I wonder which is the more disagreeable phenomenon, sexual license or venal hypocrisy. It is a question I face when I read denunciations of the morals of radicals in capitalist newspapers. I have known men and women in a score of different worlds; I have talked with them and compared their sexual ethics, and I know that the newspaper people cannot afford to throw stones at the rest.
There are causes for this, of course. Their work is irregular and exhausting; they squeeze out the juices from their nerve-centers, they work under high pressure, in furious competition. Such men are apt to make immoderate use of tobacco and alcohol, and to take their pleasure where they find it. But this applies only to the rank and file in the newspaper world, to reporters and penny-a-liners; it does not apply to the big men at the top. These men have ease and security, and surely we might expect them to conform to the moral laws which they lay down for the rest of mankind!
I have in mind a certain editor. In this book where I am sparing no one, I should perhaps give his name; but I yield to human weakness, having been a guest at his home. Suffice it to say that this editor is one of America's very greatest, one to whom the masses of Americans look every day for enlightenment. This man wrote and published a most atrocious editorial concerning Herron's sexual morals. And what was his own sexual life at the time?
When the "Jungle" was published, this editor wrote to me that he had a friend who wished very much to meet me. I accepted, and went to dinner in a beautiful apartment in New York, luxuriously furnished, where I met a charming and cultured lady whom I will call Mrs. Smith. There were two lovely children, and there was Mr. Smith, a quiet, rather insignificant gentleman. I spent an enjoyable evening, and went away with no suspicion of anything unusual in the Smith family. But afterwards, when I mentioned the matter to others who knew this editor, I learned that the editor was the father of the children, and that Mr. Smith was maintained in luxury as a blind to cover the situation. I could hardly believe my ears; but I found that everybody who knew this editor intimately knew all about it, and that the editor made no secret of it among his friends. Later on, I came to know a certain brilliant and beautiful young suffrage leader, since deceased, who told me how she had
