Soup Kitchens Fed the 1919 Seattle General Strike
60,000 IDLE STRIKERS IN SEATTLE TODAY
Eighteen Soup Kitchens in Service Strikers Prepare Food.
CITY IS PARALIZED
SEATTLE, Feb. 7. The second day of Seattle's general strike saw the city almost paralyzed'. The only normal form was the lighting of streets and homes and this was done by volunteer workers. The strikers themselves, through their culinary trade, fed strikers and those who depend upon restaurants.
Eighteen big soup kitchens were in service. No disorders have marked the strike thus far. There are 60,000 idle strikers with liberal sprinkling of the radical clement.
On the other hand are United States regular troops armed with machine guns, bayonets and, it was reported, with hand grenades. The police have mounted machine guns on trucks ready for service. The regular force with a thousand additional police are heavily armed.
—The Evening Missourian February 7, 1919
How Seattle’s 1919 General Strike Ignited America’s Labor Movement
-Bloomberg