Page:The Brass Check (Sinclair 1919).djvu/56

 *graphs of the scenes described. There was a conference of the editorial staff of the "Herald," which agreed that the story was the greatest the paper had ever had in its history. It must be read by Mr. Bennett, the staff decided. So it was mailed to Bermuda—which was the last ever seen or heard of it!

Week after week I waited for the story to appear. When I learned that it was not to appear I was, of course, somewhat irritated. I threatened to sue the "Herald" for payment for the time I had spent writing the introduction, but I found myself confronting this dilemma: the enthusiastic young editor was a Socialist, and if I made trouble, he was the one who would be hurt. So I decided to forego my money-claim on the "Herald." But I would not give up the story—that was a public matter. The public had been fooled into believing that there had been reforms in Packingtown; the public was continuing to eat tubercular beef-steaks, and I was bound that somehow or other the public should get the facts. I wrote up the story and submitted it to other newspapers in New York. Not one would touch it. I submitted it to President Roosevelt, and he replied that he was sorry, but was too busy to take the matter up. "Teddy" was a shrewd politician, and knew how hard it is to warm up dead ashes, how little flavor there is in re-cooked food.

I knew, of course, that I could publish the story in the Socialist papers. That has always been my last recourse. But I wanted this story to reach the general public; I was blindly determined about it. There was a big Socialist meeting at the Hippodrome in New York, and I went up to the city and asked for fifteen minutes at this meeting. I told the story to an audience of five or six thousand people, and with reporters from every New York paper in front of me. Not a single New York paper, except the Socialist paper, mentioned the matter next morning.

But still I would not give up. I said: "This is a Chicago story. If I tell it in Chicago, public excitement may force it into the press." So I telegraphed some of my friends in Chicago. I planned the most dramatic thing I could think of—I asked them to get me a meeting in the Stockyards district, and they answered that they would.

Mind you, a little over a year before I had put Packingtown on the map of the world; I had made Packingtown and