"In the evening I came home and read about the Messina earthquake, and how the relief ships arrived, and the wretched survivors crowded down to the water's edge and tore each other like wild beasts in their rage of hunger. The paper set forth, in horrified language, that some of them had been seventy-two hours without food. I, as I read, had also been seventy-two hours without food; and the difference was simply that they thought they were starving."
Upton Sinclair was an American writer and social critic best known for The Jungle and other reform-oriented novels. His work helped drive public debate on labor and food safety in the United States.