Sinclair simply refuses to accept existence as it stands and goes on
questioning it forever. _Samuel the Seeker_ seems a kind of allegory of
its author's own career. He, too, in the fashion of Samuel Prescott,
inquires of all he meets why they tolerate injustice and demands that
something or other be done at once. These are the methods of the ragged
philosophers, whereas the learned understand that justice comes slowly
and so rest now and then from effort; and the ironists understand that
justice may never come and so now and then sit down, detached and
cynical.

Naïve inquirers like Upton Sinclair take and give fewer opportunities
for comfort. How can any one talk of the long ages of human progress
when a child may starve to death in a few days? How can any one take
refuge in irony when agony is always abroad, biting and rending? How can
any one leave to others the obligation to assail injustice when the
responsibility for it lies equally upon all, whether victims or victors,
who permit it to continue? A questioner so relentless can very soon bore
the questioned, especially if they are less strenuous or less inflamed
than he and can keep up his pitch neither of activity nor of anger; but
this is no proof that such an inquiry is impertinent or that answers are
impossible. Indeed, the chances are that the proportions of this
boredom and the animosity resulting from it will depend upon the extent
to which grievances do exist about which it is painful to think for the
reason that they so plainly should not exist. A complacent reader of any
of Mr. Sinclair's better books can stay complacent only by shutting up
the book and his mind again.

Without doubt the various abuses which these books set forth have their
case seriously weakened by the violent quickness with which Mr. Sinclair
scents conspiracy among the enemies of justice. It is perhaps not to be