AUGUST, 1917

Vol. XXIV

No. 8

E

EAST ST. LOUIS RIOTS-THEIR
CAUSES

By SAMUEL GOMPERS

VEN though occurring in a series of unprecedented happenings, the recent race riots in East St. Louis startled and horrified the nation. Mobs and riots do not occur in a community that conducts its affairs equitably and with regard to the welfare and best interests of its people, but they indicate diseased, abnormal conditions like festering sores-inflamed by poisons and unwholesome conditions. Such outbreaks are disgraceful and humiliating to all citizens because they demonstrate intellectual or moral incompetence in dealing with community affairs.

The American nation was horrified and mortified by the brutal race riots recently occurring at East St. Louis, and we want to avoid the possibility of a similar disaster and, therefore, we want to know the causes. An investigation has disclosed the following conditions:

Negroes imported to lower industrial standards.

Political corruption and incompetence.

Absentee corporation control.

Housing conditions.

East St. Louis is a commercial and an industrial center-there are the packing plants and stockyards of Armour, Swift and Morris, the Aluminum Ore Company, the American Steel Foundry, the Commercial Acid Company and twenty-seven railroad lines. These corporations have their offices in LaSalle Street, Chicago, or Wall Street, New York. They employed many foreigners until workers were called home to their colors. They began the policy of negro importation from the south. Negro importation became a regular business-agents were sent throughout the south who collected groups of negroes and paid the railroad fare to East St. Louis. Unsigned