1919 was one of the most eventful and promising years for the local I.W.W. because of the Seattle General Strike. Sixty-five thousand of the city's workers, from hotel maids to garbage collectors, announced they would not work until the federal government and local shipyard owners granted wage increases to workers in the city's shipyards which had boomed during the war. This walkout virtually shut down Seattle from February 4th to February 9th. Although the more conservative American Federation of Labor was mainly responsible for the strike, the Seattle I.W.W. nonetheless participated and saw the strike as an harbinger of more worker solidarity and radicalism to come.