The Daily Worker Newspaper, February 12, 1927, Page 5

‘Toe New Macazine Section of THE DAILY WORKER Second Section: This Magazine Section Appears Every Saturday in The DAILY WORKER. SATURDAY, FEBRUARY 12, 1927 The Aftermath of “The Jungle” This is a chapter from a book on the life of Upton Sinclair, by Floyd Dell, which will be published on May 29th of this year.—ED. N 1905 there began to appear, in a socialist week- ly, the Appeal to Reason, published in Girard, Kansas, a novel of the Chicago stockyards, by an almost altogether unknown writer: The Jungle, by Upton Sinclair. I can remember, as a boy of eighteen, reading in my Appeal that first chapter describing the wedding party of Jurgis and Ona, and my delight in the rich, full-blooded humanity of that scene. It was the happy prelude to what was to be, as week after week the ‘story unrolled itself, a tragic panorama of working-class life, true, terrible, and magnificent. . . . The story was simple enough; it related the for- tunes of a group of immigrants who lived and worked in the stockyards district—their struggle to get ahead, to own a home, to bring up their chil- dren decently, while all the time they are brutally exploited, preyed upon, robbed, outraged, by the unserupulous forees which find in their poverty and ignorance and helplessness more opportunities for enrichment. The group is crushed, one by one, in the struggle; old men are thrown on the scrap-heap to starve, the women are drawn into prostitution to keep body and soul together, the children die; Jurgis himself goes to prison for smashing the face of a brutal boss, and when«he comes out his little world had been destroyed as if by an earthquake— and he is left to wander, getting wisdom as he wanders, and coming at last to believe in a socialist reconstruction of this hideous world. At every point the story is enriched by the most vivid and relent- less realistic detail; one is immersed in the filth and stench and cruelty of the stockyards, and one feels the sublime human aspirations which even there burn unquenchably in humble hearts. For a while the knowledge that a great new novelist had appeared in America was almost con- fined to the’ readers of that socialist weekly—no small audience, however, for the “Appeal army” of enthusiastic subscription-getters had drummed up half a million readers for that publication. The first public, therefore, of this astonishing novel, was of farmers resting in stocking feet beside the stove of winter evenings, and of discontented workingmen in a thousand cities and towns—an audience which, whether rural or urban, understood the truths of human suffering which it so vividly portrayed. That was its first success—its recognition and acclaim by a proletarian audience. Then came recognition by. fellow-writers, who heard of this strange and pow- erful novel being published in a socialist weekly, and sent for back numbers. David Graham Phillips wrote to the author: “I never expected to read a serial. I am reading “The Jungle” and I should be afraid to trust myself to tell how it affects me. It is a great work. I have a feeling that you your- self will be dazed some day by the excitement about it. It is impossible that such a power should not be felt. It is so simple, so true, ‘so tragic, and so human. It is so eloquent, and yet so exact.” And, of course, Jack London, his comrade in the socialist movement, did not fail to acclaim this achievement. “The Uncle Tom’s Cabin of wage slavery,” he called it; and with that legend on the jacket and in the advertisements it was brought before the general American public in book form in 1906, It was an immediate and enormous success. It became a “best- seller” in America, England and the British col- onies. It was translated into seventeen languages, and the world became aware that industrial America in its toil, its misery and its hope had found ~ voice. 2. € But the literary sensation in America had already zome secondary to the -shock of its readers in learning of the conditions under which their meats were prepared in Packington, not as affecting the workers but as affecting their own health—for the story dealt incidentally with the of condemned meat. The author later remarked that he had aimed at the public’s heart and by accident had hit it in the stomach. His deepest concern had been with the'Yate of the workers, and he realized with bitter- ness that he had beeome a celebrity not because the public cared anything about the workers but be. cause it-did not want to eat diseased meat. The publie was more or less prepared for such ch ves against the packers, on account of the “em- balmed beef” scandal during the Spanish-American war. President Roosevelt, responding to a wide- spread popular demand, sent a commission to Chi- cago to make>an investigation of conditions in Packingtown. This commission was assisted, at Mr. Sinclair’s expense, by Ella Reeves Bloor, who had been familiar with conditions there and had helped him in his s:ven weeks’ investigation preliminary to the writing of the novel; and the researches of this commission appear to have confirmed the chief charges made in the book. The young novelist accepted, as a socialist, the opportunity which this situation provided for agita- tion. But the packers, and large business interests in general, were aroused, and all their power and influence was used to keep this agitation from Yeaching the public, and to represent the young agitator as an irresponsible sensation-monger. He set up a publicity bureau, worked twenty hours a day, wrote articles, sent telegrams, and gave in- terviews to roomfuls of reporters; but so thorough- ly had the newspapers been mobilized by the busi- ness interests as a medium of defense that the pub- licity he actually achieved for the workers’ cause DUTCH INDIES RISES. * Dutch Indian Capitalist: “Police! Soldiers! Help! Help!” —De Notenkraker, Amsterdam. ‘was slight; and on the other hand, his own reputa- tion, in genteel literary and critical circles, and among the public at large, was seriously damaged. In the course of these efforts, President Roosevelt said to him: “Mr. Sinclair, I have been in public life longer than you, and I will give you this bit of advice; if you pay any attention to what the newspapers say about you, you will have an un- happy time.” He might have taken this as a warn- ing that his temperament was not suited to public life, for he could not get used to being lied about in the newspapers; but he persisted in his efforts, and he did have a very “unhappy time.” Nothing in particular was done about the workers’ conditions. Even. the president’s meat-inspection law, as finally passed, had, in the opinion of those behind it, had all its teeth drawn first. Sinclair con- tinued his attempt to agitate the question, but the public had been reassured, and the effort was fu- tile. In The Brass Check, where the complete story of this period is told vividly, he says: “I look back upon this campaign, to which I gave three years of brain and soul sweat, and ask what I really accomplished.” He had taken, he says, a few million dollars away from the Chicago packers, “giving them to the Junkers of East Prussia, and to the Paris bankers who were backing enterprises to pack meat in the Argentine.” He had added a hundred thousand readers to the circulation of a popular magazine, which speedily repudiated its early muck-raking habits and became a defender of big business. And he has made a fortune for his publishers, who immediately became conserva- ALEX BITTELMAN, Editor By FLOYD DELL tive and devoted their profits from “The Jungle” to promote a kind of writing hostile to everything in which he believed. . 3. “The Jungle” was in fact the climax of a literary movement in America which had aroused the fear and anger of large business interests. The great middle-class reform movement, marked in the poli- tical field by the careers of Bryan, Roosevelt and the earlier Wilson, had produced an audience sym- pathetic to the telling of unpleasant truths about American political and business conditions. In the magazine field this was called “muck-raking”; there were sensational revelations of the inside workings of Wall street by Tom Lawson, of municipal cor- ruption by Lincoln Steffens, of Standard Oil history by Ida M. Tarbell, of Beef Trust finance by Ray Stannard Baker. In the fictional field there was a corresponding literature, written by such men as Robert Herrick, Frank Norris and David Graham Phillips. This literature had its social revolutionary fringe; Jack London was an avowed revolutionist, and such socialist critics of society as W. J. Ghent, John Spargo, Robert Hunter, Charles Edward Rus- sell and William English Walling, had a wide hear- ing. A professor named Thorstein Veblen had writ- ten a devastating book called “The Theory of the - Leisure Class,” and phrases from it had passed into general intellectual currency. These conditions were sufficiently alarming, in a country where every year, mm one great industry or another, there was a bitter struggle between employers and men, in which bullets were the decisive factor. And now a@ young man, by writing a book, had put a great industry on the defensive before the whole public, It was necessary to tighten the grip of business upon the intellectual world. The newspapers were already well in hand; but there was a group of free magazines which were making money out of “muck-raking”—the very center of the intellectual rebellion. Big business struck at this group of free magazines, effectively, through the medium of ad- vertising. The magazine policies were changed, Writers were called off from investigations of in- dustrial conditions. An immense campaign of op- timism was begun, and a cheerful outlook upon American ‘industrial conditions was preached and made synonymous with patriotism. The writers for the most part changed with the times, and adapted their views to the new editorial demand; the others were silenced or discouraged. A few prominent radical journalists, unable to tell the truth any longer in the magazines, bought one of their own; but they, too, presently succumbed to the spirit of the times. Sinclair quotes, in “The Brass Check,” the titles of some representative articles from a recent issue of that once-daring magazine: “How We Decide When To Raise a Man’s Salary,” “The Comie Side of Trouble,” “Interesting People: A Wonderful Young Private Secretary,” “From Prize- Fighter To Parson.” : The public, deprived of the intellectual stimulant of unpleasant truth before it had quite got used to it, was easily trained in more cheerful tastes. Those writers who sought to revive the art of muck- raking found themselves with an indifferent au- dience. “People aren’t interested in that sort of thing any more.” While as for fiction, the old gen- teel tradition reasserted itself, the standard of non- controversiality became identical with the standard ‘of decency, and any author who dared to violate this standard ren the risk of finding himself re- moved in critical esteem beyond the pale of literary respectability. - The measure of the wrath of the masters of America and the docility of its intellectual class during this period may be taken from the Gorky incident, which happened in the spring of 1906, co- incident with the Jungle agitation. The great Rus- sian novelist, Maxim Gorky, had come to America ‘to raise funds for the cause of Russian freedom- a cause long since made popular among even the respectable American intelligentsia by the writings of the American journalist, George Kennan. A great welcome was prepared for him. But it hap- pened that two radical union leaders, Moyer and Haywood, were on trial for their lives in a western state in the. course of an industrial war bétween the miners and the coal barons. Their cause had been espoused by the socialists, who now asked Gorky ‘to sign a telegram of sympathy to Moyer and Haywood. He did so. A White House recep- tion to Gorky was immediately canceled, And then (Continued on page 7) .