Art Young

"Capitalism is an old man gone insane. Terrified and desperate, but still able to fight with a vicious strength, as a last chance he runs amok. Now it is in Spain, as it was in Italy, Germany, and Austria. With no thought of consequences, this monster is on his final rampage to rule or ruin, and to ruin all hope of progress the world over is preferable to a confession of having outlived his time. That is the scene as I see it."

"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."

"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.)""

"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."

"If he has illuminated the dark and serious subject with a suspicion of fun-it is meant to convey the hope he feels for all sinners like himself, that some relief of a slightly humorous nature may be found even in Hell."

"I was in deadly earnest about developing my talent, and carousing had no lure for me. I applied myself assiduously to the work in hand, and as I proceeded I became more and more convinced that graphic art was my road to recognition. Painting interested me no less, but I thought of it as having no influence. If one painted a portrait, or a landscape, or whatever, for a rich man to own in his private gallery, what was the use? On the other hand, a cartoon could be reproduced by simple mechanical processes and easily made accessible to hundreds of thousands. I wanted a large audience. . . The prevailing art of that period embraced a thorough, almost photographic, lens-like observance of detail. Gerome, Messonier, Cabanel, Vibert, and Bougeaureau were in the forefront of the artworld then, because they were accurate, precise draftsmen. (Chapter 1. Sunlight and Shadow in Paris)"

"I was to see more of the class struggle in the near future without knowing what it meant. Indeed, at that time, when I was 20 years old, I knew hardly anything except that I had a knack for drawing pictures and was pretty good at reciting selections from books of poetry. (Chapter 8. I see Chicago Justice at Close Range)"

"Everything I read about the Chicago Anarchists in 1886 and 1887 and nearly everything I heard about them indicated that the accused men were guilty. The news reports of the case in the dailies were quite as biased against the defendants as were the editorials. Few who read the charges that some of them had advocated violence against the police realized that they were driven to that extreme by the wanton clubbing, shooting, and killing of workers by the police in the fight of the big industries against the eight-hour day movement. (Chapter 10. Four Dissenters Silenced by the Rope)"

"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)"

"With all my self-consciousness about looks (and it maybe a feminine streak that is said to be in every artist), I have long had a dislike for individuals who judge others by surface aspects, whether it be a matter of clothes regarded as incorrect for the occasion, a spot on a shirt-front, or need of a shave. Keeping up appearances all too often is the concern of persons who have nothing else worth keeping up."

"Novel reading called for wading through too much type. I had no patience for that. The very word "fiction" I abhorred. I wanted truth. Short stories, poems, paragraphs, brief essays, picture books-anything boiled down was more to my liking."

"I had another year to go when I quit (high) school-but I felt I was getting dumber and dumber each term, and that it would be a waste of time to continue."

"A good illustrator may draw from models but knows how to forget them."

"I made about ten drawings with a joke comment or dialogue for every one that I finished and sold. Thus I kept exercising my hand and eye."

"The flaring hoop-skirt had had its day, but complete coverage was still the fashion, woman's form being left to one's imagination."

"After a few weeks I decided to graduate myself to the life classes of Kenyon Cox and Carroll Beckwith on the floor above, and strangely enough, no one objected; I just walked in as if I belonged."

"Inspiration from my youthful partial knowledge of Dore's work had carried me a long way. But now I was becoming acquainted with the political and social satires of other leading graphic artists in England and France-Hogarth, Rowlandson, John Leech, George Cruikshank, John Tenniel, Daumier, and Steinlen, and all of these held important and increasing values for me."

"Journalism today is for the most part gentlemanly and decorous, in so far as the relations among newspapers in the big cities are concerned."

"Although I knew that art schools could not make artists, I enjoyed the environment and the thought that I had an aim in life."

"Usually politics was my theme, varied now and then, on an off day, by some travesty on prevailing fads."

"in 1933, fifty-three years after the sweeping defeat of this movement which had reaped so much editorial and oratorical abuse, its supposed evil nature had been forgotten, and Congress voted for the payment of government bonds in currency, one of the demands of the Greenback convention in 1880. And in the intervening years other planks in the Greenback platform had been embodied in government policies or had been generally approved in principle."

"I have always been sensitive to competent oratory, and from that year to the present time have heard all kinds-most of it I would say, as one of Plutarch's noble Grecians or Romans put it, "tall and lofty like a cypress tree, but bearing no fruit.""

"It seems unbelievable at this distance that we assailed a candidate because he combed his hair the wrong way, but that is a part of the record of mud-slinging in American politics. And I was a participant on the front page of a leading newspaper [The Inter-Ocean]."

"To escape from such thoughts I would go back to my drawing board and plunge into the making of pictures. And now I found a new means of escape-lectures and libraries. Both enabled me to get away for a little while from my discontented thoughts because of loss of freedom through wedlock. Lately I realized anew that my education was inadequate. So many questions came up that I couldn't answer, and I needed to fortify myself with such answers. By listening to the lectures and reading a wide variety of books I nursed the seed which had been planted in my mind by Keir Hardie's speech in Denver, and by Myron Reed's discussions of the human struggle there."

"Speakers for the Social Democratic party provided me with much food for thought. They attacked the whole capitalistic system, showed how its different units combined to exploit the producing masses to the nth degree, and how the distorted or suppressed news to protect this system, of which it was a part. Being loyal to the press, my first reaction to this denunciation was one of resentment, though I had to concede that some of the charges were true."

"Listening to lectures on the class struggle (after I discovered that such a struggle had been going on for ages), I found that I had a great deal in common with the everyday workers. In other years I had felt that as a newspaper artist I was a member of a profession which enjoyed important privileges and in which a man might possibly rise to fame and fortune. But I saw now that everyone who did productive work of any kind was at the mercy of those who employed him. They could make or break him whenever they so willed...I was living in a world morally and spiritually diseased, and I was learning some of the reasons why."

"Perhaps no editor has been so guilty of stirring up the baser passions of human beings as Hearst. Often in his early years as an editor and publisher, he did some political arousings on the side of the workers. It helped him get circulation. Gradually, however, he evolved a policy which prevailed over all liberal doctrines that he might advocate-devoting his publications to the will of the big moneyed interests to have and to retain everything that they possessed and to insure their hopes of getting more through their 'superior intelligence'"

"with this feeling, I poised in my mind some other questions as to the soundness of beliefs I had long held, based upon copy-book maxims drilled into one generation of American children after another: "Merit wins...Survival of the fittest...You can't change human nature...The best people...The poor you have with you always...and the whole long line of rubber-stamp moral precepts. What were these but glittering emblems set up by the moneyed class to serve its own purposes? Born bourgeois, my brain had been filled from infancy with the nonsense of super-patriotism, with the lily-white virtues of imperialism added in due time. I had harbored these false values because I didn't know any better. I had been a drifter, innocent and sheep-minded long enough."

"Now that I was awakening to the realities of the economic struggle, I realized that I could no longer conscientiously deal with certain subjects in the way that editors wanted them handled. I had ideas for pictorial attacks on institutions hooked up with the money power, but there was no sale for these. The few papers which dared strike at the system were small, and had no money to pay for my product. And I had to live and support a family."

"Where was I headed? I didn't quite know. I had talent, facility, and a desire to produce-but steadily my market was diminishing. I fell back on illustrated jokes, and even here struck a snag. Tramps were no longer so funny to me as they had been. And my attitude toward the farmer had changed-I no longer wanted to depict him as a mere comic character. His life was all too often bound up with tragedy. The Populists had been right in many of the things they had said about the farmer's plight."

"we got a hint of how the Espionage Act would be used as a club against people with anti-war beliefs"

"Most of us who were cooperatively bringing out the Masses were agreed upon that. Some channel of protest must be safeguarded for those who had not been stampeded into dumb obeisance to the world's war-makers."

"Slacker had come into the language as a term of frequent use. Bundles of Hearst newspapers had been burned in Times Square because Hearst was slow in swinging to the Allied cause but in a few weeks he had swung, and American flags were printed all over his daily sheets. So-called pro-Germans were being tarred and feathered by mobs in the West. Frank Little of the I.W.W. executive board had been lynched by business men in Butte, Montana. And new and appalling tales of cruelty to conscientious objectors were coming out of the prisons where they were confined."

"My world had grown small and shaky. I learned what ostracism means. Men and women whom I had counted as friends found it convenient to pass me on the street without speaking, or were brief and impersonal in their conversation. And often I felt that I was being pointed out as a treasonable being to be shunned as one would the plague."

"The term "Wobbly", said to have been fastened on the I. W. W. members in derision by a Los Angeles editor, had been adopted by them with enthusiasm."

"Editors of most of the magazines where I had long had entree also shied at my offerings. Sometimes they attempted to explain, but there was no need-it was obvious that they could not afford to continue using the work of one who was being prosecuted by the government on sedition charges. Thus I had difficulty in making a living. But there was one editor who stood by me-Jacob Marinoff, of the Big Stick, a Jewish humorous weekly, which also was under surveillance by the federal authorities."

"One week-end during that trial I went up to Monroe to see my folks. They made me feel at home as always, doing everything possible to insure my comfort. But I noticed that greetings from some of my old acquaintances around town lacked the warmth of the past. They talked with me nervously and seemed to be in a hurry, as if they might be open to criticism if they were seen tarrying with one who had been accused of disloyalty to his country."

"Of course clergymen and other paid teachers and moralists admonished us to be upright and unselfish, and for people with good incomes it was easy to condemn those living on the edge of poverty as inferior, impractical, shiftless, and lacking respect for the social code. It was easy to shout thief at the other fellow when you had no temptation to steal-I mean steal in a petty way. But stealing in a big way was often accepted as good business judgment."

"I found that life was a continual struggle for most of us-and this on a plane not much above that of the struggle of wild animals-and that society dismissed this obvious truth as a negligible factor in determining human conduct as well as our mental and physical well-being. I began to see that this economic battle persisted even in the midst of an exhaustless plenty, and that most humans lived and died trying to succeed in a material sense, in short, to reach the goal of a triumphant animalism."

"Every one of us is born with some kind of talent. In early manhood or womanhood each individual begins to see a path, though perhaps dimly, that beckons to him or her. All of us have this leaning toward, or desire for doing ably, a certain kind of work, and only want an opportunity to prove our capacity in that direction. These hunches, these signs of one's natural trend, are usually right, and are not to be thrust aside without regret in later life. I am antagonistic to the money-making fetish because it sidetracks our natural selves, leaving us no alternative but to accept the situation and take any kind of work for a weekly wage. We are expected to "make good," which is another way of saying make money. Therefore we do things for which we have no real understanding and often no liking, without thought as to whether it is best for us, and soon or late find that living has become drab and empty."

"So most of us pray not for riches, but for just enough to assure our living in normal comfort and perhaps a little extra for funeral expenses at the end."

"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."

"During the last four decades of his life-journey, as this chronicle has revealed, it became more and more evident that there was one wrong, one thing over all, standing in the way of honest and contented living the unjust treatment of those who produce the wealth of the world by those who own most of that wealth; and that the continual fight between the moneyed interests and the working people (including artists) was the vital problem of our time. Now, during these recurring and ever-increasing conflicts, is it not obvious that we have to take sides? I think it has come to that, for all of us."

"I do believe that man is destined to be released for a more ennobling life, when each one of us can go even farther with our talent or natural ability than we thought possible."

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

"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."

"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."

"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."