I went home that evening feeling more sick at heart than I like to remember. And sure enough, my worst fears were justified. Week after week passed, and my Open Letter to Lincoln Steffens did not appear in the columns of “Collier’s Weekly.” I wrote and protested, and was met with evasions; a long time afterwards, I forget how long, “Collier’s” graciously condescended to give me back the article, without asking the return of the two hundred dollars they had paid me. The article was rejected by many other capitalist magazines, and was finally published in some Socialist paper, I forget which.
Such is the picture of a magazine “run on a personal basis.” And see what it means to you, the reader, who depend upon such a magazine for the thoughts you think. Here is Lincoln Steffens, taking his place as America’s leading authority on the subject of political graft; and here am I, making what Steffens declares is the best criticism of his work. It is accepted and paid for, and a date is set to give it to you, the reader; but an ignorant and childish old pack-peddler steps in, and with one wave of his hand sweeps it out of your sight. Sixteen years have passed, and only now you hear about it—and most of you don’t hear about it even now!
But here is a vital point to get clear. The old pack-peddler wiped out my discussion of the question, but he did not wipe out the question. Today the question is cried aloud from the throats of a hundred and eighty million people in Russia, and the clamor of it spreads all over Europe, a deafening roar which drowns out the eloquence of statesmen and diplomats. It is the question of the hour in America, and America must find the answer under penalty of civil war. Sixteen years ago the answer was given to Robert Collier, and if he had had the courage to stand out against his father, if Norman Hapgood had been what he pretended to be, an editor, they would have taken up the truth which I put before them, they would have conducted a campaign to make the American people see it—and today we should not be trying to solve the social problem by putting the leaders of the people’s protest into jail.
CHAPTER IV
THE REAL FIGHT
There was a strike of the wage-slaves of the Beef Trust in Chicago, and I wrote for the “Appeal to Reason” a broadside addressed to these strikers, trying to point out to them the truth which Peter Collier had concealed from his precious half million subscribers. This broadside was taken up by the Socialists of the Stockyards district, and thirty thousand copies were distributed among the defeated strikers. The “Appeal to Reason” offered me five hundred dollars to live on while I wrote a novel dealing with the life of those wage-slaves of the Beef Trust; so I went to Packingtown, and lived for seven weeks among the workers, and came home again and wrote “The Jungle.”
Now so far the things that had been done to me by the world of American Journalism had been of a mocking nature. I had been a sort of “guy”; a young poet—very young—who believed that he had “genius,” and kept making a noise about it. So I was pigeon-holed with long-haired violinists from abroad, and painters with fancy-colored vests, and woman suffragists with short hair, and religious prophets in purple robes. All such things are lumped together by newspapers, which are good-naturedly tolerant of their fellow fakers. The public likes to be amused, and “genius” is one of the things that amuse it: such is the attitude of a world which understands that money is the one thing in life really worth while, the making of money the one object of grown-up and serious-minded men.
But from now on you will see that there enters into my story a new note. The element of horse-play goes out, and something grim takes its place. And what is the reason for this change? Was there any change in me? Did I suddenly become dissipated, dishonest, self-seeking? No, there was no change in me; I was the same person, living the same life. But I ceased to oppose social wickedness with the fragile weapon of poetry, with visions and inspirations and consecrations; instead, I took a sharp sword of contemporary fact, and thrust it into the vitals of one of those monstrous parasites which are sucking the life-blood of the American people. That was the difference; and if from now on you find in this story a note of fierce revolt, please understand that you are listening to a man who for fourteen years had been in a battle, and has seen his cause suffering daily wounds from a cruel and treacherous foe.
My first experience, it happened, was with “Collier’s Weekly.” But it was not a dinner-party experience this time, there was no element of friendliness or sociability in it.
“The Jungle” was appearing serially, and was causing a tremendous lot of discussion; it occurred to me that it might be possible to persuade “Collier’s” to take up the matter, so I wrote an article, telling quite simply some of the things that were going on in the packing-houses of Chicago. I had been there, and had seen—and not as a blundering amateur, as the packers charged. It happened that I had met in Chicago an Englishman, Mr. Adolph Smith, the world’s greatest authority on packing-houses. He had studied methods of meat-packing all over Great Britain, and all over the continent of Europe, for the “London Lancet,” the leading medical paper of Great Britain. He had come, as authorized representative of the “Lancet,” to investigate conditions in America. I had his backing in what I wrote; I also had the backing of various State and Federal authorities; I had the text of the Federal meat-inspection law, which had been written by the packers to enable them to sell diseased meat with impunity.
I took all these facts to Norman Hapgood and Robert Collier. I offered them the opportunity to reap the fame and profit which I subsequently reaped from the book-publication of “The Jungle,” and incidentally to do a great public service. They were interested, but not convinced, and they employed a United States army-officer, Major Louis L. Seaman, who went out to Chicago and accepted the hospitality of the packers, and reported that all my charges were exaggerated, and most of them entirely false. And Collier and Hapgood accepted Major Seaman’s word against my word and the authorities I offered.