Gillnetter gives a good explanation of the meaning of the phrase you originally posted. I'll try to make sense of the context.
The integrity of a writer is more threatened by appeals to his social conscience, his political or religious convictions, than by appeals to his cupidity. It is morally less confusing to be goosed by a travelling salesman than by a bishop.
It sounds as though the writer of this piece is arguing that writing ought to be an art for art's sake, not a means to an end. Writers should write to express deep and eternal truths, not to advance a social agenda or make themselves rich. Now, we all recognize that writers still need to eat, and so we expect that they will sometimes bow to commercial interests in order to make money (that's their cupidity, or greed, at work.) This is similar to a traveling salesman, a character not renowned for propriety, being overly familiar and flirtatious; it's not really right, but it's sort of expected. However, some writers don't just write for artistic reasons or mercenary reasons; they write to promote a social, political, or religious agenda. In the view of the person who wrote this passage, this is not merely wrong, it's upsetting on a deeper level than a writer doing commercial hack work to pay the bills.
Where did you read this?
