People From Wisconsin

"It was in 1917 that my teacher and I first met Art Young at our Forest Hills home. He was a guest whom Anne Sullivan Macy especially welcomed. Her many-faceted personality was an open book to him. Then his delightful kindliness, humor, sudden whims, sincerity, and the dreams of beauty hovering round his fighting citadel endeared him to her kindred spirit. At a time when reaction was riding roughshod over the earth and throttling those who protested against the betrayal of the people's aspiration to genuine liberty by the capitalist empires, Art Young was emerging from his trial for anti-war charges a gentle yet formidable Samson, and I recall the gay courage with which he defied any power to muzzle the thunder and lightning of his art. It was a marvel how many truths he packed into pictures which opened blind eyes to our community of fate and interest with the downtrodden and the toilers of the world. Some of Art Young's drawings were embossed for me, and I sensed vividly the highly individual and forceful manner in which he presented with the brush ideas that he hoped would serve as a ferment in American economic philosophy. My fingers could appreciate his pictorial power in uncovering hell and its network of race prejudice and enslavement. A year never passed during which I was not thrilled by his inventiveness in devising themes that provoked wide discussion and pushed further the painfully slow campaign of education in true freedom among the working people. Little by little the pillars loosened at which his Samson hatred of oppression tugged, and it is devoutly to be hoped that his death has left them irrevocably sagging to their downfall. There is no calculating the might of patient efforts like his which quietly root themselves in the granite of tyranny and crumble it into life-giving soil. Besides the keen-eyed radical and uncompromising idealist there was another aspect of Art Young I knew-his brimming joy in all things friendly and wholesome, all things that foster song, laughter, and poetry. He said the song of a bird or a burst of morning-glories at this door or a sparkle of dew-wet verdure was enough to crowd new ideas into his day, and evening peace flooded his imagination with fantastic beckoning forms in the trees around him. In all moods, places, and activities he sought to make his labors a telling force in a future that would enable everyone with a special gift or genius to achieve a nobler civilization."

"All day, every day, the circles are in the Square, close packed huddles, voices rising and falling and rising again. "Did y' see Art Young's cartoon in The Masses? That one where two big cops are draggin' a little guy off to jail? One bystander says: "What's he been doin'?" and another guy says: "Overthrowin' the gov'ment." It's a scream!""

"If I had no other pleasant memories to recall than those of the beautiful women I have met who were active in progressive or radical affairs, life would still be worth while. I fell in love with Elizabeth Gurley Flynn when as a young girl she aroused uncounted thousands with her clear, ringing voice to the cause of social revolt. When I think of beauty I know that some on my list would not have passed a jury test for what is called feminine beauty today. But as a jury of one I attest that they were beautiful to my eyes, and their loveliness lingers in retrospect. With no attempt at alphabetical arrangement or making a complete list, I think of Margaret Larkin, Ernestine Evans, Rebecca Drucker, Ruth and Hannah Pickering, Jessica Smith, Crystal Eastman, Marguerite Tucker, Inez Milholland, Genevieve Taggard, Mary Marcy, Doris Stevens, Louise Bryant, Edna Porter, Leane Zugsmith. Freda Kirchwey. Sara Bard Field. Lydia Gibson, Martha Gruening. Clara Gruening Stillman. Jane Burr, Caroline Lowe, Jessica Milne, Mary Ware Dennett, Harriot Stanton Blatch. Margaret Sanger. Helen Black, Mary Heaton Vorse, Anna Strunsky, Louise Adams Floyd, Helen Keller. Grace Potter, Edna Kenton. Helen Todd, Anne Valentine, Carrie Giovannitti, Rose Hanna, Lucy Branham, and Sophia Wittenberg Mumford. And these are only a few of the many I have watched as they did their part in the fight to make this a better world to live in-organizing, picketing, speaking to crowds in halls or on street corners, writing, and raising money. (Chapter 40. Overflow Meeting of Memories)"

"Literature and art ought to make people soul hungry. (September 4th)"

"Even subsequent contact with blacks during a trip to Alabama and his growing social consciousness did little to alter Young's vision of southern blacks, who appeared to him happy-go-lucky primitives; he remained unaware of the hard lives behind their mask of joviality and insouciance."

"Art Young was one of the most picturesque and highly regarded cartoonists of his generation, one of the early masters of the medium. Usually forgotten these days, he was, in his day, the subject of a certain amount of sensational news coverage. And he can be credited with a couple of historic firsts, too. But mostly, he was an artist of principle at a time, the turn of the 19th into the 20th century and immediately thereafter, when cartoonists weren't yet particularly noted for doing much more than making funny faces."

"I have made many sketches of the moon and its frame of sky and cloud, always changing, never repeating. I never cease to wonder at the vast populations of the world since time began and no two faces have ever been just alike. And however much governments and society try to mold the human mind to think according to pattern, there is always a tiny something different and non-conformist in every human being, though they fear to express it. (October 25th)"

"is it not wrong for intelligent, creative men to exercise the humorous faculties of their minds, every day, all of the time, year in and year out? I would say that it is brain-abuse. (October 16th)"

"Only last year we lost the gay, faithful friend and comrade, Art Young, who "kept up with the procession," till the last moment of his life. The very night he died, last New Year's Eve, he mailed me a post card on which he wrote, "Dear Ella-It has been a long road but now I think we are getting somewhere." And then in a corner he put the word "Teheran", which means so much to us."

"When anyone tells me he hates a particular race of people, I can work up a little hate myself-not for the race-but for the one who is talking. (October 27th)"

"Nothing is important but what we do and how well we do it. If money comes-well and good; if not-we may regret not having had the thrill of plenty to carry out our dreams; but there is comfort in the thought of having lived without being tempted away from our principles by too much consideration for a pile of money. (October 17th)"

"No matter how individualistic and aloof the creative mind is it wants the kinship of all kinds of minds. To be accepted by a few in authority, although a grateful distinction, is not quite satisfactory. In the long run every true artist wants the wave-length universal. (October 30th)"

"Cartooning capitalism is far more inspiring than capitalistic cartooning. Compare some of the weak, insipid, vulgar pictorial attacks upon Socialism in capitalist papers with the virile, gripping, masterful specimens of the art produced by such revolutionary artists as Ryan Walker, Art Young, Balfour Ker, Ward Savage and Walter Crane, in their terrific onslaughts upon the capitalist system and its regime of riches and squalor, money and misery, crime and corruption. These are the young artists of the social revolution. Their every perception and touch has the divine quality of inspiration, and they are rising grandly to supremacy and exaltation."

"What crimes and follies are committed by the need for money! Most people live at high pressure . (October 11th)"

"aside from the appearance of a tree by day or night-is it not kin of the human family with its roots in the earth and its arms stretching toward the sky as if to seek and to know the great mystery? (October 8th)"

"No great height is reached when it is said of you that you are a master of expression. What matters is what you have to say. Is your message big enough for humanity, or is it a reflex of your narrowness and petty prejudice? (October 11th)"

"One has to catch a train in this kind of a civilization. You can't be careless or gay, you must crowd in and go somewhere, or get left on the desert of your dreams. (October 31st)"

"In art and literature I am always on the side of the experimentalist and those who break with tradition, knowing full well that there are some rules of art just as truly as there is a law of equilibrium. These rules a real artist picks up as he does the brush, the pencil, or chisel that have come down from antiquity. But a real artist is also a rebel. Tradition, for all its accepted truisms, is the enemy. The fact that a few accepted or basic facts reveal themselves in all art from the primitive to the classical is not more important than that the iconoclast shall have his day. Within the larger truths there are always a lot of other truths that no one sees till the radical dares to investigate and bring them to light. (October 13th)"

"Art Young drew a picture of a complacent cherub carrying a tiny pail of water dipped from the "Ocean of Truth." The pail was marked "Dogma," and my editorial read: "I publish this little picture in answer to numberless correspondents who want to know just what this magazine is trying to do.' It is trying not to try to empty the ocean, for one thing. And in a propaganda paper that alone is a task.""

"Hardly a day goes by that the problem of duty to myself-versus duty to others does not arise. (September 29th)"

"September 18th: To call one a propagandist is generally to dismiss him from the sacred realm of art. The favorite cry of critics, "Oh, he is a propagandist, not an artist." These propagandists against propaganda amuse me. Propaganda is a kind of enthusiasm for or against something that you think ought to be spread-that is, propagated. Your propaganda may be wrong-or not worth while from another's viewpoint, but that is a personal matter. Duty, sacrifice, beauty, bravery, death and eternity-all allowable subjects for poets and dramatists out of which they can fashion works of art. When others do not believe in your enthusiasm your work runs the risk of being condemned as propaganda. There never was a real work of art in which it is not plain that the author wants you to share his loves and sympathies and his ideas of right and wrong."

"I don't mind tinkling a little in this Bedlam called popularity, but my real desire is to ring true-as nearly true as I can get. I have always believed in my star, that light to live and create, and to express myself in pictures of simplicity and strength. (October 1st)"

"Inasmuch as the years ahead of us look stormy for financial kings, they may be called upon like the kings of old to appear before the people and explain. I here present a speech that I feel can be used to advantage. The speech was delivered by a well-meaning capitalist before one thousand striking employees, and it worked quite satisfactorily-with only a few setbacks: "Fellow citizens and loyal Americans (brick hits a window), the interests of capital and labor are identical (mob hisses). What's mine is yours. (voice: "Like hell.") We all want to see justice done to labor-but we have different ideas as to how it should be done. (silence). Our books are open to you. We are not making any money now or we might meet your proposal half way (mob begins to feel sorry for him). I haven't been sleeping well lately (mob sheds a tear). Money doesn't bring happiness. (Mob disperses-king retires to his banquet-hall for a champagne supper with selected friends.)""

"There is an humble looking man hanging around the press headquarters of the conference (Guess who it is?-Ed.) He has a policy of his own-a crudely expressed and inadequate program that he calls "Toward Peace"-Here are a few paragraphs copied from the first page of his pamphet. "Every nation with a navy ought to destroy three cruisers a year instead of building more. Every tariff ought to be abolished. Nations based on the capitalist-system are anti-social-they breed war." Down with them! The delegates are the wise-men, this humble, ragged outsider is just "queer." The queerer they are the wiser they seem to me."

"Obviously the League of Nations is an attempt to form a trust, to put down international competition. In that sense it is "a step in the right direction" for capitalism. And just as any trust is helpful and sympathetic toward a private individual who is trying to gain his freedom in his own way, just so the League of Nations will help and sympathize with Ireland, or Hungary, or any nation struggling for its own kind of freedom-especially if that freedom happens to be industrial in its nature and not merely political. That is the covenant. It is the last stand of Commercial aristocracy, in collusion with kings, premiers and labor fakirs. But it is not yet plain to American business that we had better form such an alliance. If we do, there must be plenty of reservations. Capitalism of course is already international, so why make a covenant out of it? The next thing you know, people will become international and align themselves boldly against the common enemy. So let us make "reasonable" reservations."

"An imagination is a brain with wings. Guided by a hand that holds a pen or a voice that directs its dream, it has accomplished all the good that the world is heir to. Imagination soars above the wrongs of the world and things that are, to things that ought to be, and nothing can stop it, till its message is heard. Imagination sees an Atlantic cable and does not rest till it is a fact. Imagination sees a Republic and does not rest till the throne falls and the better order takes its place. Imagination sees a world where "common" humanity shares in the right of suffrage, and it comes to pass. Imagination sees a world without poverty, where the producer owns the means of production and distribution, and, as in all ages, the "practical mind" says "it can't be done." But it has been written and the man with the ballot is beginning to see."

"Dante's Inferno was peopled mostly with those who had committed crimes recognized as such by the statute laws of this world. I enlarged the conception of this inferno to include many other kinds of offenders-in fact, all of us. I wanted a bigger and better-a democratic Hell, and modern efficiency. I felt that editors, preachers, politicians, poets, landlords, lawyers, cartoonists-and many others-should not be exempt from a properly planned region for future punishment. (September 16th)"

"most people are artists and dreamers in their youth, but their talent and appreciation for art are destroyed by continual application to business and the duty of getting on. (September 11)"

"No day passes that one does not hark back to the personalities and events of yesteryear. (September 17th)"

"An artist will protect his offspring as a hen covers her chicks. Dismiss the created offering of an artist as unworthy, you start a rebellion that savors of outraged paternity. But one never ought to let rejection sink in. He should be up and at it. (October 6th)"

"Art Young's drawings are published in the principal Army paper, Red Star, the satirical magazine Crocodile, Ogonyok magazine and others. He belonged to those artists to whom working means fighting for justice, and in our time one cannot fight for justice without being an active anti-fascist. Art Young was our friend and comrade-in-arms because his efforts were directed against Nazism. His biting cartoons appeal to the masses. His hard-hitting style is effective not only in his country but far beyond it. His works, impressive for their clear-cut statement of political themes and simplicity of form, can be achieved only by an experienced master. I have on my table one Art Young drawing dealing with the heroic struggle of the Red Army against Hitler's Germany. Hitler is shown in it. This is one of those social caricatures depicting the loathsome character of the Nazi regime with great impressiveness. Drawings such as this expose the rottenness of Hitler's "New Order" and the monstrosity of Nazi crimes. Thus, a fervent anti-Nazi takes part in the great battle waged by freedom-loving nations against evil forces. The artistic intelligentsia has lost one of its outstanding members. But Art Young's work will live on and call upon his young colleagues to take an active part in the struggle against Hitler's Germany for the happiness of mankind."

"Judged by that standard of success which most of the American people accept and believe, I would be classed among the failures. Now past sixty, with an obvious talent and reasonably industrious in doing the work I like, yet never in my life very far from bankruptcy. If I should happen to be a money success when I am old-and the years ahead of me very few-the fact remains the same; in the common vernacular, I lacked brains to get on and clean up; throughout all the years of an average life-time. I belong with the failures-with the man who is sitting at home tonight after his day's work who knows that his wife, his relatives and friends think; "he is a failure." I'm with this man and the whole army of splendid men and women who wear the ragged badge of defeat. I know that some people are successful who deserve to be, but I am with the unadaptable, the out-of-luck, the weary with the money-struggle. I am with them but not sadly because in my vision of a new world there is going to be a different definition of success. (March 1st)"

"Sometimes I'm lonely, but I am never discouraged," Art said to my sister Katherine, her daughter Frances, and me, when we were together at what was to be his last supper. He died a few hours later. In retrospect, it seemed as if he unconsciously spoke his own epitaph, not in a somber or foreboding spirit but in his naturally philosophical and calm manner. "I figure I should be able to live another twenty years," he continued, "and I know that in that time I will see socialism spread through the world." Our conversation was desultory-now serious, now gay, but with an undercurrent of the great changes taking place in the world, of which he was so keenly aware...He spoke considerably on longevity that night, of George Bernard Shaw and Mother Bloor and of our mother...He was a consistent and courageous admirer of the Soviet Union and the Red Army and described himself to me more than once as "A non-party Bolshevik." He had an extraordinary capacity to remain friends with people far removed from his social ideas-if they were honest in their views. But he would never sell his talents for what he disbelieved in, no matter how great his personal sacrifices. His friendship with Brisbane was on this basis...Art Young was gentle in manner, kindly and reassuring. But he was a great fighter against injustice, poverty, inequalities, and against fascism in all its forms. He was never downhearted about the progress of the world. He spoke to us rather regretfully that night about having to sell his little place in Connecticut where he had always planned to have a museum for his pictures and which he had started to build, I believe, or at least had designed. "I got a little money to live a little longer," he said. He said once to his friend Marguerite Tucker: "If I was in the Soviet Union I would be a people's artist and would not need to worry about money."

"The work of the world, the nerve, muscle and brain of human beings is the one big essential fact of our existence. Though most of labor is regimented and automatic, the skilled craft laborer, the artist producer-all, I like to think-do the best they can in a world where the big rewards go to those who have got out of the class called labor, into ownership and responsible management. (September 7th)"

"every town should have an art gallery for the people. (September 11th)"

"...instructors never meant much to me. You listen to a teacher and are thankful for his point of view. But your art school is worth while mainly because you learn to be patient and because many others are there who are going in your direction toward creative expression. The atmosphere and contacts are congenial and stimulating. On the whole-the bigger and better school is the world you live in-alone you make your way. (October 7th)"

"A conviction founded on bitter experience is often overthrown by a passing mood. We forget the sorrow that taught us our truth, and fall right into the same kind of sorrow again. It is easier to bear the loss of something you need than to have something you don't need but can't lose."

"I hope it will not be said of me that my cartoons never hurt. To be a caricaturist all one's life of the kind whose pictures "never hurt" is my idea of futility. It should not be the function of a political caricaturist just to be funny. The operation sometimes calls for cruelty. But to produce a cartoon that is nothing but an insulting burlesque of a public man is not my idea of a forceful cartoon. However, it often happens that a public man serves as a symbol of wrong because of his record and as such he should be a cartoonist's subject, not to be attacked as a man so much as the idea for which he stands. When one feels that everybody, even the most predatory of capitalists, is also a victim of his own system, one's steel is in danger of not being ground sharp enough for effective attack. But not to hurt with an idea and the manner of expressing it proves that the cartoonist is nothing but a court jester whom the money monarchs like to have around, and when he dies they will say "he never hurt.""

"The unhappy mortal is the one who has not all the freedom his nature wants him to have. He starts to soar and then in a little time is jerked suddenly back by the thought of conventional duty. He's like the pigeon that a hunter tosses into the air to attract other pigeons and then yanks down by the string tied to its leg."

"It took me a long time to understand why so much that surrounded me was too ugly to tolerate without protest. But eventually I learned the reason. I saw that the conduct of my fellow-men could not be otherwise than disappointing, in fact parasitical and corrupt, and that most of our troubles emanated from a cause which manifestly would grow worse so long as we put up with it. That cause was Capitalism. Man's natural self-interest. become perverted and ruthless! The motivating principle of business (though not openly confessed), when summed up, meant: "Get yours; never mind the other fellow." I saw, too, that our law-makers and judges of the meaning of the law put property rights first and left human rights to shift for themselves."

"Material considerations thwarted me at every turn. It was my money-earning ability that determined my right to exist, and I got through in a way-but what a way! Having spent so much of my time maneuvering to make enough cash with which to live decently, I count most of that effort a hindrance to my development, both as a man and as an artist. Instinctively most men are proud to be able to provide for themselves and their dependents, and I was no exception to the rule. That duty I accepted willingly. Still it seemed to me unworthy of any one to make that the main reason for living."

"experience proved that those in authority of publishing institutions were seldom impressed by that which was new or even a little different. Of course, they would tell us they wanted "something new" and were "looking for originality," but generally speaking they would accept nothing but the trite."

"Step right up and hit the man you hate most. "I hate a Jew," says one. So he takes a throw at "the kike." "I hate an Irishman," says another, and he drives at "the mick." Another hates an Englishman, another a German or a Japanese; so the devil in human nature spends itself in this way until wisdom touches the human mind and says, "Now calm yourself and wipe the froth from your mouth!" Then one begins to think, and finally learns this truth: that race hatred is one of the lowest and meanest of human passions. Until we learn to judge every individual on his own peculiar merits, we haven't taken a first good step toward social intelligence."

"the big war of 1914-1918 was not my war. It was plainly not a war for democracy but for plutocracy; not for peace but for plunder, and to make our country military-minded. It was capitalism's war-not mine."

"With more and more governments, however crude and experimental, dedicated to industrial democracy and universal brotherhood, the era of peace and joy in living will come on earth."

"I can see no hope for humanity so long as one's right to live depends upon one's ability to pay the cost of living imposed by those who exploit our daily needs. I think I know human nature well enough to know that the average individual works better when encouraged and praised, and does his worst when humiliated and looked upon as a slave. Some kind of congenial work is necessary to contentment. From the small boy tinkering with the construction of a toy to the old lady knitting, with no thought in their minds of cash payment-we see the desire of human beings to be doing something with their minds and hands. If the continual pressure for monetary gain whenever we render any kind of service were removed, I believe people would enjoy working for the common good. This is demonstrated over and over again in time of floods and other disasters when the call to communal welfare is the only incentive."

"the change is at hand-the old order is cracking. It has been said that 'the cure for democracy is more democracy'"

"Individual development depends upon mass-solution of the economic problems of everyday living. The inventors, thinkers, and the common man have made this world ripe for healthful leisure, and have created far more than enough goods for all. But through all this progress the business man has assumed the right to the lion's share while those who did the creating and hard work were compelled to fight for whatever they could get-or starve."

"In my youth I hoped for no higher status in life than to be among those who would follow in the wake of Thomas Nast, Joseph Keppler, and Bernhard Gillam, outstanding artists in the field of political caricature. And when in my early twenties I grew familiar with the political and social satires of the graphic artists of England and France across two centuries, these gave even greater stimulus to my ambition. Dreamily I anticipated that my destiny was to succeed as a caricaturist of some influence in public affairs."

"I do not think of myself as having arrived at any degree of achievement commensurate with my potential talent and capacity for work. I am just one among the many who have tried to approximate some measure of integrity in a world that is a sorry bewilderment of wretchedness and affluence."