Now there came fear in the hearts of the Unwise Men.  It was not that their wages were lowered,—­they went even higher.  They received, not simply, a living wage, but a wage that paid for some of the decencies, and, in East St. Louis, many of the indecencies of life.  What they feared was not deprivation of the things they were used to and the shadow of poverty, but rather the definite death of their rising dreams.  But if fear was new-born in the hearts of the Unwise Men, the black man was born in a house of fear; to him poverty of the ugliest and straitest type was father, mother, and blood-brother.  He was slipping stealthily northward to escape hunger and insult, the hand of oppression, and the shadow of death.

Here, then, in the wide valley which Father Marquette saw peaceful and golden, lazy with fruit and river, half-asleep beneath the nod of God,—­here, then, was staged every element for human tragedy, every element of the modern economic paradox.

* * * * *

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?

The answers to these questions are hard, but yet one answer looms above all,—­justice lies with the lowest; the plight of the lowest man,—­the plight of the black man—­deserves the first answer, and the plight of the giants of industry, the last.