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[[preprinted]] TELEPHONE MONROE 825
[[image: oval seal with the words ALLIED PRINTING TRADES COUNCIL CHICAGO]] 236
1437 WEST OHIO STREET
CHICAGO [[/preprinted]]

^[[Copy of letter sent E. & E.]]
^[[stamped]] ARCHIVES OF AMERICAN ART [[/stamped]]
^[[Mrs. Peter Voorhees 1959]]

July 26, 1915.

I feel that I must try to send you some word in the midst of this terrible disaster which has befallen Chicago. The city is shocked and dazed. The streets are thronged with thousands of men and women looking for their dead, for the accident occurred in the heart of Chicago. The Eastland was still at her dock in the Chicago River at LaSalle Street, only a few blocks away from the Board of Trade and the great banking center. At LaSalle Street the river is about three hundred feet wide, and in crossing the bridge you feel as if you could almost reach with an outstretched hand the people on the Eastland. Even to those of us who have seen the boat in the river the tragedy seems an incredible fact.

For years the Lake Seamen's Union and the Chicago Federation of Labor have done everything to protest against the dangers of overcrowding and have called attention again and again to the rottenness of the ships in use. In 1911, the Chicago Federation of Labor printed the findings of its Committee and circularized this report by the thousands. It reprinted and brought it up to date in 1913. We wrote repeated letters to E. F. Sweet, Assistant Secretary of Commerce, and finally in a letter date June 22, 1914, to Edward F. Sweet we concluded our protest with these words:

"The overcrowded condition allowed will result in the loss of thousands of lives even though the boat be tied to the dock".