While I had no great admiration for my own intelligence or my ability to understand political economy, neither did I have a servile respect for the i… - Art Young

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.

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.

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.