Most other local unions joined the walk-out, including members of the American Federation of Labor (AFL) and the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW).

Local, state and federal government officials, the press, and much of the public viewed the strike as a radical attempt to subvert American institutions.

Some commentators blamed the strike on Bolsheviks and other radicals inspired by "un-American" ideologies, making it the first expression of the anti-left sentiment that characterized the Red Scare of 1919 and 1920.

There was a lot of fear of the Bolsheviks because it was known that they had been hoping for a revolution in the Western world in order to support Russia by pooling resources.

[9] Most unions in Seattle were officially affiliated with the AFL, but the ideas of ordinary workers tended to be more radical than their leaders.

Some of us think we can get control through the Cooperative movement, some of us think through political action, and others think through industrial action.Another journalist described the spread of propaganda relating to the Russian Revolution:[10] For some time these pamphlets were seen by hundreds on Seattle's streetcars and ferries, read by men of the shipyards on their way to work.

Seattle's businessmen commented on the phenomenon sourly; it was plain to everyone that these workers were conscientiously and energetically studying how to organize their coming to power.

They formed the Seattle Metal Trades Council, made up of delegates from twenty-one different craft unions; there were seventeen at the time of the first strike vote.

In August 1917, the workers had succeeded in establishing a uniform wage scale for one third of the metal tradesmen working in the city.

[12] In an attempt to divide the ranks of the union, the yard owners responded by offering a pay increase only to skilled workers.

[13] Controversy erupted when Charles Piez, head of the Emergency Fleet Corporation (EFC), an enterprise created by the federal government as a wartime measure and the largest employer in the industry, sent a telegram to the yard owners threatening to withdraw their contracts if any increase in wages were granted.

The shipyard workers responded with anger directed at both their employers and the federal government which, through the EFC, seemed to be siding with corporate interests.

Exemptions to the stoppage of labor had to be passed by the Strike Committee, and authorized vehicles bore signs to that effect.

A group called the "Labor War Veteran's Guard" forbade the use of force and did not carry weapons, and used "persuasion only.

Union officials, especially those more senior and those at higher levels of the labor movement, feared that using the general strike as a tactic would fail and set back their organizing efforts.

He added 600 men to the police force and hired 2,400 special deputies, students from the University of Washington for the most part.

[15]: 87  On February 7, Mayor Hanson threatened to use 1,500 police and 1,500 troops to replace striking workers the next day, but the strikers assumed this was an empty threat and were proved correct.

[22] The Mayor continued his rhetorical attack on February 9, saying that the "sympathetic strike was called in the exact manner as was the revolution in Petrograd.

"[23] Mayor Hanson told reporters that "any man who attempts to take over the control of the municipal government functions will be shot.

And that is all there is to revolt—no matter how achieved.Between the strike's announcement and beginning, on February 4, the U.S. Senate voted to expand the work of its Overman Judiciary Subcommittee from investigating German spies to Bolshevik propaganda.

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.