The book shows how men graft everywhere, not only in the packing house, but how the slime of the serpent is over almost all of our modern commercial and political practises.
No one can justly hold the meat kings responsible for all of this.
Nothing less than a thorough reconstruction of our whole social organism will suffice. Palliative philanthropy is, as the author says, "like standing upon the brink of the pit of hell and throwing snow balls in to lower the temperature."
"The Jungle" is the boiling over of our social volcano and shows us what is in it. It is a danger signal!
We are all indicted and must stand our trial. There rests upon us the obligation to ascertain the facts. The author of "The Jungle" lived in Packingtown for months, and the eminently respectable publishers who are now issuing the book sent a shrewd lawyer to Chicago to report as to whether the statements in it were exaggerated, and his report confirmed the assertions of the author.
This book is a call to immediate action.
The Lithuanian hero found his solution of the problems suggested in Socialism. The solution lies either in that direction or in something better, and it behooves those who warn us against Socialistic experiments to tell us if they know of any other effective remedy. Surely all thoughtful men should study these theories of social redemption and learn why their advocates claim that putting them in practice would modify or abolish the evils of our modern conditions.
"The masters, lords and rulers of all lands," the thinkers and workers of our time must speedily give themselves to the understanding and application of some adequate remedy, or there will be blood, woe and tears almost without end, "when this dumb terror shall reply to God, after the silence of the centuries."
FOOTNOTE:
[2] Genuine or not genuine: we live right now in a democracy. If, in spite of that, such diabolical crimes as Sinclair describes them are committed daily, then this only proves that democracy is no panacea for them. Why should it, if criminals of the Armour kind realize profits out of their wholesale poisoning of such dimensions that they can easily buy all the glory of the people's sovereignty.—Editor.