The A.F. of L., which claims a part of the responsibility for the East St. Louis outrage, is playing with fire. The American Negro may join hands with the American capitalist and scab them out of existence. And the editor of _The Voice_ calls upon Negroes to do this. We have stood the American Federation of Labor just about long enough. Join hands with the capitalists and scab them out of existence—not in the name of scabbery, but in the name of a real organization of labor. Form your own unions (the A.C.E. is already in the field) and make a truce with your capitalist enemy until you get rid of this traitor to the cause of labor. Offer your labor to capitalism if it will agree to protect you in your right to labor—and see that it does. Then get rid of the A.F. of L. The writer has been a member of a party which stood for the rights of labor and the principle of Industrial Unionism (the 20th century kind). He understands the labor conditions of the country and desires to see the working man win out. But his first duty, here as everywhere, is to the Negro race. And he refuses to put ahead of his race’s rights a collection of diddering jackasses which can publicly palliate such atrocities as that of East St. Louis and publicly assume, as Gompers did, responsibility for it. Therefore, he issues the advice to the workers of his race to “can the A.F. of L.” Since the A.F. of L. chooses to put Race before Class, let us return the compliment. _Lynching: Its Cause and Cure_ Last week we had occasion to comment on the resignation of Mr. John R. Shillady from the secretaryship of the N.A.A.C.P. Mr. Shillady’s statement accompanying his resignation contains these significant words:— “I am less confident than heretofore of the speedy success of the association’s full program and of the probability of overcoming within a reasonable period the forces opposed to Negro equality by the means and methods which are within the association’s power to employ.” That the N.A.A.C.P. is not likely to affect the lynchings in this land can be seen with half an eye by any one who will note that Governor J. A. Burnquist of Minnesota “is also president of the St. Paul branch of the association and one of the staunch supporters of its work”; that the Minnesota lynching of last week was one of the most cynically brutal that has occurred North or South in the last ten years, and that the association has offered and is offering to give the Governor all the assistance possible. In most of the other cases of lynchings it is assumed that all the officials were in collusion with the forces of violence, or were at any rate in acquiescence. In the present case, however, the Governor of the State is himself a high officer of the association. Yet we venture to prophesy that no more will be done in the case of the Minnesota lynchings than in the case of lynchings further south.