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.

That was all right; I had no complaint against that; they used their editorial judgment. My complaint was of the way they handled the story. In their preliminary announcement (April 15, 1905) they said:

Some very brilliant articles have been sent us about the unhygienic
methods of the Beef Trust. In order not to run any risk of wronging
that organization we engaged Major Seaman to go to Chicago, and his
first report will appear next week.

So, you see, they were going to give an illustration of editorial fairness, of scrupulous regard for exact truth; and having thus prepared their readers, on April 22, 1905, they presented their material—a long article by Major Seaman, praising the Chicago Stockyards, and pretending to refute all my charges. At the same time they published only three paragraphs of my charges—the great bulk of my articles they left unpublished! They gave their readers a few paragraphs from the “London Lancet,” but so far as concerned me, the readers got only the answers of Major Seaman, and an introductory editorial condemnation of me, explaining that I had submitted my articles to the editors, and they, “desirous of securing the unexaggerated facts,” had sent Major Seaman to Chicago, and now gave his findings.

And this not being enough, they added a discussion of the matter on their editorial page. This editorial they headed, “Sensationalism”; and they subtly phrased it to give the impression that the paragraphs they were publishing constituted all I had to say: “Mr. Sinclair’s article, published alone, would have produced much more of a sensation than it will produce as mitigated, by the report of Major Seaman.... Having some doubt, however, about the real facts, we induced Major Seaman to make the trip to Chicago. This incident will serve as an example of the policy mapped out for the conduct of this paper.”

How dignified and impressive! And how utterly and unspeakably knavish! And when I wrote to them and protested, they evaded. When I demanded that they publish my entire article, they refused. When I demanded that they publish my letter of protest, they refused that. And this was done by Norman Hapgood, who posed as a liberal, a lover of justice; a man who spent his editorial time balancing like a tight-rope walker on the narrow thread of truth, occupying himself like a mediaeval schoolman with finding the precise mathematical or metaphysical dead centre between the contending forces of conservatism and radicalism. A friend of mine talked with him about his treatment of me and reported him as saying, with a smile: “We backed the wrong horse.” The truth was, he had backed the horse of gold, the horse that came to his office loaded down with full-page advertisements of packing-house products.

“Collier’s” calls itself “The National Weekly,” and has obtained a reputation as a liberal organ, upon the strength of several useful campaigns. It attacked spiritualist fakers and land-fraud grafters; also it attacked dishonest medical advertising. It could do this, having arrived at the stage of security where it counts upon full-page advertisements of automobiles and packing-house products. But when it was a question of attacking packing-house advertisements—then what a difference!

Robert J. Collier was a gentleman and a “good fellow”; but he was a child of his world, and his world was a rotten one, a “second generation” of idle rich spendthrifts. The running of his magazine “on a personal basis” amounted to this: a young writer would catch the public fancy, and Robbie would send for him, as he sent for me; if he proved to be a possible person—that is, if he came to dinner in a dress-suit, and didn’t discuss the socialization of “Collier’s Weekly”—Robbie would take him up and introduce him to his “set,” and the young writer would have a perpetual market for his stories at a thousand dollars per story; he would be invited to country-house parties, he would motor and play golf and polo, and flirt with elegant young society ladies, and spend his afternoons loafing in the Hoffman House bar. I could name not one but a dozen young writers and illustrators to whom I have seen that happen. In the beginning they wrote about America, in the end they wrote about the “smart set” of Fifth Avenue and Long Island. In their personal life they became tipplers and café celebrities; in their intellectual life they became bitter cynics; into their writings you saw creeping year by year the subtle poison of sexual excess—until at last they became too far gone for “Collier’s” to tolerate any longer, and went over to the “Cosmopolitan,” which takes them no matter how far gone they are.

And now young Collier is dead, and the magazine to which for a time he gave his generous spirit has become an instrument of reaction pure and simple. It opposed and ridiculed President Wilson’s peace policies; it called the world to war against the working-class of Russia; it is now calling for repression of all social protest in America; in short, it is an American capitalist magazine. As I write, word comes that it has been taken over by the Crowell Publishing Company, publishers of the “Woman’s Home Companion,” “Farm and Fireside,” and the “American Magazine.” I shall have something to the point to say about this group of publications very soon.

P. S.—A well known journalist writes me that he feels I do an
injustice to Norman Hapgood in telling the above story, and in failing
to give credit to Hapgood for other fine things he has done. The
writer brings facts, and I am always ready to give place to the man
with facts. I quote his letter:

“Do you know the circumstances of Hapgood’s break with Collier?
Hapgood was the highest paid editor of any periodical in the country.
The business side was encroaching on the editorial—demanding that
advertising be not jeopardized, and with it the commissions that were
its part. Collier, as you know, for years had mixed his whiskey with
chorus girls, and needed all the property could milk to supply his
erratic needs. So the business office had his ear. And Hapgood
left—and made his leaving effective. He took Harper’s and gave the
country some of the most important exposés it had. Do you know the
story of the Powder Trust treason? I wrote it. It was drawn from
official records, and could not be contradicted, that the Powder Trust
had once made a contract with a German military powder firm—in the
days when military smokeless powder was the goal of every
government—to keep it informed as to the quantity, quality, etc., of
the smokeless powder it furnished to our government. And this was in
the days when we were in the lead in that department. The Powder Trust
jumped Hapgood hard. He could have had anything he wanted by making a
simple disavowal of me, any loophole they would have accepted—and do
you have any doubt that he could have named his own terms? He declined
point blank, and threw the challenge to the heaviest and most
important client his weekly could have had. That he guessed wrong and
‘backed the wrong horse’ in the ‘Jungle’ may be true. But isn’t it
fair to assume, in the light of his final challenge to the Collier
advertising autocracy, that he was meeting problems inside as best he
could—and that he could not tell you at the time of all the factors
involved in the Collier handling of the stockyards story?”