East St. Louis had negroes. Its riots of May 28 and July 2, 1917, had origin in economic pressure aris ing from labor questions and the employment of negroes in the place of white men, and its sequence in barbarities which can be explained only by race prejudice. Tortur ing, burning, murder, lynching were rampant. Women and children were not spared. They burned 312 build ings. A large force of militia was called to duty. There were thirty-nine negroes and eight whites known to have been killed in the rioting. Many negroes were birds of passage, and estimates of the number of negroes killed ran as high as three hundred.