Even the common laborers and all unorganized labor ceased work.  The strike had tied everything up so that nobody could work.  Besides, the women proved to be the strongest promoters of the strike.  They set their faces against the war.  They did not want their men to go forth to die.  Then, also, the idea of the general strike caught the mood of the people.  It struck their sense of humor.  The idea was infectious.  The children struck in all the schools, and such teachers as came, went home again from deserted class rooms.  The general strike took the form of a great national picnic.  And the idea of the solidarity of labor, so evidenced, appealed to the imagination of all.  And, finally, there was no danger to be incurred by the colossal frolic.  When everybody was guilty, how was anybody to be punished?

The United States was paralyzed.  No one knew what was happening.  There were no newspapers, no letters, no despatches.  Every community was as completely isolated as though ten thousand miles of primeval wilderness stretched between it and the rest of the world.  For that matter, the world had ceased to exist.  And for a week this state of affairs was maintained.

In San Francisco we did not know what was happening even across the bay in Oakland or Berkeley.  The effect on one’s sensibilities was weird, depressing.  It seemed as though some great cosmic thing lay dead.  The pulse of the land had ceased to beat.  Of a truth the nation had died.  There were no wagons rumbling on the streets, no factory whistles, no hum of electricity in the air, no passing of street cars, no cries of news-boys—­nothing but persons who at rare intervals went by like furtive ghosts, themselves oppressed and made unreal by the silence.

And during that week of silence the Oligarchy was taught its lesson.  And well it learned the lesson.  The general strike was a warning.  It should never occur again.  The Oligarchy would see to that.

At the end of the week, as had been prearranged, the telegraphers of Germany and the United States returned to their posts.  Through them the socialist leaders of both countries presented their ultimatum to the rulers.  The war should be called off, or the general strike would continue.  It did not take long to come to an understanding.  The war was declared off, and the populations of both countries returned to their tasks.

It was this renewal of peace that brought about the alliance between Germany and the United States.  In reality, this was an alliance between the Emperor and the Oligarchy, for the purpose of meeting their common foe, the revolutionary proletariat of both countries.  And it was this alliance that the Oligarchy afterward so treacherously broke when the German socialists rose and drove the war-lord from his throne.  It was the very thing the Oligarchy had played for—­the destruction of its great rival in the world-market.  With the German Emperor out of the way, Germany would have no surplus to sell abroad.  By the very nature of the socialist state, the German population would consume all that it produced.  Of course, it would trade abroad certain things it produced for things it did not produce; but this would be quite different from an unconsumable surplus.