Or take another case. Twelve years ago the writer made an effort to interest the American people in the conditions of labor in their packing-plants. It happened that incidentally I gave some facts about the bedevilment of the public's meat-supply, and the public really did care about that. As I phrased it at the time, I aimed at the public's heart, and by accident I hit it in the stomach. There was a terrible clamor, and Congress was forced to pass a bill to remedy the evils. As a matter of fact this bill was a farce, but the public was satisfied, and soon forgot the matter entirely. The point to be noted here is that so far as concerned the atrocious miseries of the working-people, it was not necessary even to pretend to do anything. The slaves of Packingtown went on living and working as they were described as doing in "The Jungle", and nobody gave a further thought to them. Only the other day I read in my paper--while we are all making sacrifices in a "War for Democracy"--that Armour and Company had paid a dividend of twenty-one per cent, and Swift and Company a dividend of thirty-five per cent. This prosperity they owe in good part to their clerical camouflage. Listen to our pious "Outlook", engaged in countermining "The Jungle". The "Outlook" has no doubt that there are genuine evils in the packing-plants; the conditions of the workers ought of course to be improved; BUT-- To disgust the reader by dragging him through every conceivable horror, physical and moral, to depict with lurid excitement and with offensive minuteness the life in jail and brothel--all this is to overreach the object.... Even things actually terrible may become distorted when a writer screams them out in a sensational way and in a high pitched key.... More convincing if it were less hysterical. Don't you see what these clerical crooks are for? #The Jungle#