months; oldest, a boy of eight years. Baby "mothered" by girl of four. Father and mother work in stock-yards. Children had no shoes or stockings and flimsy underwear. No food in house except pot of weak coffee, loaf of rye bread and kettle containing mess of cabbage. But in the basement was a 'conservation' card, bearing the motto "Don't waste food."
I look back upon this campaign, to which I gave three years
of brain and soul-sweat, and ask what I really accomplished.
Old Nelson Morris died of a broken conscience. I took a few
millions away from him, and from the Armours and the
Swifts—giving them to the Junkers of East Prussia, and to
Paris bankers who were backing enterprises to pack meat in the
Argentine. I added a hundred thousand readers to "Everybody's
Magazine," and a considerable number to the "New
York Times." I made a fortune and a reputation for Doubleday,
Page and Company, which immediately became one of
the most conservative publishing-houses in America—using
"The Jungle" money to promote the educational works of
Andrew Carnegie, and the autobiography of John D. Rockefeller,
and the obscene ravings of the Reverend Thomas Dixon,
and the sociological bunkum of Gerald Stanley Lee. I took
my next novel to Doubleday, Page and Company, and old
Walter Page was enthusiastic for it and wanted to publish it;
but the shrewd young business-men saw that "The Metropolis"
was not going to be popular with the big trust companies and
insurance companies which fill up the advertising pages of the
"World's Work." They told me that "The Metropolis" was
not a novel, but a piece of propaganda; it was not "art." I
looked them in the eye and said: "You are announcing a new
novel by Thomas Dixon. Is that 'art'?"
Quite recently I tried them again with "King Coal," and they did not deny that "King Coal" was "art." But they said: "We think you had better find some publisher who is animated by a great faith." It is a phrase which I shall remember as long as I live; a perfect phrase, which any comment would spoil. I bought up the plates of "The Jungle," which Doubleday, Page and Company had allowed to go out of print—not being "animated by a great faith." I hope some time to issue the book in a cheap edition, and to keep it in circulation until the wage-slaves of the Beef Trust have risen and achieved their freedom. Meantime, it is still being read—and still being lied about. I have before me a clipping from a Seattle
