard gets called in, I leave. If the boss’s goon squads rush us, I leave. I have no plans of being beaten, shot, or serving a sedition sentence. I won’t let what happened to Uncle David happen to me.
I’ll leave you with a poem from Anna Louise Strong:
Our fight, he said,
Is not against MEN
But against IDEAS,
And I think, in most cases,
The WORKERS
Begin to understand this…
For even the men
Whom we must OVERTHROW
Will find their life richer
When the world is made safe
With love,
Avery
Bibliography
Secondary Sources
Anderson, Colin. The Industrial Workers of the World in the Seattle General Strike, Seattle General Strike Project. Retrieved March 6 2019 from http://depts.washington.edu/labhist/strike/anderson.shtml
Elliott. “A History of Variety-Vaudeville in Seattle from the Beginning to 1914 / by Eugene Clinton Elliott.” HathiTrust, Boston :Ginn,c1938., babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=mdp.39015028779208;view
Kershner, Jim. “100 Years Ago Today in Spokane: I.W.W. Strikes Puts Spokane Chamber in a Frenzy.” Spokesman.com, The Spokesman-Review, 29 June 2017, www.spokesman.com/stories/2017/jun/30/100-years-ago-today-in-spokane-iww-strikes-puts-sp/.
Kim, Tae. Where Women Worked During World War I, Seattle General Strike Project. Retrieved March 6 2019 from http://depts.washington.edu/labhist/strike/kim.shtml
Nguyen, Lynne. Women in Seattle’s Labor Movement During WWI , Seattle General Strike Project. Retrieved March 6 2019 from http://depts.washington.edu/labhist/strike/nguyen.shtml
Orwig, Senteara. The Songbird and the Martyr: Katie Phar, Joe Hill, and the Songs of the IWW, Seattle General Strike Project. Retrieved March 6 2019 from http://depts.washington.edu/labhist/strike/anderson.shtml
Winslow, Cal. “Seattle, ‘the Soviet of Washington.’” Jacobin, Jacobin Magazine, Oct. 2018, www.jacobinmag.com/2018/10/seattle-general-strike-iww-labor-revolution.
Primary Sources
Songs of the Workers: on the Road, in the Jungles and in the Shops. Songs of the Workers: on the Road, in the Jungles and in the Shops, International Workers of the World, 1917, digitalcollections.lib.washington.edu/digital/collection/pioneerlife/id/9753/rec/2.
Chaplin, Charlie. A Dog’s Life. Film, First National Pictures Inc, 1918, www.youtube.com/watch?v=GmheyLNKYCU.
Seattle’s Newspapers Report on the Strike Feb 1- Feb 13, 1919, Seattle General Strike Project. Retrieved March 6 2019 from http://depts.washington.edu/labhist/strike/news.shtml