With a long series of documented safety problems, including severe listing, the S.S. Eastland was among the boots hired by the Westinghouse Co. for an picnic outing for their Chicago employees. With 2500 passengers on board, the boat capsized before leaving the Chicago River, with hundreds trapped below deck. One of the worst ‘disasters’ in U.S. history, the number who perished was said to be around 840, almost all workers, many of them immigrants.

‘The Eastland: Greed and Graft Win as 1200 Die’ by Irwin Tucker from American Socialist. Vol. 2 No. 3. July 31, 1915.

GREED AND GRAFT WIN WHEN 1,200 DIE AS S.S. EASTLAND CAPSIZES IN CHICAGO RIVER

Corruption and Inefficiency in U.S. Inspection Service Joined to Insatiable Hunger for Profits of Transportation Company Cause Appalling Disaster to Picnic Crowd In Heart of Busy City.

The Steamship Eastland, of the St. Joseph-Chicago Steamship Company, capsized in the Chicago River at 7.40 a.m., Saturday, July 24, as it was about to start for St. Joseph with a picnic crowd. Nearly 2,800 persons were aboard, and some 1,200 to 1,500 lost their lives. The following vivid description is by one who arrived shortly after the disaster.

Never was there a more impressive demonstration of the effect of Capitalism’s hunger for profits, regardless of human lives. The horror of the Eastland surpasses that of the Slocum, the Titanic, the Iroquois Theater. Gross neglect and corruption on the part of the United States Inspection service is charged by Victor Olander, Secretary of the Illinois Federation of Labor, and for many years Secretary of the Lake Seamen’s Union. Investigations are under way by city, county, state and federal officials.

The description is in the short verse-form which makes it easy to read and remember. None of the Chicago daily papers carried a story of the disaster anywhere near so vivid as that which follows. It was too big for them. The American Socialist believes that it’s act count of the horror will live as a piece of literature, as well as the best story of the catastrophe.

The mere recital of the circumstances should make Socialists of all who read it. Pass your copy on to someone else–some non-Socialist–that he may see things as they are.

***

I.

Crushed into the oily ooze, a thousand girls, mothers, babies and men

Struggled and choked, suffocating and strangling in the black cold water;

A solid writhing mass of fighting, drowning humanity, wiped out of existence into cold, sodden death, all in an instant;–

Only a moment before, they were gay with expectation of a day of pleasure, while the Eastland began to throb beneath them, ready to depart.

White dresses fluttered in the morning breezes, bright with ribbons;

Treasured chains and lockets and strings of beads, brought forth for this occasion, glittered in the light;

Spending-money in their purses, carefully hoarded up during weeks and months of unremitting toil, was to unlock the gates of merriment for this one longed-for day;

Friend called to friend from boat to dock and back again, waving farewell, shouting gay messages, quips and jests;–

THEN–the boat heaved over, crushing a thousand of them and more into the oily black mud at the bottom of the river, at the mouth of the sewer.

The boat was top-heavy and lacked beam and depth; it had been built cheaply to save money;

Ballast had been removed to make room for a few more fares.

What does safety matter? They’re only common working-people–We’re out to make money.

The wives of the directors of the shipbuilding company needed jewelry and Pomeranian dogs;

And the son of the president of the transportation company simply must have a new model automobile;

Business is Business; the more people get on an excursion boat, the more money it makes–let them take a chance on drowning; we risked our money, let them risk their lives–it’s all they’ve got.

II.

They were dragged up, one at a time, for days thereafter;

The gay white dresses, fluttering ribbons, jewelry, and plumes and lace, were draggled and torn and full of mud, or were ripped clear off the bruised, swollen and blackening bodies;

Little babies–young girls, just starting out into womanhood mothers gray with the weight of years and care–

Young men, stalwart and handsome; boys, important with their first real vacation; elder men, fathers of families, going along to take care of the folks;

They were hauled out of the steel hull, wrenched loose from the mass of clammy death that had so shortly before been a joyous crowd of picnickers–

The Western Electric Company, so many said, had warned all its employes that they must attend this picnic or lose two weeks’ pay.

They wanted this picnic to be the biggest ever seen in Chicago, for they needed the advertisement.

And the boat made big money with the sale of tickets, and the stockholders of the transportation company needed the money; they have to take opera seats next winter, and simply must have opera cloaks and jewels;

And the transportation company cannot be sued for more than the value of the hull;

So that by building a cheap boat and crowding on thousands of passengers, they get almost enough to maintain their position in society.

III.

I saw the excursion agent, the man who was responsible for chartering the boat for this crowd; he wept like a baby.

Unable to speak, to tell his wife how it had happened, he sobbed with eyes staring at the horror of what he had seen.

I saw the captain and mate of the boat, heavily guarded by police to keep the crowd from lynching them, because, driven mad by the suddenness of it, they forbade rescuers to chop holes in the boat. (Oh, yes, undoubtedly THEY will bear the blame; you cannot expect those who made money off it to be dragged through the vulgar law courts); saw the policemen who kept [words missing] down under human sympathy for the grief-maddened crowds that fought to find their dead;

I saw the giant form of the deputy Chief of Police, his eyes swollen and red, doing his best to preserve order in the jostling mob;

I saw crazed relatives, blind in the vast crowd, weaving from side to side with unsteady footsteps, their eyes wide and unseeing; sobbing, staggering, helpless;

I saw the crowds, mute, open for them and help them through;

But they will not think of this next winter–the stockholders and their wives–when they dine at the Blackstone or attend a dinner-dance,

While the snow beats over the graves of the thousand who went to their deaths–

A thousand graves, a thousand tombstones, a thousand empty places at the table, a thousand ten thousand breaking hearts

What the devil does this matter to them? They needed the money, and they do not care where or how the money comes.

IV.

I saw trained nurses in their uniforms hastening by brigades from every hospital in the city;

I saw the companies of sisters of Charity and the black-robed nuns, kneeling beside the poor clammy bodies, trying to work breath back into them–

I saw the doctors with pulmotors, dragging lives by the score out of the black abyss of death;

I saw wagon-load after wagon-load of the dead, piled in even rows, rattling away to the improvised morgues, the corpses covered with blankets; I saw the crowds pressing by to identify them, staring, sobbing, screaming, fainting;

I saw the crowds in the street, perched on every roof-corner, on the elevated railroad structure, on the bridges, along the docks, clinging to the piers;

I saw them fishing for bodies in the river from boats and rafts and bridges;

I saw the crowds of rescuers on the sanded side of the overturned hulk, chopping holes in the boat; I saw them drag up body after body; Limp, distorted, bruised, ghastly, pitiful, terrible; growing monotonous in the horror of it–

But the most pitiful, horrible, ghastly thing about it was that nobody seemed to understand that it was all for PROFIT. That somebody makes money off the cheap, flimsy, overloaded excursion boats;

That Government Inspectors, commissioned with the solemn duty of protecting human life, are easily bought, or bought, or more easily fooled,

That the horror which they saw lurks behind every one of them every day, every hour, so long as Business is run for Profit.

The crowds were not raving with anger, the were dumb, curious, interested–but not enraged–

THAT was the ghastliest thing about it all–

V.

The Eastland had been condemned for years. Two years ago the Federation of Labor had protested to Washington against it and kindred craft;

It was unsafe when built, and grew more unsafe with every year that passed;

Money was spent in remodeling it–a small part of the money it brought in was used to tinker it up a little from time to time–

But still it was unsafe, and known to be so; but it would have cost too much to abandon it–somebody’s dividends would have been reduced!

But why should the Government pay any attention to the protests of Labor? Organized labor is a dupe and a fool, led around by the nose at each election,

While organized Capital pays good money to officers of the Government, and labor merely growls and grumbles, and forgets–(Capital never forgets, and it knows that Labor is a fool).

Nothing will happen–no rich people were lost–What does it matter if a few stenographers and common workmen get drowned?

The wives of the contractors, and the stockholders, and the Transportation company directors, will get a new dress apiece, And a French poodle, and a new high-powered car;–Labor is insolent, and a menace to Prosperity!

VI.

After the Lusitania horror we thrust our fists into Germany’s face, and threatened war,

Although the passengers were riding in a British ship filled with ammunition to blow the entrails out of Germany’s soldiers,

And although Britain had stolen our cargoes and sidetracked our passengers and bullied our trade; But there were a few millionaires lost on the Lusitania–hence we will sink a dozen battleships unless they are allowed to ride on dynamite, through the war-zone, in safety whenever they get good and ready. After the Titanic disaster we passed laws about the number of life-boats each ship must carry at sea,

Because several wealthy families were represented among the victims. But the victims of the General Slocum were all poor; and although it was shown that the life-preservers were loaded with lead, and, the fire-hose was rotten and crumbled at a touch,

We did nothing, because the lives of the poor do not matter.

The Eastland victims were all poor this was the one bright spot in the summer for a good many of them, this vacation.

And our own officials and millionaires and business people are guilty of this disaster–hence we can of course do nothing.

VII.

Now hearken, all you who are thrilled with horror and disaster to the Eastland;

On you rests the guilt, so long as you agree that money is more important than life;

So long as you consent to the proposition that business should be directed to the making of private profit;

So long as you, by voice and will and vote, uphold industry for private profit, just so long does the blood-guilt of these lives rest on you!

The ancients offered up hecatombs of cattle to their gods to placate them;

We offer up human lives by the thousand to our great god PROFIT,–And all of you who do not fight that god are his worshippers.

And as for you–MURDERERS! CRIMINALS! IDOLATERS! BLASPHEMERS! who whine that this was the “Will of God,” and is a “lesson to the thoughtless,”

You preachers of sermons who see in this horror only the lesson that “life is short,” and that we must be “prepared to die a good death,”

You too are servants of the grinning black monster, Greed, enemy of God and Man;

Judases worse than Iscariot! for he had the grace to hang himself!

You who cannot see that the ringing challenge of this disaster is that so long as Gold is God, human lives are the sacrifice–

You are sharers in the murder, and partakers of the crime!

The American Socialist, edited by J. Louis Engdahl, was the official Party newspaper of the Socialist Party of America in the years before World War One. Published in Chicago starting in 1914, the Appeal continued the semi-internal Socialist Party Official Bulletin founded in 1904 which became Party Builder in1913. The American Socialist closely followed the SP’s electoral challenges, Engdahl was often an SP candidate in Chicago as he edited the paper, and took an early and prominent anti-war position. With a circulation of around 60,000 the paper was one of the leading anti-war voices in the run up to US entry into World War One. The paper was suppressed by Federal authorities, along with much of the anti-war left, in 1917.

PDF of full issue: https://www.marxists.org/history/usa/pubs/american-socialist/v2n03-jul-31-1915-TAS.pdf