Ah! That hot, wide plain of East St. Louis is a gripping thing. The
rivers are dirty with sweat and toil and lip, like lakes, along the low
and burdened shores; flatboats ramble and thread among them, and above
the steamers bridges swing on great arches of steel, striding with
mighty grace from shore to shore. Everywhere are brick kennels,--tall,
black and red chimneys, tongues of flame. The ground is littered with
cars and iron, tracks and trucks, boxes and crates, metals and coal and
rubber. Nature-defying cranes, grim elevators rise above pile on pile of
black and grimy lumber. And ever below is the water,--wide and silent,
gray-brown and yellow.

This is the stage for the tragedy: the armored might of the modern world
urged by the bloody needs of the world wants, fevered today by a
fabulous vision of gain and needing only hands, hands, hands! Fear of
loss and greed of gain in the hearts of the giants; the clustered
cunning of the modern workman, skilled as artificer and skilled in the
rhythm of the habit of work, tasting the world's good and panting for
more; fear of poverty and hate of "scabs" in the hearts of the workers;
the dumb yearning in the hearts of the oppressed; the echo of laughter
heard at the foot of the Pyramids; the faithful, plodding slouch of the
laborers; fear of the Shadow of Death in the hearts of black men.

We ask, and perhaps there is no answer, how far may the captain of the
world's industry do his deeds, despite the grinding tragedy of its
doing? How far may men fight for the beginning of comfort, out beyond
the horrid shadow of poverty, at the cost of starving other and what the
world calls lesser men? How far may those who reach up out of the slime
that fills the pits of the world's damned compel men with loaves to
divide with men who starve?