Page:The Brass Check (Sinclair 1919).djvu/54

 CHAPTER VIII

THE LAST ACT

I am telling this story chronologically, but in dealing with a subject like "The Jungle" it seems better to skip ahead and close the matter up. There was a last act of this Packingtown drama, about which the public has never heard. The limelight had been turned out, the audience had gone home, and this act was played in darkness and silence.

A year had passed and I was living at Point Pleasant, New Jersey, when W. W. Harris, editor of the Sunday magazine-section of the "New York Herald," came to call on me, and explained a wonderful idea. He wanted me to go to Chicago secretly, as I had gone before, and make another investigation in the Stockyards, and write for the "New York Herald" an article entitled "Packingtown a Year Later."

He was a young editor, full of enthusiasm. He said: "Mr. Sinclair, I know enough about the business-game to feel quite sure that all the reforms we read about are fakes. What do you think?"

I answered, "I know they are fakes, because not a week passes that I don't get a letter from some of the men in Packingtown, telling me that things are as bad as ever." And I showed him a letter, one sentence of which I recall: "The new coat of whitewash has worn off the filthy old walls, and the only thing left is the row of girls who manicure the nails of those who pack the sliced dried beef in front of the eyes of the visitors!"

"Exactly!" said the editor. "It will make the biggest newspaper story the 'Herald' has ever published."

"Possibly," said I. "But are you sure the 'Herald' will publish it?"

"No worry about that," said he. "I am the man who has the say."

"But where is Bennett?"

"Bennett is in Bermuda."

"Well," said I, "do you imagine you could sign a contract