is that which took place
in East St. Louis, Illinois, in July, 1917, during which more than a
hundred Negroes were shot or maimed. Many of them were fatally
wounded, five thousand of them were driven from their homes, and
several hundred thousand dollars worth of property was destroyed. The
origin and cause of this little racial war seemed to have been this:
In 1916, 4,000 white men employed in the packing plants went on strike
and, in retaliation, the employers of these plants brought in Negroes
to work in the places of the strikers. When the strike ended, during
the following year, Negroes were still retained as employees in these
plants, whereas many whites, who struck, were refused their former
jobs. The trade unions then realized the power in this vast resource
of imported labor, and, therefore, took steps to check it by appealing
to the city authorities to restrain employers from transporting
Negroes from the South. In their appeal they threatened to take action
themselves if the city officials did not do so. It happened that the
latter failed to act, and, therefore, the unionists and their
sympathizers, true to their threat, took complete control of the
situation and resorted to mob law as a means of solving the
problem.[115]

Besides these preceding cases, other riots occurred, but these were
due to causes other than economic competition. One of these, which
took place in Chester, Pennsylvania, in 1917, seemed to have been due
to natural friction and conflicts between the worst elements of both
groups in the community.[116] During the same year, Homestead,
Pennsylvania, barely escaped a race riot due to ill feeling between
the two groups which had been brewing for some time.[117] In Newark,
New Jersey, there was a race riot in which four men were wounded,
probably fatally, while thirty-three others received slight wounds.
This outbreak was of such magnitude that 150 police reserves were
required to quell it. It has been reported that it was precipitated by
a fight which resulted from a dispute over the amount of money wagered
in a dice game conducted by men of both races.[118] There were riots
during the summer of 1919, in Washington, D. C., Chicago, Illinois,
and Omaha, Nebraska; but it is difficult to say to what extent the
recent exodus was responsible for these outbreaks. It seems highly
probable, however, that the great increase in the white population of
Washington and in the Negro population in Chicago,