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 d… - Art Young

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.

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.

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.