For the four days of the general strike, headlines insisted that the city was running out of food and gas, and that strikers allowed only themselves to receive food; that the strike was “bred in Moscow”; and Communists were fomenting an insurrection, using the strikers as their pawns. One paper reported the frightening news that an army of Communists was marching on San Francisco. That none of these reports were true did not worry the publishers, who considered it their civic duty to support the Industrial Association.

The National Guard and police, operating in cooperation with the Industrial Association, staged a series of raids on suspected radical gathering places. When the Marine Workers Industrial Union hall was raided by police dressed up as “unionists,” the papers dutifully reported that “Unionists Smash Radical Hangouts in Purging Move.” The San Francisco raids stimulated a mini-Red Scare, with imitators in cities across California, especially in the Central Valley.

The police and mayor vowed they were cleaning alien communists out of San Francisco. Besides wrecking several offices, police arrested hundreds of people on a variety of charges. Of these twelve turned out to be deportable aliens; three were Communists. The rest were released after varying stays behind bars.

Each day of the general strike the labor council’s strike committee allowed more places of business to open and services to be restored. On the fourth day, by a close vote and over the angry objections of the maritime unions, the strike committee called off the general strike.