 Chapter 14 from the Chicago Race Rides, July 1919 by Carl Sandberg. This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. The Chicago Race Rides by Carl Sandberg, Chapter 14. An Official of the Packers Among the employers, executives, and superintendents of the packing houses, the clashes between white and colored people in the stockyards in adjacent districts are not a race question, so much as a labor union question, according to a prominent official of one of the packing companies. This official sat in various conferences of yards officials in state, city, and militia officers during the days of riot. He is familiar with the views of the officials of the large packing companies and believes that the following expressions represent the general viewpoint of the packers. In the yards, it is not a race question at all. It is a labor union question. We have no objection to the Negroes drawn in the union. We are running an open shop. The unions want us to run a closed shop. That would mean we could hire only union men. The unions have done everything to get the Negro into their membership, but they haven't got him. That is the trouble. At one time we heard they had about 90% of all the Negroes in the yards in the unions, but they don't stay. The trouble is that the Negro is not naturally a good union man. He doesn't like to pay union dues. They're all going to take back into our employ all the Negroes who are now away on account of the riots. Just now it is a good thing for those who have gone too far to cool off. If we should close down our plants for two weeks, many would realize more clearly what is needed in this hour. There's never been an organized effort on our part to bring the Negro here. The workers' percentage of increase of Negro employees is not greater than that of any other industry during the war. The steel plants, the railroads, and others increased about the same percentage we did. High wages was the inducement that drew them north. We expect that the Negro will continue to be the chief source of surplus labor. In all our experience there have been no race clashes, no strictly racial trouble inside of the yards while the men are working. Their work requires skill and handling of axes, cleavers, and knives. And if there were any real and lasting race hatred, it would show itself in violence inside the yards where they work. At the present time, 21% of the workers in one large plant are colored. During the war at the time of highest pressure they numbered from 24 to 25% before the war they numbered 18%. With the Negroes away as at present we are able to operate plants at only 60% capacity. This lowered production and lessened amount of commodities for the market will have a measurable reflection in prices of food. It also affects the producers of our raw material. The farmer who had a bad experience marketing hogs last week when the shutdown was on because of the riots may say to himself that hogs are not the best things to raise from market. Our plant superintendes say that the white man want the colored workers back on some kinds of work. Take the beef luggers. They carry on their shoulders the quarters of beef. Negroes have always been best at this. The following figures represent the distribution of nationalities and race among the employees of armor and company. 2052 Poles, 2000 Negroes, 1372 Lithuanians, 5167 Americans, 141 Bohemians, 118 Jews, 169 Irish, 41 Greeks, 300 Germans, 150 Slovaks, 56 Mexicans, 205 Russians, 23 Scots, 55 Italians. The employees of the other plants are said to be divided in about the same proportions. End of Chapter 14. Chapter 15 From the Chicago Race Rides July 1919 by Carl Sandberg. This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. The Chicago Race Rides by Carl Sandberg. Chapter 15. Mr. Julius Rosenwald interviewed. At Sears-Rowbuck and Company, where the volume of business is $2 million a year, where they send out 8 million copies a year of the most widely circulated book in the United States, the Sears-Rowbuck and Company catalog, there sits in the administration office the president of the company, Julius Rosenwald. In the midst of an array of wall photographs of Greek parthenons in Egyptian's Vincis, there is a large photograph of Booker T. Washington, the Negro race leader. Near at hand is a remarkable collection of books on the race question. We say the Negro must stay in slums and shall not invade white residence districts. Then we shall have to make more stringent health laws to protect us from the evils that go with slums, said Mr. Rosenwald. We say the Negro must continue to live in slums. We must prepare for a brighter crime rate. They came here because we asked them to come, because they were needed for industrial service. There is no solution for the problem apparent now. That is all the more reason both sides must be fair. It will do no good to see red. With immigration restricted it will be necessary for business to seek another source of labor supply. This exists in the colored population. When they settle here and become workers in the community, they have a right to a place to live amid conditions that ensure health and sanitation. I know from experience that the Negroes are not anxious to invade white residence districts any more than white people are willing that they should come. The face of Julius Rosenwald softened. The Negro is the equal of the white man and brain, said Mr. Rosenwald. I've taught with men who said they start it with a theory that the Negro is inferior. And when the facts were arrived at, there was no other conclusion to be derived from those facts than that the colored man is the equal in intelligence of the white man. I attended the graduation ceremonies of this year's class at Hampton Institute in May. The 51st anniversary of this Negro institution. I heard Columbus K. C. Mango tell the South African story. Here he was, straight from the jungles of Africa. A full-blooded Negro who came direct from Milseter, South Rhodesia, to Hampton Institute. His speech, his markings in classes, his general behavior showed intelligence and competency. He is a specimen of what can be accomplished by education. I didn't know he wanted an education till he met a missionary who told him about Hampton. He walked 200 miles to a port that was started for America three times and then turned back by authorities. He arrived in America, a grown young man, unable to read or write. And now he is able to pass any college examinations in America. Another speaker was a Fisk University man, Isaac Fisher. He has taken 32 prizes offered by newspapers and magazines and competitions open to all without regard to color. While living in Arkansas, he wrote to the St. Louis Globe Democrat the 12 best reasons why Missouri is the best state to live in and was awarded the prize. Everybody's magazine had a contest with 3,000 competitors and the award of $1,000 was made to Isaac Fisher, the type of the pure Negro, a little thin fellow who is all intelligence. Mr. Rosenwald quoted Walter Heinz Page, a southerner, ambassador to Great Britain during the late war. The most expensive thing we can do is not to educate the Negro. He quoted Booker Washington from memory as saying that in some southern states it was found that $16 per capita was spent on the education of white children in the public schools and $1.29 yearly on the colored children and Washington's comment that such a disparity presumed too much on the intelligence of the eager blacks. There are now more than 300 Rosenwald rural schools in operation in southern states, 300 more partially established and 400 others projected. They are maintained by three contributors, Mr. Rosenwald, state treasuries and miscellaneous donors. End of Chapter 15, Chapter 16 from the Chicago Race Rides July 1919 by Carl Sandberg. This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. The Chicago Race Rides by Carl Sandberg. Chapter 16 for Federal Action The race question is national and federal. No city or state can solve it alone. There must be cooperation between states and there must be a federal handling of it. This is the view of Major Joel E. Spinger recently returned from service under fire in France and later service in the occupied zone in Germany with the 311th Infantry. Major Spinger was for six years chairman of the National Association for the Association of Colored People. What is now happening in Chicago has happened in other large cities, north and south, east and west, said Major Spinger. With the initial or igniting occurrences out of consideration, we have much the same developments in every case where there are race rides. Everything considered, the character of the Chicago population and the size of it, the total number of casualties is surprisingly low. The fact must now be emphasized that the race problem is not local, but is a national question. Should have federal attention and there should be federal aid. We must fight as a national danger the race hatred that exists in the south. That particular form of race hatred, which was one fundamental cause of the Civil War, should not be permitted to spread to other sections. The southern neglect of the Negro is a national problem. All the conditions of life that tend to degrade the Negro in the south immediately come into evidence the moment there is a shift of Negro population from south to north. Every circumstance of bad housing, bad sanitation, school neglect, and economic inequality that exists in the southern states must be regarded as a national problem. This more especially in view of the shifts of population that are so easy now and which are sometimes an absolute necessity for the conduct of industry. There must be enlightenment of the intelligent whites of America on all phases of this problem. The intelligent white man who is not informed on the neglect and wrong training of the Negro in the south is as dangerous to future peace and law and order as is the so-called bad Negro. I fought for my country two years as a major of infantry, and I wish to give it as my mature judgment that no barbarities committed by the Prussians in Belgium will compare with the brutalities and atrocities committed on Negroes in the south. In effect you may say that the Negroes who come north have issued from a system of life in industry far worse than anything ever seen under Prussianism in its worst manifestations. Every colored soldier that I have talked with in France, Germany, or America has a grievance. If there should be a development of Bolshevism in this country, it is plainly evident where these soldiers, at least those with whom I have talked, would take their stand. One of the most significant features in the Chicago situation is the Stockyard's labor union and the apparent goodwill between the two races among the thousands of white and colored men in that organization. I am told that about 60% of the Stockyard workers are Poles, and that their leader, John Kurkulski, as well as the Secretary and the 500 shop stewards of the organization, are taking a decisive stand against race prejudice, violence, and anything else than peace and equality before the law. If this is true, and it should be found that among the 70,000 men employed at the packing houses there has been no violence between white and colored union men, it may be that this is a high point in history. It is gratifying to hear that the employers at the Stockyards recognized months ago that rivalries and bitterness between union white men and non-union colored men would make a bad situation, and therefore they consented to the colored employment agencies recommending to all Negroes applying for jobs that they should join the union. It is evident that without the stabilizing influences, Chicago might have had a slaughter running into hundreds. A commission consisting of men and women from both races should be appointed to investigate and make recommendations. Such a commission, if it has the right people on it, takes the thought of people away from violence. That was our experience in the Atlanta riots. End of Chapter 16, End of the Chicago Race Rides, July 1919 by Carl Sandberg