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Show Muclc-Rakcrs at tho Past. The "muck-raker" Is by no means a nowcomer In literature. Tbe year of the publication of "The Jungle Is the seml-centeunlal or the appearance of Charles Readf's "Jt's Never Top Late to Mend," a book which the critics of tho time found as "revolting" as they now find Mr. Sinclair's work, and for reasons much the same. Its fidelity to fact in the portrayal of prison abuses shocked a conservative sentiment which was later to demand the very reforms in tho treatment of convicts of which It showed the need. The novel with a purpose long ago became common In English fiction. Reado himself, Oxford don that he was i and man of refined culture, handled the muck-rake without gloves. In "Hard Cash," published In 1SC3, he exposed ex-posed the evils of private lunatic asy- luins. and ln "Foul Play, ' In 1S69, gave j the world that forcible arraignment of th traffic in sailors' lives by shlpown- j ers which was said to have Inspired Pllmsoll's efforts for the protection of British seamen from the risks of un-seaworthy un-seaworthy vessels. Even before Reade, Charles Dickens, in "The Pickwick Papers." in 1S36, had dealt a blow at prison evils. In "Nicholas "Nich-olas Nlckleby." published in.1838, he laid bare "the petty oppressions of school life in Yorkshire with the thoroughness thor-oughness of a. Government commissioner. commission-er. In "Oliver Twist," ln the same year, he laughed away the incompetence incompe-tence of parlBh charity officials and E-reatly aided poor-law reform. The Dickens gallery of grafters and swindlers swin-dlers Is a full one. In recent times in England Walter Besant's "All Sorts and Condition of Men," by the light It threw on the deplorable de-plorable social conditions of London's East Side, was almo6t directly responsible respon-sible for the Institution of the People' Palace and gave a strong impetus tc settlement work for the reclamation ot the submerged. Our own great example of muck-rak fiction of a. former time is "Uncle Tora'i Cabin." curiously enough from a feminine femi-nine pen. No one, least of all Mrs Stowe herself, foresaw the extraordinary extraor-dinary influence which'this tract ln tho form of a romance, called forth by the fugitive slave law, was destined to exercise ex-ercise in securing the freedom of slaves. On Its publication In book form in 1852 the author despaired of its success. "It seemed that there was no hope: that nobody would read, that nobody would hear." Within Ave years 500,000 copies had been sold and Its place at the head of all novels of moral motives established estab-lished New York World. |