I had objected to Roosevelt that he was giving all his attention to the subject of meat-inspection, and none to the subject of labor-inspection. His answer was that he had power to remedy the former evils, but no power to remedy the latter. I tried to persuade him to agitate the question and obtain the power; but I tried in vain. “The Jungle” caused the whitewashing of some packing-house walls, and it furnished jobs for a dozen or two lady-manicurists, but it left the wage-slaves in those huge brick packing-boxes exactly where they were before. Ten years later the war broke out, and as these wage-slaves became restive, an investigation was made. Here are a few paragraphs describing the adventures of the Federal investigators: The first four homes brought expressions of horror from the women of the party, dark, insanitary, pest-ridden rooms and foodless kitchens. Mrs. Belbine Skupin. Working in the yards. The six Skupin children in their home at 4819 Laflin Street, hugging the stove and waiting for “mother to return.” “I didn’t think such things existed outside the books,” said one indignant young lady visitor, Miss Walsh. In one home, seven children found. Youngest, a baby of fourteen months; oldest, a boy of eight years. Baby “mothered” by girl of four. Father and mother work in stockyards. Children had no shoes or stockings and flimsy underwear. No food in house except pot of weak coffee, loaf of rye bread and kettle containing mess of cabbage. But in the basement was a ‘conservation’ card, bearing the motto “Don’t waste food.” I look back upon this campaign, to which I gave three years of brain and soul-sweat, and ask what I really accomplished. Old Nelson Morris died of a broken conscience. I took a few millions away from him, and from the Armours and the Swifts—giving them to the Junkers of East Prussia, and to Paris bankers who were backing enterprises to pack meat in the Argentine. I added a hundred thousand readers to “Everybody’s Magazine,” and a considerable number to the “New York Times.” I made a fortune and a reputation for Doubleday, Page and Company, which immediately became one of the most conservative publishing-houses in America—using “The Jungle” money to promote the educational works of Andrew Carnegie, and the autobiography of John D. Rockefeller, and the obscene ravings of the Reverend Thomas Dixon, and the sociological bunkum of Gerald Stanley Lee. I took my next novel to Doubleday, Page and Company, and old Walter Page was enthusiastic for it and wanted to publish it; but the shrewd young business-men saw that “The Metropolis” was not going to be popular with the big trust companies and insurance companies which fill up the advertising pages of the “World’s Work.” They told me that “The Metropolis” was not a novel, but a piece of propaganda; it was not “art.” I looked them in the eye and said: “You are announcing a new novel by Thomas Dixon. Is _that_ ‘art’?”