Meanwhile, in New York, I met many old friends. Also, I was asked to appear on several TV programs, and my interviews with Eric Goldman, Mike Wallace, and Barry Gray were great fun. One of the most unusual occasions was a luncheon given by my faithful agent, Bertha Klausner, who invited only those people who are working, in one way or another, with my various books—publishing or reissuing or dramatizing them for stage or screen. And there was a roomful of them!
Happily, there seems to be a revival of interest in my books. The Jungle is now in paperback, and students are reading it and teachers are talking about it in their classes. World’s End and Dragon’s Teeth, two of the Lanny Budd volumes, are also in paperback. So is Manassas, under the title of Theirs Be the Guilt. Mental Radio, my precise and careful study of Craig’s demonstrations of her telepathic power, has just been reissued by a publisher of scientific books, with the original preface by William McDougall and, in addition, the preface that Albert Einstein wrote for the German edition. The Cry for Justice: An Anthology of Social Protest is to be republished with modern additions. And A Personal Jesus, an attempt at a modern insight, is also being reissued.
Our Lady is being dramatized. Another Pamela is being converted into a musical comedy. Walt Disney is now setting out to make a movie of The Gnomobile, my story for children, which is also going to be reissued with gay illustrations from the French edition. And there is to be a TV series drawn from the Lanny Budd books. I cannot attempt to control this last and can only hope for the best.
20
Summing Up
I
A reader of this manuscript asked the question: “Just what do you think you have accomplished in your long lifetime?” I give a few specific answers.
I begin with a certainty. At the age of twenty-eight I helped to clean and protect the meat that comes to your table. I followed that matter through to the end. I put the shocking facts into a book that went around the world in both directions. I set forth the details at President Theodore Roosevelt’s lunch table in the White House, and later put them before his trusted investigators. I put their true report on the front page of the New York Times, and I followed it up with letters to Congressmen. I saw the laws passed; from friends in the Chicago stockyards, I learned that they were enforced. The stockyard workers now have strong unions; I know some of their officials, and if the old conditions had come back, I would have been told of it and would be telling it here.
Second, I know that we still have many bad and prejudiced newspapers, but many are better than they were. I think that The Brass Check helped to bring about the improvement. It also encouraged newspapermen to form a union. And the guild, among other things, has improved the quality of newspapers.
Third, I know that our “mourning parade” before the offices of Standard Oil in New York not merely ended slavery in the mining camps in the Rocky Mountains but also changed the life course of the Rockefeller family; and this has set an example to others of our millionaire dynasties—including the Armours and the Fords.