The Brass Check: A Study of American Journalism

by Upton Sinclair

CONCLUSION

When I first talked over this book with my wife, she gave me a bit of advice: “Give your facts first, and then call your names.” So throughout this book I have not laid much stress on the book’s title. Perhaps you are wondering just where the title comes in!

What is the Brass Check? The Brass Check is found in your pay-envelope every week—you who write and print and distribute our newspapers and magazines. The Brass Check is the price of your shame—you who take the fair body of truth and sell it in the market-place, who betray the virgin hopes of mankind into the loathsome brothel of Big Business. And down in the counting-room below sits the “madame” who profits by your shame; unless, perchance, she is off at Palm Beach or Newport, flaunting her jewels and her feathers.

Please do not think that I am just slinging ugly words. Off and on for years I have thought about this book, and figured over the title, and what it means; I assert that the Brass Check which serves in the house of ill-fame as “the price of a woman’s shame” is, both in its moral implications and in its social effect, precisely and identically the same as the gold and silver coins and pieces of written paper that are found every week in the pay-envelopes of those who write and print and distribute capitalist publications.

The prostitution of the body is a fearful thing. The young girl, trembling with a strange emotion of which she does not know the meaning, innocent, confiding and tender, is torn from her home and started on a road to ruin and despair. The lad, seeking his mate and the fulfilment of his destiny, sees the woman of his dreams turn into a foul harpy, bearer of pestilence and death. Nature, sumptuous, magnificent, loving life, cries: “Give me children!” And the answer comes: “We give you running sores and bursting glands, rotting lips and festering noses, swollen heads and crooked joints, idiot gabblings and maniac shrieks, pistols to blow out your brains and poisons to still your agonies.” Such is the prostitution of the body.

But what of the mind? The mind is master of the body, and commands what the body shall do and what it shall become; therefore, always, the prostitution of the mind precedes and causes the prostitution of the body. Youth cries: “Life is beautiful, joyous! Give me light, that I may keep my path!” The answer comes: “Here is darkness, that you may stumble, and beat your face upon the stones!” Youth cries: “Give me Hope.” The answer comes: “Here is Cynicism.” Youth cries: “Give me understanding, that I may live in harmony with my fellow-men.” The answer comes: “Here are lies about your fellow-men, that you may hate them, that you may cheat them, that you may live among them as a wolf among wolves!” Such is the prostitution of the mind.

When I planned this book I had in mind a sub-title: “A Study of the Whore of Journalism.” A shocking sub-title; but then, I was quoting the Bible, and the Bible is the inspired word of God. It was surely one of God’s prophets who wrote this invitation to the reading of “The Brass Check”:

Come hither; I will shew unto thee the judgment of the great whore that sitteth upon many waters;

With whom the kings of the earth have committed fornication, and the inhabitants of the earth have been made drunk with the wine of her fornication.

For eighteen hundred years men have sought to probe the vision of that aged seer on the lonely isle of Patmos. Listen to his strange words:

So he carried me away in the spirit into the wilderness: and I saw a woman sit upon a scarlet colored beast, full of names of blasphemy, having seven heads and ten horns. And the woman was arrayed in purple and scarlet color, and decked with gold and precious stones and pearls, having a golden cup in her hands full of abominations and filthiness of her fornication:

And upon her forehead was a name written, MYSTERY, BABYLON THE GREAT, THE MOTHER OF HARLOTS AND ABOMINATIONS OF THE EARTH.

Now, surely, this mystery is a mystery no longer! Now we know what the seer of Patmos was foreseeing—Capitalist Journalism! And when I call upon you, class-conscious workers of hand and brain, to organize and destroy this mother of all iniquities, I do not have to depart from the language of the ancient scriptures. I say to you in the words of the prophet Ezekiel:

So the spirit took me up, and brought me into the inner court; and behold, the glory of the Lord filled the house.

And I heard him speaking unto me out of the house:

Now let them put away their whoredom, and the carcases of their kings, far from me, and I will dwell in the midst of them forever.