Upton Sinclair

“ Curtis had already acted, so Percy informed Hal; she had passed about a subscription-paper, and in a couple of minutes over a thousand dollars had been pledged. This would be paid by check to the "Red Cross," whose agents would understand how to distribute relief among such sufferers. So the members of Percy's party felt that they had done the proper and delicate thing, and might go their ways with a quiet conscience.
"The world can't stop moving just because there's been a mine-disaster," said the Coal King's son. "People have engagements they must keep." ”

“ The sights they would see would harrow them to no purpose; and incidentally they would be exposing themselves to distressing publicity. As for offering sympathy to widows and orphans--well, these were foreigners mostly, who could not understand what was said to them, and who might be more embarrassed than helped by the intrusion into their grief of persons from an alien world.
The business of offering sympathy had been reduced to a system by the civilisation which these ladies helped to maintain ”