Page:The Brass Check (Sinclair 1919).djvu/42

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38
The Brass Check

has made? Or does it make this injurious charge against my book without investigation, trusting that its readers will accept its word, and that it will never be brought to book?

This is a fair question, is it not? The organs of armchair respectability ought not to make loose charges against radicals, they ought not condemn without knowledge. So I appeal to my beloved "Evening Post," which I have read six times per week for ten or twelve years; and the answer comes: "It is not our custom to permit authors to reply to book-reviews, and we see no reason for departing from our practice in order to permit you to advertise your book and to insult us." And so the matter rests, until a couple of months later, the President of the United States makes an investigation, and his commission issues a report which vindicates every charge I have made. And now what? Does the "Evening Post" apologize to me? Does it do anything to make clear to its readers that it has erred in its sneers at "The Jungle"? The "Evening Post" says not one word; but it still continues to tell the public that I am unworthy of confidence, because I once played a harmless joke with "The Journal of Arthur Stirling"!