'The Last Grand Struggle of All'

Jim Maurer and the 1919 Pennsylvania General Strike That Wasn't

Since the Women's March, there's been talk of a nationwide anti-Trump general strike. It's an idea that has activists excited, in part because nothing like it has ever really happened before in this country.

There's a reason for that.

In The Daily Beast this week, I wrote a piece about a Pennsylvania union boss who threatened a general strike against the governor in late 1919. It didn't end well for the union boss. Here's how it started:

Jim Maurer stood before a meeting of 500 union bosses in November 1919 and declared it was time to bring Pennsylvania to its knees.

“Get ready for the last grand struggle of all,” Maurer said. “Fight with every weapon at your command.”

The union bosses pledged that if the governor didn’t rein in the state police’s systematic harassment of steel strikers, every single organized worker in Pennsylvania would walk off the job. All Jim Maurer had to do was give the word.

By the end of the month, a mob of demobilized soldiers had hunted Jim Maurer through midnight streets; the attorney general of the United States had denounced him by name; and the Philadelphia Inquirer had warned him to leave the state.

The old Civil War veterans of the Grand Army of the Republic sang a song about him: “Hang Jim Maurer on the Sour Apple Tree.”

Check out the rest here.

Thanks for reading,

Josh