He is a rather small man, with small dark eyes, and he sat at his big desk, watching me uncomfortably. I asked him what reasons he had for pronouncing the ban upon me, and he could only say it was my reputation. I asked him where he had got his impression of my reputation, and of course he had to admit that he had got it from the capitalist newspapers. I asked if he had read any book of mine, and at first he said he had not, then he thought he had read “The Jungle,” but had forgotten it.
“Oh, no, President Birge,” I answered. “Nobody that has read ‘The Jungle’ has ever forgotten it.” And I could see that this was not the answer he had expected.
I asked him on what he based his impression that I had exaggerated in “The Brass Check.” He admitted that he had not read the book; whereat I remarked: “You have spoiled my score!” I explained that I had traveled from Pasadena to Madison, and stopped at nine cities on the way, and in each place I had talked to from ten to twenty educators—school teachers and college professors—and so far every person had read “The Brass Check.” “I thought I was going to get to New York with a hundred percent record!” President Birge murmured sympathetically.
“You will realize,” I added, “that it strikes me as significant that the one person who thinks the book isn’t true is the person who hasn’t read it.”
I went on to tell about the many and various efforts I had made to lure the Associated Press into the arena. Before publishing the book I had submitted to Mr. Melville E. Stone, then general manager of the Associated Press, four questions for him to answer. He had previously written that he would be glad to answer any questions, but he fell silent when he read the questions I sent. I had written to Mr. Stone’s assistant, now general manager, calling his attention to the book, and asking for an answer on various points. At the annual convention of the Associated Press, held in New York in April, 1921, after “The Brass Check” had been out more than a year, it was officially announced in the “Editor and Publisher,” and also in the New York “Evening Post,” that the Associated Press had a committee investigating “The Brass Check,” and was shortly to issue a complete report upon the book. A couple of months later, when this report failed to appear, I wrote the Associated Press asking what had become of it, and when they failed to reply, I published my letter and sent a copy of it to the managing editor of every Associated Press newspaper in the United States—but without getting a reply from a single one!