On this day in 1919, following the end of WWI, the "Great Steel Strike" began, shutting down half the steel industry in the U.S. The strike, subjected to Red Scare tactics, failed in January and led to the collapse of its organizing union.

The massive strike, organized by the Amalgamated Association of Iron, Steel and Tin Workers (AA), shut down almost all mills in Pueblo, Colorado; Chicago, Illinois; Wheeling, West Virginia; Johnstown, Pennsylvania; Cleveland, Ohio; Lackawanna, New York; and Youngstown, Ohio.

Public opinion was generally against the strike. Factory owners claimed that the steelworker strike was being masterminded by communist revolutionaries (the October Revolution had occurred less than two years prior), and played on nativist xenophobia by noting that a large number of steelworkers were immigrants.

The Great Steel Strike collapsed on January 8th, 1920, and the AA was decimated in the aftermath of its failure.