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It Was All So Very Businesslike That One Watched It Fascinated. It Was Pork-making By Machinery, Pork-making By Applied Mathematics. And Yet Somehow The Most Matter-of-fact Person Could Not Help Thinking Of The Hogs; They Were So Innocent, They Came So Very Trustingly; And They Were So Very Human In Their Protests - And So Perfectly Within Their Rights! They Had Done Nothing To Deserve It; And It Was Adding Insult To Injury, As The Thing Was Done Here, Swinging Them Up In This Cold-blooded, Impersonal Way, Without Pretence At Apology, Without The Homage Of A Tear.

-Upton Sinclair

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It Was All So

Upton Sinclair

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It Was All So Very Businesslike That One Watched It Fascinated. It Was Pork-making By Machinery, Pork-making By Applied Mathematics. And Yet Somehow The Most Matter-of-fact Person Could Not Help Thinking Of The Hogs; They Were So Innocent, They Came So Very Trustingly; And They Were So Very Human In Their Protests - And So Perfectly Within Their Rights! They Had Done Nothing To Deserve It; And It Was Adding Insult To Injury, As The Thing Was Done Here, Swinging Them Up In This Cold-blooded, Impersonal Way, Without Pretence At Apology, Without The Homage Of A Tear.

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Insult To Injury

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The American People Will Take Socialism, But They Won't Take The Label. I Certainly Proved It In The Case Of Epic [end Poverty In California]. Running On The Socialist Ticket I Got 60,000 Votes, And Running On The Slogan To 'end Poverty In California' I Got 879,000. I Think We Simply Have To Recognize The Fact That Our Enemies Have Succeeded In Spreading The Big Lie. There Is No Use Attacking It By A Front Attack, It Is Much Better To Out-flank Them.

So The Laws Of Good Driving Forbade You To Go Off The Magic Ribbon Except In Extreme Emergencies. You Were Ethically Entitled To Several Inches Of Margin At The Right-hand Edge; And The Man Approaching You Was Entitled To An Equal Number Of Inches; Which Left A Remainder Of Inches Between The Two Projectiles As They Shot By. It Sounds Risky As One Tells It, But The Heavens Are Run On The Basis Of Similar Calculations, And While Collisions Do Happen, They Leave Time Enough In Between For Universes To Be Formed, And Successful Careers Conducted By Men Of Affairs.

Consider Christmas - Could Satan In His Most Malignant Mood Have Devised A Worse Combination Of Graft Plus Bunkum Than The System Whereby Several Hundred Million People Get A Billion Or So Gifts For Which They Have No Use, And Some Thousands Of Shop Clerks Die Of Exhaustion While Selling Them, And Every Other Child In The Western World Is Made Ill From Overeating - All In The Name Of The Lowly Jesus?

All Day Long This Man Would Toil Thus, His Whole Being Centered Upon The Purpose Of Making Twenty-three Instead Of Twenty-two And A Half Cents An Hour; And Then His Product Would Be Reckoned Up By The Census Taker, And Jubilant Captains Of Industry Would Boast Of It In Their Banquet Halls, Telling How Our Workers Are Nearly Twice As Efficient As Those Of Any Other Country. If We Are The Greatest Nation The Sun Ever Shone Upon, It Would Seem To Be Mainly Because We Have Been Able To Goad Our Wage-earners To This Pitch Of Frenzy.

Man Is An Evasive Beast, Given To Cultivating Strange Notions About Himself.

In The Twilight, It Was A Vision Of Power.

I Just Put On What The Lady Says. I've Been Married Three Times, So I've Had Lots Of Supervision.

It Is The Music Which Makes It What It Is; It Is The Music Which Changes The Place From The Rear Room Of A Saloon In Back Of The Yards To A Fairy Place, A Wonderland, A Little Comer Of The High Mansions Of The Sky.

One Of The Necessary Accompaniments Of Capitalism In A Democracy Is Political Corruption.

The Proletarian Writer Is A Writer With A Purpose; He Thinks No More Of Art For Art's Sake Than A Man On A Sinking Ship Thinks Of Painting A Beautiful Picture In The Cabin; He Thinks Of Getting Ashore - And Then There Will Be Time Enough For Art.

I Don't Know Whether Anyone Will Care To Examine My Heart, But If They Do, They Will Find Two Words There- 'social Justice.' For That Is What I Have Believed In And Fought For.

We Define Journalism In America As The Business And Practice Of Presenting The News Of The Day In The Interest Of Economic Privilege.

If We Are The Greatest Nation The Sun Ever Shone Upon, It Would Seem To Be Mainly Because We Have Been Able To Goad Our Wage-earners To This Pitch Of Frenzy.

Captains Of Industry

I Am Sustained By A Sense Of The Worthwhileness Of What I Am Doing; A Trust In The Good Faith Of The Process Which Created And Sustains Me. That Process I Call God.

It Is Difficult To Get A Man To Understand Something When His Salary Depends Upon His Not Understanding It.

You Don't Have To Be Satisfied With America As You Find It. You Can Change It. I Didn't Like The Way I Found America Some Sixty Years Ago, And I've Been Trying To Change It Ever Since.

The Private Control Of Credit Is The Modern Form Of Slavery.

It Was All So Very Businesslike That One Watched It Fascinated. It Was Pork-making By Machinery, Pork-making By Applied Mathematics. And Yet Somehow The Most Matter-of-fact Person Could Not Help Thinking Of The Hogs; They Were So Innocent, They Came So Very Trustingly; And They Were So Very Human In Their Protests - And So Perfectly Within Their Rights! They Had Done Nothing To Deserve It; And It Was Adding Insult To Injury, As The Thing Was Done Here, Swinging Them Up In This Cold-blooded, Impersonal Way, Without Pretence At Apology, Without The Homage Of A Tear.

Insult To Injury

The Remedy [for The Great Depression] Is To Give The Workers Access To The Means Of Production, And Let Them Produce For Themselves, Not For Others, . . . The American Way.

Human Beings Suffer Agonies, And Their Sad Fates Become Legends; Poets Write Verses About Them And Playwrights Compose Dramas, And The Remembrance Of Past Grief Becomes A Source Of Present Pleasure - Such Is The Strange Alchemy Of The Spirit.

A Large Section Of The Idling Classes Of England Get Their Incomes By Believing That Jesus Was Born Of A Virgin And That Jonah Swallowed A Whale; And With The Progress Of Science They Were Naturally Finding This More And More Difficult. A School Of Ingenious Bible-twisters Arose, To Invent Symbolical And Literary Meanings For Fairy Tales, In Order That People Who No Longer Believed Could Continue With Good Conscience To Collect The Salaries Of Belief.

I Aimed At The Public's Heart, And By Accident I Hit It In The Stomach.

It Was Cold And Clammy In The Stone Cell; They Called It The "cooler," And Used It To Reduce The Temperature Of The Violent And Intractable. It Was A Trouble-saving Device; They Just Left The Man There And Forgot Him, And His Own Tormented Mind Did The Rest.

Can You Blame Me If I Am Pursued By The Thought Of How Much We Could Do To Remedy Social Evils, If Only We Had An Honest And Disinterested Press?

The First Thing Brought Forth By The Study Of Any Religion, Ancient Or Modern, Is That It Is Based Upon Fear, Born Of It, Fed By It — And That It Cultivates The Source From Which Its Nourishment Is Derived.

There Are A Score Of Great Religions In The World, Each With Scores Or Hundreds Of Sects, Each With Its Priestly Orders, Its Complicated Creed And Ritual, Its Heavens And Hells. Each Has Its Thousands Or Millions Or Hundreds Of Millions Of True Believers Each Damns All The Others With More Or Less Heartiness - And Each Is A Mighty Fortress Of Graft.

They Use Everything About The Hog Except The Squeal.

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Dad, As A Good American, Believed His Newspapers.

All Truly Great Art Is Optimistic. The Individual Artist Is Happy In His Creative Work. The Fact That Practically All Great Art Is Tragic Does Not In Any Way Change The Above Thesis.

Through Fasting. . .i Have Found A Perfect Health, A New State Of Existence, A Feeling Of Purity And Happiness, Something Unknown To Humans.

You Can't Make Somebody Understand Something If Their Salary Depends Upon Them Not Understanding It.

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American Journalism Is A Class Institution, Serving The Rich And Spurning The Poor.

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Over The Vast Plain I Wander, Observing A Thousand Strange And Incredible And Terrifying Manifestations Of The Bootstrap-lifting Impulse.

I Have Not Only Found Good Health, But Perfect Health; I Have Found A New State Of Being, A Potentiality Of Life; A Sense Of Lightness And Cleanness And Joyfulness, Such As I Did Not Know Could Exist In The Human Body.

Pessimism Is Mental Disease. It Means Illness In The Person Who Voices It, And In The Society Which Produces That Person.

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The Old Wanderlust Had Gotten Into His Blood, The Joy Of The Unbound Life, The Joy Of Seeking, Of Hoping Without Limit.

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An Event Of Colossal And Overwhelming Significance May Happen All At Once, But The Words Which Describe It Have To Come One By One In A Long Chain.

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