The Brass Check: A Study of American Journalism

by Upton Sinclair, Robert W. McChesney (Introduction), Ben Scott (Introduction)

States that American journalism is a class institution serving the rich and spurning the poor. This title likens journalists to prostitutes and the title of the book refers to a chit that was issued to patrons of urban brothels of the era. It presents a critique of the structural basis of US media.

Genres: Nonfiction, History, Journalism, Politics, Business, Writing, Unfinished

480 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1919

About the author

Upton Beall Sinclair, Jr. was an American author who wrote close to one hundred books in many genres. He achieved popularity in the first half of the twentieth century, acquiring particular fame for his classic muckraking novel, The Jungle (1906). To gather information for the novel, Sinclair spent seven weeks undercover working in the meat packing plants of Chicago. These direct experiences exposed the horrific conditions in the U.S. meat packing industry, causing a public uproar that contributed in part to the passage a few months later of the 1906 Pure Food and Drug Act and the Meat Inspection Act. The Jungle has remained continuously in print since its initial publication. In 1919, he published The Brass Check, a muckraking exposé of American journalism that publicized the issue of yellow journalism and the limitations of the “free press” in the United States. Four years after the initial publication of The Brass Check, the first code of ethics for journalists was created. Time magazine called him "a man with every gift except humor and silence." In 1943, he won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction.

Sinclair also ran unsuccessfully for Congress as a Socialist, and was the Democratic Party nominee for Governor of California in 1934, though his highly progressive campaign was defeated.

Reviews

[Ryan Holiday · Rating 5 out of 5]

You probably don't know this, but in 1920 Upton Sinclair self-published arguably the first ever structural criticism of the corrupt and broken press system in America. Not only did he self-publish it-at the height of his fame no less-but he refused to copyright it, hoping to pass through the complete media blacklist a book like this faced. It went on to sell more than 150,000 copies its first year. Take that, Cory Doctorow! Though the book has been almost entirely forgotten by history, it's not only fascinating but a timeless perspective. Sinclair deeply understood the economic incentives of early 20th century journalism and thus could predict and analyze the manipulative effect it had on The Truth. Today, those incentives and pressures are different but they warp our information in a similar way. In almost every substantial charge he leveled against the yellow press, you could, today, sub in blogs and the cable news cycle and be even more correct. In fact, the reason that most newspapers could escape this criticism is that over the last 50 years they have instituted many of the important changes he asked for.

[Jim · Rating 1 out of 5]

I'm actually editing the WikiSource version of this. It's not online yet, so this will take a while.
http://en.wikisource.org

Editing an OCR document & reading the contents at the same time is not a great way to really comprehend the finer points or total thrust of a book, but from what I've seen so far, there is no real need. Sinclair is just whining about how unfair life is. It's actually nauseating. He starts out in "The Story of a Poet" writing his experiences in the third person then switches to the first person in the third chapter in an attempt to make his case more palatable & sympathetic. Major fail!

No, being an author isn't easy. Yes, it's based on popularity or rather what editors see as being popular. Is it right or fair? Sure. They're in business to make money, not to support whiny authors that are out of step with their readership. Especially not when the author has half-baked ideals of extreme social change & are constantly pushing an agenda that few can stomach much less believe in. Some preachers can get by with uncompromising denunciations from their supposed high moral ground, but not unsupported radicals. They're generally ignored or made jeered at on a slow news day. This is exactly what happened & what Sinclair is whining about. No one takes him seriously, even though he spends all summer in a cabin in Canada writing his heart out. Go figure.

I got maybe 1/3 of the way through & just couldn't keep my interest up. Life isn't fair, but whining about it hysterically doesn't help. Grow up!
:(

[Corbin Routier · Rating 5 out of 5]

"... ideas, the most priceless possession of mankind, were made the subject of barter and sale."
-Upton Sinclair

"It is the thesis of this book that American newspaper as a whole represent private interests and not public interests."
-Upton Sinclair

Upton Sinclair starts his book with an interesting storyline: that newspapers wouldn't touch "The Jungle" because of their reliance on money from advertisements, which could be pulled in retaliation if they supported Upton Sinclair. They ridiculed his work and said it was unfounded. After the rights to the book were bought, they then advertised "The Jungle" as glorious work because they realized it had power. The rest of the book uses this as a stepping stone to a larger picture.

"Financially speaking, our big business newspapers and popular magazines are today more dependent upon their advertisers than they are upon their readers; it is not a cynicism, but the statement of a business fact, that a newspaper or popular magazine is a device for submitting competitive advertising to the public,, the reading-matter being bait to bring the public to the hook."
-Upton Sinclair

This book was written over one hundred years ago and is interesting to compare his observations of then to the realities of now.

[Rhonda · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book, written by one of the more well-known muckrakers, is an expose of journalism. It's pretty relevant to the 21st century as well.

[Dr.J.G. · Rating 4 out of 5]

The press in US then was controlled by various interests and Upton Sinclair found it difficult to publish his work since it was reportage with all his sincerity, no hiding or whitewashing in interest of the paymasters - and as he went on publishing he was hounded by mainstream press and publications, so he wrote about them, and called it Brass Check, something members of another profession were forced to carry once upon a time.

Feb 05, 2016
..........

Upton Sinclair writes, to begin with, about his own experiences dealing with the world of newspapers and publishers, editors and so on.

"Two newspapers paid attention to his communication—the “New York Times,” a respectable paper, and the “New York American,” a “yellow” paper. The “American” sent a woman reporter, an agreeable and friendly young lady, to whom the author poured out his soul. She asked for his picture, saying that this would enable her to get much more space for the story; so the author gave his picture. She asked for his wife’s picture; but here the author was obdurate. He had old-fashioned Southern notions about “newspaper notoriety” for ladies; he did not want his wife’s picture in the papers. There stood a little picture of his wife on the table where the interview took place, and after the reporter had left, it was noticed that this picture was missing. Next day the picture was published in the “New York American,” and has been published in the “New York American” every year or two since. The author, meantime, has divorced his first wife and married a second wife—a fact of which the newspapers are fully aware; yet they publish this picture of the first wife indifferently as a picture of the first wife and of the second wife. When one of these ladies says or does a certain thing, the other lady may open her paper in the morning and receive a shock!

"Meantime he was existing by hack-work, and exploring the world in which ideas are bought and sold. He was having jokes and plots of stories stolen; he was having agreements broken and promises repudiated; he was trying to write worth-while material, and being told that it would not sell; he was trying to become a book-reviewer, and finding that the only way to succeed was to be a cheat. The editor of the “Independent” or the “Literary Digest” would give him half a dozen books to read, and he would read them, and write an honest review, saying that there was very little merit in any of them: whereupon, the editor would decide that it was not worth while to review the books, and the author would get nothing for his work. If, on the other hand, he wrote an article about a book, taking it seriously, and describing it as vital and important, the editor would conclude that the book was worth reviewing, and would publish the review, and pay the author three or four dollars for it."

Upton Sinclair wrote to Lincoln Steffens and the latter sent his letter for publication to McClure's Weekly, in vain; Collier's Weekly accepted it and the publisher met the author, and invited him for dinner at home to meet the editor Norman Hapgood and other writers, but publisher's father, the owner, nixed the publication. Hapgood claimed later that while he had no memory of the said incident, the owner never meddle with the publication's editorial decisions by him or by the publisher.
...........

"I was pigeon-holed with long-haired violinists from abroad, and painters with fancy-colored vests, and woman suffragists with short hair, and religious prophets in purple robes. All such things are lumped together by newspapers, which are good-naturedly tolerant of their fellow fakers."

The author is talking here about writing, and publication, of his most famous work, "The Jungle".

"The public likes to be amused, and “genius” is one of the things that amuse it: such is the attitude of a world which understands that money is the one thing in life really worth while, the making of money the one object of grown-up and serious-minded men."

But The Jungle was serious, and its being published far more so, no longer amusing to serious moneymaking.

"But from now on you will see that there enters into my story a new note. The element of horse-play goes out, and something grim takes its place."

Collier's played dirty by sending someone who accepted the hospitality of the packers and reported that Sinclair's charges were false or exaggerated, and they published this along with three paragraphs of lesser importance out of the article given by Sinclair which was backed by report of someone sent from London to investigate matters in Chicago after writing about meat industry in UK.

"Robert J. Collier was a gentleman and a “good fellow”; but he was a child of his world, and his world was a rotten one, a “second generation” of idle rich spendthrifts. The running of his magazine “on a personal basis” amounted to this: a young writer would catch the public fancy, and Robbie would send for him, as he sent for me; if he proved to be a possible person—that is, if he came to dinner in a dress-suit, and didn’t discuss the socialization of “Collier’s Weekly”—Robbie would take him up and introduce him to his “set,” and the young writer would have a perpetual market for his stories at a thousand dollars per story; he would be invited to country-house parties, he would motor and play golf and polo, and flirt with elegant young society ladies, and spend his afternoons loafing in the Hoffman House bar. I could name not one but a dozen young writers and illustrators to whom I have seen that happen. In the beginning they wrote about America, in the end they wrote about the “smart set” of Fifth Avenue and Long Island. In their personal life they became tipplers and cafe celebrities; in their intellectual life they became bitter cynics; into their writings you saw creeping year by year the subtle poison of sexual excess—until at last they became too far gone for “Collier’s” to tolerate any longer, and went over to the “Cosmopolitan,” which takes them no matter how far gone they are."

"And now young Collier is dead, and the magazine to which for a time he gave his generous spirit has become an instrument of reaction pure and simple. It opposed and ridiculed President Wilson’s peace policies; it called the world to war against the working-class of Russia; it is now calling for repression of all social protest in America; in short, it is an American capitalist magazine. As I write, word comes that it has been taken over by the Crowell Publishing Company, publishers of the “Woman’s Home Companion,” “Farm and Fireside,” and the “American Magazine.”"

The author gives a letter by a fellow writer.

"“Do you know the circumstances of Hapgood’s break with Collier? Hapgood was the highest paid editor of any periodical in the country. The business side was encroaching on the editorial—demanding that advertising be not jeopardized, and with it the commissions that were its part. Collier, as you know, for years had mixed his whiskey with chorus girls, and needed all the property could milk to supply his erratic needs. So the business office had his ear. And Hapgood left—and made his leaving effective. He took Harper’s and gave the country some of the most important exposes it had. Do you know the story of the Powder Trust treason? I wrote it. It was drawn from official records, and could not be contradicted, that the Powder Trust had once made a contract with a German military powder firm—in the days when military smokeless powder was the goal of every government—to keep it informed as to the quantity, quality, etc., of the smokeless powder it furnished to our government. And this was in the days when we were in the lead in that department. The Powder Trust jumped Hapgood hard. He could have had anything he wanted by making a simple disavowal of me, any loophole they would have accepted—and do you have any doubt that he could have named his own terms? He declined point blank, and threw the challenge to the heaviest and most important client his weekly could have had. That he guessed wrong and ‘backed the wrong horse’ in the ‘Jungle’, may be true. But isn’t it fair to assume, in the light of his final challenge to the Collier advertising autocracy, that he was meeting problems inside as best he could—and that he could not tell you at the time of all the factors involved in the Collier handling of the stockyards story?”"

Chicago Tribune sent James Keeley to investigate and he submitted a thirty two page report refuting everything Sinclair wrote; Doubleday sent McKee, who confirmed Sinclair's version. McKee went first to packers, and their publicity agent guided him around, and casually told about having written the thirty two page refuting.

The Saturday Evening Post published a series of articles against The Jungle after it was published - it was sensationally successful in U.S., Britain and more, and translated in seventeen languages - and Sinclair wrote an article, The Condemned Meat Industry, backed by testimony of various people involved, about how the industry was selling unhealthy and worse meat to public. This article by Sinclair was published in Everybody's Magazine, crusading about such matters.

"You may find it in the library, “Everybody’s” for May, 1906. Whatever you think of its literary style, you will see that it is definite and specific, and revealed a most frightful condition in the country’s meat supply, an unquestionable danger to the public health. It was therefore a challenge to every public service agency in the country; above all, it was a challenge to the newspapers, through which the social body is supposed to learn of its dangers and its needs."

"Of all the newspapers in America, not one in two hundred went so far as to mention “The Condemned Meat Industry.”"

Arthur Brisbane talked to Sinclair.

"I remember talking about this editorial with Adolph Smith, representative of the “London Lancet.” He remarked with dry sarcasm that in a court of justice Brisbane would be entirely safe; his statement that a slaughter-house is not an opera-house was strictly and literally accurate. But if you took what the statement was meant to convey to the reader—that a slaughter-house is necessarily filthy, then the statement was false. “If you go to the municipal slaughter-houses of Germany, you find them as free from odor as an opera-house,” said Adolph Smith; and five or six years later, when I visited Germany, I took the opportunity to verify this statement. But because of the kindness of American editorial writers to the interests which contribute full-page advertisements to newspapers, the American people still have their meat prepared in filth."

The President of the United States had an investigation done, which vindicated everything said by Upton Sinclair about the state of meat packing industry in Chicago.
...........

"All these stories the “Times” sold to scores of newspapers all over the country—newspapers which should have received them through the Associated Press, had the Associated Press been a news channel instead of a concrete wall. The “Times,” of course, made a fortune out of these sales; yet it never paid me a dollar for what I gave it, nor did it occur to me to expect a dollar. I only mention this element to show how under the profit-system even the work of reform, the service of humanity, is exploited. I have done things like this, not once but hundreds of times in my life; yet I read continually in the newspapers the charge that I am in the business of muck-raking for money. I have read such insinuations even in the “New York Times”!"

"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 Seattlepaper. Some one has written to ask if “The Jungle” is a true book. The editor replies, ex cathedra, that President Roosevelt made an investigation of the charges of “The Jungle,” and thoroughly disproved them all!

"And again, here is my friend Edwin E. Slosson, literary editor of the “Independent,” a man who has sense enough to know better than he does. He reviews “The Profits of Religion” in this brief fashion:

"The author of “The Jungle” has taken to muck-raking the churches—with similar success at unearthing malodorous features and similar failure to portray a truthful picture.

"I write to Slosson, just as I wrote to the “New York Evening Post,” to ask what investigation he has made, and what evidence he can produce to back up his charge that “The Jungle” is not a “truthful picture”; and there comes the surprising reply that it had never occurred to Slosson that I myself meant “The Jungle” for a truthful picture. I had not portrayed the marvelous business efficiency of the Stockyards, their wonderful economies, etc.; and no picture that failed to do that could claim to be truthful! That explanation apparently satisfied my friend Slosson, but it did not satisfy the readers of the “Independent”—for the reason that Slosson did not give them ...

[Dr.J.G. · Rating 4 out of 5]

The press in US then was controlled by various interests and Upton Sinclair found it difficult to publish his work since it was reportage with all his sincerity, no hiding or whitewashing in interest of the paymasters - and as he went on publishing he was hounded by mainstream press and publications, so he wrote about them, and called it Brass Check, something members of another profession were forced to carry once upon a time.

Feb 05, 2016
...........

In between reading this, if one happens to read Love's Pilgrimage by the author, and has already read through the World's End series, one is likely to have come close to finding an answer to the question puzzling one as one read the World's End series, which has more than once found oneself questioning why the author is quite so Germanophile as to have his young protagonist protect a German spy working against France, which happens to be the home of the protagonist.

The answer begins to be clear somewhat simultaneously with answer to another question, namely, why didn't the protagonist of Love's Pilgrimage even mention WWI, but did stress about his reading newspapers assiduously while being anxious about news of the then current Russian revolution. These questions are suddenly and unexpectedly answered as one reads about the U.S. press setting forth to campaign with false stories attempting to implicate Woodrow Wilson, then the President of the United States, but holding back because this might get him votes.

"You didn’t happen to know that the “Scandal Bureau” had prepared a story on Woodrow Wilson! The “interests,” which wanted war with Germany and Mexico, had a scandal all ready to spring on him toward the end of the 1916 campaign. They had the dynamite planted, the wires laid; all they had to do was to press the button. At the last moment their nerve failed them, they did not press the button. I was told why by a prominent Republican leader, who was present in the councils of the party when the final decision was made. This man pounded on the table and declared: “I’d have said I’d sooner vote for the devil than for Woodrow Wilson, but if you start a dirty story on the President of the United States, I’ll vote for Woodrow Wilson, and one or two million Americans will do likewise.”"

So part of the answer is, Upton Sinclair was then - perhaps newly, as the protagonist of Love's Pilgrimage was - socialist, and saw the war as that of capitalist powers against workers of the world. But then why the love of Germany, which in fact was completely responsible for the war, as a regime if not as fault of every German, only most - as they did enthusiastically were for it?

This answer, not very explicitly stated but nevertheless clearly to be seen, is, too, in Love's Pilgrimage - the protagonist there, as the author in his life, taught himself German while very young, read a great deal of German literature, and came to see germany as the home of not only the beautiful forests or neat little villages, as any casual visitor would, but of all progressive thought and much wisdom.

One does need an effort to recall Upton Sinclair was young in an era of innocence that sought to exonerate Germany while reeling in horror at the Nazi atrocities, and this is the background of the curiously twisted tapestry of the World's End series with its loving descriptions of Germany right up to the U.S. forces marching through after WWII, while simultaneously an equally curiously disdainful and casual abandonment of France by the protagonist Lanny Budd who's life has been lived mostly in France until his mid thirties, when his travels to U.S. and U.K. and more have him only touching home base in France on equal basis, the weight shifting post war to U.S. for permanent settling.

His loyalty to U.S., and his almost worshipping stance with U.K., remains unquestionable through the World's End series, so much so he's disgustingly racist when it comes to India. But then, his abrahmic roots are deep enough to have his antisemitism and misogyny never quite be wiped, much less rooted out, despite his natural and consciously chosen liberal thought!
..........

Upton Sinclair writes, to begin with, about his own experiences dealing with the world of newspapers and publishers, editors and so on.

"Two newspapers paid attention to his communication—the “New York Times,” a respectable paper, and the “New York American,” a “yellow” paper. The “American” sent a woman reporter, an agreeable and friendly young lady, to whom the author poured out his soul. She asked for his picture, saying that this would enable her to get much more space for the story; so the author gave his picture. She asked for his wife’s picture; but here the author was obdurate. He had old-fashioned Southern notions about “newspaper notoriety” for ladies; he did not want his wife’s picture in the papers. There stood a little picture of his wife on the table where the interview took place, and after the reporter had left, it was noticed that this picture was missing. Next day the picture was published in the “New York American,” and has been published in the “New York American” every year or two since. The author, meantime, has divorced his first wife and married a second wife—a fact of which the newspapers are fully aware; yet they publish this picture of the first wife indifferently as a picture of the first wife and of the second wife. When one of these ladies says or does a certain thing, the other lady may open her paper in the morning and receive a shock!

"Meantime he was existing by hack-work, and exploring the world in which ideas are bought and sold. He was having jokes and plots of stories stolen; he was having agreements broken and promises repudiated; he was trying to write worth-while material, and being told that it would not sell; he was trying to become a book-reviewer, and finding that the only way to succeed was to be a cheat. The editor of the “Independent” or the “Literary Digest” would give him half a dozen books to read, and he would read them, and write an honest review, saying that there was very little merit in any of them: whereupon, the editor would decide that it was not worth while to review the books, and the author would get nothing for his work. If, on the other hand, he wrote an article about a book, taking it seriously, and describing it as vital and important, the editor would conclude that the book was worth reviewing, and would publish the review, and pay the author three or four dollars for it."

Upton Sinclair wrote to Lincoln Steffens and the latter sent his letter for publication to McClure's Weekly, in vain; Collier's Weekly accepted it and the publisher met the author, and invited him for dinner at home to meet the editor Norman Hapgood and other writers, but publisher's father, the owner, nixed the publication. Hapgood claimed later that while he had no memory of the said incident, the owner never meddle with the publication's editorial decisions by him or by the publisher.
...........

"I was pigeon-holed with long-haired violinists from abroad, and painters with fancy-colored vests, and woman suffragists with short hair, and religious prophets in purple robes. All such things are lumped together by newspapers, which are good-naturedly tolerant of their fellow fakers."

The author is talking here about writing, and publication, of his most famous work, "The Jungle".

"The public likes to be amused, and “genius” is one of the things that amuse it: such is the attitude of a world which understands that money is the one thing in life really worth while, the making of money the one object of grown-up and serious-minded men."

But The Jungle was serious, and its being published far more so, no longer amusing to serious moneymaking.

"But from now on you will see that there enters into my story a new note. The element of horse-play goes out, and something grim takes its place."

Collier's played dirty by sending someone who accepted the hospitality of the packers and reported that Sinclair's charges were false or exaggerated, and they published this along with three paragraphs of lesser importance out of the article given by Sinclair which was backed by report of someone sent from London to investigate matters in Chicago after writing about meat industry in UK.

"Robert J. Collier was a gentleman and a “good fellow”; but he was a child of his world, and his world was a rotten one, a “second generation” of idle rich spendthrifts. The running of his magazine “on a personal basis” amounted to this: a young writer would catch the public fancy, and Robbie would send for him, as he sent for me; if he proved to be a possible person—that is, if he came to dinner in a dress-suit, and didn’t discuss the socialization of “Collier’s Weekly”—Robbie would take him up and introduce him to his “set,” and the young writer would have a perpetual market for his stories at a thousand dollars per story; he would be invited to country-house parties, he would motor and play golf and polo, and flirt with elegant young society ladies, and spend his afternoons loafing in the Hoffman House bar. I could name not one but a dozen young writers and illustrators to whom I have seen that happen. In the beginning they wrote about America, in the end they wrote about the “smart set” of Fifth Avenue and Long Island. In their personal life they became tipplers and cafe celebrities; in their intellectual life they became bitter cynics; into their writings you saw creeping year by year the subtle poison of sexual excess—until at last they became too far gone for “Collier’s” to tolerate any longer, and went over to the “Cosmopolitan,” which takes them no matter how far gone they are."

"And now young Collier is dead, and the magazine to which for a time he gave his generous spirit has become an instrument of reaction pure and simple. It opposed and ridiculed President Wilson’s peace policies; it called the world to war against the working-class of Russia; it is now calling for repression of all social protest in America; in short, it is an American capitalist magazine. As I write, word comes that it has been taken over by the Crowell Publishing Company, publishers of the “Woman’s Home Companion,” “Farm and Fireside,” and the “American Magazine.”"

The author gives a letter by a fellow writer.

"“Do you know the circumstances of Hapgood’s break with Collier? Hapgood was the highest paid editor of any periodical in the country. The business side was encroaching on the editorial—demanding that advertising be not jeopardized, and with it the commissions that were its part. Collier, as you know, for years had mixed his whiskey with chorus girls, and needed all the property could milk to supply his erratic needs. So the business office had his ear. And Hapgood left—and made his leaving effective. He took Harper’s and gave the country some of the most important exposes it had. Do you know the story of the Powder Trust treason? I wrote it. It was drawn from official records, and could not be contradicted, that the Powder Trust had once made a contract with a German military powder firm—in the days when military smokeless powder was the goal of every government—to keep it informed as to the quantity, quality, etc., of the smokeless powder it furnished to our government. And this was in the days when we were in the lead in that department. The Powder Trust jumped Hapgood hard. He could have had anything he wanted by making a simple disavowal of me, any loophole they would have accepted—and do you have any doubt that he could have named his own terms? He declined point blank, and threw the challenge to the heaviest and most important client his weekly could have had. That he guessed wrong and ‘backed the wrong horse’ in the ‘Jungle’, may be true. But isn’t it fair to assume, in the light of his final challenge to the Collier advertising autocracy, that he was meeting problems inside as best he could—and that he could not tell you at the time of all the factors involved in the Collier handling of the stockyards story?”"

Chicago Tribune sent James Keeley to investigate and he submitted a thirty two page report refuting everything Sinclair wrote; Doubleday sent McKee, who confirmed Sinclair's version. McKee went first to packers, and their publicity agent guided him around, and casually told about having written the thirty two page refuting.

The Saturday Evening Post published a series of articles against The Jungle after it was published - it was sensationally successful in U.S., Britain and more, and translated in seventeen languages - and Sinclair wrote an article, The Condemned Meat Industry, backed by testimony of various people involved, about how the industry was selling unhealthy and worse meat to public. This article by Sinclair was published in Everybody's Magazine, crusading about such matters.

"You may find it in the library, “Everybody’s” for May, 1906. Whatever you think of its literary style, you will see that it is definite and specific, and revealed a most frightful condition in the country’s meat supply, an unquestionable danger to the public health. It was therefore a challenge to every public service agency in the country; above all, it was a challenge to the newspapers, through which the social body is supposed to learn of its dangers and its needs."

"Of all the newspapers in America, not one in two hundred went so far as to mention “The Condemned Meat Industry.”"

Arthur Brisbane talked to Sinclair.

"I remember talking about this editorial with Adolph Smith, representative of the “London Lancet.” He remarked with dry sarcasm that in a court of justice Brisbane would be entirely safe; his statement that a slaughter-house is not an opera-house was strictly and literally accurate. But if you took what the statement was meant to convey to the reader—that a slaughter-house is necessarily filthy, then the statement was false. “If you go to the municipal slaughter-houses of Germany, you find them as free from odor as an opera-house,” said Adolph Smith; and five or six years later, when I visited Germany, I took the opportunity to verify this statement. But because of the kindness of American editorial writers to the interests which contribute full-page advertisements to newspapers, the American people still have their meat prepared in filth."

The President of the United States had an investigation done, which vindicated everything said by Upton Sinclair about the state of meat packing industry in Chicago.
...........

"All these stories the “Times” sold to scores of newspapers all over the country—newspapers which should have received them through the Associated Press, had the Associated Press been a news channel instead of a concrete wall. The “Times,” of course, made a fortune out of these sales; yet it never paid me a dollar for what I gave it, nor did it occur to me to expect a dollar. I only mention this element to ....

[Dr.J.G. · Rating 4 out of 5]

The press in US then was controlled by various interests and Upton Sinclair found it difficult to publish his work since it was reportage with all his sincerity, no hiding or whitewashing in interest of the paymasters - and as he went on publishing he was hounded by mainstream press and publications, so he wrote about them, and called it Brass Check, something members of another profession were forced to carry once upon a time.

Feb 05, 2016
..........

Upton Sinclair writes, to begin with, about his own experiences dealing with the world of newspapers and publishers, editors and so on.

"Two newspapers paid attention to his communication—the “New York Times,” a respectable paper, and the “New York American,” a “yellow” paper. The “American” sent a woman reporter, an agreeable and friendly young lady, to whom the author poured out his soul. She asked for his picture, saying that this would enable her to get much more space for the story; so the author gave his picture. She asked for his wife’s picture; but here the author was obdurate. He had old-fashioned Southern notions about “newspaper notoriety” for ladies; he did not want his wife’s picture in the papers. There stood a little picture of his wife on the table where the interview took place, and after the reporter had left, it was noticed that this picture was missing. Next day the picture was published in the “New York American,” and has been published in the “New York American” every year or two since. The author, meantime, has divorced his first wife and married a second wife—a fact of which the newspapers are fully aware; yet they publish this picture of the first wife indifferently as a picture of the first wife and of the second wife. When one of these ladies says or does a certain thing, the other lady may open her paper in the morning and receive a shock!

"Meantime he was existing by hack-work, and exploring the world in which ideas are bought and sold. He was having jokes and plots of stories stolen; he was having agreements broken and promises repudiated; he was trying to write worth-while material, and being told that it would not sell; he was trying to become a book-reviewer, and finding that the only way to succeed was to be a cheat. The editor of the “Independent” or the “Literary Digest” would give him half a dozen books to read, and he would read them, and write an honest review, saying that there was very little merit in any of them: whereupon, the editor would decide that it was not worth while to review the books, and the author would get nothing for his work. If, on the other hand, he wrote an article about a book, taking it seriously, and describing it as vital and important, the editor would conclude that the book was worth reviewing, and would publish the review, and pay the author three or four dollars for it."

Upton Sinclair wrote to Lincoln Steffens and the latter sent his letter for publication to McClure's Weekly, in vain; Collier's Weekly accepted it and the publisher met the author, and invited him for dinner at home to meet the editor Norman Hapgood and other writers, but publisher's father, the owner, nixed the publication. Hapgood claimed later that while he had no memory of the said incident, the owner never meddle with the publication's editorial decisions by him or by the publisher.
...........

"I was pigeon-holed with long-haired violinists from abroad, and painters with fancy-colored vests, and woman suffragists with short hair, and religious prophets in purple robes. All such things are lumped together by newspapers, which are good-naturedly tolerant of their fellow fakers."

The author is talking here about writing, and publication, of his most famous work, "The Jungle".

"The public likes to be amused, and “genius” is one of the things that amuse it: such is the attitude of a world which understands that money is the one thing in life really worth while, the making of money the one object of grown-up and serious-minded men."

But The Jungle was serious, and its being published far more so, no longer amusing to serious moneymaking.

"But from now on you will see that there enters into my story a new note. The element of horse-play goes out, and something grim takes its place."

Collier's played dirty by sending someone who accepted the hospitality of the packers and reported that Sinclair's charges were false or exaggerated, and they published this along with three paragraphs of lesser importance out of the article given by Sinclair which was backed by report of someone sent from London to investigate matters in Chicago after writing about meat industry in UK.

"Robert J. Collier was a gentleman and a “good fellow”; but he was a child of his world, and his world was a rotten one, a “second generation” of idle rich spendthrifts. The running of his magazine “on a personal basis” amounted to this: a young writer would catch the public fancy, and Robbie would send for him, as he sent for me; if he proved to be a possible person—that is, if he came to dinner in a dress-suit, and didn’t discuss the socialization of “Collier’s Weekly”—Robbie would take him up and introduce him to his “set,” and the young writer would have a perpetual market for his stories at a thousand dollars per story; he would be invited to country-house parties, he would motor and play golf and polo, and flirt with elegant young society ladies, and spend his afternoons loafing in the Hoffman House bar. I could name not one but a dozen young writers and illustrators to whom I have seen that happen. In the beginning they wrote about America, in the end they wrote about the “smart set” of Fifth Avenue and Long Island. In their personal life they became tipplers and cafe celebrities; in their intellectual life they became bitter cynics; into their writings you saw creeping year by year the subtle poison of sexual excess—until at last they became too far gone for “Collier’s” to tolerate any longer, and went over to the “Cosmopolitan,” which takes them no matter how far gone they are."

"And now young Collier is dead, and the magazine to which for a time he gave his generous spirit has become an instrument of reaction pure and simple. It opposed and ridiculed President Wilson’s peace policies; it called the world to war against the working-class of Russia; it is now calling for repression of all social protest in America; in short, it is an American capitalist magazine. As I write, word comes that it has been taken over by the Crowell Publishing Company, publishers of the “Woman’s Home Companion,” “Farm and Fireside,” and the “American Magazine.”"

The author gives a letter by a fellow writer.

"“Do you know the circumstances of Hapgood’s break with Collier? Hapgood was the highest paid editor of any periodical in the country. The business side was encroaching on the editorial—demanding that advertising be not jeopardized, and with it the commissions that were its part. Collier, as you know, for years had mixed his whiskey with chorus girls, and needed all the property could milk to supply his erratic needs. So the business office had his ear. And Hapgood left—and made his leaving effective. He took Harper’s and gave the country some of the most important exposes it had. Do you know the story of the Powder Trust treason? I wrote it. It was drawn from official records, and could not be contradicted, that the Powder Trust had once made a contract with a German military powder firm—in the days when military smokeless powder was the goal of every government—to keep it informed as to the quantity, quality, etc., of the smokeless powder it furnished to our government. And this was in the days when we were in the lead in that department. The Powder Trust jumped Hapgood hard. He could have had anything he wanted by making a simple disavowal of me, any loophole they would have accepted—and do you have any doubt that he could have named his own terms? He declined point blank, and threw the challenge to the heaviest and most important client his weekly could have had. That he guessed wrong and ‘backed the wrong horse’ in the ‘Jungle’, may be true. But isn’t it fair to assume, in the light of his final challenge to the Collier advertising autocracy, that he was meeting problems inside as best he could—and that he could not tell you at the time of all the factors involved in the Collier handling of the stockyards story?”"

Chicago Tribune sent James Keeley to investigate and he submitted a thirty two page report refuting everything Sinclair wrote; Doubleday sent McKee, who confirmed Sinclair's version. McKee went first to packers, and their publicity agent guided him around, and casually told about having written the thirty two page refuting.

The Saturday Evening Post published a series of articles against The Jungle after it was published - it was sensationally successful in U.S., Britain and more, and translated in seventeen languages - and Sinclair wrote an article, The Condemned Meat Industry, backed by testimony of various people involved, about how the industry was selling unhealthy and worse meat to public. This article by Sinclair was published in Everybody's Magazine, crusading about such matters.

"You may find it in the library, “Everybody’s” for May, 1906. Whatever you think of its literary style, you will see that it is definite and specific, and revealed a most frightful condition in the country’s meat supply, an unquestionable danger to the public health. It was therefore a challenge to every public service agency in the country; above all, it was a challenge to the newspapers, through which the social body is supposed to learn of its dangers and its needs."

"Of all the newspapers in America, not one in two hundred went so far as to mention “The Condemned Meat Industry.”"

Arthur Brisbane talked to Sinclair.

"I remember talking about this editorial with Adolph Smith, representative of the “London Lancet.” He remarked with dry sarcasm that in a court of justice Brisbane would be entirely safe; his statement that a slaughter-house is not an opera-house was strictly and literally accurate. But if you took what the statement was meant to convey to the reader—that a slaughter-house is necessarily filthy, then the statement was false. “If you go to the municipal slaughter-houses of Germany, you find them as free from odor as an opera-house,” said Adolph Smith; and five or six years later, when I visited Germany, I took the opportunity to verify this statement. But because of the kindness of American editorial writers to the interests which contribute full-page advertisements to newspapers, the American people still have their meat prepared in filth."

The President of the United States had an investigation done, which vindicated everything said by Upton Sinclair about the state of meat packing industry in Chicago.
...........

"All these stories the “Times” sold to scores of newspapers all over the country—newspapers which should have received them through the Associated Press, had the Associated Press been a news channel instead of a concrete wall. The “Times,” of course, made a fortune out of these sales; yet it never paid me a dollar for what I gave it, nor did it occur to me to expect a dollar. I only mention this element to show how under the profit-system even the work of reform, the service of humanity, is exploited. I have done things like this, not once but hundreds of times in my life; yet I read continually in the newspapers the charge that I am in the business of muck-raking for money. I have read such insinuations even in the “New York Times”!"

"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 Seattlepaper. Some one has written to ask if “The Jungle” is a true book. The editor replies, ex cathedra, that President Roosevelt made an investigation of the charges of “The Jungle,” and thoroughly disproved them all!

"And again, here is my friend Edwin E. Slosson, literary editor of the “Independent,” a man who has sense enough to know better than he does. He reviews “The Profits of Religion” in this brief fashion:

"The author of “The Jungle” has taken to muck-raking the churches—with similar success at unearthing malodorous features and similar failure to portray a truthful picture.

"I write to Slosson, just as I wrote to the “New York Evening Post,” to ask what investigation he has made, and what evidence he can produce to back up his charge that “The Jungle” is not a “truthful picture”; and there comes the surprising reply that it had never occurred to Slosson that I myself meant “The Jungle” for a truthful picture. I had not portrayed the marvelous business efficiency of the Stockyards, their wonderful economies, etc.; and no picture that failed to do that could claim to be truthful! That explanation apparently satisfied my friend Slosson, but it did not satisfy the readers of the “Independent”—for the reason that Slosson did not give them ...

[Dr.J.G. · Rating 4 out of 5]

The press in US then was controlled by various interests and Upton Sinclair found it difficult to publish his work since it was reportage with all his sincerity, no hiding or whitewashing in interest of the paymasters - and as he went on publishing he was hounded by mainstream press and publications, so he wrote about them, and called it Brass Check, something members of another profession were forced to carry once upon a time.

Feb 05, 2016
..........

Upton Sinclair writes, to begin with, about his own experiences dealing with the world of newspapers and publishers, editors and so on.

"Two newspapers paid attention to his communication—the “New York Times,” a respectable paper, and the “New York American,” a “yellow” paper. The “American” sent a woman reporter, an agreeable and friendly young lady, to whom the author poured out his soul. She asked for his picture, saying that this would enable her to get much more space for the story; so the author gave his picture. She asked for his wife’s picture; but here the author was obdurate. He had old-fashioned Southern notions about “newspaper notoriety” for ladies; he did not want his wife’s picture in the papers. There stood a little picture of his wife on the table where the interview took place, and after the reporter had left, it was noticed that this picture was missing. Next day the picture was published in the “New York American,” and has been published in the “New York American” every year or two since. The author, meantime, has divorced his first wife and married a second wife—a fact of which the newspapers are fully aware; yet they publish this picture of the first wife indifferently as a picture of the first wife and of the second wife. When one of these ladies says or does a certain thing, the other lady may open her paper in the morning and receive a shock!

"Meantime he was existing by hack-work, and exploring the world in which ideas are bought and sold. He was having jokes and plots of stories stolen; he was having agreements broken and promises repudiated; he was trying to write worth-while material, and being told that it would not sell; he was trying to become a book-reviewer, and finding that the only way to succeed was to be a cheat. The editor of the “Independent” or the “Literary Digest” would give him half a dozen books to read, and he would read them, and write an honest review, saying that there was very little merit in any of them: whereupon, the editor would decide that it was not worth while to review the books, and the author would get nothing for his work. If, on the other hand, he wrote an article about a book, taking it seriously, and describing it as vital and important, the editor would conclude that the book was worth reviewing, and would publish the review, and pay the author three or four dollars for it."

Upton Sinclair wrote to Lincoln Steffens and the latter sent his letter for publication to McClure's Weekly, in vain; Collier's Weekly accepted it and the publisher met the author, and invited him for dinner at home to meet the editor Norman Hapgood and other writers, but publisher's father, the owner, nixed the publication. Hapgood claimed later that while he had no memory of the said incident, the owner never meddle with the publication's editorial decisions by him or by the publisher.
...........

"I was pigeon-holed with long-haired violinists from abroad, and painters with fancy-colored vests, and woman suffragists with short hair, and religious prophets in purple robes. All such things are lumped together by newspapers, which are good-naturedly tolerant of their fellow fakers."

The author is talking here about writing, and publication, of his most famous work, "The Jungle".

"The public likes to be amused, and “genius” is one of the things that amuse it: such is the attitude of a world which understands that money is the one thing in life really worth while, the making of money the one object of grown-up and serious-minded men."

But The Jungle was serious, and its being published far more so, no longer amusing to serious moneymaking.

"But from now on you will see that there enters into my story a new note. The element of horse-play goes out, and something grim takes its place."

Collier's played dirty by sending someone who accepted the hospitality of the packers and reported that Sinclair's charges were false or exaggerated, and they published this along with three paragraphs of lesser importance out of the article given by Sinclair which was backed by report of someone sent from London to investigate matters in Chicago after writing about meat industry in UK.

"Robert J. Collier was a gentleman and a “good fellow”; but he was a child of his world, and his world was a rotten one, a “second generation” of idle rich spendthrifts. The running of his magazine “on a personal basis” amounted to this: a young writer would catch the public fancy, and Robbie would send for him, as he sent for me; if he proved to be a possible person—that is, if he came to dinner in a dress-suit, and didn’t discuss the socialization of “Collier’s Weekly”—Robbie would take him up and introduce him to his “set,” and the young writer would have a perpetual market for his stories at a thousand dollars per story; he would be invited to country-house parties, he would motor and play golf and polo, and flirt with elegant young society ladies, and spend his afternoons loafing in the Hoffman House bar. I could name not one but a dozen young writers and illustrators to whom I have seen that happen. In the beginning they wrote about America, in the end they wrote about the “smart set” of Fifth Avenue and Long Island. In their personal life they became tipplers and cafe celebrities; in their intellectual life they became bitter cynics; into their writings you saw creeping year by year the subtle poison of sexual excess—until at last they became too far gone for “Collier’s” to tolerate any longer, and went over to the “Cosmopolitan,” which takes them no matter how far gone they are."

"And now young Collier is dead, and the magazine to which for a time he gave his generous spirit has become an instrument of reaction pure and simple. It opposed and ridiculed President Wilson’s peace policies; it called the world to war against the working-class of Russia; it is now calling for repression of all social protest in America; in short, it is an American capitalist magazine. As I write, word comes that it has been taken over by the Crowell Publishing Company, publishers of the “Woman’s Home Companion,” “Farm and Fireside,” and the “American Magazine.”"

The author gives a letter by a fellow writer.

"“Do you know the circumstances of Hapgood’s break with Collier? Hapgood was the highest paid editor of any periodical in the country. The business side was encroaching on the editorial—demanding that advertising be not jeopardized, and with it the commissions that were its part. Collier, as you know, for years had mixed his whiskey with chorus girls, and needed all the property could milk to supply his erratic needs. So the business office had his ear. And Hapgood left—and made his leaving effective. He took Harper’s and gave the country some of the most important exposes it had. Do you know the story of the Powder Trust treason? I wrote it. It was drawn from official records, and could not be contradicted, that the Powder Trust had once made a contract with a German military powder firm—in the days when military smokeless powder was the goal of every government—to keep it informed as to the quantity, quality, etc., of the smokeless powder it furnished to our government. And this was in the days when we were in the lead in that department. The Powder Trust jumped Hapgood hard. He could have had anything he wanted by making a simple disavowal of me, any loophole they would have accepted—and do you have any doubt that he could have named his own terms? He declined point blank, and threw the challenge to the heaviest and most important client his weekly could have had. That he guessed wrong and ‘backed the wrong horse’ in the ‘Jungle’, may be true. But isn’t it fair to assume, in the light of his final challenge to the Collier advertising autocracy, that he was meeting problems inside as best he could—and that he could not tell you at the time of all the factors involved in the Collier handling of the stockyards story?”"

Chicago Tribune sent James Keeley to investigate and he submitted a thirty two page report refuting everything Sinclair wrote; Doubleday sent McKee, who confirmed Sinclair's version. McKee went first to packers, and their publicity agent guided him around, and casually told about having written the thirty two page refuting.

The Saturday Evening Post published a series of articles against The Jungle after it was published - it was sensationally successful in U.S., Britain and more, and translated in seventeen languages - and Sinclair wrote an article, The Condemned Meat Industry, backed by testimony of various people involved, about how the industry was selling unhealthy and worse meat to public. This article by Sinclair was published in Everybody's Magazine, crusading about such matters.

"You may find it in the library, “Everybody’s” for May, 1906. Whatever you think of its literary style, you will see that it is definite and specific, and revealed a most frightful condition in the country’s meat supply, an unquestionable danger to the public health. It was therefore a challenge to every public service agency in the country; above all, it was a challenge to the newspapers, through which the social body is supposed to learn of its dangers and its needs."

"Of all the newspapers in America, not one in two hundred went so far as to mention “The Condemned Meat Industry.”"

Arthur Brisbane talked to Sinclair.

"I remember talking about this editorial with Adolph Smith, representative of the “London Lancet.” He remarked with dry sarcasm that in a court of justice Brisbane would be entirely safe; his statement that a slaughter-house is not an opera-house was strictly and literally accurate. But if you took what the statement was meant to convey to the reader—that a slaughter-house is necessarily filthy, then the statement was false. “If you go to the municipal slaughter-houses of Germany, you find them as free from odor as an opera-house,” said Adolph Smith; and five or six years later, when I visited Germany, I took the opportunity to verify this statement. But because of the kindness of American editorial writers to the interests which contribute full-page advertisements to newspapers, the American people still have their meat prepared in filth."

The President of the United States had an investigation done, which vindicated everything said by Upton Sinclair about the state of meat packing industry in Chicago.
...........

"All these stories the “Times” sold to scores of newspapers all over the country—newspapers which should have received them through the Associated Press, had the Associated Press been a news channel instead of a concrete wall. The “Times,” of course, made a fortune out of these sales; yet it never paid me a dollar for what I gave it, nor did it occur to me to expect a dollar. I only mention this element to show how under the profit-system even the work of reform, the service of humanity, is exploited. I have done things like this, not once but hundreds of times in my life; yet I read continually in the newspapers the charge that I am in the business of muck-raking for money. I have read such insinuations even in the “New York Times”!"

"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 Seattlepaper. Some one has written to ask if “The Jungle” is a true book. The editor replies, ex cathedra, that President Roosevelt made an investigation of the charges of “The Jungle,” and thoroughly disproved them all!

"And again, here is my friend Edwin E. Slosson, literary editor of the “Independent,” a man who has sense enough to know better than he does. He reviews “The Profits of Religion” in this brief fashion:

"The author of “The Jungle” has taken to muck-raking the churches—with similar success at unearthing malodorous features and similar failure to portray a truthful picture.

"I write to Slosson, just as I wrote to the “New York Evening Post,” to ask what investigation he has made, and what evidence he can produce to back up his charge that “The Jungle” is not a “truthful picture”; and there comes the surprising reply that it had never occurred to Slosson that I myself meant “The Jungle” for a truthful picture. I had not portrayed the marvelous business efficiency of the Stockyards, their wonderful economies, etc.; and no picture that failed to do that could claim to be truthful! That explanation apparently satisfied my friend Slosson, but it did not satisfy the readers of the “Independent”—for the reason that Slosson did not give them ...

[Dr.J.G. · Rating 4 out of 5]

The press in US then was controlled by various interests and Upton Sinclair found it difficult to publish his work since it was reportage with all his sincerity, no hiding or whitewashing in interest of the paymasters - and as he went on publishing he was hounded by mainstream press and publications, so he wrote about them, and called it Brass Check, something members of another profession were forced to carry once upon a time.

Feb 05, 2016
..........

Upton Sinclair writes, to begin with, about his own experiences dealing with the world of newspapers and publishers, editors and so on.

"Two newspapers paid attention to his communication—the “New York Times,” a respectable paper, and the “New York American,” a “yellow” paper. The “American” sent a woman reporter, an agreeable and friendly young lady, to whom the author poured out his soul. She asked for his picture, saying that this would enable her to get much more space for the story; so the author gave his picture. She asked for his wife’s picture; but here the author was obdurate. He had old-fashioned Southern notions about “newspaper notoriety” for ladies; he did not want his wife’s picture in the papers. There stood a little picture of his wife on the table where the interview took place, and after the reporter had left, it was noticed that this picture was missing. Next day the picture was published in the “New York American,” and has been published in the “New York American” every year or two since. The author, meantime, has divorced his first wife and married a second wife—a fact of which the newspapers are fully aware; yet they publish this picture of the first wife indifferently as a picture of the first wife and of the second wife. When one of these ladies says or does a certain thing, the other lady may open her paper in the morning and receive a shock!

"Meantime he was existing by hack-work, and exploring the world in which ideas are bought and sold. He was having jokes and plots of stories stolen; he was having agreements broken and promises repudiated; he was trying to write worth-while material, and being told that it would not sell; he was trying to become a book-reviewer, and finding that the only way to succeed was to be a cheat. The editor of the “Independent” or the “Literary Digest” would give him half a dozen books to read, and he would read them, and write an honest review, saying that there was very little merit in any of them: whereupon, the editor would decide that it was not worth while to review the books, and the author would get nothing for his work. If, on the other hand, he wrote an article about a book, taking it seriously, and describing it as vital and important, the editor would conclude that the book was worth reviewing, and would publish the review, and pay the author three or four dollars for it."

Upton Sinclair wrote to Lincoln Steffens and the latter sent his letter for publication to McClure's Weekly, in vain; Collier's Weekly accepted it and the publisher met the author, and invited him for dinner at home to meet the editor Norman Hapgood and other writers, but publisher's father, the owner, nixed the publication. Hapgood claimed later that while he had no memory of the said incident, the owner never meddle with the publication's editorial decisions by him or by the publisher.
...........

"I was pigeon-holed with long-haired violinists from abroad, and painters with fancy-colored vests, and woman suffragists with short hair, and religious prophets in purple robes. All such things are lumped together by newspapers, which are good-naturedly tolerant of their fellow fakers."

The author is talking here about writing, and publication, of his most famous work, "The Jungle".

"The public likes to be amused, and “genius” is one of the things that amuse it: such is the attitude of a world which understands that money is the one thing in life really worth while, the making of money the one object of grown-up and serious-minded men."

But The Jungle was serious, and its being published far more so, no longer amusing to serious moneymaking.

"But from now on you will see that there enters into my story a new note. The element of horse-play goes out, and something grim takes its place."

Collier's played dirty by sending someone who accepted the hospitality of the packers and reported that Sinclair's charges were false or exaggerated, and they published this along with three paragraphs of lesser importance out of the article given by Sinclair which was backed by report of someone sent from London to investigate matters in Chicago after writing about meat industry in UK.

"Robert J. Collier was a gentleman and a “good fellow”; but he was a child of his world, and his world was a rotten one, a “second generation” of idle rich spendthrifts. The running of his magazine “on a personal basis” amounted to this: a young writer would catch the public fancy, and Robbie would send for him, as he sent for me; if he proved to be a possible person—that is, if he came to dinner in a dress-suit, and didn’t discuss the socialization of “Collier’s Weekly”—Robbie would take him up and introduce him to his “set,” and the young writer would have a perpetual market for his stories at a thousand dollars per story; he would be invited to country-house parties, he would motor and play golf and polo, and flirt with elegant young society ladies, and spend his afternoons loafing in the Hoffman House bar. I could name not one but a dozen young writers and illustrators to whom I have seen that happen. In the beginning they wrote about America, in the end they wrote about the “smart set” of Fifth Avenue and Long Island. In their personal life they became tipplers and cafe celebrities; in their intellectual life they became bitter cynics; into their writings you saw creeping year by year the subtle poison of sexual excess—until at last they became too far gone for “Collier’s” to tolerate any longer, and went over to the “Cosmopolitan,” which takes them no matter how far gone they are."

"And now young Collier is dead, and the magazine to which for a time he gave his generous spirit has become an instrument of reaction pure and simple. It opposed and ridiculed President Wilson’s peace policies; it called the world to war against the working-class of Russia; it is now calling for repression of all social protest in America; in short, it is an American capitalist magazine. As I write, word comes that it has been taken over by the Crowell Publishing Company, publishers of the “Woman’s Home Companion,” “Farm and Fireside,” and the “American Magazine.”"

The author gives a letter by a fellow writer.

"“Do you know the circumstances of Hapgood’s break with Collier? Hapgood was the highest paid editor of any periodical in the country. The business side was encroaching on the editorial—demanding that advertising be not jeopardized, and with it the commissions that were its part. Collier, as you know, for years had mixed his whiskey with chorus girls, and needed all the property could milk to supply his erratic needs. So the business office had his ear. And Hapgood left—and made his leaving effective. He took Harper’s and gave the country some of the most important exposes it had. Do you know the story of the Powder Trust treason? I wrote it. It was drawn from official records, and could not be contradicted, that the Powder Trust had once made a contract with a German military powder firm—in the days when military smokeless powder was the goal of every government—to keep it informed as to the quantity, quality, etc., of the smokeless powder it furnished to our government. And this was in the days when we were in the lead in that department. The Powder Trust jumped Hapgood hard. He could have had anything he wanted by making a simple disavowal of me, any loophole they would have accepted—and do you have any doubt that he could have named his own terms? He declined point blank, and threw the challenge to the heaviest and most important client his weekly could have had. That he guessed wrong and ‘backed the wrong horse’ in the ‘Jungle’, may be true. But isn’t it fair to assume, in the light of his final challenge to the Collier advertising autocracy, that he was meeting problems inside as best he could—and that he could not tell you at the time of all the factors involved in the Collier handling of the stockyards story?”"

Chicago Tribune sent James Keeley to investigate and he submitted a thirty two page report refuting everything Sinclair wrote; Doubleday sent McKee, who confirmed Sinclair's version. McKee went first to packers, and their publicity agent guided him around, and casually told about having written the thirty two page refuting.

The Saturday Evening Post published a series of articles against The Jungle after it was published - it was sensationally successful in U.S., Britain and more, and translated in seventeen languages - and Sinclair wrote an article, The Condemned Meat Industry, backed by testimony of various people involved, about how the industry was selling unhealthy and worse meat to public. This article by Sinclair was published in Everybody's Magazine, crusading about such matters.

"You may find it in the library, “Everybody’s” for May, 1906. Whatever you think of its literary style, you will see that it is definite and specific, and revealed a most frightful condition in the country’s meat supply, an unquestionable danger to the public health. It was therefore a challenge to every public service agency in the country; above all, it was a challenge to the newspapers, through which the social body is supposed to learn of its dangers and its needs."

"Of all the newspapers in America, not one in two hundred went so far as to mention “The Condemned Meat Industry.”"

Arthur Brisbane talked to Sinclair.

"I remember talking about this editorial with Adolph Smith, representative of the “London Lancet.” He remarked with dry sarcasm that in a court of justice Brisbane would be entirely safe; his statement that a slaughter-house is not an opera-house was strictly and literally accurate. But if you took what the statement was meant to convey to the reader—that a slaughter-house is necessarily filthy, then the statement was false. “If you go to the municipal slaughter-houses of Germany, you find them as free from odor as an opera-house,” said Adolph Smith; and five or six years later, when I visited Germany, I took the opportunity to verify this statement. But because of the kindness of American editorial writers to the interests which contribute full-page advertisements to newspapers, the American people still have their meat prepared in filth."

The President of the United States had an investigation done, which vindicated everything said by Upton Sinclair about the state of meat packing industry in Chicago.
...........

"All these stories the “Times” sold to scores of newspapers all over the country—newspapers which should have received them through the Associated Press, had the Associated Press been a news channel instead of a concrete wall. The “Times,” of course, made a fortune out of these sales; yet it never paid me a dollar for what I gave it, nor did it occur to me to expect a dollar. I only mention this element to show how under the profit-system even the work of reform, the service of humanity, is exploited. I have done things like this, not once but hundreds of times in my life; yet I read continually in the newspapers the charge that I am in the business of muck-raking for money. I have read such insinuations even in the “New York Times”!"

"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 Seattlepaper. Some one has written to ask if “The Jungle” is a true book. The editor replies, ex cathedra, that President Roosevelt made an investigation of the charges of “The Jungle,” and thoroughly disproved them all!

"And again, here is my friend Edwin E. Slosson, literary editor of the “Independent,” a man who has sense enough to know better than he does. He reviews “The Profits of Religion” in this brief fashion:

"The author of “The Jungle” has taken to muck-raking the churches—with similar success at unearthing malodorous features and similar failure to portray a truthful picture.

"I write to Slosson, just as I wrote to the “New York Evening Post,” to ask what investigation he has made, and what evidence he can produce to back up his charge that “The Jungle” is not a “truthful picture”; and there comes the surprising reply that it had never occurred to Slosson that I myself meant “The Jungle” for a truthful picture. I had not portrayed the marvelous business efficiency of the Stockyards, their wonderful economies, etc.; and no picture that failed to do that could claim to be truthful! That explanation apparently satisfied my friend Slosson, but it did not satisfy the readers of the “Independent”—for the reason that Slosson did not give them ...

[Dr.J.G. · Rating 4 out of 5]

The press in US then was controlled by various interests and Upton Sinclair found it difficult to publish his work since it was reportage with all his sincerity, no hiding or whitewashing in interest of the paymasters - and as he went on publishing he was hounded by mainstream press and publications, so he wrote about them, and called it Brass Check, something members of another profession were forced to carry once upon a time.

Feb 05, 2016
..........

Upton Sinclair writes, to begin with, about his own experiences dealing with the world of newspapers and publishers, editors and so on.

"Two newspapers paid attention to his communication—the “New York Times,” a respectable paper, and the “New York American,” a “yellow” paper. The “American” sent a woman reporter, an agreeable and friendly young lady, to whom the author poured out his soul. She asked for his picture, saying that this would enable her to get much more space for the story; so the author gave his picture. She asked for his wife’s picture; but here the author was obdurate. He had old-fashioned Southern notions about “newspaper notoriety” for ladies; he did not want his wife’s picture in the papers. There stood a little picture of his wife on the table where the interview took place, and after the reporter had left, it was noticed that this picture was missing. Next day the picture was published in the “New York American,” and has been published in the “New York American” every year or two since. The author, meantime, has divorced his first wife and married a second wife—a fact of which the newspapers are fully aware; yet they publish this picture of the first wife indifferently as a picture of the first wife and of the second wife. When one of these ladies says or does a certain thing, the other lady may open her paper in the morning and receive a shock!

"Meantime he was existing by hack-work, and exploring the world in which ideas are bought and sold. He was having jokes and plots of stories stolen; he was having agreements broken and promises repudiated; he was trying to write worth-while material, and being told that it would not sell; he was trying to become a book-reviewer, and finding that the only way to succeed was to be a cheat. The editor of the “Independent” or the “Literary Digest” would give him half a dozen books to read, and he would read them, and write an honest review, saying that there was very little merit in any of them: whereupon, the editor would decide that it was not worth while to review the books, and the author would get nothing for his work. If, on the other hand, he wrote an article about a book, taking it seriously, and describing it as vital and important, the editor would conclude that the book was worth reviewing, and would publish the review, and pay the author three or four dollars for it."

Upton Sinclair wrote to Lincoln Steffens and the latter sent his letter for publication to McClure's Weekly, in vain; Collier's Weekly accepted it and the publisher met the author, and invited him for dinner at home to meet the editor Norman Hapgood and other writers, but publisher's father, the owner, nixed the publication. Hapgood claimed later that while he had no memory of the said incident, the owner never meddle with the publication's editorial decisions by him or by the publisher.
...........

"I was pigeon-holed with long-haired violinists from abroad, and painters with fancy-colored vests, and woman suffragists with short hair, and religious prophets in purple robes. All such things are lumped together by newspapers, which are good-naturedly tolerant of their fellow fakers."

The author is talking here about writing, and publication, of his most famous work, "The Jungle".

"The public likes to be amused, and “genius” is one of the things that amuse it: such is the attitude of a world which understands that money is the one thing in life really worth while, the making of money the one object of grown-up and serious-minded men."

But The Jungle was serious, and its being published far more so, no longer amusing to serious moneymaking.

"But from now on you will see that there enters into my story a new note. The element of horse-play goes out, and something grim takes its place."

Collier's played dirty by sending someone who accepted the hospitality of the packers and reported that Sinclair's charges were false or exaggerated, and they published this along with three paragraphs of lesser importance out of the article given by Sinclair which was backed by report of someone sent from London to investigate matters in Chicago after writing about meat industry in UK.

"Robert J. Collier was a gentleman and a “good fellow”; but he was a child of his world, and his world was a rotten one, a “second generation” of idle rich spendthrifts. The running of his magazine “on a personal basis” amounted to this: a young writer would catch the public fancy, and Robbie would send for him, as he sent for me; if he proved to be a possible person—that is, if he came to dinner in a dress-suit, and didn’t discuss the socialization of “Collier’s Weekly”—Robbie would take him up and introduce him to his “set,” and the young writer would have a perpetual market for his stories at a thousand dollars per story; he would be invited to country-house parties, he would motor and play golf and polo, and flirt with elegant young society ladies, and spend his afternoons loafing in the Hoffman House bar. I could name not one but a dozen young writers and illustrators to whom I have seen that happen. In the beginning they wrote about America, in the end they wrote about the “smart set” of Fifth Avenue and Long Island. In their personal life they became tipplers and cafe celebrities; in their intellectual life they became bitter cynics; into their writings you saw creeping year by year the subtle poison of sexual excess—until at last they became too far gone for “Collier’s” to tolerate any longer, and went over to the “Cosmopolitan,” which takes them no matter how far gone they are."

"And now young Collier is dead, and the magazine to which for a time he gave his generous spirit has become an instrument of reaction pure and simple. It opposed and ridiculed President Wilson’s peace policies; it called the world to war against the working-class of Russia; it is now calling for repression of all social protest in America; in short, it is an American capitalist magazine. As I write, word comes that it has been taken over by the Crowell Publishing Company, publishers of the “Woman’s Home Companion,” “Farm and Fireside,” and the “American Magazine.”"

The author gives a letter by a fellow writer.

"“Do you know the circumstances of Hapgood’s break with Collier? Hapgood was the highest paid editor of any periodical in the country. The business side was encroaching on the editorial—demanding that advertising be not jeopardized, and with it the commissions that were its part. Collier, as you know, for years had mixed his whiskey with chorus girls, and needed all the property could milk to supply his erratic needs. So the business office had his ear. And Hapgood left—and made his leaving effective. He took Harper’s and gave the country some of the most important exposes it had. Do you know the story of the Powder Trust treason? I wrote it. It was drawn from official records, and could not be contradicted, that the Powder Trust had once made a contract with a German military powder firm—in the days when military smokeless powder was the goal of every government—to keep it informed as to the quantity, quality, etc., of the smokeless powder it furnished to our government. And this was in the days when we were in the lead in that department. The Powder Trust jumped Hapgood hard. He could have had anything he wanted by making a simple disavowal of me, any loophole they would have accepted—and do you have any doubt that he could have named his own terms? He declined point blank, and threw the challenge to the heaviest and most important client his weekly could have had. That he guessed wrong and ‘backed the wrong horse’ in the ‘Jungle’, may be true. But isn’t it fair to assume, in the light of his final challenge to the Collier advertising autocracy, that he was meeting problems inside as best he could—and that he could not tell you at the time of all the factors involved in the Collier handling of the stockyards story?”"

Chicago Tribune sent James Keeley to investigate and he submitted a thirty two page report refuting everything Sinclair wrote; Doubleday sent McKee, who confirmed Sinclair's version. McKee went first to packers, and their publicity agent guided him around, and casually told about having written the thirty two page refuting.

The Saturday Evening Post published a series of articles against The Jungle after it was published - it was sensationally successful in U.S., Britain and more, and translated in seventeen languages - and Sinclair wrote an article, The Condemned Meat Industry, backed by testimony of various people involved, about how the industry was selling unhealthy and worse meat to public. This article by Sinclair was published in Everybody's Magazine, crusading about such matters.

"You may find it in the library, “Everybody’s” for May, 1906. Whatever you think of its literary style, you will see that it is definite and specific, and revealed a most frightful condition in the country’s meat supply, an unquestionable danger to the public health. It was therefore a challenge to every public service agency in the country; above all, it was a challenge to the newspapers, through which the social body is supposed to learn of its dangers and its needs."

"Of all the newspapers in America, not one in two hundred went so far as to mention “The Condemned Meat Industry.”"

Arthur Brisbane talked to Sinclair.

"I remember talking about this editorial with Adolph Smith, representative of the “London Lancet.” He remarked with dry sarcasm that in a court of justice Brisbane would be entirely safe; his statement that a slaughter-house is not an opera-house was strictly and literally accurate. But if you took what the statement was meant to convey to the reader—that a slaughter-house is necessarily filthy, then the statement was false. “If you go to the municipal slaughter-houses of Germany, you find them as free from odor as an opera-house,” said Adolph Smith; and five or six years later, when I visited Germany, I took the opportunity to verify this statement. But because of the kindness of American editorial writers to the interests which contribute full-page advertisements to newspapers, the American people still have their meat prepared in filth."

The President of the United States had an investigation done, which vindicated everything said by Upton Sinclair about the state of meat packing industry in Chicago.
...........

"All these stories the “Times” sold to scores of newspapers all over the country—newspapers which should have received them through the Associated Press, had the Associated Press been a news channel instead of a concrete wall. The “Times,” of course, made a fortune out of these sales; yet it never paid me a dollar for what I gave it, nor did it occur to me to expect a dollar. I only mention this element to show how under the profit-system even the work of reform, the service of humanity, is exploited. I have done things like this, not once but hundreds of times in my life; yet I read continually in the newspapers the charge that I am in the business of muck-raking for money. I have read such insinuations even in the “New York Times”!"

"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 Seattlepaper. Some one has written to ask if “The Jungle” is a true book. The editor replies, ex cathedra, that President Roosevelt made an investigation of the charges of “The Jungle,” and thoroughly disproved them all!

"And again, here is my friend Edwin E. Slosson, literary editor of the “Independent,” a man who has sense enough to know better than he does. He reviews “The Profits of Religion” in this brief fashion:

"The author of “The Jungle” has taken to muck-raking the churches—with similar success at unearthing malodorous features and similar failure to portray a truthful picture.

"I write to Slosson, just as I wrote to the “New York Evening Post,” to ask what investigation he has made, and what evidence he can produce to back up his charge that “The Jungle” is not a “truthful picture”; and there comes the surprising reply that it had never occurred to Slosson that I myself meant “The Jungle” for a truthful picture. I had not portrayed the marvelous business efficiency of the Stockyards, their wonderful economies, etc.; and no picture that failed to do that could claim to be truthful! That explanation apparently satisfied my friend Slosson, but it did not satisfy the readers of the “Independent”—for the reason that Slosson did not give them ...

[David Hill · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is a book about the state of journalism a century ago. With certain public figures today singing "fake news" whenever anything negative about them is published, it's fitting to visit the topic to get a sense of the history of the subject.

Today, cries of "fake news" are almost entirely a response to negative press. A century ago, the term was of course unknown. I suggest much has changed since Sinclair wrote this book. If things were the same today as back then, powerful figures wouldn't be crying "fake news" because nothing negative about them would be published.

The first section of the book is a sort of memoir, at least as regards his interactions with the press. As a notable muck-raker of the time, he was subject to attack from the powers that be. Those attacks often happened in the press. His thesis is that newspapers were typically owned by people who controlled industry. A steel magnate might own several papers. Those papers would never print anything negative about the steel industry, and would likely suppress news about labor strife.

Also, newspapers relied greatly on advertising. These advertisers were also powerful entities. Were any negative stories printed about an advertiser, the paper could expect their income to be hurt. And finally, the newspapers worked together through the auspices of the Associated Press, which was controlled by a small number of the larger papers.

Through these mechanisms, the people were misinformed about major topics of the day, and anybody who wanted to effect change in society (that would negatively impact business profits) could be attacked and have no recourse.

Sinclair makes a good case that this was the reality of 1920 or so. In the last chapter he suggests corrective measures.

I don't know that his suggestions ever worked. But the world changed with the advent of radio and television (and now the internet). I'd suggest that newspapers in my lifetime didn't suffer the ills Sinclair discusses. Had things been the same, we'd never have had the Pentagon Papers or Watergate. Enron might have gone unreported, as well as things like the Ford Pinto.

[Drew Davis · Rating 4 out of 5]

Sinclair lays out the realities of the press of his time in a striking and compelling way. Filled with stories, anecdotes, and propositions this book is sure to inspire thought about history and how the news operates today.

You may think that a book written 100 years ago wouldn't be valid anymore but much of the critism still holds today and it is interesting thinking about how his observations might change if he were around today.

[Valarie · Rating 4 out of 5]

Well, on one hand, the problem with today's mainstream media are nothing new...on the other hand, the problem hasn't been solved since this book was originally published.

But it's my favorite Upton Sinclair book so far.

[Babs M · Rating 4 out of 5]

Obviously fake news has always existed and things never change except for who is in charge. I thought the book was worth reading however he was a known Socialist and it certainly is expressed in this book.

[Tie Webb · Rating 5 out of 5]

Just like an erudite once said:: "It's déjà vu all over again."
Yogi Berra

[Derek Kreider · Rating 5 out of 5]

If I had to rate this book in terms of interest level, it would probably only be a three. There are some really great parts, particularly the intro as to why the book is called "Brass Check," as well as the conclusion. But a lot of what's conveyed is anecdote. It's interesting, but it's anecdotal stories about his experiences. While his anecdotes could have been verified back in the day, it would be really tedious to do now. Nevertheless, it's really interesting.

I enjoyed seeing the various strategies of the press in how they frame events. It was also fascinating getting a glimpse back into big business and the ways it used violence to control people, which of course has now switched over to propaganda (see Alex Carey "Taking the Risk Out of Democracy" or "How Propaganda Became Public Relations"). This book is highly important historically, but also to see how propaganda may work today.

It amazes me that as I'm writing this, there are less than 100 reviews on Goodreads, and there's hardly anything on it on Youtube or Google. While the book sold quite a few copies in the first few years, it's been largely suppressed in silence and being ignored. So in terms of value, that makes up for any lack in terms of compelling storytelling.

[Paul · Rating 3 out of 5]

Interesting to look back 100 years and see that although many things are different today in our media, many things are still the same.

Written in 1919 this is a study of American journalism of that time, describing the difficulties that Upton Sinclair had getting stories into print, how the media was used to blacken the name of those opposed to vested interests, and how newspapers and magazines were controlled for the benefit of big business, and advertisers. A lot of it is a personal account of his own experiences, but he goes on to analyse the causes in the second part of the book, and then suggests solutions later on.

[Tymon Cotoarba · Rating 4 out of 5]

Definitely interesting book and good read. At the end of the second part I felt like he kinda kept repeating the issues that where already mentioned. Would have been nice to see more solutions.

It's pretty relevant to the 21st century as well.

[David Brown · Rating 5 out of 5]

Fantastic exposé by a brilliant mind

Over 100 years later it is so sensational and applicable to today. It's as if The Brass Check were written in the 2020s rather than the 1910s. A real eye opener. It answers the question: Why wasn't this the history taught in high school?

[Mary · Rating 4 out of 5]

I enjoyed most of it, but Sinclair was a bit too wordy for my taste at times. It gives a fascinating peek into the journalism of the early 1900s.

[Michael B · Rating 4 out of 5]

Upton Sinclair quite substantially exposes the faults and biases of American journalism in the early 20th century. He is very detailed in the evidence he presents regarding large publications efforts to deceive the public, inventing stories to ruin the reputations of Socialists and radical progressives and omitting facts regarding poor working conditions and the causes of strikes against the various Trusts. Though reporting ethics may have generally improved up to today, there are still points which are just as applicable today as they were a century ago (for example, the underreporting or vilification of the railworker strike at the end of 2022).

This is a must read of Sinclair’s bibliography. I’d recommend this alongside The Jungle to any American history buffs, especially in the subjects of journalism and Socialist ideologies. There’s some excerpts in here also worth reading by just about anyone regarding the trustworthiness of our news outlets

[Stephen Davis · Rating 2 out of 5]

My m.o. is to finish even books I don't like but I made an exception this time. While I have enjoyed several of his many books, this one about journalism practices, many of which are probably still relevant, was too focused on dated examples of the mistreatment he received as a result, he claimed, of his Socialistic beliefs. It was too much for me.

[Kim · Rating 5 out of 5]

Bloggers Take Note

Upton Sinclair shows once again how daily journalism, particularly newspapers of his day, were the puppets of the wealthy. The conscious reader will be overwhelmed to the point of numbness that news outlets made lying, rumor-mongering and utter disregard for the truth a job requirement. And especially shameful is the Associated Press.
Bloggers in our day should read this before writing one more word. That Mr. Sinclair kept at his fight for fact-based news is as startling as the greedy forces that tried to shut him up.