Woe to our memory if it can be said by unhappy future generations that we defeated Hitler and Mussolini, only to lay down arms to the Hoovers, the Va… - Irene Levine Paull

Greed and hypocrisy are indeed inseparable companions. ("To a Young Girl Graduate")

The ones we love are like lighted candles in our being. When one goes out, it leaves a part of us in darkness. I have a duty to perform, grappling with the darkness where once you used to be-a duty to you and to all youth like you born into a world of poverty and depression and war, a world which seems to have no present and no future. I have a monument to build to your memory...a better society where youth can blossom to its rich fulfillment. Goodbye, little sister! Thousands of crushed and broken youth lie like you in their needless graves, youth who had no present, and saw no future. But millions of us have set our teeth against the wind. The working class is moving toward a happier world where its beloved children will not be gnarled and twisted and broken, but will grow straight as the young trees straining towards the sun. ("She who Died Without Living")

The time was the era shortly after the First World War when waves of post-war immigration carried to the new world like rotting bilge water all the bitter hatreds, prejudices and venoms of Tsarist Russia and Poland.