violence. Harry Eastman, the East St. Louis workers' representative, addressed the mass of employees: The strikers held the railroads and city for about a week, without the violence that took place in Chicago and other cities. The federal government intervened, and on July 28 US troops took over the Relay Depot, the Commune's command center, and the strike ended peacefully. Great Cyclone of 1896 On May 27, 1896, a tornado struck St. Louis and East St. Louis. It stands as the deadliest tornado to ever hit the cities. In approximately 20 minutes, this tornado resulted in destruction that killed 137 people in St. Louis and 118 in East St. Louis. The tornado's destruction spanned 10 miles, including into the railyards and commercial districts of East St. Louis. During the storm, 311 buildings were destroyed and 7,200 others were severely damaged. The cost of this loss was estimated to be between $10 million and $12 million. In 1896 this was a considerable amount of money, as a two-story brick house could be purchased at that time for $1,500. East St. Louis riots of 1917 East St. Louis in 1917 had a strong industrial economy boosted by America's economic participation in demands related to World War I; although war was declared in April, the nation did not meaningfully enter the war until that fall. Industry was dominated by European immigrant workers, who had been coming to industrial cities since the late 19th century. Here and across the country, they repeatedly tried to organize in efforts to gain better wages and working conditions. In the summer of 1916, 2,500 white workers struck the nearby meat packing plants of National City. Companies recruited black workers, sometimes importing them from the South. While the white workers won a wage increase, the companies retained some black workers, firing white ones. Such economic competition raised tensions between the groups in a period when the number of blacks in East St. Louis had increased dramatically due to the first Great Migration, when African Americans left poor rural areas of the South to escape Jim Crow oppression and seek jobs in the industrial cities of the North and the Midwest. From 1910 to 1917, the black population nearly doubled in East St. Louis. The United States established a draft which would bring in many workers to the military. As the war prevented immigration from Europe even before the U.S.