Yesterday unknown, the author of “The Jungle” is today a familiar name on two continents. Paris, London and Berlin know him only less well than New York and Boston. They know about him even in far-off Australia. Forthwith came the man from the “Journal,” all but tearing his hair with excitement. What unspeakable treachery was this I had committed? Was it true that I had promised to write for the “World,” as well as for the “Journal”? I answered that it was, of course. “But,” said this man, “you gave me an exclusive contract.” “I gave you nothing of the sort,” I said, and pulled out the contract to prove it. “But,” said he, “you promised me personally that it would be an exclusive contract.” “I promised you nothing of the sort,” I said. “I never thought of such a thing.” But he argued and insisted—I must have known, my common-sense must have told me that my stories for them were of no value, if at the same time I was writing for their deadly rival. I was rather shocked at that statement. Were they entirely interested in a “scoop,” and not at all in the working girls of New York? “To hell with the working girls of New York!” said the Hearst reporter; whereat, of course, I was still more shocked. For three days this man from the “Journal” and other men from the “Journal” kept bombarding and besieging me; and I, poor devil, suffered agonies of embarrassment and distress, being sensitive, and not able to realize that this was an every-day matter to them—they were a pack of jackals trying to tear a carcase away from another pack of jackals. But when I stood by my contract with the “Evening World,” the “Journal” dropped its contract, and lost its interest, not merely in the working girls of New York, but also in the sins of the Chicago packers. The lobbyists of the packers had their way in Washington; the meat inspection bill was deprived of all its sharpest teeth, and in that form Roosevelt accepted it and prepared to let the subject drop. I was bitterly disappointed, the more so because he had made no move about the matter which lay nearest my heart. I had made a remark about “The Jungle” which was found amusing—that “I aimed at the public’s heart and by accident I hit it in the stomach.” It is a fact that I had not been nearly so interested in the “condemned meat industry” as in something else. To me the diseased meat graft had been only one of a hundred varieties of graft which I saw in that inferno of exploitation. My main concern had been for the fate of the workers, and I realized with bitterness that I had been made into a “celebrity,” not because the public cared anything about the sufferings of these workers, but simply because the public did not want to eat tubercular beef.