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Art Young, his life and times
ART YOUNG
ART YOUNG
HIS LIFE
AND TIMES
ART JLOUNG
/tVec/ Ly
JOHN NICHOLAS BEFFEL
NEW YORK
SHERIDAN HOUSE
'COPYRIGHT 1939 BY ART YOUNG
PRINTED IN THE UNITED 'ST'ATES 0? AMERICA
BY J. J, LITTLE AND IYES COMPANY, NEW YO*K
ACKNOWLEDGEMENT
Without the assistance of John Nicholas Beffel the writ-
ing of this book might possibly have been finished sometime
around 1950.
Although it was earnestly undertaken I found myself
involved in debates with my own ego to such an extent I
had to have the first dead-line moved ahead one year, then
another year, and no doubt would have continued indefi-
nitely asking for extensions of time. Then, too, I had periods
of indifference as to whether it was worth doing at all. But
Beffel was a stimulating adviser and an agreeable companion
in helping me retrace my steps to look at it all again. Indeed
it was he in the first place who proposed the book. Beffel
kept me interested, took notes of my memory talks, assembled
my long-hand pages in proper sequence, and conferred with
me on many occasions to discuss contents and weigh values.
I found it best to let him have his own way when I couldn't
see the best way myself to present some of the phases of a
long life overcrowded with memories.
If there is any show of vainglory in the book, I'll blame
it on Beffel. The modesty, if any, is mine.
And if there are any mistakes as to names or dates, they,
too, are mine, for Beffel will find the right date or the cor-
rect spelling of a name if they can be found in any place on
earth. He will not rest until a statement of fact is authenti-
cated by checking up with other chroniclers of the same pe-
riod of American history.
In writing personal names of the old home town, how-
ever, it was often a hit-or-miss recollection and not always
strict identity that resulted.
Special thanks are due also to Ruth Collat for her
thoughtful reading of the proofs of this narrative; to Charles
vi ACKNOWLEDGEMENT
Scribner's Sons and Harper & Brothers for permission to
quote respectively from Mr. Dooley Says and Mr. Dooley's
Philosophy; and to the publishers of the Encyclopedia
Britannica for leave to use some paragraphs from the authors
article therein on the theory and technique of the cartoon.
A.Y.
Chestnut Ridge Road,
Bethel, Connecticut,
October, 1939,
CONTENTS
1. Sunlight and Shadow in Paris 3
2. A Chinese Army Gets in My Way 17
3. Back to the Old Home Town 27
4. Any Boy Could Become President Then .... 35
5. A Small-Town Lad Chooses a Career .... 49
6. I Capture the Nimble Nickel 62
7. The Stage is Set for a Supreme Tragedy .... 74
8. I See Chicago Justice at Close Range 82
9. Melville E. Stone Sends for Me 88
10. Four Dissenters Silenced by the Rope . . . . 101
11. Patterson of the Tribune Fires Me 109
12. I Go to New York with High Hopes 115
13. We Learn About the English and Welsh . . . . 126
14. On the Stage; Pictures Set to Music 136
15. Return to Health and Chicago 144
16. I Work With Thomas Nast 155
17. Altgeld Pardons the Anarchists 165
18. Mayor Harrison is Shot Down 169
19. I Marry Elizabeth North 175
20. Helping the Yellow Press Start a War . . . . 188
21. Matrimony Hits a Reef 200
22. I Become Aware of the Class Struggle . . . . 213
23. Another Child and New Worries 225
24. But the Back-to-Nature Experiment Fails . . . 243
25. All Too Slowly I Sec the Light 254
26. At Last I Know Where I'm Going 269
27. In Washington for the Metropolitan . . . . 282
28. The A. P. Robes Itself in White 295
29. War^Makers Beat Their Drums 302
30. The Censorship Picks on the Masses * . . . . 318
31. We Go to Trial in Tense Days 328
viii CONTENTS
I'HAPTHR
32. Stifling the Voices Against War ....
33. Some Optimists Launch Another Magazine
34. Successful Publishing Requires Hardness .
35. My Younger Son Picks a College ....
36. Battles on the Liberator Board .....
37. An Art Gallery and Two Books .....
38. I Move Along a Shadowy Road ... -
39. Among the Silk Hats at Brisbane's Funeral , 424
40. Overflow Meeting of Memories .... 4^1
Epilogue: Watching the Old Order Crack . . . . 450
Index , . 461
ILLUSTRATIONS
Art Young Frontispiece
PAGE
Buffalo Bill in Paris, 1889 7
Bougeaureau 9
End of the Paris Exposition, 1889 13
My Day Nurse 19
My Boyhood Home 28
Remembrance of My Father and Mother 32
Scene in Father's Store Around 1886 39
Old Fashioned Grandpa 44
Youthful Entry in a Prize Contest 55
Early Art School Drawings, Chicago, 1884 .... 63
My First Published Cartoon 64
William Frederick Poole 71
Judge Joseph E. Gary . 84
Fashion in 1886 90
Booth and Barrett 91
Finley Peter Dunne 96
Before the Bicycle 97
The Chatsworth Train Wreck 99
The Haymarket Prisoners in Jail 103
When I Was Misled 107
Eugene Field's Letter 114
Arrival in New York, 1888 117
Joseph Keppler, Sr . . 122
Bernard Gillam 122
Clarence Webster and His Kodak 132
When I Was on the Stage 141
Preview of World's Columbian Exposition , . . . 157
Elizabeth North 176
Vanguard of Coxey's Army 182
Keir Hardie 185
ix
x ILLUSTRATIONS
PAftK
A Comic Suggested by My Wife 189
From an Early Art Young Book 194
The Terrible Teddy 197
Artists and Editors:
Frederic Remington, Arthur Brisbane, Thomas Nast
and Bob Davis 203
Frederick B. Opper 204
When 'Hiram Pennick' Was Merely Comic . , . - 211
Just Alike 226
Connecticut Crime Against Art 234
Mark Twain 241
A Success 246
Shots at Truth 248
All Is Vanity 250
Graduation Night at Cooper Union, 1906 .... 254
Ella Reeve Bloor 257
Alexander Irvine 258
American Mothers 259
The In and Out of Our Penal System 261
Charles Edward Russell .263
Some Day. A prophetic cartoon 265
Piet Vlag 270
Just People 273
Time to Butcher 278
Holy Trinity ,280
The Lawrence Way 282
Taft; "Eyes Front!" , 284
At the 1912 Socialist Convention 286
Oscar Ameringer , . . . ,287
When the Village Rich Man Dies 290
Susan B. Anthony 292
"He Stirreth Up the People" 294
When I Was Under a Cloud 300
Mother Jones 303
Not Harmonious 304
Where Will It Strike? 306
Charles A. Lindbergh .309
ILLUSTRATIONS ad
PAGB
The White Man's Burden 312
Terence V. Powderly 316
Having Their Fling 325
The Boss 326
A Case of Heresy 329
Morris Hillquit 333
Bill Haywood 344
The Sower 348
Charles W. Ervin 353
A Good Morning Poster 358
Small Favors Thankfully Received 361
James Eads How 365
Fixing Up the World War Soldiers 367
The Poor Fish 370
The Harding Inaugural Parade 373
A Private View for the Best People 376
Bonus or No Bonus 377
Looking On 379
Convention Notes 380
Fight La Follcttc 381
Editor of the County Gazette 382
Hope Springs Eternal 384
Steffens Reports On His Visit to Russia 393
My Art Gallery 401
Mary Heaton Vorse 403
Defeat 404
Sketching Devils 417
Ghosts 419
One Bystander to Another 420
Heywood Broun 422
A Greek Fable Up to Date 426
My Slouch Hat , 427
Remember Whence You Came 430
For Adoption 43 1
Rounding Up the Unbridled Past 433
The Joke Is On You, Baby 435
O. Henry 436
xii ILLUSTRATIONS
PAQR
Robert G. Ingersoll ,436
Carlo Trcsca ... 438
Sacco and Vanzetti .... 439
Alexander Woollcott 441
For an Upton Sinclair Book . , 443
Elizabeth Gurley Flynn 445
Clarence Darrow 446
Self-Portrait of Thomas Nast 448
Over They Go 454
ART YOUNG
HIS LIFE AND TIMES
Chapter 1
SUNLIGHT AND SHADOW IN PARIS
PARIS was like some lovely young hostess with arms
outstretched that September afternoon as Clarence
Webster and I strolled along the boulevards, crossed
the bridges over the Seine with its gay Exposition-bound
boats, and revelled in the sound of the animate voices all
around us, the musical cries, the bright faces, and the cracking
of cabmen's whips — a continual cracking above all other
sounds. For months I had been hungering for all this, but
my visions had never come near the reality.
Clear skies and a fresh breeze, and Chicago and New
York far behind. Exquisite women passed in magnificent
carriages, and on the wide walks were men of leisure topped
by silk hats; trim nursemaids with their convoys of children;
artists and their girls, known as grtsettes, whom my dictionary
describes as having "lively and free manners but not neces-
sarily of immoral character/' Spreading green trees, statues
of historic figures at every turn, fountains pouring forth
sun-drenched water. And in the distance, dominating the
whole scene, the black outline of the Eiffel Tower. The year
was 1889, and I was twenty-three.
As a small boy at home in Monroe, Wisconsin, I had
seen only one person who had been to Paris. This was Mrs.
Cook, an old lady who occasionally called at our house. She
had traveled widely in European countries, an unusual thing
for an American sixty years ago, before the day of popular
cruises. Mother told me that Mrs, Cook had spent many
months in Paris, and had played cards with Victor Hugo*
I didn't know who Victor Hugo was, but he sounded im-
portant, and Mrs. Cook seemed to me a remarkable woman
just to look at because she had traveled and met famous
people. Afterward, when I attended art schools in Chicago
and New York, the talk was often about Paris — the shining -
goal of those students who wanted to finish off their educa-
3
4 ART YOUNG: HIS LIFE AND TIMES
tion. My Instructors in Chicago and New York — J. H, Van-
derpoel Kenyon Cox, Carroll Beckwith, and others—had
studied abroad. Both Paris and Munich in their time were
close rivals for aspiring artists.
"We won't think about work for a week/' Webster in-
sisted. "We're going to examine this widely advertised town
and see if it lives up to all we've heard about it." ^
I was not so sure about spending more time in loafing;
for I was eager to enroll in the Academie Jalien, where I
would study drawing and painting and continue my art
training generally. But all things considered I decided it best
to be an idle wanderer for a while longer, and get oriented
We had already been to the picturesque town of Chester in
England on the day after landing in Liverpool and had gone
over into Wales to do some sketching and because Web was
keen to learn if Welshmen really could pronounce the names
of their towns. Then we explored London, particularly some
of the places made familiar in Dickens's writings, for Web
was an ardent Dickens fan. And overnight the boat had
brought us from Dover to Calais, with me curled up on a big
coil of rope on deck, sicker than any dog; ^after which we
had proceeded on a wheezing and halting train to the French
capital
Everywhere we went Web jotted down his impressions
and observations in a notebook. For he was doing a series
of travel articles for the Chicago Sunday Inter-Ocean under
the now de plume of Conflagration Jones, and I was illus-
trating them with pen and ink drawings. Pale faced, and
with a dark Vandyke beard, Webster had been mistaken in
Hyde Park for John Burns, leader of the London dock-
workers* strike. Carrying a camera under his arm, as Burns
had carried a portfolio, he was followed for blocks by an
admiring group of workers until he finally discovered why
they were doing it, and explained — with some difficulty —
that he was not John Burns, Webster's camera was the
novelty of that season — a kodak.
My own appearance in Paris that first day is a strange
memory picture to look back upon, I wore a flat- top black
derby hat, cutaway coat with tails, trousers which flared
around the feet in the current fashion, a cream-colored Wind-
sor tie, and a winged collar, and I carried a cane, swinging
ART YOUNG: HIS LIFE AND TIMJbt
it in the manner of one who thought he had the world by
the tail. The flat- top hat — I think it was called a "shell
derby0 — was in the prevailing mode, but the other items of
attire I had adopted in New York because I didn't want to
look like other young men, which was, I suspect, an act of
protest against the herd instinct. But to my discomfiture in
Paris I saw so many men queerly dressed that my own garb
attracted no special attention; no one turned to look after me,
saying; "I wonder who that is/' Nobody cared how you
dressed. I was introduced to an artist who wore a plug hat,
a short velvet coat, and wooden shoes, and who passed any-
where without comment.
A dyspeptic who at home was regarded by many ac-
quaintances as a grouch, Webster had excellent qualities, and
his surface cheerfulness on our travels was doubtless often a
screen for internal misery. Certainly much of the cooking
we encountered in England must have depressed him. He
liked tarts and pies — especially the British pork pie — and
suffered in consequence, then resorted to taking Carter's Little
Liver Pills, which he always carried.
He had been my best friend in Chicago during the four
years that I worked as cartoonist and news sketch artist on
the dailies there. After I went to New York to study, I kept
in close touch with him by letter, and he knew that I was
restless. When he arranged the joint assignment I approved
of the plan instantly. Web was a versatile individual — jour-
nalist art critic, humorous writer, lecturer. From the begin-
ning of this European trip we both made sketches, and I
attempted some painting with a water color outfit which my
companion carried. We had sailed from New York on the
maiden voyage of the Cunard liner Teutonic. I had funds
enough to carry me along for several months in France —
and I felt that it would be simple to earn more when needed,
remembering that I had made money easily in Chicago;
earned more at eighteen than I had supposed came to men
twice that age.
While Web commented jocularly on people and incidents
that afternoon, I was lost in daydreaming. This was life, and
life was good. Here was the Queen City of the world, with
lovely parks and boulevards, glorious women, and all about
one the marks of a culture centuries old. And what traditions
5 ART YOUNG; HIS LIFE AND TIMES
ingercd! Here Dore, Daumier, Steinlen, and Millet had
worked, here one could see the drawings of the masters of
the Renaissance, here Napoleon had shaken the foundations
of the world's empires, (Later I was to discover that Paris
also had slums, but we didn't see these on that day,) . , .
Breathing in that romantic air, I was whispering to myself
a vow: "I'm going to be recognized as an artist — and noth-
ing can stop me/' Hovering in my mind, though not defi-
nitely a part of the vow, was a thought of rich rewards to
come; in that hour everything, for me, was wreathed in daz-
zling golden light,
I wanted to go at once to the Louvre, and Web assented.
"We'll ask the first gendarme we see/' Having the greater
initiative, he voiced the questions, and got profuse answers,
with elaborate gestures* The answers were not clear to me,
but they appeared adequate for my companion who had
given much time to a French dictionary on the ship, though
his pronunciation didn't sound at all like that of a native.
Seizing me by the arm, he guided me triumphantly in the
direction indicated, only to learn from an Englishman an
hour later that the famous museum was in another part of
the city — in fact, not far from our hotel — and by the time
we arrived at its doors it was closed*
Web amused himself by asking many gendarmes; " Where
is la Tour Eiffel?" This always brought a look of quizzi-
cal amazement to the face of the one addressed, since the
tallest man-made structure then in the world, 984 feet high,
towered above everything else, and was visible all over Paris.
But we kept straight faces and Web would say "Out! OuiVf
when the guardian of law and order pointed impressively
to that giant steel spire.
Earlier that summer Bill Nye, who had come to Paris to
do some articles for the New York World, had been taken
into custody for some inadvertent infraction of the law, and
wrote that he "would willingly go a hundred miles to be
arrested by a John Darm — they are so courteous/'
"How about going to the Exposition this morning?"
Web inquired on our second day in France.
"Let's just walk around the streets/' I urged* "The Ex-
position will keep until tomorrow/' Next day it was post-
poned again, there being so many other things to see, and
ART YOUNG: HIS LIFE AND TIMES 7
we kept postponing it* I had read so much about it, and
had looked at many illustrations of that spectacle, in Harper's
Weekly and other periodicals, that my thought had been
that I would rush to the Exposition grounds as soon as I
reached Paris. But now there seemed no special reason to
hurry.
We had taken rooms in the Hotel de Nice, a small quiet
establishment in the Rue des Beaux Arts, a short street in the
Latin Quarter, traversed at one end by the Rue Bonaparte
BUFFALO BILL IN PARIS. 1889.
and the other by the Rue de Seine* In that street also there
had lived Prosper Merimee, author of the Carmen libretto;
Corot; and Fantin La Tour, who had painted flowers and
done masterful lithographs of scenes from the operas of
Wagner,
Web learned that Oscar Wilde was staying in the Hotel
Alsace, almost opposite our quarters. He essayed to interview
Wilde, and presented his card to the concierge, who told him
that the playwright was too ill to see anyone. This was five
years before Wilde's trial and disgrace, but he was well
known as a public figure, who during his lecture tour in the
United States in 1882 had reaped perhaps the largest array
8 ART YOUNG: HIS LIFE AND TIMES
of unfavorable press comment, ridicule, derision, and cat-
calling of any foreign-born individual who had ever visited
this country. Web's day was spoiled for him by that disap-
pointment, as another day had been clouded in London when
he tried to get an audience with James McNeill Whistler,
and found him "busy with a sitting/'
Buffalo Bill's Wild West show was holding forth in a
tent in an open field near the Exposition, and we were taken
to see it by Theodore Stanton, Paris correspondent for the
Inter-Ocean, son of Elizabeth Cady Stanton, the pioneer
suffragist, and brother of Harriot Stanton Blatch, Colonel
Cody was then in his prime, a dashing and dramatic figure*
The Parisians called him Gaillaame Boofato, cheering him
madly as he shot glass balls in air from a galloping steed.
We were thrilled, and thought it a great show* Cody intro-
duced American popcorn balls to the French, who didn't
take to them. It was amusing to see the people outside the
tent hesitatingly buy the pink and white balls and nibble on
them.
Day after day Web and I moved about the streets, hav-
ing fun, We were looking chiefly for the comic aspects of
life for the Inter-Ocean series, for it was the comic that was
wanted back in Chicago. With that attitude, I realize now
that we saw only surfaces. If there was a social problem any-
where in Paris then, if people on mean streets were hungry,
we never knew it. Even in the Whitechapel district of Lon-
don, where we saw hordes of ragged and lean people, they
had no social meaning for me. It was poverty, but what
could be done about it? My eyes had not then been opened
to the realities of the human struggle.
We sampled some of the night life of Paris, and once
we went to a theatre which had a reputation for being
risque, but found nothing that was any bolder than the offer-
ings of Chicago burlesque houses. True, we were importuned
by guides with mysterious eye-winks to go with them to see
things behind locked doors in out-of-the-way corners, but
we were wary, suspecting they might be runners for robbers*
dens*
After the week of loafing I signed up at both the Acad*
emie Julian, where I studied by day, drawing chiefly from
the nude, and at the Colarossi School, which I attended in
YOUNG: HIS LIFE AND TIMES 9
the evenings, sketching models in costume. At the Julian I
studied under Bougeaureau and Tony Robert Fleury. Boug-
eaureau was then the high priest of French painters. I liked
his work, for its thoroughness of draftsmanship and his
ability to impose beauty over realism, though his art was
being assailed as sentimental ' 'candy-box stuff" by both real-
ists and impressionists.
Though I lived in the Latin Quarter on friendly terms
with the other students, I did not enter Parisian life with
the Bohemian abandonment you read about in novels of the
BOUGEAUREAU, From a pencil sketch made when I
was studying in the Academic Julian.
Quarter* 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 me-
chanical 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,
10 ART YOUNG: HIS LIFE AND TIMES
Vibert, and Bougeaurcau were in the forefront of the art-
world then, because they were good composers and accurate,
precise draftsmen. In a sense they were the forerunners of
colored photography, though of course their work was su~
perior to the candid camera as imaginative-selection always
is when an individuality, not a machine, reveals a scene.
I enjoyed working in the schools, but the days were not
all pleasant. I was angrily resentful when a poor girl, anxious
to qualify as a model for a week of posing, would be hooted
as she disrobed for approval on Monday morning before a
class of more than a hundred young men* Many times I saw
some sad, inexperienced girl jeered down because her hips
were too large or too small according to majority opinion,
I had heard much about French courtesy, but in the Julian
classroom it was often found wanting, when cries of "La
Basl" and worse were hurled at the innocent who hoped
that her figure was good enough to earn the paltry sums paid
for this tedious labor of posing.
One day I had sketched a big-muscled male, and Bougeau-
reau came around inspecting our work. When he saw my
drawing, he commented, with vigorous shoulder-shrugging*
I didn't understand French, and it was my custom to ask a
fellow-student named Robert Henri what the instructor had
said. "He says your drawing is too brutal The model looks
brutal enough without making him more so/'
But I knew that Hogarth, Daumier, and Dore also had
been brutal in portraying brutality, and that caricature
meant the ability to exaggerate, Indeed, that all good art had
this quality in some degree*
Web's wife was soon to have a child and one day, after
receiving a letter, he left for home with a wave of the hand,
and when he was gone I felt rather lost. I had depended
upon him in my daily life much more than I had realized,
I now found myself overwhelmed by Paris. The few words
of French I had learned failed me at every turn, and north
always proved to be south, except when the sun was setting
beyond the Eiffel Tower — one direction I had learned was
west. Looking back I can see how ill-prepared I was for the
Gay City, and how much more I might have got out of it
had I obtained a proper background of understanding by
intensive reading* I had read some of Hugo's and Balzac's
ART YOUNG: HIS LIFE AND TIMES 11
works, and a few other books by artists who had lived in
France, but of the things of deeper significance in the past
of that nation I knew little. I had never heard of Francois
Villon then, nor did I know that Dante had once been a
student at the University of Paris,
In those first days of being alone I dared not venture far
from the bronze statue of Voltaire, in front of the Institute
of France, which was around the corner from my hotel.
There he sat on his pedestal and smiled across the blue-black
Seine. Often I gazed up at that strong lean face, and pon-
dered the wisdom and courage reflected there, recalling a line
from Hugo: "Jesus wept, but Voltaire smiled."
But as the days rolled by I shed some of my timidity and
made excursions farther from my base. Just to look at all
those ancient surroundings enchanted me — the crooked and
winding streets of the Quarter, through which the wind
howled on stormy nights; the more ponderous statues, many
bearing names I did not know; the Punch and Judy shows in
the Champs Elysees; the book-stalls flanking the Seine; the
tall, narrow dwellings centuries old. Down some of those
little streets clear rivulets ran all the time, so clean that
women washed clothes in the gutters; I never learned where
all that water came from*
And of course the art galleries. On Saturdays and Sun-
days I would haunt the Louvre, which was just across the
Seine from the hotel. There I would contemplate the paint-
ings and drawing of Raphael, Millet, Delacroix, Gericault,
and others — weighing with what I hoped was an intelligent
eye the good and bad features in each.
One day I paid the long delayed visit to the Exposition.
It was big, but I was less thrilled than I had hoped to be.
The decorative scheme was rococo and too much jeweled
like a gaudy wedding cake. I hunted out the United States
exhibit, and there met with disappointment; it was too small
to do justice to our country, I thought, and not at all up to
the showing made by England and Germany. The most im-
portant exhibit there, to my mind, was the Edison phono-
graph, to which several persons could listen at once through
ear-tubes. It was uncanny, to hear the human voice coming
out of a machine, both in song and speech, and band music.
12 ART YOUNG: HIS LIFE AND TIMES
This machine used the cylindrical record which preceded the
later disk form*
Naturally I was interested in watching the crowds, and
especially in hearing the comments made by American vis-
itors. And as I moved about I found a good many things
that were worth stopping to look at — outlandish weapons,
queer foodstuffs, exotic color schemes in the buildings and
booths occupied by the darker peoples.
Several times that day I paused at the foot of the Eiffel
Tower, gazing up at its incredible height, But I did not enter
for a ride in its elevator. I knew that many of ^the famous
artists of France had protested against its erection, on the
ground that it would violate the canons of art, Bougeaureau,
Dumas, Sardou, de Maupassant, Gounod, and other well
known men had spoken out in an open letter "in the^name
of our national good taste, against such an erection in^the
very heart of our city, as the monstrous and useless Eiffel
Tower/' Yet everywhere in Pari? one met with reproduc-
tions of the tower in every conceivable material — chocolate,
celluloid, pewter, wood, pasteboard, papier mache, glass,
china, even in gold, The commercially minded section of the
French people had overlooked no chance to cash in on the
Eiffel idea.
My hotel was notable for good food, bad coffee, and a
motley assortment of guests. Like many Paris hotels then it
had what Webster disparagingly called "he-chambermaids"
— men who made the beds and polished the floors with
brushes attached to their shoes. Two women conducted the
establishment — Madame Medard and Madame Franklin, the
first a handsome Frenchwoman and the second an English-
woman, heavy and business-like but kindly disposed, espe-
cially toward art students*
Thomas Corner of Baltimore, a Quaker boy who later
became well known as a portrait painter, was a fellow-
boarder. He and I had a good deal in common. One person
whom I sketched often was a woman of grand manner from
New York whose daughter was studying art and who liked
to tell everybody about it. She sat opposite me at the dinner
table, and never gave the good looking blonde daughter a
chance to talk, but insisted on regaling us with reminiscences
NovrM»r,* 14, 1889,]
PALL MALL BUDGET
1449
T H E LAST OF THE PARIS E X H I B I T I O N
Pall Mall Budget
END OF THE PARIS EXPOSITION, 1889. I was the last spectator
to leave. • • , •.
13
14 ART YOUNG: HIS LIFE AND TIMES
of her travels. At the dinner table she would always assure
us that "cheese digests everything but itself/'
In the several weeks since Webster left, I had made no
drawings for publication, feeling that it was well to concen-
trate on study. But now I had a bright idea: I would attend
the Exposition on the closing night, and be the last person
shooed off the grounds. I did that, and it was a curious ex-
perience, watching the spirit of antic play shown by visitors
from many lands. There was something both joyous and sad
about that farewell to a world event. I looked back into the
grounds as two gendarmes politely but firmly closed the main
gates — the walks were cluttered with newspapers, candy
boxes, and other litter. Ahead of me were students, arms over
shoulders, dancing in single file across the nearest bridge over
the Seine. Behind them some peasants singing. And an old
gentleman in high hat and shawl, moving along with spry
step*
I had made numerous pencil sketches during the evening,
and next day I re- drew them in ink, grouped them on a large
sheet of paper, and sent them post haste to the Pall Mail
Budget in London, which was edited by W. T. Stead. To
my surprise that publication devoted a full page to a repro-
duction of my pictures, and sent a prompt check,
That called for a celebration. I took Corner to dinner on
a Saturday evening in a cafe where there was good wine,
Talking across the table, I dwelt upon things I was going
to do — romantic and bizarre features for the papers in Lon-
don, Chicago, and New York. The market was waiting; all
I had to do was turn out the stuff.
Next day I was up early, whistling merrily, and after
breakfast hastened forth to walk along the Quai in the sun-
shine and gaze over the stone parapet at the busy boating
on the Seine. My emotions were riding high; I needed room
for my wings. Ahead of me through the years lay glamorous
adventure. I would study diligently as long as need be, but
presently I would begin going to other places over week-
ends and holidays and sketching my observations for publi-
cation, doing enough writing to counterbalance the pictures
in print. Perhaps I would take trips to Brussels, Vienna, the
seacoast, and maybe Florence. Already my name meant some-
thing to Chicago editors — and now here was London show-
ART YOUNG: HIS LIFE AND TIMES 15
ing receptivity. I could have everything I wanted in life.
, . * I wrote to my mother and father in Wisconsin, sending
them a marked copy of the Budget, and telling of my plans.
For weeks I worked with great enthusiasm, Christmas
approached, and I sent home souvenirs of Paris, and wrote
Mother telling of the festive observance of the holidays there.
At Madame Medard's suggestion I attended Christmas morn-
ing mass in the Cathedral of Notre Dame, and was stirred by
the music. January and February passed, with my thoughts
of future success still soaring. I was living in a dream-world.
Never had I felt more fit, physically and mentally, than
I did as I came downstairs one morning in March. My de-
scent was a dance. For I had awakened with a brilliant vis-
ualization of certain pictures that I knew I could do — a series
of pen-and-ink drawings which would express the spirit of
Paris from the viewpoint of a dozen different types of hu-
mans of whom I had made note in the streets. I had lain in
bed for a few minutes, clear-eyed and vibrant with the joy
of prospective creation.
But at breakfast the talk of the others was anything but
cheerful. There was a new outbreak of la grippe, a virulent
form of influenza. Some of my fellow-lodgers were down
with it, and I remembered that several students both at the
J alien and at Colarossi's had been absent on that account.
In the previous year there had been an epidemic of la grippe
in Paris, and I heard that certain scientists had seen in it a
counterpart of a plague lately raging in China, though health
officials denied this. Directors of the Exposition had indig-
nantly repudiated the theory that Asiatic visitors to the Fair
had brought the germ of the disease into France.
Talk of sickness always annoyed me; I had never been
ill. I was in fine trim, weighing around 140, with no excess
fat then, and with muscles in good condition. I would be
immune to la grippe, partly because I wasn't afraid of it. Days
passed, with more and more students falling ill, and I re-
mained untouched.
One afternoon at school, however, I became aware of a
crowded feeling in my chest, then pain, which steadily grew
worse. I kept on working for an hour, until the suffering be-
came so intense that I asked to be excused. Madame Frank-
lin's face paled as I staggered into the hotel. "You are ill!"
16 ART YOUNG: HIS LIFE AND TIMES
she cried. "You should be in bed . . * Jean, go at once and
call young Dr. Delbet." The Delbets, father and son, lived
near by.
Madame Franklin and the servants helped me upstairs to
my third floor room, Woozily I managed to undress and get
into bed. When the doctor came he examined me and looked
grave, "Did you strain yourself, by lifting or falling?" No,
I had not, I could not recall any strain, . . , "Pleurisy/'
the doctor said, and so badly was the pleural cavity swollen
that my heart was beating on the right side. Young Dr,
Delbet tried to reduce the inflammation with plasters. No
use! But I got through till next morning. Then Delbet called
in his father, a noted physician of that time, and also Dr.
Peters of Hopitdl de la Charite. More tests, head-shakings,
consultation outside my room. Then the elder Dr. Delbet
came in alone. My condition was "serious", he explained.
Did I have any relatives in Paris? No? Too bad. An imme-
diate operation was imperative. He and the others would
"do everything possible" for me. He tried to be casual about
it, but his efforts could not hide the gravity of my condition.
I could read it in all of the faces around me, I felt like one
doomed to the scaffold.
Nurses came. Madame Franklin tried to cheer me as
preparations for the operation were made. Thomas Corner
had cabled my father. Madame Medard assured me she would
pray to the Blessed Virgin for my recovery. Corner said:
"Don't worry, Art, you'll get through all right."
I was not so sure. I thought I ought to send some kind
of a message to the folks at home, but I didn't know what
to say. I dared not tell them what was in my mind, I was on
fire with the fever, but my legs were like ice. All the golden
dreams of the future had faded; no dazzling light before
my closed eyes — only blackness, I tried to lift my arms to
reach out and grasp something tangible. But I was powerless.
» . * Outside somewhere a bell was tolling, I could hear my
own footsteps, going to somebody's funeral — maybe my
own.
Chapter 2
A CHINESE ARMY GETS IN MY WAY
THEY moved me on a stretcher into a large front room,
I could hear Madame Medard praying in the halL Such
a shuffling and concern — over an art student from the
prairies of Wisconsin — it was comical. But I knew I was
terribly ill. Low but insistent voices kept calling out: "Af-
tendezl Attendez!" * . . The pain lessened, then came again
in repeated stabs. Tom Corner was bending over me, and
I was trying to tell him what to write to my folks. But I
gave it up. * 'Never mind . . /' It would take more than
two weeks for a letter to reach home. The Quaker artist's
face was hazy to my eyes. ... I heard him say: "Your
father is coming/' He would be too late, I was sure.
Then the three doctors came in, and a nurse. All of
them advanced toward my bed; I felt them closing in on me.
I tried to cry out, but no words would come from my throat.
Now some one was holding a sponge close to my nostrils.
Chloroform, sickishly sweet. My body became light; I was
floating in air, high above the roof-tops and the church-
spires. I heard a crash like thunder, and I sank into darkness,
down, down, down.
Long afterward I was fighting my way upward through
the blackness, choking until I found light once more. But
instantly the light blinded me. I could hear voices, all jum-
bled. They were talking about me, I was certain, but I could
make out nothing that they said. . . . After a long time
Dr. Peters* s voice grew distinct. "How do you feel, young
man?" I struggled to answer, uttering something I've for-
gotten— probably: "Awful/'
There was a new pain in my body, a roving pain. Each
time I wondered about it, the pain leaped to another region.
Ice packs on my head. Nausea.
Somebody at some time explained to me that there were
three rubber tubes in my side, instead of the usual single
17
18 ART YOUNG; HIS LIFE AND TIMES
tube for draining the pleural cavity, and that I must be care-
ful not to turn my body and not dislodge them. So I had
to lie for hours in unchanging position, until I would plead
for relief, and the nurses would shift me,
Time passed leadenly, in my conscious periods. Then
the fever would rise again, and days and nights would chase
each other, like silhouetted figures on a shadow-lantern. All
the persons who entered the room, if I could see them at
all, were like shadows, All food tasted alike. Damp cold was
coming in from outside, and the skies were gray. The room
was heated by a charcoal grate, which gave uneven results, t
and required much tending. I learned one French phrase from
the doctor, "Fermer la potte, s*it vous plait.''
My hearing became supersensitive, whispers on the far
side of the room being audible to me. Sounds outside came
in from great distances — bells, whistles of boats on the Seine,
In the street below a goat-milk peddler, cab drivers inces-
santly cracking their whips, a hand-organ grinder playing
doleful tunes from grand operas, and, this being a time of a
governmental crisis — with a dictatorship headed by General
Boulanger threatened hourly — cavalry troops clattering by.
Often thirst was upon me, my throat always parched.
Thoughts carried me back to the cool clear water in a trough
on my Uncle Aly's farm, where the horses drank. I thought,
too, of my mother, father, and sister, and the pony of my
boyhood. I wondered dimly about God, if there was one,
as I heard Madame Medard pray; I didn't mind her doing
that, because she meant it kindly, but I had no inclination
to pray myself, although I remembered Hugo's phrase, some-
thing like this: "There are times when the soul prays though
the body does not kneel/*
I had two nurses, both English. The one who served
by day, whose name escapes me, was a large woman curi-
ously resembling Mrs, Sairey Gamp in Martin Chuzzlewit*
She was a devout Catholic, and one day I saw her jabbing
holes with a hat-piti through a newspaper picture of Martin
Luther. But she was conscientious in carrying out the doc-
tors' orders, sometimes a bit too conscientious, I thought.
Talkative when I was able to listen, she told of seeing Victor
Hugo lying in state during the great public funeral cere-
monies in 1885, She hadn't a good word to say of him —
ART YOUNG: HIS LIFE AND TIMES iy
lying dead, she declared, "looked like a mean old bear/* Her
pet hatred, however, was Gambetta, the liberal Premier, who
was accidentally shot and killed in 1882; she was glad of
that. Naturally I didn't form any special liking for my day
nurse; she was mostly venom*
MY DAY NURSE. From a pencil sketch made in bed.
She jabbed a picture of Martin Luther with a hatpin.
But Mrs, Stone, who watched over me at night, was a joy
serene. She was kind, and lovely for a sick artist just to look
at. She had an industrious husband, whose photograph she
showed me proudly, and six small children. One line I re-
member from her quiet talk was: "You ought to see me
'usband and the rest of us a-walking out of a Sunday/'
Days of rain and fog came, and gloom pressed into the
room. The elder Dr. Delbet appeared daily, gave me hypo-
dermic injections, and conversed in anxious, whispers with
the nurse and Madame Franklin. I was only half-conscious,
and presently was clutching at dark shapes in ugly dreams.
Some time later Madame Franklin was at my bedside saying,
"Your father is half way across the ocean/'
That night I grew worse. Could I last till my father
arrived? If I should have a relapse I was sure I would not
live; I had not enough strength left. It was hard to hold
on to reality* The room seemed too warm and I needed
oxygen. I tried to breathe deeply, but found that it brought
20 ART YOUNG: HIS LIFE AND TIMES
pain to the lung area, and seemed likely to disturb the tubes.
So I breathed with exceeding care, taking in all the air 1
could without doing damage inside. That was something to
think about, something constructive; oxygen was life-giving;
the more I got of it the better. I wanted a window open.
Mrs, Stone demurred at that; but after an argument she
opened one window a little and I felt better.
Corner came in whenever permitted, trying to interest
me with reminders that Father was steadily coming nearer*
"I'll go to the Gate da Nord and meet him* What kind of a
looking man is he?" I was able to answer that question, in a
half-lucid interval "He resembles General Grant and wears
a blue broadcloth suit/' After that a long blank, .
When my father arrived, I recognized him, although I
was in a mental haze and my talk was incoherent. I felt no
surprise at his being there; I had a notion that he had been
close by all the time, and it seemed as if he had just dropped
in from around the corner instead of crossing the Atlantic.
But there was a vague comfort in knowing that he was near,
He would come and go, sitting by my bed for hours, some-
times far into the night. He would bring in fruit, which I
could not then eat freely, but it was cheerful to see it, and
Sairey Gamp was fond of fruit.
There was trouble with the drainage from my wound,
the fever mounted again, and my mind rambled* Late one
night, after Father had gone to sleep in his room down the
hall, I reached the high point of delirium.
For hours, it seemed, I had been conscious of marching
steps, and the shadows of passing people, I heard voices in
a strange tongue, commands, the clash of cymbals, and the
clatter of horses' hoofs, I asked the nurse what the excite-
ment was all about She said it was nothing. Then, far off,
I could hear drums, coming closer and closer. More com-
mands, below my window.
Suddenly I knew what all these maneuvers meant: There
was going to be a war — a Chinese army, led by a giant
general on a white horse, was coming across the Seine, around
the Institute of France, and past our hotel. The general
wore a huge and fierce looking mustache, and held a ponder-
ous broad sword across his loins. Sweeping all obstacles aside,
he and his soldiers were pushing on to seize the Eiffel Tower
ART YOUNG: HIS LIFE AND TIMES 21
and set up a new empire with Li Hung Chang at its head.
Where were all the French patriots who should be here
dying for France? Why hadn't the bridge over the Seine been
guarded? Why hadn't the garrisons on the frontier kept back
these barbarian hordes? Somebody must do something about
this. By God, I would do it myself, I would go out there on
the window balcony and stop these Chinese soldiers from
advancing another foot. ... I tried to jump out of bed
and hurry to the window. Mrs. Stone sought to stop me,
and her face seemed to change. Ah! I saw her now as a
Chinese spy.
I struck at her, and struggled with her, determined to
get out on the balcony and stop the invasion. But the nurse
had strong arms, and managed to get me back to bed, and
after a while quieted me. In the morning I was clearer-
headed. The elder Dr. Delbet was there again, very solemn,
as he talked with Father and Mrs, Stone.
After this delirium I began to show marked improve-
ment. My mind cleared and I was able to carry on intelligent
conversations.
"How is Mother?'* was my first question.
"She's well, and anxious for you to come home/'
I had inquiries to make about my sister Nettie, my
brothers Charles and Will, and other people and institutions
in our town. And as I sat propped up against pillows and
ate milk toast — the first food that tasted right — Father began
remembering things that had been happening at home since
I visited there the previous summer.
"Charlie recited some poetry at the fire department's en-
tertainment/' he said. . . . "We went to see Uncle Dave
the Sunday before I left. He's had his whiskers cut short,
and you wouldn't know him. . . . Old Man Meyers con-
fided to me lately that he's on the point of discovering per-
petual motion/'
All this talk of home lifted my spirits, My eyes must have
lighted up, for Father was encouraged to go on, with a
chuckle now and then.
"There's a new iron gate at the poorhouse. * , , Ab
Keeler says he's going to sign the pledge next time a tem-
perance lecturer comes to town. «, . . Hank Hussig found an
22 ART YOUNG: HIS LIFE AND TIMES
Indian hatchet with a head ten inches long in his cornfield,
, , . The county officials are going after the fast drivers.
Judge Dobell fined two men from Clarno five dollars each for
driving faster than a walk across the Pecontonica River
bridge."
More news of similar kind came as the days went by, in
letters from my mother and sister. And they sent copies of
the Weekly Sentinel. Father now read from it such items as
these:
"Carl Marty of New Glarus sent a carload of cheese to
Milwaukee. . . . The young folks report Julia Moore's
party a success. . . , Monroe Band concert at Turner Hal!
next Thursday night. Hear Strawn Shrake play 'The Palms/
, . , Fred Geiger was a pleasant calkr Tuesday from
Blanchardville, . . , Henry Puffer is on the sick list. . . .
George Wagner of Orangeville and Billy Blunt, our popular
townsmen, are going to start a gents' furnishing store on
the south side of the Square. Good luck, George and Bill
Don't forget to advertise in the SentineL We need some haber-
dashing. . . . Mr. and Mrs, Bat Niles of Spring Grove are
the proud parents of a son, born last Friday, . . . Steve
Klassy drove up to New Glarus Tuesday to look at a cow."
Thus the history of Monroe and the surrounding coun-
tryside, important to those named and important then to me
as I took hold of life again.
During the long slow weeks of convalescence I saw my
father in a new light, developing an appreciation for his
capacities which I had never had before. Here was Dan
Young, a small-town general storekeeper, who knew little
of the world, suddenly uprooted by a crisis, and sent hurtling
across 4,000 miles of land and water to a country where the
language and customs were alien to him — yet doing every*
thing that needed to be done, quietly, effectively. In those
first days when I was babbling in delirium he scarcely left
my side, even though there was always a nurse on duty,
And when my senses were restored he was constantly
thoughtful.
Presently it occurred to me that he must be tired staying
indoors so much, and I persuaded him to go out exploring
on his own. Having a natural instinct for direction, he walked
ART YOUNG: HIS LIFE AND TIMES 23
a lot and saw numerous landmarks that I had never got
around to see — including the Tomb of Napoleon, His French
was as bad as mine, though he too had been trying to fathom
a co-language dictionary. Going to a barber-shop, he asked
for a haircut in carefully rehearsed syllables, but was not
understood. So he had to fall back upon the sign language,
imitating scissor-blades with two fingers, gesturing with them
around his head.
I never asked him how much my operation cost; I hadn't
the courage.* And there were the nurses' services, and the
hotel expense. My morale was in no condition then to con-
cern myself with financial problems. Father had assumed
all the responsibility, and I let things take their course. Each
day he wrote my mother and sister. It was understood with-
out discussion that I was to go home as soon as I was able
to travel. I offered no objections to this; it was easier to let
some one else make all my decisions.
Toward the end of April, I was definitely on the up-
grade, and it was possible to dismiss both nurses. The tubes
had been removed, and the wound was healing. Madame
Medard and Madame Franklin looked in occasionally to talk
with Father, and Corner came in each evening. But I was
alone a good deal of the time, and I welcomed that. I wanted
to think, to re-plan my shattered future. My ego had been
dealt a devastating blow. Ego was not a layman's word in
that day; we called it self-esteem. I remembered a sermon
I had once heard in the Presbyterian church at home, about
the deadly sin of pride. And I had been the cock of the walk
in Chicago — and now had been laid low.
Lying there weighing all that had happened to me, I knew
that it was too early for any planning. I was not even sure
that I would be able to do any drawing when I got back on
my feet. I searched my brain for ideas for pictures, but none
would come. Hitherto ideas had flowed easily.
So I began making mental journeys back to the scenes
of childhood. What a marvelous instrument the brain, when
it performs normally — a magic carpet, annihilating time and
space. , , . Gazing across the distance at my self of earlier
* As these pages were written, a letter from my sister gave me the answer to
that question, almost fifty years after the fact. She wrote: "The doctors would
not operate on you until Father had cabled $700."
24 ART YOUNG: HIS LIFE AND TIMES
years, I thought that if I could live life over again I would
do it better, would be more considerate of my parents, more
helpful in the store and on the farm,
"Why do the French say 'Out/ Ouil' when just one 'OuiT
would do?" Father wanted to know*
"That is one of the mysteries of this strange land/' I
told him. "Clarence Webster devoted a great deal of time
and energy trying to learn the answer to that question, and
he was never able to get any light on it. He has a theory
that the old rhyme about one of the ten little pigs saying
Vee, wee, all the way home' was written by a Frenchman/'
Father displayed more humor in Paris than I had ever
suspected him of having. In my boyhood he had usually
appeared rather glum, while the rest of us laughed a good
deal I couldn't understand that. Yet perhaps,,! reflected, as I
stared at the ceiling of my room, raising a family of four
children was a pretty serious business, ... He had a free
and easy way now, as of one on a holiday, which amused
me — especially when he would say to the elder Dr. Delbet
(dignified member of the Legion of Honor) : "Well, Doc,
how do you think the boy is today?"
Late April brought warmer weather and sunshine again,
and my strength increased. Soon I was able to get out of bed,
sitting up for fifteen minutes one day, and next day trying
my legs in the hall, A week later I was permitted to go out
of doors; and leaning on Father's arm, I moved slowly and
carefully around the corner of the Institute to the Voltaire
statue. After lying in bed so long, I felt as if I were on stilts
ten feet tall, and in danger of falling at every step* We stood
for a little while and looked over the parapet into the Seine
with its brisk traffic; then sat on a bench and watched some
children at play.
When I felt equal to a longer walk, we visited the Louvre
together, and Father seemed a bit abashed when we came
to a room full of paintings of nudes, mostly of beautiful
women. Yet I noticed he wasn't in any hurry to get away.
"I suppose it's all right/' he said, as we finally left, "to
have pictures like that in a big city, but if they were exhibited
in Monroe it would be kind of embarrassing if the minister
AJRT YOUNG: HIS LIFE AND TIMES 25
and his wife happened to come in while a fellow was looking
at them/'
On a fine day in May we boarded a boat and went up
the river to the Exposition grounds. When Father wanted
to go up in the Eiffel Tower, I said nothing about my previ-
ous indifference to it. By this time I felt that perhaps a duty
was involved. When I got back home it might be hard to
explain why I hadn't gone up when every other visitor to
Paris presumably had.
It cost five francs to make the ascent. The elevators ac-
commodated fifty passengers at a time, and were so solidly
constructed that there was a fine sense of security as one was
propelled upward. The day being clear, France was spread
out below us like a relief map. Lecturers on the lofty observa-
tory floor, 750 feet above ground, pointed out towns, rivers,
battlefields, and other landmarks as we gazed through field-
glasses. I had to admit to myself that Alexandra Gustave
Eiffel had great engineering skill; and better than skill —
imagination.
I was still shaky as the ship bore us homeward, although
the sea air helped. And I was humbled. There was still much
doubt in my mind about the future. It would depend on
how far I succeeded in building back to normal strength.
I had no immediate wish to do any drawing. Yet I had no
thought of any other career. I was gripped by the same
inertia which had held me during those last weeks in Paris.
Nothing seemed worth doing which required any effort.
But my father's spirits were high. He was taking me home
upright and not horizontally, and I was going back to fresh
country air and sunshine and good food. That anxious jour-
ney to France and the return with his son alive was of course
the high point in Father's life. He had never before been
away from his Wisconsin home farther than Iowa. . . ,
And now he was enjoying himself. He was interested in
everything on the ship — the machinery, the pilot house, the
changing of watches by the seamen, the crisp commands,
the clock- work routine, and the luxurious meals. We did a
turn around the deck morning and afternoon, and it was
exhilarating for him to feel the surge of the seas when the
bow of the liner climbed a wave as we rounded the fore-
26 ART YOUNG: HIS LIFE AND TIMES
cabin. I tried to pretend that I felt exhilaration too, but
my pretense had a poor foundation.
Much of the time I sat in a deck chair and had little
to say, even when Father was close by. I was still trying to
recover my old whistling confidence.
Chapter 3
BACK TO THE OLD HOME TOWN
I FELT a good deal stronger when we landed in New
York, but I was miserably sunburned. We put up at the
Murray Hill Hotel, and I took Father to see the outside
of the Art Students' League building, where I had studied,
viewing it from across the street; it was then at Twenty-third
and Lexington avenue, I had no wish to meet anyone I knew,
because I didn't want to do any explaining about Paris. That
was mostly a nightmare to be forgotten — the wreck of a
golden dream.
We walked over to Madison Square, where I grew wob-
bly again, and we sat for awhile on a bench. Though he did
not say it in words, Father was plainly concerned about those
spells of weakness which kept recurring, and he was not so
much interested in seeing New York as in getting on to
Wisconsin. I felt the same way.
There was something friendly about the front of the
Grand Central station next morning. We of course referred
to it as "the depot", as railroad stations were called fifty
years ago. Father stocked up with fruit. I went to bed early
in the Pullman berth that evening, and succeeded in sleeping
a good deal. The elder Dr. Delbet had said: "Rest as much
as you can."
Clarence Webster was waiting for us when we pulled
into Chicago, and took us to lunch at the Grand Pacific Hotel.
Web had much to tell about the boys I had worked with, and
plied me with questions about Paris. "You're looking great,
Art, for an alleged invalid," he said heartily. "You'll soon
be back at the drawing board."
I must have smiled wanly, for I wasn't so sure. I had
not touched a pen since my last day at the Julian. My hands
were clumsy. And I was still many pounds underweight,
although my hair, which had been largely burned out by the
fever, had grown in again and was curling naturally. Some-
27
28 ART YOUNG: HIS LIFE AND TIMES
times in the nights on the ship there had been a dull, pressing
pain beneath the four-inch scar where the incision had been
made in my left side. Often I said to myself: "Oh, Gosh,
suppose I had to go through all that again V*
We were met at the train in Monroe by the rest of our
family and a little group of friends. What I recall particu-
larly is that I gave way to tears when I caught sight of my
mother* Weeping is frowned upon among males generally,
but I seem to be about fifty-two per cent weepy. Mother held
me close, with no words. My sister and the boys did the
talking, "Hello, Art, glad them foreign doctors didn't kill
MY BOYHOOD HOME.
ye,"' the village hackman remarked. And Prank Chenowethu
volunteer booking agent for the town's brass band, explained
that "We were going to have the band boys here, but Scott
Darling is out of town/' Scott was the pride of Monroe as a
drummer. He could rat-tat-tat the snare-drum like nobody
else I ever heard, and the band was no good without him*
In the family carriage we drove to our home, known as
the Evergreen Fruit Farm. Carrie, our Scandinavian hired
ART YOUNG: HIS LIFE AND TIMES 29
girl, had supper all ready for us. But first I had to see Nig,
the pony which Father had bought for me when I was
around 1 0 or 11; he was still frisky and recognized me with
delight when I patted his head.
Supper was a gay affair, with much talk. Elizabeth
North, my favorite Monroe girl, was there, sitting next to
me. Father, and not I, answered most of the questions. He
told them how kind Mrs. Stone, the night nurse, had been,
and he took out of his pocket a thermometer which he had
brought away from my sick-room as a souvenir, because
there was a story attached to it. When he found that the
room was ten degrees cooler than he thought it ought to be,
he arranged with the concierge to have more heat, then cooled
the thermometer in a glass of water just before Dr. Delbet's
arrival, to make it register the lower temperature the latter
had ordered. When the doctoir came, he said: "It's too warm
here/' but on looking at the thermometer he said: "No, it's
correct. It must be I/'
He recalled incidents of the sea voyages. When he was
leaving the boat at Havre, a sailor pointed to his collar as if
something were wrong — and Father suspected that the young
man was alarmed at thinking that he had forgotten to put
on his necktie, an article of apparel he had never worn in all
his life* He was past fifty before he would consent to put on
a tie, and I never saw him wear any kind of clothes except
dark blue broadcloth*
I had a good chance to observe him from my sick-bed
and on the boat and now back home. A ruddy, handsome
face, with a close-cropped beard. His crudities often amused
me, but I wondered then and later why it had not been
Father's fate to be a celebrity. To my mind he was a great
man. And sometimes I think that just character, regardless
of ambition to achieve, ought to be the principal test of fame.
My father had no worldly ambition. I couldn't under-
stand why one of his popularity among the townspeople and
farmers did not want to get into political office where he
could exercise an influence for good in the community. Every-
body knew Dan Young, knew him to be a man who had
his own ideas of what was right and friendly to all — but for
political distinction of any kind, he had no yearning. As a
youngster of ambition I thought that just to be a good man,
30 ART YOUNG: HIS LIFE AND TIMES
a forthright citizen, was not enough — why was he not
mayor, as the local managers of political affairs wanted him
to be, at least in one campaign when he was a favorite with
the Republican leaders? Now I know that to be honored as
this or that in the Who's Who of political affairs is not
always the way of a wise man. It may take as much courage
not to be "distinguished*' as to become so — it depends on
one's own idea of integrity and usefulness,
Next day I went into town with my younger brother
Will, visited Father's store, noting improvements there; and
looked in at the court house and other establishments where
old acquaintances held forth. Charlie Booth, editor of the
Weekly Sentinel, interrupted a printing job to welcome me;
a genial man, he appeared glad always to have his work
interrupted, so he would have an excuse for conversation.
There was the usual group discussing politics around the
courthouse, in various dialects, Fred Lund, the Populist, was
detailing the wrongs suffered by the farmers under the Harri-
son administration.
On the west side of the Square I met up with the Meth-
odist preacher, who inquired sedately after my welfare. Bill
Hoesly, the postmaster, wanted to know when I'd have an-
other exhibition of pictures to hang in the post office. I said
I appreciated the invitation, but that I lacked inspiration
and didn't know when I'd get at my drawing again. Elmer
Peasley told me he had intended to go to Paris when he
was twenty, but changed his mind after being seasick while
crossing Lake Michigan.
Talking with a lot of the old-timers and listening with a
fresh ear to their voices, I realized clearly for the first time
what a racial conglomerate was this town in which I had
grown up. In having this mixture of people from many
lands, it was of course akin to countless other towns that had
been formed in pioneer days in Wisconsin, Illinois, Minne-
sota, and Iowa. Here were New Englanders who had left
the East for good and found southern Wisconsin about right;
Germans from a fatherland where war had been flaring up,
and who liked the idea of peace and democracy; Swiss, who
came to this region of hills and lakes, seeing it as dairy coun-
try resembling their own; Norwegians, Swedes, and Danes,
ART YOUNG: HIS LIFE AND TIMES 31
who stopped here instead of continuing their migration
toward the upper Mississippi in Minnesota; and a goodly
proportion of Irish, Scotch, English, and Welsh.
Having made the rounds of familiar spots in Monroe,
I was inclined to spend most of my time on the farm in the
days that followed. It was good to wander in the fields and
see green things sprouting. I drank in the clean air as if it
were wine.
June and fine weather, and arrangements were being
made for a lawn party at our place, in honor of my return
from Paris, My sister Nettie, who for five years had been
Mrs. Clyde Copeland, was the moving spirit behind this cele-
bration. The idea pleased me, and gave me an incentive to
draw some pen-and-ink pictures to herald the event, the first
I had attempted to draw since my illness. My pen-hand
worked well, and that was good for my morale. These pic-
tures were sent to Chicago by Charlie Booth to be engraved,
and were reproduced in the Sentinel with an announcement
of plans for the party. One of the drawings depicted certain
leading citizens of Monroe coming to the big event. These
citizens I had often made sketches of before I left home. Some
of them I now pictured walking on our telephone wire, with
balancing poles in their hands, to get to this brilliant social
affair.
Horse-drawn buses brought the guests to the farm. Loads
of them came — the young folks and some of the older ones.
The party was a distinct success, as those things go — the
grand picnic event of that summer in Monroe. I had never
realized before how many good-looking girls there were in
our town, and for once I was the center of attraction. Every-
body present seemed carefree, and I was congratulated over
and over again upon having come safely through a critical
illness — and was asked a hundred times if it didn't feel good
to be home again. And of course the boys and girls wanted
to hear all about Paris and the Exposition and the Eiffel
Tower — and was the Latin Quarter as naughty as reports
would lead you to believe?
Nettie was at her best that day, and Mother was bright-
eyed and youthful looking as she moved from one group
to another, to make sure that everyone had enough ham
32 ART YOUNG: HIS LIFE AND TIMES
sandwiches, coffee, lemonade, strawberries fresh from our
field, ice-cream, and cake. Father shared the honors, having
left the store in charge of the clerks.
Sundays were pleasant days. Father would be at home
and would trim his beard in the morning with ceremonious
regularity, while Mother would busy herself with prepara-
tions for dinner. Hammock, chairs, and a buffalo robe would
be out on the lawn. Charles and Will and I would read the
Chicago Sunday Inter-Ocean and George W. Peck's Mil-
waukee Sun, in which the "Peck's Bad Boy" stories were
running, and then perhaps try our hand at croquet. After
REMEMBRANCE OF MY FATHER AND MOTHER,
dinner Mother would join us on the lawn, and in due time
somebody would make a pail of lemonade. Often Nettie and
her husband would join us.
Sometimes we would get Father and Mother talking
about pioneer days, and there was rich drama in their mem-
ories. Father was born in 1838, only six years after the
Black Hawk War, on a farm near Orangeville in Oneco town-
ship, Stephenson County, Illinois, a few miles south of the
Wisconsin line and only ten miles from Monroe* This, too,
was the spot where I came into the world* As a boy Father
ART YOUNG: HIS LIFE AND TIMES 33
had plowed with oxen, when the settlers thereabouts were
still fearful of possible Indian raids, despite government guar-
antees that there would be no more. Father was the son of
Stephen and Louisa Miner Young, and Stephen had come
overland from somewhere in northern New York. Family
legend says that both the Youngs and the Miners originally
hailed from rural England.
My mother's people were Pennsylvania Dutch, which
means German; her great grandparents had hailed from the
Palatinate. Her father was Jacob Wagner, her name being
Amanda. When she was five, her parents and her several
brothers and sisters traveled by prairie schooner to northern
Illinois, where they took up a homestead in Stephenson
county in the same township where my father's people lived.
When Mother was a young girl on a farm, she and her
three sisters would go barefooted to the pasture to milk the
cows* On frosty autumn mornings, once the cows were made
to stand up, the girls would plant their feet on the ground
that had been warmed all night by bovine heat. Young people
went to church, carrying their shoes to save sole-leather and
putting them on at the church door. Traveling cobblers in
those days repaired and sold shoes of their own make.
Father served as a mounted usher at the second of the
Lincoln-Douglas debates in 1858; this in Freeport, the seat
of Stephenson county. Some 15,000 people attended, coming
from as far away as Chicago. The railroads gave excursion
rates, and the crowds came on special trains, as well as in
wagons, on horseback, and on foot.
Stephenson county had been divided on the slavery ques-
tion, and thus there were big demonstrations for both these
notable candidates for the United States Senate* Stephen A.
Douglas had been a member of that body for eleven years,
and was seeking re-election. On the previous evening the
Democrats welcomed his arrival from Galena with a long
torchlight procession. But there was a greater throng on hand
when a train from Dixon brought Lincoln, the Republican
nominee, in the morning*
Lincoln was much the better humored of the two de-
baters that day, my father remembered. He towered almost
two feet above his rival* Despite the apparent enthusiasm for
Douglas shown by the parade, jeers met some of the Senator's
34 ART YOUNG; HIS LIFE AND TIMES
assertions. When he complained that the interrupters were
lacking in respect, Lincoln retorted that Mr. Douglas would
be given respect if he were careful to be respectful to his
audience.
Some man in the overflow crowd back of the speakers'
platform called out while Abe was voicing an argument, ask-
ing him to turn around oftener so those in the rear could
hear him.
"I'd like to talk to you folks behind me/' Lincoln an-
swered, "but I think I'd better talk to the majority/'
Father was always receptive to mechanical progress. Ours
was the first telephone in Monroe. It connected the store and
the farm, being powered by storage batteries. Mother didn't
like it, and said she wouldn't talk into the thing. It got out of
order easily, but we could sometimes hear simple statements
like: "Can't get home for supper" — the words vague and
accompanied by such electric sputterings as to cast much doubt
on the early Bell phones ever being practical Years before
that innovation a wire had been strung from store to farm
over which we sent dots-and-dashes messages by hammering
with a potato masher, or an implement that looked like one*
on metallic diaphragms encased in walnut boxes.
To keep up to date, Father never neglected to renew his
subscription to the Scientific American, He was inventively
inclined, and got one of the earliest patents on an automatic
gate-swinger, designed to save farmers the trouble of getting
out of a buggy or wagon every time they wanted to enter
or leave their enclosed acres. It didn't work very well, how-
ever, and I remember how patiently and hopefully I tried
to manipulate the leverage, hoping that in time Father would
perfect the device and make money out of it. But after
repeated trials I found that it was simpler to get out of the
wagon or dismount from my pony when I wanted to open
the gate. Yet I still think the underlying theory of that in-
vention was all right, and simply needed further experiment
to have made it practicable.
The leading farm periodicals also came to us regularly,
and Father was always among the first in that vicinity to
cultivate any new variety of strawberry, raspberry, potato,
or other vegetable or fruit.
Chapter 4
ANY BOY COULD BECOME PRESIDENT THEN
I HAVE no recollection of my birthplace, but once when
I was a young man, on a visit home from Chicago in the
Eighties, I drove out there with Father. The house was
gone, its site being marked by a depression which showed the
outlines of the foundation. Father traced the boundaries of
the farm for me; pointed out the East Forty, and the cow
pasture. We found the old well, now almost filled in; and
only a single tumbledown shed remained of the outbuild-
ings. A wagon wheel was sunk into the grass. And down by
the creek, still gurgling on its way, we stood where the
springhouse had been. That was the prototype of the ice-box
and frigidaire. A simple stone house built around a cold
bubbling spring, in which to keep eggs, milk, and butter cool
through the summer heat.
I was raised on a bottle — as they used to put it — when
a mother's breasts went dry. And I can remember playing
with the artificial breasts that women wore in those days to
build up a thin bosom. These were heavy round pads with
white linen covers, filled with sawdust, and were meant only
for wear on the street or at social functions. But we children,
getting into everything, bandied them about the house. My
recollections of the colored fashion plates in Godey's Lady's
Book seem to go back to the age of three. That publication
was a regular visitor in our house, for my mother, like most
pioneer women, was taking notice of correct appearances.
Reveling in "the pretty pictures," I turned the pages again
and again. My favorite toys were not soldiers, but Noah's
Ark and the animals that went in two by two.
Mother attended the Lutheran church when we lived in
Illinois. After we moved to Monroe, however, when I was
a year old in 1867, she went to the Methodist church, which
was across the way from our house, and she took me along
for Sunday school. All I remember about this religious expe-
35
36 ART YOUNG: HIS LIFE AND TIMES
rience is that one Sunday we each were given a colored card
with tinseled angels on it.
My father was not a churchgoer in those days, and when
I became older I learned that he was an agnostic. But he
contributed to the local churches regardless of creed, and he
liked to discuss religion with the local ministers when they
came into our store. He was well versed in the arguments of
Robert G. Ingersoll, whose books he had read. In his old age
he got into the habit of going with Mother to the Universalist
church every Sunday.
I must have been about five when there occurred the first
manifestation of sex that I can recall in my life. Mother
took me to the home of one of her friends, beyond the rail-
road tracks south of town. It was fairyland to me as we
moved along a garden walk, amid blue and pink flowers,
A girl of my own age was there, and we romped together
while the two women gossiped. I felt like some playful ani-
mal chasing this girl around and into secret places, especially
under a bed. Why couldn't I go on chasing her until some-
thing happened? There were a couple of similar experiences
with the same girl when I was eight or nine. Female-like —
or shall I say cat-like — she was still on the defensive and
unyielding. She was on my mind for a long time as a citadel
to be taken. When I saw the citadel many years later, I didn't
think it worth taking. But she was the essence of all that was
beautiful in the world and comes back in my dreams even
now. If this interests the Freudians, let them make what they
can of it.
Mother doted on my blond curls, and made me wear
them much longer than I wanted to, as she did my kilts.
I must have been five and a half before I got rid of both —
and she was tearful, of course, when the curls were sheared
off. She had them saved and kept them for years. Now that
my hair was cut I made definite declarations of my mas-
culinity.
After I grew up my mother would recall the time she
started to put a kind of Red Riding Hood cape on me. She
was wrapping it over my shoulders as she had done before
on rainy days. I protested, saying, "I won't wear it 'cause
I wore that when I was a girl/'
Sometimes Pa would let me ride with him to the store,
ART YOUNG: HIS LIFE AND TIMES 37
where he would give me candy, or an orange. The store
looked out upon the Square, in the center of which was the
courthouse. Public celebrations and mass-meetings were held
there, and parades on Fourth of July and Decoration Day
always moved through the Square. There, too, the fire de-
partment held exhibition drills, including speedy ladder scal-
ing. A lofty flagpole rose near a bandstand.
Traveling men, pausing in the act of selling a bill of
merchandise, would make much of me. They were impressed
by the pictures I was constantly drawing. In the store many
objects attracted my eyes, especially the picture labels on
packages and the advertising placards. And I enjoyed look-
ing at the Chinese posters which were enclosed in chests of tea.
From infancy I had been fascinated by books, magazines,
and newspapers with pictures in them. Long before I was
able to write I had begun to copy those pictures with a pencil
on any scraps of paper I could find. There was a picture
advertisement of a livery stable in the Sentinel. That seemed
to me more interesting and amusing than anything else in its
columns. It was nothing but a wood-cut of a horse and
buggy, but the horse was going. Because of continued print-
ing of that cut for years the whip sticking up from the dash-
board had thickened until it looked like a heavy club.
We had fine times — we kids* There were four of us.
When I was five, Charles was eight, Nettie seven, and Will
three, Charles kept us laughing with tales of fun at school,
and repeated the "pieces" he spoke on Friday afternoons or
the last day of a term. We had an Estey organ, which Nettie
learned to play by note at an early age.
Fred Darling, the boy next door, knew a lot of valuable
things. He was eight or nine when I was five, could pick up
snakes by the tail without fear, and had stories to tell as good
as many of those in the books that Charles read to me. One
day Fred had gone with his father out to Big Prairie, beyond
the poorhouse, to fish for suckers and bullheads in the creek.
Coming back, he told me he had seen a camp of Indians, and
he imitated one of their dances and their war whoops: "Yea
yu! yea yu!" Another time he said he saw an Indian in the
Square shoot pennies from between the fingers of his small
son. I asked Father to take me to see the Indians when they
came to town again. He agreed to, but the redskins did not
38 ART YOUNG: HIS LIFE AND TIMES
reappear, and I never managed to see them emulate William
Tell No doubt they had learned at last that they hadn't
really belonged in southern Wisconsin after the Black Hawk
War, and were on their way farther west.
At intervals Mother would feel a need to get away from
home and would hitch up and drive to Orangeville, to see
her sisters, taking along one of us children — choosing the one
who had been "the best this week/' Those trips were joyful
when I was the lucky one, for Aunt Mary would welcome
us with cookies and jam and maybe salt-rising bread* In after
years James Whitcomb Riley's "Out to Old Aunt Mary's"
seemed to me to have been written about my own lovable
relative.
The first book I ever owned was The Three Bears, with
colored illustrations. Other books which were mine in child-
hood, and which contained pictures, were Robinson Crusoe,
Aladdin and the Magic Lamp, and Aesop's Fables.
My father had a considerable library, or what was called
a library in those days. That is, he had a collection of books
which he kept in a locked case called "the secretary/' with
an overflow of several volumes resting on a table in the sit-
ting room. I remember especially The Gilded Age, by Mark
Twain and Charles Dudley Warner; Struggles and Tri-
umphs, or Forty Years' Recollections, by P. T. Barnum;
Sunshine and Shadow in New York; Barriers Burned Away
by E. P. Roe; Robert G. IngersolVs Lectures; The Farmer's
Almanac; The Lady of the Lake, by Sir Walter Scott; and
Will Carleton's Farm Ballads — most of them illustrated with
wood-cuts.
In school my studies were often interrupted by ideas for
pictures, and I would lose myself in drawing. Geography
and history interested me more than other school books,
because the text was relieved by engravings on wood blocks.
Even at an early age I delighted in the wood-cut. It had
direct strength and simplicity. I liked a firm line — no hesi-
tancy. Technical-teasing or whispering in art has never ap-
pealed to me. Whatever the artist has to say he ought to say
out loud.
I had no thought of taking drawing lessons; the pictorial
urge had come naturally. Often I copied pictures out of
ART YOUNG: HIS LIFE AND TIMES 39
magazines or books, to see if I could improve upon them or
vary their features. But when I was twelve or so I gave up
copying, and made it a point, to do original work, either
from observation of people or things or from imagination*
My schoolmates watched over my shoulders while I drew
behind the screen of a geography. I was just being polite to
my teachers when I used such a screen, for none of them ap-
peared to mind if drawing encroached upon the studies I
was supposed to be pursuing. One day I drew a comic picture
on the long white hair-ribbon of Alice Treat, who sat in
front of me. I thought she would be annoyed, but she was
complimented, and I heard that she hung the ribbon over the
mantel-piece at home.
To the people of Monroe the long two-story establish-
ment on the north side of the Square was Dan Young's store,
but at home we always spoke of it as "our store/' It was a
gathering place for politicians and other leading citizens,
and for farmers who came in from the country for miles
around. Here they swapped horses, told off-color stories, dis-
cussed the Civil War and the hard times which followed, and
talked about crops. Their tales were apt to become tall when
boys were listening, and often I had reason to be skeptical
of the war reminiscences of some of the veterans.
SCENE IN FATHER'S STORE AROUND 1886.
The cronies hear the funny cracks.
All these debaters were rugged individualists, who be-
lieved there was equal opportunity in the world for every-
body who was willing to work hard and keep an eye open
for the main chance. And indeed there was some truth in th£
will-to-power theory in the Eighties. Garfield, widely em-
40 ART YOUNG: HIS LIFE AND TIMES
blazoned as an ex-canal-boat boy, got into the White House,
and the Monroe Hot Stove Club echoed the stump-speakers
and editors who held that "any boy born in the United
States" might become President. I was frequently reminded
that a farm boy who looked much like my father also had
attained to the nation's highest office. . . . The exponents
of persevering industry and unwavering ambition of course
never mentioned opportunities for women. Their place was
still in the home, and the few who stepped put of it for
public careers met with raised eyebrows if not bitter hostility.
While the veterans vocalized the part they had played
in freeing the slaves, and the other talkers figured out what
was wrong with the country, I stood behind a nearby show-
case and put their portraits on paper, with contours usually
exaggerated. The subjects of such caricature were apt to be
startled by my emphasis on whatever was personal, but
usually they were flattered by the attention given them by the
town's only artist. And I was never too busy with customers
to draw a picture of any one. I was quite willing to postpone
delivering groceries, or sweeping out the store, or cleaning
the lamp chimneys. This was at times exasperating to my
father, but it hastened my artistic education.
New chances for adventure loomed when Father bought
the farm a mile north of town. This was about the time
when I was finishing first grade in school. Father figured that
he could raise fruit and vegetables in quantity and sell them
in the store, besides having plenty for ourselves. The farm
comprised only 20 acres, but it seemed boundless, especially
when I grew old enough to attempt plowing and was assigned
to pick potato-bugs off the vines.
Our house was white, with green blinds, and part of it
was two-storied. There was an attic with a window where
on rainy days I would explore amid a hodge-podge of old
furniture for cast-away clocks and forgotten toys. Out in
front was a broad, clean lawn on which one could roll a
long way. A line of evergreen shrubs along the roadside
added a note of decorative charm.
In the barn we soon had a cow in addition to our horse;
later chickens, ducks, and turkeys were added. We raised a
good deal of sweet corn, which was sliced from the cob by
ART YOUNG: HIS LIFE AND TIMES 41
knives and then dehydrated (though that word was not used
then) in a drying house heated by a furnace* Father had
invented this process, and the dried corn, which would of
course keep indefinitely, was sold in the store.
Wagons loaded with grain and produce moved past;
creaking wheels indicated when a farmer was too poor to
buy axle-grease or was negligent. "Bummers" in faded army
uniforms would stop in to ask for a drink at our well, and
maybe get a meal also. The hired girl was likely to be im-
patient, classing them when they were out of earshot as 'lazy
good-for-nothings/' but my mother was sympathetic and
kind to these uninvited visitors. Once one of them mapped
the Wilderness battlefield for me, with a stick on the ground,
and explained the general strategy of Grant's and Lee's forces.
He was wounded and left for dead on the field, he said — and
after he got out of the hospital he never could find his
regiment again.
I was industrious then, and tried to help the hired girl
with churning — but I wasn't fast enough to suit her. She
said I was "as slow as molasses in January." This term to
describe slowness was a mid-western idiom — and another to
describe speed was doing a task "in two jerks of a lamb's
tail"
My mother got the notion when I was about 10 that I
ought to take piano lessons. She talked with Carrie Bloom,
the town's leading pianist, who consented to see what she
could do with me. She taught me to play two short exercises,
but somehow I couldn't play and look at notes at the same
time. The notes were in the way. Subsequently Mother
thought Fd better try again, this time with an out-of-town
teacher, Clara Porter from Janesville.
By dutiful application I improved considerably, and in
due time was billed with Miss Porter's other pupils for a
public concert. In a crowded hall before the elite of Janes-
ville, I walked to the piano, sat down, and began to play
The Maiden's Prayer with an affected boldness. Before me
was the music, and my teacher stood alongside ready to turn
the leaves. The first few notes went over with a resounding
confidence. Then suddenly a tremulous stage fright seized
me. I could go no further. I left the stage — a failure — and
Miss Porter's reputation for bringing out the musical talent
42 ART YOUNG: HIS LIFE AND TIMES
of fond mothers1 boys and girls got a setback that night.
I never recovered from this defeat I couldn't talk about it
for years.
My recitations and impersonations were better than my
piano-playing, and various townspeople who heard them
said I ought to study for the stage. But the actor of the
family was my brother Charles. I had a deep admiration for
him when he acted in school plays and other local-talent
productions. I thought he was of star caliber, and still think
so. His voice had a noble resonance when he declaimed Mark
Antony's oration over the body of Caesar: "Look you
here . . . This was the most unkindest cut of all ... Put
a tongue in every wound of Caesar, that should move the
stones of Rome to rise and mutiny." I hear again the rhyth-
mic echo of his tones in lines like "Men shut their doors
against a setting sun" and when he cried: "Art thou that
Thracian robber?"
Looking at him on or off the stage, I felt that if Booth
or Barrett only knew him they would say: "Charles Young
has no equal on the American stage." He never got any
further, however, than Turner Hall in Monroe and a few
theatres in nearby towns. Perhaps he didn't take his own
histrionic talent seriously enough. But I shall always think
of my brother Charles as a potential interpreter of drama
who should have become widely known. To the mute in-
glorious Miltons, one can add the inglorious Booths and
Macreadys and the unsung of all the arts.
One of the great days of my boyhood was that on which
my father presented me with an Indian pony called Nig.
Father paid $25 for him. Such ponies were brought to our
part of the country in droves. Nig was coal-black* Two or
three times a week I rode him, sometimes far into the coun-
try, and would mount him at a moment's notice, to go on
some hurried errand — provided only that I was not busy
drawing.
I can remember how resentful and stubborn I was at
times when Mother would ask me to go to town for a beef-
steak— if I was absorbed in a picture. I thought she should
know that my artistic development was more important
than a steak. She would use diplomacy then, perhaps re-
ART YOUNG: HIS LIFE AND TIMES 43
minding me that Nig looked lonesome and needed exercise.
That was her best appeal.
My passion for riding Nig had become theatrical. No
doubt about it, I was an exhibitionist. Whether anybody
saw me or not as I rode, I was "the man on horseback" of
the future. Especially on Sundays, on long stretches of level
road, I would let Nig out, and he would run a close race
with the liveliest wind. I liked to feel his prancing under me,
see the proud curve of his neck, and hear his fretful hoof-
beats when he was all lathered up and apparently enjoying
it as much as I. No one ever saw us in the Square except
when my mount was dancing.
Once he threw me — I had become too dictatorial and he
resented it. I was sprawled upon the ground a half mile from
town on a back street, and Nig ran wildly through the
Square. People knew from this that something had happened
to Dan Young's boy — and doubtless felt that it served him
right for getting his pony all het up.
Father scolded me for letting myself get thrown. "The
idea! Can't you hang onto a horse? You ought to be
ashamed."
I was humiliated and was never thrown again. Nig had
taught me a lesson. I never gave him cause to repeat his anger,
for it had suddenly dawned upon me that he had rights
which deserved respect. And after he had cooled down that
day, Nig was my friend always. I curried him daily and fed
him his oats for several years. I missed him when I went
away. In my letters from Chicago and New York I wanted
to know: "How's Nig?" He lived to be twenty-six years old.
We owned him more than twenty-three years.
Another companion of mine then was a coach dog named
Van, a black-and-white polka-dot Dalmatian who was too
good for his own good. When I think of the way I batted
Van around — pulling his ears ; using him for a pillow when
I was inclined to rest, especially on winter nights behind the
stove; making him jump high for food; fooling him in num-
berless ways, I marvel that he never turned on me in mad
revolt,
I tried to interpret what he would say if he could talk.
He had a wise look when in repose, as if thinking things
over. And with what patience he followed under the wheels
44 ART YOUNG: HIS LIFE AND TIMES
of the family buggy, close to Nig's heels. No matter how
far we drove, how hot the day, nor how much dust he
breathed in, he would keep on to the end of the journey.
Although we had cats, cows, pigs, chickens, geese, ducks,
etcetera, they were not enough to satisfy Will and myself,
so we caught woodchucks, owls, and gophers, keeping them
for a few days to study their habits, and then turning them
loose again, I was good at mimicking animal voices, and one
day I was trying to outdo a rooster that was crowing. My
mother saw rne in the act and said to Nancy Grant, our
washerwoman, "Hear the rooster, Nancy ?" and Nancy an-
swered, "Yes, a two-legged rooster/'
Often I wonder if being raised in daily contact with
animals is not vitally important in the development of a
child — whatever his future calling may be, One curse of city
upbringing, I would say, is not to know the constant kinship
of soil, vegetation, birds, and the so-called dumb creatures.
Monroe had its share of eccentric characters, mention of
whom would invariably bring a smile to the faces of their
townsmen*
Bob Crow was one of these. We boys would cross his
farm when we went to Banty's Mill to swim in the pond
there, which had been created by damning up a creek* He
always contended that a man was not dressed up unless he
wore a silk hat. And whenever he came to town he was
adorned with a stove-pipe head-piece such as Abe Lincoln
used to wear.
Casper Disch lived out at the poor farm. He had a sunny
nature, laughing a great deal,
"Let's see you stand on your ear, Casper/' we would
say when we met him as we cut across the poorhouse grounds
to gather walnuts or hunt for birds' eggs.
And he would immediately oblige. That is, he would
try energetically to stand on his ear, though he never quite
succeeded. He seemed to think we were complimenting him
by making the request. We would say, "All you need is a little
more practice, Casper/' and he would believe us,
Billy Rean, the village grouch, was an early subject of
my caricaturing. He could just sit silently in the Square
and exude grouchiness like a drum-stove throwing off heat.
OLD-FASHIONED GRANDPA
ART YOUNG: HIS LIFE AND TIMES 45
In boyhood I cherished a fond ambition to attain the
majestic dignity of George Banks, the druggist, who had a
"bay window" in front and who walked down Main Street
with his shoulders far back and with the air of a man who
owned the whole town. Often I would walk behind him and
imitate his manner, to the great amusement of my mother
and of others who happened to see my performance.
Father wanted at least one of us three boys to grow up
and look after the farm. But none of us leaned toward tilling
the soil. I tried being an agriculturist, but it soon palled upon
me. The days were too long and the tasks endless — currying
and harnessing the horses; watering, feeding, and milking the
cows; feeding hogs; weeding potatoes; making boxes to be
filled by the hundred berry pickers we employed in season;
plowing; husking corn, cutting wood; picking potato-bugs
from the vines and burning them in kerosene.
There was no money to be made by a farmer's son in
farm-work. Father had no thought of offering me any in-
centive; he would pay our hired man, but he regarded it
as a son's duty to help his parents all he could without wages.
Of course I got my board, lodging, clothes, but I was inter-
ested also in having some money to spend. I never could
keep my mind on the job before me. When I went plowing
I would put a copy of Pack in one pocket and Harper's
Weekly in another, and would sit down at the far end of
the furrows and enjoy myself.
Charles, my eldest brother, was ambitious to be a soldier.
He also was fond of reciting poetry. When the Spanish-
American War broke out he was in the state militia, and was
quickly promoted to Lieutenant-Colonel. He never caught up
with the war, but like William Jennings Bryan he got side-
tracked in Jacksonville, Florida, where he enlivened informal
camp gatherings with dramatic recitations. Returning home,
he resumed his partnership with Father in the store and
continued it until after 1918.
Will, who was three years younger than I, wanted to go
to college, and got his wish. He attended the University of
Wisconsin, was co-founder of the Daily Cardinal there, and
subsequently was a special feature writer on the New York
World, managing editor of Hamptons Magazine, author of
46 ART YOUNG: HIS LIFE AND TIMES
a history of the cigarette, editor of the British government's
official war films, and producing director of the first " Alice
in Wonderland" film and of "The Mystery of Life/' a sound
movie dealing with evolution, in which Clarence Darrow was
narrator.
Circuses made every boy's heart beat faster, and perhaps
they had the same effect on the girls, though I never thought
to inquire about that. Every boy who was footloose was up
at the Fair Grounds watching the canvas-hands put up the
"big top" and unload the animal wagons, but few girls had
the temerity to hang around; if they did they'd be called
tomboys. Forepaugh's circus had its winter quarters in Janes-
ville, 35 miles east Heralded by flamboyant posters, it came
to Monroe when I was ten or eleven. The town's whole
population was standing on the sidewalks around the Square
when the parade came down the hill. Farmers held tightly to
their horses lest they bolt and run away when the smell of
the camels and elephants reached them. A man with a silk
hat in a carriage made a speech repeatedly inviting every-
body to a free show at the Fair Grounds, to be given by "the
Tightrope King/'
Generally I got money from Father and went with my
tall chum, Harry Everett. School had been let out for the
afternoon. I liked the waxworks in the sideshow, and the
animals, and fell in love with the winsome girl who danced
on the cushioned back of a galloping white horse. Harry
went into the circus in the midst of a half dozen other boys,
bending his knees so he could get in for a quarter. If he had
stood straight up they would have charged him full admis-
sion price.
Next day I did an artistic production at school which
was a nine days' sensation, All along the blackboards in my
room I drew a circus parade with chalk — band-wagon, ele-
phants, camels, horses, wild animals in cages, clowns, calliope,
and the rest. Emma Van Wagenen, my teacher, brought
in Mr. Donaldson, the principal, to see this pageant, and
numerous boys and girls brought their parents to marvel at
it Miss Van Wagenen was apologetic when it finally became
necessary to have the parade erased, and in fact it was re-
moved only one section at a time. But I didn't mind seeing
ART YOUNG: HIS LIFE AND TIMES 47
those chalk pictures destroyed. I could draw others just as
good any time. My ego was flowering.
And in another school vacation I did better than that,
with my brother Will's energetic aid. With several other boys
we were putting on a show at the home of Eddie Mack.
Having constructed a tent out of old carpets and other stray
pieces of cloth, Eddie's father allowed us to pitch it on the
spacious Mack lawn.
This was to be no ordinary kid-show, but one on a
grand scale, like Barnum's. So we must have a street parade.
Will borrowed all the available boys' wagons and topped
them with cages made of wooden grocery boxes. In these we
put various animals and birds that we had caught — wood-
chucks, rabbits, hawks, gophers, and snakes.
I decorated the cages with tropical scenes — one being a
tiger hunt — with bright red, green, purple, and yellow pre-
dominating. This presentation was designed to impress the
beholder with the idea that our menagerie was the most
wonderful collection of wild beasts in captivity.
My masterpiece of our glittering enterprise was the cage
containing a water-snake, which I adorned with a depiction
of an Indian shooting a boa-constrictor with bow and arrow.
To the wagon which bore that exhibit we hitched Fred
Schuler's dog.
With an improvised brass band, drum major, clowns,
and my pony Nig, we paraded through the principal streets
and around the Square, amid the plaudits of Monroe's busi-
ness men, who remembered that they were once boys them-
selves.
At the show grounds we took in about 50 cents, the ad-
mission price being one cent. It was a great day.
This experience might well stand as an epitome of many
an artist's life — fun in the doing of his job but with small
returns on the investment of talent, time, and energy.
One summer the Wisconsin countryside was swept by a
revival of religion. Widely advertised evangelists held forth
at meetings in a tented grove outside the town. Here they
would exhort their congregations day and night, making
scarlet sinners "white as snow." Scores of people I knew,
including two of my cousins, "got the power/' These cousins
48 ART YOUNG: HIS LIFE AND TIMES
seemed so happy that I went with them to the camp meeting,
and tried to get it. But in spite of the hard work of the
eloquent soul-saver on the platform, the "power" evidently
was not for me.
The best part of the revivals, I thought, was the songs,
such as Bringing in the Sheaves and Shalt We Gather at the
River? and the sad, sweet longing for some place to go to
that sounded better than Monroe, in that rousing old hymn,
Sweet Beulah Land. It was easy for me to play those tunes
on our family organ, by ear.
In Turner Hall we saw Uncle Tom's Cabin, East Lynne,
Hy Henry's Minstrels, Diabolo the Fire Demon — and once
we had Janauscheck, a noted Polish actress. Topping all
these, to my mind, was a comedian named Jake Simons,
whom I picked for success but who never arrived. The charm
of his funniness lay in its simplicity. He could make his audi-
ence laugh by just standing still and saying nothing, doing
nothing except letting his feelings play across his face as he
listened to the talk of other performers on the stage. He knew
the value of slow motion,
What an enviable life actors and actresses led, traveling
all over the country, seeing the sights, meeting important
people, having their names on show-bills, and being ap-
plauded nightly! I had grown restless early in my teens, and
the theatrical companies which came to town fed my urge
to get away to the bigger world outside.
Chapter 5
A SMALL-TOWN LAD CHOOSES A CAREER
ONE of my sorrows in adolescent days was a nose with
the habits of a chameleon** If I had been born with
a club-foot or a stammering tongue it could not have
caused me more worry than that unruly beak. From child-
hood it would take on the color of blue, pink, plain red, or
carnation, depending upon sluggish circulation or the weather,
or both. Too much sun or too much cold would make it
conspicuous over my other features.
A spanked and cry-baby complexion was my booby-gift
from the gods, while all other Youngs near or distantly re-
lated were endowed with normal coloring and were pleasing
to look at under all adversities of digestion, liver complaint,
or extremes of climate. My cheeks were often pink and my
mouth usually a juicy red, but the flush of full rosy dawn
seemed to prefer hitting me right on the snoot.
Yet despite that nose I was always popular, especially
with the girls. They still tell in Monroe how this odd boy
was the cause of a battle royal between two of the village
belles, Lena Myers and Nettie Booth. On the south side of
the Square, with people looking on and enjoying the show,
they fought and scratched and tore each other's clothes, all
for the honor of being the sweetheart of yours truly.
This affair was the talk of the town. All other honors
I have received since pale into insignificance beside it* I can-
not remember now which girl was considered victorious, and
perhaps the outcome was not clear. Enough for me to know
that I was the cause of such a sensation, a gossip subject for
weeks. Doubtless it was my ability to draw pictures which
* After reaching the age of 60 I began to be described by various metro-
politan writers as one who "looks like an angel much the worse for wear and
tear", as "a Santa Claus without whiskers", and again as ''one who might
pass for the kind of capitalist he likes to ridicule/' Peggy Bacon states in her
book, Off With Their Heads, that I have "a light comedy nose." But to have
that invaluable part of my anatomy dismissed with such a casual observation by
that merciless analyst of looks, was not Peggy at her best.
49
50 ART YOUNG: HIS LIFE AND TIMES
led them to forget my comic nose and to contend for my
favor. Is it because women are themselves creative (or better
say procreative) that they are inclined to admire those who
can create in the arts? I think there is something to that.
After I got out in the world, so conscious did I become
of the blushing shine of my nose on occasions, that I took to
carrying in my vest-pocket a piece of chamois laden with
talcum powder. With this I would surreptitiously tone down
the offending organ if I had to attend a public affair. Close
friends told me that I exaggerated the importance of per-
sonal appearance, and harbored unduly high ideals of physi-
cal perfection. And perhaps I was inclined to look too closely
for my own defects and eccentricities as I looked for them in
others as a caricaturist.
Disgust with my facial map was lessened somewhat,
however, when I began to read history and learned about
the bodily shortcomings of the great — that Lincoln's ears
were abnormally large, that Alexander Pope was a hunch-
back, Sir Walter Scott had a lame leg, Michelangelo a broken
nose, and so on. And talking with people, I could see that
often those really worth while were excessively freckled, had
too much mouth, or were lacking in some other way.
With all my self-consciousness about looks (and it may
be 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 incor-
rect 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.
My contacts with girls when I was a growing boy were
of course necessarily superficial. However much I felt the
need of some sex association, I was hemmed in on all sides
by the religious, puritanical taboo that young people must
not mate in advance of marriage. That taboo was always
sounding, like a bell-buoy in the seas, always warning me
lugubriously against the traditional ''evil/* It kept me living
in a world of self-deceptive morality* On every hand I was
told of the evil of sex indulgence, and 'lost manhood" ad-
vertisements by quack doctors helped build up fear within
me of sexual diseases.
When I was about fourteen I heard a sermon by the Rev.
ART YOUNG: HIS LIFE AND TIMES 51
Mr* Bushnell in the Methodist Church on "Carnal Sin/'
Carnal was a new word to me, but there was no mistaking
what he meant. He condemned the sexual act without qualifi-
cation. Quoting the Bible, he skipped the pages where the
tribes of Israel seemed to do nothing but "begat" day and
night. All this I read in later years. My youthful mind began
struggling with the problem of how Mr. Bushnell could
be the father of seven children without having gravely sinned.
Why didn't he say that over-indulgence in sex or excess
gratification of any physical or emotional appetite was evil?
But no; it was wrong any way you looked at it. And his
sermon had the effect of making me think of him ever after-
ward as a pulpit-pounding fraud, full of sin himself but
demanding that others remain pure.
Despite all the apparent hypocrisy of certain leaders of
moral conduct in our town, I was infected during those
formative years with the thought that sexual union was
really a sin. The grown folks said so — so it must be so. And
this dictatorship of bourgeois morality in the life of a small
community made of one young man something of an ascetic
— who loved vicariously all the girls he looked at and who
looked at him, that being as far as he dared go.
I hark back to my first feeling for poetry. In a school-
book was a line: "The wind came howling over the moun-
tain." What the story was I don't recall. Lines in another
book which conjured up a poetic sense within me were:
Over the river they beckon to me —
Loved ones who've crossed to the farther side;
The gleam of their snowy robes I see,
But their voices are drowned in the rushing tide.
That was a long poem, and sad, but it sounded pretty
good to my crude young mind.
Then I got hold of a volume of Longfellow. "The
Bridge at Midnight" and "The Old Clock on the Stairs"
were quite up to my country-boy standard of real poetry.
But I never read novels nor serial stories. I saw my brother
Will reading Golden Days and the Youth's Companion, and
I felt that my lack of interest in them marked me as mentally
52 ART YOUNG: HIS LIFE AND TIMES
deficient 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.
Dante's Inferno was the first book to give me a real
thrilL I thought Dore's drawings in it remarkable, and I
became exceedingly curious about his work. No one in town
owned a Dore Bible, the highest priced table book of the
period, but I soon began to see Dore's pictures in magazines.
Who was he? Then a man came to town opportunely and
lectured about Dore in Wells's Opera House, Admission 15
cents. It seems strange that the visiting lecturer on that sub-
ject could have hoped to draw much of an audience in a
town of 2,000 in 1881. But there was a goodly turnout — >
and I suppose the explanation is that anyone coming to a
town of that size to lecture about anything was an event*
That was a great night for me, I was the town's fifteen-
year-old prodigy in art and I remember the people turning
to look in my direction as the speaker proceeded. Edith Eaton
leaned over and said: "This ought to interest you, Artie. "
I sat there fascinated, especially by the lantern slides of the
imaginative Dore's paintings and illustrations. Fires of am-
bition flamed within me. I must escape from the humdrum
life of Monroe, and get away to Chicago, There, I felt, lay
my big chance, Chicago newspapers were just beginning to
use pen drawings. If I could only get to the Windy City
and show samples of my work to an editor, I was sure I
could get a job. I thought of mailing some specimens, but
reconsidered. The proper way, I decided, was to go forth
with a flower in my buttonhole, a portfolio of pictures under
my arm, and compete on the ground,
I didn't graduate. Professor Twining, the high school
principal, who was my last teacher, apparently wasn't con*
cerned about that. He knew that I spent most of my time
drawing, and was tolerant when I flunked in my classes,
Evidently he deemed it more important for me to follow
my artistic bent than to gain marks in the cut-and-dried
curriculum of those days. Spelling was the one study at which
I was good. I had another year to go when I quit school —
ART YOUNG: HIS LIFE AND TIMES 53
but I felt that I was getting dumber and dumber each term,
and that it would be a waste of time to continue,
No matter what other possible careers I contemplated in
day-dreams, I always came back to making pictures. I prac-
ticed on all the town's personalities which were in any way
distinctive or eccentric, caricaturing every one of consequence
around the Square. My subjects included Strawn Shrake,
leader of the Monroe brass band; John Bolender, grocer and
mayor; Arabut Ludlow and Joe Treat, bankers; Dr. Hall
and Dr. Loofborough; Charles Booth, editor of the Weekly
Sentinel; A. C. Dodge, Pete Wells, and Bill Rean, local
business men; fat Louis Schutze, proprietor of the Green
County House, and Alderman Fred WettengeL Most of them
took it in good part, no matter how loosely I played with
their features.
But my chef d'cettvre of that time was a pen sketch, in
color, portraying our leading lawyers — Colin Wright, A. S.
Douglas, H. J. Dunwiddie, and P. J. Clawson — in character-
istic attitudes before the Green county bar. This was exhibited
in the window of Father's store, where for weeks it con-
stantly drew onlookers,
I had been doing a lot of such pictures at home, show-
ing them to a few people, and then putting them aside. I
was drawing more and more, day and night — especially
night, by the light of a kerosene lamp. One day, however,
I handed Bill Hoesly, our postmaster, a sketch of himself,
in no sense complimentary. But Bill said:
"I don't think I'm that good lookin', Art. But I hear
you got quite a gallery of pictures of better lookin* fellers
than me at home. How about letting the public see them?
There's a nice blank wall goin* to waste. I guess Uncle Sam
wouldn't object if you tacked up some of your masterpieces."
That was real encouragement. I hurried home and was
back in an hour with several drawings that I felt proud of.
The only one I can remember now was that of a sergeant
drilling a squad of soldiers, and each soldier a comic of some
young man I knew about town, Bill helped me tack them up,
chuckling. Everybody in town saw those pictures, and every-
body I met commented on them. I enjoyed that taste of
recognition.
An offer of a substantial cash prize by the Waterbury
54 ART YOUNG: HIS LIFE AND TIMES
Watch Company to amateur artists for the best pen-and-ink
illustrated advertisement of its popular dollar watch caused
me to get busy. Painstakingly, and with considerable imagi-
nation for a boy of fourteen, I worked out a somewhat
elaborate but symmetrical and rather impressive sketch de-
signed to occupy a full page of some current magazine. I
got no prize for this effort, but received a letter commend-
ing my picture, I still feel that mine was as good as the prize-
winner. Artists will notice in this drawing the influence of
the Thomas Nast cross-hatch technique.
I got into a jam over one picture I made when I was
sixteen, P. J, Clawson, then district attorney, was running
for re-election. His opponents prevailed upon me to draw a
cartoon showing P. J. before and after election. In the first
scene he was shaking hands with his constituents and beaming
upon them. In the second he was walking along as if he were
the only person on earth. That was not a diplomatic move
on my part — for I was enamored of the district attorney's
daughter Sophia, and had been spending some of my eve-
nings at their home.
My lampoon was exhibited in an upright showcase in
Father's store, and P. J, almost burst with indignation when
he heard about it. He forbade his daughter ever to see me
again, and walked into the store brandishing his cane, de-
manding to know where I was. Hearing that he was gunning
for me, I stayed at home for a few days, working indus-
triously on the farm*
Despite the manifest truth in my cartoon, P, J, was
elected again — and having emerged from the campaign * 'tri-
umphant over traducers/' as he said in a victory speech, he
soon cooled down. Presently I was going around with Sophia
once more, but whenever P» X saw me, for a long while
after that, he always scowled and looked as if he still owed
me a beating.
Not long after this I made a sketch, the effects of which
taught me that propaganda may sometimes stir people into
action, but produce an undesirable result I drew in water
colors a likeness of myself addressing a classic figure of a
woman emblematic of public opinion, while members of the
Green County bar were grouped around her. Beneath were
the words; "Here you have lawyers to be proud of* Why
tf 1
YOUTHFUL ENTRY IN A PRIZE CONTEST. Modestly I signed
name backward.
my
55
56 ART YOUNG: HIS LIFE AND TIMES
don't you wake up and build a courthouse you also can feel
proud of?" . . . Eventually the citizens did bestir them-
selves (or rather the politicians and contractors did) , tore
down the old courthouse, and built a new one; and my
cartoon which set them thinking hung for many years in
the office of the county clerk, Frank Corson, who had always
been an admirer of my work. But the new courthouse, while
much larger and more adequate to the needs of the growing
town, never looked so picturesque as the old one. That
edifice had simple lines and the mellowness of a weather-
beaten landmark, I wish I had let it alone.
Clerking in Father's store began to pall upon me. I knew
I was not a good clerk, and so did everybody else. For a
time I thought it might be sensible to apply for a job in one
of Monroe's three carriage shops. It would be easy to make
stripes and rococo flourishes on carriages and wagons. And
if I could just be around where others were using brushes
and paint, I could develop in my own way and perhaps make
a little money.
A handsome old gentleman named Austin, an English-
man, was an expert carriage painter in one of those shops.
He had a private studio on a side street, where he made
enlarged copies from chromo reproductions of popular paint-
ings. Knowing that he was rather gruff and taciturn, I
watched him from outside of his front window, but never
ventured inside. Often I stood fascinated, while he slowly
brushed on his oil colors as he copied Landseer's famous
"Monarch of the Glen/' or "The Stag at Bay/' which were
his specialties. Some of these faithful copies he sold in town
— others, I imagine, he gave away, At a party one evening
in the home of the well-to-do McCrackens I saw Austin's
duplicate of the "Monarch of the Glen" hanging above their
new piano.
I wondered then if I couldn't open a studio and make a
living. Mr; Austin had, and managed to support a family.
I must become master of my own fate — no more clerking in
a store.
While I pondered this desire, Clyde Copeland, the town's
leading photographer, suddenly discovered that he could
make a place for me in his establishment Clyde was an alert.
ART YOUNG: HIS LIFE AND TIMES 57
genial fellow, who had been keeping company with my sis-
ter Nettie. He couldn't pay much, he explained — maybe $3
a week — but I would have a chance to learn the photograph
business. Though I was secretly doubtful whether I would
care to devote my life to photography, I accepted the job
readily*
One inducement to make the Copeland studio my head-
quarters was the fact that Elizabeth North was employed
there as reception girl She was the daughter of R B. North,
who owned a livery stable near the American House. Fred
North was a favorite of mine, not only because he had a
rugged face I liked to draw, but because he knew so much
about horses and had raised them on a farm of his own.
I had known Elizabeth casually in school. Now I learned
that she had certain cultural leanings. She read good books,
and showed keen interest in my work. I liked to make pencil
drawings of her head with its wavy, dark brown hair and
large, well-lashed eyes.
Clyde patiently explained to me the whole technique of
his profession. I listened attentively, but the process seemed
intricate and formidable. I don't know how much Clyde
really expected me to learn about photography — but if he
expected much, I must have disappointed him.
This experience among photographs impelled me to do
a lot of thinking about the value of the creative draftsman.
Of what use was my talent? What could I do that a photog-
rapher could not? I was drawing "by hand/' painstakingly,
while here was a machine that merely winked its eye and
there was a picture. Where was this invention leading? I was
not much interested in the technical side of photography.
About all I became proficient at in the Copeland gallery
was taking tintypes. Occasionally I would do retouching and
watch photographic prints in the process of developing and
fixing.
Joshua Sweifel, a Swiss boy with a marked dialect, did
most of the work requiring skill. He spent a good deal of
time in the dark room "devil-upping," as he called it, while
I puttered around with odd jobs, "devil-uppiiig" in my own
way, and wondering if my hand-drawn pictures would ever
find a place in the world.
Clyde knew, of course, that my strongest interest lay in
58 ART YOUNG: HIS LIFE AND TIMES
drawing, and with his co-operation I had a booth (which
I called a "studio") built for myself. Little larger than a
modern telephone booth, it was covered with canvas and
was on wheels, so that it could easily be moved about. Sit-
ting in this cubicle, I could close myself in and make cartoons
in complete seclusion.
The more I thought about photography, the more I was
troubled by it. Was it the open sesame to visual truth? I was
skeptical and yet I was being lured into a false regard for
the product of this machine, as something to emulate. Often
I would think: "If I can't draw as realistically, and catch
light and sliade accurately enough so that my pictures will
beat a camera, then I'd better give up/' Wasn't my eye as
sharp and sensitive as a lens?
Above all things I knew I wanted the ttuth, and it ap-
peared, except for color, right here in a photograph. It fooled
me, and I tried to make pictures with the detail-quality of
photographs, I even tried pasting facial photographs of vil-
lage acquaintances on my drawing paper and doing their
bodies and surroundings in free-hand draftsmanship. But I
didn't like the result. The photograph spoiled the whole
picture.
My fear of the camera as a competitor was relieved, how-
ever, by humorous incidents in the gallery, especially the
posing of people to whom it was a new experience. There
were many pictures of couples just married — the barbered
groom sitting and the bride standing just so, with a hand
modestly gripping her husband's shoulder but nevertheless
conveying the idea that she had finally caught him. No bride
and groom could be posed in any other way. That was the
law of the new photographic art.
Sometimes a wife and her daughters would bring the
head of the household to be photographed, and he would
register deep pain in the process, As a rule the early settler
didn't want to be bothered having his picture taken, but the
others would insist upon it as a social duty. They would
comb the chaff out of Pa's hair and whiskers in a dressing-
room and lead him to the slaughter, watching him closely
as he posed in the clamp of a head-rack for his family's sake.
ART YOUNG: HIS LIFE AND TIMES 59
If photography has become an ''art/' what kind is it?
Let me inject here my mature conclusions for what they may
be worth, on this phenomenon — the candid camera which
has almost overwhelmed the graphic arts.
A photograph is the surface of something. Of course an
artist is concerned with surface appearances, but only as a
means of penetrating to the spirit of the thing. Through his
own temperament he reveals the way he is impressed as a
beholder of the scene* The artist's emotional reactions to the
subject before him, and his obligation to stress its essentials,
are the main factors in a work of art. Sensitive to every
element in nature, the draftsman finds his hardest task in
sacrificing the extraneous detail of his subject, and he is forced
to perform many difficult operations, while holding fast to
that which is good for his purpose.
Real art transcends the personal and the particular. The
photographer cannot make a portrait nor anything else that
is not a documentary picture of a particular thing, however
skilful he may be in the professional tricks of subduing and
heightening the effects of light and shade. He cannot make
a picture that is not specific — and therefore lacks universality.
Art must transcend positive truth to reveal it.
A photograph of your grandfather or mine may show a
noble head and features of unusual character, but it does not
belong in the realm of great art, because it is only one grand-
father, documented and exact. Even a silhouette of a person
in the foreground of a photograph, though the detail is lost
in the darkness and therefore something is left to the im-
agination, also looks too much like a certain person. A good
illustrator may draw from models but knows how to forget
them.
A painter knows how to draw human beings, but he uses
them not so much to identify individuals as to represent the
kind of human beings they are. The best portraiture is not
the accurate measurements up and down and across the face,
but the sensation created in the artist's mind from watching
the subject, and his ability to capture whatever is character-
istic. A photograph does not stimulate the imaginative mood
as good music, poetry, or painting does. In short, photog-
raphy is too literal. And yet I would call it one of the greatest
inventions of the nineteenth century — because of its useful-
60 ART YOUNG: HIS LIFE AND TIMES
ness to science and its documentary utility in all the arts*
As a pictorial feature of magazines it has been vastly over-
done and is tiresome.
I grew steadily more confident in those early days of
photography that it would never successfully compete with
the art of the cartoon, and that there would be no invasion
by the camera of that field of art where ideas, imagination,
fancy, and symbolism are factors of supreme importance.
There the hand-drawn pictures would always find an appre-
ciative public.
In the decade following the Civil War the American peo-
ple lauded Thomas Nast's cartoons of Boss Tweed, and the
story goes that Tweed, fleeing from the law, was captured
in a Spanish port because he was identified through Nast's
well-known caricatures. For the police records, no doubt,
photographs would have been better. Nast's cartoons did not
look so much like Tweed if you compared them with photo-
graphs; they were more than mere realism. The person of
Tweed was recreated and emphasized by Nast, who knew
the powerful truth of figurative expression. He found that
he could exaggerate Tweed's jowls and general facial con-
struction in a way to suggest a money-bag and still further
convey the idea with a belly- front that resembled another big
bag of cash. And he showed the boss of New York City in
arrogant postures defiantly saying: "What are you going to
do about it?"
To add to the marvelous realism of the camera in my
boyhood there was the stereoscope, to be found on the parlor
table in nearly every home. Everybody enjoyed looking
through this device, which made photographs three-dimen-
sional. One had the feeling that the camera had pictured the
very atmosphere. I would peer through the lenses of our
stereoscope spellbound at a man standing on the bank of a
tree-girt lake — it was so true to life — the last word in pic-
torial representation, except for motion and color. And now
in this epoch, color, three dimensions, and sound are becom-
ing the common additions to photographic actuality*
Clyde Copeland never complained that he didn't get the
worth of his money while I '* worked" in his gallery, so per-
haps I earned what I got. Or maybe he felt that he was help-
ing a deserving youth toward an art career.
ART YOUNG: HIS LIFE AND TIMES 61
Will Monroe, a school-chum of my brother Charles, was
studying to be a doctor at Bellevue Hospital in New York.
Will had always been interested in my pictures. He wrote to
Charles, saying that if I would send him some drawings he
would take them around to the magazines. He was sure they
were marketable.
Judge liked a picture I had made of a boy dragging a dog
by the neck while a meddlesome old pedant protested: "Why,
this is an ignominy/* To which the boy answered: "Naw,
'tain't neither, it's nothin' but a common pup/' Not a very
good joke, but it should be remembered that at that time the
comic papers were fond of jests that ridiculed literary
Bostonese. Judge sent me a check for seven dollars, and I
was prancing along the road to fame and fortune.
Monroe could not hold me long after that. I was con-
vinced that Opportunity was knocking insistently at my door.
A few weeks passed, punctuated by debates with my parents
on the relative chances of an artist in a big city and in a
town of 2,250 population. Then I packed a valise, wrapped
up the best of my drawings, and bought a ticket for Chicago.
I was then seventeen.
My mother was tearfully concerned lest some dark evil
befall me in the city. The old story: "breaking home ties/'
I had said goodbye to Elizabeth the night before. Father came
over to the train with me. "You'll get along/' he said. Mr.
Puffer, the cheerful station agent, yelled: "Don't buy any
gold bricks, Art," and old Joe Gleissner, who drove the bus
to and from the depot, and who always got the well-known
maxims twisted, said: "Veil, Artie, a rolling stone gathers
some moss — yah!" My brother Charles rode down to Chi-
cago with me to see that I was comfortably located. The
sky was bright as the train sped across the miles toward the
promised land.
Chapter 6
I CAPTURE THE 'NIMBLE NICKEL'
MY first residence in Chicago was a dump of a boarding
house on Wabash Avenue near 15th Street. The
place had been recommended by Mel Morse, railroad
baggageman in Monroe, who happened to know the land-
lady. From my window, which faced the West, I could see
slums and low life, and also the constant movement of the
masts and riggings of boats in the Chicago River nearby.
At this window I began my professional career as a cartoon-
ist, with an improvised easel and the handicap of having no
heat in winter. Whatever the hardships, I was determined
to get ahead and to make my way without asking for money
from home.
In the next room was an old fellow from Texas who
thought he knew politics and considered himself an unrecog-
nized statesman. Immediately he set out to enlist my talent
on an idea he had for a cartoon. He was sure that Harper's
Weekly would jump at the chance to publish it. I drew the
picture, mailed it to Harper's, and it came back in a few
weeks with regrets from the editor. I have that cartoon yet,
and looking at it now I can see that there was a good deal
of merit in the old Texan's idea.
Immediately I signed up at the Academy of Design,
which was later merged with the present Art Institute. Here
I began to learn the fundamentals of anatomy under John
H. Vanderpoel. Short and deformed, and voicing tart humor,
this instructor was crisp and direct in his criticism. When a
student's drawing was bad, he would go over it with a
firm black line and point out the mistakes. He gave each of
us individual attention.
Soon after entering the Academy, I went forth with a
portfolio of drawings and called on the W. M. Hoyt Com-
pany, a wholesale grocery house which published a trade
paper called the Nimble Nickel. I had seen this periodical in
62
EARLY ART SCHOOL DRAWINGS. CHICAGO, 1884.
my father's store and had sent some sketches to the editor,
receiving in return a friendly letter indicating the possibility
of my drawing regularly for him* His name was Eugene J.
HalL His handshake was hearty, and after we had talked
a few minutes about the aims of the Hoyt house-organ and
63
64 ART YOUNG: HIS LIFE AND TIMES
the power of attraction which lay in illustrations, he took
me in to meet A. C Buttolph, the business manager, who
looked over my samples and saw humor in several of my
Monroe caricatures.
It was readily agreed that comics were needed to liven
up the Nimble Nickel, and I was told to go ahead and submit
whatever I thought would fit into its editorial scheme. The
Nimbi* Nicktl
MY FIRST PUBLISHED CARTOON, bought by a
Chicago wholesale grocery company's publication. 1884.
pay would be according to the firm's idea of value in each
instance. In three days I was back with some drawings, in-
cluding one of a man wearing a plug hat and brandishing a
big cleaver, labeled "Great Slaughter of Prices/* These offer-
ings were immediately accepted, and I wrote home jubilantly*
The next Monday morning a check for $5 came. Week
after week I submitted other pictures to Mr* Hall, with slo-
gans or text designed to pull business from retail grocers,
and nearly all were taken. Sometimes I was paid $7, and
occasionally $10, and this regular income covered the cost
of two terms in the Academy.
ART YOUNG: HIS LIFE AND TIMES 65
To the stand-up collar which I had adopted before leav-
ing home, I had added to my wardrobe an artist's flowing
black bow tie, and began buying clothes a bit different from
the conventional style. I made friends easily, probably be-
cause I was interested in everybody and everything, and I
imagined people saying behind my back: "Rather queer, but
he means well/' Anyhow, I hoped they were saying some-
thing like that,
Chicago was fascinating, the crowds downtown amazing.
The corners at State and Madison streets were crowded
with people at all hours, like nothing, I thought, except
the business section of Monjroe on circus day* I wandered
around in the evenings seeing the sights — the Clark Street
Dime Museum; the old Exposition Building on Michigan
Avenue, when something was going on there; McVicker's
Theatre, where drama and melodrama were played; and oc-
casionally, Sam T. Jack's burlesque house, that being a time
when big-hipped women were the rage among male con-
noisseurs.
Then there was the Battle of Gettysburg cyclorama, in
a round brick building, on Wabash Avenue* I passed it daily
on my way to the Academy, and after a couple of weeks
could no longer resist the temptation to go inside. It was
a circular mural showing the various phases of that decisive
battle, a curious mixture of romanticism and realism, painted
by the French artist Henri Philippoteaux. A lecturer re-
counted the movements of the armies on the field. Glory of
war was portrayed here, but the bloodiness of the scene
should have been sufficient antidote to cure any onlooking
youth of a wish for a military career. Cavalry dashed across
the broken terrain, men and horses fell dying, billows of
cannon-smoke rolled across the field, infantry pressed on to
bayonet charges in the enemy's trenches, a flag had fallen
and was being picked up again* That cyclorama stayed a
long time, and was well patronized by visitors from the
country*
On Sundays I would find new streets to explore, or
would take a cable car to one of the parks. When walking
I was always on the lookout for displays of pictures in art
store windows, confident that some day mine also would
be shown thus. And constantly I was sketching scenes along
66 ART YOUNG: HIS LIFE AND TIMES
the way. Foreign faces and the picturesque garb of aliens
were much in evidence in Chicago then, for great numbers
of immigrants were arriving every year — Germans and Irish
mainly, also Jews, Italians, and Poles.
During my first year in Chicago, it seemed to be my fate
that no matter where I moved I would find myself living in
a bawdy house. After a few months in the place on lower
Wabash Avenue, I moved two blocks north, where there was
a row of houses with dignified doorways, stone steps, and
front yards with trees and iron fences. In one of these houses
I took a room. Compared with my first quarters, this was
like dwelling in a palace.
The landlady who rented me the room had moist eyes
and painted cheeks, and lots of rings on her fingers. I hadn't
seen women dressed like this in Monroe, but I was prepared
to encounter odd customs in the city, and thought nothing
of her appearance except to admire her for putting on an
abundance of jewelry, lace, and paint, if such was her taste.
For she was pleasant-voiced and cordial.
I hadn't been at my new address more than a few weeks
when I observed that a well-dressed man who looked and
acted like one who was incognito appeared there each Satur-
day and slept late on Sunday. Two or three times I saw him
in the landlady's room when the door happened to be ajar.
"Aha!" said this Wisconsin youth to himself. "It doesn't
look respectable around here." I felt a bit self-conscious, and
pondered what my parents would say if they knew where
I was living.
There was a cab out in front a few days later, and an
attractive blonde girl alighted and tripped up our steps,
carrying a satchel. I was just coming downstairs. The land-
lady beamed on me and introduced her younger sister, who
had come to visit her from St. Joseph, Michigan.
"Mr. Young is the artist I told you about in my last
letter/'
"Oh!" the blonde exclaimed sweetly. "I want so much to
see your pictures. May I?"
I was a little embarrassed by her curiosity, but I managed
to say: "It will be a pleasure."
ART YOUNG: HIS LIFE AND TIMES 67
Next day there was a knock at my door while I was
drawing* She had come to pay a call, in a gay pink frock.
"Hellooo!" she said. "Am I interrupting your work? Or
may I come in?"
Again I was embarrassed, for I wasn't used to entertain-
ing young women. But her self-assurance was refreshing, and
I asked her to sit down. We immediately found a good deal
to talk about — what she had seen and liked or disliked in
Chicago (she had been over on State Street shopping with
her sister) , the fun she had had coming across Lake Michigan
on the boat, and what life was like in St. Joe, Then she
reminded me of the pictures, and I brought forth many
sketches that I had stored up, copies of the Nimble Nickel
containing my stuff, and the exhibit which I always put fore-
most— the copy of Judge in which the dog joke had been
published.
Her name was Clara and she did not gush over my work,
but displayed just the right amount of enthusiasm over the
drawings that she particularly liked. Sometimes our hands
accidentally touched and she didn't seem to mind. Her fingers
were slim and tapering and well cared for.
Then we talked some more, and I asked questions about
her. She was about my age, and since she left high school
she had been keeping house for her parents. She didn't know
yet what she wanted to do, whether to take a business course
and become a stenographer, or go into training as a hospital
nurse.
Watching Clara's face from many angles, I had been
struck by the beauty of her profile, and told her so. She
blushed, but readily agreed to come back next day to let me do
a sketch of her.
Posing her for the sketch, in the right light and at the
proper angle, gave me an excuse to touch her arms and her
shoulders. Then I said: "Now forget that I am here."
"But I can't," she insisted.
Before I was through I did two sketches of her, so that
we each could have one. Afterward she was standing near the
door, thanking me and saying she must go, but lingering.
When she had said that three times, we both laughed, and
suddenly I found her in my arms. Then that cursed demon
68 ART YOUNG: HIS LIFE AND TIMES
of inhibition began to ring its warning bell, and I let her go,
and was soon back at my work.
Now I wondered; was she in love with me? Did she
intend to marry some day? Probably, for most girls had that
on their minds. Above all, I knew that I must not get too
deeply involved with her. A few days later I met her in the
hall and was relieved when she told me she was going back
to St. Joe.
"I would like to cross the lake and visit you/' I said.
I half meant that at the moment, but I never made the trip,
and never saw her again.
After a few months, Clay Bennett, a boyhood chum,
came from Monroe to study dentistry, and we decided to
look for a rooming house where we could live together for
the sake of economy. We found one on Clark Street, oppo-
site Kohl and Middleton's Dime Museum. It was called a
hotel
We hadn't been there long before I began to suspect that
it was another one of those places. Soon I had ample evidence
to prove it. Again I began to think of myself as a lost soul
if my environment should get the best of me. Noises in the
next room persisted — sounds of hilarity, varied by quarrel-
ing. One forenoon I was impelled to peer through a crack
in the thin board walls. In that other room I got a good
view of a lovely looking girl in the near nude.
An artist has one great advantage over others — he can
always justify his inquisitiveness, and his curiosity about all
the quirks and perversities of human nature because it's the
sttmmam bontim of his profession to see life. Without a keen
curiosity no one can be an artist. And seeing what is unposed
and unconscious in the actions of individuals or groups
affords more inspiration than any formal posing or conscious
parade.
Now I set out to show my work to editors of various
publications, and found a market for drawings with the
American Field, a sportsman's magazine — chiefly comics re-
lating to hunting or fishing, but occasionally illustrations
for a story. Then somebody started a Sons of Veterans
periodical, which bought joke drawings from me at $5 each.
Having made good on the Nimble Nickel and the Ameri-
can Field, I began looking around for other worlds to con-
ART YOUNG: HIS LIFE AND TIMES 69
quer. I had waited nearly a year before visiting any of the
newspaper offices, for I wanted to be sure of my technical
facility and of being able to face editors and listen to their
critical judgement* When I left Monroe, excited over the
sale to the popular Judge, it seemed it would be easy for me
to walk right in to the office of the editor of any daily and
convince him that he needed my services* But my confidence
had been sadly deflated by the time I stood in front of a news-
paper building. It took me a long time to screw up courage
enough to enter. Then the editor would ask me: "How much
experience have you had?" and I would show him the Judge
drawing, and some of my pictures in the Nimble Nickel and
the American Field — hoping these would impress him. I no
longer felt like "the wonder" that folks thought I was back
home. Thus had my ego been flattened out by the weight
of the city's vast impersonality.
All that of course was mental. I had to become a full-
fledged Chicagoan before I could generate the requisite
bravado to beard those giants of the sanctums.
But the thing seemed easier as my free-lance sales con-
tinued. Having studied the contents of the various dailies
carefully for months, I picked the Evening Mail as the one
most likely to be receptive. Bundling up my best pictures,
I called on Clinton Snowden, editor of that paper. It was
published by Frank Hatton, who had been First Assistant
Postmaster General under President Arthur. Midafternoon,
with the Mail news-room quieting down after the day's rush.
My knees were shaky, but I made a show of boldness. Snow-
den was cordial, looked at my work, told me it had "promis-
ing qualities."
"We may be able to use some of your stuff," he said.
"But we have no engraving plant. You'd .have to draw on
chalk plates. Do you know how to handle them?"
I had a general idea, having heard them discussed by a
newspaper artist who was a classroom visitor at the Academy.
Snowden took me into a back room. Here flat steel plates
were covered with a layer of hard chalk on which you traced
your drawing and then plowed your way through the design
with a sharp steel pencil — after which molten lead was
poured over the plate. When it cooled you had a, cut ready
to print. As you plowed you had to blow the chalk dust
70 ART YOUNG: HIS LIFE AND TIMES
away — and some artists contended it was dangerous to the
lungs to breathe in that dust. I didn't like this roundabout
way of making a picture ready for printing, but nevertheless
I couldn't pass up the chance when Snowden offered to try
me out.
I had brought in some sketches of street scenes, with
action in them, and these I now transferred to chalk. The
result was better than I had expected from this experiment
with a medium new to me, and Snowden liked the pictures;
published them all during the next week, and gave me an
order on the cashier for $12. I made more chalk sketches,
which he took, and presently he began giving me an occa-
sional assignment, sometimes to illustrate a story about a
news event or to sketch some celebrity who was being inter-
viewed. The pay varied, but some weeks it was pretty good,
and I felt that I had practically a staff job, while still being
free to do odds and ends for magazines and trade papers.
On one of the Mail assignments, I fell in with a cheerful
person named Eugene Wood, who had been a country boy
in Ohio, but who had by this time made a reputation as a
reporter on the Snowden paper. After a month's acquaint-
ance Wood irreverently addressed me as Nosey, referring to
my beak, when it was brilliant from too much sun. His
ambition was to be a magazine writer. In later years we met
often in New York, and became close friends.
Having finished the dentistry course in record time, Clay
Bennett returned to Monroe to set up an office, and my next
move was back to Wabash Avenue and the familiar sound of
the cable cars — the purring of the cable underground and the
imperious clanging of the gripman's bell as he tried to push
his way through clogged wagon traffic. The cable cars were
like short railroad trains — first an open grip car, on which
the seats faced in four directions on front, back and sides;
and then one or usually two closed trailer cars. In the grip
car the driver stood in all weathers with no protection against
the icy winds of winter, and operated long heavy upright
levers, one of which clutched the moving cable beneath, the
other controlling the brakes. Only in warm weather did the
gripmen appear to find life agreeable; in winter they were
grim looking, red-faced, wind-whipped.
Safety campaigns hadn't been thought of in those days,
ART YOUNG: HIS LIFE AND TIMES
71
and the ways of crowds were free and easy. When there was
some great gathering in good weather, with not enough
street cars available to accommodate the homeward bound
throng afterward, men and boys would climb to the roofs
of the cars and ride there. Seldom did the police interfere,
and the conductors wouldn't trouble too much to collect
fares. They would collect all within reach, and forget the
rest.
WILLIAM FREDERICK POOLE, head
of Chicago Public Library. 1885.
On the east side of Wabash Avenue, near Van Buren
Street, I found a small second-floor room just large enough
for a bed, bureau, and chair, and by acrobatic twisting of
my body managed to work on a drawing board leaned
against the window ledge. (I must remind the reader that I
haven't always been fat.) Here I worked hard, turning out
a good many pictures beside the sketches for the Evening
Mail
Sometimes in the evenings I went to the public library,
then near the City Hall. On my first visit there I found an
engaging subject for a sketch— William Frederick Poole, the
librarian, a distinguished looking personage/ who wore long
72 ART YOUNG: HIS LIFE AND TIMES
Dundrearian whiskers and peered over his nose-glasses. I
could easily draw him from memory now, fifty-three years
afterward. It was he who established that invaluable refer-
ence work, Poote's Index of Periodicals, forerunner of the
present-day Readers Guide. Mr. Poole was always obliging,
always ready to give all the time needed to help an inquirer
find an elusive book or magazine.
I delved into every available picture book, especially
those containing drawings by Dore, whose fame had be-
come world-wide. I also liked to look at the annual illus-
trated catalogue of the Paris Salon, and both current issues
and bound volumes of the London Graphic, Harper's
Weekly, the Illustrated News of London, and Punch. I ad-
mired the powerful drawings of R. Caton Woodville; the
character sketches of R Barnard, especially his illustrations
for the household edition of Dickens; the cartoons of John
Leech, Sir John Tenniel, George Cruikshank, and Harry
Furniss. People speak of my woodcut style, and doubtless
this early absorption in the work of the graphic artists of
the middle nineteenth century had its effect upon my
technique.
Many of the best artists of that period in Chicago made
their living by painting scenery for the theatre. There was
Walter Burridge, whose canvases were usually hung on the
line at the Academy of Design annual shows, but whose
principal activity was producing background curtains for the
shows at McVicker's, and for the Dave Henderson produc-
tions in the Grand Opera House when Eddie Foy was the big
laugh. One Sunday we went sketching together in the coun-
try out beyond LaGrange, and Burridg£ said: "The way to
see a landscape is to bend down frontward, and look at the
scene between your legs/' I tried it, and certainly found that
one's legs helped to frame the view, but there was danger
of having a rush of art to the head.
Then there was Jules Guerin, also doing stage scenery,
whose work became notable in art circles after his Chicago
days. He was slim and nimble, an accomplished artist in
profanity as well as in paint, and later developed that re-
markable talent for seeing and co-ordinating large spaces of
flat color, as opposed to the fretful brush-tapping school of
ART YOUNG: HIS LIFE AND TIMES 73
the impressionists. He painted the interior of the Pennsyl-
vania station in New York City.
I exhibited a few times at the Academy of Design annual
shows, but to this day have never had much enthusiasm for
exhibitions. To go to the trouble of having your picture
framed, carted, and then if accepted — to be just one among
hundreds, no matter how much your work is acclaimed, with
always the doubtful chance of a sale — is an unsatisfactory
way of becoming a recognized artist. A solo exhibition is
more sensible, but that, too, has its penalties. The art agents
have their own peculiar methods of promoting artists, and
all things considered, I have thought it best to exhibit niy
work in periodicals and books.
Chapter 7
THE STAGE IS SET FOR A SUPREME TRAGEDY
SNOWDEN'S occasional assignments to me were varied,
though for the most part I was allowed to suggest the
pictures I wanted to draw. Moving about the city pretty
much at will, I knew that labor was stirring, was beginning
to raise its voice. Sometimes I attended a mass meeting on
the lake front at the foot of Adams Street, and heard some
impassioned speaker denounce the capitalists and the daily
press, accusing the newspapers generally of systematically mis-
representing the facts about the conditions under which the
working masses toiled and lived, I was not convinced by
these fiery charges. Certainly, I felt, the Evening Mail could
not be as black as it was painted; Snowden struck me as
an honest fellow, who in conversations had expressed con-
siderable sympathy for the underdog; and the Mail now and
then published editorials voicing such sympathy.
A rugged Swede who had come from Seattle a few years
before, Snowden was understood to have worked with his
hands in his youth. He was tireless as director of the news
staff, which was small, but which gave everything it had to
help this appreciative chief build up the paper. Once in par-
ticular Snowden showed a crusading spirit for the benefit
of the common people akin to that shining exemplar of
enterprising journalism, Joseph Pulitzer. For many months
the Mail fought for a three-cent fare on street cars. I remem-
ber that a date was set for the people to refuse to ride at the
five-cent rate. The boycott, as I recall it, was to begin in a
specified area. Snowden and others in our office had it all
figured out that this action would bring the company to
terms once it saw an indignant populace walk out in protest.
But the crusade failed. Only a few persons refused to use the
street cars, while the many rode and paid five cents as usual.
When the disappointing reports came in, there was gloom in
the office of the Evening Mail.
74
ART YOUNG: HIS LIFE AND TIMES 75
Early in 1885 three of Jay Gould's railroads, including
the Wabash, had given notice of a 10 per cent cut in shop-
men* s wages. These workers were organized in the Knights
of Labor, which was headed by Terence V, Powderly. In a
few days some 4,800 shopmen quit their jobs, and the train-
men on all three lines backed this action with a threat of a
sympathy strike* Gould gave in; there was no wage cut: and
the managements agreed that there would be no discrimina-
tion against any of the strikers. Within six months that agree-
ment was repudiated, and many of the shopmen were fired
by the Wabash.
Immediately the Knights of Labor announced a boycott
against that road, all men on other lines being ordered to
move no Wabash freight cars, while union loaders and team-
sters throughout the country were ordered to co-operate.
Gould knew that the Knights were strong enough to enforce
that boycott, and that it would play havoc with the Wabash
line's operations; so he promptly capitulated. The discharged
men were reinstated, and the K. of L. ban was called off.
This victory gave a strong impetus to labor organization
in all the nation's industrial centers. In those times of bitter
negotiations, Jay Gould was often quoted as having said:
"I could hire half of the working class to kill the other half."
And William H. Vanderbilt, another rail king, had attained
dark fame by his retort to a Chicago Daily News reporter
who tried to interview him in his private car: "The public
be damned!"
For more than a year there had been "hard times/' Strikes
followed wage cuts, employers retaliated with lockouts, and
great numbers of men were out of work. Many of them took
to the roads as tramps (the term hobo was not yet in use) ,
begging their way from town to town. The newspapers
spoke editorially of "the tramp menace." Speakers in the out-
door meetings and in labor union halls advocated the eight-
hour day as a cure for the growing unemployment. Eight
Hour Leagues were springing up in various parts of the coun-
try, and Chicago, as the nation's chief industrial city, became
the center of this movement. The soap-box speakers told of
"starvation wages," long hours of toil, and of working con-
ditions "worse than slavery."
That summer a strike of street-car men was broken by
76 ART YOUNG: HIS LIFE AND TIMES
police clubs; the police heads declared that "we will continue
to put down disorder wherever it shows itself/' ^Workers'
meetings were often broken up by the forces of "law and
order/*
"Unprincipled foreigners" and "Anarchists" were blamed
by the daily press for the eight-hour-day demand. The edi-
tors saw "dirty aliens undermining American institutions/'
Readers began to hear of the "Black International," as the
papers * called the International Working People's Associa-
tion, which had been organized in London several years
before, and which was now active in New York, with Johann
Most as its leader. Bloody revolution was near at hand,
unless something was done to stop it, according to the omi-
nous editorials in the dailies,
Now and then, when I had turned in a layout of pictures
to Snowden, I would sit down in a corner of the Evening
Mail local room to talk with the reporters. Usually the con-
versation was frivolous, but sometimes it took on a serious
cast Louis Seibold was then a star boy reporter on our
paper. An Irishman, one of the older men, whose name I've
forgotten, but who read a good deal, occasionally made com-
ment which gave me something to think about.
"There's a limit to how far the police can go in the name
of law and order/' he said once, "They'll go too far with
the clubbing one of these days, and the workers will strike
back. Even a worm will turn. Captain Schaack has a lot of
gall to talk about 'trouble-makers/ You can bet your life if
there was no trouble Schaack would make some. He's a glory
hunter and a bastard of the first order!"
Albert Parsons had become well known in the city news-
paper offices as the editor of the weekly Alarm, organ of the
International Working People's Association, and as a militant
speaker at mass meetings. A good-looking man with dark
hair smoothed back tight on his forehead, a dark moustache,
earnest and passionate in his attacks upon the "exploiters of
labor/' there was no mistaking his sincerity. Even Ed Mona-
han, cynical young reporter who scoffed at all reformers and
agitators, conceded that.
What I knew then about the working masses and their
problems, at the age of twenty, was fragmentary, gleaned
from hearing occasional speeches and from desultory reading.
ART YOUNG: HIS LIFE AND TIMES 77
No clear realization of what labor was up against had yet
sunk into my consciousness, nor did it for many years after-
ward. I lacked a foundation for such understanding; nothing
I had learned in school gave me anything on which to build.
In a vague way I sensed that the social system was not perfect,
but all that seemed remote from my life. The questions raised
by the soap-boxers were disturbing at the moment, but there
was little I could dot so far as I could see, to better the
situation. I would give a hungry man on the street the price
of a meal and a bed, but that would help him only for the
time being. And if I drew pictures of hungry people, as such,
the Evening Mail certainly wouldn't publish them. It might
use a news report of some man dying in the street from star-
vation, but it wouldn't go out of its way to air the causes
which led to deaths of that kind. Such happenings were de-
pressing to think about, anyhow. Instinct led me to hope
that the Knights of Labor would win the fight for the eight-
hour day; that would put many jobless men back to work.
My thoughts turned to more pleasant things as spring
came in 1886, and I sketched people at their ease on Sunday
in the parks, pioneer residents of Chicago, quaint street scenes,
important guests in the larger hotels, sandlot baseball games,
and other innocuous if colorful phases of the city's life.
And I had been home in March for my sister's marriage
to Clyde Copeland, "by Elder Daniel R. Howe of the Chris-
tian Church, at the residence of the bride's parents." My
wedding gift was a water color drawing of the bride and
groom, surrounded by ornate decorations, with cupids ram-
pant over the heads of wedding guests, and myself in the
foreground, dismissing the affair with a wave of the hand
and saying: ''No wedding bells for me.'*
Lingering in Monroe for a few days, I enjoyed myself.
My friend the postmaster was displaying clippings of some of
my recent pictures from the Mail on the government's wall,
and so everybody in town was kept posted about my produc-
tions. But old Bill Sutherland, retired plasterer, was sur-
prised to hear that I'd been away, "I don't get downtown
much nowadays, on account of my sciaticy/' Then he told
me 'I've tried Swift's Specific, St. Jacob's Oil, Packard's Pain
78 ART YOUNG: HIS LIFE AND TIMES
Killer, and Peruna, but it still ketches me right here/* gestur-
ing around to his back*
From my store of collected material I have come across a
yellowed copy of the Monroe Sentinel which reported my sis-
ter's wedding. Scores of compact paragraphs of news of the
outside world were in that issue of Charlie Booth's weekly:
"Again is the assertion made in New York dispatches
that ex-President Arthur is in very bad health, and not likely
to recover. ... A strike of street-car employees is in prog-
ress at Columbus, Ohio, and plans for a revolt at Pittsburgh
have been made. * . . Duke Calabeitti, who was exiled from
Italy for fighting with Garibaldi, died Wednesday in Hobo-
ken, N. J., where he was a hotel manager* . . . The eight-
hour ordinance passed by the Milwaukee common council,
affecting all persons paid by the day, has been signed by
Mayor Wallber, * . . An affliction resembling epizoot is so
prevalent at Canton, Ohio, as to confine 1,000 school chil-
dren to their beds or homes.
1 'Distress prevailing among the unemployed of Great
Britain is not deemed by Mr. Gladstone a sufficient reason for
asking the Queen to appoint a day for national humiliation
and prayer. ... A dispatch from Scituate, Mass, reports
the death of Miss Abigail Bates, one of two heroines who in
the war of 1812 drove away the British by playing a fife
and drum in the bushes. . . . H. M. Hoxie, vice-president
of the Missouri Pacific, in a letter to T. V. Powderly, de-
clined to hold a conference with the Knights of Labor, and
argues that the strike is devoid of a redressable grievance.
. . . Both houses of Congress have passed the pension bill
which increases the pensions of soldiers' widows and depend-
ent relatives from $8 to $12 per month. It will require about
seven million dollars to meet the provisions of the bill/'
Back in Chicago after that vacation, I stuck close to the
drawing board. I was doing pretty well on the Mail, but I
wanted to do better, to put money in the bank and have a
substantial cash reserve. Many of the newspaper men I knew
spent their spare time in gambling and drinking. I was not
inclined in that direction. This was not at all a moral atti-
tude. I simply found no fun in it. I saved my money by
holding to the small room on Wabash Avenue, for which I
ART YOUNG: HIS LIFE AND TIMES 79
paid $3 a week. Few friends came there, and I had no wish
to have large and impressive quarters as an accompaniment
to success.
Easter came on April 25, and I watched the parade that
morning in the vicinity of one of the South Side churches
where the wealthy attended. All was right with the world, if
one could judge from the beaming faces of the well-dressed
churchgoers as they moved along the walks homeward or
got into their carriages. Swelling organ music poured through
the open church doors as the congregation made its exit, and
a sleek clergyman shook hands with many of his flock, utter-
ing polite, stereotyped phrases.
But in the downtown section some 3,500 workers, bear-
ing flags and union banners, and headed by a band, marched
through the streets to the lake front, to join in a demonstra-
tion in behalf of the eight-hour work day, in which 20,000
persons or more took part. Speeches were made by various
leaders of the movement, including four whose names were
soon to become symbols in a mighty social conflict — Parsons,
Schwab, Spies, and Fielden.
The speakers dwelt at length upon the wrongs that labor
had suffered at the hands of the railroads, manufacturers, and
other employers; they told how animosities had been fos-
tered by agents of the bosses between one nationality and an-
other, such as the Germans and the Irish, to keep them from
organizing ; they excoriated the police for brutal attacks upon
the toilers who produced the wealth for capitalists to enjoy.
All this reminded the newspapers and the police heads
acutely that May 1 was near, and that organized labor had
planned strikes in major industries on that day, to enforce
its demand for the eight-hour day. Chicago employers urged
Mayor Carter H. Harrison to have state troops in readiness,
and he said no, as he had in the past. The police were com-
petent to meet any emergency, he averred. Elected largely
by the workers, Harrison was in his fourth term, and he
had kept his head, despite all the alarmist talk by merchants
and financiers that revolution was at the city's gates.
So bitter and far-reaching had been the attack upon the
eight-hour-day movement that the local executive board of
the Knights of Labor, that week, rescinded its approval of
the plan for the May Day strikes. For this the board was
80 ART YOUNG: HIS LIFE AND TIMES
assailed as cowardly by many rank-and-file members. The
Alarm and another militant labor paper, Die Arbeiter Zei~
tang, called on the workers to defend themselves — with force
if need be — against the assaults of the police and the Pinker-
tons who served the capitalists.
Word was given out at police headquarters on Friday
night, April 30, that the whole force would be on reserve
all next day, and that arrangements had been made to muster
hundreds of special policemen "in the event of any serious
outbreak/'
"Captain Schaack will be sadly disappointed," said my
Irish co-worker on May Day morning, "if his men can't
find an excuse to smash a lot of skulls today."
But there was no outbreak, no disorder of any kind.
More than 60,000 workers paraded or took part in gather-
ings that day, and no occasion arose for arrests. The "cele-
bration" of that May Day, however, lacked any aspect of
joyousness. Defiance was its keynote, the paraders and the
police eyeing each other with sullenness.
Whatever reassurance there was for the general public in
Saturday's peacefulness, new trouble blazed forth on Mon-
day at the McCormick harvester works out on Blue Island
Avenue, known to old-timers as the Black Road. For many
weeks this had been a sore spot for the workers. Fourteen
hundred striking employees there had been locked out in Feb-
ruary, the company bringing in scabs and 300 Pinkerton
thugs to guard them. Cyrus H. McCormick told the press
that "the right to hire any man, white or black, union or non-
union, Protestant or Catholic, is something I will not sur-
render/'
Protest meetings arranged by Albert Parsons and his
associates near the gates of the McCormick works had repeat-
edly been broken up by the police with clubs. On that Mon-
day, May 3, August Spies, editor of the Arbeit er-Zeitung,
was one of those who addressed such a meeting. He called
upon the strikers to stand solidly together. Soon afterward
there was a clash between the locked-out men and a group of
scabs. Police to the number of 150 came, fired into the
throng, killing one striker and wounding at least five others.
Spies went back to the Arbeiter-Zeitang office, and wrote
an account of all this for his paper. He had seen the strikers
ART YOUNG: HIS LIFE AND TIMES 81
fall before the police bullets, and that afternoon he read in
the Daily News that six men had been killed in that attack.
This report was not accurate, but Spies had ample reason to
believe that it was. Finishing his news story, he talked with
others about the situation, and then wrote copy for a leaflet
announcing a mass meeting of protest to be held in Hay-
market Square on the West Side the next night. This, was
headed: "Workingmen! To Arms!*' Without consulting
Spies, the compositor who set the type inserted ahead of that
slogan and as a part of it the word "Revenge!" Thousands
of copies of this leaflet were distributed overnight wherever
workers gathered*
I was reading about the industrial turmoil, or hearing
about it from members of the Mail staff, but I was not get-
ting assignments to illustrate any news stories dealing with it.
My social awareness remained undeveloped. I had no per-
spective on the human conflict, and had not found out how
to connect up an effect with its underlying causes.
When I came from the country I had a strong belief
that the newspapers of the big cities were oracles, beacon
lights. I still clung to that belief, though a bit shakily. Of
course I knew their policies were inconsistent, but perhaps
that couldn't be helped — it was best not to expect it. In one
election a Chicago daily would thunderingly assail some can-
didate, and a year later would be lauding him, with no ex-
planation of its reversal. And the same newspaper would
attack the railroads for victimizing both their employees and
patrons, but would assail the eight-hour day movement and
organized labor's program. The press blew hot and cold at
will. I was often bewildered by that.
Chapter 8
I SEE CHICAGO JUSTICE AT CLOSE RANGE
I NEED not dwell at length upon what happened in Hay-
market Square on the night of May 4, 1886. The story
has been told many times — the mass-meeting of some
1,500 persons in protest against the wanton shooting of
workers by the police; Mayor Carter H. Harrison in attend-
ance; Albert Parsons speaking, then leaving with his wife
for a beer garden two blocks away; Samuel Fielden mounting
the wagon used as a rostrum: rain beginning to fall, and the
crowd dwindling; the Mayor departing, and visiting the
nearby Desplaines Street police station to report to Captain
John Bonfield that there had been no disorder at the meet-
ing; Bonfield disregarding the Mayor's words, and in a few
minutes leading 125 reserve policemen to the scene, and
ordering the remaining audience of some 200 persons to
disperse; then from above or behind the wagon a whizzing
spark; a tremendous explosion; many policemen falling;
their comrades firing into the panic-stricken crowd, killing
and wounding. Seven of the police died; how many civilians
were killed by police bullets that night was never definitely
known, and nothing was ever done about it.
Then a hue and cry — widespread police raids; arrests of
hundreds of men and women known as or suspected to be
Anarchists, Socialists, or Communists; announcements of the
discovery of various dynamite "plots" and of the finding
of bombs and infernal machines; indictment of Albert Par-
sons and others as conspirators responsible for the Haymarket
explosion and deaths.
Newspaper editors and public men generally cried for a
quick trial of the defendants, with speedy executions to fol-
low, and there was every reason to believe from the pub-
lished reports that the accused were guilty. Public opinion
was formed almost solely by the daily press, and in its col-
umns "evidence" was steadily piled up against these labor
82
ART YOUNG: HIS LIFE AND TIMES 83
agitators. Parsons had disappeared on the night of the bomb-
ing— police all over the country were watching for him;
was not his flight confession of guilt? Rudolph Schnaubelt
also was gone; he had been arrested twice and questioned
briefly, but had been released — and Police Captain Schaack
was incensed at the * 'stupidity*' of the detectives who had let
him go; Schnaubelt specifically was suspected of the actual
bomb-throwing. And the daily newspapers reproduced a
leaflet announcing the Haymarket meeting, which bore a
black- faced line urging workers to come armed.
Like the great mass of Chicagoans, I was swayed by these
detailed reports of the black-heartedness of the defendants.
Outstanding business and professional men, and prominent
members of the clergy, denounced the accused, who were now
all lumped together as "Anarchists," and condemned the
killing of the seven policemen as being "the most wanton
outrage in American history/' In the bloody and gruesome
descriptions of the tragedy of May 4, the city's people for-
got the needless killing and wounding of workers by the
police on May 3. I, too, saw "evidence* ' against Parsons in
his running away. He had spoken at the mass-meeting, and
the explosion had come only a few minutes after he left —
and then he had vanished. Innocent men do not run away
when a crime has been committed (so my youthful mind
reasoned then) ; they stay and face the music.
But when on the opening day of the trial, June 21,
Albert Parsons walked into court and declared that he wanted
to be tried with his comrades, my sympathies began to lean
in the other direction. He had been in seclusion in Waukesha,
Wisconsin, working as a carpenter and living in the home of
Daniel Hoan, father of the present Mayor of Milwaukee. If
Parsons were guilty, I reasoned now, he would not have
come back; he needn't have come; the police had been unable
to find any trace of him.
Shortly after the jury had been selected, Clinton Snow-
den assigned me to make some pictures of scenes in the court-
room for the Evening MaiL The place was crowded, but I
managed to get a seat with the reporters at a table near the
defense attorneys. The prosecution was putting in its case,
and there were continual objections by the defense to the line
of questioning by Julius S. Grinnell, the State's Attorney.
84 ART YOUNG: HIS LIFE AND TIMES
Usually these objections were overruled, in a rasping voice,
by Judge Joseph E. Gary. When Grinnell uttered some opin-
ion which the defense considered prejudicial, Gary would
say: "The jury will disregard the State's Attorney's remark"
— but Grinnell kept on with bold assurance that he was
master of the situation.
Many well-dressed men and women, obviously from the
city's better families, were spectators, craning their necks to
JUDGE JOSEPH E. GARY, who presided at the trial
of the Haymarket case defendants.
get a view of the eight defendants. But I was interested quite
as much in the lawyers battling on both sides of the case.
It was common knowledge that it had been difficult to find
reputable and competent attorneys in Chicago willing to de-
fend the accused; their cause was too unpopular; notice had
been plainly served that only a pariah and an enemy of
society would try to save those men from the gallows. In
the face of this warning, three courageous members of the
bar, who hitherto had handled only civil cases, had agreed to
undertake the Anarchists* defense. William P* Black was chief
ART YOUNG: HIS LIFE AND TIMES 85
of these; a captain in the Union Army during the Civil War,
he was known as a fighter; tall, dark, and handsome, with a
pronounced jaw that shook a short beard, he was often the
center of all eyes in court. Assisting Black were William A.
Foster, said to be capable as a finder of evidence, and Sigis-
mund Zeisler, an earnest and studious young man with a
blond Vandyke beard, red lips, and wavy hair.
On the other side of this desperate contest was Grinnell,
the State's Attorney, who was understood to aspire to the
Governor's chair; and several assistants, whose names got
into print much less often than GrinnelFs. He had a fresh,
healthy face and a big well-curled moustache.
At that stage of the fight the Evening Mail was particu-
larly interested in the make-up of the jury, for it had been
selected only after the examination of almost a thousand
talesmen, during a period of four weeks. That jury was
representative of the middle class.
Frank S. Osborne, the jury foreman, was a salesman for
Marshall Field and Company; and the other eleven "good
men and true" answered to these descriptions: former rail-
road construction contractor, clothing salesman, ex-broker
from Boston, school principal, shipping clerk, traveling paint
salesman, book-keeper, stenographer for the Chicago and
Northwestern Railway, voucher clerk for the same railroad,
hardware merchant, seed salesman.
Watching the accused men in court, I wondered whether
it was indeed possible that any of them had anything to do
with the throwing of that bomb, which wounded countless
working people as well as killing the seven policemen. There
were reports, repeatedly published, that members of the An-
archist group were mortally injured on the night of May 4,
but that they were "spirited away*' by friends.
The defendants were neatly dressed, each with a flower
in his buttonhole. They sat in their chairs with dignity, and
with the apparent self-confidence of men who expected to
be exonerated.
There was a breathless tension to the court proceedings,
the air electric. Grinnell talked much about "protecting so-
ciety and government against enemies bent on their destruc-
tion/' Captain Black was on his feet often with objections.
Back at the Evening Mail office, I re-drew my sketches
86 ART YOUNG: HIS LIFE AND TIMES
on chalk plates* By this time I had acquired a ready hand
for working with this process, though I never liked it. These
pictures of the trial attracted considerable attention, both
among the Mail staff and outside. Word came to me a little
later that Melville E. Stone, editor of the Daily News, had
commented favorably upon that day's work of mine. And
Snowden praised my courtroom pictures.
Having attended a few sessions of the trial, and in a
sense having been for several days a part of that dramatic
spectacle, I followed the newspaper reports of the case with
deep interest. "Evidence" steadily mounted against them* Of
the real quality of that "evidence" I knew nothing then.
After the prosecution had rested its case, the defense
attorneys moved that the jury be instructed to return a ver-
dict of not guilty for Neebe, on the ground that the State
had failed to connect him in any way with either the bomb-
throwing or the alleged conspiracy. But Judge Gary over-
ruled the motion.
When the defense was putting in its evidence, I was in
court again, and now the accused men were having their
inning. The structure which the State had built up seemed
to be breaking down. I took note of Parsons's wife in the
audience, with her striking Indian-hued face; of Nina Van
Zandt, sweetheart of Spies; and of the relatives of other
defendants. They all seemed buoyed up by new hope.
Reading in next morning's papers about the sessions I
had attended, however, the case appeared in a much different
light than it had in the courtroom. Did the reporters have
sharper ears and keener eyes than I? Perhaps so; they were
trained in this kind of work while I was new at it. Yet why
was one side of the case over-emphasized, and the other sub-
ordinated? I know now, but I didn't know then.
And a few days later, the State had the last word
blasting the defendants in its closing arguments, repairing
any damage the defense had done to the prosecution's case.
Grinnell spoke all one day and part of the next. Out over
night, the jury brought in a verdict finding all the defend-
ants guilty of murder "as charged in the indictment/' That
verdict specified a penalty of death for Spies, Schwab, Fielden,
Parsons, Fischer, Engel, and Lingg; and fifteen years' im-
prisonment for Neebe,
ART YOUNG: HIS LIFE AND TIMES 87
I listened to the opinion among the men on the Mail staff
as to the guilt or innocence of the Anarchists. Argument over
that question went on heatedly for days in the news room*
The champions of the defendants, who were in the minority,
cited various alleged flaws in the State's case* I remember
there was a good deal of skepticism over the testimony of a
Tribune reporter, a prosecution witness, who told what was
said by speakers at the Haymarket meeting, and swore that
he took notes with a pencil down inside of his overcoat
pocket! But even if the prosecution was weak on that point,
the conservatives declared, there was plenty of other evi-
dence of guilt — and they cited it, point by point. 'Til trust
that jury/' Fred Martin insisted. "All of them are guilty as
hell/'
Newspaper editorials and prominent citizens in inter-
views lauded the jury for "intelligent service to the State"
and the Tribune printed a letter from an ardent reader urging
the raising of a $100,000 fund to be presented to the jurors
as a fitting reward for their fearless integrity, etcetra.
Immediately after the verdict the defense gave notice that
it would appeal to the higher courts, and with the convicted
men locked in their cells in the county jail, the press began
devoting its front pages to other affairs.
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 9
MELVILLE E. STONE SENDS FOR ME
NOW I got word that Melville E* Stone wanted to see
me. Waiting a few days so as not to seem too anxious,
I went over to the Daily News office, taking along
samples of the best of my drawings. Stone looked them over
with a critical eye.
'Tve been watching your work/' he said, "and I was
impressed particularly by your sketches of the Anarchists'
trial. I think we could make a place for you here. The Daily
News is expanding, and we need pictures — good pictures*
We've just put in a zinc etching plant, and we've stopped
using chalk plates. . * . How would you like to come and
work for us in the art department?"
I favored the idea.
"How much money do you want?"
That was a trying moment. I was still afraid of editors,
and for many years thereafter my heart sank whenever I
approached any of them. I had read a book, Getting on in the
World, by William Mathews. Whether it fortified me at this
juncture, I don't know, but I kept saying to myself: "Look
your listener right in the eye and don't sell your talent too
cheap/* Stone's question was a tactical error. I had been
getting only about $12 a week from the Evening Mail for
my free-lance contributions; and if he had offered me $15
or $20 a week I would have accepted without haggling, for
the chance to work on such an enterprising paper as the
Daily News.
But boldly I said: "I think I am worth $35 — a week/'
"Well, you are worth that if you can do the work,"
Stone answered.
Instantly I thought: "My God, what have I done? I've
got to make good."
So I was given a key to the art department and a salary
that was large for a country boy,* in those days before artists
88
ART YOUNG: HIS LIFE AND TIMES 89
and pictures were thought to be much of an asset to news-
papers. J. C. Selanders had been doing most of the work in
that department, but he was soon to leave for a tour of
Europe.
Stone was editor and part owner of the News, with Vic-
tor R Lawson as partner. Tall and slim, and son of a small-
town clergyman, Stone was an energetic and ambitious per-
son, obviously proud of the contacts with notables that he
made through his position.
Most of my assignments came from Charles H. Dennis,
the managing editor, and from Butch White, city editor; but
occasionally they were given directly by Stone, in his nasal
voice. Once I said to him, after proposing a certain kind
of picture: "I think the public likes such pictures/* "Never
mind what the public likes/' Stone answered. 'Til take care
of that/'
Like the Evening Mail, the Daily News was in an old
dingy building. In fact all the Chicago papers were then in
such rookeries. My working environment was raw, but it
didn't matter. The adventure of being in a bustling metropo-
lis constantly took on new color. The city was smoky and
blatant, sprawled out and smelly — with odors both savory
and repellent: blindfold, I could have told with a high per-
centage of accuracy what part of town I was in* There were
the spice mills and coffee roasting plants around the Hoyt
company's quarters near the Rush Street bridge; the fish,
poultry, fruit, and vegetable markets along South Water
Street; the poisonous river, which with its two branches
divided the city into three segments; and more potent than
all else, when the wind was from the Southwest, the unmis-
takable breath of the stockyards. Another odor which, how-
ever, might be found anywhere in Chicago was sewer gas.
Newspaper standards in that time were low, though I
didn't know it, having no yardstick for comparison. The
dailies were emotional in their news columns as well as in
editorials, profuse with derogatory epithets even on the front
pages in political campaigns. They fawned upon visiting
celebrities, often grew maudlin in eulogies of them. Some of
the papers systematically stole telegraph news from the
others; one way of achieving such theft was the bribery of
a telegraph operator in one office to provide an unofficial
90 ART YOUNG: HIS LIFE AND TIMES
client with carbon copies of all material coming over the
wires. A good many outlandish fake news stories found their
way into print, and were all too often believed by a gullible
public* Many reporters were careless with their use of facts.
The less prosperous dailies, weak in their supply of tele-
graphic intelligence and with small local staffs, brought in-
vention into play; anything to keep up with, or beat, their
rivals.
FASHION IN 1886, from one of my sketch-books.
It was good sport to sit around with the reporters after
hours, in the local room or over in police headquarters, and
hear the news-hounds boast about their achievements — how
one landed a big story by hiding under a sofa in an alder-
man's office; how another impersonated a federal officer and
thus got an interview with a fugitive not yet caught by the
authorities; how a third crouched in water in a rainbarrel
while he eavesdropped on a well-known couple who a little
ART YOUNG: HIS LIFE AND TIMES 91
later were airing dirty linen in the divorce court. There were
gory tales, too, of suspects in crime cases being beaten almost
to death in the police stations to force them to talk; these
were horrifying.
Assignments on the Daily News gave me entree every-
where that I wanted to go, and my life moved along
smoothly. From men and women whose names were known
internationally for their achievements, I learned much. True,
Chicago Daily News
BOOTH AND BARRETT. Two great actors view the
Lincoln statue by St. Gaudens.
the information I was picking up was in unrelated pieces;
and I had to become much older before I could put these
jigsaw pieces together and make a clear composite of them.
Frances Willard, long president of the Woman's Christian
Temperance Union, made a deep impression on me when I
sketched her. She was the first woman publicist of any conse-
quence that I ever saw. It was a rare thing in those days for
a woman to do battle on social questions in the public arena.
Except for those who braved ostracism by going on the
92 ART YOUNG: HIS LIFE AND TIMES
stage, most of the gentler sex either remained in the home,
concerned themselves with non-controversial activities like
music, became missionaries or collected money for the
heathen, taught school, or went into nunneries. Miss Willard,
a finely moulded individual, was a torch of eloquence,
I listened spellbound as she addressed a convention of
several thousand people in the old Exposition building* She
was attacking the exploitation of the masses by the rich, and
her statements seemed unanswerable* Some years later I got
hold of a pamphlet in which she advocated such radical steps
as nationalization of transportation and communication;
public ownership of newspapers, with every editorial bearing
the signature of its author; compulsory arbitration in indus-
trial disputes; and minimum wages for workers. This was
one of the first Socialistic appeals that I ever read, although
I am sure there was no mention of Socialism in Miss Willard' s
utterances. I could see nothing fanatical about this magnetic
woman or her ideas. But she was expected to stick to the
subject of temperance and let economics alone.
President Grover Cleveland and his wife came to town,
and I made sketches of them, as they were driven along
Michigan Avenue in a four-horse carriage. Cleveland was so
bulky that he looked slightly comic, especially because of his
habit of wearing his silk hat tilted a bit forward.
One day in Lincoln Park, by sheer chance, I came upon
Edwin Booth and Lawrence Barrett, his fellow actor, seated
in a carriage viewing the St. Gaudens statue of Abraham
Lincoln, which was being made ready for dedication. I
sketched that scene and it was reproduced in the Daily News.
Booth had often been hooted when he appeared on the stage
after his brother Wilkes had killed Lincoln, but he neverthe-
less had continued his career, and finally regained public
esteem.
One rarely hears of Eugene Field nowadays, save when
some old-timer harks back in reminiscence to him and his
work. But in the Eighties he was an institution in Chicago;
and like all who are in the limelight he had detractors as well
as panegyrists. Day after day the local scene was enlivened
by his column in the Daily News, which bore the title,
''Sharps and Flats/'
ART YOUNG: HIS LIFE AND TIMES 93
His writings therein, like those in most columns of the
kind in newspapers, were words traced in sand, forgotten
soon afterward. Most of his poems have faded out, except
"Winken, Blynken, and Nod/' "Little Boy Blue" and "See-
ing Things at Night/' Another favorite with me was "That
Was Long Ago/' in which a father relates youthful memories
to his child* He could recite his own poems better than any
of the professional elocutionists. I knew many of them by
heart.
"I don't write poetry/* he said to me. "Call it just verse/'
Yet some of it was poetry, with depth of feeling and a lilt
of beauty that compels remembrance.
I can look back fifty years and see him clearly in his
cubby-hole, exchanging quips with a side-whiskered crony —
Dr. Frank Reilly of the editorial staff, later Chicago's health
commissioner. Field has an architect's drawing board on his
knees. That is the desk on which he does his writing; and
his penmanship is as clear and fine as copper-plate print* The
walls are plastered with newspaper clippings, most of them
about himself and his friends. He was sixteen years older than
I, but having youngsters like myself around seemed to be his
idea of right living.
Field had inherited $8,000 from his father at the age of
twenty-one, and set out immediately to see how fast he
could get rid of it. With a brother of the girl he was to
marry, he went abroad, "spending six months and my patri-
mony" in France, Italy, Ireland, and England.
"I just threw the money around," he said, in recalling
that splurge. "I paid it out for experience — and experience
was lying around loose everywhere I traveled. When I got
back life was a good deal simpler than when I thought myself
rich. Practically broke, I went into newspaper work in St.
Louis."
After I had come to know him he made a second visit to
England, and declared on his return that he didn't care much
for the English. Yet he had brought home a lot of souvenir
photographs of British men of letters whom he liked —
among them Andrew Lang — and an axe presented to him by
Prime Minister Gladstone, who had chopped down number-
less trees with it for exercise.
Field asked Lang to translate a Latin epigram which had
94 ART YOUNG: HIS LIFE AND TIMES
accompanied the axe, and Lang promptly obliged with the
translation, adding: "If your countrymen admire Mr. Glad-
stone, I wish they had owned him; but the just anger of
God sent him to punish our imperial hypocrisy and humbug.
Every nation has the Gladstone it deserves/'
I spent many pleasant hours with Field at his home in
suburban Buena Park. Here, in a spacious "den/' he did a
great deal of his work, flanked by books and piles of news-
papers, and surrounded by thousands of curios, beautiful or
grotesque, which revealed a collector's passion. Especially was
he fond of canes from all countries. He sat in an arm-chair
which had belonged to Jefferson Davis, and on his table was
an inkstand that Napoleon had used and scissors formerly
Charles A. Dana's. And on shelves and in glass-fronted cabi-
nets were hundreds of dolls, old china, odd-shaped bottles,
mechanical toys, small images, and strange pewter dishes.
"Some of the best of these things I got for nothing/' he
explained. "When a fellow becomes known as a collector,
and can show just the right shade of enthusiasm for some
object that another person has, he finds that a lot of people
are glad to contribute to his collection."
When Field knew you well enough he would show you
his most unusual treasure — an album of pornographic pic-
tures, curious examples of erotica from many lands, in which
both men and women and dumb animals were portrayed in
amorous ecstasies. I am sure that Anthony Comstock would
have burned with envy had he known of that garner of for-
bidden photographs in Buena Park.
Field had canaries in his den, but their cage-doors were
left open. They flew about the room, alighting on his shoul-
ders or anywhere they pleased, while he wrote or read.
He thought of himself as a hard man to get along with,
and once told me of a dream he had had the night before.
"I was in Heaven, walking along the golden streets/' he
said, "and somebody introduced me to an old codger he
called Job. 'What/ said I, 'are you the man who had so
much trouble, as told in the Bible?' * . . Tm the man/ said
Job. . . . 'Well, Job/ I said, "y°u don't know what trouble
is. Wait until you meet the woman who had to live with
me — Mrs* Eugene Field/ "
Field was an inveterate practical joker, and no one in
ART YOUNG: HIS LIFE AND TIMES 95
the Daily News office was immune from his humorous frame-
ups. He perpetrated some jokes on the editor which de-
lighted the staff. Once when he felt the need of a salary in-
crease, he rounded up several ragged children from the back
streets, gave dimes to them, cautioned them not to talk, and
marched them up the stairs and into Stone's presence.
'Is it right/' he demanded, "that my children go ragged
in the streets because the Daily News won't pay me a decent
wage?"
Stone pretended to weep over the columnist's sad plight,
and instructed the cashier to step up his pay envelope.
Field would cheerfully invite any uninitiated caller to
sit in a chair with a camouflage cushion of a few newspapers.
It originally had had a cane seat, but this had long since
worn out, and the caller's stern would sink into the aperture
along with his dignity. Eugene always apologized profusely
for not having had the chair fixed, while the victim struggled
to extricate himself.
A man of reading and discernment, Field was at the same
time Wild-Western and raw, an odd combination. He chewed
tobacco with avidity and swore convincingly, often inventing
unique profane phrases which aroused admiration among his
less imaginative co-workers.
Like Mark Twain, Field was an ardent dissenter against
the prevailing social order in private conversation, although
not much of that dissent was found in his writings — nor in
Twain's. Both of those men were born too soon, or perhaps
were just naturally cautious of being combative in public.
They were cast by Fate into a period which we know today
as the era of rugged individualism — a nation marching be-
hind a banner bearing the legend: "Self conquers all!" Mean-
ing, of course, that it's up to you alone — a doctrine which
practically everybody across the land took for granted, and
one which hangs on in spite of its falsity.
Yet Field and Twain occasionally exhibited signs of
doubt and wrote satirical comment on American life. Field
poked fun at the shallow culture of the Chicago pork packers,
and Mark Twain indulged in brief outbursts of anarchistic
protest. None of their onsets, however, was incisive enough
to make the big financiers question their loyalty to the exist-
ing economic and social system.
96 ART YOUNG: HIS LIFE AND TIMES
Finley Peter Dunne was on the Daily News staff then,
writing editorials and paragraphs about current affairs. He
had not yet conceived the Mr, Dooley series, those pithy
comments on the uneven course of the human race still being
ten years in the future, Dunne's small office was on the second
floor, one of several formed by eight-foot partitions, I re-
member dropping in one day to show him a picture I had
just finished. He laid down a book he had been reading —
the story of a trip up the Hudson and to New York summer
resorts, by Charles Dudley Warner, Looking at me through
FINLEY PETER DUNNE, before the
Dooley articles brought him fame.
spectacles set against a bulbous nose, Dunne said; 'Tve been
wasting my time reading this. Some critics say Warner is a
genius. Genius hell!"
Irish wit often cropped out in his daily talk even then,
and so the Dooley philosophy had a familiar ring when it
was being featured afterward when Dunne was on the Eve-
ning Journal. I followed the observations of "the sage of
Archey Road" with delight, and Mr. Dooley frequently
scored a bull's eye with his verbal shafts. He managed to get
in a lot of side-swipes at the financiers, the politicians, the
war-makers, and other evil figures and institutions in Ameri-
can life, in the guise of humor* In his Dooley articles he
called attention to stupidity on our side of the fence in the
conduct of the Spanish- American War; he voiced skepticism
that the Standard Oil Company would ever have to pay the
ART YOUNG: HIS LIFE AND TIMES
97
famous $29,000,000 fine, and it never did; and he dealt
with the national tendency to begin crusades against social
wrongs and never finish them* He knew the value of ridicule
as a weapon.
Some of the sayings of Mr. Dooley deserve recalling now:
"High finance ain't burglary, an* it ain't obtaining money
be false pretinses, anJ it ain't manslaughter. It's what ye
might call a judicious seliction fr'm th' best features iv thim
ar-rts."
Chicago Daily News
BEFORE THE BICYCLE. Young women sped
along on tricycles in 1887.
*T11 niver go down again to see sojers off to th' war*
But yell see me at the depot with a brass band whin th* men
that causes wars starts f r th' scene iv carnage/'
"Don't ask f r rights. Take thim. An* don't let anny wan
give thim to ye. A right that is handed to ye f r nothin* has
somethin' the matter with it. It's more than likely it's only a
wrong turned inside out/*
And when his friend Hennessey asked: "What's all this
that's in the papers about the open shop?" Mr. Dooley
answered:
98 ART YOUNG: HIS LIFE AND TIMES
". . . Really, Fm surprised at yer ignorance, Hinnissey.
What is th' open shop? Sure, 'tis where they kape the doors
open to accommodate th' constant stream av min comin' in t'
take jobs cheaper than th' min that has th' jobs. . . ."
"But," said Hennessy, "these open-shop min ye minshun
say they are fur the unions if properly conducted/'
"Sure," said Mr. Dooley, "if properly conducted. An'
there we are. An' how would they have thitn conducted?
No strikes, no rules, no conthracts, no scales, hardly any
wages, and damn few members."
Robert B. Peattie and his wife Elia also were energetic
members of the News staff in my time. With his white face
and nose glasses, Peattie moved about the office like an ab-
sorbed professor. Elia had school-girl cheeks. In summer she
edited the news of the Wisconsin resorts. Whenever she
entered the art department all four artists (the staff was
growing) stopped their work to gaze upon a woman as
pretty as a rose fresh from outdoors. I had heard of the
literary evenings in their home, and was invited to one of
them, but gave an excuse to stay away. I felt I was still a bit
too crude to mingle with the elect.
My most important assignment on the Daily News, up
to that time, came on August 11, 1887, when I was sent
down to Chatsworth, Illinois, some ninety miles, to cover the
aftermath of an appalling disaster there. On the previous
night an excursion train on Jay Gould's bankrupt railroad,
the Toledo, Peoria & Western, had piled up in a corn-field
when a burning wooden trestle gave way.
First reports stated that more than 100 persons had been
killed, and 400 injured. The actual number of dead was
eighty.
I went first to the wreck scene, three miles east of, the
town. One sleeping car had somehow remained right side up,
and was still largely intact. But the others were mostly
smashed or burned. Amid the corn rows were a lot of car-
seats, on which the injured had been laid until they could
be taken to Chatsworth. Many men and boys and a few
women moved about amid the debris, some of them picking
up bits of charred wood or scraps of twisted metal as
souvenirs,
THE WRECK AFTER RECOVERING THK BODIES,
SCENES ON THE LOWER FLOOR OF THE TOWN HALL AT CHATSWORTH.
FREIGHT-ROOM IN THE' DEPOT AT CHATSWORTH.
Chicago Daily
THE CHATSWORTH TRAIN WRECK. Aftermath of an 1887 Illinois
disaster in which 80 persons were killed.
That train had left Peoria at 8 p.m. on the 10th, loaded
to the limit with 960 passengers, all bound for Niagara
Falls on a $7.50 round-trip excursion* Six sleepers, six day
99
100 ART YOUNG: HIS LIFE AND TIMES
coaches and chair-cars, three baggage-cars — all of wood, of
course, then — and two locomotives. Being an hour and a
half behind time, the train was running nearly a mile a
minute when it passed Chatsworth.
The wooden trestle was only 1 5 feet wide, bridging a dry
creek-bed 10 feet below. Sparks from some other train sup-
posedly had set it afire. The engineer on the first locomotive
saw the flames too late. The first locomotive got across; the
trestle crumpled under the weight of the second, and the cars
piled up behind it, quickly taking fire.
Many of the injured were women and children. Among
those unhurt were only about fifty able-bodied men. They
did all that they humanly could to rescue people trapped in
the burning cars, and for some four hours they fought the
flames with earth carried in their bare hands. Not a drop of
water was available, and the dying suffered from thirst.
Arriving in Chatsworth after dark, I had already steeled
my emotions against the sights which met my eyes. News-
paper men take on fortitude in the presence of catastrophes
as do doctors and nurses. The city hall, depot, and another
building had been turned into hospitals, serving also as
morgues, with the dead lying on the floor covered with sheets
or other pieces of cloth. Homes of the townsmen had been
opened to survivors of the wreck who had to remain there
with injured members of their families. I made sketches in
the light of flickering lanterns and oil lamps. I can remember
the sobbing of women and the groaning of the sufferers on
the cots.
Men who stood around waiting to learn whether some
loved one would live discussed the cause of the crash. Some
of them were outspoken in blaming Jay Gould, notorious
for exploiting railroads and the railroad-using public. He
had let the T. P» & W. run down, one man said, until
anybody who rode on it was in danger of being killed.
My drawings were used in the Daily News next day.
Done under difficult conditions, I can see now that they were
crude. But they evidently were all right for that day, and
they satisfied the editors. Stone complimented me, saying I
had done a good job,
Chapter 10
FOUR DISSENTERS SILENCED BY THE ROPE
MEANWHILE the attorneys for the convicted Anarch-
ists had carried their case to the State Supreme Court,
The city had cooled down; one no longer heard of
plots to blow up police stations, nor of plans for revolution.
A defense committee had collected money to cover the expense
of the appeal; in the Daily News office we understood that it
was having tough going; most people in Chicago accepted
the jury's verdict as just, and thought the convicted men
ought to be hanged: only a few intrepid souls argued other-
wise*
In the local room, occasionally during lulls in the pres-
sure of work, controversy over the kind of evidence presented
would flare up again. Bits of the speeches made by the de-
fendants in court would be quoted. Doubt would be cast
upon some of the "plots'* uncovered by Captain Schaack.
But the defenders of 'law and order" among the reporters
would cite an array of evidence developed by the prosecution,
to show that "the jury did right."
When in November, 1886, the high Illinois tribunal
granted a stay of execution of the sentence, bets at consider-
able odds were offered by knowing newspapermen that the
courts would affirm the verdict. I recall no takers. But when
the appeal was filed and arguments were heard in Spring-
field the following March, the prisoners and their counsel
were hopeful of winning a new trial. The lawyers had cited
numerous alleged errors in Judge Gary's procedure, and
offered affidavits to prove that the jury had been "packed/*
Six months passed before the court handed down its de-
cision. It unanimously upheld the judgement. Discussing the
case at great length, it gave many technical reasons for ap-
proving the jury's findings. This decision was of course fea-
tured in the Chicago dailies.
But the defense would not yet admit defeat. Preparations
101
102 ART YOUNG: HIS LIFE AND TIMES
were immediately begun to carry the fight to the United States
Supreme Court, on constitutional grounds. General Ben-
jamin F. Butler was one of the attorneys who presented the
argument in Washington late in October, 1887, After five
days' consideration by the full bench, Chief Justice Waite
read its decision. No cause for reversal, it said*
Earlier Judge Gary had sentenced the seven men in the
county jail to die by hanging there on November 11. This
left them only nine days to live. Counsel and members of the
defense committee began circulating petitions addressed to
Gov. Richard Oglesby urging commutation to life terms in
prison. Many prominent individuals wrote the state chief
executive to that end, and various delegations visited him in
behalf of the doomed men.
It was apparent now that sentiment concerning the An-
archists had changed a good deal. Appeals in their behalf
were signed by notables including Lyman J. Gage, later
Secretary of the Treasury; William Dean Ho wells, Robert
G. Ingersoll, Henry Demarest Lloyd, General Roger A. Pryor,
and George Francis Train. From England protests against
the impending execution were cabled by William Morris,
Walter Crane, Annie Besant, Sir Walter Besant, and Oscar
Wilde. And 16,000 members of working-class organizations
in London, on a single day, signed a plea to Oglesby to save
the doomed men. George Bernard Shaw was one of those
who circulated that petition.
While all this desperate activity was being generated by
the defense, various well-known Chicago citizens were say-
ing publicly that "the killing of the Haymarket martyrs must
be atoned''; that ''the safety of our whole community de-
mands that these executions proceed*'; that "those who de-
fend anarchy by speaking in behalf of these red-handed
murderers ought to be run out of the country."
On Wednesday, November 9, two days before the sched-
uled hanging, Butch White, city editor of the News, assigned
me to go to the county jail and do pictures of the "Anarch-
ists." The jail was adjacent to the criminal court building in
which the trial had been held. After my credentials had estab-
lished my identity at the entrance, I climbed the stairs to the
tier where the seven were confined, and was allowed to roam
freely there while I drew my sketches. Other visitors also
ART YOUNG: HIS LIFE AND TIMES 103
were present (presumably friends of officials) , and they gazed
into the cells of the doomed labor leaders curiously, as if at
animals in a zoo.
Albert Parsons sat writing at a table piled witjb books
and papers. He reminded me of a country editor — and, in
Chicago Daily News
THE HAYMARKET PRISONERS IN JAIL. I sketched them there
shortly before the date set for the executions, and these drawings were
published on that day.
fact he had edited a weekly in Waco, Texas, before coming
to Chicago. . . . Adolph Fischer, who had been a printer,
looked like an eagle — peering up through the bars of his cell,
still hopeful, . . * George Engel, also a printer, had less the
appearance of an intellectual than the others. His eyes seemed
iull, as if all feeling had gone from him* . . . August Spies,
editor of the Atbeiter Zeitang, was strikingly good looking
104 ART YOUNG: HIS LIFE AND TIMES
and straightforward in his talk, . . . Michael Schwab,
spectacled editorial writer, had a solemn, sad face* . . .
Samuel' Fielden, a bearded ex-Methodist preacher from a
country town in England, was a familiar speaker in halls and
working-class street meetings, with the voice and intensity of
a born orator. . . .
But it is Louis Lingg that I remember best. Perhaps my
memory of him is clearest because a ray of sunlight, coming
through a little high window, was shining in his cell as I
sketched him. Only twenty-two, a pale blond, he had a look
of disdain for all. He sat proudly in his chair, facing me with
unblinking eyes, and silent. Had he opened his lips, I thought,
he probably would have said: "Go ahead, you reporters, do
what your masters want you to do. As for me, nothing
matters now/'
Engel was fifty-one, Fielden forty. The others were in
the thirties or twenties. Schwab's beard and Lingg's mous-
tache could not disguise their youthfulness.
Thursday brought word of an explosion in the jail — it
was reported that Lingg had put a bomb into his mouth
and lighted the fuse, and was dying. Considering all the
precautions taken by the authorities, the searching of visitors,
and the frequent searching of the Haymarket defendants*
cells, no one has ever satisfactorily explained how that bomb
got past the guards. I was chilled with the horror of the story
as details kept coming in. Suffering untold agony with his
face terribly mutilated, Lingg remained conscious while three
physicians worked over him, and lived six hours.
Melville Stone was in the local room a great deal that
day, directing arrangements for covering the execution.
Friends of the prisoners, some of them prominent and influ-
ential in civic affairs, were in Springfield, trying to get the
Governor to intervene, but our correspondent wired that
Oglesby could find no reason for such action. Late in the
afternoon, however, the Governor issued a formal statement,
commuting the sentences of Fielden and Schwab to life im-
prisonment, but refusing to interfere with the sentences
against the other four. (Oscar Neebe, the eighth defendant,
was already serving a 15 -year term.)
Wild rumors were in circulation, which the newspapers
ART YOUNG: HIS LIFE AND TIMES 105
made the most of, increasing the fears of the populace. Police
Captain Schaack had announced the discovery of a plot to
rescue the prisoners. Detective Herman Schuettler was sup-
posed to have heard, through a peep-hole cut in a wall of a
North Side rooming house, the discussion of a plan to blow
up the jail The force on guard there was doubled, and
Schaack's men searched under the sidewalk for mines. De-
struction of the city waterworks, a few blocks away, was
asserted to be a part of the alleged conspiracy, and it was
carefully protected.
Many wealthy citizens had left town, for the rumors
had it that if the four prisoners were hanged vengeance
would be taken against the rich. Anarchists from other cities
were declared to be streaming toward Chicago to join in the
rescue attempt.
I was much relieved when I learned that another artist,
and not I, had been assigned to witness the execution and
sketch the scene. I would have gone, of course, had I been
ordered to, however gruelling the task. But Butch White
gave the assignment to William Schmedtgen, an older man,
who had joined the staff after me. I never knew why he was
chosen, but figured that White thought I was too young.
Next morning I saw Schmedtgen put a revolver in his
hip pocket and noticed that he was pale and trembling. Out-
side in the streets an ominous quiet prevailed. Business seemed
to have come to a halt. Pedestrians were comparatively few,
and every face was tense. We who stayed in the office didn't
talk much, and when we spoke our voices were subdued.
It was like sitting near the bedside of some one who is dying.
When a copy-boy was heard yelling to another boy out in
the corridor, one of the staff hurried out to shut him up.
Reporters worked in relays covering the news in the
vicinity of the jail. One by one they came into the office and
wrote their individual angles of the story for the early edi-
tions, then returned to the scene of action. Thus we got
frequent bulletins on what was happening there.
Three hundred policemen had formed a cordon around
the jail, a block away from it on all sides, keeping the curious
crowds back of a line of heavy rope. Only those persons who
could satisfy the cops that they had bona fide passports could
106 ART YOUNG: HIS LIFE AND TIMES
get through. Once a newspaperman got into the jail, the
police would not let him out.
There was no attempt at rescue. The hanging proceeded
efficiently, from the viewpoint of officialdom. When the four
men had dropped from the scaffold and the doctors had pro-
nounced them dead, the tension of months suddenly was
gone* All over town that afternoon there were drunken
policemen, in and out of the saloons. Their honor as de-
fenders of law and order had been vindicated.
My pictures of the executed men and their fellow-
defendants were used in the Daily News that day. Schmedt-
gen's sketch of the hanging also was rushed into print. I saw
him early that afternoon. He was white and silent. We were
good friends for years afterward, but I never heard him
speak of what was done in the jail-yard.
Long detailed accounts of the hangings were published
in the dailies, with the last words of the four Anarchists.
. . . The general tenor of those accounts was that their
final speeches were stage effects, that they were posing as
martyrs.
When another night had passed and no reprisals had been
attempted, the mass fear of the populace lifted, the skies were
clear again, and people returned to their normal ways of life.
Now the whole episode seemed like some weird dream.
Stone congratulated the staff on its "excellent work" in
covering the Haymarket case. 'It was a good job well ended/'
he said.
Our circulation had been steadily climbing in recent
months.
I didn't know until long afterward about the part that
Melville Stone had played in the prosecution of the accused
men. Not until 1921, when his autobiography was published,
did I know that he wrote the verdict of the coroner's jury,
although he was not a member of it.
Called in for advice by the prosecutor, the city attorney,
and the coroner, Stone took the position that it did not matter
who threw the bomb, but that inasmuch as Spies, Parsons,
and Fielden had advocated the use of violence against the
police, "their culpability was clear." Then he wrote the ver-
dict for the coroner's jury, which formed the basis for the
Anarchists and
Bomb Throwers
Tine Greatest Murder Trial on Record, with. Speeches In
ney« for tne Prosecution and Defense. Profusely Illustrated.
Price »S Cents. Agents Wanted.
G. S, BALDWIN, PUBLISHER, 199 CLARK STREET, CHICAGO.
WHEN I WAS MISLED. Carried away by propaganda against the Hay-
market case defendants, I drew this illustration for the cover of a book up-
holding their conviction. I regret that now.
107
108 ART YOUNG: HIS LIFE AND TIMES
theory of "constructive conspiracy/' on which the prosecu-
tion's case was based. It held that Mathias Degan (one of
the seven policemen killed in the Haymarket Square explo-
sion) , had come to his death from a bomb thrown by a per-
son or persons acting in conspiracy with Spies, Parsons, Fiel-
den, and others unknown.
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 club-
bing, shooting, and killing of workers by the police in the
fight of the big industries against the eight-hour day move-
ment.
Not until several years later did I discover that there
was another side to the story. So when asked by a pub-
lisher to draw a cover for a paper-bound anti-Anarchist
book I readily assented. Anarchists and Bomb-Throwers was
the title of this volume, and it upheld the convictions. My
picture showed Law and Order, personified as an Amazonian
woman, throttling a bunch of dangerous-looking men.
If the dead can hear, I ask forgiveness now for that act.
I was young and I had been misled by the clamor of many
voices raised to justify a dark and shameful deed.
Chapter 11
PATTERSON OF THE TRIBUNE FIRES ME
^ITEADILY the Daily News was forging ahead. Its cir-
culation was far in the lead among Chicago's eight
English dailies, and it took delight in flaunting its
figures. In 1885 its daily average sale had been 131,992
copies, as attested to the American Newspaper Directory; the
Tribune, Times, and Herald each claimed "more than
25,000"; the Mail and Inter-Ocean had "more than 22,500."
In 1886 the News average had increased to 152,851, while
the Tribune had climbed above 37,500. The Times and Inter-
Ocean had stood still, the Herald was down to 22,500, and
the Mail had dropped to 20,000.
The Tribune was a sixteen-page morning paper, with
the 24-page Sunday edition; the News had only eight pages,
appearing both morning and evening six days a week; the
Mail had only four pages.
Much older than the Daily News, the Tribune (owned
by Joseph Medill) obviously was envious of the strides made
by the Stone-Lawson paper since its establishment in 1876.
One story told with glee by men on the News had to do
with a trap engineered by that paper to catch the Tribune
in a theft of exclusive news. Repeatedly the Medill sheet had
helped itself to good foreign dispatches originated by the
News; also its New York correspondent found the press
there a ready source of intelligence from all over the United
States and from other countries as well.
Matthew Arnold had lately completed a lecture tour in
this country, with Chicago as one stop on his itinerary, and
remembering his tendency to caustic criticism, the Daily News
executives saw in him an ideal peg on which to hang a story
which would tempt the pirates over on Dearborn Street.
Under Melville Stone's instructions a supposed cable dispatch
from London was written, quoting from an article concern-
ing the English poet's impressions of Chicago, declare^ to
109
110 ART YOUNG: HIS LIFE AND TIMES
have just been published in the Pali Matt Journal In that
"article" Arnold was represented as assailing various promi-
nent Chicagoans for boorishness and thickheadedness.
Stone sent the purported dispatch to the editor of the
New York Tribune with a confidential letter of explanation,
and soon the alleged criticism of Windy City notables was
printed in a single copy of Whitelaw Reid's paper. That copy
quickly reached the desk of the Chicago Tribunes correspond-
ent, who put the story on the wire. The Daily News solemnly
sent reporters to interview the citizens whose toes had been
stepped on, and all of them were indignant. Meanwhile
Stone cabled to Matthew Arnold explaining the hoax, and he
answered saying he had not written any such article. Then
the News let the public in on the secret, pointing out that
the Pall Mall Journal was non-existent.
But three years had passed since that incident, and the
Tribune was showing new verve. It had spruced up the en-
trance to the building it occupied at Madison and Dearborn
Streets, and had put in an elevator, the Daily News not
having yet installed one. And that winter the Tribune re-
vealed that it had taken notice of me.
Robert Patterson was running the Tribune. He was a
son-in-law of Joseph Medill. Patterson sent for me, indicated
special interest in my pictures, and offered me a job. I had
no trouble in getting $50 a week. Giving Stone notice, I ex-
plained that I felt this was an opportunity that I couldn't
pass by. He said he was sorry I was leaving, and added: "If
at any time you get tired of the Tribune there will be a place
open for you on the Daily News/'
Assignments on the Tribune were often vague; the editors
seemed to have trouble in deciding what they wanted. But
one order that challenged my imagination was for sketches
of the great blizzard in New York City in March, 1888.
''See if you can make a few pictures of that storm/' was
Patterson's request. Of course I had seen various woodcut
illustrations of New York streets and some photographs, but
now I had before me not a shred of graphic material — for in
that day the Tribune had not developed a reference library.
With nothing to go on except the telegraphic reports, I drew
from word descriptions several pen-and-ink sketches which
at least caught the spirit of the mighty snowdrifts in the
EUGENE FIELD'S LETTER
recommending me to the editor of the 7V«w; ForA- World,
ART YOUNG: HIS LIFE AND TIMES 111
East and gave the Tribune an aspect of worthy enterprise*
With money from my increased salary piling up in a
savings bank, I had a fine sense of well-being. I went to
Monroe for a weekend, and basked in the warmth of ad-
miring glances. But I knew that this admiration was not
caused so much by my drawings that my fellow Monroeites
had been seeing in the Chicago papers as by the fact that
Dan Young's boy was making $50 a week. My imagination
was soaring on the new job, and I think that the quality
of my work decidedly improved.
Shortly after this, however, Robert Patterson informed
me that "circumstances have compelled us to make some
readjustments in the staff/' and that it was necessary to dis-
pense with my services. "Illustrations in newspapers are just
a passing vogue/' he said. "People will get tired of them/'
I was stunned, of course, but I asked no questions, did not
inquire what was the real reason for my being discharged.
I have never asked an editor why he didn't want my work;
it would have been too much like asking a woman why she
didn't love me. I had a suspicion that the Tribune had hired
me away from the Daily News simply to weaken the staff
of the latter.
Stone's offer to make a place for me at any time had
sounded pleasant when he uttered it. Yet now I had no
thought of going back to the News. Having ample money in
reserve, I was inclined to relax and free-lance for a while.
My living quarters were still in the little room on Wabash
Avenue. But though my own room was cramped, I found
ease and comfort in leisure hours in visiting upstairs with a
fine looking blonde of about thirty. She managed a depart-
ment in one of the big State Street stores, but never talked
shop. Her two rooms were above mine. Edith knew about
me, from our landlady, and had seen my drawings in the
newspapers.
When her evenings were lonely, she would signal to me
by tapping on the floor. On my first visit she had thought-
fully turned the lights low when they appeared to annoy
my eyes, and soon, without quite knowing how it happened,
I found her in my arms. She had a healthy outlook, and
laughter in her soul. Presently I (or perhaps it was she)
had broken down all the barriers of convention that keep
112 ART YOUNG: HIS LIFE AND TIMES
a man and woman apart. For me it was akin to standing
on a precipice and suddenly gathering courage for a dive
into strange waters below.
Knowing much more of life than I, Edith was unafraid,
and her ecstasy was like wine to my senses. Here was roman-
tic adventure about which I had wondered and for which I
had often longed. But quickly afterward, there was a let-
down. As I lay alone in my own room later that night, I
was shaken. Had I been wise? Echoes of the Rev. Mr. Bush-
nell's voice, thundering against the iniquity of carnal sin,
swept in to haunt me. Next morning uncertainty lingered.
Yet when on another of Edith's lonely evenings she again
tapped the signal, I could not say no. Once more the tingling
caresses of a free soul lifted me to mountain-tops.
But the reaction followed as before, taking my mind off
my work. I saw that, for all of Edith's charm and the joy of
being with her, I was steadily being drawn into an impossible
situation. Walking down Michigan Avenue in the fresh air
to think things out, I determined not to become involved in
any other passion but the creating of pictures. All else must
be subordinated to that. It was not economic fear which
deterred me then; not until later in life did I collide with the
frightening financial consequences of love. At that time I
simply did not want to assume any emotional responsibilities
other than that of pursuing my own artistic development;
my career must not become sidetracked by a sentimental
attachment.
Overnight I decided that it was time for me to pack up
and go to New York. I would study in the art schools there.
Newspaper work now seemed commonplace ; I wanted to go
far beyond it — paint, experiment with color, deal with sub-
tleties, weave into my pictures the undertones and overtones
of life.
New York City had something, I was sure, that one with
artistic leanings could never find in Chicago. Suddenly that
city had grown crude in my eyes. My work was not appre-
ciated, and I was out of a job. Now what? All the world's
great lived in or visited New York at some time or other;
tot nearly so many reached Chicago.
\ I could see myself growing vastly in creative stature in
£he atmosphere of the metropolis. There was nothing to hold
ART YOUNG: HIS LIFE AND TIMES 113
me back* I had saved enough money to carry me along for
many months, while I was working out plans for the future.
Eugene Field gave me a letter to CoL John A* Cockerill, who
had attained renown as the ' 'fighting editor*' of the Cincinnati
Enquirer and the Washington Post, and who at that time was
managing editor of the New York World under Joseph
Pulitzer* Gene laid it on thick. He wrote:
Dear Colonel Cockerill:
This will introduce Mr. A. H. Young, by all odds
the brightest and best caricaturist and artist we have had
here in Chicago. Inasmuch as he intends to make his
home in New York, you will do the smart thing if you
get a first mortgage on him. God bless you.
Eugene Field
Also I had an invitation from the art editor of the New
York Graphic to join his staff. This was the first daily news-
paper anywhere to emphasize the importance of pictures with
text reduced to a minimum. The Graphic staff included such
able cartoonists and humorous illustrators as Kemble,
Cusachs, Frost, and the inimitable Hopkins ("Hop"), who
after the fall of the Graphic went to Australia and was that
country's leading cartoonist for many years.
Before making the 900-mile jump to the East, I went
home to Monroe to say goodbye to the folks, and to lounge
around town for a couple of days and tell various friends
and acquaintances about my intentions. My father's eyes
lighted up as he told customers that his son had not only
been working for Chicago newspapers, but that I had saved
enough cash to carry me for a year or more through art school
in New York. My mother voiced anxiety about my going
so far away from home, but I could see that she too was
quietly proud of my progress. I spent the evenings with
Elizabeth North, agreeably. "I always knew you'd be a
success/' she said.
The town seemed smaller now than before. And there
had been changes — some of the old characters that had fre-
quented our store had died. Bill Blunt had been appointed
town constable, a big cherry tree in Frank Shindler's yard
had been cut down after being struck by lightning, and the
Milwaukee & St. Paul depot had a fresh coat of paint.
114 ART YOUNG: HIS LIFE AND TIMES
Charlie Booth, editor of the Sentinel, as usual, knocked off
work for a half hour to talk with me. He'd always had
ambitions to go to New York himself, he said, but had been
too busy to get around to it, Jim Fitzgibbons, poolroom
proprietor, asked me to keep an eye open for a cousin of his
who at last accounts was driving a street car somewhere in
New York City.
Back in Chicago, to cut my moorings, I had another long
evening with Edith, and was relieved when she raised no
tearful fuss about my going away. But my laughter wasn't
real when she said gayly: "I may send you a nice little boy
some day. How would you like that?" It was as if I were
fleeing from the devil when I boarded a Michigan Central
train. Yet as the clicking wheels bore me Eastward, I was
warmed anew by the thought of her laughter and her supreme
self-assurance. I knew she was no more of a sinner than I —
and that has been my attitude toward intimate relations
between the sexes ever since.
I wish I could brag about my prowess in the matter of
sex in those growing years. I wish I had had more experience
in amorous affairs, not so much as my friend Frank Harris
claimed to have had, but anyhow bolder and with less re-
gard for the consequences. The Puritan bourgeois ideas of
a country town pressed heavily upon me, and affected my ap-
proach to life. Gloomy admonitions were my heritage: Thou
shah not! and Beware of disease!
Having such a background of morality and fear, it was
fortunate that I also had a talent to look after, which helped
me to forget the flesh. But I saw many girls whom I wanted
to love. Vicariously I have loved and still love thousands
of them. Through most of my years sex in my life has
been repressed. Whether I am the better or worse for it is just
idle speculation now. . . . Often I am skeptical when I
hear of the vaunted reputations of certain authors and artists
as conquistadotes among women. I doubt their emotional
capacity to keep up the pace of which they boast.
Chapter 1 2
I GO TO NEW YORK WITH HIGH HOPES
A the train sped eastward I sat in the luxurious diner
and reveled in the scene, as the green~and~brown
panorama of the fields flitted past. I liked to see
farmers wave their straw hats, and horses out to pasture
kick up their heels and run as the train sped by, as if they
were showing off and saying: * 'Think you're going fast?
Look at us!" As we went a bit slower through small villages
I liked to see the girls and boys at stations and cross-roads,
gazing at this express train bound for New York. I suspected
they were envious of us lucky passengers, and were hoping
that some day they, too, would be riding on a fast train to a
fast city.
I read again the letter from Eugene Field to Colonel
Cockerill, and the invitation from the Illustrated Daily
Graphic editor to work for him. There was satisfaction in
knowing that I had such letters to fall back upon if needed.
But there was no hurry about my getting a job. I wanted to
study for a while.
My emotions flared high. I whistled a tune in rhythm
with the rumble and click of the wheels. At ease in the Pull-
man, the first I had ever ridden in, I felt that boyhood dreams
were coming true. Towns and cities were momentary inci-
dents along the way. We left Indiana behind and were in
Michigan. One knew that only because the time-table said
so; the character of the country remained unchanged. A
humorous conception of my childhood came back — the
thought that each state was of a different color, as in maps,
and that between them was a clearly marked boundary.
I had brought along some reading matter — Harper's
Weekly, the Daily Graphic, Judge, Puck, and Scribner's. As
usual I went through their pages more than once — scanning
the pictures first, then the text and the advertisements. The
quality of the illustrations varied considerably, and they
115
116 ART YOUNG: HIS LIFE AND TIMES
seemed much below the standard of the European draftsmen
of the graphic arts — in social satire, political cartoons, and
comics.
Advertisements of that time included names of firms and
products which are still familiar — Pear's Soap; Pond's Ex-
tract; Spencerian Pens; Ayer's Cherry Pectoral; Baker's
Breakfast Cocoa; Columbia Bicycles; Mellin's Food; Cuti-
cura Soap; Royal Baking Powder, and Castoria: "Children
Cry For It" After I had studied the illustrations in the maga-
zines, and read the short pieces of text, I got out my sketch-
book and began drawing the faces of my fellow-passengers,
and setting down memoranda for jokes about travel. Then,
and for many years, 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.
We reached Detroit after dark, and here the train was
broken up into sections, run onto a huge flatboat, and ferried
across the river to Windsor. The Canadian shore seemed far
away, the Detroit harbor limitless. There was a stiff wind
blowing, and there was a sense of pushing into an unknown
sea. I wondered what all the fuss was about, as we were towed
across to the rail- dock on the other side.
On Clarence Webster's advice I had taken a lower berth,
and was glad of this when I saw that the uppers had no
windows. Marveling, I watched the porter transform the
double seat into a sleeping section . * . In the washroom
several traveling men were smoking and indulging in small
talk about business, politics, and the state of the crops, and
uttering commonplaces of banter.
My berth was comfortable, but it was not easy to go to
sleep. After I put out the light I lay awake for hours, it
seemed, looking out the window at the countryside, mysteri-
ous under the stars. I had hoped to see Niagara Falls, but was
on the wrong side of the car, and anyhow I was sound asleep
when we passed that famed wonder, before dawn. . . .
There was a thrill in seeing the Erie canal, about which I had
read a good deal. The railroad was a stiff competitor, but
there were still numerous barges moving both east and west in
"Clinton's ditch."
When we turned southward at Albany, my heart
pounded faster. Here was the historic Hudson, which grew
ART YOUNG: HIS LIFE AND TIMES 117
lovelier as we hurried on into the Highlands, I thought of
the legends of Rip Van Winkle and the gnomes with whom
he played at tenpins, and other tales that Washington Irving
told of this majestic valley. But the long run into the city
after we passed the outskirts made me conscious of an ap-
proach to something ominous — maybe the end instead of the
beginning.
Outside Grand Central Station were a flock of men with
badges on their hats, all offering to take me to a choice hotel.
ARRIVAL IN NEW YORK, 1888.
I whistled a great deal in those days.
But I knew where I was going. Some one had recommended
the Morton House in Union Square as home-like and cheap.
So I hunted around till I found a policeman, learned how to
get there, and then took a hansom cab.
After I got settled in the hotel, I went out and looked
around a little. That afternoon and evening I walked miles.
New York was full of wonders, different from Chicago,
brighter, cleaner. The clear sunlight was a startling contrast
to the smoky atmosphere of the crude city I had left, which
118 ART YOUNG: HIS LIFE AND TIMES
Mayor Carter Harrison excused for being so dirty by saying:
"Chicago is like a growing boy who doesn't like to bother
keeping himself clean/'
Although I went to particular places, I found almost any
place interesting during those first days in the metropolis.
Just looking on, wherever I happen to be, even to this day, is
sure to reveal something that holds me with some dramatic
import From the Morton House I would go over to Bren-
tano's on the west side of Union Square, to scan the latest
magazines. Then there was Tiffany's on the southwest corner
of Fifteenth Street, where the Amalgamated Bank is now.
Here coaches would drive up, letting out women shoppers
dressed in style, meaning that they wore bustles. The flar-
ing hoop-skirt had had its day, but complete coverage was
still the fashion, woman's form being left to one's imagina-
tion,
I walked up to Nineteenth Street on Broadway, and gazed
into the windows of Lord and Taylor, about which I had
heard so much. They reminded me of a poem about Broad-
way that I had read in school about "silks and satins that
shimmer and shine" and opals that gleam "like sullen fires
through a pallid mist/'
In a few days I took a room in a boarding house on
Sixteenth Street, west of Fifth Avenue. W. J. Arkell, pub-
lisher of Judge, had just put up his new building at the
northwest corner of that intersection. I clipped one of
Thomas Nast's cartoons from a copy of the Daily Graphic
and tacked it on my wall, and one day in conversation with
the servant girl who made up my room, I found that she
had worked in the Nast household in Morristown, N. J. She
told me stories about the Nast family. Surely now I was near
the heart of things.
New York agreed with me. I liked the sea-air. I was
having fun. For two weeks I just loafed and wandered about
town. I wasn't ready to begin systematic study yet, nor to
attempt selling pictures, though of course I made sketches
everywhere of people and scenes.
I explored Chinatown, and went down to see the site of
P. T. Barnum's museum at Broadway and Ann streets. And
one day I walked across Brooklyn Bridge, and was stirred
by the sight of those tremendous arches and the monumental
ART YOUNG: HIS LIFE AND TIMES 119
grace of the whole structure* I was curiously interested, too,
in the Richard K. Fox building, in which the Police Gazette
was published near the bridge on the Manhattan side.
Another time I loafed along the water's edge in Battery
Park, and was impressed by Castle Garden, then a landing
station for immigrants, and now the Aquarium. Boats were
plying to the Statue of Liberty, unveiled only three years
before. But I was satisfied to view that at a distance, even
though an old Irishman standing on the wharf informed me
that Bedloe's Island, on which the statue stands, had "a
great history/* His father, he said, was one of thousands in
excursion boats who saw Hicks, the last pirate in those waters,
hanged there.
As in Chicago, everywhere in New York's principal busi-
ness streets then there were networks of overhead wires strung
on poles. These were chiefly for telegraphic purposes, al-
though some of them carried telephone conversations. News-
paper editors frequently urged the city council to compel
the owning companies to put those wires underground, since
they were a grave handicap in fighting fires. Horse-cars moved
along Broadway from the Battery to some point far north.
Steve Brodie had lately jumped from Brooklyn Bridge into
the East River — or had not, depending on which party to
that controversy one belonged to. And now he was reported
to be preparing to go over Niagara Falls in a barreL
Remembering that to my regret I had never got around to
visiting the Chamber of Horrors in Chicago, I made it a
point to go to the Eden Musee on Twenty-third Street, a
similar institution. Here were figures of famous and notorious
individuals, amazingly modeled in wax — Queen Victoria,
Jesse James, Oscar Wilde, Brigham Young, Horace Greeley,
the Prince of Wales, Jay Gould, Boss Tweed, Garibaldi,
John Brown, U. S. Grant, Abraham Lincoln, John Wilkes
Booth, Robert G. Ingersoll, Jenny Lind, Guiteau, who mur-
dered President Garfield, and a host of others.
But the exhibit which intrigued me most was the glass
enclosed Dying Gypsy Maiden. Just why she was dying was
not stated, but the expiring heave of her bare bosom was so
realistically achieved by hidden mechanism that I felt almost
tearful.
Everybody from out of town was drawn to this wonder
120 ART YOUNG: HIS LIFE AND TIMES
palace. It was the high spot of interest in New York. If
a farmer was seen standing on a street corner apparently lost,
it was taken as a matter of course that he wanted to be
directed to the Eden Musee. Once I saw an old fellow stand-
ing near the site of the present Flatiron Building, stroking
his whiskers and looking first one way and then another. I
walked over to him and said: "The Eden Musee is right
down there — on the uptown side of the street/' He thanked
me.
Soon, however, I had my fill of loafing and decided that
for my own good I must get down to work again* So I
signed up at the Art Students' League, and began studying
there industriously, to develop thoroughness, for I knew that
my flip sketches needed a basic understanding, especially of
anatomy. Teaching- routine at the League was much the same
as at the Academy of Design in Chicago, but I found no one
among the instructors who would give the same individual
attention to the groping student as Vanderpoel had.
Here, too, we had to draw from casts, which always
bored me. I did this solemn drafting conscientiously, none
the less, though I considered it a waste of time, and found
compensation for such tedious labor by sketching comic pic-
tures around the margin of the paper on which the serious
effort awaited criticism. 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 — Ho-
garth, Rowlandson, John Leech, George Cruikshank, John
Tenniel, Daumier, and Steinlen, and all of these held im-
portant and increasing values for me.
Feeling financially secure and being engrossed in study, I
neglected to present Eugene Field's letter to Colonel Cock-
erill of the World, and had no inclination to submit my work
to the magazines. But I kept close watch on all periodicals
as well as the newspapers, for the trend in cartoons and illus-
trations. Puck, Judge, and Life were at their best Harper's
ART YOUNG: HIS LIFE AND TIMES 121
Weekly was beginning to slip, and that year the Illustrated
Daily Graphic folded up.
Journalism today is for the most part gentlemanly and
decorous, in so far as the relations among newspapers in the
big cities are concerned. But in that day the New York dailies
openly assailed one another's actions and motives with all
the contempt that lily-white citizens might express toward
horse-thieves and road agents. Dana of the Sun and Pulitzer
of the World fought a long feud, widely talked about, and
the World and Herald frequently snarled at each other.
I knew, of course, that it was the World that had col-
lected $300,000 to provide a base for the Statue of Liberty
after the city, state, and federal governments had all failed
to make it possible for the French people's gift to be set up
on this side of the Atlantic. The World was fighting Tam-
many. Frequently it assailed the municipal administration
for mismanagement, pointing to the failure to clean the back
streets, the fire-trap tenements, sweat-shops, and the condi-
tions which bred tuberculosis.
Now and then I meandered into the heart of the East
Side. Here was stark poverty, even worse than I had seen in
the slums of Chicago. Great numbers of children played
amid filth and debris in the narrow streets. Old people sat on
doorsteps or moved listlessly along the walks. They seemed
to have lost hope. Gangs of toughs congregated on corners.
But looking at all this squalor I felt instinctively that
most human beings did not prefer dirt to cleanliness, and
they did not like stealing better than earning, nor a bad name
better than a good one. I made sketches here and there, but
did not remain long in one spot. There was a sense of escape
in getting back to my room. The World's editorials had not
exaggerated. Yet what could one do about it? Nothing, it
seemed to me, except through reforms: cleaning streets, pay-
ing good wages, providing for cheap carfare, etcetera. I could
come no nearer to an answer than that.
I continued to read Harper's Weekly, following the
work of W. A. Rogers therein (Nast had severed his
connection with that periodical a couple of years earlier) ;
and watched Life, Judge, and Puck. The latter contained
topical cartoons, and editorial comment with many pages of
drawings to illustrate what are known today as gags. The
122 ART YOUNG: HIS LIFE AND TIMES
cartoons by Joseph Keppler, Bernard Gillam, Frederick
Opper, and Zim were leading features. Pack, too, was agitat-
ing for civic virtue, and for the sending of bribe-taking alder-
men to Sing Sing. But it viewed the Single Tax movement
as akin to anarchy; had fought Henry George and his co-
worker, the heroic Catholic, Father Edward McGlynn, when
the former ran for mayor; and attacked Greenbackism as
spelling national ruin. Frequently it ridiculed the United
States Senate as a servant of the moneyed interests* It was
JOSEPH KEPPLER, SENIOR, founder
of Puck.
BERNARD GILLAM, an outstanding
illustrator in the Eighties.
strong for civil service reform and a low tariff, and inten-
tionally "mugwump", as liberal Republicans were then called.
Whatever the mixed social ideas I was thus absorbing,
the lessons I gained from studying Keppler' s drawings were
valuable. He was less cumbersome than Nast, having that
swing of line reminiscent of the early nineteenth century
German draftsmen. Today, as one turns back to the pages
of Pack in the years from 1870 to 1890, it will be seen that,
though dated in subject, Keppler's pictures have an arresting
quality of color and a spontaneity agreeable alike to student
and layman. But for individuality, and for ability to "make
fun of something", Nast was pre-eminent. It was said in
those days that his cartoons of Horace Greeley during the
Greeley- Grant campaign for the Presidency were a large fac-
tor in causing the death of that brilliant but eccentric editor
ART YOUNG: HIS LIFE AND TIMES 123
within a month after his defeat in 1872. I didn't believe
this, but I knew that his darts of satire were sharp*
P. T. Barnum was then living in New York, in his old
age. One bright Sunday I saw him attending services in
Robert Collyer's Unitarian church at Park Avenue and 34th
Street. I sketched him as he bowed his head in prayer, and as
he talked with friends afterward in the sun outside. He was
round-shouldered, and had a curly fringe of gray hair left
under the rim of his silk hat. Doubtless he would have been
pleased if he had known that I was making pictures of him.
In these days the venerable showman often stopped people on
the streets and engaged them in conversation. At the end he
would say: "Do you know who you've been talking to? . . .
You've been talking to P. T. Barnum." ... I had no idea
then that years later I would own a home in Bethel, Con-
necticut, the town in which Barnum was born.
As the months went on I thought a great deal about the
possibility of going to Paris, for I had been hearing of the
art schools there ever since I signed up with the League. It
seemed to be the ambition of most of my fellow-students to
study in the French capital, though others dreamed of
Munich. They talked much, also, of the unrestricted life in
the Latin Quarter, as something else to look forward to.
Clarence Webster knew from my letters that I had con-
siderable yearning to continue my art education abroad.
Although I knew that art schools could not make artists, I
enjoyed the environment and the thought that I had an aim
in life. And one day in the early summer of 1889, Web
wrote me saying: "I am planning to go to Europe for a
couple of months. England, Wales, and France. The Inter-
Ocean is willing to let me do a series of travel articles, which
will cover my living expense over there. How would you
like to go along and illustrate my writings? I am sure that
I could arrange with the office to get steamship passage for
both of us through the advertising department/'
I answered that I would think about it. And the more I
pondered the idea, the more it appealed to me. I began to
see myself as an art student in Paris for at least a year.
So in a few days I packed up and took a train for Chicago.
There Web and I conferred with one of the Inter-Ocean
124 ART YOUNG: HIS LIFE AND TIMES
editors, and we agreed that I would go home to Wisconsin
for a short visit before we started East,
In Monroe I spent a few days with the folks, and had
some evenings with Elizabeth North, who looked more at-
tractive than ever. Now that I had become a New Yorker,
my parents had taken to reading every bit of New York
news, and Harpers Weekly continued to be a regular visitor
at home. Father was interested in having me compare the Art
Students' League with the Chicago Academy of Design —
which had benefited me the most?
Monroe appeared still smaller. But the cheese business
was growing in Green County, with the steady increase in
the number of Swiss immigrants* Old George Banks, the
druggist, whose walk I used to imitate to the great amuse*
ment of my mother — he walked like a king on parade — had
grown fatter, but dignity triumphed with his every step.
Everybody in Monroe was talking about the Johnstown flood
in Pennsylvania which had drowned nearly 2,300 persons a
few weeks before.
My sister Nettie and Clyde Copeland had set up a com-
fortable home over on the north side of town, and my "No
wedding bells for me" picture was in plain sight in the parlor
when I was there for supper; I never knew whether Nettie
displayed it only when I was around, but I grant that she
would have been justified in hiding it at other times. Mother
seemed less anxious when I left this time, even though I
was soon to cross the ocean, than she had when I was going
only to Chicago the first time. Perhaps she felt that I was
able to take care of myself.
We had railroad passes also, and on the Baltimore & Ohio
train, Web posted me on recent happenings in Chicago. . . .
Melville Stone was traveling in Europe, spending some of
the money he got from Victor Lawson for his interest in the
Daily News. . . . The jury was being picked for the trial
of the alleged Clan-na-Gael conspirators for the murder of
Dr. Cronin. He had been lured from his home at night by a
purported call to attend a sick person, and his body had been
found in a catch-basin on the outskirts of the city. The
doctor had been a member of the Clan, and was supposed to
have been killed because he had betrayed some of its secrets
ART YOUNG: HIS LIFE AND TIMES 125
and charged Alexander Sullivan, a lawyer, and others with
misappropriating the Clan's funds. . . . There was new
talk of building a broad ship canal from Lake Michigan to
the Mississippi. . . . Temperance advocates were trying to
get an ordinance passed to abolish free lunch in the saloons,
with widespread opposition. . . . The police were investi-
gating a report that Rudolph Schnaubelt, who was supposed
to have thrown the Haymarket bomb, had been seen in South
America. ... A man named Garfinkle was trying to finance
a balloon trip to the North Pole. . . . And Web told me
the gossip in art circles, and around the Chicago Press Club,
where I first met Opie Read, Stanley Waterloo, and Ben King.
It was Ben who wrote that classic parody of the popular
poem: "If I Should Die Tonight/'
Arriving in New York, I was feeling hot, sooty, sticky,
and sick, and I said to Web, "If a B. %$ O. train can make
me miserable, what will an ocean liner do to me?"
Chapter 13
WE LEARN ABOUT THE ENGLISH AND WELSH
EVERPOOL was our destination, on the Cunard Line's
Teutonic, newest and finest ocean liner afloat. With
the gentlemanly Bruce Ismay, president of the line,
mo.destly receiving congratulations on board, we sailed on
August 2 1 from a pier in the Hudson River: Our tickets were
second class, but we had an outside cabin with permission (a
courtesy to the press) to roam anywhere on the ship.
Web sauntered about the decks locating notables and
interviewing them, everything and everybody being grist to
the mill of the Inter-Ocean's humorous correspondent with
the pen-name "Conflagration Jones/* But we spent some of
our time sketching, especially down in the steerage. I did not
care to meet many people, for I soon verified my fears that
I was not a good sailor. There were days and nights when
the steamer rared up and pranced, and it was no fun to be
rolled around in a ship's cabin like a marble in a pigs-iri-
clover puzzle. . . . On calm days, however, I managed Well
with the drawings, and the voyage netted me numerous pic-
tures of those about us. Among the dignitaries riding first
class I sketched the railroad magnate, Collis P. Huntington,
and his wife. I talked with a woman devoted to a small
daughter who would recite on the slightest provocation,
"Curfew Shall Not Ring Tonight'*; and an evangelist who
annoyed people by asking them: "Have you found Christ?"
When he asked me, I thought of the Swede in the old story
who was asked the same question and answered that he
"didn't know he was lost."
I had several chats with a ruddy Englishman who had
been traveling in the States and had not been favorably im-
pressed. His main objection was: "Your bloomin' country
is all full of 'ills and 'oles." Then there was the man who
was always keeping tabs on the ship's course, which was no
concern of mine*
126
ART YOUNG: HIS LIFE AND TIMES 127
We landed in Liverpool a week later. Walking around
the streets, my legs still felt as if swayed by the steamer's
roll. I made sketches of boys selling matches, and turned to
gaze at tall, stately girls with rose-petal complexions who
passed. To Web I said: "DuMaurier is right. He knows how
to draw the English girls, and Burne-Jones knows how to
paint them/' We went to the Walker art gallery, where I
saw a Dore oil painting of an English flower girl — and it
stimulated my desire to see the Dore gallery in London. I
had not known that he had mastered painting as well as
illustration.
But before going on to London, Web had a notion that
we ought to take a look at the old town of Chester, and
then visit Wales. At the railway station a hand-swung school-
bell was rung by the conductor when it was time for our
train to start. The ride to Chester took only an hour. And
here I was looking at rural England of which I had seen so
many woodcuts and steel engravings. The fences were mostly
hedges, though I saw a few of barbed wire, and wrote home
that they looked as uncomfortable to sit on as the American
brand. Trees in this section were mostly gnarled and twisted
oaks, and the old broken- down stiles, with their frames of
overgrown hedges, were just as the English artists had time
and again pictured them.
We walked up the narrow main street of ancient Chester,
wending our way through the slow traffic, where people were
all jumbled together with donkey-carts, horses, wagons, and
market-baskets. Our eyes were kept peeled looking for a place
to stop, as Webster said, "off the trail of the deadly tourists/'
I remember passing Blossom's Hotel. I wonder if it is still
there. A sturdy, weathered looking establishment. But we
didn't stop. It seemed a likely place to run into tourists*
The buildings in that picturesque city may have been
erected in the time of King Arthur, for all I know — their
upper stories jutting out over the sidewalks, propped up, but
sagged into complacency as if ready for another century.
The general effect of this street upon my eye was like seeing
a stage-set for a play of the time of Cromwell — in the days
of old "when knights were bold and robbers held their
sway."
After going some distance from the main thoroughfare
128 ART YOUNG: HIS LIFE AND TIMES
we discovered a hotel called the Red Lion. Here we stayed
four days. Both of us began to realize that we were a long
way from home. No letters from loved ones. Of course it was
too soon to expect any, but "nobody loves us/' we thought,
and we could have eaten worms or paid any penance then
for the rash conduct of quitting our native soil.
Proceeding to the historic Chester Cathedral, we found
the portal open wide, so we walked in and sat down. There
we slumped, shafts of sunshine slanting through the stained
glass windows, but not for us. I knew I wasn't getting re-
ligion, but I was sad with homesickness.
After our morning in the cathedral we began to get
hold of ourselves. We found a boat and took a row on the
River Dee. That night I started a letter to the Monroe Senti-
nel— which wasn't finished until we reached Paris — and it
told a good deal about our adventures that day. In my early
childhood I heard a poem recited (or maybe it was a song
sung) the refrain of which was: "Mary, call your cattle
home across the sands o' Dee." In my letter I reported that
"it would take a good deal of loud calling, even by a husky
English girl, to get a drove of tired cows across the sands
of Dee. The sand of this country is what we call plain mud
at home/*
We passed at least a dozen boatloads of boys and girls
in a half mile, dressed in proper boating clothes, the girls
rowing as efficiently as the boys. I wrote that "the American
contingent cut quite a figure on the River Dee that beautiful
morning. Mr* Webster, with a big sombrero on his head
and a section of an American flag around his neck, did the
rowing, while I sat at the helm and did all the steering and
grumbling/'
Chester was surrounded by a high stone wall supposed
to have been originally built by the Romans. I remember
standing on the very stone of the wall where Charles I stood
watching while his army was being defeated by Crom well's
troops on the moor below. That of course is the Baedeker
thing to do and a guide who caught me at it charged me
three pence.
Taking a cab on another day, we rode through the Duke
of Westminster's estate, my companion remarking as we
passed deer, grouse, and other wild game, "all for his Royal
ART YOUNG: HIS LIFE AND TIMES 129
Nibs to shoot/* We walked around outside the ancient wall,
and I made a pencil drawing of the cathedral by moonlight.
We had planned to go out to Gladstone's summer home,
Hawarden Castle, six miles from Chester, but the fourth day
we concluded we'd better see something of Wales.
Back at the hotel, however, we learned that Wambold's
circus, then swinging through the provinces, had come to
town, and we decided to stay another day. Web had a sudden
notion that it would be worth our while to travel with
Wambold's aggregation. His idea was that maybe they would
take on two live Americans. He would lecture on the Ameri-
can Indian, while I would draw easel pictures to illustrate
the lecture as he talked. We went in the evening, and found
the performance much like that of the small wagon shows at
home. We were interested particularly in the animal tent —
and saw a caged stork resent being pointed at and catch a
man's forefinger in the grip of its vise-like bill.
But what I most enjoyed here was catching fragments
of conversation — just as I did at the hotel — and as I do today
wherever I go. Around the bar of the Red Lion, old-timers
talked much about the Isle of Man, which was only sixteen
miles off shore. "I 'ear 'Awkins went to the h-island today."
Hall Caine had not then written his play, The Manxman,
for Wilson Barrett to produce and play the leading role. Some
years later I saw the play and met Hall Caine in New York;
the play made me cry — but just what it was about I don't
remember.
Next day we journeyed by train down into Wales. Our
first stop was Llangollen. Arriving after dark we registered
at the hotel and went early to bed, not knowing what the
town was like. No scene actual or painted ever looked more
beautiful to me than the morning view from that hotel win-
dow. A sun-tinged river winding and laughing its rocky
course through the town, while a street musician playing a
pipe in the foreground gave just the right touch to this deco-
rative bit of Wales.
We conversed with some of the natives, and found that
none of them could or would explain why a word spelled
Llowainwlmjdfsllwgd was pronounced Gwillid, as we had
been informed by non-Welshmen. Walking along a canal,
we met up with two ragged boys who said their father
130 ART YOUNG: HIS LIFE AND TIMES
worked in the slate mines* They asked if we would like to
hear them sing. Of course we said yes, so they sang a folk
song, not knowing that I was also putting them down in
my sketch book. For singing and posing I hope that we paid
them generously. Hardly knowing one English coin from
another, I wasn't sure. But they went on their way happy
with arms around each other, and it was pleasant to see.
I do not think they expected a fee — but like most Welsh
children for centuries past, they enjoyed singing.
Then we went to Conway Castle and to Holywell, where
we saw the "miraculous well/' and the church nearby where
hundreds of crutches of the cured had been left as proof.
This part of Wales abounded in ancient abbeys and ruined
castles. Webster said: "The trouble with our country is that
we're shy on ruins. We ought to blow up a lot of old
breweries, let the ivy and owls have their way, and call
them something historic/*
Three days in Wales were all too short for this charming
country, but Web's time was limited and the next stop on
our schedule was London. When we arrived there we found
lodgings in Bloomsbury Square, in a rooming house near
the British Museum. Being a Dickens enthusiast, Web was
interested in searching out landmarks and streets mentioned
in that author's novels. I was more immediately interested
in visiting an exhibition of a hundred years of English carica-
ture lately opened in the Royal Arcade Gallery. Dickens could
wait. We compromised by going to the caricature exhibition
first.
It was inspiring, for it comprised many originals by all
the outstanding English draftsmen from before the time of
Hogarth. Thus I was able to study at first-hand the work
of Rowlandson, the most prolific and versatile of British
caricaturists; Gillray, Isaac and George Cruikshank, Leech,
Barnard, Howitt, Thackeray, DuMaurier, Xeene, Phiz
(Hablot K. Browne) , and various others. It was Phiz who
illustrated most of the Dickens narrative when they first
appeared. Of all the drawings on the walls, I was impressed
most by those of Hogarth, Rowlandson, Gillray, George
Cruikshank, and Frederic Barnard, who illustrated The Pil-
grim's Progress long after Bunyan's day, and who did pic-
tures for some of the Dickens novels.
ART YO^NG; HIS LIFE AND TIMES 131
I thought Barnard the greatest character artist of all. And
to think that I was face to face with Hogarth's originals, and
his own engravings — the picture propagandist for good con-
duct and morals, a preacher with paint* Rowlandson's themes
were much more varied. He depicted the lighter side of Lon-
don life, the gambling parlors and the cockpits, and was
less inclined to moralize, but not without taking notice of the
misery all about him. Both he and Gillray were well repre-
sented by a series of lampoons on Napoleon Bonaparte, which
helped to deflate the little emperor* s ego and pull down his
star. George Cruikshank's works which we saw that day cov-
ered a wide range of subjects, done with an etching needle
tipped with fanciful satire. I. felt that this exhibition alone
was worth the trip across the Atlantic, for all those sad
''Oh, why did I leave home?" days of both sea- and home-
sickness.
And now we were looking around at the more romantic
parts of Old London. I took a good look at the sacred Bank
of England. Moving about wherever our noses led us, we
saw Whitehall Palace, where Charles I was tried and in front
of which he was beheaded; Westminster Abbey, where I was
glad to see a bust of my fellow countryman, Henry Wads-
worth Longfellow, amid the tombs of ancient kings, St.
Paul's Cathedral, the Royal Academy, Buckingham Palace,
and the Houses of Parliament; Petticoat Lane, that famous
pushcart market, where bargain-sellers of many nationali-
ties gathered to take the public's money; the Tower of Lon-
don; Trafalgar Square; the Thames embankment; and
Westminster Bridge.
Having steeped himself in Dickens lore, Clarence Web-
ster was able to rattle off a great deal of remembered detail
which lighted up London history for me in rich colors.
Barnaby Radge of course occupied a much larger stage than
any other of the Dickens novels, for it dealt with the Gordon
Riots in the time of George III. Its central character was a
member of Lord George Gordon's "No Popery" mob of
60,000 persons who gathered in the open fields east of the
city where Gordon harangued them, then marchetl them in
divisions across Westminster Bridge, London Bridge, and
Blackfriars Bridge. For six days and nights the mob held
all London at its mercy, besieged Parliament, emptied the
132 ART YOUNG: HIS LIFE AND TIMES
prisons, pillaged the homes of well-to-do Catholics, raided
the distilleries and set them on fire. Benjamin Franklin was
then in France as a U. S. emissary, and wrote home about
the vast destruction.
Most of the buildings in Whitechapel were old and doubt-
less had been there in the days when Dickens wrote of Bill
Sikes murdering Nancy. Men and women in those mean
CLARENCE WEBSTER AND HIS KODAK New picture-making device
creates a sensation in London's Whitechapel district.
streets also seemed of an era far in the past; from their looks
they might have been the very people who moved through
the pages of Oliver Twist or followed Lord George Gordon.
When the natives heard that Web was carrying a picture-
taking machine, they surrounded us in droves. A large, slat-
ternly woman, with her abdomen thrown out proudly, cried :
"Tike -me, Mister!"
Many places we came to in London were instantly con-
nected up with Dickens' s writings by Web's extensive mem-
ART YOUNG: HIS LIFE AND TIMES 133
ory, and some of them were known to me also — not so much
from my reading, for I cared little for novels, but from the
hundreds of illustrations over which I had often pored. The
whole scene was rich in picture stuff, a constantly changing
panorama, as we pushed along. I remember the Tower, Bill-
ingsgate Fish Market, St. Paul's Cathedral, the Marble Arch,
Regent's Park, Cheapside, and various inns — the Cheshire
Cheese, the Blue Bull, the Maypole, the Rainbow Tavern,
the Old Ship, the Red Lion, and Jenny's Whim. One fog-
enveloped night Webster was sure we had found the Seven
Dials, and I made a sketch of two outcasts, an old man and
an old woman talking it over in the blear gas light of a foggy
night. I showed it to Webster and he said: "Here's Dickens
and Dore, all in one picture/'
It may have been because I was fed on the latter' s draw-
ings in my adolescence, that I admired his work with a kind
of awe. And one day, when we again visited the Dore gal-
lery on Bond Street, it was with difficulty that Web finally
got me to leave it for other London sights. I thought then
and still think that if ever there was a born artist it was the
Alsatian Gustav Dore. He was an engine of energy; hand-
some; with an Oedipus complex, but having futile love
affairs with Adelina Patti and Sarah Bernhardt; the talk of
Paris at twenty for his Dante, Rabelais, and Balzac illustra-
tions, his paintings and comic drawings. At forty he had out-
distanced all other artists, not only illustrating but enhanc-
ing the text of his favorites in classic literature. But long
before his fiftieth year he was a miserable melancholic, mainly,
it is said, because the critics would not recognize him as a great
painter.
Dore had at least one admirer who accepted all that he
did — painting, cartoons, statuary, and illustrations — as be-
yond criticism. A young man from Wisconsin who thought
he understood him and counted him the greatest artist of his
time. I estimated the gift of imagination in all of the arts as
supreme. And Dore had it. Rowlandson, George Cruikshank,
the elder Peter Breughel, Gillray, Callot, Durer, and Ober-
lander also had it in the graphic arts, as did most of the
Renaissance painters. But Dore's torrential ambition and his
over-production not only killed him at fifty-one — it dead-
ened a decent appraisal of his work. He was a sensation,
134 ART YOUNG: HIS LIFE AND TIMES
and it may have been only "for the day thereof/' Time will
tell whether much of his work will survive.
Thomas Nast was a great admirer of Dore. Once, so Nast
told me, they almost met. He was going into the Bond Street
Gallery and Dore was coming out. "He looked at me/' Nast
said, "as if he ought to know me, and I looked at him as if
I ought to know him — and we let it go at that/' I am quot-
ing this from a conversation I had with him when I visited
Nast at his home in Morristown, New Jersey, in 1897. Nast
had many Dore drawings on his walls there. He told me that
the editors of Harper's Weekly had accused him of plagiariz-
ing Dore's mannerisms. Anyone who looks through that
magazine in the years from 1862 to 1870 will see early Nast
drawings which certainly have the powerful dramatic effects
of light and shade associated with the work of Dore. But
Nast had an original style that no plagiaristic admiration
could conceal.
Being older than I, and supposedly better versed in the
ways of the world, Web usually took the initiative in ar-
ranging our travels. But I found it necessary to prod him
to make sure that we didn't miss trains and got to places on
schedule; for he had a faulty sense of time. One day, how-
ever, he had a laugh on me when I essayed to bargain with
the driver of a cab who had deposited us at our house in
Bloomsbury Square after an hour of sight-seeing. He de-
manded half a crown for the ride. That sounded like a lot
of money, although I was muddled about money matters,
rate of exchange, and all that.
I objected that it was too much, and offered the man four
shillings. He looked at me strangely, but said: "Orl right,
Guv'ner, *av it yer own wye."
"I'm not going to let any of these grasping Britishers
overcharge us/' I said with a glow of victory when the cab
had gone.
"How much do you think half a crown is, in American
money?" Web inquired.
"I— I don't know."
"Just 61 cents. You've paid him 36 cents more than his
price."
After that I let Web handle the finances.
ART YOUNG: HIS LIFE AND TIMES 135
Though our lodgings were near the British Museum, I
never managed to visit that institution. It was on my list,
but somehow I never found time to go there, and was sorry
afterward.
We had set a limit of three weeks for our stay in London.
When I realized that we were going next into a foreign-
language country, and knowing no word of French except
Oar", I was a bit timid. Not to know the value of a country's
money is bad enough, but not to know its language is to be
helpless, I thought — and I said to Web, "Maybe Fd better
stay right here/'
But in this mood I was forgetting my objective, which
was to study at the Academie Julien. In a few days we were
off for Paris by way of Dover and that churning ride across
the English Channel.
Chapter 14
ON THE STAGE; PICTURES SET TO MUSIC
A~TER my illness in Paris, the journey home to Wis-
consin, and the strawberry festival which celebrated
my return, I found myself with time on my hands
and the problem of how best to occupy it. First of course
I knew I must look out for my health. I liked the walk to
town (about a mile) , not ^>n the main road but cross-cutting
through Ludlow's farm — stopping perhaps to lie on the
bank of the creek — and sometimes sketching cows, I don't
know of any animal more difficult to draw than a cow lying
down.
Arriving at the Square, I would go to our store, hang
around for an hour and look at catalogs and other advertising
matter that had come in the mail, help myself to candy or
fruit, and then perhaps go upstairs to the Sentinel office, and
chin with the editor, Charlie Booth. My itinerary also in-
cluded the Court House and the stand in the post office where
Chicago newspapers were sold.
At home I did chores around the farm, whereas in
younger days I had usually dodged them, especially when I
was engrossed in making pictures. The whole family now
cautioned me not to overdo, but I knew that I needed physical
activity. I was still much underweight, and naturally my
mother undertook to cure that with tasty home- cooked food.
Croquet was the outdoor sport in that day, and I thought
it fun, playing with my brother BilL Then I found a pair
of Indian clubs in the attic, a reminder of an earlier passion of
Billys, and I began exercising with these, doing fancy gyra-
tions in the front yard. This was a decided mistake. Farmers
going by in their wagons disapproved of it. Sometimes I
could hear their acid comment; or it was relayed to me
promptly by others. "If he was my boy/' said one of these
critics, "he'd exercise out in the fields with a hoe/* I didn't
want people to think I was a playboy and a loafer. I had
136
ART YOUNG: HIS LIFE AND TIMES 137
been a great expense to my family; I knew that, and the
townspeople knew it. And I did try hoeing, dutifully; but
a couple of hours of it daily was enough to wear me out.
So I took things more easily for a while. And as the
weeks went by, I had to learn that lesson more than once*
There were stretches of good weather when I would move
along in fine fettle; then I would have days with a pain in
my side, and a feeling of dread* Father had Dr. Loofborough,
our family physician, come in to see me. He was cheerful
and reassuring, "Nothing wrong with you, Art. Just a matter
of time and patience — and you'll be all right again. Get
plenty of rest — not necessarily at night, but whenever you
feel tired — and keep your mind occupied. And if what you* re
doing seems a task, switch to something else. Don't feel that
you have to do today anything that you can put off until
tomorrow/'
My chief diversion, as always, was drawing pictures, and
in running through any illustrated books or magazines that
I could get hold of. Harper's Weekly came to us regularly,
and I was first to look it over. At intervals all too long a
show would come to Turner Hall, and usually I would go
to renew my childhood; for I had been through enough
trouble to make me feel like one who was getting along in
years.
Letters from Clarence Webster kept me informed about
what the fellows I knew in the Chicago newspaper offices
were doing, and made me lonely for the color and move-
ment of the city. Yet when I thought of the possibility of
going back, I knew I wasn't equal to it yet. The fine self-
confidence that I had had for a few years while things were
going well, was lacking now. But I was keenly interested in
what Web wrote about preparations for a World's Fair to
celebrate the discovery of America by one Christopher Co-
lumbus— the question of his right to the title of "discoverer"
not having been raised in that era. The Fair would mean a
great boom, my friend and advisor said, with the newspapers
riding on the crest of the tide* . . *
And now I began toying with an idea that had long
been in the back of my mind — the writing and illustrating of
a book dealing with intimate affairs in the Hell of my own
138 ART YOUNG: HIS LIFE AND TIMES
time, as Dante (with the subsequent pictorial aid of Dore)
had done, I figured that Hades must have changed a good
deal through the centuries, in view of outside influences, just
as the upper world had changed for better or for worse.
Looking through the Dante-Dore volume that rested on the
parlor table, I was sure that many of the local institutions
shown therein would now be obsolete.
I gave attention with my drawing pen to various arrivals
in Hell since the Florentine poet's day. New subjects of
Satan took form on the paper before me — small-town gos-
sips, cornet-fiends, farmers who failed to blanket their horses
in winter, chronic kickers, botch tailors, hypocritical church
pillars, bunco-steerers, and kindred souls eligible for mem-
bership in the society of the nether regions.
Fitting punishments were set forth in other pictures —
quack doctors gulping down their own poison; boodle alder-
men, each in a superheated oven; confidence-men on a sand-
paper slide; the chronic kickers being kicked by machinery;
the monopolists and snobbish rich sitting in frying pans over
fires.
Many of those drawings I would now reject as inferior
to my present standard. Yet some of them I like much, and
would not change. One which I prize (if one may unblush-
ingly admire a self-created work) is my portrait, drawn of
course from imagination, of the inventor of the barbed-wire
fence, naked except for a high silk hat and a walrus mous-
tache sitting through eternity on his bare behind on one of
the fences he devised. As a boy in farm country I used to see
cattle and horses gashed and bleeding from encounters with
those cruel steel points.*
There was tonic for me in all this. But when I had com-
pleted several dozen new views of Gehenna, I made no move
to place the material with a publisher. That seemed a formid-
able task — and remembering the doctor's advice, I set the
whole thing aside to be taken up again when I happened to
* Until this was written I had no idea who invented barbed- wire. Then
word came that his name was Jacob Haish, and that he died in 1926 in DeKalb,
Illinois, only sixty miles from where I was born. He was 99 years old, and had
made millions from his invention, the idea for which came to him around 1851,
as he wound pasture fences with osage, which had stiff thorns. When he died
the Illinois Historical Society described him as a "man of peace", who had lived
to see the farmer's fence turned into a "tangle of horror and death that ran like
a rusty snake through northern France."
ART YOUNG: HIS LIFE AND TIMES 139
be in the proper mood. Yet I mentioned it in a letter to
Eugene Field, and I asked him how he would like to write
some reading matter to go with the pictures. "Don't be so
modest/' he replied. "Write it yourself. You know a lot
more about Hell than I do. Anybody who went through an
illness like yours in Paris ought to have no hesitation in
describing the tortures of Hades/'
Webster and I had a friend in Chicago who bore the
curious name of Wyllys S. Abbot, and who was interested in
the stage as well as in journalism. At this point Abbot had
what he considered a scintillating idea, about which he first
wrote, then came up to see me. He proposed to organize a
traveling company, of which I would be the headlines to
edify the people of various cities and towns with a combina-
tion of art, song, and music. He dwelt strongly upon my
having "a talent which ought to be capitalized/' My part
would be to draw quick sketches of well-known persons and
familiar scenes in time and keeping with music. Webster
knew of this stunt of mine and had told him about it.
I was hesitant about carrying out the scheme, but Abbot
painted its advantages in such glowing colors that I agreed —
and then we went around and enlisted Grant Weber as one of
the company. Grant, who had been studying music in Ger-
many, was the boy who had remembered his notes on the
day I got stage fright and forgot mine at the Janesville
concert when I was ten.
Abbot promptly lined up other performers in Chicago
and arranged for a tryout at the Press Club there. Admission
was by invitation only, and the membership turned out in
force. Suzanne Ella Wood, soprano, described as "a popular
young society woman on the South Side/' sang well. Grant
Weber played creditably; he had developed a fine technique,
with both power and delicacy.
We should have had an orchestra accompanying my act
to make it effective, but I managed to get along with the solo
support of one Signor Tomaso, a find of Abbot's, who used
a mandolin. While he rendered appropriate selections, I drew
quick charcoal sketches on large sheets of white paper of
Napoleon Bonaparte, General William T. Sherman, Richard
Wagner, General Boulanger, and Bob Ingersoll, with a pitch-
140 ART YOUNG: HIS LIFE AND TIMES
fork tossing him into flames. I also made Devolution sketches* '
— with a few swift strokes of my crayon. I rhythmically
changed a watermelon into the face of a grinning darkey
while the long-haired Signor obliged with the tune "Dancing
in the Barn/*
The press did well by us, so that we were able to quote
favorable comment from the Daily News, Tribune, Inter-
Ocean, and Herald in a leaflet — "novel exhibition , . .
pleasant entertainment . . . clever . . . artistic * . . rare finish
and brilliancy . . . refreshing/'
Abbot got us a booking at Plymouth Church, and here
we added a chorus of young women* This brought us more
publicity, and soon we were billed to appear at the Grand
Opera House in Bloomington, Illinois, Then Abbot spread
himself on a poster, topped by the bold-lettered words:
"Good Morning, have you seen Art Young?" Below was
some bragging about my facility, which, however, I was sure
I could live up to. Abbot said: "We've got to do it that way,
Art Everybody does it. You're not heralding your own vir-
tues, I'm doing that, as your manager/'
His ballyhoo knew no limit: "Art Young's political
satires have widened and strengthened the influence of many
journals, among them the Tribune, Dally News, and Inter-
Ocean of Chicago, Texas Siftings and The Judge (sic) of
New York, and the Pall Mall Budget of London. His artistic
pencil has accompanied Lieutenant Swatka in Alaska, Rider
Haggard in Africa, and 'Conflagration Jones' abroad, but —
"His greatest triumph is the presentation of the most
unique entertainment ever presented to American audiences
in which, keeping time and tune with his crayon, he presents
to the eye an artistically beautiful or laughable sketch . . .
suggested by the melodious strains. . . .
"The performance is wonderful — the effect is magical
Among his spectators cheers, laughter, and tears seem at his
bidding. Once seen, his marvelous talent is never forgotten.
No wan has ever before displayed it/'
We appeared in Bloomington on May 22, 1891. The
posters had said: "While the band plays he draws a picture of
a song/' But this must have been press agents' license, for
no band or orchestra is mentioned on the program. Instead
a Signor Carolla is down for a violin solo, and I seem to
ART YOUNG: HIS LIFE AND TIMES 141
remember that he supplied the accompaniment for me. I drew
pictures illustrative of the Marseillaise, Boulanger's March,
Marching Through Georgia, In the Sweet Bye and Bye,
Lohengrin's Wedding March, McGinty, Annie Rooney, We
Won't Go Home Until Morning, Hail Columbia, Tenting
Tonight, Nearer My God to Thee, and others. I am amused
now at the memory of having done a portrait of Napoleon
to illustrate the Marseillaise, but it got across with that
audience.
Svy vy I 0 Have you seen Art Yeafljg?
^^i^ ^^tr JL*H^ ^^^^
Artistic 'and Musical
ARTHUR H. YOUNG
WHEN I WAS ON THE STAGE.
The Bloomington Daily Leader said that "the critical
audience applauded long and loud/' and the local corre-
spondent of the Chicago Inter-Ocean reported the concert as
* 'an event of much social importance" and said the audience
was "not only large but containing the very elite of the
city/' Some now forgotten co-worker whom I had known
on the Daily News in Chicago, had hooked up with the
Kansas City Star, and he wrote a story for that paper, dwell-
ing upon my method of drawing a picture of Mr* McGinty
in rhythm with "the orchestra" as it played the tune lament-
142 ART YOUNG: HIS LIFE AND TIMES
ing that unfortunate worthy's descent to the bottom of
the sea.
With all this favorable comment, Abbot contended that
it was time for us to move on my home town, I was reluctant
to appear in Monroe, especially in view of my manager's
proposal that we stage our performance as a benefit to a
home-town boy who had come through a desperate illness.
Finally Abbot agreed to omit any mention of a benefit from
the advertisements, and I consented to let him go ahead with
arrangements*
So he got out a large four-page leaflet, with pen-sketches
of the principals, and with five bold cuts of myself, all alike,
spread across one page. "Admission 35 and 50 cents. Tickets
for sale at the Post Office and at D. S. Young & Co/s."
June 1 1 was the date, and Turner Hall was packed. We
gave the audience a long program for its money, and those
present demanded more from every performer. But I was not
happy that night. I felt that even though the ads had not
called the show a benefit, it was generally understood that it
was intended to be that — and that perhaps all the generous
applause was not based strictly on the merits of our offerings.
Clarence Webster was on hand, billed as " 'Conflagration
Jones/ the famous humorist of the Chicago Inter-Ocean/'
and gave, in his best style, a recitation entitled "Pizen Jim/'
with encores. Suzanne Wood, Grant Weber, and others also
were on the program. I appeared on the stage with two sets
of sketches, repeating what I had done in Bloomington.
Many friends told me that the performance was a great
success, but to me that evening was one of the worst ordeals
I ever went through. As I stood before the people of Monroe,
I felt that everyone there was a super-critic. I wondered
whether my clothes were all buttoned properly, and if my
necktie was still straight. But the music helped a lot, and I
went through all the motions of the routine that I had re-
hearsed so many times.
On the leaflets heralding our Monroe concert was an an-
nouncement of a forthcoming Chicago magazine, the
Ahkoond of Swat, projected by Abbot, with Webster and
myself as associate editors. This was planned as a monthly,
the title being borrowed from George Thomas Lanigan's
poem. In 1878, when he was on the night news desk of the
ART YOUNG: HIS LIFE AND TIMES 143
New York World, the cable brought the bare announcement
of the demise of a king in a small country in India, Unable
to find data in any reference books upon which to base an
obituary, Lanigan was impelled to write that now famous
threnody. The first stanza read:
What, what, what
What's the news from Swat?
Sad news,
Bad news,
Comes by the cable led
Through the Indian Ocean's bed,
Through the Persian Gulf, the Red
Sea and the Med-
iterranean— he's dead:
The Ahkoond of Swat is dead!"
The Ahkoond of Swat started bravely, and flamboyantly,
as such publications do. It was largely humorous, but also
contained editorials dealing with political and other affairs,
The first issue contained two of my Hell pictures, each oc-
cupying half a page. Abbot predicted a great future for this
periodical, but found it difficult to get advertising for it.
There were only three issues. So far as I know I have the
only copy of the Ahkoond that has survived.
About the same time an Englishman we knew in Chicago
launched a magazine called Push, and Web and I were in on
the ground floor there also. But it didn't have enough push
to pay its way, and soon gave up the ghost.
There had been talk of our concert company going to
Janesville and other Wisconsin cities, but after the Monroe
appearance we all felt we had enough of it, and the plan was
scrapped.
I went back to work on the Hell book, and resumed the
physical exercises. Sometimes the old weakness recurred, but
the intervals of well-being were much longer. My share of
the proceeds of the concerts was enough to justify my loafing
at home for a while longer.
Chapter 15
RETURN TO HEALTH AND CHICAGO
IT seems strange now that I lingered in Monroe conva-
lescing for a year and a half — but it took that long before
I was my normal self again. Around Christmas in 1891
I realized that I had been on the sidelines long enough; I
must get out into the world once more. A national campaign
was coming on; and there was likely to be a hot fight, par-
ticularly over the tariff. I didn't know much about the tariif
question, but I wanted to be where there was action.
New York seemed my best bet. I still had that letter of
introduction from Eugene Field to Colonel Cockerill of the
World, and there was Puck, in which a good many pictures
dealt with politics and topical affairs. There ought to be a
place for me somewhere in the metropolis. I had been wait-
ing for something to happen which would give me a legiti-
mate excuse to write to eastern editors and ask if there was
an opening. But I figured now that my chances would be
better if I pulled up stakes and saw the editors in person.
My strength had returned and I was a new man, ready for
anything.
So I said goodbye again and started east, stopping in
Chicago, of course, to look up my friends, I told Field some
new anecdote at which he laughed, and he said: "Write it/'
I did, and also made an illustration for it, and both were
published next day in his column, "Sharps and Flats/*
Dropping in at the Inter-Ocean office to see Web, I was
hailed in friendly fashion by William Penn Nixon, the editor
and part-owner whom I had met before. He inquired solici-
tously about my health and plans. Then he asked how I
would like to do political cartoons for the Inter-Ocean, which
at that time was as influential as the Tribune. It was, in fact,
known as "the farmers* Bible", so completely did the people
in the rural districts read and believe in it.
Evidently Nixon had heard about my being let out by
144
ART YOUNG: HIS LIFE AND TIMES 145
the Tribune. He knew my work on the Daily News, and also
that his managing editor, Mr, Busbey, and Webster wanted
me on the staff. He offered me $50 a week, to start at once
if I was ready, and it took me no more than a couple of
minutes to say yes. This was a definite job, offered without
being asked for, and I liked the idea of being so close to
home, Elizabeth North was now living in Milwaukee with
an uncle, which fact also had had something to do with my
acceptance,
Webster took me out to dinner to celebrate, and then we
went to look at the two great new skyscrapers that had
sprung up in my absence — the Masonic Temple, twenty-one
stories high, the tallest building in the land, and the Audito-
rium, in which were combined a magnificent opera house,
hotel, and office floors. And with the stupendous World's
Fair coming on in the fall, this surely was the place for me.
I had no regret about not going on to New York. Web and
his wife had a house out in LaGrange and next day he
invited me to share it with them. This arrangement was
agreeable and advantageous to me,
Nixon wanted me to do a cartoon every day. This was
new to the Mid-West, although Walt McDougall, whom I
was soon to meet, had been drawing one a day for the New
York World as early as 1884. Most of the cartoons which I
drew for the Inter-Ocean were my own ideas, but occasion-
ally Mr. Busbey would suggest a subject, and I would devise
a way to present it. Usually politics was my theme, varied
now and then, on an off day, by some travesty on prevailing
fads.
The Inter-Ocean was Republican, and of course for tariff-
protected industry. I had some knowledge of its past, for I
had seen that past dug up by enemy papers. They could not
forget that in 1880 the /-O had supported the Greenback
party, an act classified by the righteous as involving gross
moral turpitude, and as treason to society, business security,
and prosperity — but the farmers liked it. By 1892 the Inter-
Ocean, like the Tribune (which once had published militant
editorials by Henry Demarest Lloyd, Socialist) , had pulled
in its horns, and was now generally regarded by the business
interests as respectable and level-headed on most issues*
I had found no reason in that day to regard money-
146 ART YOUNG: HIS LIFE AND TIMES
reform as anything but nonsense and it was necessary for me
to become much older to get straightened out on that* And
I must add that 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 for-
gotten, 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.
H. H. Kohlsaat, proprietor of a chain of busy lunch-
rooms in the downtown district, was then principal owner of
the Inter-Ocean. Active in Republican politics, it was well
known that he had an ardent dislike for President Benjamin
Harrison, who hoped to be nominated to succeed himself.
The Republican convention was scheduled to be held in
Minneapolis in the second week of June, 1892, and Kohl-
saat, who had taken full charge of the newspaper, assigned
me to cover the pictorial side. He was to be a delegate.
Shortly before his departure for Minneapolis, he reached his
office one morning to discover a large number of Negro men
and women waiting to see him. All of them had seen a notice
in Eugene Field's column in the Daily News which stated
that Kohlsaat was going to Minneapolis to urge the nomina-
tion of a colored man as Vice-President, and that he was
ready to pay the expense of any Negro who would go to
the convention to help achieve that end. Kohlsaat had long
shown a philanthropic interest toward the black race. He
had to explain that this announcement was a joke by a
writer with an odd sense of humor — and it was difficult for
the hoaxed Negroes to understand that joke. Many southern
editors quoted and no doubt believed the story invented by
Field.
I remember no hotter place in my life than the vast
temporary wooden building in which the Minneapolis con-
clave was held. Rosin dripped from the new lumber of
which it was made, and perspiration dripped from the 15,000
or more persons in attendance. William McKinley of Ohio
was chairman. He tried to cool himself frequently with a
palm-leaf fan, as did everybody else. It was a fan-fluttering
ART YOUNG: HIS LIFE AND TIMES 147
convention. The thousands of fans in evidence had been
presented by the enterprising Kohlsaat, who had had them
stamped with an advertisement: "Keep cool and read the
Inter-Ocean." I was amazed at the emotional heights to which
the delegates worked up in that atmosphere.
The fight for the nomination was a three-cornered one,
the main contestants beside Harrison being McKinley and
James G. Elaine, the "Plumed Knight" of Maine. Thomas
B. Reed, also of Maine, and Robert T. Lincoln of Illinois,
son of Abraham, were lesser favorites in the balloting. A
great experience for me, watching that first of many national
conventions which I was to attend during the following
forty years. It was spectacular drama. Elaine had been am-
bitious for years to attain the Presidency, and the disappoint-
ment of his followers as they saw him losing another contest
was intense*
I sat at the press table with Walt McDougall of the New
York World and other cartoonists of the dailies. And what
was most important, I met Thomas Nast, who was doing
some special pictures for the Inter-Ocean for his friend Kohl-
saat. Nast was then fifty-two. I introduced myself to him,
and we talked at length. He stayed only a day*
Listening to speeches, watching the thunderous demon-
strations staged by the delegates, and playing a silent part
while the correspondents and artists around me speculated
on what was happening behind the scenes, I accumulated
a large stock of material for use in the campaign. Here were
the leaders and the statesmen (not always synonymous) of
the Republican party — the best minds, in action at close
range.
Chauncey M. Depew made a clear and forceful speech,
proving that he was a good speaker on serious subjects as
well as a humorist. At the end he placed Harrison in nomina-
tion, and then the band played lustily. Several men hurried
down the center aisle with a big portrait of the President,
adorned with the national colors, and fastened it to a standard
on the platform. ... In one of the demonstrations for
Elaine, the cheering was led by the portly Thomas B. Reed,
who for many years had been Elaine's implacable enemy; he
had succumbed to the pressure of what is known as political
expediency. ... A slim girl in light gray aided the Harrison
148 AJRT YOUNG: HIS LIFE AND TIMES
cause with an oft-repeated Indian war-whoop, recalling the
President's grandfather ''Old Tippecanoe."
On the fourth day the nomination went to Harrison on
the first ballot. He got 535 1-6 votes, while McKinley re-
ceived 182 1-6; Blaine, 182; Reed, 4; and Lincoln L The
Vice-Presidential choice was Whitelaw Reid, editor of the
New York Tribune, who was chosen by acclamation,
Two weeks later I attended the Democratic national con-
vention at the Exposition building on the lake front in
Chicago, at which Grover Cleveland was picked to head the
ticket, with Adlai E. Stevenson as his running mate. ^ , ,
A clergyman with a weak voice delivered the invocation,
amid cries of "Louder !" Before the prayer was ended the
Horace Boies Club, which had been vociferously champion-
ing Iowa's favorite son and Governor, started to march
down the aisle to the platform. The club was halted and
quieted by the police, , . . One ludicrous incident stands out
in memory — a faux pas of a German bandmaster. He was a
capable musician, but evidently had come to this country
some time after the Civil War, and his education in American
history was incomplete. For just as the Georgia delegation
was entering the hall, his band started to play Marching
Through Georgia. Immediately there was a riotous demon-
stration of protest among the mint-julep fanciers in Section
K and only the fact that the band playing the hated reminder
of General Sherman's march was in the gallery saved the
leader and his men from physical violence*
Tammany's representatives were drenched by a down-
pour of rain through a hole in the roof. Richard Croker and
Charles R Murphy were among those who got their clothes
wet. The Tammany crowd was backing former Governor
David B. Hill of New York, and fighting with every possi-
ble weapon to defeat Cleveland. , . . The band got a big
hand when it played Dixie and Ta-ra-ra boom de~ay.
Representative William L. Wilson of West Virginia was
the chairman, and made the keynote speech, saying: 4t Who-
ever may be chosen leader by our party in this campaign,
no telegram will flash across the sea from the castle of
absentee tariff lords to congratulate him. But from the home
of labor, from the fireside of the toiler, from the hearts of
ART YOUNG: HIS LIFE AND TIMES 149
all who love justice and do equity, who wish and intend that
our matchless heritage of freedom shall be the common wealth
of all our people and the common opportunity of all our
youth, will come up prayers for his success and recruits for
the great Democratic host that must strike down the beast of
sectionalism and the moloch of monopoly before we can
ever again have a people's government run by a people's
faithful representatives."
That sounded reasonable to me, but I was a Republican
employed by a Republican paper for $50 a week and not to
be influenced by the siren song of our opponents. Neverthe-
less 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/'
My work at the office was a consistent day-after-day
show-up of the iniquities of the Democrats. On all sides the
campaign was bitter, and grew more and more vituperative
as the months went on.
My scrap-book for that year contains all of my cartoon
attacks on Grover Cleveland and the Democratic party. On
one of these the caption reads: "The political Darius Green
and his flying machine: The greatest invention under the
sun. 'And now/ says Darius, 'hooray for some fun/ "
Cleveland, with makeshift wings attached to his shoulders,
labeled: "My letter of acceptance*' . . . "Meaningless plati-
tudes/' * . * "Speeches with no sense/' Grover stands on the
Democratic platform, labeled: "Free trade « . . No pensions
. . . Wildcat currency . . . Fraudulent elections/' He is about
to try a flight to the White House in the distance.
Remembering that Tammany Hall fought tooth-and-
nail to keep Cleveland from being nominated in Chicago,
there is a queer ring now to another of my Inter-Ocean cat-
toons entitled The Beggars. This depicts Joseph Pulitzer,
with accented nose, playing a hand- organ labeled "New York
World" and leading the Tammany tiger, which carries a
plate in its mouth. The tiger holds in a claw a paper bearing
the words: "We must buy votes for Cleveland and free
trade", while Pulitzer flaunts a banner reading: "Please give
150 ART YOUNG: HIS LIFE AND TIMES
a helping hand to the democracy of the Northwest; it is all
going to smash/'
Another picture was headed The Latest from the South,
with an underline: "Adlai Stevenson is still grinding out his
one speech to large and enthusiastic audiences/' The candi-
date, adorned with a silk hat, stands on a tree stump grinding
a hand-organ. Attached to his coat are ribbons labeled
"Knight of the Golden Circle" (the Knights were a secret
society of Democrats opposed to the Civil War) and "Green-
back record/* His sole listener is a Negro seated on a rail fence
eating watermelon.
In July the story of the battle between Pinkerton thugs
and locked-out Carnegie Steel Company workers in Home-
stead, Pennsylvania, screamed from the front pages. When
men who had struck against a wage- cut gathered to pre-
vent 300 Pinkerton men on barges from landing at the
plant, the leader of the thugs gave an order to fire and ten
workers fell, two being instantly killed. That was the be-
ginning of an all-day fight, in which the aroused steel workers
met repeated attempts of the Pinkertons to land with rocks,
bullets, dynamite, and burning oil cast adrift on the waters
of the Monongahela River. Other men died that day on both
sides of the battle, ten in all, with matiy wounded.
Around three o'clock the Pinkertons ran up a white flag.
It was shot full of holes by the enraged strikers. A second
white flag met the same fate. But when a third one was run
up cooler heads among the strikers agreed to a truce. With
women and children jeering at them, the captured thugs
marched with their hands in air several blocks to an old
skating rink, where they were held "prisoners of war" for
twenty-four hours. Then they were taken to the edge of
town and told to "hit the road/' Overnight the strikers had
burned the Pinkerton barges. Henry C. Frick, manager for
Andrew Carnegie, demanded that Governor Pattison of
Pennsylvania send in troops. But Pattison was slow to act.
Of course the press dispatches were not so explicit as the
summary of the battle that I have given here. The facts of
the situation were slow in coming through, as they usually
are in such situations, and the emphasis of the telegraphic
reports was on "labor rioting/'
Editorially the daily newspapers displayed two distinct
ART YOUNG: HIS LIFE AND TIMES 151
attitudes toward that episode, depending on whether they
were Republican-tariff-protection or Democratic- free trade
organs. We of the Inter-Ocean made the most of the battle
and its aftermath. From the dispatches I drew a front page
cartoon-spread of the tragedy, ^and underneath it the editor
put this caption: 'Who's to blame?*'
I note three cartoons that I drew in the next few days.
One has this underline: "What a regiment — if all the men
who have made asses of themselves in the Homestead riot
case would fall in line/' The picture shows several figures
each with a label: Governor Pattison, "delay in calling out
militia"; Palmer, "incendiary speech"; Voorhees, "wild
talk"; a donkey-headed "agitator"; two more donkey heads
and another down a long line labeled "free trade editor"
* . . The second picture portrays Public Opinion in feminine
personification delivering a mandate to Governor Pattison:
"Write that letter!" with an explanatory label: "Letter order-
ing out the militia in the interest of law and order." Below
was the added comment: "And he wrote it/'
My third pictorial preachment on Homestead is headed:
"Dana Shames the Small Democratic Editors/' The cartoon
depicts the New York editor in a silk hat pointing an ad-
monitory finger at a group of boys as they stand abashed at
the foot of a scarecrow labeled: "Homestead riot scare to
frighten voters." Underneath is a long quotation from Dana's
paper, the New York San, which was Democratic but not
wedded to the idea of free trade; thus:
"We regret to notice that some (nearly all) of our Demo-
cratic contemporaries are treating the Homestead incident in
a partisan fashion, for which there is no excuse* They assume
that because Mr. Andrew Carnegie and his associates at
Homestead have been engaged in an industry protected by the
tariff, and because a dispute as to wages has arisen between
the employers and employed, protection is responsible for
the murders and mischiefs. ... If strikes were never heard
of in unprotected industries; if, in fact, the greatest strikes
in the country had not occurred in the unprotected indus-
tries, like the steam railroads and the horse railroads; if free
trade England were not a country of desperate strikes, and
if these facts were not known to everybody with education
enough to read large print, these assumptions might be worth
152 ART YOUNG: HIS LIFE AND TIMES
contradicting. As the case is, they are so far fetched and
wildly absurd that we fear they will bring discord upon the
Democrats in the national campaign/'
John P. Altgeld, who had been chief justice of the Cook
County Superior Court, was running for the governorship
on the Democratic ticket. He was anathema to the Inter-
Ocean, as probably any Democratic candidate for that chair
would have been then. I look back over the anti-Altgeld
cartoons in my scrapbook now with a deep sense of shame.
Two cited here will be sufficient to typify my assaults upon
that clean man's character in those far-off days of youth.
One is headed: "Eighty Per Cent Wrong/' and under-
lines quote the S treat or Free Press as saying: "Judge Altgeld' s
record on the bench is about the worst in modern history.
Ten cases were appealed from Altgeld's court, eight of which
were reversed on account of error by the Judge. He couldn't
have been wrong oftener if he had tried/' In this picture
Altgeld is seen leaning on "his barrel" (then the political
symbol of wealth) which is labeled "Wrong Argument/*
and a string is fastened to one of his legs, which is being
pulled by Mike McDonald, political boss. Back of Altgeld
on a wall are numerous signs: "Says the wrong things at the
wrong time . . . The wrong kind of man to nominate for
Governor . . . Does wrong by his poor tenants . . . Combs
his hair the wrong way . . . Makes his tenants pay in gold
coin only, which is wrong . . . Has wrong views on the
labor question."
That was how I was making good with the Inter-Ocean
and the Republican party. It seems unbelievable at this dis-
tance 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.
But for sheer abuse the following is perhaps the prize
cartoon:
"Shades of Departed Governors, Has It Come to This?"
Shades of Yates (1862) and Edwards (1812), tall men,
stand beside the Illinois executive chair, while Altgeld, shown
as a diminutive figure, is climbing onto the dais with his
hands on the chair-arm. On his back is a keg labeled "$$$
Barrel to Buy Votes/' and on the floor are papers with these
ART YOUNG: HIS LIFE AND TIMES 153
inscriptions: "Attempted robbery of Chicago * . . Slander of
state institutions . . . Alliance with thugs and bum element/'
Altgeld had attacked the prison contract labor system,
and he had charged Governor Joe Fifer's administration with
gross extravagance, alleging, for instance, that there were
institutions in Illinois where "it took $600,000 to pay and
keep employees to expend $400,000 on the inmates of the
institution/' In answer the Republican press, with the Inter-
Ocean among the loudest, denounced Altgeld as a liar with-
out conscience. The editorial writers assailed his charges as
"the deliberate and malicious falsehoods of a brazen dema-
gogue/' they called him an Anarchist, a gold-bug, a fomenter
of "foreign know-nothingism," and asserted that he was
"never in the army at all!'*
In all this smoky conflict I followed the Inter-Ocean's
editorials and trusted the editor who had given me my job
and H. H. Kohlsaat, the owner. They were mature men and
as such I felt ought to know the truth* The Inter-Ocean
called itself a paper for the home, and it was careful not to
print anything except what was "moral/' Sometimes, it is
true, I detected flaws in the Republican armor; but I con-
soled myself with the thought that no human institution was
perfect. Perhaps politics was just sordid, unpleasant, and a
necessary evil; when I got away from the office at night I
was glad to forget about the campaign.
Despite all our bitter opposition Cleveland was elected
President and Altgeld Governor of Illinois, and afterward
the Inter-Ocean had the federal and state administrations to
attack instead of mere candidates. We got excited once about
the hardships of life at West Point, which I deplored in a
cartoon called "Straining at a Gnat and Swallowing a
Camel/' This depicts the Democratic Congress swallowing
a camel labeled "Southern harbors appropriations/' with an
underline: "Not one cent for soap at West Point, but millions
for the improvement of Southern harbors/'
We found time, too, to hit at the misdeeds of the Demo-
cratic municipal administration. In one picture entitled "A
Ruler Afraid to Rule," a feminine Chicago points to "Gamb-
ling dens running wide open/* and Mayor Hopkins replies:
44 You' 11 have to speak to the chief of police about that/'
. . . John Burns, British labor leader, came to the city,
154 ART YOUNG: HIS LIFE AND TIMES
and I quoted him in a cartoon as saying "Your streets are
vile, horrible!" and city contractors, inspectors, and sub-
contractors answering: "They suit us, see?"
So ran my first year on the Inter-Ocean.
When time had moved along to 1915 the State of
Illinois got around to erecting a monument to Altgeld's
memory in Chicago. Writing then in the Metropolitan Maga-
zine, for which I was covering Washington, I apologized
for having ridiculed the courageous little Governor in my
adolescence as a cartoonist*
"Almost every act of Altgeld's offended the capitalist
powers of the state and nation," I recalled. "He was an
idealist, therefore an 'insane statesman/ He believed in the
rights of labor, was a friend of common people, and showed
his friendship by his deeds. . * .
"I thought he must be a political Beelzebub because re-
spectable, well-dressed people said so. I soon learned, how-
ever, that well-dressed, respectable judgement is not reliable;
indeed, it is generally wrong."
Chapter 1 6
I WORK WITH THOMAS NAST
ONE of my chief compensations in working on the
Inter-Ocean was that I got to know Thomas Nast
intimately. Long a friend of Mr. Kohlsaat, the pub-
lisher, he had come to Chicago to act as judge in a contest
staged by the paper for a drawing which would best sym-
bolize the spirit of that fast- growing city. He had cut loose
from Harper's Weekly at the end of 1886 because of the
limitations which George William Curtis, the editor, put upon
his work. After the contest in Chicago, he stayed on to do
some special cartoons for a bigger and better Inter-Ocean
-which would soon make other newspaper editors in the Mid-
dle West sit up and take notice.
In that autumn of 1892 the Inter-Ocean made its big
forward step.* It had installed the first color press in the
country, and began to print a colored supplement with its
Sunday issue. In this Nast and I were presently appearing
with full-page pictures, and it was gratifying to see my
name featured in advertisements with that of the artist I had
admired so much in the dream-days back on the farm.
While color-printing has of course been much improved
in forty-seven years, the productions of that first color press,
viewed in copies of the supplement which I have preserved,
compare favorably with the fast color printing seen in comic
supplements and feature sections of newspapers today. Our
Sunday circulation was immediately increased by many thou-
sands, and the editors of the other seven-day papers were
given something serious to think about.
* The New York World has often erroneously been given credit for produc-
ing the first colored supplement. Walt McDougall, in his autobiography, gave
the date of that "first'* in the World as September, 1893; while a New York
City publication. Highlights of the Nineties, timed simultaneously with the
opening of the 1939 World's Fair, reproduced an Atlantic Garden Saturday
Night Scene from the World of November 19, 1893, calling it "the first page
of color appearing in any American newspaper." But I have pages from the
Chicago Inter-Ocean colored supplement dated as early as September 18, 1892.
155
156 ART YOUNG: HIS LIFE AND TIMES
Nast's cartoons in the supplement were usually political.
Mine dealt with various topics in addition to politics. One
was entitled "Let Uncle Sam Be the Arbitrator/' and por-
trayed our venerable red-white-and-blue relative making
Capital and Labor shake hands. Another was called 'In Dark-
est Chicago/' showing crime slinking along on badly lighted
streets. Occasionally I illustrated feature articles, such as
"Highwaymen of the Past."
That then marvelous color press had been acquired at
a propitious time, enabling the Inter-Ocean to celebrate im-
pressively the dedication exercises at the World's Columbian
Exposition, which took place in October, For more than a
year an army of workingmen had been speeding the con-
struction of the great edifices, lagoons, waterways, islands,
fountains, remodeled landscape, roads, and docks to com-
prise the dazzling White City which would commemorate the
landing of Columbus on American soiL
All Chicago's people seemingly caught the spirit of that
daring enterprise, and felt its thrill, as did the multitudes
across the hinterland — for it marked the rebirth of a com-
munity that needed to cast off a dingy skin. Architects with
soaring imagination from various cities, engineers with un-
fettered vision, sculptors and painters competent to work on
a scale of immensity until then unheard of, were given leave
to work out their dreams, with ample money and materials,
the one handicap being the pressure of a time-schedule.
There was a glow of idealism about the rising of all
that wonderland; at least so I, and most people, thought.
I did not know that hundreds of workers on the Fair were
injured in accidents due to the speed-up, nor that eighteen
of them died from those injuries in the first few months.
Such unfortunate circumstances were always kept in the
background.
It was inspiring to do pictures of those monumental
palaces and pavilions as their towers and domes rose against
the sky. Drawing now for reproduction in much larger space
than ever before, I could see my drfftsmanship definitely im-
proving. I found myself taking more pains with this work
which would appear in color than with the daily front-page
political cartoons — which I had learned to turn out between
157
158 ART YOUNG: HIS LIFE AND TIMES
4 and 6 p.m., and which were done conscientiously enough
in that limited time, but which had become routine exercises.
Other memorable things were happening that year. John
L. Sullivan lost the heavy-weight championship to Jim Cor-
bett in New Orleans* Nancy Hanks did a mile trot in 2:04.
Work was begun on the Drainage Canal, to be followed in
time by the changing of the current in the Chicago River, so
that it would flow away from Lake Michigan instead of into
it and no longer pollute the source of the city's drinking
water supply. And prominent Baptists dedicated the first
building of the University of Chicago, toward which John
D. Rockefeller had given a small fortune.
Meanwhile the fighting in the national political campaign
steadily grew hotter. Backing the Republican candidates,
President Benjamin Harrison and Whitelaw Reid, the Inter -
Ocean was straining every sinew to defeat Cleveland and
Stevenson. The Populists, too, were putting on a campaign,
and were 'Viewed with alarm" and denounced frequently
by the press serving the old parties. There were Prohibition
and Social Labor tickets in the field also, but to the press in
general they didn't seem worth worrying about.
I did at least one full-page cartoon in the Sunday supple-
ment assailing Cleveland for his free trade doctrines, and in
the week-day issues I kept throwing pictorial shafts at all
the vulnerable spots in the Democratic party's anatomy. One
of the daily lampoons is titled "Election Day." A character
identified as Demented Democracy is speaking to another
labeled Voter. The former is a frowsy man standing along-
side a downcast horse called Wildcat Banks, leading him with
a strap bearing the words Free Trade. Mr. Voter is on a
sprightly steed named National Banks and Protection, with a
paper in his pocket headed Sound Money. Demented Democ-
racy is saying: "Don't you want to change?*' and Mr. Voter
says: "Not today."
Reading the Inter-Ocean's dispatches from the political
battle fronts, to the exclusion of opposition newspapers, one
would gather that only the Republicans had any real chance
of winning. All over the country, it appeared, the voters were
lining up in huge numbers for the party of Abraham Lincoln.
But on election night the sad news came that the Demo-
crats had run away with the apple-cart. Cleveland and
ART YOUNG: HIS LIFE AND TIMES 159
Stevenson had won 277 electoral votes, while Harrison and
Reid got only 145, and the Populists (first minority party
ever to poll any electoral votes, boasted of 22) . Six states
gave the Populists a majority, and their national total was
1,065,191 votes. The new alarm at this, voiced now by both
the Republican and Democratic press, was probably genuine.
Headed by James Baird Weaver, who had been the party's
Presidential nominee in 1880, when the Inter-Ocean had
flown its banner, the Populists had waged a determined cam-
paign on a platform demanding government ownership of
railroads and telegraph, telephone, and express systems; free
coinage of silver at the ratio of sixteen to one; the initi-
ative and referendum; restricted immigration; an eight-hour
workday; and election of U. S. Senators by direct vote of the
people.
Altgeld and the whole state Democratic ticket also had
won, swept into office despite the supposedly strong Repub-
lican press. The Governor-elect had gone into half a hun-
dred counties meeting farmers, miners, and small-town peo-
ple on their own ground, discussing their problems, talk-
ing their own language with them, rather than making many
public speeches. His editorial foes of course looked askance
at all this, harpooning him for his "political handshake*' and
giving the impression that there was some skullduggery afoot
when a gubernatorial candidate came down from the plat-
form and shook a voter's hand when that hand was grimy
with coal dust or locomotive oil. This close contact with the
plain people by Altgeld was combined with attacks on the
trusts, and with exposures of Republican extravagance in
state institutions and of the dark abuses under the system
which permitted the contracting of convict labor in the
prisons. f
That defeat at the polls saddened the Inter-Oceans
official family on election night and next day, though the
gloom quickly wore off. Officially the paper foresaw calamity
for the nation under Democratic auspices, but privately the
editors didn't seem to mind. And sometimes I was moved
to wonder about the consistency of a newspaper's emotions
and actions during such a campaign. Was Cleveland actually
the national menace that the Inter-Ocean called him? I had
seen and sketched him when I was on the Daily News, and
160 ART YOUNG: HIS LIFE AND TIMES
he seemed a decent, level-headed individual And was Alt-
geld truly muddle-brained and Mike McDonald's tool? I
noted that despite the detailed instructions given by William
Penn Nixon for cartoons charging the Democratic ticket
leader with manifold villainies, Nixon, after working hours,
would readily concede that Altgeld had numerous good
points.
I could see that working on a daily newspaper when a
campaign was on was a good deal like being a soldier in a
war, on one side or the other. One's personal attitudes, if one
had any attitudes, were shelved for the time being if they
happened to run counter to those of the publication on which
one was employed. True, there were men on the Inter-Ocean,
as there had been on the Daily News, who frequently damned
the owners for their policies, but kept on working for them
just the same and never walked in and expressed their opin-
ions to Melville E. Stone or H. H. Kohlsaat. No more did L
All of us obeyed.
When the smoke from the political artillery had drifted
away, I felt it was time for me to do something tangible
about getting my Hell book published* It had been completed
weeks before, save for a few finishing touches which I attended
to over the next week-end. When Eugene Field advised that
I do my own narrative for that volume, his opinion of me
as a writer was better than mine. He had seen few samples
of my word-handling in the infrequent news stories I had
written for the Daily News city desk when dealing pictorially
with some event — hardly enough to judge by. But anyway,
I had taken his advice.
Pictures and text totaled only 100 pages, but that seemed
enough to do justice to the subject in that day, and Field,
Webster, and others were enthusiastic over my manuscript.
There were only a handful of book publishers in Chicago,
and I got a ready acceptance from the first one to which I
went. Francis J. Schulte and Company brought out the first
edition in time for the Christmas trade.
Hell Up to Date was the title of that edition, purporting
to deal with The reckless journey of R. Palasco Drant, spe-
cial correspondent through the infernal regions, as recorded
by himself: with illustrations by Art Young. I dedicated this
ART YOUNG: HIS LIFE AND TIMES 161
highly moral work to Clarence Webster "in the hope that it
will make him a better man/' The frontispiece was a full-
page portrait of the author with bandaged head, standing
alongside a bust of the first explorer of the flaming empire.
Farther on was another portrait labeled "Mr. Dante of Italy/'
showing him with a generally damaged and discouraged look
as if he had just had a run-in with a denful of devils. Of
all the pictures in that report of my initial survey of Gehenna,
that one of the pride of the Alighieri family gave me the most
satisfaction. The cover title was in bold red ink on black.
Issued at $1 and displayed by stores, news-stands, and
train butchers, the book's immediate sales appeared brisk, but
the cash returns to the author-artist were disappointing. My
royalty checks amounted to only about $500, and I had
paid for the engravings. Schultes* put out another edition for
the Canadian trade, in paper covers, for 50 cents. There also
was a de luxe edition with the title softened to Hades Up to
Date.
But if my profits on that venture were small, it did not
diminish my interest in the natural history and the social and
economic conditions in the woeful region farthest down, and
I returned to the subject in after-years.
I sent a copy of my book to A. B. Frost, then living in
Convent, New Jersey. I had never met Mr. Frost, but had
long followed his work in the delineating of American types,
particularly rural, in the magazines. He replied at some
length, despite the fact that his eyes were giving him trouble
and limiting his correspondence. There was great encourage-
ment for me in these words:
"I think you have a strong and decided talent for carica-
ture, and what is particularly refreshing in these times, your
work is your own; and does not remind one instantly of
some one else's. I like your feeling fpr movement and action
very much/'
Governor Altgeld was ill when inaugurated in January;
he managed, however, to go through his speech; then was
taken hastily to his new home in Springfield and went to bed,
where he stayed for weeks. The strain of travel and battle
had told heavily on his slight physique, There were hints
162 ART YOUNG: HIS LIFE AND TIMES
in the air that he might not survive, and the newspapers
ceased firing at him.
After President Cleveland had been inaugurated we shot
an occasional shaft in his direction; but there was less reason
now than during the campaign. Almost immediately he with-
drew from the Senate the Hawaii annexation treaty which
his predecessor had signed after "an uprising by Americans
and the better class of natives/' and offered to restore the
deposed queen, Liliuokalani, on conditions that she rejected.
That gave us an excuse for a cartoon headed "Another Ver-
sion of the Song/' with this underline: " 'Two little boys
that are blue' — black and blue/' This was a take-off on the
then popular ballad, "Two Little Girls in Blue/' The boys
in the picture are named Grover and Walt, the latter being
Walter Gresham, Secretary of State, Both are crying, and
holding their behinds, as Uncle Sam leaves after whipping
them with a bunch of birch rods labeled Public Criticism.
Above them is a bust of the Queen marked Lil, with tears
flowing from her eyes.
Interest among all the city's newspapers that spring
shifted largely to the opening of the World's Fair, scheduled
for May 1. We of the Inter-Ocean staff were called upon fre-
quently to visit the transformed Jackson Park, where the
magic white metropolis was being rushed to completion* New
wonders greeted us each time we went. By virtue of a com-
mand from the board of aldermen, the Illinois Central rail-
road, which would carry the bulk of the traffic to the Fair,
was elevating its tracks, and thus would increase its speed
and eliminate the danger to life and limb at grade crossings.
The hotels and restaurants were preparing for the expected
influx of people from all over the world, and real estate
values were booming.
On Sunday, April 30, Page 1 of our Sunday supplement
featured a colored sketch by Nast — showing the world's na-
tions, personified in the figures of John Bull and the other
males which we cartoonists used as typical, romping around
a May Pole in honor of the lovely feminine figure of Chicago,
who bore the magic slogan "I Will" upon her bodice. In
Nast's bold style, the picture bore the words: "Opening Day
of the World's Fair/'
ART YOUNG: HIS LIFE AND TIMES 163
Into the vast Court of Honor poured some 450,000 men,
women and children, who presently were milling on rain- wet
ground to hear if they could the words of the notables on the
platform flanking the east wall of the Administration Build-
ing. Here stood President Cleveland, members of the Spanish
nobility, Mrs. Potter Palmer, Governor Altgeld, General
Nelson A. Miles, Mayor Harrison, and executives of the Fair.
The President whose election the Inter-Ocean had so bit-
terly fought touched an electric key, and all the silent waiting
machinery of the Exposition sprang into life — flags were un-
furled on all those gleaming palaces, crystal water flowed
from every fountain, heroic statues were automatically un-
veiled, cannon roared from warships out in the lake.
And what astonishing things to tell of to faraway rela-
tives or friends in letters, or for the people in the country
towns to read of in their newspapers — 633 acres in the Fair
grounds, four times the area used by the Paris Exposition,
which I had seen in 1889; the Ferris Wheel,, 250 feet tall;
the Palace of Manufactures, 1,687 feet long by 787 feet wide;
the Palace of Fine Arts, crowded with aesthetic treasures; the
magnificent searchlight illumination of the Grand Basin; the
replicas of Columbus's three caravels; the reproduction of
the Convent of La Rabida, where the explorer applied for
alms before starting for the Indies; the Venetian gondolas,
with singing Italian pole-men, on the canals and lagoons;
the Midway Plaisance, with its Street in Cairo and undulant
dancing girls; the lovely tall German building; the Japanese
and Javanese villages; and many scenes that typified other
far-off countries. « , . Opposite the Fair grounds, on the
west side of Stony Island avenue, Buffalo Bill's Wild West
had set up its weather-beaten tents. There was no room for
that show within the Exposition confines. As a supplemental
attraction, it prospered.
And what do you think I liked best? The art galleries,
of course — the native art of many countries. But for sheer
fascination the Javanese village and its theatre of native actors
got to me strongest. And next in appeal to me was Robert
Burns' s home — a replica, I believe, of the simple house in
which many of his familiar poems were written or inspired.
Almost every week during the ensuing five months there
were pictures of some phase of the Fair to be drawn. Those
164 ART YOUNG: HIS LIFE AND TIMES
assignments were pleasant; for me they amounted to a liberal
education in the history, productions, possessions, and cus-
toms of the world's peoples. It gave me an illuminating in-
sight also into the habits of human beings, when gathered in
crowds* Among the masses of visitors there was a certain
curious madness which I too have felt when in some in-
triguing gallery or museum — the tendency to try to see every-
thing there in a single day or hour. Actually it would have
required six months of constant attendance to have seen all
that was shown at the Exposition of 'Ninety-three. And to
me those glorious edifices gave a lift of spirit which I had
not felt at the Paris Fair.
Chapter 1 7
ALTGELD PARDONS THE ANARCHISTS
WILLIAM PENN NIXON was chairman of the
Amnesty Association, which for three years had
been striving to obtain pardons or commutations
of sentences for the three Anarchists in the Joliet penitentiary.
It will be remembered that Fielden and Schwab were serving
life terms, while Neebe had been sentenced to fifteen years.
Union labor was strongly represented in the association's
membership of 100,000 in Chicago, but it also embraced
numerous prominent business and professional men.
Countless Chicagoans, including individuals in high
places, had come to doubt the justice of the verdict which
had sent four other defendants to the gallows and led one to
suicide. One of various reasons for this doubt was a charge
made by former Police Chief Ebersold, in an interview in
the Daily News, that Captain Michael X Schaack had manu-
factured a great deal of the evidence against the Anarchists.
That interview was published in 1889, a year after Melville
Stone had sold his interest in the paper to Victor Lawson.
'It was my policy," Ebersold said, "to quiet matters
down as soon as possible after the 4th of May. The general
unsettled state of things was an injury to Chicago. On the
other hand, Captain Schaack wanted to keep things stirring.
He wanted bombs to be found here, there, all around, every-
where. I thought people would lie down and sleep better if
they were not afraid that their homes would be blown to
pieces any minute. But this man Schaack, this little boy who
must have glory or his heart would be broken, wanted none
of that policy. . . . After we got the Anarchist societies
broken up, Schaack wanted to send out men to again organize
new societies right away. . . . After I heard all that, I began
to think there was perhaps not so much to all this Anarchist
business as they claimed, and I believe I was right/'
165
166 ART YOUNG: HIS LIFE AND TIMES
And the Herald had revealed, in a front-page story which
no one took the trouble to deny, that a secret organization of
300 capitalists, formed immediately after the Haymarket
tragedy, had for five years contributed from $50,000 to
$140,000 annually to the police "to crush anarchy in Chi-
cago/' In 1891 this organization ceased these contributions,
according to the Herald, because it had reason to believe that
"anarchy no longer exists/' The finance committee which
had disbursed the money gave out no more, but issued a
report in which it averred that $487,000 had been expended
and that "all we had to show for it was the hanging of four
men, the horrible self-murder of one, the imprisonment of
three others, and the unearthing of an alleged plot against
Grinnell (the prosecutor of the Anarchists) and Judge
Gary/'
An unnamed "attorney of great prominence/' who had
furnished the Herald with the information on which its story
was based, declared that a police raid on a meeting of
Arbeiter-Zeitung stockholders in Griefs Hall "was simply a
scheme to show men who had been putting up money to
keep down Anarchist movements that the followers of Par-
sons and Spies were not yet dead/'
A strong showing had been made to Governor Fifer that
no evidence in the trial had connected Neebe in any way with
the Haymarket bomb. But Fifer had refused to act, although
it was understood that he leaned toward clemency for Neebe.
Pressure of the opposition forces was too heavy*
Altgeld's election gave fresh impetus to the activities of
the Amnesty Association. And shortly after the new Governor
rose from his sick bed a petition for pardons for all three
prisoners, signed by more than 60,000 Illinois citizens, was
placed before him. The top signer was Lyman X Gage,
financier, who later served as Secretary of the Treasury under
McKinley, Two other leading Chicagoans, who with Gage
had been active in circulating that plea, were aged Lyman
Trumbull, friend of Lincoln, and E, S. Dreyer, a banker who
had been foreman of the grand jury that indicted the Anarch-
ists. Many of Chicago's men of affairs joined in the appeal
— financiers, railroad heads, merchants, lawyers, physicians,
clergymen. Governor Altgeld said he would weigh the argu-
ART YOUNG: HIS LIFE AND TIMES 167
ments in the petition carefully, and would get the trial record
and study it.
While that study was in progress the Century Magazine
for April came out with a long article by Judge Gary
upholding the Haymarket trial verdict and defending his
own procedure. Champions of the Anarchists promptly an-
swered Gary, in pamphlets and magazine articles, assail-
ing his method of reasoning and accusing him of bias. Other
individuals took up verbal cudgels in the judged behalf.
There was no police interference when 8,000 persons
assembled in Waldheim cemetery on Sunday, June 25, to
witness the dedication of a bronze-and-marble monument
over the graves of the four hanged men and Lingg. Justice in
bronze, with no bandage over her eyes, is seen laying a
laurel wreath upon the head of a worker who has gone down
fighting for his kind.
Out of a clear sky next day came a bolt which rocked the
nation — the announcement that Governor Altgeld had par-
doned Fielden, Schwab, and Neebe, and that they would all
be out of prison that afternoon. Not only did he exonerate
and free those three men, but he issued an accompanying
statement 17,000 words long in which he demonstrated
clearly that the jury had been packed, and pointed out that
the prosecution had never established who threw the bomb,
and that there was no evidence that any of the defendants
ever had any connection whatever with the person who did
throw it, nor that he had acted on any advice given by them.
Emphasizing the charges that Judge Gary had been preju-
diced against the defense, he said he did not care to discuss
that feature of the case "any further, because it is not neces-
sary/'
Newspapers all over the country, regardless of political
affiliations, denounced Altgeld for this action. Among the
most bitter were the New York World, Times, Evening Post,
Herald, Sun, and Tribune; the Philadelphia Press; the Wash-
ington Post; the Louisville Courier- Journal; the St. Louis
Globe-Democrat; and the Chicago Tribune and Inter-Ocean.
Editorial prose was not sufficient to express the New York
Sun's emotions. It published an apostrophe "To Anarchy "
which ended with this stanza:
168 ART YOUNG: HIS LIFE AND TIMES
O wild Chicago, when the time
Is ripe for ruin's deeds,
When constitutions, courts, and laws
Go down midst crashing creeds,
Lift up your weak and guilty hands
From out the wreck of States,
And as the crumbling towers fall down
Write ALTGELD on your gates!
All the old derogatory epithets were hurled, and others
added. The little man with the close-cropped hair and beard
was portrayed as an Anarchist himself, a bomb-thrower, an
enemy of society, un-American, a reckless demagogue, a
wrecker of democracy. In one town he was hanged in effigy.
There was talk of starting a movement for his impeachment.
Many of the newspapers took umbrage at Altgeld' s implied
criticism of Judge Gary, The Inter-Ocean was one of these;
conceding that the Governor was within his legal rights, it
called his arraignment of Gary "outrageous/' This was the
paper's official attitude; William Penn Nixon, its editor,
obviously thought otherwise* Judge Gary and Prosecutor
Grinnell declined to comment on the pardons. It was notice-
able also that Altgeld made no answers to any of the wide-
spread condemnation of his course* He had said all that he
had to say in the pardon message, and he stood his ground,
I was beginning to admire him now, though I was not
yet ready to admit that we were all wrong in our crusade
against his policies during the campaign, I could see that even
with all the new cannonading against him, his silence gave
him the advantage. And there were a few voices sounding
which called the Governor brave.
Mayor Carter H. Harrison* s paper, the Chicago Times,
held that "Governor Altgeld has done no more than right in
giving them freedom for the rest of their days/' The Chicago
Globe was confident that time would prove the "righteous-
ness and justice" of the pardons.
It took years, however, before my mind got straightened
out on the question of where justice really lay in the Hay-
market case. That mental clearance had to wait until after
Altgeld died, as this narrative will show*
Chapter 18
MAYOR HARRISON IS SHOT DOWN
THERE was an uproar that summer over the question of
the World* s Fair remaining open on Sundays, Church
people, reformers, the Fair directors, the courts, and
Congress were all involved in this momentous issue. Congress
had originally specified that the Fair grounds should be closed
on the Sabbath, in authorizing the selling of Columbian
souvenir coins to the tune of $2,500,000 to help cover Ex-
position costs* Facing a heavy deficit, the heads of the Fair
figured that a seven-day operating week would be a life-saver.
Their lawyers found a technical reason for contending that
the Congressional stipulation was not binding. Fearing a de-
ficit, the Fair officials got around that — as business men
usually do — and Sunday opening was announced, to the
horror of the moralists.
Meanwhile the reformers, not to be outdone, obtained
an injunction against Sunday operation of the Fair. It was
contested in the district courts and the ban was upheld. A
higher court reversed the decision. The Fair was now running
seven days a week, attendance increased daily, and the moral
issue was lost in the shuffle.
I continued to do large pictures of Exposition scenes for
the Inter-Ocean supplement — of the Eskimo Village, and of
the buildings and people representing various states and coun-
tries. Countless unique objects lent themselves to news stories
and illustrations — the Liberty Bell, borrowed from Phila-
delphia, the long-distance telephone to New- York, LaFay-
ette's sword, Miles Standish's pipe, John Alden's Bible, the
Japanese tea house on Wooded Island, a Bolivian Indian 25
years old and nine feet ten inches tall, and the moving side-
walk, 4,500 feet long.
There were elements of humor also in the scene. Near
the Connecticut building wooden nutmegs were sold as
souvenirs at five cents each, a little joke harking back to the
169
170 ART YOUNG: HIS LIFE AND TIMES
days of an ingenious swindle in spice selling by Yankee ped-
dlers in that state. But the demand for the wooden souvenirs
was greater than the supply, and when these ran out the
vendors took to selling real nutmegs to the unsuspecting
public, representing that they were wooden. This hoax pres-
ently being discovered by some one who thoughtfully grated
a souvenir to see what kind of wood it was made of, pur-
chasers now began clamoring indignantly for the return of
their money on the ground that they had been defrauded.
The incident furnished a nice illustration of real and
artificial values. Bona fide nutmegs were then worth perhaps
two for a cent at retail; the wood in a synthetic nutmeg
was worth much less, but the five-cent "value of such a sou-
venir was built up by the cost of the labor involved in shaping
and coloring the facsimile, the chuckle in the thought of how
the old-time peddlers put it over on customers that would
never see them again, and the novelty of the 1893 buyers
having something odd to talk about with their friends.
Downtown, for years before the World's Fair was
thought of, there was a popular department store called The
Fair. This four-story emporium extended from State Street
to Dearborn Street on Adams. As I write, forty-six years
later, it has grown to much larger proportions. But in that
day, it was something to see for its vast display of goods.
A farmer from Wisconsin, looking up and down State
Street, one day in 1893, asked a passerby: "Say, Mister, kin
you tell me where's the Fair?" The one spoken to thought
he meant the big store, which was near by, and pointed it
out to him.
The farmer spent three days looking around this estab-
lishment, from kitchen utensils in the basement to furniture
on the top floor and back again, several times. Then he re-
turned home* The natives of course asked him how he liked
the World's Fair,
"I enjoyed every minute of it" he said.
Pressed for specific information about the Ferris Wheel,
the Midway, and the ostrich farm, his mind was blank.
Though he had been looking at the wrong Fair, it was good
enough for him.
Visitors from the country at that time flocked to the
Palmer House to see an exhibition of money which was
ART YOUNG: HIS LIFE AND TIMES 171
regarded by many of them as one of the world's wonders.
In the barber shop of that hotel the marble floor was im-
bedded with hundreds of silver dollars. Potter Palmer, the
owner, once said that that was the most profitable form of
advertising he had ever tried.
On Wabash Avenue, near my first lodging house, "John
Brown's fort" was on exhibition* This was the fire-engine
house in which Brown and his army of twenty-two men
barricaded themselves when they raided the town of Harper's
Ferry, Virginia. Many bullet holes were in its walls, made by
the state militia in its siege. Some years later Kate Field, the
lecturer and journalist of Washington, D. C, raised money
to have the "fort" taken back to Harper's Ferry, where it
stands on the grounds of Storer College, a school for Negroes.
October 9, anniversary of the great fire in 1871, was set
apart as Chicago Day at the Exposition. Seven hundred thou-
sand spectators crowded through the gates, women fainting
in the crush, children getting lost or mislaid — by far the
greatest turnout the city had ever seen. Mayor Carter H.
Harrison and visiting dignitaries spoke, in celebration of the
/ Will spirit with which the community had risen out of its
ashes.
For nineteen days the elation of that gathering lingered
as the World's Fair moved toward its end. Then it was shat-
tered by a tragedy.
Summoned by a ring of the doorbell in his home, the
popular Mayor Harrison was shot down by a disappointed
office-seeker named Prendergast, who had a mental twist and
thought the mayor had plotted to keep him out of a job. Mr.
Harrison died in a few minutes, and the city he loved was
plunged into gloom.
Certainly the regret of every Chicago newspaper worker
for his death was whole-hearted, and his bitterest enemies in
life did not hesitate to laud him now for his good sportsman-
ship and his invariable on-the-square attitude.
Harrison, like Altgeld, had made it a point to get out
among the plain people and learn what they were thinking
about, and what they were up against. Repeatedly he had
taken the side of the workers when they were being exploited
172 ART YOUNG: HIS LIFE AND TIMES
by employers or beaten down by the police* He was a whole-
some man of the people in spite of his shortcomings. Among
newspapermen, I used to hear them say that before an audi-
ence of Bohemian workingmen, he would tell them he had
Bohemian blood in his veins; and when talking to Irish,
Czechs, Poles, Italians, Russians, Syrians, Greeks, or Jews,
he would claim a similar identity with them. This stretch of
his imagination appealed to me. At least it was an indication
of a lack of racial prejudice, though interpreted by his
enemies as demagogy.
Carter Harrison was a man I could not help liking,
though he was a Democrat Earlier I had illustrated the
Evening Mail's stories of his journey around the world.
Those pictures, drawn on chalk plates, were in humorous
vein, showing the mayor meeting Queen Victoria and smil-
ing upon her, hobnobbing with Bismarck, giving diplomatic
pointers to the Sultan of Turkey, and encountering the in-
evitable discomfitures of foreign travel in the Eighties.
The Inter-Ocean of course kept on criticizing the acts
and policies of President Cleveland's administration. But not
all my cartoons of Cleveland had to do with politics; some
dealt with his passion for fishing and other diversions. And
because we were not now trying to defeat him in a contest
the criticisms were usually not so harsh as they had been in
the campaign. Two years earlier his daughter Ruth h'ad been
born, and various photographs of her had been published. I
took occasion to put the child in many of my Cleveland car-
toons, a touch of sentimental contrast to her bulky father;
who wore a size 19 collar. I was told by our Washington
correspondent, White Busbey, that Mrs. Cleveland saved all
of my pictures in which Ruth appeared.
Hard times followed the closing of the Fair. Real estate
values dropped, great numbers of workers were made jobless
by the closing of mills and factories, many men begged food
on the streets with watchful eyes out for the police, and the
newspapers made much of ''the tramp problem/' They gen-
erally regarded all homeless and unemployed men as tramps,
assumed that all these wanderers were opposed to work, and
pictured "the tramp" as a menace to society. Supposedly he
was what he was because he had a shiftless nature.
ART YOUNG: HIS LIFE AND TIMES 173
Kohlsaat sold his control of the Inter-Ocean in May,
1894. The identity of the new ownership was vague, but an
official announcement said that the policies of the paper would
remain unchanged, and that the Inter-Ocean would "continue
to serve the best interests of Chicago in its onward march/'
We of the editorial department were assured that our jobs
were safe, and things went on as before*
I made it a point to sketch and interview celebrities who
came to town, and to find out, for my own information if
not that of the paper, what was in their minds. Some day
when I got around to it, I figured I would get up a book
containing pictures of well-known people I had met.
W» T. Stead had arrived in Chicago in February, intent
upon a crusade against drink, gambling, and commercialized
prostitution, which he had fought in London* Clarence
Webster and I went to see him at his hotel, and he readily
remembered the page of pictures of the last night of the Paris
Exposition which I had done for his Pall Mall Budget, and
Webster's writings for the Budget and Stead's other publica-
tion, the Pall Mall Gazette. He was exploring the slums in
our city, he told us, and was gathering material for a book on
his findings. This man, with his bushy red beard and burning
blue eyes, struck me as fearless, and sincere.
He wrote his book with white-hot ardor, and when it
was finished he had me draw a cover design for it. The title
was If Christ Came to Chicago, and it shocked the city, for
it contained names of distinguished citizens, some of them
pillars of wealthy churches, who owned buildings in the red-
light districts and leased them to the madams at high rentals.
And he listed also the names of wealthy but respectable tax-
dodgers and grafting politicians then known as "boodlers."
Stead had intended to go to other cities in the United
States and expose similar conditions, but the outcry against
"the mouthings of this alien interloper* ' was so loud and the
power of the gentlemen attacked so far-reaching that he
found his way blocked at every turn.
The press threw cold water on his fiery crusade. The
publishers and the business interests they served couldn't
allow such "bad advertising" for Chicago. Another thing
Stead did to arouse antagonism was to declare his belief in
the innocence of Samuel Fielden, one of the Haymarket pris-
174 ART YOUNG: HIS LIFE AND TIMES
oners whom Altgeld had pardoned. Fielden was a country-
man of his, having been a Methodist minister in a small Eng-
lish town*
When I drew a picture of this militant journalist, relaxing
in his room after a strenuous day in the slums, he wrote be-
neath my drawing: "These are my legs, but the face is too
tranquilly benevolent for W. T. Stead/'
CHAPTER 19
I MARRY ELIZABETH NORTH
THERE had long been an unspoken agreement that some
day Elizabeth and I would marry. That was the usual
understanding in a small town when a young man and
a girl had been "going together" for several years. And as
Christmas approached in 1894 I was in a romantic mood.
Having seen some of my friends evidently happy with their
children clustered about them, I had visualized a similar
happiness. Yet I hadn't thought much of marriage as an
actuality in my life.
But it seemed that this was a good time for Elizabeth
and myself to make the venture. I was now nearly twenty-
nine years old. I had saved up considerable money, and the
future looked bright. For seven years my sweetheart and her
sister Kate had been keeping house for* their uncle, Len
Cheney, in Wauwatosa, a suburb of Milwaukee. Elizabeth
and I were home in Monroe for the holidays, and I took
occasion to suggest a quiet wedding soon.
The idea was agreeable to her, and we were married in
Uncle Len's house on New Year's Day, 1895, by a clergy-
man friend of Elizabeth's family.
I wonder if any bridegroom ever really feels ecstatic dur-
ing a wedding ceremony. I didn't. I felt self-conscious, and
victimized by formality, and there seemed something fateful,
like the clicking of a key in a lock, in the sound of the words:
"Do you take this woman to be your lawful wife, for better
or for worse, until death do you part?" and in my answer:
"I do." But my embarrassment gave way to a feeling of
comic sadness that every young man was expected to go
through marriage ; now it was my turn. We honeymooned in
Chicago. Returning, we stayed on at Wauwatosa. The Cheney
house was neat and cheerful under the deft hands of Eliza-
beth and Kate, and their Uncle Len was a genial host.
Uncle Len liked to paint in oil. His canvases he called
175
176 ART YOUNG: HIS LIFE AND TIMES
"merely impressions" — and Elizabeth, with playful sarcasm,
would say quietly to me, "merely impressions/* He had in-
vested a good deal of money in a silver mine near Cripple
Creek, Colorado. He would read the letters from the company
aloud to us. All the mine needed now was another shaft or
an ore-crusher, and the company president or treasurer in-
variably closed his communication with "Thanks for the
check/' Through seven years the girls had become so familiar
ELIZABETH NORTH, who became the
author's wife.
with these letters that the phrase, "Thanks for the check**,
had become a household joke, and Uncle Len himself would
laugh with us, although I do not think he ever lost faith in
the mine*
I had married without much deliberation as to the next
step. We had no definite plans yet for home-making, and
decided it would be best for Elizabeth to continue living in
Wauwatosa for a while, and I would run up from Chicago
for week-ends. This was a pleasant arrangement. Through
each week I would look forward eagerly to the moment on
ART YOUNG: HIS LIFE AND TIMES 177
Saturday when I would hasten to the depot to catch the late-
afternoon train. We spent some of these week-ends in the
parks, and then extended our walks to the surrounding coun-
try. Always I carried a sketching pad in a pocket, and made
pictures of my wife in many poses, and of any likely subject
that we came upon. The next time we visited Monroe, my
brother-in-law, Clyde Copeland, said: "This ought to be a
good time for us to burn that 'No wedding bells for me*
masterpiece of yours." I made a lame joke about it, saying:
"I didn't have any wedding bells. We were married in a
house, not in a church/'
While the glow of our honeymoon was still upon us, I
began to note signs of an impending upheaval in both the
editorial and business departments of the Inter-Ocean. There
had been some change in control behind the scenes, rumor
saying that Charles Yerkes, the traction magnate, who had
been grabbing up street franchises right and left, had bought
a majority of the stock. Some time later his control of the
paper was public knowledge.
Working schedules were tightened, office rules rigidly
enforced, deadlines pushed ahead, and everybody was made
uncomfortable. Old editors, writers, and artists were being
displaced one after another. Nobody knew where the axe
would strike next. Some of the boys found other berths and
resigned before they could be pushed out. Each time a man
was given the sack he was assured that this was "no reflection
upon your ability, but simply the working out of new office
policies/' Victor Murdock was one of the reporters on the
Inter-Ocean then. Later he was elected as a Representative in
Congress from Kansas, and succeeded his father as editor of
the Wichita Eagle.
My future being uncertain, I pondered what move to
make next. Clarence Webster was planning to go to San
Francisco, having been offered a place on one of the leading
dailies there by a friend who had risen to the top since his
journalistic days in Chicago. And presently I also received an
offer — from Lansing Warren, a former member of the Inter-
Ocean staff, who had become editor of the Denver Times, an
evening paper owned by David H. Moffatt, the banker. He
178 ART YOUNG: HIS LIFE AND TIMES
wrote that the Times was willing to take me on as a cartoon-
ist at the same salary I was then getting.
Colorado seemed far away, out in the vast beyond — an
unknown quantity to me as a spot in which to live. But
here was a job worth considering. So I took the first train
for Milwaukee to discuss the situation with Elizabeth. After
weighing all the elements involved, we agreed that I'd better
go alone to Denver, try it out for a few weeks, and if I liked
the work and the location I would send for her.
Denver was then a bustling community of 125,000 popu-
lation. It still had a certain frontier rawness, though here
and there were evidences of up-to-date ambition. The air was
not at all like that of Chicago. On a summer day, if you
stepped into the shadow of a telegraph pole you felt as if you
were freezing; step out into the sun, and you were frying.
My sponsor made me at home in the Times office. After
he had introduced me to the staff and explained the paper's
program and the kind of cartoons it wanted, he took me to
lunch at the Brown Palace Hotel, the show-place of the city.
Here I spent a leisurely and profitable hour, while my host
pointed out local persons of importance and gave me the
highlights of Denver history. This hotel and this dining
room had had as guests General Grant, the Prince of Wales,
Sarah Bernhardt, Edwin Booth, General William T. Sher-
man, Oscar Wilde,' John L. Sullivan, Emma Abbott, and the
Duke of Manchester — and of course I was duly impressed.
Warren had stories to tell also of Eugene Field's years as
columnist on the Denver Tribune — his comment on the
Shakespearean efforts of John McCullough: "He played the
king as though he feared somebody would play the ace";
his entering a stray mongrel in a dog show and winning a
blue ribbon with it; and his Oscar Wilde hoax. Field dressed
up a friend in a velvet coat, with lace cuffs and a sunflower
in his lapel, and drove him about town in a carriage a couple
of hours before the poet was due to arrive. The pseudo-
aesthete bowed to onlookers along the way and raised a
plumed hat resembling a British admiral's in salute* Wilde
was ready to bite nails when he learned of the impersona-
tion, and delivered his scheduled lecture that night with
resentment showing through the words.
ART YOUNG: HIS LIFE AND TIMES 179
Coming out of the dining room, Warren said: "See that
man leaning over the desk?" A broad-shouldered elderly
person with a black slouch hat, drooping moustaches, and
an old frock coat, was asking some question, and the clerk's
answer was a negative nod. The inquirer turned glumly
away.
"That/* said Warren, "is ex-Senator Tabor, who used to
be the richest man west of the Mississippi. He was cleaned
out when the silver market hit the rocks/* Walking along
the streets Warren pointed out the landmarks which the
Senator had built in his heyday — the Tabor Block and the
Tabor Grand Opera House, in which he had objected to a
drop curtain bearing the likeness of William Shakespeare,
demanding to know: "What did he ever do for Denver?"
and having his own portrait substituted for that of the Avon
bard*
The Times had lately been taken over by Moffatt, and
though he was reputed to have plenty of money, the paper
had the -look of being on a precarious footing. It was trying
to cut into the field of the Rocky Mountain News, a property
which was doing well, and which was controlled by Thomas
M. Patterson, attorney, politician, and afterward United
States Senator. The News was a morning sheet, like the
Republican, which had merged with and absorbed the old
Tribune, on which Eugene Field had written his lively quips.
Our only rival in the afternoon field was the Post, which
also was struggling along.
Immediately I began drawing a daily cartoon, in three
column-width, and the Times featured these. Some of them
dealt with silver and gold coinage and other aspects of politics,
but a good many had to do with purely local events* My
scrapbook includes one on a vital business issue, captioned:
"Denver Holds the Bag — the Others Bag the Game/* This
shows a hunter personifying the Colorado metropolis holding
a sack labeled High Freight Rates, while other hunters (Kan-
sas City, Chicago, Omaha, Salt Lake City, St. Joseph) are
bringing down birds with guns labeled Low Rates. . . .
Another is headed: "Still They Come to the Great Conven-
tion City/* with a pictured procession revealing the Amalga-
mated Order of Chinese Laundrymen, the United Order of
Hot Tamale Peddlers, the National Asociation of Street
180 ART YOUNG: HIS LIFE AND TIMES
Bands, the Mystic Order of Phrenologists, and the National
Order of Veteran Sports, I am not sure how much benefit, if
any, the Queen City of the Silver State derived from that free
advertising, but the idea I was trying to convey was that
Denver, being the ideal convention city, welcomed all comers.
The Times didn't think much of the government's policy
in dealing with the aboriginal Americans, There was some
trouble with the red men just then, and I drew a cartoon
headed "That Bannock Indian War/' with an underline:
"We think Poor Lo has the laugh on you, Uncle Sam/'
Uncle is seen on a still hunt with a gun, while an Indian
brave is hiding behind a rock. . , . The opening of the
muskmelon season was recognized pictorially under the cap-
tion: Rocky Ford's Great Day, that town being the center of
a vast and fertile farm region where luscious melons were
grown*
Once the business manager got an idea from somewhere
that some of my pictures might be useful in appeals for
circulation. He would write the words to go with the illus-
trations. As a writer he was a good deal of a loss to the Times.
Whenever he sat down to struggle with the English language
great beads of sweat stood out on his brow. One of our
collaborations showed a lot of frogs around a pond croaking
the words: "Hard times!'' The caption went Stop Croaking
and Read the Times, and beneath the picture was this poetic
atrocity :
If croaking croakers who sit all day
And fill the air with their sorrowful lay
Would only stop croaking for a minute or two,
How much better 'twould be for me and for you.
I soon learned that they preferred me to fill my cartoon
space with glorifications and boostings of Denver — the city
a mile above the sea, with 300 cloudless days a year, the
greatest health resort in the West, and kindred claims. Colo-
rado's scenic wonders also received their share of attention.
There were other features of Denver life and industry,
however, that the Times did not touch upon, but which I
glimpsed in evening walks with Warren and others after
dinner in the Brown Palace, or the Windsor Hotel, where
the legendary Horace Tabor had held forth in the days
ART YOUNG: HIS LIFE AND TIMES 181
when he threw money away like water. The city was wide
open. "The powers-that-be figure it's good business/' fellow
staff-members explained. "Plenty of chance for the flush
boys from out of town to spend their money, or lose it on
games of purported chance. It all means that that money
comes into Denver, and gets into general circulation. Some-
body gets a cut for protection, and everybody is happy/'
Down in the night-life section, known as The Lowers,
various salons de joie were well patronized. Sounds of well-
pounded pianos came from all sides. Warren pointed out the
favorite establishment of state legislators who didn't want to
be lonesome when they visited the capital. In the gambling
houses one could find any game that his heart might desire,
and there was no limit on the stakes.
In the afternoons after I had finished next day's picture,
I would wander about town looking for ideas, dropping in
at the hotels to see if any odd characters were around, talking
with any local old-timers who happened along, and search-
ing out the city's landmarks.
On Larimer street I came upon an institution full of
romantic appeal — Tammen's Free Museum.
All sorts of relics of the Old West were here — mementoes
of Indian and cattle wars, of prairie schooner journeys, of
bad men and vigilantes, horse thieves and quick-on-the-draw
sheriffs, legal hangings and lynchings. Bows and arrows,
arrow-heads, stone hatchets, scalps, outlaws' guns, deathbed-
confessions, dead bandits' boots* The public was welcomed
to come in and see these historic trophies without charge —
but every curio in the "museum" was for sale. A thrilling
show, all of which looked real to my unsuspecting eye. But
I was not moved to buy any of those articles.
"Your instinct was correct," a former Denverite assured
me some years later. "If you had bought Jesse James's favor-
ite six-shooter, there would have been another just like it,
and with the same label, on display within a month. Tarn-
men had a factory nearby turning out that -stuff for the
visiting trade/'
Fortunately, however, there were some things in Denver
to feed the intellect. Occasionally I went to hear a militant
independent preacher named Myron Reed, who gave Sunday
182 ART YOUNG: HIS LIFE AND TIMES
lectures in a theatre. My recollection is that he had been
ousted from a regular pulpit because of sermons assailing the
methods by which many rich men had gained their wealth*
He drew big audiences, and the faces of his hearers lighted
up as he talked* To me, he gave something that one couldn't
get in a regular church — for he dealt with the realities of
that day instead of the dim happenings of 1,900 years ago.
A tall, lank Scotchman, Reed made a deep impression
upon me. His eloquence was simple, but he said things which
one remembered on the way home. He raised questions about
justice in the world, the rights of the poor, the laws that
were made by the strong to keep the masses "quiet and con-
tent/'
Listening to this clear-speaking man, and thinking about
his words afterward as I walked along the streets, I began to
wonder about the justice in the attitude of the newspapers
generally toward happenings like the march of Coxey's
Army, and the American Railroad Union strike, in which
Eugene Debs had seen sent to jail. The movement set going
by "General" Jacob Coxey had failed, it was true; but had it
THE VANGUARD OF COXEY'S ARMY. Led by Carl Brown on a
white horse, it enters Washington.
ever been given a chance to succeed? From the start the press
had heaped ridicule upon it; and another countless army —
of paid molders of opinion- — had seen hilarious comedy in
the spectacle of thousands of ragged and hungry men beating
their way across the country to demand relief in Washing-
ton**
* By the same token, a multitude of theatre-goers through five years have
laughed uproariously at the comedy in Tobacco Road, evidently without per~
ceiving the underlying tragedy in the dramatized lives of Jeeter Lester and his
impoverished family in the back country of Georgia. Max Eastman explains this
phenomenon in his Enjoyment of Laughter.
ART YOUNG: HIS LIFE AND TIMES 183
But what was wrong In that attempted protest? I re-
called the editorial bleating of outrage when Coxey's fol-
lowers commandeered freight trains to speed their progress*
That was trespass, of course; or confiscation, if you pre-
ferred the word; yet what was there so terrible about it?
Weren't the editors and captains of industry really incensed
because the Coxey migration showed up the vast poverty and
degradation in the United States? Wasn't it in the nature of
a mortifying "scene" — like that of a neglected wife berating
her husband in public?*
I reflected, too, that one Chicago newspaper, the Times,
had held that the treatment of the Coxeyites by the Washing-
ton police was 'Vicious and brutal** and "a blunder/' The
Times had been owned by the assassinated Mayor Carter H.
Harrison and had since been operated by his son Carter Jr.
and another son*
That paper, too, had taken the side of the railroad
workers in the great Pullman strike when George M. Pull-
man had answered their demands for a living wage by say-
ing: "There is nothing to arbitrate/'
It was in such a mood that I went to hear an address by
Keir Hardie at a labor mass-meeting, I had read about him,
and he had appealed to my imagination. I knew that this
Scotsman had been a coal miner and a union leader, and that
he was a member of Parliament, representing a London dis-
trict*
Early that summer Hardie had stood up in the House of
Commons and attacked Chancellor of the Exchequer Sir
William Harcourt, Leader of the House, and his fellow-
members for refusing to express a vote of sympathy to the
bereaved families of more than 250 miners killed in a South
* The eminent Mark Sullivan, in Our Times, declares that Coxey's Army
marched to Washington to "take control of the government in the interest of
the people — or what Coxey thought was the people's interest." Mr. Sullivan is
one of those casual historians who pick up their "facts" here and there. I doubt
if any of Coxey's critics in 1894 ever went so far as to accuse him of any in-
tention to take over the government. The manifest purpose of Coxey and his
legions of the dispossessed was to demand that Congress provide aid for unem-
ployed workers and their families. That of course was a startling proposal in
those days long before the New Deal. If the federal authorities had had any
tangible evidence of subversive plans, the leaders of the march surely would
have been prosecuted for treason, instead of being jailed for walking on the
Capitol lawn.
184 ART YOUNG: HIS LIFE AND TIMES
Wales colliery explosion. That happened because the grasp-
ing mine owners had not provided adequate safety devices.
Harcourt had moved a vote of condolence to the people
of France when President Carnot was assassinated the next
day, and called upon the House to congratulate Queen Vic-
toria upon the birth of her great-grandson, who in time
became King Edward VIII. But the Chancellor ruled out of
order a move for an expression of antipathy to the system
which made mine disasters inevitable.
In a speech which nearly caused apoplexy to many of his
hearers and which brought bitter denunciation to him from
the reactionary English press, Keir Hardie stood unwavering
and said:
"The life of one Welsh miner is of greater commercial
and moral value to the British nation than the whole royal
crowd put together. . . . Two hundred and fifty human
beings, full of strong life in the morning, reduced to charred
and blackened heaps of clay in the evening! . . . Only
those who have witnessed such scenes, as I have twice over,
can realize what they mean. . . .
"Coal must be got cheap — even if twelve hundred sturdy
miners are murdered yearly in the process — twelve hundred
hearths made desolate."
He was shaggy looking like a Scotch terrier, his head,
chin, and cheeks covered with brownish curled hair — and his
strong voice deeply burred. Thirty-seven then, he looked
considerably older. One could see at once that beneath this
rough exterior was a man of learning. The thing that he
brought home most forcibly to me that night was the fact
that a strike or a lockout or an industrial disaster was not an
isolated event; it was part of a struggle, a war, which had
been going on for decades, and knew no national boundaries.
"The employers and their henchmen/' he said, "have a
trick of appealing to your sense of local patriotism. They
blame unrest on 'outside agitators/ and infer that if it were
not for these evil interlopers everything would be lovely in
your community and that nobody would be complaining.
That trick is as shoddy as the other one of setting two groups
of people at one another's throats by stirring up their re-
ligious differences/'
He quoted a line from Robert Browning: "God give us
ART YOUNG: HIS LIFE AND TIMES 185
no more geniuses, but elevate the human race!" I had never
read anything by Browning, and this aroused my interest in
him* But I could never find such a passage in any of his
books.
That gathering was notable also because its chairman
was Governor David Hansen Waite of Colorado, who had
been elected by the Populists. A calm enough appearing indi-
vidual, who looked like a fine old farmer, he had been jeer-
Denver Times
KEIR HAS.DIE, dealing with the class
struggle in a Denver speech.
*
ingly characterized by the press as '"Bloody Bridles Waite' '
for a speech he made at the state silver convention two years
before.
India's mints had stopped coining silver, and immediately
the Colorado silver producers had shut down their mines. It
was then that Waite, addressing that convention, was quoted
thus:
"If the money power shall attempt to sustain its usurpa-
tion by the 'strong hand' we will meet that issue when it is
186 ART YOUNG: HIS LIFE AND TIMES
forced upon us, for it is better infinitely that blood should
flow to the horses' bridles rather than that our natural lib-
erties be destroyed* . . .
"If it is true that the United States is unable to carry out
its governmental policy without the dictation or consent of
foreign powers; if we are a province of European monarchies,
then we need another revolution, another appeal to arms/'
But he talked sensibly enough at the Hardie meeting, and
had none of the look of a fanatic which one might expect
from newspaper descriptions of him.
As the weeks went by I kept postponing my decision as
to whether Elizabeth ought to come to Colorado, Though it
made a good deal of noise, the Times did not seem to be
making much actual headway, and I felt that my position,
like that of the rest of the staff, was not secure.
For recreation I took a week-end trip farther up into the
mountains, to Silver Plume, went riding along rugged trails
on a burro's back, and did some sketching and water-color
painting — as well as a lot of thinking about the future. The
novelty of Denver and its holdover atmosphere from fron-
tier days was wearing thin. I missed the crowd-surge of
Chicago. Perhaps the time was ripe for me to go to New
York as a cartoonist and illustrator instead of as a student. I
would weigh that possibility further. About all I had accom-
plished in Denver was a reputation for boosting a locality.
A newspaper publisher in Pueblo, a hundred miles south
of Denver, who had got me to draw a boosting cartoon for
his city, annoyed me by failing to pay for it despite repeated
duns. The more I dwelt on this publisher's audacity, the
angrier I became. Finally I sat down and wrote him a threat-
ening letter, saying that I was about to get out a revised
edition of my book Hell Up to Date, and that I intended to
put in a Department of Dead Beats with him in a front seat
fully identified. By return mail I received an answer: "You
win. Here's your check/'
Chill autumn weather came, and I felt drawn toward
home. Denver had a feeling of isolation about it, for I re-
membered pictures in Harper's Weekly of trains snowbound
for days in the mountains of the West. I didn't like the
thought of being caught and held in Colorado through the
ART YOUNG: HIS LIFE AND TIMES 187
winter. And the Denver newspaper field seemed to lack life;
the dailies dealt with all sorts of trivialities, reminding one
of a small town like Monroe. So I gave two weeks' notice of
leaving. Warren was sorry; we had become good friends.
CHAPTER 20
HELPING THE YELLOW PRESS START A WAR
ON my way back to Wisconsin I kept thinking that it
would be best for us to live in New York. I must get
into a broader field. Elizabeth readily assented when
I rejoined her in Wauwatosa, and in a few weeks we were
packed up and set forth. Whether I would seek a regular job
or free-lance was still an open question, but I was keen for
some arrangement whereby I could do steady production.
Constantly in my mind was the realization that it was a
mistake for a man like me to be married. I had chosen a
lovely, intelligent girl for a mate, and yet I had a feeling that
the freedom I had enjoyed when single was no more. I was
no longer an individual thinking in terms of one. Every
thought, every plan, now had to include another, and later
on probably it would have to include three or four. I am
sure that Elizabeth tried hard to understand what kind of a
man it was to whom she had entrusted her future. Still I felt
there was something wrong in the idea of our signing a
contract agreeing to love each other forever — when Nature
obviously was opposed to such compacts.
Yet Elizabeth was patient. She saw humor and beauty in
life, and our journey to the metropolis was an enjoyable
one. I found fun and novelty in showing my wife the sights
of New York. We lived first on Washington Place, a few
doors from Washington Square, where we had a comfortable
apartment. As soon as I got down to work here things took
on a brighter hue, and I began to feel that maybe married
life would turn out all right after all; perhaps it was just a
matter of adjusting myself to the changed conditions.
Later we lived in the top studio of the Winfield Scott
Moody home on Ninth Street west of Fifth Avenue. Moody
was one of the editors of Scribner's, and his wife was a writer
for the Ladies' Home Journal and other magazines. After-
ward, for a time, we had a cheerful hall room in a boarding
188
ART YOUNG: HIS LIFE AND TIMES 189
house on West 16th Street, opposite St. Francis Xavier Col-
lege.
Here I began to see that Elizabeth could be helpful in
suggesting ideas for drawings. Two pictures among others
for which she gave me the suggestions come to mind. One,
published in Life, bore the caption: "Willie Jones — as he
seems to his teacher — to the cook — to the cat — to his
mother/' Another, used in Judge, portrays a farmer who
looks at his turkeys as they stand sadly awaiting the Thanks-
giving Day axe, and beholding the long necks and general
"THE TIE THAT BINDS/'
FARMER—" Mother. I hain't got the heart ter do It. It 'd seem too much like killln' one o' the family."
A COMIC SUGGESTED BY MY WIFE.
Judge
resemblance to his own kin, says: "Mother, I haint* got the
heart to do it — it's too much like killing one of the family/'
At that time I had my first experience with the type of
man who might be termed a 'city slicker." He was a Wall
Street speculator with an office in Exchange Place. My wife
met his wife in the boarding house and we all became so-
ciable. Free with cigars and with an air of prosperity, he got
into my good graces by praising Elizabeth's character and
looks. And one day he mentioned that he might be in a posi-
tion soon to put me in the way of making considerable
money. He was just waiting for an expected turn in the stock
market to cash in on it in a large way*
190 ART YOUNG: HIS LIFE AND TIMES
Presently he announced that that turn had come, and if
I could put up $300 he would invest it for me so that I
would make a fat profit. By adroitly leading Elizabeth on in
conversation, his wife had learned that I had some $3,000 in
a savings hank, which I had drawn out of a Chicago build-
ing and loan association* My sense of caution led me to balk
at giving him the sum he asked, but I let him have $200 —
with which he bought the rising stock, only to have it go
down like a punctured balloon next day. I never got any of
the money back, and counted the experience as a valuable
lesson*
In this boarding house lived Volney Streamer, who
worked for Brentano's as an expert in English bibliography.
He wore a wig, had been an actor with Booth, and was now
dyspeptic and a misanthrope. My brother Will, who had
come east a couple of years before and was on the World
staff, had met Streamer on several occasions, and one evening
when we were sitting in the parlor Streamer came in. Will in
his cordial manner said: "Good evening, Brother Streamer!"
Scowling darkly, Streamer retorted: 'Tin brother to no-
body!"
I made no move to get a job in New York. Free-lancing
appealed to me now much more than tying up to office
routine, and in the long run, I thought, I would make more
money in the open market
My drawings in that period of frequent change of resi-
dence were done anywhere — in bedroom or living room or
wherever I could slant a drawing-board, and usually I had
difficulty in finding a good light. It was not long, however,
until I bought a simple collapsible drawing table, which I
still use. For forty-odd years I have drawn most of my car-
toons on this table. Later, in relatively prosperous days, I
bought a larger one, of an expensive type used by architects,
on which I drew with a feeling of being less restricted in area
— and this I also have in my Bethel studio.
When I was a boy I remember writing to Bernard Gillam
of Pack asking him what kind of a pen and what kind of
paper he used in doing his cartoons. He didn't answer. Nor
was the question so momentous as I thought I didn't ask
him what kind of a table he used, but details concerning the
tools of any profession loom large in significance when
ART YOUNG: HIS LIFE AND TIMES 191
you're young — less so as one gets older. My friend T. S.
Sullivant of Life was one who never got over his keen in-
terest in implements and materials. He would be jubilant for
days over the discovery of a certain quality of paper or a new
pen which worked just right*
During those first years of married life and trying to
succeed I found that I could not make sufficient income to
meet our living expense. Gradually my bank account was
dwindling, but not through other reckless loans of money
for speculation. Some months I would break even — then
have a slump. If I received a check for less than I thought I
ought to get from Life, I would spend hours trying to write
a tactful letter to John Ames Mitchell, the editor, explaining
that I had expected at least ten dollars more than he had paid
me; and invariably he would send me an extra ten. But
generally I had no heart for arguing about money and would
take what I could get.
Soon I came to know the personnel of the inner sanctums
of Pack, Judge, and Life, and what was quite as important
I knew those stationed at the outer gates, so that I wasn't
kept waiting when I called to see the editors. Frequently I had
dinner with one or more of them — Tom Masson of Life,
Grant Hamilton and James Melvin Lee of Judge, young Jo-
seph Keppler, Arthur Folwell, and Bert Leston Taylor of
Puck.
The elder Joseph Keppler, whose cartoons in that weekly
had been a national institution for so many years, had died
in February, 1894, and I had done a memorial cartoon of
him then for the Chicago Inter-Ocean. Young Joe thought-
fully gave me a fine collection of prints and humorous Euro-
pean magazines which his father had owned. Looking them
over is one of my pleasures today.
I still called myself a Republican, and the anti-Democrat
atmosphere of the Inter-Ocean office still clung to me as the
1896 national campaign got into full swing. McKinley and
Hobart were appealing for votes on the promise of "a full
dinner pail for every workingman." That struck me as a
vulgar issue, and I told Grant Hamilton, who did most of
the full dinner-pail cartoons for Judge, that a plea to the
worker's stomach, as if that was the only thing the laboring
man could understand, was insulting.
192 ART YOUNG: HIS LIFE AND TIMES
But I remembered the hard times under Democratic rule,
which was being emphasized in Republican campaign litera-
ture, and I was pleased with the opportunity to propagandize
for the Grand Old Party — I was working for the nation's
"best people" — the same party which, led by Herbert Hoover
years later, appealed to the workers with the slogan: "A
chicken in every pot/'
W. J. Bryan had been nominated by both the Democrats
and the Populists, who termed themselves the People's Party,
and to us Republicans that proved there was something
wrong with him. He had won the nomination by a speech in
Chicago, which was being repeated by other orators as if it
were a trumpet call to save the nation — that speech which
had this grandiloquent climax:
"You come to us and tell us that the great cities are in favor
of the gold standard: we reply that the great cities rest upon our
broad and fertile prairies. Burn down your cities and leave our
farms, and your cities will spring up again as if by magic; but
destroy our farms and the grass will grow in the streets of every
city in the country. . . .
"Having behind us the producing masses of this nation and
the world, supported by the commercial interests, the laboring
interests, and the toilers everywhere, we will answer their demand
for a gold standard by saying to them: You shall not press down
upon the brow of labor this crown of thorns, you shall not crucify
mankind upon a cross of gold."
"Just a demagogue's play to the farmers and labor, the
seductive words of a master-hypnotist," the Republicans
said. Bryan as a Democrat was crusading for Free Silver, on
a 16-to-l coinage ratio, and the pro-McKinley press saw a
great danger in that. I was never quite clear about the silver-
and-gold coinage question, and in fact I would be hazy about
it now if some visiting foreigner were to ask me point-blank
to explain it* But as the candidate of the Populists the Com-
moner from Nebraska stood for government ownership of
the railroads, the telegraph, and the telephone systems — and
that practically meant Socialism, or Anarchism, according to
the newspapers and magazines which spoke for the Repub-
lican party.
Judge was in the forefront of the attack. Its methods were
ART YOUNG: HIS LIFE AND TIMES 193
far from scrupulous, as I view them now, though at the time
I was not so critical, the attitude of all those around me
being that anything was fair in politics. Typical of Judge's
onslaughts was a full-page front cover cartoon in colors,
drawn by Grant Hamilton, and captioned "The Sacrilegious
Candidate/' This portrayed Bryan, bare-armed and with torn
shirt, standing with booted foot on a Bible, with a cross of
gold in his left arm and a crown of thorns in his right hand.
Speeches "plagiarized from the Bible'* protruded from his
pockets. Beneath the picture were the words: "No man who
drags into the dust the most sacred symbols of the Christian
world is fit to be President of the United States/' Nearby a
tatterdemalion figure in a French Revolution cap was waving
a red flag labeled Anarchy.
But if Judge's editors were horrified by the idea of drag-
ging sacred symbols in the dust, its advertising department
was not. For in the same year that periodical ran an advertise-
ment reading: "The modern Joan of Arc polishes her boots
with Brown's French dressing/* with a half-tone cut of
Joan, sword in one hand and flag in the other.
As a result of all this valiant effort, our noble candidates
won. The villainous Democrats who had been responsible for
all the hard times were sent up Salt Creek by vote of the
people, and in came a new era of prosperity and full stomachs
for the workers — that is, if you read the Republican press.
But my own income was still low, and the economic
problem was pressing. Mornings I spent at the drawing table,
and in the afternoon I would set out to visit editorial offices
or to cultivate contacts through which I could learn the
political inclination of editors who were buying pictures. I
would study current magazines for their "policy" — for each
had some definite slant. Most of this studying was done at
the periodical counter in Brentano's basement, where I would
browse at length and finally pay out money for a single
magazine — as a sop to my conscience for having had such an
educational feast.
I had been working at intervals on pictures and text for
a book to be called Authors' Readings. This was intended to
comprise recitations from the work of sixteen well-known
writers, with a short biography of each, and sketches showing
Authors' Readings
FROM AN EARLY ART YOUNG BOOK. Literary notables of the day.
The one whose name is not shown is C. B. Lewis, widely known then as
"M. Quad."
them in characteristic attitudes, as I had seen them reading
their works* Frederick A. Stokes liked the idea, but thought
my manuscript contained enough material for two books.
194
ART YOUNG: HIS LIFE AND TIMES 195
So a single volume of 2 1 5 pages was published, dealing with
nine individuals — Eugene Field, James Whitcomb Riley, Bill
Nye, Hamlin Garland, Ella Wheeler Wilcox, Opie Read, Will
Carleton, Mary Hartwell Catherwood, and C B. Lewis, who
wrote under the nom de plume of M. Quad. There was a
foreword implying that a second volume would be issued to
cover the others, who were named.
Both the publishers and I were expectant of substantial
sales. But the returns were small, and so the plan for the
second volume went into the discard. It would have cele-
brated the literary creations of General Lew Wallace, Captain
Charles King, Joaquin Miller, Octave Thanet, John Vance
Cheney, Lillian Bell, Henry B. Fuller, and Robert Burdette.
I had a notion that the West was breeding writers who in
time might stand the test of enduring worth as well as the
New England breed. Some of my selections were amateurish
— but they were the best I could find at the time.
After the battleship Maine was blown up I made several
cartoons for Leslie's Weekly in line with its advocacy of war
with Spain. For months various New York newspapers had
been emphasizing the tragedy of the Spanish domination of
Cuba, against which the Cubans had revolted, and calling for
intervention. The killing of 257 American seamen in Havana
harbor intensified the editorial demands to the point of
hysteria. It was instantly assumed by the Hearst papers and
others not ordinarily thought of as yellow that Spain's hand
was behind that explosion — although the court of inquiry
never found any tangible evidence of that, simply reporting
that in its opinion the explosion was due to a submarine
mine*
But it was easy for me to believe, as everybody around
me did, that Spain was guilty. Such an act seemed in line with
its treatment of the Cubans, and its surly attitude toward
American protests against its policy in the Caribbean area.
No one seemed to realize that it might have been perpetrated
by some Cuban who wanted the United States to intervene.
And on all sides the press and public men were thundering
that it was a sacred duty for this nation to chastise Spain and
put her in her proper place. The Hearst papers were inter-
spersed with small red-white-and-blue American flags with
196 ART YOUNG: HIS LIFE AND TIMES
the words: "Cuba Libre!" and "Remember the Maine!" And
boys and men were wearing celluloid buttons on their coat
lapels bearing those slogans and another: "Remember the
Maine, to hell with Spain !"
Instead of spreading my war cartoons across several issues,
as I had anticipated, Leslie's combined them into a full page
and ran all at once. That was gratifying*
Those drawings illustrated quoted passages from speeches
by four United States Senators — Thurston, Proctor, Gallin-
ger, and Mason — all calling for revenge.
In one issue Leslie's asked that the public suspend judge-
ment on the guilt in the blowing up of the Maine until the
wreck could be raised and the truth about the cause ascer-
tained. But that, I believe, was its only judicial utterance in
that period. Week after week it whooped up the war spirit.
If there were indeed any voices objecting to our coming to
grips with Spain, they were lost in the din.
To me that war, when it presently came, was equally as
just as the war waged by the North to free the slaves. Even
though I knew that the South had fired the first gun in 1861,
I was still confused about that conflict. I was not aware then
of the economic causes which lie behind most wars. . . . Spain
needed a lesson, I thought, and needed to be soundly whipped.
But when the stories began to come through from Tampa
of the "embalmed beef" fed to the American troops, of sol-
diers dying like flies of fever and dysentery in unsanitary
camps, and then of others dying in battle, some of whom had
been my friends and acquaintances, doubt entered my mind.
Was war, after all, the best way to settle international
wrongs? And how far, I asked myself, was a cartoonist or an
editorial writer who advocated such a war, responsible for
the deaths of those soldiers? It was chiefly members of the
working class who were being killed and wounded, and not
the sons of the meat packers or of the other wealthy men
who were making big profits on sales to the War Department.
Even with those doubts, I was thrilled when the news
came of Dewey's victory in Manila Bay. Most of the re-
ports in the press were highly dramatized, and throughout
all the news and editorials the note was sounded insistently
that this was a righteous war. There were acts of individual
daring, like that of Hobson and his men sinking the collier
ART YOUNG: HIS LIFE AND TIMES 197
Merrimac in Santiago harbor to bottle up Cervera's fleet,
which made patriotic hearts beat faster — and I was still a
super-patriot — my country right or wrong,
Teddy Roosevelt leading the Rough Riders up San Juan
Hill was great stuff — reading the papers one got the idea that
Teddy was practically the one who won that war.
Occasionally, however, there were notes of discord — for
instance, Stephen Crane's dispatch to the World which told
THE TERRIBLE TEDDY.
of the Seventy-first New York Volunteers, a militia regi-
ment, lying down to keep out of the way of bullets while
other regiments pushed forward to cope with the Spaniards.
Mr. Hearst's Journal promptly assailed the World for this
dastardly reflection upon the bravery of local boys, although
its indignation was soon deflated when the redoubtable Teddy
confirmed Crane's story.
All the heroes came home — except those who had died
afield — and New York yelled itself hoarse. I went to hear
Roosevelt speak on the night of his return from Cuba, every-
198 ART YOUNG: HIS LIFE AND TIMES
body, including myself, shouting: "Hurrah for Teddy!"
. . Lieutenant Hobson was kissed by countless young
women; Admiral Dewey moved up Fifth Avenue and
through the Victory Arch, acclaimed by the greatest throng
the city had ever seen; the Hearst papers collected pennies
from school children to buy a house in Washington for
Dewey and his bride; and Theodore Roosevelt's political for-
tunes prospered because of his war reputation.
After T. R. became President the Russian painter
Vereshtchagin visited Washington and spent many days at
Fort Meyer painting a big canvas showing the charge up San
Juan Hill. The belligerent Teddy was revealed in the thick
of the fray, on a white horse. This simply proved that the
great Russian artist had read the early dispatches about that
battle, and not the later corrected accounts, which brought
out that there were no horses in the San Juan assault. The
painting, with the white horse still in it, is said to have been
sold in New York for $10,000 a few years later. ... In
1917, when he was touring the army camps, T. R. got a
laugh in his speeches by saying of the Spanish-American
imbroglio that "it wasn't much of a war, but it was the only
war we had just then/'
We got the Philippines, which seemed the right thing,
on the theory that if we didn't step in and protect the helpless
Filipinos, no longer under the Spanish yoke, some grasping
nation like Japan would go in there and take over the islands
and exploit the natives. Thus Uncle Sam was being mag-
nanimous. I didn't know until long after the fact that
600,000 men, women, and children died in Luzon alone as a
result of the American-Filipino War which followed the
Spanish-American conflict.
To those who may view this statement as incredible, I
suggest that they read the evidence on page 121 of The Con-
quest of the Philippines by the United States, by Moorfield
Storey andMarcialP. Lichauco (Putnam, 1926) . The charge
is based on an estimate made by Gen. J. M. Bell, who spoke
from first-hand knowledge. That figure represented one sixth
of Luzon's native population.
Two sentences from General Bell's comment on his own
figures clearly illuminate his attitude toward the situation:
"The loss of life by killing alone has been very great, but I
ART YOUNG: HIS LIFE AND TIMES 199
think that not one man has been slain except where his death
served the legitimate purpose of war. It has been thought
necessary to adopt what in other countries would probably
be thought harsh measures/' The italics here are mine.
CHAPTER 21
MATRIMONY HITS A REEF
SOMETHING was wrong with me, I didn't know what.
I was listless, found it difficult to concentrate on my
work, and lay awake nights. So I went to see a doctor.
"Nothing organically wrong," he said. "Just a case of 'nerves/
You've been working too hard. How about a change of scene
for a while?"
I knew of one place where I could go for an inexpensive
outing. A couple of years earlier Father had bought forty
acres of timberland in Southern Alabama, which the Mobile
and Ohio Railroad had been selling cheaply. He had spent
two winters down there, clearing the land with hired help,
and planting almond trees. His plan was to have an almond
grove for each of his four children, so that when the trees
matured we all would have a profitable inheritance. He stayed
in a hotel in Citronelle, the nearest town, during those visits,
and Mother was with him through one of the winters. A
couple employed by Father did the general work on the
farm.
I took a train for Alabama, and in a few days Elizabeth
joined me. We occupied a little house just outside Citronelle,
which was set amid healthful wooded country. Here one saw
incredibly tall and straight Caribbean pines in great pro-
fusion. And there was fine sketching material hereabouts,
both in the landscape and among the primitive white folks
and the happy-go-lucky Negroes (thus I thought of them
then, not knowing of the hard lives of which their apparently
care- free attitude gave me no hint) * We soon got acquainted
with the neighborhood pickaninnies. Some were named after
perfume brands and others after labels on package groceries.
I liked to talk with them, their vocal tones and their dreamy
ideas about life delighting me. The name of one little girl, so
she insisted, was Pickle Lily.
I sold a few comic pictures at that time to Judge, for ten,
200
ART YOUNG: HIS LIFE AND TIMES 201
fifteen, or twenty dollars. My income was nothing to brag
about, but rent was low, food cheap, and fuel cost nothing.
Pine wood, to be had simply for picking it up, made an ex-
cellent cooking fire.
The almond farm was miles back from the railroad, and
to get to it one had to travel with a team over miry roads
through bad swampy country. Elizabeth and I visited it a
few times, and the thought of reaping a comfortable living
from nut groves in future years was gratifying — but I was
not tempted to do any of the work on the farm, although
Father was busy all the time. Clearing that land for nut
cultivation was back-breaking toil, and I was satisfied to let
the hired help earn their pay.
After several months in Alabama, I felt much refreshed,
and we returned to New York. My brother-in-law Clyde
Copeland also went to Citronelle for a few weeks, to help
along the almond project and for a vacation. But I never
visited Alabama again. The almond trees did not thrive, and
presumably the soil was not right for them. In time Father
gave up the idea, and sold that land.
"Well, it was a change anyhow and a good way to escape
Wisconsin winters/' he said, the next time I saw him. "But I
guess I'd better stick to the store business/'
We took a small upstairs apartment in West Ninety-third
Street, and I resumed picture production with considerable
vim. Frank Nankivell, illustrator, Percival Pollard, then a
well-known magazine editor, and Robert H. Davis had the
first floor. Hearst was then buying talent away from Pulit-
zer's World, and Bob Davis was one of the young editors
and artists from the West who were making the Evening
Journal look lively* All kinds of sensational features were
being tried out.
Davis was running the Journal's editorial page for a while
and I wrote a few editorials with illustrations for him. I
suggested that they be printed in facsimile typewriter style,
and he thought this a worth-while innovation. But I couldn't
keep it up. When it came to pouring out my thoughts in
words on paper I lacked the necessary ability to keep going
and sustain my theme. I could spurt now and then, but
routine writing has %lways been too much for me.
202 ART YOUNG: HIS LIFE AND TIMES
I made the acquaintance of other editors whenever I had
a tangible excuse, and occasionally opened up a new market.
A few years before I had met Arthur Brisbane when he was
on the Sunday World. In Pack and Life I had caricatured
him as "Whizzbrain." Now he was managing editor of
Hearst's Evening Journal One evening after the theatre I ran
into him in Allaire's restaurant (Scheffel Hall) on East Sev-
enteenth Street, where the beer was excellent even if the food,
being German-cooked, was a bit heavy.
We talked at length. Brisbane had been particularly im-
pressed by pictures of mine which touched upon social prob-
lems— tenements, hungry people, child labor, grafting
politicians, low wages, and kindred topics. There was one
drawing of mine in Life that had attracted wide attention,
and he made much of that. It was called "The Outcast," and
depicted an old man in rags and broken shoes standing in the
rain, with these lines by Shakespeare below it:
Famine is in thy cheeks,
Need and oppression starveth in thy eyes,
Upon thy back hangs tagged misery,
The world is not thy friend, nor the world's law.
Shortly after that talk Brisbane suggested that I go to
work regularly on the Journal. He wanted me to draw car-
toons and illustrate editorials. He had shoved aside the long,
heavy editorials of the Greeley-Dana and Watterson types
and substituted easy-to-read summaries of popular issues. His
offer of $100 a week and his outline of the kind of cartoon
material he sought appealed to me, and I readily accepted.
Next morning I reported at the Journal office at William
and Duane Streets, and Brisbane installed me with my draw-
ing outfit in William Randolph Hearst's private sanctum,
which was next to his. Hearst was then in California. Bris-
bane brought in a plentiful supply of brushes, pens, pencils,
and drawing ink, and said: "Go to it/'
This spacious room was quiet and well appointed, with
mahogany furniture of simple design. One slight disturbance
lingers in memory. Frederic Remington kept bobbing in day
after day, a bit tight and somewhat voluble, asking: "Where
is Mr. Hearst?" I gathered that he wanted some money from
the absent owner, and when told that he was out of town,
ART YOUNG: HIS LIFE AND TIMES 203
would shake his head sadly and say over and over: "Can you
beat it?" *
Hearst stayed away a month. When he came back a desk
and chair were assigned to me in the art department, in a
ARTISTS AND EDITORS. Top, left to right: Frederic
Remington, Arthur Brisbane. Bottom: Thomas Nast, Bob Davis.
room with Frederick Opper and T. S. Sullivant Here the
atmosphere was less conducive to concentration than in the
chiefs secluded sanctum.
Lunch-time would usually find Brisbane in an "exclu-
sive" restaurant just south of the stone arches of Brooklyn
* Remington died at the age of forty-eight in 1909, soon after he had built
a house and studio for himself near Ridgefield, Conn. His need for money in
the days when I was with the Journal is recalled in contrast by a news report
on May 14, 1937, telling *of the sale at auction of a Remington painting,
"Ouster's Last Stand0, for $7,700.
204 ART YOUNG: HIS LIFE AND TIMES
Bridge. He favored thick mutton chops, and invariably
matched coins with some one seated at a table reserved for
newspapermen to see who would pay for the meaL
Around four o'clock he would begin pounding out edi-
torials for next day on his typewriter. He did this with pre-
cision, and ordinarily was finished in a couple of hours.
In the art department I enjoyed the frequent badinage —
that joshing indulged in by newspaper artists while "the fac-
FREDERICK B. QPPER.
tory" is turning out comics and political cartoons. The char-
acteristic sound of an art department is scratching — the
scratch of pens and the scratching out of mistakes in the
making of pictures, not unlike the scraping sound in a barber
shop when a razor encounters a tough beard, T. S. Sullivant
did more scratching on his drawing paper than any other
artist I ever knew. We all were amused by it — he was always
fretfully scratching out his pen-lines and starting over again.
Once Opper turned to me and said: "If Sullivant would
scratch his head more and his paper less^ he could draw better
cartoons/'
ART YOUNG: HIS LIFE AND TIMES 205
Things at home had moved along all right for a few
weeks after Elizabeth and I had returned from Alabama. But
this condition did not last. My interest in the job at the
Journal office and its future possibilities of greater income did
not prevent me from becoming nervous and morose again. I
would wake up in the mornings feeling depressed, as a caged
bird must feel when it wants to get out and fly and knows it
can't. The fact that the bars which formed my cage were
invisible made them no less real. I realized that something
had happened inside of me when I married that had crippled
me — nothing, of course, that one could describe in words,
I had no criticism to make of my wife. There was noth-
ing in her actions to which I could object, and undoubtedly
she was playing her part as a wife conscientiously. She had
so many good qualities, and I am sure meant well for me
all along the line. Her eyes were lovely, she was slim and
neat, and walked with feet toeing in just a little. I liked that,
as I have always liked any slight deviation from the norm.
It doesn't always mean character, but it suggests it. She was
fond of good fiction; her favorites included Howells's Rise
of Silas Lapham, Olive Schreiner's Story of an African Farm,
George Eliot's novels, and the stories of George Meredith and
Thomas Hardy.
Elizabeth, however, had no special interest outside of our
home, as I had. She made friends and I accepted them, but
she couldn't as easily accept some of mine. We doubtless saw
too much of each other; and we lacked the spiritual replen-
ishment that outside and separate friendly contacts would
have given us. I was half conscious of this; but somehow I
was unable to talk about it with Elizabeth. And I was fearful
of those emotional explosions which so often come when the
relations of a man and a woman have become strained; it is
easier to remain silent.
Searching back in my thoughts through the years of our
life together, I would look for some point along the road
where I might have taken some different course which would
have made for happiness. But I could never find that point
short of going back to the days when I was single, the days
when I was not in constant fear of being thought selfish for
thinking more of my work than of the household routine.
My mind being troubled, my output suffered. And evi-
206 ART YOUNG: HIS LIFE AND TIMES
dcntly the uncertain quality of my pictures was manifest to
Brisbane, for at the end of five or six months he decided
that we'd better end our arrangement.
"But I want you to submit cartoons on a free-lance
basis/* he said. "My door will always be open to you. I think
you'll be happier free-lancing than tied down to an office
grind. Not everybody is temperamentally fitted for that/'
I wouldn't have quit voluntarily just then, for the hun-
dred every week meant that I could take out life insurance
and save money. Nevertheless, I felt a great relief when Bris-
bane dropped me from the staff. It meant that Fate had made
a decision for me. I walked to the elevated whistling.
With my working hours no longer tied to an employer's
time schedule, I now found it even more difficult than before
to work at home. So I invented excuses to be away from our
rooms a great deal. I had to see editors, and I had to go to the
library to look up things.
Very soon it became clear to both of us that the atmos-
phere was too tense; we couldn't go on living together in
those cramped quarters, though I wasn't sure that we would
have been any better off in a ten-room house.
So we separated. Elizabeth packed what belongings she
needed, and I carried her luggage to a furnished room which
she had taken nearby. There were tears in her eyes when we
said goodbye, and I felt a bit tearful myself, but we said
little, beyond wishing each other good luck.
My brother Will, who had been watchful of our un-
happy state, now asked me to come and live with him in his
large one-room studio at 81 Fifth Avenue. He hoped and
believed that our trouble would soon be adjusted. I readily ac-
cepted his invitation. His quarters were in a fine old mansion
with a beautiful massive stairway leading from the entrance
hall to the second floor. It was that stairway more than any-
thing else that had made Will want to live there. Boys from
the farm, where simplicity is the order, are apt to be taken
in by the appearance of splendor. Some rich family had lived
in that house in earlier days, but in our time the first and
second floors were occupied as a dancing studio by a then cele-
brated teacher of the terpsichorean art named Koch. What
had once been the grand ballroom on the second floor served
ART YOUNG: HIS LIFE AND TIMES 207
for his larger classes and for occasional social affairs. Koch
had leased the whole house and sublet the third and fourth
floors to us tenants.
Our studio had large windows looking out on a little
back garden; an ornate marble mantle, a practical fireplace,
and a washroom with cold water; and we had the use of a
bathroom with hot water. Will had had a cushioned window-
seat made for the wide back windows, and for sleeping facili-
ties he had constructed what was probably the largest "cozy
corner" in history, built around and over a box-couch wider
than a double bed.
The most bizarre India prints to be found in Vantine's
were utilized for wall coverings, and for the canopy and
side and front drapings, which were supported by antique
spears and lances; and wherever possible a Damascus blade,
a kriss, a medieval shield, or some other old-world war im-
plement was hung. For fear that there might not be enough
cozy atmosphere in these quarters Will had added some Civil
War muskets and swords and Cuban machetes. No week went
by without his bringing in a porcelain vase or other decora-
tion to clutter up the space. On that massive couch was the
most varied and numerous collection of sofa pillows that I
ever saw. Several that my brother prized most were covered
with fabrics that he had bought from the Waldorf-Astoria
when that hotel decided on a new decorative scheme and got
rid of its stock on hand.
Other objects in this great room were a tall inlaid ma-
hogany combination bookcase and writing-desk, a golden
oak bureau, a green arm-chair, a willow rocker, and a mas-
sive carved Flemish oak table and chair set — a typical con-
glomerate decorative scheme of the period. On the walls
among the array of weapons were framed drawings which
had illuminated Sunday World feature stories that Will had
written, and originals done by the artists on the World staff;
also drawings for the ''funnies*' of that era, by Dick Out-
cault, George Luks, Anderson, Bryans (whose silhouette
pictures were then popular) , Tony Anthony, Gus and Rudy
Dirks, Joe Lemon, Walt McDougall; and illustrators such
as Will Crawford (he made comics as well, but they always
seemed too dignified and artistic to be classed as such) , "Hod"
Taylor, Al Levering, and others.
208 ART YOUNG: HIS LIFE AND TIMES
Of course a studio furnished so lavishly would be not at
all to my taste now, nor to Will's, but I liked it then. The
place was a refuge for me, and I could work again*
Will was alert, got around a lot, as a seeing journalist,
and frequently brought in new and worth-while people for
me to meet. Or we met them in one restaurant or another
where artists and writers gathered. At that time Will was
on the Sunday World staff.
He had come to New York late in 1894, ' 'absolutely un-
wanted by any publication", as he recalls. After two long
weeks of job-hunting he had been taken on as a reporter
by the World (on the morning daily) at $15 a week. This
wage didn't seem much of a compliment to him, for he
couldn't forget that he was one of the founders of the Daily
Cardinal at the University of Wisconsin, and that he had
been news editor of the Madison (Wis.) Democrat and Madi-
son correspondent for the Chicago Tribune and a Milwaukee
daily. His combined income in Madison had been about $35
a week. But he took that $15 job none the less, thinking of
the "prestige" of working on a New York paper.
He stayed a year in that poorly paid berth, then went
to the New York Mercury, an old-timer that had just been
rejuvenated by the injection of $200,000 in new capital;
and lingered there until that money had been absorbed and
pay-checks were held up, which took only about six months.
Returning to the World, he was put on the Sunday staff at a
time when Hearst had panicked the other papers by buying
their editorial talent away from them. The rich man's son
from California, who was still regarded by his New York
rivals as an interloper, had induced Morrill Goddard, the
World's Sunday editor, to move over to the Journal; Pulitzer
had persuaded him to move back; and Hearst had raised his
bid still higher, and got Goddard again, all in a single week.
Tom McGill, creator of the comic strip, "The Hall-room
Boys", which was credited with big drawing power in the
continuing fight for newspaper circulation, also lived at 81
Fifth Avenue when we did. And he lived in a hall-room, too,
for that was before the years of .big money for the comic
strippers.
Saturday Evening Post
EDITOR OF THE COUNTY GAZETTE
One of a series of Old Home Town types used in the Lorimer weekly.
ART YOUNG: HIS LIFE AND TIMES 209
In the spacious front room on our floor were Gordon
Grant, then and ever since a natural composer of pictures and
a fine artist withal, and his roommate, Jack Haywood, a suc-
cessful patent attorney, now dead. Haywood had social con-
nections and he and the well-groomed. Grant gave tone to the
place. They had a large organ in their studio, which afforded
me much pleasure, for I would frequently go in and play on
it, thinking of days back on the farm. I've done a lot of rest-
ful day-dreaming while playing an organ or toying with the
keys of a piano.
Chuck Connors came to our studio several times with
Will, though it was hard to get him to leave the Bowery and
come to swell Fifth Avenue. It was Will who had discovered
this character of the Chinatown district for journalistic pur-
poses, and who had written the Chuck Connors stories in the
Sunday World that had made the ex-newsboy a notable and
led to his national fame. Will used Chuck as the mouthpiece
for a wide variety of observations on passing events, and
thus Chuck gained as much or more fame than Steve Brodie
without going to the trouble of jumping off the Brooklyn
Bridge into the East River.
I remember the thrill I felt when I attended the first of a
series of Chuck Connors balls in the old Tammany Hall on
Fourteenth Street* This was rough and noisy, with beer
flowing free, and music that may not have been so good as
that in the Waldorf ballroom but was louder. The fun began
during the grand march, when Chuck's lady friend, known
in Chinatown as "The Rummager", had her train stepped
on and torn off. She spent the rest of the evening in a box,
where she slept off the effects of too much liquor. On the
program I noticed the typical Connors language, which de-
scribed a waltz as "Grab a rag and twist."
When my old friend the late Walt McDougall wrote his
sprightly autobiography, This is the Life, he reproduced the
names of some of the members of the "Chuck Connors Club",
the purported sponsor of one of those balls. Walt had found
a program of the event printed in Moss's "History of New
York", with George Francis Train, billed as financial secre-
tary, and with the club members including: R. F. Outcault,
Walt McDougall, Al Smith, Mickey Finn, Charley White,
210 ART YOUNG: HIS LIFE AND TIMES
Steve Brodie, Roland B. Molineaux, Timothy D. Sullivan,
Oscar Hammerstein, James J. Corbett, and Bob Fitzsimmons.
"Judge Moss seems to regard the list of members as au-
thentic— and representative", McDougall wrote, "but his
judicial acumen should have enabled him to perceive that
this was Connors' method of attracting the elite to his low,
coarse, and quite disreputable function."
But the formation of that "club" on paper was not the
handiwork of Mr. Connors, the "mayor of Chinatown/' It
was my brother Will who conceived the idea of the Chuck
Connors balls and directed the arrangements for them, coach-
ing Chuck in the part he was to play. And Chuck was a
responsive pupil. Will suggested the staging of those affairs
in Tammany Hall because they made good newspaper copy
and added to the gayety of the city.
There was plenty of artistic stimulus at 8 1 Fifth Avenue
and in restaurants, theatres, and bohemian centers which we
visited around town. Will frequently had passes for shows,
or was assigned to do a feature story about some situation
which involved the gathering of a queer assortment of people,
and often I went along, watching for both the serious and
the humorous angles.
For Brisbane was buying an occasional illustration for
an editorial or for an article, while the comic periodicals were
taking some of my joke pictures. And in that period, too, I
sold some "Snapshots in Hades" drawings to Life and began
a "Through Hell" series in the Cosmopolitan. John Brisben
Walker was then publisher of the latter, and at his invitation
I journeyed up to Irvington-on-the-Hudson, where he lived.
Those Inferno scenes were subsequently incorporated in my
second book dealing with the nether regions, which was called
Through Hell with Hiptah Hunt. This was published by
Clinton S* Zimmerman in 1901.
Will went to Chicago in July, 1900, becoming Sunday
editor of Hearst's Evening American there, taking charge of
its editorial page, and also working on the editorial page of
the morning Examiner, then under the direction of Charles
Edward RusselL I remained in the studio alone, and there
was a great sense of luxury in basking amid all those bargain
ART YOUNG: HIS LIFE AND TIMES 211
treasures and having that spaciousness all to myself, in imita-
tion of one who was wealthy.
I was still a Republican when the 1900 national cam-
paign came along, with McKinley and Roosevelt asking elec-
tion with the promise of "four years more of the full dinner-
pair*, duly featured on the front covers of Jadge and its
^OUR COUNTRY CORRESPONDENT
t pen in
of th« royel famlys is humbugs & says if its true what he's heerd bout sum of them
I mad? a speach in town hall here satday nite that shows you how the speerit that,
stured.the boozums of our four-fathers haint ded yet as Toilers:
Feller Citzens ; Sum famlys of ferrin lands has to be high up & others has to be
low down. That's the way they been runnm things fer so long in them countries they
dont kno no better. The Royel fcrnlys that got to the top of the lader of fame as the,
poit says 2 hunderd yers ago is still up, & a good many on em wuld be keepin sloons
er worktn in cheez factrys if the peeplc tuk a noshen to kick the lader out frum. under
em. In Amenky the land of the free one man ono be az good az a nuiher & a blame
site Beter if he fites fer his place & behaves hisself & has branes to back it.
If the rich city peeple wunt to pay fer dressm up 2 or 3 tony fellers in velvet close-
an sendin em over to a ferrin country fer to do plite bowin & scrapm front cf a. King
thats a big gun caus his parunts wuz, wy let em do it but the U S. Congres & the pee-
Josh Melhm.
DAVIS JUNCTION. O..
June 38th.
EniTER JUDOE:
Uncle Cyrus Whif-
fle ts so's to he. round
agin. Cyrus says they
la
to
make auttymobiles
Josh Mellun 82
burthday tuesday fer
las.t 9 y«rs Josh has
turned a. hanspring
owin to a cowbunckle
neck.
Theresa good d
Ohio bout the way the
country is goin crary
over royelty
Fust it wus that
Princ Henery now its
the King of England.
Levi Kirxk leedin
ciuen here says most
Uncle Hiram lecture* his fellow-townsmen.
pie of Davis Junction
orto stick clost to the
constitooshiui & rek-
lect that this nashun
haint founderd on A
monarky & is Jest as
much ftr- them that
them that has. The
cloait of glory thats
reddy made & dont
hav to be paid fer
wuntfitthcAmcrikan
Egle. Cheers fer them
that fites fer there
fame but' not a. gol-
that gets it fer ootb>
In.
HlK
Judge, 1900
WHEN 'HIRAM PENNICK' WAS MERELY COMIC. But I also used
this character, I recall with shame now, in aiding the widespread campaign
of ridicule which killed off the Populist party.
allies. Still a victim of the old illusions. I had not yet learned
to think my way to a clear understanding of realities. Now
and then some of nay bourgeois beliefs had been shaken a
bit by some ironic episode in the human struggle, or by some
speech like that of Keir Hardie in Denver, but I clung to my
inherited beliefs.
That year I served the cause by writing and illustrating a
series of articles for Judge under the general title of "Cam-
212 ART YOUNG: HIS LIFE AND TIMES
painin for the Millenum", which purported to record the
travels and speeches of Hiram Pennick, a Populist of a Don
Quixote type, who was shown touring the Mid-West on a
decrepit horse. With my pictures were alleged letters in which
Mr. Pennick reported his progress in badly spelled words to
the editor of Judge.
He was for Free Silver and against Imperialism and the
Trusts. In one speech he said: "We must bust the chanes that
fasens us to the charyot, thats all made out of gold, when one
wheel ort to be made out of silver/* In another he made this
prediction: "When the smoke of battle is cleared away weel
see the octipust (the Trusts) thets been chewin at the
nashun's vitals ded as a herrin while over the hull scene the
flag of Populism is floatin in a breez of victry/'
Mr* Pennick was an elderly farmer. I showed him being
met by committees of faithful party members, making
speeches on street corners and in halls, and enlisting recruits
after which the motley procession would move on to the next
town. Thus I helped to kill off Populism by poking fun at it.
Other cartoonists and writers used the slapstick on "Sock-
less Jerry" Simpson, Representative from Kansas, who was
reputed to be eccentric in his footwear, and journalistic winds
fanned the whiskers of Senator Peffer of Kansas, also a Popu-
list. And again the sandbag and bludgeon were used against
Bryan. I had heard him shout: "You must not put the dollar
above the man!" and I was beginning to feel that here
was something to think about, even though I was helping
McKinley and the big-money Republicans.
Chapter 22
I BECOME AWARE OF THE CLASS STRUGGLE
IN December that year my brother returned to New York
to be married on New Year's Eve and to have a brief
honeymoon. His bride was Adelaide Oehler, whose father
had a shoe store at Sixth Avenue and Eighteenth Street. I
felt that they were well matched. Anyway Adelaide was good
to look at.
Both were evidently happy, and they became anxious
about my lone state of existence. Several close friends, too,
had been worrying about that. They seemed to think it
wasn't right for Elizabeth and myself to remain apart. In-
deed I suddenly found myself the center of a private domestic
relations conference, in which I was urged to rejoin my wife
and "try it again/' Adelaide, Will, and Mr. and Mrs. Win-
field Scott Moody held that our separation was simply due
to some lack of understanding which could be righted if both
of us would show a give-and-take spirit.
They all painted a rosy picture of possibilities. At first
I was skeptical, but in the face of their well-meaning concern
I didn't want to be stubborn. They offered to go and talk
with Elizabeth, and endeavor to smooth the way for a recon-
ciliation; afterward I suspected that the Moodys had already
talked with her. Anyhow, I agreed; I let myself be optimistic,
and I was ready to meet Elizabeth half-way. As a result of
all this we were reconciled (sentimentally at least) to the
obligations of the marriage certificate. Then we moved into
a studio apartment on West Twenty-first Street.
At the time of our reunion we had not discussed nor even
admitted the existence of any differences between us. We
simply started all over again, with a, sincere effort on both
sides to avoid serious misunderstandings. Elizabeth was
thoughtful of my sensibilities, and I of hers, and I got along
>vell with my work.
213
214 ART YOUNG: HIS LIFE AND TIMES
When warm weather came we went to Leonia, New Jer-
sey, where we found a vacant barn to live in, within shouting
distance of Peter Newell's home. New and dry and clean,
this barn made a good dwelling for us* We shared it with
Alfred Z. Baker (an artist whom I had known in Paris) and
his wife. Baker was then contributing quaint animal draw-
ings, signed B.B., to Pack.
Elizabeth and Mrs. Baker occupied themselves by mak-
ing the barn ready for housekeeping and decorating it with
curtains and other feminine essentials. Baker and I had studios
in New York and went back and forth daily. In the eve-
nings we would often assemble in Newell's house, talk about
our work, grow reminiscent over old days, quote poetry,
have some music, and then back to the barn.
Peter Newell was one of my favorite interpreters of the
homely characters of American life — Negroes, farmers, and
various types of simple folk. He also did many drawings of
a curiously imaginative flavor and a quaint humor. His pic-
tures were drawn for the Harper publications. A likeable,
religious, homey fellow from Illinois. In some Valhalla get-
together of artists, I want to see that tall, lanky man smile
at me and say: "Welcome, Art! . . . As we were saying — "
After the summer near Leonia, we moved into an apart-
ment house called the Corona, at Ninety-Ninth Street and
Riverside Drive. Here I settled down to work with a fairly
free mind. After all, I thought, maybe I'm adjusting myself
to married life. But this new equilibrium was upset when
Elizabeth announced that she was going to have a child. She
had known it for some time, and had been hesitant about
telling me.
I tried to seem cheerful — but I wasn't. All the old feel-
ing of being caught in a net came back. Of course I couldn't
quarrel with Elizabeth about her condition, nor blame her.
Thinking about the whole situation, in the streets or lying
awake in the dark at night, I knew that any friend would
say that I had gone into marriage with my eyes open; and
that it was customary for married people to have children.
But I was more and more unhappy (and not proud as any
normal man should be) , as the date for Elizabeth's confine-
ment approached.
The cry of a new-born child! * . . Yesterday there were
ART YOUNG: HIS LIFE AND TIMES 215.
two of us — now there are three. What a thought to have
pounding against the walls of my mind! In Riverside Park
I pushed a baby carriage — and I really liked the baby, whom
we had named North. I like all babies — to look at, but not
to push. And yet the experience was a good thing. Every
man ought to go through with the duty of pushing a baby
carriage for one^ summer at least. This new son of mine was
a good-natured child, who in due time cooed at the passing
steamers on the Hudson and was not afraid of dogs. But the
sight of the steamers made me moody. They were all going
somewhere, up the river to Albany or southward down the
coast, and I was chained here to one place. Would I ever get
a chance to travel again? 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 inade-
quate. So many questions came up that I couldn't answer,
and I needed to fortify myself with such answers. By listen-
ing to the lectures and reading a wide variety of books I
nursed the seed which had been planted in my mind by Keir
Har die's speech in Denver, and by Myron Reed's discussions
of the human struggle there.
England was fighting the Boers, and my sympathies were
with the weaker nation of bearded Dutchmen who were put-
ting up such a courageous fight to preserve their independence.
Speakers for the Social Democratic party provided me
with much food for thought. They attacked the whole capi-
talistic system, showed how its different units combined to
exploit the producing masses to the nth degree, and how the
press distorted or suppressed news to protect this system, of
which it was a part. Being loyal to the press, my first reac-
tion to this denunciation was one of resentment, though I had
to concede that some of the charges were true.
I remembered hearing in Chicago, in talks among the
reporters, of department store elevator accidents in which
people were killed, and not a paper printed a line about it.
I recalled instances of news stories which I knew were far
from the truth, written to order to carry out a newspaper's
216 ART YOUNG: HIS LIFE AND TIMES
policy. How much justification, if any, was there for the
Inter-Oceans attacks on Altgeld, in which I had played an
active part? Altgeld's administration as Governor had been
creditable in many ways, I could see now; he had taken the
side of labor, and had achieved numerous reforms.
It must have been about this time that I first heard Eugene
Debs speak. He was facing an audience which packed the
Academy of Music. On that same stage Henry Ward Beecher
had stood and upheld the cause of the Democratic party in a
tense campaign. Some one interrupted with a rude question:
"How about Cleveland and free love?" This of course re-
ferred to the affair of the candidate for the Presidency with
Maria Halpin. And Beecher answered: "Let him who is
without sin cast the first stone/'
I had been greatly interested in seeing Debs, for I had
read and been told much about him — of his fearless leader-
ship in the railroad strike of 1894, his term in jail ^ as a
consequence, and his fighting spirit. But I was disappointed
that night — not by what he said, but by his manner. I
thought him too much like a school-boy elocutionist.
In after years, however, I attended several mass-meetings
at which Debs was the main speaker, and he who had once
been amateurish had become a real tribune of the people and
a master of chastisement of the profit pharisees. No question
about it — an inspiring man because he was himself inspired.
He was emotional, and used the logic of understanding born
of long experience with workers. When one heard him voice
a natural sympathy for the enslaved, one felt that here was
a champion who would go to the stake rather than sacrifice
his own beliefs.
Listening to lectures on the class struggle (after I discov-
ered that such a struggle had been going on for ages) , I found
that I had a great deal in common with the everyday work-
ers. In other years I had felt that as a newspaper artist I
was a member of a profession which enjoyed important privi-
leges 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 dis-
eased, and I was learning some of the reasons why.
ART YOUNG: HIS LIFE AND TIMES 217
When McKinley was shot down by Leon Czolgosz in
September, 1901, and important newspapers suspected an
Anarchist conspiracy, I found myself analyzing their asser-
tions. The police rounded up a lot of Anarchists with a great
deal of publicity, but found no evidence of such a plot. Mean-
while the New York World laid the blame for the assassina-
tion directly to William Randolph Hearst because of the
editorial attacks in his papers on McKinley. One of those
editorials said that "if bad institutions and bad men can be
got rid of only by killing, then the killing must be done/' *
But I believed then, and time has strengthened my belief,
that accusing individuals of being accessories to, or instigators
of, murder because they wrote or said something which might
have planted homicidal thoughts in a culprit's mind was
stretching legality to the last degree of absurdity. And law
is absurd enough without dragging in "suspicious" influences.
Many a man and woman has been accused of being an ac-
cessory before the fact because he or she rented a room to a
murderer, or was seen talking with him three weeks before
the deed. The logical end of such net-work finesse in get-
ting evidence would be to arrest the slayer's father and mother
who brought him into the world and indict them as accom-
plices.
Joseph Pulitzer was "wild and impetuous" in his youth,
and was assailed by newspaper foes as holding "anarchistic
beliefs"* Nor was he tame in attacking public men. There
was not much sweetness and light in his thoughts when he
felt it necessary to condemn men in positions of high responsi-
bility. Turn, for instance, to an editorial in the World for
September 3, 1913. It was about that time that the directors
of the New York, New Haven, and Hartford Railroad had
been through a Congressional investigation, and President
Charles S. Mellen of the New Haven and the Rockefeller-
Morgan interests, who controlled the stock, were accused as
the arch-criminals who had got away with the loot and had
ruined thousands of stockholders. And to make matters worse
there was a frightful wreck in New Haven, the White Moun-
tain express ploughing through a Bar Harbor train and killing
and injuring many passengers. The World editorial said:
* New York Journal, April 10, 1901.
218 ART YOUNG: HIS LIFE AND TIMES
4 'No Rockefeller is ever killed in any of the wrecks of the New
Haven Railroad.
"No Morgan is ever killed.
"No director is ever killed.
"None of the bankers who have bled the system white is ever
killed. . . .
"This is Wall Street's wreck, and the blood of the victims is
on the hands of the highly respectable financiers who for their
own profit have converted a great railroad system into a shambles/'
But no maimed victim of that wreck who may have read
the World editorial took a pot shot at any one of the highly
respectable men mentioned.
With like indignation Pulitzer lashed out at John D.
Rockefeller Jr. after the Ludlow massacre in Colorado,
when the miners employed by the Colorado Fuel and Iron
Company were on strike. On April 23, 1914, the World said:
"Mr. Rockefeller recently testified that he was willing to sink
his entire investment in Colorado rather than yield to the demand
of his employees that they be permitted to organize.
"He has not sunk and he does not intend to sink his entire
investment, but he has debauched an American commonwealth,
and the blood of women and children is on the hands of his bar-
barous agents, private and public/'
In quoting these as samples of the inflammatory charac-
ter of newspapers, I am merely pointing out the guilt of those
who perhaps thought themselves innocent — like Pulitzer —
but there were many editors who let loose at times with
innuendo or sensational anger as they saw fit. No one con-
nected with the big dailies, however, so far as I know, was
ever prosecuted as Albert Parsons of the Alarm was in the
Haymarket case when some violent crime followed an edi-
torial outburst. But the Alarm was a small radical weekly,
and not a large daily upholding the capitalist system.
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 arous-
ings 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
ART YOUNG: HIS LIFE AND TIMES 219
have and to retain everything that they possessed and to
insure their hopes of getting more through their "superior
intelligence/'
But to hold him responsible for the killing of McKinley
because of a bitter editorial, a poem, and Frederick Opper's
cartoons of "Willie and his Papa" (Willie being the Presi-
dent and Papa being Mark Hanna, both favorites of the big,
overfed trusts) was far-fetched.
Altgeld died in Joliet, Illinois, after collapsing at a pro-
Boer mass meeting, and 50,000 people moved sadly past his
casket in the Chicago public library; many of those thou-
sands had stood for hours in the rain waiting to do him
honor. The changed tone of the press toward this man was
amazing; newspapers which had been the most inimical to
him now lauded his deeds without indicating that they had
reversed themselves. Among his former enemies which now
spoke well of him were Harper's Weekly and the Nation. The
latter at that time had not yet come into liberal hands. This
was in 1902.
There was an Altgeld memorial meeting in Cooper
Union, the place being packed to the doors. Many notables,
of all shades of political opinion, paid tribute. Emphasizing
the Haymarket case as the high light in his career, the
speakers lauded the courage of the little man who had dared
to antagonize the press and the courts and to do all that lay
within his power to correct a terrible wrong.
Many well-meaning persons who had thought the Chi-
cago Anarchists guilty or who, like myself, had wavered in
their attitude toward the accused men, now found occasion
to read — or re-read — Altgeld's Reasons for Pardoning
Fietden, Neebe, and Schwab. This message was now avail-
able in most big libraries, in pamphlet form. I had read it,
in substance at least, at the time of the pardons, but it was
overshadowed then by the prejudiced interpretations of hos-
tile newspapers.
Considering it in 1902 in a calm environment, I could see
the real values in Altgeld* s presentation of the Haymarket
affair. He showed, with ample documentation, that the eight
defendants were convicted by a packed jury; that they were
never proven guilty of the crime charged (conspiracy to com-
220 ART YOUNG: HIS LIFE AND TIMES
mit murder) ; that no evidence had ever been produced to
show who threw the bomb, and that there was no proof that
the defendants had had any connection with that crime.
The Governor also pointed out that at the close of the
prosecution's evidence, Stated Attorney Grinnell admitted
to Mayor Harrison that he did not think he had a case against
Neebe, but that his associates objected to dismissing him
because it might influence the jury in favor of the other de-
fendants; and that all the circumstances indicated that the
throwing of the bomb was an act of some unknown person
who was taking his revenge against the police for their wan-
ton clubbing and killing of workers.
Altgeld brought out the point that this jury was not
chosen in the usual manner, by drawing names out of a box,
and thus getting a selection from the general voting public.
Instead Judge Gary had appointed a special bailiff to go
out and summon any men he liked. And a prominent busi-
ness man who was summoned attested that this bailiff said
to him, in the presence of others: "I am managing this case,
and know what I am about. These fellows are going to be
hanged as certain as death, I am calling such men as the
defendants will have to challenge peremptorily and waste
their time and challenges. Then they will have to take such
men as the prosecution wants/'
The court records, scanned by Altgeld, showed that many
of the talesmen said they had been pointed out to the bailiff
by their employers, to be called as jurors. Many of them
declared they believed the defendants guilty, then each was
examined by Judge Gary "in a manner to force him to say
that he would try the case fairly". Even a man related to one
of the policemen killed by the bomb was passed by the judge
as competent. Several of the jurors who were eventually
chosen to serve, after the defense had exhausted its challenges,
"stated candidly that they were so prejudiced that they could
not try the case fairly/' Altgeld found, "but each, when
examined by the court, was finally induced to say that he
believed he could try the case fairly upon the evidence/'
Documents cited by Altgeld included the interview with
former Police Chief Ebersold published in the Chicago Daily
News in 1889 which told of Captain Schaack's desire "to
ART YOUNG: HIS LIFE AND TIMES 221
keep things stirring", of his wanting "bombs to be found
here, there, all around, everywhere/*
"It is further shown here/' the Governor stated, "that
much of the evidence given at the trial was a pure fabrication;
that some of the prominent police officials . . . not only ter-
rorized ignorant men by ... threatening them with torture
if they refused to swear to anything desired, but that they
offered money and employment to those who would consent
to do this/'
Reading and weighing all this, and recalling what Altgeld
suffered, I felt a deep sense of shame for my part in the news-
paper assaults upon him. I took a new view now of his oppo-
sition to Cleveland's sending federal troops into^Chicago in
the 1894 railroad strike, when neither the mayor nor sheriff
had asked for soldiers. On the Inter-Ocean I had been in-
fected by the widespread indignation against the strikers for
"interfering with the United States mails" when they pre-
vented trains from running. That had seemed sacrilege then.
But, I asked myself now, was there anything more criminal
in stopping the mails than in an employer cutting wages
and shutting off the milk supply for a worker's children?
And 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 . . . Sur-
vival 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 Jfalse
values because I didn't know any better. I had been a drifter,
innocent and sheep-minded long enough.
I was to get more light on the Haymarket case in later
years from Charles Edward Russell, who covered the execu-
tion of Parsons and his comrades for the New York World,
and who subsequently spent several months on an assignment
from that paper investigating to see if he could find any
tangible evidence of the purported dynamite plots.
222 ART YOUNG: HIS LIFE AND TIMES
"The truth is," Russell wrote in summing up the results
of his work, "that Chicago was at no time in more danger
of an Anarchist uprising, in more danger of an outbreak by
violence, in more danger of destruction by dynamite, than
any other American city was then and is now. . ; * Slowly
the conclusion was forced upon me that the idea of an
Anarchist conspiracy was purely a dream/'
Altgeld has been widely quoted as saying, when he par-
doned the Anarchists, that it would spell his political death.
Yet when he died in 1902, the Inter-Ocean, which had fought
him so ferociously (now no longer under Kohlsaat control) ,
said that "he left the Governor's office the most influential
Democrat in the West, and with his bitterest opponents con-
ceding his personal honesty and his political strength/' And
Kohlsaat, in his memoirs, published in 1921, said that Alt-
geld was the dominant figure at the 1 896 national Democratic
convention, and that if he had not been foreign-born and
thus ineligible for the Presidency, he would in all probability
have been the nominee.
Now that I was awakening to the realities of the eco-
nomic struggle, I realized that I could no longer conscien-
tiously 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 prod-
uct* 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.
To be sure, my farmers of the Hiram Pennick series were
not the straw-chewing by-heck type made familiar by the
caricaturist Zim, but came from my sketch-books. They were
the folks that I was raised among out in the Middle West,
ART YOUNG: HIS LIFE AND TIMES 223
but it was ridicule none the less of men who tilled the soil
around Monroe, and in other farm sections I had visited.
I had had the temerity to have Hiram Pennick date one of
his Campainin for the Millenum letters from Oneco town-
ship in Illinois, where I was born.
The circulation of Judge in this Presidential campaign
was enormous — it penetrated to all parts of the country. If
I should go home again, I reflected, and should meet any of
the farmers there, I would have to explain that it was all
done in fun; but would any of them believe that? I wrote
a letter to a friend in Wisconsin, enclosing a sketch of my-
self arriving home and being pursued by farmers with pitch-
forks ready to lunge at me while I tried to explain.
Letters and news clippings sent by my father told of the
campaign Robert M. LaFollette was making to be re-elected
as Governor of Wisconsin. That gave me an inspiration. I
was a bit tired of New York, and needed a change in order
to take new reckonings and re-shape the course of my work-
ing life.
LaFollette' s friend Isaac Stephenson had established the
Milwaukee Free Press chiefly, if my memory is correct, to
back the Governor's political program. I wrote volunteering
my services as a cartoonist during the critical weeks of the
contest, asking only that my railroad fare both ways be paid.
This offer was accepted, and I immediately left New York
and got into the fight. After a conference on strategy with
the Free Press editors, I went on to Monroe to visit with my
folks and sent my cartoons by mail.
My appearance had an effect upon the enemy which
amused me greatly. The Milwaukee Sentinel, principal
mouthpiece for the "Stalwart Republicans", a rival faction
in LaFollette's own party, published a long editorial about
"the desperate situation" of the LaFollette following indi-
cated when the campaign committee "had to hire a high-
priced cartoonist to help." But evidently it was his foes that
were desperate, judging by the amount of abuse hurled at
him, especially by the Stalwart crowd.
To that effort in LaFollette's behalf I gave everything
I had. I believed that he represented the honest Americanism
which flowed from the pioneers. He was for the farmers,
224 ART YOUNG: HIS LIFE AND TIMES
whether Swedes, German, Swiss, Irish, or what; and for the
industrial workers, native and foreign-born alike. His record
was replete with activity in the interests of both. As District
Attorney, as Representative in Congress, and as Governor,
he had served intelligently and conscientiously.
Speaking at county fairs, chautauquas, and other gather-
ings all over the state, he showed up the rottenness in his
own party, exposed appalling inequalities in the Wisconsin
taxing system, and the vital importance of public supervision
of railroad rates. And now he won re-election as he had
won all previous contests for public office. All the mud-
slinging had failed to stop him.
Chapter 23
ANOTHER CHILD AND NEW WORRIES
MY wife and I both stemmed from healthy stock. And
yet I always had foolish misgivings that our chil-
dren might be born with some kind of a handicap —
blindness, or a lesser affliction* Out west they used to tell a
lot of stories about Abraham Lincoln, a good many of them
raw, of the variety known as "men's stories/' Some of them
were undoubtedly inventions. But I recall one that to me
seemed true to his quaint humor and imagination. When he
had a law office in Springfield and his wife was expecting
their first baby, Abe went over to his home to be near during
the event. On his way back to the office, a friend who had
heard the news hailed him and asked for more information,
and Abe answered:
"It's a fine boy. ... I was afraid it might have one
of my long legs and one of Mary's short ones. But it's all
right/'
Another baby was scheduled to arrive late in 1904, and
Elizabeth's sister Kate came on from Wisconsin to live with
us and help take care of our growing family. We needed
more room, and moved into a larger apartment (five rooms
instead of four) at 936 West End Avenue, near where Broad-
way joins that thoroughfare around 107th Street.
Our second son, Donald, was born in December. Again
Elizabeth was pleased, saying: "Now North will have a play-
mate/' And Kate was elated. To me this addition to the
household spelled another problem, although I was glad to
see such a fine body of a boy. This meant being even more
obligated to tread a path of duty. Friends congratulated
me, and spoke of the "proud father", making jokes more
or less humorous, mostly less. Of course I responded with a
synthetic smile, and handed out the customary cigars. How
many men who have not discovered how to make a con-
tinuously good income are really proud fathers? Yet some-
225
226 ART YOUNG: HIS LIFE AND TIMES
how, as the months went on, I managed to pay rent and
grocery bills, although more of my drawings had lately been
rejected than in the past.
Admittedly Don was a handsome and inspired looking
infant. (My portrait of a youngster often reproduced with
the caption, "Every child is a genius until forced to surrender
to civilization/* is Don at the age of three.) But that didn't
lessen my gloomy thoughts.
I worked harder than ever now, and increased my efforts
to sell pictures. Constantly, too, I was reading history and
economics, to improve my understanding of causes behind the
human struggle. No longer could any defender of the prevail-
ing system tell me that there were no social classes in this
country.
One evening I had been reading in the Cooper Union
library. On my way out I passed a large room off the main
hallway, from which I heard the voice of some one making
a speech. I stopped to listen. Certain sentences in the declama-
tion interested me, and I quietly edged into the room. Here
were young men of varied races and many nationalities learn-
ing to talk in the English language on the issues of the hour.
The instructor would sum up the merits and defects of the
speakers as to good English, construction, delivery, and all
that makes for effective speaking in public.
I decided then and there to become a member of that free
night- class in parliamentary law, oratory, and debate in this
institution founded by Peter Cooper. I had read about this
great American philanthropist who had "queer" ideas of re-
forming our national currency and who was one of the first
of the Greenbackers. Whether he was right on the money
question I do not know. But his idea of free education for
all who wanted it seemed sensible to me. And today I would
have less excuse for my attacks on the educational system
if colleges were free and democratically administered.
For a long time I had felt the need of learning to think
and speak on my feet. When I drew a cartoon on some con-
troversial theme, and an editor rejected it and said it was
illogical, I was usually unable to argue against the objections.
But Cooper Union, I was certain, would show me how to
defend my point of view*
w
^
ART YOUNG: HIS LIFE AND TIMES 227
Some of the sessions on debate nights brought me great
illumination, stirred me deep within, made clear what was
valid evidence in support of contentions on one side or the
other of a vital question. My early efforts at argument in
class were awkward, but I persisted. Soon I realized that
an essential thing in debate was preparation. Often the con-
tests on the floor had the aspects of a battle — each con-
testant determined to win. Many times our instructor had to
pound with the gavel and say: "Come now, you are getting
angry. Anger will defeat you/'
And as I went along with my reading and debating I
became increasingly conscious of widespread social injustice.
All the veils of illusion were being stripped away from the
thing called civilization, and I saw what a shameful tribute
man. must pay to her whom John Swinton called "the bitch
goddess Success/* I had no desire just to be a fluent talker
like a lawyer, politician, or salesman. I, too, was seeking
success, but it would have to be of a kind consistent with my
way of thinking.
Throughout this course in debating I would always take
the side which seemed to me right — if for no other reason
than that I couldn't argue convincingly on the other side.
I was sure that the Cooper Union training was going to help
me at least in ordinary controversies. And I was now coming
to the conclusion that I would no longer draw cartoons which
illustrated somebody else's will. Henceforth it would be my
own* way of looking at things^right or wrong, I would
figure things out for myself. If success came, well and good;
but to win at the price of my freedom of thought — that
kind of success was not for me. Though I perceived that
much of life was compromise, in dealing with world affairs
or with my own, I would have to sink or swim, holding on
to my own beliefs on questions of vital importance.
More and more was I aware that I was totally unfitted
for married life. I could not adjust myself to the routine of
domesticity. There was a feeling always that I was shut in —
that I didn't belong to myself. I missed my old solitude, the
easy-going way of having my meals any time I wanted to,
of going to bed at any hour and getting up when I liked —
228 ART YOUNG: HIS LIFE AND TIMES
unless there was special reason to arise early to do some
drawing for which an editor was waiting. Day after day this
kind of living annoyed me. Why must I stop for lunch at
twelve o'clock if I happened to be right in the swing of
an absorbing cartoon? To be courteous? Which comes first
I kept asking myself — dutiful domesticity, or draftsman-
ship and dreams?
In our family relations I seldom protested, for 1 pre-
ferred at all costs to avoid a scene. Outwardly everything
was all right. There was something so ridiculous in bicker-
ing about the jarring trivialities while living together in a
state that had been blessed, certified, stamped and sealed for
all time. I could show anger over issues like government and
religion, but not at the pin-pricks of everyday life.
Yet these things continually irked me, and left scars, and
I was envious of artists who could 'let go" when their emo-
tions got pent up, who could raise hell if interrupted at their
work by foolish questions or if blamed for something they
couldn't help. I even suppressed my whims (harmless enough
I am sure) , if I thought they would upset the daily round of
married life. But if others felt their whims had the right of
way I made no objection. It ought to be said here, however,
that I was never a victim of nagging. Nevertheless there was
deadly discord — and I had not found the key to harmony.
What with this continued repression, the struggle to make
both ends meet, and the feeling that the freedom I knew as a
young man was dying from neglect, I was on the verge of
becoming a hopeless neurotic, and that should be avoided at
all costs — for I was the provider for my family. I felt that
I was living a grave mistake. But married life seemed all right
for some artists — why couldn't I make the necessary adjust-
ment?
Uppermost was the thought that I ought to resign myself
to wedlock at all costs. Was it not the natural and accepted
relation of man and woman? And above all things I ought
to keep the tradition of the Young and North families invio-
late, for most of them knew how to marry, stay married,
and be contented. Such was the hold of a conventional up-
bringing— and I fought day and night to keep contrary
thoughts out of my mind*
ART YOUNG: HIS juIFE AND TIMES 229
Spring came again, with fine weather, new ideas, new
stimulus, and the pressing conclusion that the city environ-
ment was all wrong. Cities crushed people's souls. All these
monolithic piles of brick and stone, these hard pavements,
the nerve-tearing noise, made it a torture chamber — an in-
ferno. Certainly New York streets were no proper place for
children. They were entitled to better surroundings in which
to grow up. The country might be the solution of my own
problem and Elizabeth's. For I was not blind to the fact
that she had a problem.
I began day-dreaming about open roads and fields — the
soil, rippling streams, and the sunshine as I knew them in
boyhood. If only I could go barefoot again, wade in a creek,
and feel the cool touch of plowed ground. If only I could
let the warm sun soothe the back of my neck while I stood
with naked feet on a grassy knoll, — that would be the true
polarity of health, sun and soil meeting in my system, and
I would be well again mentally as well as physically. And
to watch horses, cows, birds, and trees — the thought of it!
I had heard of crippled city horses that had pounded their
feet on cobblestones for years being restored to usefulness
by the cushioned pastures of the country.
Too much city — now for the country! Elizabeth and
Kate both hailed the idea enthusiastically, and we began hunt-
ing through the advertisements of farms for sale in the Sun-
day papers, marking the likely ones. Then we took stock
of the family finances. Elizabeth had some money available
that had been left her by Uncle Len, and I had a few dollars
remaining from the proceeds of sales to magazines.
We inspected several of the farms offered, but all had
something wrong with them — they were too far from a town,
or were on land too rocky, or had no good water supply,
and all too often did not bear out the representations of the
real estate dealer.
But each time we fared forth hopefully. And one day
we went to Connecticut to look at a place south of Bethel,
two hours by train from New York. "Maybe this will be
the one/' said Elizabeth. Mr. Platt, who lived a quarter
of a mile from the farm we were going to inspect, and who
was acting as agent for the owner, met us at the depot with
a team and a two-seated buggy, and drove us out. We turned
230 ART YOUNG: HIS LIFE AND TIMES
to the right at Shaker's Corner, and moved on along Chestnut
Ridge Road which climbed amid enchanting wooded hills.
The place we went to see comprised four acres of land;
a gurgling creek which ran half-hidden through the brush;
a two-story frame house badly in need of repair, with a
cellar and attic; a good barn, painted red; and an orchard
which was worth the price asked, just to look at. The land
sloped "every which way", as New Englanders say. The
house was on a higher level than the barn, with a plot of
fairly even ground between which was suited to gardening.
Back of the house was a trail leading upward to a huge gray
boulder, not rounded by a million years of glacial rolling,
but still with sharp edges and a pointed apex, as if it might
have been tossed around no more than a few thousand years.
On that summit one could stand in the breeze and survey
the surrounding foothills of the Berkshires. There was a sense
of isolation here, of protection from the tearing clamor of the
outside world. I stood on that high rock a long time that first
day, thinking and hoping. ... It was amazing how much
ground- space there could be in four acres. And the area
seemed even larger when I set out later to cut the grass and
weeds with a scythe.
We called on neighboring farmers to inquire about the
history of this little homestead. Old Mr. Hickok, who lived
dowa the road, said: "There hain't no better garden ground
and no better well-water in these parts/' After climbing to
the lookout rock again and feasting our eyes further on the
whole prospect, we returned to Bethel, and went to the town
clerk's office to look up the deed. That being clear, we paid
Mr. Platt a few dollars to bind the bargain and said we'd
bring the family up in a week and take possession.
I felt happier that day than I had in ten years. And Eliza-
beth was gay. It was a real holiday for her, away from the
responsibility of caring for the children. She wore an attrac-
tive light blue frock and a flower-trimmed hat to match, and
seemed no older than when I came back from Colorado.
Packing our belongings was no task this time; it was
sport. During the week I visited several editors and boasted
about my back-to-the-farm movement. I would be able to
do better work in the country air, I was certain. On the
strength of my glowing expectations I got orders for enough
ART YOUNG: HIS LIFE AND TIMES 231
drawings to cover the expense of moving — so our migration
to Connecticut was made auspiciously*
What did me the most good in all this was the hopeful
feeling that I could find myself again out where there was
an absence of confusion. In the city my real self was being
rubbed out by the friction of conflicting thoughts. You don't
know who you are unless you stand alone among the hills
and trees. Hills and trees don't argue with you; they take
you for granted*
We all stayed for a few days in Mr* Platt's house, until
our household goods arrived. They came by freight. I was
much concerned about the piano and a large Swiss music-box
which had been given to me by a Chicago friend — but every-
thing arrived in good order, and soon was moved up to our
hill. For another day we were busy placing furniture, tacking
down carpets, putting up curtains, and disposing of various
little tasks.
Then I took off my shoes and stockings, rolled up my
pants, and reveled in the contact with grass and earth. North
joined me, while his mother and aunt were in the house put-
ting minor things to rights. Then we climbed to the big
rock, and North was excited over being up so high above
our house. Between us and the house the apple trees were
in blossom, and the air was fragrant. We went down to the
creek, which was beyond the barn, and North tried to catch
frogs and minnows, which were always too quick for him.
The barn was a lure, and we explored that, watching the
doves which had cotes inside the south door; they had been
thrown in with the farm.
I did no drawing that day, for there were too many odds
and ends to be done before we would be settled. But my brain
was active with planning. I arranged to have Mr. Hickok
bring his horse over and plow up the garden. In the evening
I walked in to Bethel and bought seeds. Mr. Hickok would
come the following week, we would plant the seeds as soon
as the ground was ready, and I figured out from the directions
on the seed-envelopes just how many days it would be before
we would be eating our own vegetables. But something hap-
pened that year so that the garden did not turn out well —
too much rain, or maybe it was drouth; I've forgotten which,
As the days wore on I began to feel quite at home in the
232 ART YOUNG: HIS LIFE AND TIMES
new environment* I remembered the cartoons I had promised
the editors. I put my drawing table in the northwest room
upstairs which looked out on a hill of apple trees. Picture
production had begun again, and I could hear North at his
play — and later at the supper table his reports of discoveries
of insects and such queer things (to a city boy) that he had
found down by the creek. He had captured a small turtle and
had put several fireflies in a glass jar and was going to inves-
tigate the mystery of their light. The quaint, genius-like
observations of children as they voice them before they have
been told what their elders think they know on any subject
makes child-thoughts sound like the highest wisdom — and
hence are real poetry.
After Hickok finished the plowing, a barefoot walk in
the moist loam became a daily rite with me before breakfast.
Then a footbath in the creek. If there is any greater thrill
of health than this I have never felt it. And many times I
climbed to the gray rock, inhaled deeply, and saw new scenes
in the surrounding countryside; in changing lights and at-
mospheres the beauties of the view were inexhaustible.
When the vegetables began to show themselves, of course
the weeds sprang up to beat them. I hoed earnestly then and
with more interest than I ever had on my father's farm. But
as weeks passed hoeing became a nuisance, and the crusade
against weeds was one more lost cause. I busied myself in
one way or another around the old house, giving an imita-
tion of a carpenter.
Then I found it convenient to set up a studio in the loft
of the barn, where I could work without being disturbed by
North's romping. Entrance to that was by ladder, and I
installed a trap-door at the top to close myself off. Not much
needed to be done to make that loft comfortable for me. It
was dry, the roof being sound. And by leaving the wide
hay-door open I could have good light by day and a view
of the hills to the East that seemed often to change. After I
had swept the hay-dust from the floor, Elizabeth contributed
some small rugs so that the place wouldn't be too bare.
My books were in the house, filling many shelves, and
in the evenings I would be there, in what we then called the
sitting room, reading while Kate and Elizabeth were busy
with their own devices, perhaps crocheting, playing croki-
ART YOUNG: HIS LIFE AND TIMES 233
nole, or telling stories to North. We three grown-ups would
vie with one another to find amusing anecdotes in the maga-
zines or newspapers that were worth repeating. Sometimes
we would pop corn or have a candy-pull, as we used to back
in Wisconsin. And the glee of North over these simple treats
reminded me of my own childhood.
In the fall I went down to New York to see editors, but
stayed only overnight, and was glad to get back to the farm
and the clean smell of earth, the early morning chorus of
birds, the peaceful quiet of back roads.
We had rural free delivery, with mail in the mornings.
But frequently I would walk to the village, a mile away, late
in the afternoon, to mail drawings before the postoffice
closed. In the village I would talk with old-timers who had
long since retired from whatever work they had done, and
would ask them questions about local history. Being a good
listener, I was willing to let them do most of the talking —
and often I would sketch them as they gave me the low-down
on village happenings in the past.
The best of their stories had to do with P. T. Barnum.
That great showman, three times member of the state legis-
lature, and mayor of Bridgeport, first saw the light of day
in Bethel in 1810. The house in which he was born still
stands.
When we moved to the Chestnut Ridge place, there stood
in the center of the village in a triangular grass plot an ornate
bronze fountain which Barnum presented to his home town
in 1881. I have read his presentation speech, and seen photo-
graphs of the occasion — and for memory reflections, recalling
names and incidents of his boyhood, I have never read a
similar extemporaneous address to compare with it.
"And now, my friends/' he said in closing, "I take great
pleasure in presenting this fountain to the town and borough
of Bethel, as a small evidence of the love which I bear them
and the respect which I feel for my successors, the present
and future citizens of my native village/*
But there followed a good deal of criticism of the gift.
Some said he "gave it to Bethel because Bridgeport didn't
want it/* and others that "it took too much water to keep
it going/' Still others who were suspicious that P. T. might
CONNECTICUT CRIME AGAINST ART. Bronze fountain given by
P. T. Barnum to Bethel, his home town. Razed by village authorities in
1920 to make room for this atrocious war-statue.
try to humbug them, opined that "like as not it hain't hronze
at all."
Unfortunately this heroic figure of a Triton blowing a
horn with spouting dolphins arqund the base — such a foun-
tain as one sees in public parks in Europe, and which Barnum
had had cast in Germany — is no more. I think it sad that
the village selectmen one day around 1920 had the fountain
demolished. They said it was cracking and sold it to a junk
dealer. Then what? In its stead they erected one of those
234
ART YOUNG: HIS LIFE AND TIMES 235
libels on American youth, a big bronze male out to kill —
typical statue in American towns to commemorate the "war
for democracy". If such memorials are intended to stimulate
and revere heroism, they are jokes; but worst of all they are
insulting to anyone with a sense of the artistic. The Barnum
fountain had at least the merit of classic form.
Passing the old cider mill near Shaker's Corner, and pro-
ceeding north along Plum Tree Road for a couple of miles,
one comes to a lane which leads to Ivy Island, the five- acre
tract which Barnum's maternal grandfather, an inveterate
joker, deeded to him at his birth. As young Phineas grew
into boyhood, the grandfather and other relatives often re-
minded him that he was "the richest boy in town/* Not
until he was perhaps eleven did he get to see this fabulously
valuable property of his.
Then he persuaded an Irish farmhand, on a Sunday, to
take him to Ivy Island. When they arrived at his estate,
Phineas burst into tears when he discovered that it was just
a piece of worthless swamp-land. He was chased by a black-
snake, according to his recital of that disillusionment, was
stung by bees, and sank to his waist in mire. . * . But many
years later, when Barnum was buying Scudder's Museum in
New York — he blandly put up Ivy Island as part of the
security — and it was worth just as much then as it had been
on the day when he first saw it. Today it is still worthless.
Three miles north of Bethel lies Danbury, the county
seat, an old circus town rich in memories. Barnum was a
prisoner there for sixty days, in the old jail, still standing.
As a young man he was publisher of the Herald of Freedom
in Bethel, and got into trouble by criticising one Deacon
Seeley editorially. Convicted of libel, he was jailed. But he
had a good time during his confinement. The sheriff was a
friend, and provided his guest with comfortable quarters on
the third floor, where the windows afforded pleasing views.
P. T. continued to edit the Herald of Freedom from his jail
quarters, and when he was released a large delegation of citi-
zens waited outside to welcome him. They put him into a
carriage, drawn by plumed horses, and with a brass band at
its head, a long procession escorted him through the principal
streets of Danbury, and then home to Bethel.
As an editor Barnum assailed slavery, and later as a leg-
236 ART YOUNG: HIS LIFE AND TIMES
islator bore down heavily on the New Haven railroad. An
ardent temperance lecturer, he fails to mention in his auto-
biography, Straggles and Triumphs, that he had a brother
Eben who was the town drunkard and who used to sleep off
his jags sometimes on the grass plot where the Barnum fresh-
water fountain was erected.
When that work first appeared, a book agent invaded
Bethel to solicit orders for it. He knocked at a certain door,
and when it was opened by an elderly woman he launched
into a description of the book's contents, saying that "every
American" ought to know the story of P. T. Barnum's life.
"Young man/* she said, "I know more about P. T.
Barnum than you can ever get into a book. I'm his mother/'
I learned during my early residence in these parts that
Danbury and Bethel, which in a manner of speaking were
for many years "all one place", had a historic background
worth knowing about* Much of renown and interest beside
the world's most famous showman is associated with these
hills.
Over on Redding Ridge, I heard, there was a place where
Gen. * Israel Putnam camped throughout a winter with his
ragged soldiers during the American Revolution* It was only
a few miles from my home, and one day I walked over and
saw a serried half-mile stretch of camp-fire sites. Here were
a lot of the old stones which encircled the fires around which
the boys sang and cursed — but knew with some degree of
certainty what they were fighting for. That area has been
conserved, and is now known as Putnam Park.
Many Tories lived in this part of the state in Revolu-
tionary years. One patriarch informed me that his grand-
father told him that his father went to a church "right here
in Bethel" — one Sunday in those anxious days — and after
the sermon the minister said: "Now I'm going to ask all
those who are for the cause of the Revolution to go out of
the door on the left, and those opposed to go out on the
right/' The old-timer didn't know what the count revealed.
But it was one way of trying to find out who was for a
monarchy and who for a radical change in government.
Our nearest neighbor on the road south going toward
Redding was Mr. Agnew, a good carpenter, who had built
ART YOUNG: HIS LIFE AND TIMES 237
many houses in and around BetheL He would often stop at
our gate on his way to and from the village, and was always
ready to do odd jobs of carpentry. Sometimes he would work
for hours and laugh it off when I tried to pay him. I don't
like to think of it, but those men who enjoyed doing things
for others with no thought of pay have mostly passed out
of the scene — to make way for the go-getters in all profes-
sions.
Mr. Agnew had never been to New York City since he
stopped there sometime during his service in the Union Army.
One day he made up his mind to go in and visit a relative
living in "the Bronix." When I next saw him I asked if he
had been to the big city. He had — for just one day. This
was his story:
"I went to visit my cousin in the Bronix. After dinner I
thought Fd better take a look around the city. First I went
to Grant's Tomb, and the folks told me I ought to look at
Central Park — so I went there and hung around till three
o'clock. Then I decided I'd take the four o'clock train back
to Bethel. Shucks! I don't suppose I seen half what there
was to see/*
In discussing the Civil War with Mr. Agnew, I speke of
John Brown. He laughed — and I suppose that laugh was
the same kind that was heard in many places when Old
Osawatomie was mentioned back in pre-Rebellion days. Then
my neighbor said:
"I seen him up in Torrington, where he was born. He'd
been living and fighting out in Kansas, and folks said he
came back to Torrington to buy knives and guns/'
"What kind of a fellow was he?" I asked.
"Crazy as a bed-bug/* said Mr. Agnew.
One evening I was taking a walk on a back road. Appar-
ently no one lived in that part of the countryside. But finally
I came to a worn path which led to a weather-beaten shack
by the side of a swamp. No sound except at intervals the
croak of a frog — and off in a dark grove a screech owl would
shiver the doleful air in reply. In this scene of somber desola-
tion, with the twilight almost gone, I saw a man sitting by
the shack, I ventured over to him slowly* After the "good
evening'' salutation I found that he was willing to have a
little conversation, in the course of which I learned that he
238 ART YOUNG: HIS LIFE AND TIMES
had lived in this same place "nigh onto thirty-one years/' I
asked him if he had ever been to New York City.
"Once/' he said. "There for three days — but the place
is too dang lonesome for me/'
I made a picture with similar dialogue which was pub-
lished in Life.
Early in this century there was still some real farming
in this region like that I had known out West. Not on such
a large scale, of course, but small farms on which a hard-
working man with a small family could live, provided he
kept a cow, horse, chickens, and enough pigs for winter
meat. Then it was possible to survive even in stony Connecti-
cut; so if the worst came to the worst I figured I might be
able to do the same on my four acres.
But gradually as the years went by the sturdy American
yeoman, not only in this state but all over the country, was
giving up the idea of making a small farm pay or even assure
a subsistence. The reason is well known to those who fol-
low the trend of economic determinism* Some of these small
Connecticut agriculturists had begun even around 1906 to
see the futility of farming, so they would do their chores
early in the morning and late in the evening — devoting the
interim hours to work in one of the many hat factories in
Danbury and BetheL
One fine day I was thinking what a great advantage it
was to have escaped from scenes of debate, controversy, and
taking sides — that the quiet countryside was the right place
to be — away from it all — when George Agnew, son of my
neighbor, called. George said he had been asked by his fellow-
workers in the Short hat factory to see me about an impor-
tant matter.
Would I serve as an arbitrator in a serious conflict be-
tween the owner and the employees?
He said my decision would stand, as both parties con-
cerned had agreed to that. I was an outsider, so to speak, and
would be impartial. He showed me several typewritten sheets
explaining how much per dozen hats the workers had re-
ceived under a previous contract, how much the boss would
pay if another contract were drawn up — if the workers
ART YOUNG: HIS LIFE AND TIMES 239
would agree to this and that and other things — and so on
ad infinitum*
After casually looking over this array of facts and fig-
ures, I said: 'Tm willing to act as arbitrator, but frankly I
can't be impartial. I'm for labor, first, last, and all the time/'
But George was keen to have me serve in spite of my bias.
So I read the document carefully and rendered my decision,
pronouncing the workers' demands reasonable and justified
according to contract* The decision was accepted all around
and I was pleased to know that an outsider could do a little
to help the cause of labor, if only to the extent of a few
cents per day.
During the years that I have lived near Bethel there have
been repeated strikes and lockouts in the two towns — a few
flush months, then gloom for the rest of the year.
But this once strong union sector of labor was de-
moralized following a strike in 1902, when the D. E, Loewe
Company, hat manufacturers in Danbury, sued the members
of the local hatters' union as individuals for injury to the
corporation's trade because of a boycott used to aid the strike.
The suit was brought under the Anti-Trust Act. Backed by
the National Manufacturers' Association, the Loewe com-
pany claimed damages, and was awarded $74,000 by a jury
in 1910, the law permitting it to collect as much as three
times the amount of the award. Under this judgement the
company attached the workers' homes and bank accounts —
if they had any to attach.
Many sad stories are told around here of the desperate
straits of those workers as a result of this ruthless assault,
the obvious purpose of which was to break up labor unions
in the United States for all time. Organized capital had de-
cided that it would no longer tolerate organized workers.
This was to be one of the final tests of strength.
The judgement was appealed and carried from court to
court. In 1915 the United States Supreme Court affirmed the
jury's verdict, which entitled the plaintiff to take $222,000
from the defendants — which meant taking everything they
had.
But in this long-drawn fight the boycott persisted despite
the Supreme Court, and Loewe himself lost his business and
died a financial wreck, though he received a pension from the
240 ART YOUNG: HIS LIFE AND TIMES
National Manufacturers' Association up to his death. It had
used Loewe for its own purpose, and the courts did their
part in upholding the right of capital to use any kind of a
club to knock labor helpless.
Chatting with the townsmen of Danbury and Bethel, I
would sometimes meet up with one of the older generation
who liked to talk about James Montgomery Bailey, "the
Danbury News man," who died in 1894. When I was a boy
out west "the Danbury News man" was known to everybody
— like Josh Billings, George W. Peck, and Bill Nye. It was
pleasant to hear those who had lived when he was here in
the flesh tell about him.
"You know," said the veteran Ezra Judd, "Monty was
in the Civil War. Got his reputation writing letters home to
the Danbury Times — some comical, some pretty darn sad.
When he come back him and Tim Donovan got hold of a
little money and bought the Times, and a few years later
they changed the name to the Danbury News, and said they
were going to keep politics out of it, and Monty began writ-
ing about anything he wanted to. I've been 'round the old
Danbury postoffice when they were mailing out the News;
they used to say thirty thousand copies went out every week
— pretty good for a country-town paper."
"What kind of a fellow was Bailey?" I asked him.
"Great big six-footer — good-looking — never wore a
neck-tie — they say he had spells of the blues — and would
stay home drunk for a week. He liked children, but didn't
have none of his own. Every time I saw him he had a big
dog, sometimes two or three, with him. Everybody knew
he'd help them if they ever got in trouble — didn't care for
money. Mr. Young, Monty Bailey was as fine a man as ever
drew breath, and you can say that Ezra Judd said so."
In my library I have one of Bailey's books, Life in Dan-
bury, and Fm old-fashioned enough to enjoy the homespun
humor of his time. Taking that volume from the shelf, I
open it casually and see this one among the locals (which is
typical of the Bailey manner of saying things) :
"A Sharon man stole a peck of dahlia roots under the
impression that they were sweet potatoes. He feels the decep-
tion keenly*"
ART YOUNG: HIS LIFE AND TIMES 241
Mark Twain made his home in Redding during the last
six years of his life* This is the next railroad station three
miles south of Bethel* Once I talked with him at an Illus-
trators* Society entertainment in his honor in New York. I
was then illustrating epigrams called * 'Shots at Truth" for
Life, and I told him he ought to publish the sententious
remarks of Puddinghead Wilson and other short passages
from his writings. I don't know whether I had anything to
do with it, but about a year later I saw a Christmas brochure
JC.
MARK TWAIN
0'
•f
of brief quotations from the works of Mark Twain, with
emphasis on Puddinghead' s philosophy*
There are many stories in circulation about Twain's life
in Redding* He was becoming sick and depressed in those
years. I asked Albert Bigelow Paine, his biographer, whose
home was near the humorist's then, if his heart trouble (an-
gina pectoris) was caused by his incessant smoking. Paine
said; "It is not the cause, but it aggravates it/*
Two thieves broke into Mark's house late one night
242 ART YOUNG: HIS LIFE AND TIMES
when everything was still, and stole a bag full of precious
silverware. They were caught next day, and their trial was
subsequently held in the old schoolhouse in Redding which
was used for the administration of justice. Louis Ohlweiler,
the Bethel barber, went down to attend the proceedings.
When he arrived, he told me, Mark was walking slowly back
and forth in front of the schoolhouse and smoking a cigar.
During the trial, the judge asked the author- of Hackle-
berry Finn the date and approximate hour of the burglary.
Mark drawled out an answer — but the judge, after talking
with the sheriff, said: "Mr. Clemens, I think you must be
mistaken," and named a different date and hour from the
official record.
''All right, Judge/' Mark replied, "have it your own
way. Fm always wrong. That's how I got my reputation/'
CHAPTER 24
BUT THE BACK-TO-NATURE EXPERIMENT FAILS
THE experiment of going back to the soil did not work
out as I had optimistically planned. As the months
went on it became evident that there was an excess of
conventional sameness in my life. Each day was too much
like being on a treadmill. I had hoped that the new arrange-
ment, in which I had more room to myself with less inter-
ruption, and where my wife and her sister saw less of me —
would help to break the terrible restraint I felt as a man
married. But try as hard as I could, even praying to the God-
of-all-wisdom for guidance (a desperate manifestation of my
troubled self) , I could not justify -my nature with marriage.
I knew many artists who were married and apparently happy,
and I blamed myself for being queer — a non-adjustable,
misfit egoist. Evidently I didn't belong among normal people.
Day after day the situation grew worse. I was miserable,
couldn't concentrate on my work and was turning out pic-
. tures which I knew were far below my standard, and nightly
I lay awake for hours.
I realized now that daily contact with plowed ground,
the blowing clover, trees and birds, and above all two bright
children, couldn't save me. Fd have to tackle the world with
a fresh outlook as I did when young — free to be myself, even
if wrong. I had no yearning for the gay life, and no woman
was waiting for me in the background. I was simply no
longer equal to the duties and courtesies of married life. Only
through release from its conventional routine and binding
exactions could I function as a provider for my family.
It had become impossible to combine domesticity and
creative work. I was capable of doing a small drawing now
and then with some concentration and good results — but sus-
tained effort was beyond me under the existing circumstances.
For some five years we had gone on with our second
effort to live together in harmony, I did my best to have it
243
244 ART YOUNG: HIS LIFE AND TIMES
succeed, and I am sure Elizabeth did. But the result was fail-
ure. Now I was through. All I wanted was to be alone to
continue my work.
During all the harrowing conflict which went on within
me, I felt that neither of us could be definitely blamed for
what happened. We were in the grip of forces over which we
had no control. Here were two natures, each the product of
countless centuries of combining physical and emotional
attributes and defects. With some other man Elizabeth might
have been supremely happy, and he with her. Or if we had
married in youth, when my love was strong and possessive,
it might have turned out all right — if. That word if. I made
a picture which was published in Life of that word if as a
huge rock in the turbulent sea which I titled "The Grave of
Our Dreams/' Elizabeth seemed to see in clear outline the
reality which confronted us, and did not try to fight it.
Elizabeth, the sweetheart of my youth, now so far away, is
my favorite heroine. What she went through in her years
with me is her own untold story.
An artist is one who can put himself in another's place.
There is no art without feeling, and the better the artist the
more intensely he feels. He is sympathetic and imaginative to
a degree that makes him * 'queer" to the world of "normal"
human beings. Seeing others in despair is his own despair.
One thing I had learned through that long drawn out
ordeal was this: When a revolution comes, whether in the
life of an individual or of a nation, it is seldom justifiable to
those who must endure the brunt of abrupt change. Some
will say "it could have been avoided"; others that "I don't
object to it, but to the way it was done"; still others deplore
"the innocent sufferers." Oh yes, many sad things occur as a
result of a vital change in private or social living. But often
it is pride that is injured most. People who cannot see the
true inwardness of our personal problems are apt to think us
heartless for conduct that they see only from the outside. It
may have required every bit of our moral courage, but for
some other act requiring no strain of morals or ethics in the
doing, we are thought heroic*
I came back to New York and took a room in an office
building rented out for studios on Twenty-fourth Street
ART YOUNG: HIS LIFE AND TIMES 245
Under the same roof were John Cassell, the cartoonist; Jim
Conde, picturesque illustrator of the Uncle Remus stories
and other animal books; Philip Dillon, writer and dilettante
in politics; and Morgan Robertson, then at the height of his
production of sea stories.
Jim Conde introduced me to one of the first stool-and-
counter lunchrooms in New York, around the corner on
Sixth Avenue. "Let's go over to Minx's/' he would say,
"and sit on a stool like a frog on a lily-pad/' His favorite
dish was rice pudding because you got so much for your
money.
My studio was up five flights. The elevator stopped run-
ning at 6. There were 'bedbugs to fight on summer nights,
and life was far from being one long sweet song — but I
accepted the hardships willingly as part of the price of my
new freedom.
The building in which we lived and worked had poor
heating facilities. In winter it was hard to wield a pencil
with freezing fingers. Late one cold December night I hap-
pened to go to Jim's room. He had retired — in a cast-off
barber's chair, one of his studio accessories. Tilted back and
fully dressed, with newspapers tucked in around him, he had
arranged an electric light bulb so that it touched his chest.
In his colorful language, he said:
"By the billy-horned Moses! I had to figure out some
way to keep warm on a night like this."
In a short while after my return to the city the doors of
opportunity were opening to me again just as in my youth,
and I soon began to send money to Elizabeth. That had been
my first thought. But I was now developing a hatred for all
bourgeois institutions in addition to marriage, and trying
hard to live up to my own ideas of right and wrong. Hence-
forth no one could hire me to draw a cartoon that I did not
believe in. This had become an obsession.
Once I sent back to Life a check for a hundred dollars,
though I needed it badly, because, after drawing a cartoon at
John Ames Mitchell's suggestion, I decided that the idea ex-
pressed in it was not true. Life had been attacking what it
called the theatrical trust, contending that this combine was
exclusively Jewish and that these Jews were crucifying the
art of the drama.
246 ART YOUNG: HIS LIFE AND TIMES
My picture showed a swooning woman, The Drama,
nailed to a cross, with various Jewish men typifying the
theatre owners looking on with delight. After the picture had
been delivered to the office of Life by messenger I realized
that it was untrue to my convictions. I asked myself: Why
did I draw that cartoon? Why hadn't Life asked some other
cartoonist to do it, who didn't bother his head about the
ethics of ideas so long as there was money in them? I felt that
Life
A SUCCESS.
the editor's suggestion had been conceived in a spirit of ani-
mus against a race, and that idea I never could believe in.
Anyone who believes something sincerely usually can
make me believe it for a little while if he is a good talker,
even if his idea is basically wrong, but when I think it over
alone I discover that his thoughts were not mine at all. In this
instance I knew I had been trapped by my own tendency to
oblige. It is this tendency, plus the damnable coercion of
economic need, that leads to the deterioration of creative
minds.
When I told Mr. Mitchell that I was returning his check
ART YOUNG: HIS LIFE AND TIMES 247
and that I positively did not want Life to publish that draw-
ing he was a bit peeved, but said "All right, if that's the
way you feel about it." And I said to myself: "That's the
end of me as a contributor to Life," But I had thought the
whole question through and was ready for anything* And I
knew this: that I would not sell my talent to be used for
anti-Semitic propaganda. Certainly commercialization of the
arts was not by any means an exclusively Jewish sin — there
were plenty of old-family Americans and members of other
races ready to sacrifice anything for profit. Then, too, I
wanted to save such a tragic concept as a crucifixion for a
cause greater than that of the drama — and I was now con-
vinced that it should be reserved for use in some stark crisis
of the under-privileged, in general the poor and despised of
earth, who were everywhere being nailed to the cross of profit
at the behest of the moneyed interests.
But that incident did not close Life's doors to me; on the
contrary, as time went on, Mr. Mitchell seemed even more
receptive to my work than before. Had it come to an argu-
ment, however, I felt now that I could hold my own. Be-
cause of the training I was getting in the Cooper Union de-
bating class I was more and more able to justify my point of
view.
Despite Life's occasional anti-Semitic slant, its editor had
reverence for that Jew whose other name is Christianity. In
conversation with me Mr. Mitchell once said: "The average
business man finds one great fault with Jesus; he thinks it too
bad that he wasn't practical/'
"That would make a strong cartoon/' I answered. "A
picture of a group of business men calling Christ to account
for being an impractical man/'
He told me to go ahead and draw it. I did, and he voiced
his approval and sent a prompt check in payment. Yet I could
see that his sense of good taste was a little upset by the finished
drawing. Week after week I watched the pages of Life hop-
ing to see it appear, but it didn't, though later work of mine
continued to be used. More than once Mr. Mitchell was
apologetic, saying: "We're trying to get up nerve enough
around here to publish your Christ picture/'
Likely that cartoon is somewhere in the archives of un-
published works of art among the effects of Life Publishing
248 ART YOUNG: HIS LIFE AND TIMES
Company. It was drawn with enthusiasm hecause of its
truth.
From my reading I would cull meaty phrases and
maxims, and illustrate them. Batches of these quotations were
printed in Life, under the general title "Shots at Truth/' At
SHOTS AT TRUTH. Under this general title I illustrated a series of
epigrams for Life, which ran singly. Captions for the above, in obvious order,
were : "Fear follows crime and is its punishment" (Voltaire) ; "It is difficult
to rise if your poverty is greater than your talent" (Juvenal) ; "The great
are only great because we carry them on our shoulders; when we throw
them off they sprawl upon the ground" (Montandre) ; "He who abuses
others must not be particular about the answers he gets." (Anonymous.)
the same time I was also drawing for Puck, principal com-
petitor of Life, My friend Bert Leston Taylor, then an editor
of Puck, didn't think much of these "shots" in the rival
weekly. One day Taylor said: "Say, Art, why don't you
illustrate Battletfs Quotations?" I told him that a good
illustrated Bartlett would not he a bad idea, and for a long
time I entertained the thought of doing The Best of Bartlett,
ART YOUNG: HIS LIFE AND TIMES 249
Illustrated. Had I been given any encouragement by an editor
or publisher, I could have found many epigrams in Bartlett
worthy of such handling. Back of this idea of illustrated
quotes was the belief that if a title credited to Shakespeare or
some other famous man was put under a drawing of mine, it
would have more weight than any title I could devise.
In the debating class we dealt often with the doctrine of
government operation of utilities. The theme appealed to me,
and I joined the Municipal Ownership League and began
making speeches for it around New York. This was during
a political campaign* Carrying an easel and drawing paper,
I would frequently illustrate my speeches with simple dia-
gram cartoons drawn while the audience watched. Cab hire
necessitated by the easel cost a good deal, and not until late
in the campaign did the arrangements committee ever pay
for my cabs. Being an unpaid speaker, I was considerably in
the red when the campaign ended*
One of the arguments used by the opponents of municipal
ownership was that it would be unjust to take away the
franchise held by the utility corporations — that legally or
ethically the city could not compel a corporation to forfeit
such a franchise no matter how tyrannical that corporation
had been.
"People who argue this way/' I said in my speeches,
"remind me of the small boy who bought a green pepper at
a grocery, thinking it a pear. A gentleman meeting the little
fellow a few blocks down the street noticed the boy screwing
up his face in disgust. The gentleman said; 'What's the mat-
ter?' . . . *Oh/ said the boy, 1 bought this for a pear and
I suppose I've got to eat it/ "
Only five years earlier I had been poking fun at Hiram
Pennick for his "campainin for the millenum" and "against
the octipust" and now I was crusading for one of the chief
demands of the Populists. And often my audiences were not
much larger than the handful of listeners which I had shown
following in Hiram's wake. Changing the world was a slow
process; people in mental darkness were slow in seeing the
light, as I had been; crusaders for the betterment of human
society needed extraordinary patience.
After that local campaign I had a new burst of produc-
250 ART YOUNG: HIS LIFE AND TIMES
tive energy, for I must earn additional money and build up
a financial reserve to keep my family going. The easiest mate-
rial for me to sell then was the illustrated joke, which occa-
sionally satirized the passing show, but didn't tread on
individual toes as my political cartoons had done.
Thus I produced a series for Pack called "Things That
Hit Our Funny Bone/' A typical specimen of this series shows
two pictures — first Chester Van Daub, artist, painting a
ALL IS VANITY. Wife reading local paper: "Ezra Whitcomb was seen
yesterday driving his new rubber-tired carriage." (Note the "Well, I guess"
wiggle of that leg.)
canvas in his studio, and second, Mr. Wright Mush, critic
and authority on pictures, gushing over the same canvas
to some awed museum visitors. Van Daub at work says:
"I d' know wha' thish picture means (slashes on a brash- fall
of burnt sienna and pink) but it looks like a Hungarian
goulash. T' hell with art anyway!" . . . Mr. Wright Mush
says; "Ah, this is Van Daub's 'Moonlight Splendor', a won-
derful conception; the meaning of the artist is so clearly and
intellectually expressed and shows such a firm grasp of his
medium. As I said in my review, such a picture is born only
in the brain of one who is intensely devoted to his art."
One of my dialogue pictures in Pack reveals people seated
at two tables in a cafe. A soulful woman is saying to her
ART YOUNG: HIS LIFE AND TIMES 251
escort: "Those men over there are all brilliant writers.
Wouldn't it be a treat just to hear their conversation?*' . . .
And one of the brilliant writers is reminiscing just then:
"Gus, do you remember those sausages we had in Berlin?
Talk about — but say, they don't know how to cook in this
country!"
Other illustrated jokes I sold to Puck dealt with The
Reward of Virtue, showing the lawyer who resolved never
to defend a client he believed guilty (and thus remained poor)
and the lawyer who didn't (and got rich) ; Street Signs in
Plenty Where Nobody Goes (in the realty developments)
and No Signs Where Everybody Goes (in the center of a
city) ; Santa Glaus discovering the convenience of using a
dumb-waiter instead of a chimney; and automobiles scaring
farmers' horses.
I note that once I poked fun at my own back-to-nature
ideas, working out in pictures this theme: "Henry Wilbur
Puddin reads Dr. Dippy's book, 'Getting Back to the Earth' ,
and tries the bare-foot exercises recommended (doing them at
night in the snow) . He gets back to earth in three weeks."
His tombstone read: "He had a gentle trusting nature/'
In the editorial waiting rooms I would meet other car-
toonists and illustrators and exchange small talk with them*
There was no other regular meeting place to which I had
entree. Cartoonists and writers didn't know much about each
other's personalities then* There were few social or fraternal
organizations in New York which I could have joined that
were not too expensive. Thomas Nast once had urged me to
come into the Players' Club, but the cost was too much —
and the Salmagundi Club likewise was beyond the reach of
a struggling free-lance. Bills that I couldn't pay have always
been a big part of the hell that has surrounded me in most
of my years.
In a later period, when I happened to be making money
above expenses, I was almost persuaded by C. D. Gibson
and Frank Crowninshield to become a member of the exclu-
sive Coffee House Club. Here I could have chinned with
Joseph H. Choate, Chester H. Aldrich, George Arliss, Win-
throp Ames, Paul Manship, and others, and no doubt it
would have been much to my liking. But I had learned to
252 ART YOUNG: HIS LIFE AND TIMES
avoid the club habit, with its monthly dues staring one in
the face like a bugaboo in the night
Some of us got together now and then at dinners — par-
ticularly in Chinatown on Saturday evenings. Robert Ryland,
Sydney Shaw, Andrew Schwartz, Howard Smith, and other
kindred souls would attend — all painters, and some of them
Prix de Rome winners and others with prize records. At those
informal affairs there was sparkling talk and keen repartee.
And after the chow mein and trimmings had been disposed
of, and many cups of tea had been downed, we would walk
home through dim back streets to our uptown studios.
These gatherings grew larger as the years went by — and
the last time I took part Mahonri Young and John Held Jr.,
both from Salt Lake City, and many more of the rising
generation of painters and illustrators were there. The group
had expanded to fifty or more — too many for real camerad-
erie. With only six or a dozen at a table the talk was intimate,
and all of us could be in on it. But when the number of
diners multiplied the Chinatown dinners became confusing.
Our friendly little exchanges had become institutionalized,
and for me the lure was gone. An announcement of one of
those later conclaves described it rightly as "a dinner to make
believe we are having a better time than we are having/'
And I met a few painters in those days whom I had read
about in my youth — for instance, Walter Shirlaw (a great
artist now neglected) — and was introduced to John LaFarge
once when he was out walking with his Japanese servant. I
knew the picturesque DeLeftwitch Dodge, who was one of
the promising wizards of sensual and fantastic murals even
in the days when we were both at Julien's in Paris. The last
time I saw him he was teaching at the Art Students* League
— and in one of those casual street talks with him it was
plain that the tendency of the younger generation to see some
merit in the new cult of Picasso and the other modernists
aggravated him.
After our breakup, Elizabeth and Kate and the children
remained on the farm for about six months. Then they de-
parted for California to make it their Borne. Both sisters had
been left small legacies by their Uncle Len.
We kept up a fairly regular correspondence in which the
ART YOUNG: HIS LIFE AND TIMES 253
progress of the two boys was the principal topic. Several
years after going to the west coast, Elizabeth indicated that
she would like to sell her share in the Chestnut Ridge place,
and I agreed to buy it and pay for it in installments during
the following year.
Around 1910 Elizabeth and the youngsters made a visit
to Wisconsin, and my father expressed pride in the brightness
of the boys and the consideration they showed for their
mother.
Chapter 25
ALL TOO SLOWLY I SEE THE LIGHT
FAITHFULLY I continued to attend Cooper Union.
Each Saturday night we debated such subjects as the
tariff, immigration, woman suffrage, public ownership
of utilities, taxation, states' rights, and others of timely
interest.
GRADUATION NIGHT AT COOPER UNION, 1906. Class in oratory
and debate. I rise to the occasion.
In the spring of 1906 I graduated, on the platform where
Lincoln made his historic speech just before he became Presi-
dent. That speech in which he expressed what was then an
unpopular view among the best people of the East, that the
federal government had the right to exercise control over
254
ART YOUNG: HIS LIFE AND TIMES 255
slavery. "Never let us be slandered from our duty/* he said.
"... Let us have faith that right makes might, and in that
faith let us to the end dare to do our duty as we under-
stand it/'
And from this same platform more than half a century
later, President-elect William Howard Taft had been con-
fronted with a challenging question:
"What would you advise a man to do who is out of a
job and whose family is starving because he can't get work?"
There was little comfort for the unemployed in Taft's
answer:
"God knows. Such a man has my deepest sympathy.
>»
On the night of my graduation, there was a debate:
"Resolved, that a tax on income is vital to the welfare of
the American people/' I was selected as one of the four de-
baters from a class of more than 100. I was at my best that
evening, and our side, the affirmative, won. The late Judge
Morgan J. O'Brien was judge of the contest, and presented
the diplomas.
I enjoyed the mind exercise I was getting in those days;
there were thrills in it such as I imagine people have when
they fly in airplanes. Disappointments too. Sometimes I
would read an illuminating book, and having finished it,
would lean back in my chair with the satisfied feeling that
I knew enough to last me for awhile. Next night, perhaps,
I would hear a lecture by some better informed individual
than I could ever hope to be, and would realize that I had
climbed only the foothills of understanding.
I stocked up with Socialist pamphlets, and read, or tried
to read them. Often they were in language too deep for me;
in technical terms familiar to European Socialists, but not to
unconverted Americans. But it never occurred to me to be
against Socialism or any other theory because it originated
in Europe. I felt that such an objection was just plain silly;
that "alien theory", "imported doctrine*', and such phrases
of contempt were deliberately coined to discredit a growing
cause. If this was good reasoning, I figured, why accept any-
thing that originated outside of our own country? That our
prevailing religion came from Asia — and many of our ac-
cepted political and best scientific ideas had their origin in
256 ART YOUNG: HIS LIFE AND TIMES
Europe — seemed to me ample justification for free trade in
theories.
For several years the scathing articles by Lincoln Steffens
under the general title of "The Shame of our Cities" had been
appearing in McClares Magazine, and they exposed the
bribed and the bribing of municipal government Seemingly
one city was as rotten as another. And Ida Tarbell had writ-
ten "The History of Standard Oil/' and turned the search-
light on the methods by which John D. Rockefeller acquired
his fortune.
Thomas W. Lawson, outspoken Boston stockbroker, had
held the center of the American stage for more than two years
with his "Frenzied Finance" series in Everybody's Magazine.
With spectacular wrath, he tore the feathers out of the buz-
zards of Wall Street, showing up their evil practices and
raising hell generally among his own tribe. This lone bird
sought to reform the predatory birds all around him. Every-
body's leaped to an average sale of 750,000 copies during
that expose. Lawson's brilliant and bitter articles aroused
great public indignation against Wall Street. Then they
petered out with the crusader discouraged and financially
crushed.
Upton Sinclair had come along, a young man with a
mighty determination, and against heavy odds forced the
publication of his novel, The Jungle, based upon his first-
hand observations of the conditions under which meat was
packed in the Chicago stockyards and under which the work-
ers there lived. And President Theodore Roosevelt, who had
testified that he would as soon have eaten his old hat as the
canned meat furnished the American troops by the Chicago
packers in 1898, appointed a commission to investigate Sin-
clair's charges. Ella Reeve Bloor was a member of this body.
Brisbane lauded the book in two editorials, saying "The
Jungle'* had done for modern industrial slavery what "Uncle
Tom's Cabin" did for black slavery, and had done it better.
And the New York American began running the Sinclair
novel serially*
Many persons lost their taste for meat for a long time
because of the horrors shown in that story* Then the news-
papers reported that conditions had been cleaned up in the
ART YOUNG: HIS LIFE AND TIMES 257
stockyards by the new inspection service installed by the
Department of Agriculture at the urging of Roosevelt's com-
mission, and the public clamor died down. But the publicity
given to the investigation had painted a dark picture of the
whole meat industry in the minds of millions of Americans.*
Moyer, Haywood, and Pettibone were kidnapped in Den-
ver and taken to Boise, Idaho, for trial on a charge of assassi-
nating former Governor Steunenberg with dynamite. The
stories that came through on this in the daily press for months
gave the impression that these men and their associates in the
Western Federation of Miners were red-handed murderers; it
was easy to believe that, if one heard nothing of the other
ELLA REEVE BLOOR
side of the story, clear up to the time of the defendants*
acquittal.
But there were protest meetings in behalf of the defense
in New York, and I attended one of these, where Eugene V.
Debs spoke, and he brought home to us who listened the
black story of the frame-up against the accused, which was
designed to crush unionism among the metal miners of the
West. Debs was dynamic as he denounced the mining mag-
nates whose agents had seized the three union leaders in Colo-
* The Jungle had a profound effect upon me when I read it in 1906.
Sinclair gives a graphic picture of the tenacious nature of the giant evil he tried
to blot out, in The Brass Check and American Outpost. Recalling in the latter
book, in 1932, that he aimed at the public's heart and by accident hit it in the
stomach, he says: "I am supposed to have helped clean up the Yards and
improve the country's meat supply — though this is mostly delusion. But nobody
even pretends to believe that I improved the condition of the stockyards workers.
They have no unions to speak of, and their wages are, in relation to the cost of
living, every bit as low as they were twenty-eight years ago. Yet I don't want
to be pessimistic. . . . Some day we shall ... see the sprouting of the seed
we have been scattering all these weary years-**
258 ART YOUNG: HIS LIFE AND TIMES
rado without a warrant, carried them into another state, and
held them incommunicado for days while the prosecution
was building its case against them, His voice shrilled with
contempt as he cited Theodore Roosevelt's characterization
of the defendants and their friends as "undesirable citizens/'
What a nation for Washington and Lincoln to look
upon, if they could have returned for a visit then!
Nineteen Seven brought a panic in Wall Street, and hard
times again* Factories were closing, countless thousands of
men out of work. That autumn a mass-meeting of unem-
ployed was announced under Socialist auspices to take place
ALEXANDER IRVINE
in Union Square. A permit for this was refused by the police,
but the crowd gathered anyhow. Policemen poured into the
Square, on horse and on foot, and began clubbing men and
women right and left, and riding them down.
In the midst of all this a bomb exploded — almost a re-
enactment of the Chicago Haymarket scene — one youth be-
ing killed and many persons wounded. The police "identified"
the young fellow who was killed as the bomb-thrower. His
name was given as Sig Silverstein, and he was described
variously as a Socialist, Anarchist, and Nihilist. One of those
knocked down by the explosion and then clubbed by a
policeman was Alexander Irvine, a young Episcopal clergy-
man and Socialist, who on Sunday evenings conducted an
open forum in the Church of the Ascension on Fifth Avenue,
where Dr. Percy Stickney Grant was rector* Irish-born, Irvine
S
O
O
P
1
G
cd
I
O
.
*
•§
P*
I
O
O
259
260 ART YOUNG: HIS LIFE AND TIMES
had been raised in poverty. He wrote of his life in a hook,
"From the Bottom Up/*
I went to the forum on the following Sunday, and
heard him tell of his experience at the Union Square meeting,
after which he explained how the capitalists used the police
against the producers of their wealth, how they threw the
latter out of jobs without pity. Being an emotional speaker
and a Christian minister, Irvine was an arousing voice in
the wilderness of New York churches, convincing all his
listeners except of course the wealthy members.
On various occasions I attended that forum, where speak-
ers on both sides could be heard, and always came away with
a clearer insight into the class struggle. Once a bourgeois-
minded gentleman was speaking on the virtue of charity. It
was winter-time, and he said he had just seen a beautiful
illustration of that virtue on Eleventh Street near Broadway.
His heart was thrilled as he watched a long line of hungry
men receiving bread free of charge.
"The true Christian spirit," he shouted, "My friends, it
was beautiful !"
Whereupon a lean figure, who looked like one of "those
incorrigible Socialists", got up and said: "Then the longer
the line the more beautiful it is?"
At that time I had not thought of drawing any cartoons
for the existing Socialist and kindred publications, nor had
anyone asked me to. The current periodicals of that type in-
cluded Wilshires Magazine, published in New York;^ the
Appeal to Reason issuing from Girard, Kansas; the Chicago
Daily Socialist; Mother Earth, Anarchist organ, the Inter-
national Socialist Review, the Weekly People, organ of the
Socialist Labor Party, and Wayland's Monthly, also pub-
lished in Girard.
I knew where my sympathies lay; but was not yet ready
to speak out, although Darwin Meserole and other friends
were saying: "With your equipment as an artist, you ought
to be a Socialist/' Instead I was holding on to such estab-
lished publications as were receptive to my work, and en-
deavoring to put across pointed cartoons which would in
some way help the cause of Socialism. For Life, Pack, and
Judge would take pictures aimed at firetrap tenements, John
261
262 ART YOUNG: HIS LIFE AND TIMES
D. Rockefeller, child labor, grafting public officials, sweat
shops, deified money, exploiters of the poor, and related evils.
Meanwhile Arthur Brisbane occasionally reprinted car-
toons of mine from Life or Pack and made them the basis of
editorials, sometimes agreeing with my contention, but quite
as often as not pointing out that there was much to be said
on the other side, and that Mr. Young, "able and well
meaning", had erred in thinking that his cartoon was as true
as it appeared to be. Now and then Brisbane voiced beliefs
that were part of the Socialist party program, but quieted
the fears of those among his readers who might object by
saying that "perhaps ten thousand years hence these ideas
will be adopted by society/'
And as I moved farther into the field of social satire
Brisbane called upon me to do special work for the Journal,
and subsequently for the Sunday American, when he began
doing editorials for what was then the World Events section.
My cartoons for this purpose were drawn for full-width use
across the top of the page. In that day practically all Ameri7
can dailies were seven columns wide instead of eight as now.
I was striking at effects rather than at causes, and it was
never possible to point to the institution which I was now
convinced lay at the bottom of all these dark manifestations.
Once in a moment of excess confidence, I labeled a fat silk-
hatted figure in a picture with the word Capitalism.
"We can't do that/' Hearst's principal editor said. "Call
him Creed. That means the same thing, and it won't get
us into trouble/'
It was around 1910 that I realized I belonged with the
Socialists in their fight to destroy capitalism. I had been a
long time arriving at that conclusion. Often I have been
asked: "What made you a radical?" It was no thunderbolt
revelation that hit me like the one which struck Paul of
Tarsus. Many elements went into my decision. For years the
truth about the underlying cause of the exploitation and
misery of the world's multitudes had been knocking at the
door of my consciousness, but not until that year did it begin
to sound clearly.
Earlier I had devoted a great deal of enthusiasm in cer-
tain periods to profit-sharing and public ownership, but I
HAPPINESS DCVELOPMENT / ORIJER JUSTICE:
CHARLES EDWARD RUSSELL. The Socialist Party used this drawing
as a poster when he ran for the New York Governorship in 1910.
263
264 ART YOUNG: HIS LIFE AND TIMES
saw now that while these were moves in the right direction,
the ultimate solution of society's greatest problem was the
co-operative commonwealth, with production for use as the
first point in the program, so that no human would ever
again have to suffer for want of food, clothing, or shelter.
Seeing this, I began to draw cartoons hitting directly at
capitalism, placing them where I could, or saving them against
a day when a friendly editor might accept them. I watched
for chances to hook up current injustices to that underlying
cause. Mitchell of Life welcomed so#ie of these cartoons,
although he held that there was a limit to how many of that
type he could intersperse in his pages. But in those days, for
a magazine that had not declared war upon the moneyed
interests, Life did pretty well.
One of my drawings used by Mitchell, which now seems
daring for that time, bore the one- word caption, "Capital-
ism," later reprinted with the title, "The Last Supper/'
High on a precipice, symbolic of his lofty position in world
affairs, sits a grossly fat gentleman at a table, which is lit-
tered with the leavings from a rich feast which he has just
gorged. As he leans back in his chair to drain a big golden
bowl for his final fill, the chair is dangerously close to teeter-
ing over the brink.
One day after I had turned definitely leftward, I ran into
Eugene Wood on the street. I had not seen him since our
Chicago days. He expressed gratification that I had become
Socialistic in my thinking and said: "Everybody will see
the light some day/' It was an exhilarating discovery to find
that a farm boy from my mid-west country who could write
effectively also had some "queer" notions about political
economy. Most of the many writers and artists in New York
then never bothered their heads about economics or political
trends. I felt that I was not so eccentric after all — if Eugene
Wood, whose humorous stories about his Ohio home folks
were popular features of Everybody's Magazine, could accept
the Marxian philosophy,
He was a man of true nobility, self-sacrificing, giving
everything he had to the cause. As writer, speaker, and teacher
he served valiantly. He wrote Socialist pamphlets, spoke in
political campaigns, and for several terms taught English
and pronunciation to large classes of foreigners in the Rand
265
266 ART YOUNG: HIS LIFE AND TIMES
School. Simultaneously with that teaching, he worked on the
copy desk of the Daily Call . . . The death of his wife was
a heavy blow to him; they had been devoted to each other.
After that loss we used to meet occasionally in the Union
Square district, where we both lived; and his sadness deepened
as the months went by. The one joy left in his life was his
daughter Peggy, the actress, in whose talent he took great
pride.
Like myself, he was born amid the moral restraints of a
small community, and was a bit timid about some of the
pictured nudes and articles on sex in the Masses, and resigned
from the staff when some of the numbers displeased him.
His best humorous writings in that magazine were burlesques
of the old stories in the Bible.
Balfour Ker is remembered for his powerful social satires,
and above all for a certain picture entitled From the Depths.
It shows the terror of revelers in a palace of pleasure as a
fist is thrust up through the floor by one of the toilers below
whose labor enables the revelers to exist. This has often been
reprinted, and has been the subject of many editorials and
sermons, but few people nowadays know where it first ap-
peared. It was one of the illustrations which Ker made for
a novel called The Silent War, written by John Ames
Mitchell and published in 1906. The theme was the class
struggle.
I find a letter which Ker sent me from London in Decem-
ber, 1910, which has bearing on that period, and I feel that
it is well worth including here.
So you have joined in the good fight (Ker wrote) — I knew
you would sooner or later. It takes a long time sometimes to just
see the proposition right, but once that is done the rest of the
way is sure if rough. Well, the long time it takes us to see it shows
how much the future of Socialism depends on the mass of the
people being educated in the idea. Constant reiteration, from press,
pulpit, picture, book, platform, everywhere, in every conceivable
way, whether it be labeled Socialism or not. We must din it into
the public ear, eye, nose, stomach, and purse. You remember Mira-
beau said that there were three essentials in convincing oratory:
"The first is repetition; the second repetition; and the third repe-
tition/' I guess that's about right — and would apply to Socialist
propaganda.
ART YOUNG: HIS LIFE AND TIMES 267
No human being could stand out very long against the argu-
ments for the necessity of the complete socialization of the eco-
nomic machine. It's our business to keep hammering away. And
Gosh! But you have a bully old sledge-hammer in that pen of
yours. Your work stands head and shoulders above any other
work of its kind in the U.S.A. It ranks with the little fine stuff
in cartooning in Germany and France. I've received Life regularly
since I left the land of the free — and have got a pretty good idea
of its relative merits and demerits. It's a damn bright able little
sheet, and shows up well even at 3,000 miles distance. And your
stuff is about the strongest of it all, much the strongest drawing,
and it tickles me that you have "seen de light/' Brer Young. . . .
How is that capitalist room-mate of yours? Have you con-
verted him yet? . . . Vlag gives me great accounts of his co-op
society. Co-operation is an important factor over here, and I think
Pete deserves all sorts of credit if he gets it going in the U.S.A.
with a Socialist tag on it too. I was a member until recently of
one of the largest co-ops in England, but I found that the thing
was not really democratically run, but run by and in the interest
of a small clique of officials and share-holders, so I cleared out. It
was founded purely as a profit-sharing concern, and called co-
operative to draw members. Even under those circumstances they
gave far better value for the money than the ordinary business
houses.
It's my private opinion that only through labor unions, in-
dustrial unionism, and some form, or forms, of co-operation, will
the people receive the necessary instruction in the common sense
and economy of complete socialization of productive machinery.
You should have heard yours truly haranguing British crowds
on the foolishness of 'protection' as a cure for unemployment,
and on the danger of trusts, etc. — pretty near got my head punched
several times for butting into 'tariff reform' speeches and meetings.
I've met some damn nice fellows here in the movement. They
compare well with any bunch of men in any profession or class,
these fellows working in the dark corners for the better day, Man
for man, they are far better than the average gink or capitalist.
And some of them are real heroes — men who could get to almost
any position they wanted if they would just drop their propa-
ganda work, men who cannot be bought, scared, bluffed, nor
humbugged. Men of very real ability and really splendidly edu-
cated, plugging away day and night year in and year out educat-
ing, arguing, talking, talking, talking the truth into the almost
hopelessly 'indifferent workers. Surely something must some day
come of such effort — let's hope it comes soon.
Do you still attend classes at the Rand School? I haven't had
268 ART YOUNG: HIS LIFE AND TIMES
a chance for lectures since I came here, I've put in about three
hours a day studying drawing though in different schools, and
I'm starting to paint again tomorrow with some fellows, one of
whom is a cracking fine painter, an old pupil of Whistler's named
Clifford Adams. Hope to learn lots, not that I want ever to ^ paint
a la Whistler, but Adams knows Whistler's "science'' of painting
down to the ground, and has offered to teach me. I'm going to
keep on studying this time I'm over here until I'm a thoroughly
well equipped craftsman. I'm afraid that means some years yet
of hard work, but I'm going to stick it. The worst of the damned
business is that I have to keep doing pot-boiling, which lengthens
the time necessary more than I can really spare. However, my
"comrade", as you called her, is of the right sort and willing to
rough it and even starve if necessary, so we live very economically
and I do as little illustrating and as much studying as possible,
and methinks I've learned a thing or two since getting here.
When I look over the field of modern art I have to blush for
the painters, a lot of silly upper-class parasites, and yours truly
is going to try to show that a painter can be a Socialist and use
his brush like the splendid weapon it is, and as hundreds have
used their pens, for freedom and light. Gee whizz ^ Doesn't that
sound big? And it's little me — talking. However, since you are a
Socialist, I don't mind "talking big" to you. Socialism makes us
think of big things and long to do them whether we can or not.
One evening I went to hear Emma Goldman, out of
curiosity. She was an emotional speaker, but not nearly so
dangerous looking as she had been pictured by the news-
papers. Her talk was a bit bookish, and she looked like a
hausfratc, and more maternal in appearance and manner than
destructive. She carried her audience along with her like a
mother hen followed by a brood of chicks. Sometimes, how-
ever, she rose to heights of flaming anger as she cited crimes
of the police against workers or the use of federal or state
troops to break strikes.
Chapter 26
AT LAST I KNOW WHERE I'M GOING
NOW I was past forty years of age and I knew definitely
where I was going. I was in such a state as our Chris-
tian forebears would have called "righteous indigna-
tion/' My humorous sense had to keep reminding me to look
out for fanaticism. However, I was filled with a deep resent-
ment against the social wrongs that were manifest wherever
one turned to look. Henceforth my drawing pen must be
devoted — in so far as circumstances would permit — to attack-
ing the System which engendered so much woe.
From Twenty- fourth Street I had moved to 9 East
Seventeenth Street, on the edge of Greenwich Village, then
the radical center of artistic and economic ferment — in a sense
the American Montmartre. Here I occupied a large skylight
studio with my friend Howard Smith, painter and commer-
cial artist. We had to walk up three flights, but I regarded
this as good exercise.
There was a new zest for me in just living. Days of
real doing had set in. But I still had my own economic prob-
lem, which must be solved anew each week. Whatever recog-
nition my talent had had in the few years since I had swung
to an avowed espousal of "the cause", none of the radical
publications could see any point (if they ever thought of it)
in turning me loose against the System and paying me for it,
not even if I were able to bring about the industrial common-
wealth singlehanded. What money they had went to business
upkeep and to sustain editors and writers expert at spreading
out columns of wordage on the difference between the twee-
dledee of their wing of the movement and the tweedledum
of the other wing. Of course these editorial writers had to
know Karl Marx, the materialist conception of history, and
how to use invective — with such equipment they would write
a thousand words to say what a good cartoon could say at
269
270 ART YOUNG: HIS LIFE AND TIMES
a glance. So I had to keep going financially by continuing to
draw for the established periodicals.
When I received a good check for a Socialistic cartoon,
such as those which Life occasionally used, I was as pleased
as the Irishman who wrote to his friend in the old country:
"Jim, come on over. I'm tearing down a Protestant church
and getting paid for it besides/* My main support came from
the sale of comics to Life and Judge, with now and then a
PIET VLAG, founder of The Masses.
job of illustrating for Collier's or some other successful maga-
zine. Once in a while, too, I would get a check for a cartoon
illustrating a labor leaflet which would just about cover my
week's laundry bill. Add to these a few pictures for book
jackets at intervals, and my days were well occupied.
Late in 1910 Piet Vlag, a young Dutchman whom I had
met at the Rand School of Social Science, then at 112 East
19th Street, came to my studio and said he was going to
start a magazine. He had a restaurant in the basement of the
ART YOUNG: HIS LIFE AND TIMES 271
school building. If you saw Piet once you would never forget
him. He had the large nose you see in photographs of Dutch-
men along the Zuyder Zee, black penetrating eyes, and an
irresistible smile. With contagious ardor he explained the
policy of the projected magazine and sketched its format. It
would have to do with co-operatives in which Vlag was
directly interested, Socialism, art, and literature, among other
things. And Piet had a backer for the enterprise — Rufus W.
Weeks, vice-president of the New York Life Insurance Com-
pany.
"Will you contribute to the magazine?" he asked.
"Of course/' I said, "here's one now/' And I handed
Piet a cartoon lately finished.
Various names for the new periodical were suggested,
and the question was discussed at some length before all those
concerned agreed upon calling it The Masses, a name pro-
posed by Thomas Seltzer, who was chosen as the editor.
Mr. Weeks was ready to pay the cost of printing and engrav-
ing for "a reasonable length of time/' Vlag, always an
enthusiast in anything he undertook, figured that in six
months the enterprise ought to be solidly on its feet. He
plunged into it with admirable industry, spending all his
waking hours in visiting writers and artists, pledging them
to contribute, and talking about the virtues of the forthcom-
ing magazine to everyone he met.
There was no mention of paying contributors, and cer-
tainly none of us expected pay. For The Masses promised
to be a publication for the release of socially conscious anti-
capitalist literary and artistic expressions for which there was
hardly any demand by the well printed news-stand variety
of magazine. And there were artists and writers who felt
the need of such an outlet — pay or no pay.
January, 1911, saw The Masses launched. It was de-
signed, the publishers explained, to help improve the condi-
tions of the working people, (f whether they want it or not/'
Eugene Wood was listed as president of the publishing com-
pany, Hayden Carruth as vice-president, and Andre Tridon
as secretary.
That first issue included articles on the co-operative move-
ment by W. J. Ghent and Eugene Wood, one on the cost of
living by Gustavus Myers, a cartoon by Cesare, and two
272 ART YOUNG: HIS LIFE AND TIMES
cartoons by myself. One of mine dealt with the evolution of
the store, forecasting a day when the vulture of capitalism
would be kicked off the top of retail business and ownership
and operation would be taken over by the people for the
common good*
While the quality of the material in the new magazine
varied widely, some of the offerings had strength, and I was
optimistic. There would be improvement as the months went
on. Eugene Debs, always ready to aid any effort to extend
the Socialist press, lauded it.
Charles A. Winter made the cover drawing. This re-
markable artist has been deplorably overlooked since those
days when he had but recently returned from study abroad.
His work showed a strong classic influence, and Dante Gabriel
Rossetti at his best could not have surpassed the richness
of his color* Doubtless those superb pictures, which have
had all too little attention, are somewhere piled up for re-
lease, some time — after awhile.
Each month Piet Vlag would hurry into my studio and
say: "Veil, Art, ve got to have a picture for the Messes/'
His pronunciation was delightful, and I was sometimes wor-
ried lest Eugene Wood would take Piet in hand and smooth
out his speech into pure English. If I had nothing suitable
lying around I would draw a cartoon touching on some
current topic. A theme agreed upon, I often found these pic-
tures much easier to draw than those I was selling to the
conventional magazines. If you are getting paid for work
most editors, like true business men, make it a rule to find
fault. Anyhow they offer no praise, for fear you will think
they need you and that your money is earned too easily.
With Vlag there was no haggling over the way in which
I had interpreted an idea. It was up to me, and I felt that
an audience was waiting to see what would be in the next
issue. For the first time in my life I could cut loose and express
my own unhampered point of view,
Louis Untermeyer was contributing poems which dealt
with the realities of the class struggle, but which sounded
a note of hope. There were articles showing how the workers
were robbed through exploitation by employers as the cost
of living went up; others against the Boy Scouts, which were
viewed as a potential military organization; and attacks on
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273
274 ART YOUNG: HIS LIFE AND TIMES
child labor. A good deal was printed about co-operatives.
Portraits of contributors were occasionally used with their
articles. Vlag's writings had some punch in them, but were
not in any sense distinguished. Rufus Weeks' s offerings were
inclined to be too leisurely philosophical to be appropriate
in a periodical designed to appeal to the working class.
Weeks was a quiet, dignified gentleman, an avowed So-
cialist with an inquiring mind. Rockwell Kent, who knew
him better than I, told me stories about him* Rockwell said
that on election days in Tarrytown, where Weeks lived, the
family carriage would be driven to the polling place by his
Negro coachman, who also was a Socialist. Together Weeks
and the coachman would go in and cast their ballots for the
straight Socialist ticket. Being a vice-president of a big insur-
ance company, I suspect that Rufus Weeks, to his business
associates, was one of those fellows of whom people say:
"He means well, but he's kind of impractical and up in the
clouds/'
For a year and a half the Masses appeared regularly, but
did not become anywhere near being self-supporting, and Mr.
Weeks's enthusiasm waned and finally came to a full stop.
Vlag's co-operative stores were suffering from too much in-
dividualism, and he had lost his usual buoyancy. But he was
busy trying to solve the problem of survival for "the Messes",
and he went to Chicago to look up a man reputed to have a
lot of money and a generous nature. That man had just left
for a trip around the world, and Vlag worked out a plan to
merge his publication with a Socialist women's magazine then
appearing in the midwestern metropolis. Impulsively he
promised the parties of the other part to throw all of us
contributors into the combination. When he returned to New
York with a wide smile of satisfaction over having fixed
up everything for the future, he was surprised to learn that
we artists and writers who had been giving time and energy
to keeping the Masses alive did not approve of his plan.
There was no September issue in 1912, and Charles
Winter, who had been an active contributor, called a small
group together for a crisis meeting in his studio. Those pres-
ent included Alice Winter, John and Dolly Sloan, Louis
Untermeyer, Eugene Wood, Maurice Becker, Glenn Coleman,
William Washburn Nutting, H. T. Turner, and myself. We
ART YOUNG: HIS LIFE AND TIMES 275
were unanimous in holding that the magazine must go on.
Somehow we would find the money to pay the cost, from
month to month. But who would be editor? There were no
candidates for the job among the conferees.
I nominated Max Eastman, who had lately been ousted
from a Columbia professorship for his outspoken opinions
on the social conflict in classroom lectures. Max and I had
met at a Jack London dinner, and we had discussed the possi-
bility of building up the Masses into a magazine which would
have the bold tone and high quality of Simplicissimus,
Jugend, Steinlen's Gil Bias, and Assiette au Beurre, all of
which were inspiring to the world's rising young artists. To
show how Max could handle words and ideas, I read to the
conference a magazine article he had written, describing with
charming humor how he had organized the first Men's League
for Woman's Suffrage in New York. All the others acqui-
esced in the nomination, and we all signed a letter to Max,
which said: "You are elected editor of the Masses, no pay/'
Max was not keen about taking a no-pay editorship of a
literary magazine, for at that stage it was to have a literary
front, but he thought he might make the job serve a useful
purpose, and presently consented to come in. In private con-
versations with him we who had assumed control made it
clear that of course he could have a salary, even a good one,
if we succeeded in developing the magazine into a self-sus-
taining property. But the main thing was the co-operative
principle in editing the contents — art and literature. Though
we of the executive board were eager to resume publication,
it took time to raise the necessary money and to whip into
shape text and pictures for an issue that would measure up
to the standard we had visualized. So it was December before
the Masses blossomed again, now with a colored cover, a
new make-up, and a fresh note of hope.
Members of the staff listed were: Literature: Max East-
man, Eugene Wood, Hayden Carruth, Inez Haynes Gilmore,
Ellis O. Jones, Horatio Winslow, Thomas Seltzer, Mary
Heaton Vorse, Joseph O'Brien, Louis Untermeyer, Leroy
Scott. Art: John Sloan, Art Young, Alice Beach Winter,
Alexander Popini, H. T. Turner, Charles A. Winter, Maurice
Becker, William Washburn Nutting*
276 ART YOUNG: HIS LIFE AND TIMES
And in announcing the revival of the Masses, and its
policy, we said:
We do not enter the field of any Socialist or other
magazine now published, or to be published. We shall
have no further part in the factional disputes within the
Socialist party; we are opposed to the dogmatic spirit
which creates and sustains these disputes. Our appeal
will be to the masses, both Socialist and non-Socialist,
with entertainment, education, and the livelier kinds of
propaganda.
In February, 19 13, the contents of the magazine included
two drawings by Maurice Becker and a 'little testimonial
from Boston" in the form of a letter from the Library Club
House saying: "Stop sending us the Masses; we never ordered
it and do not want it." And John Reed, new on the scene,
had written a further statement of policy in collaboration
with Max Eastman, which now appeared:
This magazine is owned and published co-opera-
tively by its editors. It has no dividends to pay, and no-
body is trying to make any money out of it. A revolu-
tionary and not a reform magazine; a magazine with a
sense of humor and no respect for the respectable; frank,
arrogant, impertinent, searching for the true causes; a
magazine directed against rigidity and dogma wherever
it is found; printing what is too naked or true for a
money -making press; a magazine whose final policy is
to do what it pleases and conciliate nobody, not even its
readers.
Reed became a contributing editor in March, and other
new writers and artists came in with us as time moved along,
replacing some who for one reason or another withdrew.
These additional members of the literary and art boards in-
cluded Floyd Dell, Arthur Bullard, Frank Bohn, G. S.
Sparks, Cornelia Barns, Stuart Davis, William English Wall-
ing, B. Russell Hertz, Robert Carlton Brown, Glenn O. Cole-
man, 1C R. Chamberlain, E. G. Miska, H. J. Glintenkamp,
Edmund McKenna, Arturo Giovannitti, George Bellows,
Howard Brubaker, Charles W. Wood, John Barber, Board-
man Robinson, Robert Minor, and Frank Walts.
ART YOUNG: HIS LIFE AND TIMES 277
Having a free hand on the Masses to attack the capitalist
system and its beneficiaries loosed energies within me of which
I had been unaware. I felt as many a Crusader must have felt
long ago as he set forth to rescue the Holy Land from the
infidels. For the first time I could draw cartoons striking
openly at those who took the best years of the worker and
then threw him on the scrap-heap. I didn't have to think
about whether a picture of mine might offend an advertiser
and thus violate a business-office policy.
And one was not confined to assailing generalities; I could
and did cast my pictorial shafts at individuals who symbol-
ized the system — financiers, politicians, editors, and others.
It was gratifying to have a responsive audience, and also occa-
sionally to hear yelps of pain from the persons attacked.
They would register their indignation in public speeches or
in newspaper interviews in which the militant labor press
would be condemned as a "menace to decent society."
Reference might be made to many of the pictures which
I drew for the Masses in the next seven years, but it will
suffice to mention here a few that attracted wide attention.
"Speaking of bandits, the American soldiers are on the
wrong trail" was the title of one cartoon which plainly im-
plied that Pershing's troops should go to Wall Street instead
of spending their time hunting Pancho Villa in Mexico.
Three pictures on one page, alt alike, bore these labels:
"Composite photo of boards of patriot organization boost-
ing preparedness. . . . Composite photo of boards of mu-
nition corporations. . . . Composite photo of foreign exploi-
tation corporations/*
I depicted a preacher exclaiming to a workingman: "You
must be born again!" and the worker, tired of the struggle,
replying: "Once is enough, Doc!"
"Turning to Christianity" was the title of a scene based
on a newspaper interview in which a missionary declared
that "one effect of the war (in 1916) has been to increase
the individual Turk's respect for Christianity." My drawing
revealed a church with cannon sticking from the steeple, a
tractor-mortar on the roof, and a big cannon barrel pointed
from out of a window.
Early in the Masses venture I contributed a drawing
which I knew would not be acceptable to magazines which
October 26,^1912
Price 5 Cents
THE
COMING NATION
A JOURNAL OF THINGS DOING AND TO BE DONE
Time to Butcher
For the sake of the beatt itself at well as the people
had to uphold the genteel tradition. Some ideas were just
bad taste, and none of. the old-line editors would think of
offending elderly women subscribers. . . . In this produc-
tion of mine a small boy and his sister are walking along a
street in the slums on a star-lit night. Jimmie looks up at
278
ART YOUNG: HIS LIFE AND TIMES 279
the sky and says; "Gee! Annie, look at the stars, thick as
bed-bugs!"
But the cartoon which is best known of all the many
I made for the Masses, and which has been reprinted around
the world, portrays a workingman just home from a day's
toil. As he slumps in a chair he says:
" 1 gorry, I'm tired!"
And his wife retorts: "There you go! You're tired!
Here I be a~standinr over a hot stove all day, an' you
workin' in a nice cool sewer/'
Editors reprinting that picture and text have persistently
altered the opening words to read "By gorry*' or "Begorry",
evidently assuming that " 'I gorry'* was a misprint. But that
was the form in which it originally appeared in the Masses,
and that was the way I had heard that expletive in the
brogue of an old Irishman back in Wisconsin.
I found another outlet for creative expression in 1911
and later in the Cowing Nation, a weekly published by J. A.
Wayland and Fred D. Warren in Girard, Kansas. This maga-
zine displayed my cartoons boldly, and now and then I
wrote and illustrated an editorial for it*
In its columns, on July 22, 1911, Charles Edward Rus-
sell gave me special credit for the corrective effect of a cartoon
which I had done some three years before for Pack. Writing
at length about the episode, Russell said:
"Trinity Church in New York City has now destroyed
156 of the rotten tenements that it owned on January 1,
1908. . . . When the character of the tenements was first
disclosed and denounced, the church officers arose in righteous
wrath and vehemently denied every charge. . . . Every-
body was a liar that said a word against Holy Trinity. . * .
The public was assured on all sides that the tenements were
among the best in the world and above reproach.
"But almost at once the corporation began quietly to pull
down these admired structures. Nothing was ever said in the
press about this, but the work was steadily pushed. . * .
They * . . will breed tuberculosis and typhoid no more.
"What settled the fate of the Trinity tenement was a
cartoon by Art Young* He called it 'Holy Trinity', and it is
one of the great cartoons of history* From it there was no
Puck
HOLY TRINITY. Charles Edward ' Russell credited this cartoon of mine
with forcing Trinity Church to destroy a vast number of disease-breeding
tenements which it owned in 1908.
280
ART YOUNG: HIS LIFE AND TIMES 281
escape; the wardens might fume and the corporation might
dodge and twist; whichever way they turned, there before
them rose that tremendous thing, thrusting a finger into their
faces: 'Holy Trinity' — Sanctimony praying while in the
dreadful tenements below men, women, and little children
suffered, and from their sufferings arose the money that made
Trinity rich. Terrible picture! And terrible truth! No one
that ever looked upon that great cartoon could thereafter get
it out of his mind; it had the irresistible and convincing
touch of truth and genius, and it did the business/'
The cartoon referred to was drawn at a time when Rus-
sell was crusading in Everybody's Magazine against Trinity's
ownership of those disease-laden tenements. He went on to
say in the Coming Nation that I could feel that thousands
of people in New York were better housed and more com-
fortable because of the power of my pencil. That commenda-
tion was the finest reward that had come to me since I had
begun to draw.
Chapter 2 7
IN WASHINGTON FOR THE METROPOLITAN
OJOMETHING happened in 1912 which was highly im-
^^ portant to me and significant of the spirit of protest that
was in the air. I was asked to go to Washington for the
Metropolitan Magazine and do a monthly review of the po-
litical scene in words and pictures. This opened up a broad
new field, for the Metropolitan had a wide circulation,
whereas the Masses would have to be content with a rather
Collier's Weekly, 1912
THE LAWRENCE WAY.
exclusive folio wing. The latter had been running a year in
revised form, and we knew its limitations for general appeal,
Nice people didn't want it around, I had been drawing car-
toons (and sometimes writing) for an audience -which in the
main was already converted, but now I could appeal to those
who were "sitting in darkness/' It was understood by the
Metropolitan editors that my pictures would continue in the
Masses and other magazines.
282
ART YOUNG: HIS LIFE AND TIMES 283
Up to that time the newspapers and magazines had paid
comparatively little attention to the national capital* If Con-
gress had advertised like the theatres, no doubt its personnel
and daily procedure would have received ample publicity on
the well-known economic principle of reciprocity: "You
scratch my back and I'll scratch yours/' I knew that the
press of England considered Parliament front-page news at
all times. I had tried before to interest editors in sending
me to Washington to illustrate whatever was informative
and picturesque from my point of view, but without success.
The editor-in-chief of the Metropolitan, an Englishman,
H. J. Whigham, thought as I did — that Congress should be
played up as British newspapers featured the doings of their
law-makers, and as Toby M.P. (H, W. Lucy) was doing
each week in his * 'Essence of Parliament" in Punch with
splendid caricatures by Harry Furniss.
When the matter of sending me to the capital came up,
there was a debate in the editorial room as to whether my
friend Fred C Kelly, then a Washington correspondent,
should not do the writing while I drew the cartoons. Fred
told the editors they ought to make me do both. I argued
that I would rather draw than write. But they insisted on
trying me out in the dual role. I accepted it, and the arrange-
ment continued for more than six years.
What Congress did or didn't do had been of little im-
portance in the daily life of the average American, until just
before the war broke out in Europe. As time went on, the
newspaper editors observed that there was a growing public
interest in this powerful aggregation of law-makers, and that
the people were becoming conscious that politics really con-
cerned them, especially when the conscription law was passed
and the government reached into the nation's homes for its
young men, the citizenry began to ask: "Who's doing all
this?"
The editors had come to realize also that an occasional
editorial on what Congress was doing was not enough. People
wanted to know more about it. Much of the legislation favor-
ing big finance was put over on the American populace while
they were unaware of its significance. A long period of public
apathy, and concealment of facts or indifference by the press,
are largely responsible for the humiliating spectacle of a great
H
fe
284
ART YOUNG: HIS LIFE AND TIMES 285
nation ruled by the monarchs of money, who have become
more of a menace to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness
than George III and his Tory tyrants were to our forefathers.
Brand Whitlock and I covered three conventions for the
Metropolitan in 1912 — the Republican in Chicago, the
Democratic in Baltimore, and the Socialist in Indianapolis.
We were given a great deal of space by the editors, and made
the most of it.
"And in each convention/' Whitlock wrote, "there was
a vigorous personality, dynamic and compelling, which em-
bodied the radical principle and troubled the conservative —
Haywood at Indianapolis, Roosevelt at Chicago, and Bryan
at Baltimore. In each its colossus bestrode the scene, but here
the lines of similarity diverge; Haywood forced a compro-
mise and preserved the organization; Roosevelt was defeated
and gallantly withdrew to raise his flag elsewhere; Bryan
was victorious and for the fourth time in twenty years,
wheeled his obstreperous and reluctant party into line/'
Battles among the Socialists that year centered around the
question of supporting the Industrial Workers of the World
in their free speech fight in San Diego and the question of
industrial versus craft unionism. And after those issues had
been threshed out at length, the report of the committee on
labor "confessed the failure of craft unionism but took no
decided stand on the subject of industrial unionism, declaring
it to be the party's duty to give moral and material support
to the labor organizations in their offensive and defensive
struggles against capitalist oppression and exploitation/'
That committee also stated that the Socialist party had
no part in controversies over the question of form of organi-
zation, or technical methods of action in the industrial
struggle.
Thus the spokesmen for the fighting LW.W. were able
to boast of a victory without dividing the party, and Bill
Haywood, in a ringing speech of celebration, said:
"This is the greatest step ever taken by the Socialist party
of this country. Now I can go out and talk Socialism from a
Socialist party platform to the entire working class, to the
eight million women and children who have no votes, . . .
THE METROPOLITAN MA-GAZtNE
Metropolitan
AT THE 1912 SOCIALIST CONVENTION. Brand Whitlock wrote the
story, while I did the pictures. Hay wood was the dominating figure.
to the blanket stiffs of the West and the timber wolves of the
South who are disfranchised by the nature- of their jobs/*
In the many sketches I made for that article I dealt mainly
with personalities, and it was especially gratifying to have a
286
ART YOUNG: HIS LIFE AND TIMES 287
magazine with a huge circulation publish a whole gallery
of my portraits of the leading lights in my own party* Some
of those I portrayed were: Hay wood, "who sees enough with
one eye*'; Debs, "who hovers over an audience like a big
bird"; Dan Hogan, "from Arkansas and proud of it";
Charles W* Ervin, in a characteristic "Well, I'll be d "
attitude; Barney Berlyn of Illinois, veteran Socialist; Victor
L. Berger, only Socialist in Congress; Oscar Ameringer, "a
man of gestures"; Joshua Wanhope, a big man wearing a
cap; Meyer London; and Alexander Irvine.
OSCAR AMERINGER, dean of American
labor editors. Publisher of the American
Guardian, Oklahoma City.
I was in Washington during Woodrow Wilson's first ad-
ministration and half of his second. Then as now corporation
lawyers comprised most of the Senate and House, and they
naturally made laws for the benefit of the corporations^!
made a cartoon picturing the situation: "Laws for Capi-
talism go through on wings; laws for Labor go through on
crutches/'
Until just before the United States got into the war, the
policy of the Metropolitan was definitely Socialistic, and it
was well known that its financial backer was Harry Payne
Whitney, a multi-millionaire. Finley Peter Dunne, who was
Whitney's close friend, once told me he often twitted "Harry"
288 ART YOUNG: HIS LIFE AND TIMES
for backing such a publication. He said he liked to whisper
to him through clenched teeth: "Harry, I'm beginning to
think you're one of those damned Socialists/'
William Mailly was then doing a social comment depart-
ment in the Metropolitan, and Clarence Day Jr. was handling
book reviews. Some of the contributors were George Bernard
Shaw, John Reed, Morris Hillquit, Ernestine Evans, Alger-
non Lee, Rudyard Kipling, W. W. Jacobs, Gouverneur Mor-
ris, Walter Lippmann, Boardman Robinson, Willy Pogany,
Inez Haynes Gilmore, Fannie Hurst, and others.
Usually I did two pages a month on the activities of
Congress, for which I got $300 a page* It was of course
worth more, for out of that I had to pay my expenses in the
Capital, and I still felt it necessary to retain my studio in New
York.
On the day I arrived in the city of magnificent distances,
the first thing that caught my eye as I stepped out of the
Pennsylvania station was the dome of the capitol — the dome
which I had drawn so many times in the background of
my cartoons but had never before seen. There it was — the
same dome which Nast and all cartoonists had used as a
symbol of the government of the United States. Throughout
most of my years in Washington I lived in hotels around
Capitol Park, in the shadow of that dome, though for a
few months I roomed a little farther away, north of the
Congressional Library, with Isaac McBride, who was then
secretary to Senator Harry Lane of Oregon. When I had to
go up Pennsylvania Avenue, to the White House or to some
government department, I'd roll along in a victoria.
My father used to say that "an artist or a writer has an
advantage over a storekeeper because he can carry his capital
stock with him/* This stock of paper, pencils, ink, and other
essentials of my profession, I could carry in a satchel, but I
preferred to keep a supply in my hotel or rooming house
ready for me on my return from New York, where I was
expected to report once, sometimes twice, a month.
It took me a few days to get my bearings when I first
landed in the Capital. I knew I did not want the regular run
of news that the Washington correspondents were sending
out. Usually they just touched the surface of the stories really
vital to the welfare of the multitude.
ART YOUNG: HIS LIFE AND TIMES 289
I had entree to the House and Senate press galleries, but
the atmosphere was not very cordial. I felt that there was
some suspicion that because of my identity with radical publi-
cations, I might be a disturbing factor to the morale of the
other correspondents, or that I was up to some sinister plot
to push over the pillars of the Republic. While some of the
newspapermen were friendly, all were aware that I was not
a "regular' '.
I knew, of course, that I could not ignore the conventional
subjects of interest — the stars of statesmanship and their
ways, and I got the whole Wilson Cabinet except William G.
McAdoo, Secretary of the Treasury, to give me sittings of a
few minutes each. McAdoo refused, but having seen him on
a few occasions, I drew him from memory.
I had a swanky card printed* It was folded — two cards
in one. Outside was printed: "The Metropolitan Magazine
. . * Art Young/' Turn it over and there was space for
writing my request to the Senator or to whom it might con-
cern, and space for his answer.
When I began drawing for the Masses it was like the
unfolding of wings to soar; but the Metropolitan connection
gave me an opportunity to circle around and then peer right
in at government in the making. Whether it was just a mental
heritage, I don't know, but I never could understand the
Anarchist philosophy that people could get along without
government. I could see no way for them to dispense with
recognized laws or rules of some kind. If government was
all nonsense, as some of my Anarchist friends believed, now
I would try to find out*
A suffragette once asked Bill Haywood, who leaned to-
ward the anarcho-syndicalist faith, if he thought women
should have the vote, and Bill said: "Sure, and besides, they
can have mine/' Such was the indifference to political action
held by many who could see no hope in the ballot, nor in
the whole set-up of parliaments, but put their full faith
in the organization of labor*
During my years in Washington I learned why the capi-
talists believed in a Congress, a Supreme Court, and in
bureaus within bureaus — and I saw their agents swarming
at every session lobbying in their interests.
290
ART YOUNG: HIS LIFE AND TIMES 291
It was a privilege to circulate among the "fittest" who
had survived in the race for political preferment. Here they
were. From President down to doorkeepers, I felt sociable
with them, and they didn't seem to object to me. While I
found it difficult to select my daily subjects for caricature
because there was so much to select from, I soon felt that no
one in the wide world ever had such luck. The magazine
being a monthly there was no hurry, and I could take ample
time to draw for the Masses too. Often I would hark back
to the cartoons of national politics in Harper's Weekly and
Pack which so absorbed my attention in early youth — and
here I was walking through corridors where the glamorous
gods of American statesmanship once trod.
I cultivated an old doorman of the Senate, then eighty-
seven, who liked to talk about his memories of the long-ago
years. He had been employed in the Capitol building since
boyhood. I was a good listener, and would ask him: "Did
you know Matt Carpenter from Wisconsin? . . . What
kind of a fellow was Pig Iron Kelley? . . . Was Roscoe
Conkling really so dignified and proud? . . „ Was Blaine
the great debater they say he was? . . . How about Garfield
when he was a Representative — was he really eloquent?"
Almost any question would set him going with delightful
reminiscence. Once I said: "Do you remember Senator Sam
Houston?" His old tired eyes lighted up. "Sam used to wear
a panther-skin vest — quite a man for the ladies." And he
would recall that "Daniel Webster couldn't let liquor alone."
And that "Stephen A. Douglas was a little feller but a good
talker." Over in his room on a side street not far from the
Capitol he had many inscribed photographs and other sou-
venirs of Presidents and Congressmen he had known, dating
back to 1850.
I had a sense of well-being then. Nearly every month
Whigham or Carl Hovey, the managing editor, would write
that my work was "splendid" or "you're doing good stuff."
What with my appearance in the Metropolitan and in other
magazines, surely I was getting on. Occasionally I would
find diversion in drawing a few allegorical pictures for other
magazines. Late in 1912 Father wrote saying that the min-
ister of the Universalist Church in Monroe had preached a
292 ART YOUNG: HIS LIFE AND TIMES
sermon with one of my cartoons as the text. This had ap-
peared in Collier's. In the background was a forest of tower-
ing, ruler-straight pines, such as I had seen in Alabama. Down
in front was one hopelessly deformed tree and a man similarly
crippled and leaning on crutches. The caption was "Why?"
and the minister had discussed the question: "What is life,
and why?" Holding the picture up before his congregation,
he said: "Many of you know the artist who drew this car-
toon, for his first drawings were made in Monroe/'
Life, 1912
SUSAN B. ANTHONY. In 1872 she was fined $100 for voting in
Rochester, N. Y. "The spirit of revolt, as shown by this splendid woman,"
said the caption with my cartoon, "is abroad in the land."
Every week or two I was sending money to Elizabeth
in California. In November she wrote from Los Angeles:
"The boys are growing fast and doing well in school. Their
teacher wants them to belong to a nature club. Donald will
be eight the seventh of next month/* Then she sent a batch
of drawings done by both boys, North having attained the
age of ten. Most of them, I thought, were much like the usual
child art, but a few were startlingly original. Elizabeth said
they were drawn "especially for you", and added that "the
boys like their bicycles/'
This period of my life on the scene of national politics
where I saw so much evidence of lying, demagogy, and down-
right betrayal of the people, was enough to make me a hope-
less cynic; nevertheless, I clung to an inborn faith in democ-
racy. Hundreds of times this faith has been made to look
like a stupid error, yet I hang on.
ART YOUNG: HIS LIFE AND TIMES 293
I want the men in a factory to decide who shall be boss,
I want the people, by majority vote in periodic elections,
to decide issues and choose men and women whom they be-
lieve capable of holding administrative positions. When it
came to the question of the United States entering the Euro-
pean war, I wanted the people to say whether they wished
their government to declare war. When the LaFollette reso-
lution for such a referendum was killed in Congress, I knew
it was because Wall Street didn't want to know the will
of the people. The people's desire to avoid becoming em-
broiled in a foreign conflict, as demonstrated in the re-election
of Woodrow Wilson in 1916 because he had so far "kept us
out of war", might be repeated in another test vote, if the
people were given a chance, and of course big business could
not afford such a risk.
Democracy is all right if they will let it work. By they
I mean those who don't want it to work. And they have
many cunning and extra-legal ways of defeating it. Democ-
racy is all right if the issue is fairly clear — but the enemies of
democracy are masters of confusion; they stir the water in
the spring- fed pool into mud. They take little unimportant
truths and blow them up into big important-looking truths.
In the chaos of political campaigns you try to find out what
you believe, if there is anything to be believed. Nevertheless
I continue to hold that even an imperfect democracy is better
than other forms of government. Royalty is dying as it
deserves, but the first king was called that because he was
kind — king and kind were synonymous in ancient times.
Whoever the administrators of the future state, they must be
exemplars of kindness — or perhaps my meaning is scientific
helpfulness, but helpfulness to the majority who do the
world's work; the greatest good to the greatest number.
And that is the dream which must some day come true
the world over — a social machinery vastly different from
today's so-called democracies, which bring about the greatest
good to the few — not to the many. Surely, Washington was
teaching me a few things.
I still kept my studio in New York and retained my vot-
ing status there. And my work in the national capital did
not prevent my running for office in the Empire State in
HE STIRRETH UP THE PEOPLE
JCSUS CHRIST
THE WORKINGMAN OP NAZARETH
WILL SPEAK
AT BROTHERHOOD HALL.
— SUBJECT —
-THE RIGHTS OF LABOR. —
The Masses, 1913
"HE STIRRETH UP THE PEOPLE." This portrait of Christ, as I
conceived him, also was published with a reward notice describing him as a
professional agitator "wanted for sedition."
1913. That fall I was a candidate for the Assembly in the
Twenty-seventh District on the Socialist ticket. My running
mates were Charles Edward Russell, who sought to be
Mayor; S. John Block, who was trying for the Supreme
Court; and John Sloan, who was candidate for the Assembly
in the Twenty-fifth District.
At the suggestion of the campaign committee, some of
my speeches were illustrated with rapid-fire drawings made
on big sheets of paper on an easel as I talked. The audiences
liked those pictorial attacks on the capitalist system, and
demanded numerous encores, but their ballots did not total
enough to elect me.
294
Chapter 28
THE A. P. ROBES ITSELF IN WHITE
WHILE the West Virginia coal strike was at its height
in November, 1913, Max Eastman and I were in-
dicted on a charge of criminal libel preferred by
the heads of the Associated Press, This was based on a Masses
editorial written by Max entitled "The Worst Monopoly"
and a cartoon of mine called ' 'Poisoned at the Source/' On
my next trip to New York I appeared in court voluntarily
with Max, and Justice Grain of Special Sessions set our bail
at $1,000.
Max Eastman's editorial pointed out that the appalling
industrial conditions in West Virginia had first become pub-
licly known through a demand by Senator Kern for a Sena-
torial investigation of stories of atrocities against workers and
their families in the coal regions.
For fourteen months, the editorial charged, the A.P. had
withheld or distorted news of the West Virginia conflict.
Calling the A.P. a Truth Trust, the Masses comment went
on to say that "so long as the substance of current history
continues to be held in cold storage, adulterated, colored
with poisonous intentions, and sold to the highest bidder to
suit his private purposes, there is small hope that even the
free and the intelligent will take the side of justice in the
struggle that is before us/'
My cartoon which so wrought up the directors of the
A.P. shows a man personifying the Associated Press kneel-
ing at the edge of a vast reservoir in which the water is
labeled The News. He is pouring into the reservoir the dark
contents of bottles of Lies, Suppressed Facts, Prejudice, Slan-
der, and Hatred of Labor Organization. In the background
of the picture is a suggestion of cities and towns which depend
upon the reservoir for their news supply. The clear water is
being discolored by the poisonous dye-stuff from the bottles.
We were not arrested. Efforts toward this end had been
295
296 ART YOUNG: HIS LIFE AND TIMES
made by the A.P. in August, when one of its counsel appeared
in Jefferson Market Court and asked for warrants for the
arrest of the Masses editors, but the magistrate sitting there
overruled the request on the ground of insufficient evidence.
Reporting our arraignment, the New York Call said:
"The attitude of the Associated Press on the West Vir-
ginia strike was criticized many times in numerous publica-
tions, and suppression and coloring of news was generally
intimated. These allegations, however, being in some cases
in large and powerful publications, backed by big financial
interests, were ignored by the association.
"It was not until the occasional, one-sided stories and the
long periods of silence from the strike region were the subject
of comment in the columns of a Socialist magazine that efforts
were made to set the machinery of the law in motion against
its publishers/' In other words, the great, powerful A.P.
picked on a magazine so small that it created wide sentiment
in our favor.
At the same time the Call did us a signal service by
publishing two paragraphs at the end of its front-page story
which presumably gave the A.P. bojums pause.
"Socialist and radical magazine men/' the Call said,
"have been working for the past month in several of the cities
of the Middle West gathering material in the interests of the
Masses, and it was stated last night that should the charges
of the A.P. really be maintained and the two defendants
brought to trial, revelations of such a nature as to make
the Associated Press regret that the case ever came to court
would be unreservedly made.
"Not only will the charges against the news association
under consideration be substantiated, it was asserted, but other
facts, now believed to be inside secrets of the Associated Press,
will be made public/'
Immediately many friends, old and new, rallied to our
aid. Various newspaper men who had formerly worked for
the Associated Press, and some who were then employed by
it, came forward with information and documentary evidence
of specific news suppression and distortion by that organiza-
tion. All this material was turned over to a group of indi-
viduals with research experience who checked it minutely
before it was handed to our counsel for use as evidence.
ART YOUNG: HIS LIFE AND TIMES 297
Floyd Dell had lately come East from Chicago, where he
had been editor of the Evening Post literary supplement, and
he was promptly picked to be associate editor of the Masses,
which meant that he would share the work with Max East-
man, who continued as editor. There would be plenty for
both of them to do. By this time the magazine's income had
reached a point where it was possible to pay each of them
twenty-five dollars a week, with something also for a business
manager. In January, 1914, we published a long statement
about our case, signed by Floyd, in which he explained that
after various important publications, including Collier's and
the Independent, had "delicately hinted'' that the Associated
Press had given the country no fair account of the West Vir-
ginia situation, the Masses decided to look into it, with the
idea that if the stories out of that State were true, they ought
to be explicitly told, and not just hinted at.
Now the grand jury brought in a second indictment,
this time charging Max and me with criminally libeling
Frank B. Noyes, president of the A.P. In February it de-
veloped that this was designed as a piece of shrewd strategy.
On the 1 Oth our attorney, Gilbert E. Roe, asked Judge Wad-
hams for an order permitting the defense to take depositions
from those in charge of the Associated Press office in Pitts-
burgh, showing what news was actually sent out on the West
Virginia strike. Arthur Train, assistant district attorney in
charge of the prosecution, opposed this, and in the course of
his argument mentioned that the first indictment, charging
libel against the A.P. as an organization, would be dismissed.
But on the 1 7th Judge Wadhams granted the order for
the depositions. Then Train declared that he would oppose
such an order in connection with the second indictment, on
the ground that the depositions would not be admissible as
evidence concerning the alleged libeling of the A.P. president,
for the reason that the truth or falsity of Associated Press
reports was immaterial to the question of personal damage
against Mr. Noyes.
Our friends arranged a mass-meeting in our behalf in
Cooper Union on March 5, and 2,500 packed the Great Hall
there. Hundreds stood in the aisles, with other hundreds
turned away. Inez Milholland presided, and the speakers were
Amos Pinchot who had made a careful study of our case
298 ART YOUNG: HIS LIFE AND TIMES
from a lawyer's viewpoint; John Haynes Holmes, then pastor
of the Church of the Messiah; Lincoln Steffens, Charlotte
Perkins Oilman, William English Walling, Norman Hap-
good, and Joseph D. Cannon, organizer for the Western
Federation of Miners. Though grateful for the mass demon-
stration, on that night the two who were accused stayed
away from the meeting. We felt that the issue had become too
big to make it personal.
"I have had a long acquaintance with the Associated
Press/' said Pinchot in his speech. "I am perfectly willing
to stand behind the charge made by Eastman and Young that
it does color and distort the news, that it is not impartial,
and that it is a monopolistic corporation, not only in con-
straint of news but in constraint of truth.
"The Associated Press, through its capitalistic sympa-
thies, is inclined to take the part of capital against labor.
It has produced a condition where, during strikes and labor
disputes of all kinds, the working people have grown to
feel that their case, if given at all to the public, is presented
in a grossly distorted form.
"I believe that no one element in American life is so
powerfully conducive of bitterness and that feeling of help-
lessness, which so often results in violence, as the coloring
of news during acute conflicts between capital and labor. On
the other hand, it gives to men, such as the gunmen recently
imported into Calumet by the mine operators, and to the
mine operators themselves, a feeling of immunity from public
criticism which is inevitably a dangerous element in the case/'
Two days later the Times commented on the mass-meet-
ing in an editorial more than a column long. Defending the
A.P., the Times asserted that Mr* Pinchot was careless in his
statements, and that it would be impossible for the Associated
Press to color and distort the news as we had charged.
"All sorts of newspapers/' the Times averred, "are served
by the Associated Press — Republican, Democratic, Bull
Moose, Independent, pro-Bryan, anti-Bryan, some that insist
that the corporations are too much abused, and others insist-
ing that they are not abused enough — in short, newspapers
representing every shade of opinion.* Now, if Mr. Noyes
* Italics are the author's. An unnamed spokesman for the A. P. had stated
in the New York Evening Post that "its members, some nine hundred in
ART YOUNG: HIS LIFE AND TIMES 299
should attempt to use his dyestuffs on the news served to all
these papers, there would be a deafening uproar and tumult
all over the country. The Associated Press would be split
into fragments and the views openly expressed of its manage-
ment would make the cartoon of the Masses look like an ex-
pression of confidence and esteem/*
Amos Pinchot had called for a widespread protest against
the use of the federal district attorney's office for the muzzling
of those who criticized the Associated Press procedure. "Mr.
Pinchot should understand/' said the Times, "that this is
not an Associated Press suit; it is a Government suit, an
action brought by the people to punish the lawless/*
Meanwhile I traveled back and forth between New York
and Washington frequently. One day while I was at work in
my hotel room in the capital, there was a knock at the door,
and Senator Robert LaFollette Sr. looked in on me. "Hello,
Art/' he said, "I just want to say that if I can do anything
for you in regard to that Associated Press case let me know/'
I expressed my appreciation of this magnanimous offer, and
told him I would keep it in mind if need for his help should
arise. LaFollette had long been the subject of vitriolic news-
paper attacks because of his stand against the big corporations
and the system of which they were a part.
Months passed, and our case did not come to trial. It
was apparent from tips we got from friendly sources that
the A.P. was in the position of the hunter who had a bear
by the tail and didn't know how to let go of it. A year
after the accusation the newspapers reported that the indict-
ments had been dismissed, and our bail was returned without
explanation by the district attorney's office,
We held a celebration in the Masses office, and in high
spirits I drew two cartoons for the next issue which conveyed
the prevailing sentiments of our editorial and art boards to-
ward our late adversary. In one I depicted the Associated
Press as a stout and elegantly dressed woman out for a walk;
she was carrying several packages, one being labeled Probity,
and a poodle dog called Aristocracy; and out of her armful
of impedimenta a legal scroll bearing the words The Masses
Case had fallen to the ground. The caption was: "You
number, represent every shade of political and economic opinion." This of course
was not quite the truth.
300 ART YOUNG: HIS LIFE AND TIMES
Dropped Something, Madam/' ... In the other cartoon,
a double-page spread, I pictured the Associated Press as an
angel hovering over the news reservoir pouring perfume into
it from a pretty bottle labeled Truth.
Since that episode the A.P. and most of the big daily
newspapers in this country have been more careful in hand-
ling news of strikes and the whole industrial conflict. That
of course has been brought about largely by the growing
8 U LLET I
Recove
AFTCR
Soci
ANN I H
BY THC
CLUB, H
CON
SCIOUSNESS %
WHEN I WAS UNDER A CLOUD, as a result of the libel suit brought
by the Associated Press.
strength of labor unionism and its better publicity facilities.
But I like to think that some of the credit for this improve-
ment is due to the protest which we of the Masses made
twenty-six years ago*
Some time in 1914 I was proposed for membership
in the National Press Club in Washington, only to find
that my record was against me, particularly the cartoon
attacking the Associated Press, for which I had been indicted.
Some of the membership committee (and especially one who
had proposed me) dissented vigorously against the attitude
of those to whom I was anathema. But it did no good then.
ART YOUNG: HIS LIFE AND TIMES 301
Several years later, however, I was proposed for the club
again and was elected as an out-of-town member. By that
time I had quit Washington for good, and in a little while
I resigned.
Chapter 29
WAR-MAKERS BEAT THEIR DRUMS
SOCIALISM was being frankly advocated by H. J. Whig-
ham in his editorials in the Metropolitan Magazine in
1914. He dealt with the European conflict at length in
October, asking and answering two questions: ."Where is
Socialism now? Why did not the Socialists stop the war?"
Algernon Lee did social comment in a department headed
Tidings of the Times, Two letters from John Reed in Mexico
were published, heralding a series of articles on Francisco
Villa's war for "land and liberty" for the peons. Lincoln
Steffens dealt with the failure of government by "good
people/'
I had a free hand in portraying the solemn gestures and
grotesque antics of Congress each month, often in a double-
page spread. Out of the 520 members of both houses, I found
that at least 500 were lawyers. Elected by and for the people,
the bulk of that august assemblage spent most of its time
gumming up legislation instead of working for the benefit
of those who elected them. As comedy, if one could overlook
the underlying tragedy of the whole scene, Congress was the
best show in the country for a cartoonist*
My pictures and text appeared under a different heading
each month. Some of the titles were: "Here They Are Again"
. , . "Gumshoeing Around Washington" . . . "What's
Doing on the Potomac" . . * "Be It Resolved" . . . "Let
the Thinking People Rule" . . . "Making History, Such
As It Is" , . , "This Tragicomic World" . . . "Can Such
Things Be?"
Once I had occasion to remark that "The old judge in the
trial scene in a well-known vaudeville act never tried harder
to get order in the court by being disorderly himself than
does Speaker Champ Clark." . , . Senator Ollie James of
Kentucky, who weighed 270 pounds and looked like 400
was always good copy. He never denied any of the many
302
ART YOUNG: HIS LIFE AND TIMES 303
anecdotes about him, most of which concerned his bulk. One
told of his dislike for upper berths. Once he drew an upper
in starting from Louisville for Washington. A man weighing
about 110 had the lower. He looked worried when he saw
the mountainous Senator. James grabbed the framework of
his bed and shook it violently. 'Tm always afraid of these
damned upper berths/' he said. "The last one I was in fell
down with me/' The little man was magnanimous. '1*11
change with you. I sleep better in an upper/'
Mother Jones came to Washington and told a Congres-
sional committee about the terror in the West Virginia coal
regions. I pictured her, and wrote that it was not easy to
portray that "benign and yet so belligerent" face. When she
was held captive by the West Virginia authorities she said
to them: "You can stand me up against that wall and riddle
me with bullets, but you can't make me surrender/* Whigham
also did an editorial on Mother Jones versus Rockefeller.
Jack Reed had written some richly colored articles about
Villa's war, portraying him as a man of destiny* After the
coal operators' machine guns had rained death upon the
miners* tent colony in Ludlow, Colorado, the Metropolitan
telegraphed Jack to jump to that area. He got there in time
to do a trenchant article for the next issue, which said: "There
is no thing .revolutionary about this strike. The strikers are
neither Socialists, Anarchists, nor Syndicalists/' The article
opened with this excerpt from testimony given before a Con-
gressional investigating commission:
304 ART YOUNG: HIS LIFE AND TIMES
HERRINGTON (attorney for the Colorado Fuel
and Iron Company) — "Just what is meant by 'social
freedom* I don't know. Do you understand what the
witness meant by 'social freedom', Mr. Welborn?"
MR. WELBORN (president of the Colorado Fuel
and Iron Company) — "I do not/'
Walter Lippmann contributed to the Metropolitan an
article on President Wilson and Little Business, which I illus-
Metropolitan
NOT HARMONIOUS. President Wilson tries to get Secretary of State
Bryan in key.
trated. It quoted Wilson's declaration in The New Freedom:
•"I am for big business, and I am against the trust*'. And
Lippmann commented; -"He knows that there is a new world
demanding new methods, but he dreams of an older world:
He is torn between the two/* . . . When Lippmann did
another article called A Key to the Labor Movement, I fur-
nished a cartoon showing capitalists massed in regiments,
with a caption saying: "Employers should organize— sure,
ART YOUNG: HIS LIFE AND TIMES 305
that's sound sense — but the workingman should go it alone/'
Alongside was a companion picture in which a worker stood
reading a placard on a factory wall: "TO LABOR, a warn-
ing: Be free to work independently — trust the generosity of
your employers — Don't submerge your individuality in a
union. (Signed) EMPLOYERS' ASSOCIATION/'
In one of my articles I reprinted the first two published
cartoons of Theodore Roosevelt — one from Harpers Weekly
by Nast in 1884 and the other from Pack in 1886. T. R.
was 26 years old and a member of the New York State Leg-
islature in 1884.
"In the 50 years since caricature became a feature of
American journalism/' I pointed out, "no man has been the
subject of so many cartoons as Roosevelt. A cartoon com-
posite of him would include Don Quixote, Tamerlane, Na-
poleon, Ananias, Cromwell, Wallenstein, Peter the Great,
the Wild Horse of Tartary, Dn Dowie, a prize-fighter, Savo-
narola, a circus performer, a hyena, a snapping turtle, the
Angel of Peace, Ivan the Terrible, Mohammed, and Moses."
Jack Reed and I were assigned by the Metropolitan to
cover the national political conventions in 1916. And at the
same time I was asked by the Newspaper Enterprise Associa-
tion of Cleveland to draw cartoons at the conventions in
collaboration with Charles Edward Russell, who was han-
dling the news end for it The N.E.A. was then an offshoot
of the Scripps-McRae newspapers (now the Scripps-
Howard) , and through its service my cartoons went in ma-
trix form to several hundred dailies, including the New York
Call Indianapolis News, New Orleans States, Portland
(Ore.) News, Seattle Star, Cleveland Press, Chicago Evening
Post, Detroit News, Memphis Press, Oklahoma News, San
Diego Sun, Cincinnati Post, Des Moines News.
In Chicago the work was hard, since there were two
conclaves to attend, the Republican in the Coliseum and the
Progressive iri the Auditorium, several blocks apart. There
was always the feeling that while we were at one of these,
something highly exciting might happen at the other which
we ought not to miss.
Numerous dark horses were in evidence in the G. O* P.
ranks throughout that tense week, with the possibility that
306 ART YOUNG: HIS LIFE AND TIMES
any one of them might break loose and gallop to victory* So
it was real news when Justice Charles E. Hughes of the
Supreme Court was nominated on Saturday,
Over at the Bull Moose meeting place I sat just be-
hind William Jennings Bryan and his wife. He was there
reporting the affair for a newspaper syndicate. I talked with
Bryan during a lull, commending the stand he had taken on
the European mess, which had led to his resignation as Secre-
tary of State under Woodrow Wilson. He said: "It's like a
terrible fever that will have to run its course/'
Newspaper Enterprise Association
WHERE WILL IT STRIKE? Line-up of willing candidates at the 1916
Republican convention at Chicago, where I saw "all the favorite sons, and
dark horses, too, waiting to be hit.''"
I saw the mighty demonstration that had its climax in the
nomination of Theodore Roosevelt by the Progressives, fol-
lowed by the reading of his letter declining to run — unless
Hughes proved himself unsound on the issues of Americanism
and preparedness and pacifistic, pussy- footed, or pro-German.
This was a bitter blow to the Bull Moose legions, since it
plainly left them out on a limb. In a long telegram of accept-
ance that afternoon Justice Hughes expressed his belief in
"unflinching maintenance of all the rights of American
citizens on land and sea . . . an Americanism that knows no
ulterior purpose ... adequate preparedness ... the ideals
of honorable peace/' So T. R. was quickly out of the running*
ART YOUNG: HIS LIFE AND TIMES 307
We went on that night to St. Louis, where the Democrats
were assembling. There was no doubt in the air as to where
the lightning would strike here; Wilson was a foregone con-
clusion. But anyhow the delegates went through all the usual
motions of a contest. I remember chiefly the eloquent speeches
by Senator Ollie James of Kentucky, former Governor Mar-
tin Glynn of New York, and William Jennings Bryan. When
they referred to the President as "a man of peace" who had
"kept us out of war/' the spectators in the galleries and many
delegates were carried to such emotional heights as to make the
scene look like a religious revival.
Cries of "Bryan! Bryan!" from so many parts of the
convention hall greeted the appearance of the Commoner in
the press gallery at the final session that the chairman sus-
pended the rules to permit him to speak from the platform.
"I have had differences of opinion with President Wil-
son," he said, "but I join the people in thanking God that
we have a President who does not want the nation to fight."
Those who had feared he might recall, for purposes of
party disruption, their conflict over Wilson's Lusitania policy,
were now set at ease. Bryan was at this moment the perfect
harmonizer, forgetting personal ambition and old quarrels.
"As a Democrat," he declared, "I want my party to have the
honor of bringing the peace about, and I want the country
to give Woodrow Wilson a chance to bring it about."
Peggy and Orrick Johns attended the convention regu-
larly, and Jack and I lunched with them in the Planters'
Hotel and spent some pleasant hours in their country home
out in the Meramec hills. Orrick harks back to my "declaiming
in the manner of a Southern Senator" and remembers how
Reed, "a big curly-haired kid wearing dark workman's shirts
and the best tweeds, would comment on the wildeyed ap-
pearance of the delegates, or tear into the fallacies of the
windy monologues."
Often the correspondents for various capitalist papers
would tell me of a Congressman or of some one in a federal
department who would make good copy for me, but not for
them. They had to concern themselves with public men who
were strictly "regular," or on occasion those wko made news
because no one took them seriously.
308 ART YOUNG: HIS LIFE AND TIMES
"Say, Young, you ought to see Lindbergh. There's a
man for you/' said one of these correspondents. He secretly
admired Charles A. Lindbergh Sr., but knew that this Min-
nesota Representative was frowned upon by his paper be-
cause of his political beliefs.
In Washington no observer can escape from the consensus
of opinion among the scores of correspondents from all over
the country as to what is news of public interest and who
should get publicity. Lindbergh, father of a boy then in short
pants who in a few years would suddenly become world-
famous, was not regular news. Elected on the Farmer-Labor
ticket, he was so irregular that he started an investigation of
the House of Morgan. Also I had heard casually of a bill he
had introduced to provide easy credit for farmers, and of his
exposures of the banking system, in speeches and pamphlets
that everybody could understand. Being so different, he
would naturally be of interest only to a cartoonist and com-
mentator who was himself outside the pale. Such was my
reputation for having radical views.
I found Lindbergh in his room in the House Office
Building, and told him I'd like to make a sketch of him for
the Metropolitan. Courteous enough, he seemed neither will-
ing nor unwilling to have me go ahead. He was sitting at his
desk, and I said: '"Just as you are is all right/' A stoical
Swede, I thought, as I began drawing from the brow down,
as is my usual way. Stoical and a man of home-spun integrity,
I felt, as I limned the contour of his strong face and came to
the big gnarled hands. I was not long at my work as he sat
patiently looking out the window, and occasionally at his
desk, where correspondence and memoranda of a Congress-
man's duties stared him in the face.
My informant was right — "You ought to see Lind-
bergh/' I had seen and sketched Knute Nelson, banker Sena-
tor from the same state, a hard-boiled regular, also a Swede.
Of him my most distinct memory is that he could make the
brass spittoon near his desk on the Senate floor ring with
powerful shots of tobacco juice. When the Senate was quiet
Knute's echoing sluice was a sure sign that "God's in his
heaven, all's right with the world" for the bankers. Lindbergh
had vision, while the seniof Senator from Minnesota was a
prize example of a man without vision.
ART YOUNG: HIS LIFE AND TIMES 309
The younger Lindbergh must have inherited some of his
father's imagination — for the son was certain he could do
what others thought foolhardy, and did it. Lindbergh senior
was farther ahead of time than his boy. But what he ad-
vocated also will be done. The spirit of Lindbergh senior will
carry on. He voted against American entrance into the Euro-
pean war, and fought for peace during that conflict. His idea
was that human life is at least as sacred as wealth; so he
urged the conscription of wealth to pay the money costs of
the fighting. He recommended that the government take over
310 ART YOUNG: HIS LIFE AND TIMES
the telegraph, telephone, banking, and transportation sys-
tems. He hated Wall Street and wrote and published a book,
Why Is Your Country At War?, which was promptly sup-
pressed and the page plates confiscated by the federal au-
thorities.
So inflamed can a whole nation become through the in-
sidious propaganda of newspapers that on more than one
occasion in those days Lindbergh's life was in danger while
he was speaking as a candidate for Governor of Minnesota,
his last campaign in his home state, where his record for
honesty and unswerving principle was known to everybody.
"You ought to see Lindbergh/' and I saw him — a man who
deserves to live endlessly in the history of his country. He
was more of a lone eagle than his son. He soared higher and
with a nobler purpose, but the bitter unreasoning storm of
public opinion was against him.
Wilson's administration was a shining target for the
Metropolitan throughout the Princeton professor's first term,
and the magazine kept on throwing big chunks of criticism
at him long after this country was dragged into the war.
"The charge against Mr. Wilson/* Whigham wrote in
December, 1916, "is that he has poisoned the wells of truth.
The one man who ought to be candor incarnate, he has made
the written word of the President of the United States a
laughing stock of all the world/' And a month later, under
the heading of Farewell, Old Guard, the editor added: "For
four years we have been opposed to the policy of Mr. Wilson
and the Democratic party. Long before the war broke out our
opposition to Mr. Wilson was based on the fact that his main
ideas of government were reactionary rather than progres-
sive/*
Theodore Roosevelt, who by this time was being widely
advertised as a contributing editor (having resigned as an
editor of the Outlook) , had an article in the same issue
entitled "Good Americans Should Support Mr. Hughes/'
On the day when Wilson signed the Porto Rico bill I
went to the White House, curious to see for once how a Presi-
dent looked when he affixed his name to such a document
with three different pens, each of which would be given (like
Babe Ruth baseballs) to notables directly concerned with the
event. I arrived late, however, because the cab-horse which
ART YOUNG: HIS LIFE AND TIMES 311
brought me was tired and the cab needed oiling, and Secretary
Tumulty said the ceremony was all over — but that the Presi-
dent was still in the reception room, and said to me, "Go
on in/' and I did. The President was shaking hands with
some of the guests, and when they left him I introduced
myself as the Washington correspondent of the Metropolitan.
He didn't show any emotion at that, but said, "The
Metropolitan doesn't like me very much, does it?"
"Well, you may have noticed, Mr, President/' I an-
swered, "that I've never drawn any especially harsh cartoons
of you, nor written anything libelous about you/'
Then I made some conversation about the difficulties of
his high office, and told him the Porto Rico bill "ought to
improve that situation," and I ended by asking him a question
that I heard people ask in Wisconsin in my boyhood: "Do
you sleep well?"
He didn't reply to that, but a ghost of a smile crossed
his face, and he said: "Good day, Mr* Young." Going out
I mentioned to Tumulty that I saw the President and that
"everything went all right,"
Some three weeks after Wilson began his second term I
happened to be in the office of Senator Harry Lane of Oregon
one morning. He handed me a newspaper he had been reading,
and pointing to a headline which stated that J. Pierpont
Morgan was a Washington visitor, he said: "Our government
has arrived!"
Official sources had just announced that Morgan had
agreed to lend $1,000,000 for the Army, without interest, to
permit the continued purchase of supplies for which Congress
had refused money. Next day the Evening Star stated that
"indications grew stronger today that President Wilson will
ask Congress next Tuesday to declare that a state of war
exists between Germany and the United States/'
And a few days later he who had "kept us out of war"
went before that body and made a speech about the failure
of neutrality. What followed is familiar history — conscrip-
tion of youth, the beating down of all opposition by a reign
of terror, vast profiteering, and a deluge of blood and tears.
I sat in the Senate press gallery when Wilson delivered
his so-called peace message to Congress, which in its essence
THE WHITE MAN'S BURDEN,
312
ART YOUNG: HIS LIFE AND TIMES 313
was a preliminary pronouncement of wan So well groomed
that he resembled a fashion-plate, the Chief Executive walked
down the aisle with almost everybody cheering as he mounted
the dais. Here he shook hands with Vice-President Marshall
adjusted his eye-glasses, looked out over the audience for
several seconds, and then began reading the fateful message
amid a great silence.
My ears caught scarcely any of his words* I wasn't listen-
ing to them ; I could read the salient points in the newspapers.
But I knew the die had been cast. I was thinking of what
inevitably lay ahead, and wondering what my radical friends
who had upheld Wilson's course and motives would have to
say now. Lincoln Steffens, John Reed, and many others had
contended clear up to that point that he would stick to his
announced policy and "keep us out of war." But I didn't
believe it, and had said so over and over again. I felt he
would like to, but I said: "They won't let him."
I knew, as everyone handling news did, how the propa-
ganda factories were working ceaselessly to force us into the
slaughter. . . , And as I pondered all this, sitting there
among the press correspondents, I wasn't looking at Wilson
— I was watching the face of Uncle Joe Cannon of Illinois.
It was the color of an old plow-share covered with red rast,
and he looked at the President as if approving every word he
said. Hard-boiled Republican though he was, for once he
was in agreement with a Democratic President. And the mem-
bers of the Supreme Court also were there looking on with
satisfied expressions.
Jeannette Rankin had just begun to serve her term as
Representative from Montana when the infamous war reso-
lution sponsored by Wilson came crashing into Congress for
immediate attention, with the eyes and ears of the world
waiting for the verdict. I had been hanging around the
Capitol all day on April 5, and had gone home late that
night, sick at heart because I was sure the measure was going
to pass. About 3 a.m. the vote of the House was taken with
50 members against and 373 for war.
I heard about the ordeal next day from those who had
seen the session through. As the roll was called, and the read-
ing clerk shouted "Rankin of Montana!", there was no re-
314 ART YOUNG: HIS LIFE AND TIMES
sponse. Then, louder: ' 'RANKIN OF MONTANA!" Visibly
overcome and sobbing in despair, she answered: "I want to
stand by my country, but I cannot vote for war/*
So Jeannette Rankin, in that nest of dominant males,
made herself heard. If the manner was essentially feminine,
nevertheless it was truly the voice of the maternal instinct
which seeks to protect life rather than destroy it.
More disillusionment came to me that spring when the
Socialist party's emergency convention in St. Louis split on
the question of opposing the war, I had long held the belief
that all Socialists would logically oppose a capitalistic and
imperialistic war in which the proletarian masses of the
countries involved would be the great losers. Ever since the
carnage had begun in Europe, the Socialists in this country
had been almost unanimously against entering it I had
felt secure in the belief that the party would unflinchingly
stand its ground.
But there was bitter controversy on the convention floor
when a resolution condemning the entrance of the United
States into the European holocaust was offered for passage.
After acrimonious debate a majority comprising some three
fourths of the delegates adopted such a measure which said:
The only struggle which would justify the workers in taking
up arms is the great struggle of the working class of the world
to free itself from economic exploitation and political oppression.
As against the false doctrine of national patriotism, we uphold
the ideal of international working class solidarity. In support of
capitalism, we will not willingly give a single life or a single
dollar; in support of the struggle of the workers for freedom, we
pledge all. . . . We brand the declaration of war by our gov-
ernment as a crime against the people of the United States and
against the nations of the world. The Socialist Party emphati-
cally rejects the proposal that in time of war the workers should
suspend their struggle for better conditions. On the contrary, the
acute situation created by war calls for an even more vigorous
prosecution of the class struggle.
Countering this position, a minority resolution uphold-
ing the war was insisted upon by the remaining fourth of the
delegates, among whom were Charles Edward Russell, John
ART YOUNG: HIS LIFE AND TIMES 315
Spargo, William English Walling, Upton Sinclair, X G.
Phelps Stokes, W. J. Ghent, Charmion London, and George
Sterling. The report of these dissenters held that now that
this nation was in the war, that war must be "recognized"
as a fact; that Socialists should support it and help carry it
to a successful conclusion as soon as possible*
Rose Pastor Stokes and her husband, X G. Phelps Stokes,
subsequently resigned from the party to express their opposi-
tion to the majority resolution, which in a referendum was
adopted by the party membership by a vote of about ten to
one. Printed copies of that resolution were confiscated as
"treasonable" by Department of Justice agents.
And Clarence Darrow, supposedly a competent thinker,
also took a pro-war position. Though I still think that all of
that group were wrong, I have never believed that personal
antipathy for them, because of their attitude, should have
been carried over for a single day beyond the Armistice by
any of us who opposed entry of the United States into the
war. I have a talent for reserving judgement, sometimes re-
serving it so long, however, that it becomes a fault.
That session of Congress had opened with an excited
determination of many members to reduce the cost of living,
which had hit top figures. Many schemes were offered. But
only one man in this conclave of statesmen met the issue with
a clear, convincing solution. Champ Clark, Representative
from Missouri, when asked by a reporter how the people
could meet the rising costs of subsistence, said: "Eat mush" —
and added that "everyone also ought to keep some hens/'
So I came out in my Metropolitan department for Champ
Clark for our next President on a one-plank platform:
Eat mash!
Later, in a page headed Flopping Around, I had a cartoon
of Herbert Hoover tossing out advice so much needed by the
millions of families living on $15 a week: "Save the scraps
. . * Economy . . . Don't eat unless hungry „ . . Don't
buy in carload lots."
Memories of industrial turmoil in the Eighties, and the
tendency of men to get in out of the storm when the elements
battered them too harshly, were recalled by my discovery of
an old-timer at a desk in the Department of Labor on which
316 ART YOUNG: HIS LIFE AND TIMES
one would always see an orange or an apple mixed up with
the documents of business. This was Terence V. Powderly,
who in the Eighties was Grand Master Workman (the prin-
cipal officer) of the Knights of Labor, the first powerful
union of workers in the United States. There in Washington,
he was assistant to the Commissioner of Immigration. Seldom
did his name get into print; he was no longer news for the
press which had once regarded him as a force to reckon with
in the struggle of labor for a decent livelihood.
Senator Sherman of Illinois was often a good source of
copy for me on dull days. He had a large store of anecdotes.
S* ^v.
Metropolitan
TERENCE V. PQWDERLY. Head of the militant Knights of Labor, he
was National Villain No. 1 in the press of the Eighties. When I made this
profile in 1918, he was Assistant Immigration Commissioner.
It was easy to get him to slant himself against his desk and
start telling stories. One of his tales was about an illiterate
man leaning against the frame of a courtroom doorway.
Somebody came along and asked him: "What's the judge
doing in there?" and the illiterate citizen said: "He's giving
his obstructions to the jury/'
Roosevelt clamored in the Metropolitan for our entrance
into the war in an article entitled Now We Must Fight and
another called Put the Flag on the Firing Line. After that
wish was gratified, T. R. came out in May, 1917, with a
treatise on Liberal Russia in which he said: "The great demo-
cratic revolution in Russia was successfully carried through
just before the United States entered into the war on the
ART YOUNG: HIS LIFE AND TIMES 317
side of the Allies. . . . We of the United States most earn-
estly wish well to Russia. We believe that she has before her
a career of really stupendous greatness/' And he said also:
"We .most earnestly hope that the sinister extremists, always
associated with any revolution, will not gain control/' This
was in pre-Kerensky days, and before the Bolsheviki had
been heard of in this country.
Whigham continued to criticize the Wilson administra-
tion, holding that "our democracy was on trial/' "If we want
to make the world safe for democracy/' he said editorially
in July, "there are two things we must surely do. 1. We must
so deal with Germany that neither she nor any other great
power will ever again think it worth while to start out on a
career of world conquest. ... 2. To make democracy safe
we must make democracy self-supporting. Washington at the
present moment is rather a deplorable spectacle."
The development of that theme brought numerous pro-
tests, and in August Whigham was clearly on the defensive
against the pressure of the super-patriots. Under ,the heading
"This Is Our War" he stated the Metropolitan's position.
Some readers, he explained, had objected to the July editorial
as an attack on the national administration. But neither the
President nor any of his advisers were sacrosanct, the Metro-
politan's editor insisted, and it deplored the idea held by well-
meaning people that loyalty and patriotism meant standing
by the Administration and doing little else. "Whatever the
President does toward winning this war in the shortest and
most effective way has our enthusiastic support/*
Chapter 30
THE CENSORSHIP PICKS ON THE MASSES
K)UGH going had been encountered by the Masses in
its efforts to remain a medium for free interpretation
in a time of hysteria. Because of its pitiless reporting
in trying to reveal true causes, its lack of respect for com-
mercialized religion, and its attacks on sex taboos in art and
literature, the magazine had earlier been barred from the
reading rooms of many libraries, ousted from the subway and
elevated news stands in New York, and refused by the large
distributing companies of Boston and Philadelphia; and our
right to use the mails in Canada had been revoked by the
Dominion government.
One poem by Carl Sandburg had caused an issue to be
held up in the New York post office for two days, and some
subscriptions were stopped on account of it. This was dedi-
cated to Billy Sunday, and the opening lines read:
You come along . . . tearing your shirt . . . yelling
about Jesus.
I want to know . . . what the hell . . . you know
about Jesus.
Jesus had a way of talking soft and everybody except
a few bankers and higher-ups among the con-men
of Jerusalem liked to have this Jesus around because
he never made any fake passes and everything he said
went and he helped the sick and he gave the people
hope.
Frequently we reprinted bits from the daily newspapers
which needed no satirical comment to give them bite. For
example, the mention of a woman who wrote to the Phila-
delphia North American telling how she fed a family of six
on $3 a week, and that publication's response: "The North
American . . . publicly acknowledges its admiration for such
a fine manager, A few of this sort in each community in the
318
ART YOUNG: HIS LIFE AND TIMES 319
land would soon put an end to the high cost of living agita-
tion/*
For three months after the United States declared war on
Germany the Masses kept on assailing the jingoists, the profit-
eers, and the capitalists who caused the beating and deporta-
tion of strikers, the Post Office censorship, and other evils
which had been loosed in the campaign to silence all critics
of the war administration. If anyone questioned the maga-
zine's course, the editors were able to point to a statement by
President Wilson for justification. Shortly after the declara-
tion he had said :
I can imagine no greater dis-service to the country
than to establish a system of censorship that would
deny to the people of a free republic like our own their
undisputable right to criticize their own public officials.
While exercising the great powers of the office I hold, I
would regret in a crisis like the one which we are now
passing to lose the benefits of patriotic and intelligent
criticism.
On July 3 the August issue of the Masses was delivered to
the New York Post Office. Copies of this were immediately
sent to Washington "for examination/' the editors were in-
formed. Two days later a letter came from Postmaster T. G.
Patten of Manhattan, stating that according to advices from
the Solicitor of the Post Office Department, that issue was
unmailable under the Act of June 15, 1917, which meant the
Espionage Act. It was understood that the Solicitor, the At-
torney General, and Judge Advocate General Crowder of the
U. S. Army had conferred about excluding the magazine
from the mails. In a statement in our September number,
explaining what happened to the August issue, there was a
footnote: "Date of conference unknown; rumor that the
Generals, in spite of pressure of war-business, celebrated In-
dependence Day by deciding to suppress the Masses, cannot
be verified/ '
Merrill Rogers, our business manager, hastened to Wash-
ington and interviewed Solicitor Lamar, who declined to say
what provisions of the Espionage Act had been violated by
the Masses for August, or what parts of the magazine violated
that law.
320 ' ART YOUNG: HIS LIFE AND TIMES
Immediately we retained Gilbert E. Roe as counsel. He
had handled our fight against the Associated Press libel suit.
On July 12 he filed a motion in the federal court to enjoin
the postmaster from excluding the magazine from the mails.
All-day argument on this motion was held before Judge
Learned Hand on July 21. And now we got a hint of how
the Espionage Act would be used as a club against people
with anti-war beliefs. Assistant U. S. District Attorney Earl
Barnes set forth that the Post Office Department construed
that act as giving it power to bar from the mails anything
which might interfere with the successful conduct of the war,
Barnes offered as exhibits four cartoons and four pieces
of text in the August issue as specific law violations. These
cartoons were Boardman Robinson's ''Making the World
Safe for Democracy/' two by H. J. Glintenkamp having to
do with Conscription and the Liberty Bell, and one by my-
self on Congress and Big Business. The objectionable writ-
ings were: "A Question/' an editorial by Max Eastman; "A
Tribute/' a poem by Josephine Bell; an editorial, "Friends
of American Freedom"; and a paragraph in an article on
"Conscientious Objectors/'
"But/' said Roe, in his argument, "the Espionage Act
was designed chiefly to strike at agents of enemy countries,
and was never intended to prohibit political criticism or dis-
cussion. To permit the Post Office Department to use it as a
cover for arbitrary acts of suppression would be to recognize
a censorship set up without warrant of law."
Granting a temporary injunction against the postmaster,
Judge Hand upheld Roe's contention completely in a memor-
able decision. That decision, boiled down, emphasized the
following points: There was no valid basis for the peculiar
construction placed by the postal authorities on the Espion-
age Act. The Masses for August did not violate the specific
provisions of the law. Its cartoons and editorials fell "within
the scope of that right to criticize, either by temperate reason-
ing or by immoderate and indecent invective, which is norm-
ally the privilege of the individual in countries dependent
upon the free expression of opinion as the ultimate source
of authority/'
Expression of such opinion might militate against the
success of the war, Judge Hand pointed out, but Congress
ART YOUNG: HIS LIFE AND TIMES 321
had not seen fit to exclude it from the mails, and only Con-
gress had the power to do this. The pictures and text com-
plained of might tend to promote disaffection with the war,
but they could not be thought to counsel insubordination in
the military or naval forces "without a violation of their
meaning quite beyond any tolerance of understanding/' The
Glintenkamp cartoon on conscription might "breed such
animosity toward the Draft as will promote resistance and
strengthen the determination of those disposed to be recal-
citrant/' but it did not tell people that it was their duty nor
to their interest to resist the law. The text objected to ex-
pressed "high admiration for those who have held and are
holding out for their convictions even to the extent of re-
sisting the law/' But the expression of such admiration, Judge
Hand held, was not a violation of the Espionage Act.
On July 26 a formal order requiring the postmaster to
transmit the August Masses through the mails was signed by
Judge Hand. And on the same day, in Windsor, Vermont,
250 miles away, U. S. Circuit Judge C. M. Hough signed
another order staying execution of Judge Hand's injunction
and requiring the contending parties to appear before him in
Windsor on August 2 to show cause why this stay should
not be made permanent pending an appeal which had been
taken by Postmaster Patten.
It would be several months before the appeal could be
heard. Meanwhile, the Masses explained in its September
issue, "our attorney will oppose the staying of Judge Hand's
order. If he succeeds, you will get your August issue through
the mails — unless the Department thinks of some other way
to stop it. If our attorney doesn't succeed, we will have to
adopt other ways and means. . . . The Masses is your prop-
erty. This is your fight as much as it is ours. We are not going
to quit. We do not believe you are, either. We need money
to help pay expenses. . . /'
Yes, the fight must go on. Most of us who were co-
operatively 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. On the back cover of the September issue was a
bold pronouncement headed: Challenging the Government,
which said:
322 ART YOUNG: HIS LIFE AND TIMES
"Twelve to fifteen hundred radical publications have heen
declared unmailable. The Masses is the only one which has
challenged the censorship in the courts and put the Govern-
ment on the defensive. Each month we have something
vitally important to say on the war. We are going to say
it and continue to say it. We are going to fight any attempt
to prevent us from saying it. The Masses has proved in the
last few issues that it stands as the foremost critic of mili-
tarism/'
We had found comfort and confidence in that decision of
Judge Hand, even though it had been immediately blocked
by another court. Judge Hand's thoughtful and explicit sanc-
tion of our course was assurance that there was still some
sanity left in the judiciary.
So the September issue of the magazine continued its
policy of unremitting protest. A lead article by John Reed
headed One Solid Month of Liberty, said that "in America
the month just past has been the blackest month for freemen
our generation has known/* . . . A full-page cartoon of
mine entitled Having Their Fling, pictured an editor, capi-
talist, politician, and clergyman dancing to the music of a
deviFs orchestra playing instruments shaped like cannon, ma-
chine guns, and hand grenades. Placards above the dancers
read: "All for Democracy ... All for Honor ... All for
World Peace. . . All for Jesus." . . . Sweatshop conditions
of labor among the women employed in the federal Bureau
of Printing and Engraving in Washington were detailed in
an editorial.
There was a double-page cartoon spread by Boardman
Robinson called Deportations — Take Your Choice, in which
he showed the Kaiser and his army driving Belgians away
from their homes and a silk-hatted Phelps-Dodge Corpora-
tion official and its gunmen herding miners into box-cars in
Arizona. . . . Max Eastman had an article assailing the
Post Office censorship. . . . Young Lads First was the title
of a poem by Willard Wattles, telling of gray-beards who
came from councils and set young men's ears aflame with
cries of "Honor!" and sent them off to die.
All of these features were of course red rags to the pro-
war crowd, as were two other cartoons I drew for the same
issue. One represented Postmaster General Burleson as 4
ART YOUNG: HIS LIFE AND TIMES 323
worried knight in armor who had broken his lance in the
battle with radical publications. Burleson's tattered banner
bore the legend: "Death to all newspapers and magazines
that haven't 'the right spirit/ " . . . My other cartoon was
a simple portrait of Assistant U. S. District Attorney Barnes,
identified as a defender of relics, with a quotation from his
argument for exclusion of the Masses from the mails: "The
Liberty Bell cartoon, sir, to my mind, is objectionable, be-
cause it shows that time-honored relic in a state of complete
collapse/'
It would be hard to find a more illuminating commentary
on the American scene in that period than John Reed's
article. "With a sort of hideous apathy/' he related, "the
country has acquiesced in a regime of judicial tyranny, bu-
reaucratic suppression, and industrial barbarism, which fol-
lowed inevitably the first fine careless rapture of militarism/'
... He declared that Emma Goldman and Alexander Berk-
man were not convicted of the charges on which they were
ostensibly tried; they were convicted by the Assistant District
Attorney's constant stress of the term "Anarchist/' and by
the careful definition of that term, brought out by both judge
and prosecutor, as one who wishes wantonly to overthrow
society by violence. . . . Reed told of the attack of soldiers
and sailors on the Socialist headquarters in Boston; the race
riot in East St. Louis, in which more than thirty Negroes,
men and women, were massacred by whites; the loading of
hundreds of striking copper miners and their attorney, into
cattle cars in Bisbee, Arizona, and their being abandoned in
the desert, foodless and waterless,
"Out in San Francisco/' Reed wrote, "the bomb trials go
merrily on. In spite of the exposure of Oxman, the utter con-
tradiction and discrediting of the state's witnesses, Mooney
is still going to die. . . . And so the most patent frame-up
ever conceived by a Chamber of Commerce to extirpate union
labor goes on, and indictments rain upon all who have dared
to defend the Mooneys. . . .
"Meanwhile, organized labor lies down and takes it —
nay, in San Francisco, connives at it. Gompers is too busy
running the war — he has not time for anything except to
appoint upon his committees labor's bitterest enemies. I sup-
pose that as soon as Tom Mooney and his wife are executed,
324 ART YOUNG: HIS LIFE AND TIMES
Gompers will invite District Attorney Fickert to serve upon
the Committee on Labor*
"The suffrage pickets in front of the White House, set
upon by mobs of government clerks, then by the police,
arrested time and time again upon no charge, and finally
committed to the work-house for sixty days, were, as the
world knows, hurriedly pardoned by the President as soon
as it was evident how prominent they and their husbands
were. But at the same time that he pardoned them for their
'crime/ he intimated that he was too busy over his 'War for
Democracy' to give any attention to their petition — which
was a petition for the fundamental rights of citizens/*
It was inevitable, in the temper of the time, that the
Masses would be suppressed. In October our second-class mail-
ing privilege was rescinded, and the grand jury indicted Max
Eastman, Floyd Dell, Henry J. Glintenkamp, Josephine Bell,
Merrill Rogers, business manager, and myself.* We were
charged, under the Espionage Act, with "conspiracy to ob-
struct the recruiting and enlistment service of the United
States" by publishing seditious articles, cartoons and poems.
If convicted, we faced sentences of imprisonment up to
twenty years each and fines up to $10,000 each* And many
twenty-year prison terms had already been handed out to
dissenters.
Stacker 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.
The road ahead would be hard. We of the Masses staff
had no illusions about that.
It was not surprising, in view of the editorial switch of
the Metropolitan to the side of the war crowd, that my space
* Subsequently John Reed also was indicted.
ART YOUNG: HIS LIFE AND TIMES 325
had in recent months been reduced from two pages to one
page, and that now it was cut to two-thirds of a page. I
had felt the magazine's policy steadily narrowing, and it had
EDITOR CAPITALIST POLITICIAN MIIMlST€ll\
The Masses
HAVING THEIR FLING. One of the cartoons for which I was indicted
for alleged conspiracy to obstruct recruiting.
become more and more difficult to draw cartoons and express
opinions on the situation in the capital that would get by
the board of editors. Still I kept on, satirizing the show as
vigorously as I dared, under heads such as Following the
Leaders and Let the Thinking People Rule.
326 ART YOUNG: HIS LIFE AND TIMES
It was not surprising either when I got a letter from the
editors of the Metropolitan in the fall of 1917 saying:
"You're not catching the spirit of Washington. We wish you
would come to New York and talk it over/* I went, but I
knew what the outcome would be before I entered the office.
We didn't go into details in our discussion. Whigham and
^c
THE BOSS: "Now, children, all together, three cheers for the
Supreme Court!"
This appeared soon after the Keating Child Labor Act of the
Wilson administration was declared unconstitutional.
Carl Hovey, the managing editor, both seemed a bit abrupt
and it was all over.
Yet it was a relief to get away from Washington then.
For the scene in the capital had become both farcical and sad.
Better to be out of it than to remain with my hands tied and
brain clamped. The magnificent distances swarmed with busi-
ness men from near and far patriotically giving their services
at "a dollar a year" with a cheerful eye on large orders for
ART YOUNG: HIS LIFE AND TIMES 327
their products; Congressmen giving out pompous interviews
and making stuffed-shirt speeches; spurred swivel-chair offi-
cers suddenly growing omnipotent; members of the Intelli-
gence Service hunting for spies; members of the American
Protective League raiding the office files of persons suspected
of subversive tendencies, with the aid of building superin-
tendents and janitors by night,
Jeannette Rankin once complained to Secretary of War
Newton Baker that she was being followed by a secret service
man, ''Don't pay any attention to him/' said Baker. "Two
of them have been following me for three months/'
Rents were exorbitant, food prices soared, and every hotel
was crowded. One encountered drunken parties in profusion
moving about the town by night. When I read new pro-
nouncements by Woodrow Wilson I could hear the voices of
all the stay-at-home slogan makers:
"Hundred per cent Americanism/'
"Over there — "
"Give till it hurts!"
"Don't be a slacker!"
"Do your bit!"
"Down with the Huns!"
"Kill the Kaiser!"
"Make the world safe — "
"A war to end war!"
Chapter 31
WE GO TO TRIAL IN TENSE DAYS
I FELT, as others among my radical associates did, that
the spirit of protest must be kept alive. And with pur
trial for seditious "conspiracy" approaching, it was
essential that we have some dependable medium through
which we could present our case to the public.
Accordingly some of us who had been active in promoting
the Masses decided early in 1918 that we would establish a
new magazine of similar format, to be called the Liberator.
Again Max Eastman was editor, with his sister Crystal as
managing editor and Floyd Dell as associate, while the con-
tributing editors were: Cornelia Barns, Howard Brubaker,
Hugo Gellert, Arturo Giovannitti, Charles T. Hallinan,
Helen Keller, Ellen LaMotte, Robert Minor, John Reed,
Boardman Robinson, Louis Untermeyer, Charles W. Wood,
and Art Young.
"Never was the moment more auspicious to issue a great
magazine of liberty/* our leading editorial said in the first
issue in March. "With the Russian people in the lead, the
world is entering upon the experiment of industrial and real
democracy* . . . The possibilities of change in this day are
beyond all imagination* We must unite our hands and voices
to make the end of this war the beginning of an age of free-
dom and happiness for mankind undreamed by those whose
minds comprehend only political and military events. . . .
"The Liberator . . . will advocate the opening of the
land to the people, and urge the immediate taking over by the
people of railroads, mines, telegraph and telephone systems,
and all public utilities. » * .
"The Liberator will endorse the war aims outlined by
the Russian people and expounded by President Wilson — a
peace without forcible annexations, without punitive indem-
nities, with free development and self-determination for all
peoples. Especially it will support the President in his demand
328
ART YOUNG: HIS LIFE AND TIMES 329
for an international union, based upon free seas, free com-
merce, and general disarmament, as the central principle
upon which hang all hopes of permanent peace and friend-
ship among nations/'
The Masses
A CASE OF HERESY. Charles M. Schwab, steel magnate, upsets his
class by an outspoken speech at an alumni dinner in New York.
That issue included an article by Helen Keller in behalf
of the LW.W.; one by Bob Minor on the peril of Tom
Mobneyv with a cartoon by Bob showing "the rope still
around Mooneyes neck"; while Jack Reed dealt with Red
330 ART YOUNG: HIS LIFE AND TIMES
Russia* I contributed two cartoons, one being entitled "A Case
of Heresy/' in which Charles M. Schwab was being haled
into court before old Judge Capitalism for an utterance he
made at a banquet:
"Some people call it Socialism. Others call it Bolshevism,
It means but one thing, and that is that the man who labors
with his hands, yet does not possess property, is the one who
is going to dominate the affairs of the world."
Through the following months the Liberator contained a
good deal about what was happening abroad, and illuminat-
ing news material and comment about the class struggle in
the United States. Some pieces worth noting here were: an
article on an atrocity by a masked mob in Tulsa, Oklahoma,
which whipped, tarred and feathered, and deported seven-
teen men, some of them I.W.W. oil-workers who had been
taken from the custody of the city police; a report on the
growing propaganda for compulsory military training; and
an article by William D. Haywood, general secretary of the
LW.W., telling of the daily life of himself and 105 other
class-war prisoners in the foul air of the county jail in
Chicago.
Cartoons which I made for the new magazine that year
included one in which a capitalist bows his head in prayer,
saying: "O Lord, control my appetite if you must, but don't
take my pie (private ownership) away!"; another called
"Good Night!" in which private ownership of public institu-
tions ("the light that failed") is being buried, amid the
weeping of the church, press, colleges, and stage; and a third
in which Karl Marx views his triumph in current headlines.
Such cartoons I classify now as wishful thinking.
Then I made a portrait of a well-fed, self-satisfied look-
ing man, to illustrate this supposed news dispatch:
"RIDGEVILLE, N. HL— George Turnip, a leading citi-
zen of this town, was given a birthday dinner today in honor
of his sixty-third birthday. Mr. Turnip, who is a bachelor,
made a strong speech in favor of military training for every
male citizen over nineteen and under sixty-three years of
age."
Looking over a bound volume of the Liberator for 1918,
it is easy to discern that the soft pedal was being used, in
contrast to the outspokenness of the Masses. But the terror
ART YOUNG: HIS LIFE AND TIMES 331
against all objectors to the war was in full force, and with
our trial coming on, we were not inclined to aggravate the
situation further — though we were ready to stand by the
written and pictorial expressions which had led to the seven
indictments.
On the eve of our trial an editorial in the Liberator for
May, in discussing it, drew a comparison between our position
and that of the Metropolitan. While the latter had been aiding
the war, it had lately published an article by William Hard
declaring that America was not honest in her profession of
anti-imperial war-aims, that she was in fact imperialistic.
Thereupon some "automaton" in the Post Office Department
had issued a mandate to the New York postmaster to exclude
Whigham's periodical from the mails* But this action was
quickly over-ridden by higher-ups, who explained that it was
all a mistake.
Thus, the Liberator commented, "the respectable felonies,
that enliven the pages of the Metropolitan, and the Kansas
City Star, and Collier's, and the newspapers of William R.
Hearst, may continue with impunity, as they should of course
in a society whose ultimate and really admired ideal is respect-
ability."
Our new magazine was being consistently more diplo-
matic than militant in its utterances, and that issue contained
a carefully poised article by Max Eastman headed "Wilson
and the World's Future," in which various wrongs in con-
nection with the war were pointed out, in the manifest hope
that the man in the White House might deal with them con-
structively.
"President Wilson conducts his own thinking," this ar-
ticle began, "with a large freedom and interior democracy
that is not usual either among professors or politicians. He
gives a voice to every new fact and every new suggestion
that the current of events and meditation throws out."
Then certain recent actions of the Chief Executive "in the
single interest of human freedom" were listed.
"A thing that makes me especially willing to travel [in
the same car with him]," Eastman stated, "is that President
Wilson has at last turned his attention to those violations of
liberty and constitutional right in our domestic affairs which
have been making his great words before the world sound
332 ART YOUNG: HIS LIFE AND TIMES
so hollow/' This referred to an order for a review of courts-
martial and sentences dealt out to several hundred conscien-
tious objectors, with a view to remedy by the President "if
any be needed/'
Moves that Wilson might make to ease the tensity of
the whole situation, suggested by the Liberator's editor, in-
cluded recognition of the Republic of Labor Unions in
Russia, indorsement of the proposed Inter-Belligerent Con-
ference of Socialist and Labor Delegates, and some public
statement to curb "the American Prussians ' and to halt the
general suppression of publications and the persecution of
organizers and agitators with radical opinions.
Patriotic music was being played lustily by an army
band in City Hall Park as we of the Masses went to trial
in the old Post Office building before Judge Augustus Hand
in April. Only five defendants were present — Max Eastman,
Floyd Dell, Merrill Rogers, Josephine Bell, and myself. John
Reed was in Russia, and Henry Glintenkamp's whereabouts
were unknown. He had been out of town when the indictment
was returned by the grand jury.
Assistant District Attorney Earl Barnes was handling the
prosecution, while Morris Hillquit and Dudley Field Malone
were our attorneys. Hillquit had been under fire by the super-
patriots because he had admittedly written most of the St.
Louis and- war proclamation of the Socialist party; some of
the newspapers referred to him as "the unindicted Hillquit/'
Malone was a liberal who liked to exercise his independent
spirit right in the open, but for all that was still regarded as
respectable. He was in the case mainly because of the free
press issue.
Among the exhibits introduced by the prosecution as evi-
dence against us, these six stood out:
1. Eastman's editorial, "A Question/' which praised the
moral courage of those who were conscientious objectors to
the draft.
2. Letters from conscientious objectors in English pris-
ons, with a foreword by Floyd Dell lauding them.
3. Glintenkamp's cartoon in which Death was measuring
a drafted soldier for a coffin, with an excerpt from a news
ART YOUNG: HIS LIFE AND TIMES 333
dispatch stating that a huge number of coffins had been
ordered by the War Department.
4. An "article" signed by Reed, which actually was a
compilation of quotations from a report by the National
Mental Hygiene Committee, which cited the great frequency
of mental diseases among soldiers in the prevailing war. This
report had been published by the New York Tribune, but no
editor of that newspaper had been indicted. The only part of
MORRIS HILLQUIT, one of the defense
counsel in the Masses sedition case.
the "article* 'which was original with Reed was the headline,
"Knit a Strait- Jacket for Your Soldier Boy/'
5. Josephine Bell's free-verse poem, "A Tribute/' and
dedicated to Emma Goldman and Alexander Berkman, who
had lately been convicted under the Espionage Act.
6. My anti-war cartoon, "Having Their Fling." This
was just one of various pictures of mine cited by the State.
Picking the jury was an arduous task, which often im-
pelled grave doubts of our chances as we contemplated the
"peers" who were to decide whether we should spend the next
334 ART YOUNG: HIS LIFE AND TIMES
twenty years in or out of prison. Scores of middle class tales-
men, many of them elderly and "retired," were examined as
to their social views, with practically the same answers from
all.
"Are you prejudiced against pacifism and pacifists?" Al-
ways the reply would be "Yes/'
There was no hope of getting twelve men, or even three,
on that jury who were open-minded* The best that our
attorneys could get from the talesmen whom we thought
looked "human" was an expression of belief that their preju-
dices "might be overcome by proof and argument." It was
chilling to remember that in the Chicago Haymarket case
most of the jurors who sent four men to the gallows had
voiced the same belief. Hillquit requested Judge Hand to
excuse talesmen who had that attitude, but the judge said:
"You cannot get a jury anywhere in the United States not
prejudiced against pacifism."
My love for music suffered during that triaL While the
jury-picking was going on, and through the whole eight days
that our fate was in abeyance, the bands in the park below,
where Liberty Bonds were being sold, played national airs.
To me, who considered myself quite as patriotic in a real
sense as those who had to prove it by emotional excess, this
music sounded sad, not to say ominous, like the relentless
beat of a funeral march.
Once when brass horns blared out "The Star Spangled
Banner" right under the court- room windows some one in
the room stood up, then others, till everybody present was
standing at attention. It was like some solemn religious cere-
mony with God looking on from behind a cloud. We de-
fendants stood up with the others, knowing that if we didn't
we would be mobbed* This patriotic gesture seemed to be-
wilder Judge Hand* He arose slowly as if saying to himself:
"What started all this?" For there was no custom in court-
room behavior of standing up for anything or anybody ex-
cept the judge himself*
We were more fortunate than the Haymarket men, how-
ever, in having a conscientious judge on the bench* Judge
Hand had not been stampeded by the war mania, and he con-
sistently tried to be fair in his rulings and in his instructions
to the jury.
ART YOUNG: HIS LIFE AND TIMES 335
I was amazed anew at the vastness of evil intent which a
prosecutor could find in the utterances of defendants repre-
senting an unpopular cause. Earl Barnes took great pains to
point out to the jury that we were traitors to the principles
which guided the Founding Fathers of this nation, that we
had entered into a deliberate conspiracy to undermine the
pillars of the republic, that we had set out to defeat the
purposes of the army and navy which were protecting our
country against the mad aims of the Kaiser. He read from
the exhibits in awe-inspiring tones, and held up the offend-
ing cartoons with a gesture of horror as if he were displaying
the pistol with which Booth shot Abraham Lincoln.
Hillquit, in his opening address, contended that "true
patriotism, the concern for one's country and its people, is at
least as consistent with a desire to protect them from mass
slaughter as with honest war enthusiasm/' and he concluded:
"These then were our honest views. Were we wrong?
Were we right about it? Gentlemen, you are not called upon
to pass on this question. History will be our jury. No human
being today can assume to render final judgment on the great
problems which the world catastrophe has put before us. You
are called upon to pass on only one thing: Are these men
criminals? Did they conspire to injure their country? Did they
conspire with the Imperial German Government in this war?"
At the end of the state's case Hillquit asked the court to
quash the indictment against Josephine Bell, arguing that no
part of her poem was illegal. Some idea of its character may
be gained from this portion:
Emma Goldman and Alexander Berkman
Are in prison tonight
But they have made themselves elemental forces
Like the water that climbs down the rocks;
Like the wind in the leaves;
Like the gentle night that holds us;
They are working on our destinies;
They are forging the loves of the nations.
Judge Hand read the poem thoughtfully, and handing it
back to Hillquit said: "Do you call that a poem?" Hillquit
answered: "Your Honor, it is so called in the indictment/*
Whereupon the judge said: "Indictment dismissed/'
336 ART YOUNG: HIS LIFE AND TIMES
Each of the remaining four defendants was put on the
witness stand. Max Eastman and Floyd Dell discussed at
length, in response to our attorney's questions, the funda-
mental rights of the press and of American citizens as in-
dividuals to express themselves freely on issues which con-
cerned their own welfare or that of their countrymen. Merrill
Rogers explained the business end of the Masses, which largely
consisted in finding money each month to meet the deficit.
All three of course denied that there had ever been any
conspiracy by those who devised or edited the contents of the
magazine, and Eastman and Dell tried to make clear that it
had never been possible to get all the "co-operating" editors
and contributors together at any one time. (Actually more of
us had attended the studio meetings after the indictment than
ever before; postcards would arrive from the Masses office
saying: "Come over to B's studio Thursday night — con-
spiracy/')
I was called upon to identify my own cartoons and to
explain them. In drawing "Having Their Fling/' I stated, I
tried to show a mad orgy of men representing our country's
principal institutions: press, pulpit, politics, and business. I
tried to picture them as war- crazy.
"But/' said the prosecutor, as if he thought I was holding
something back, "when you put that orchestra playing on
war-implements in the background of your cartoon and the
Devil leading the orchestra, what did you mean by that?"
Nobody but a war-time prosecutor would have asked
such a question, but it had to be answered, and I said: "Well,
since General Sherman described war as Hell, it seemed to me
appropriate that the Devil should lead the band/'
Another of my cartoons which had excited the prosecu-
tor's patriotic ire was captioned Iceland Declares War on
Africa, and a third depicted Congress as a humble individual
asking a war board of financiers: "Where do I come in?"
and the board answering: "Run along. We got through with
you when you declared war for us/'
In cross-examining me, Barnes insisted on knowing what
my motives were in drawing these cartoons. "For the public
good/* I said. On re-direct examination our attorneys sought
to bring out just what public good I had intended. I wasn't
prepared for that question — my thoughts had not gone that
ART YOUNG: HIS LIFE AND TIMES 337
far. There was a long silence, with reporters' pencils poised
waiting, and the jurors leaning forward to catch my answer.
I felt warm and uncomfortable.
"I intended — why — the good of the public/' I stam-
mered.
But evidently that wasn't sufficient. Our attorneys re-
phrased the question, only to find me still at sea. Then Judge
Hand came to my aid. He gave some abstract definitions of
public good — which were Greek to me — and asked if I had
intended some such public good as he had mentioned.
"That's it exactly/' I said, and the matter was dropped.
I had reached a stage of weariness with the whole trial where
I was in a mood to say, "Go ahead and hang me if you must,
but stop pushing."
That weariness culminated one day in my falling asleep
in court. Hillquit shook me, with a warning whisper: "Wake
up, Art, you'll be arrested for contempt!" Even if that had
been my bad luck and twenty years in prison my future, I
don't think I could have stayed awake throughout that hot,
listless afternoon while trivial technicalities were being
messed over. When I was fully awake, I made a sketch of
myself as I must have looked during that peaceful nap.
George Creel, director of American publicity forces for
the war, was one of several individuals who testified that the
accused were of good character. Considering the vilification
turned against anyone on trial for anti-war activities, such
testimony was thankfully received, especially coming from
the chief bugle-blower for war propaganda and the new
militarism. Creel had shown some radical tendencies in other
years, and had written an article for the Masses called "Rocke-
feller Law/' exposing the action of the Rockefeller interests
in the Colorado mines.
Various notables attended the trial, sitting inside the
rail as guests of our attorneys or because they were known
to the court. I remember seeing Dean George W. Kirchwey,
Edna St. Vincent Millay, Richard LeGallienne, Amos Pin-
chot, Edna Kenton, Darwin Meserole, and Savel Zimand.
While many in the audience were no doubt strongly against
us, I often recognized friends and acquaintances — lawyers,
teachers, artists, poets, and Socialists, also I.W.W. members
who wisely wore no identifying buttons just then.
338 ART YOUNG: HIS LIFE AND TIMES
Our actions were not those of conspirators, but of
"straightforward men/* Hillquit and Malone argued. When
Max Eastman sent a telegraphic reply to a youngster in New
Orleans who was troubled as to what attitude he should take
toward the question of fighting in the war, Max wired him
what he would do if he were in the inquirer's place; "con-
spirators were not given to using open language in telegrams/*
our counsel declared.
"There's Art Young/' said Malone in developing his
defense* "Everybody likes Art Young. Look at him* There
he sits — like a big friendly Newfoundland dog. How could
anyone conceive of him playing the role of a conspirator?"
And for the moment I felt sorry for myself — it was a
shame, that's what it was, and I hoped that the jury would
be duly impressed.
In view of the somber atmosphere of the court when
Prosecutor Barnes excoriated us anew in his closing address,
we expected a quick verdict and were prepared for an un-
favorable one. The best I looked for was several years in
prison. Not a pleasant outlook, but I consoled myself with
the thought that maybe I would be allowed to draw pictures
there. We had told the truth out of turn, and now what?
Kate Richards O'Hare had been sentenced to five years for
an anti-war speech, and Rose Pastor Stokes had lately been
convicted, also for a speech, made in South Dakota, in which
she said that "The government cannot serve both the
profiteers and the employees of profiteers/'
But many hours went by with no verdict, a night, and
another day, and still another night. And as the time length-
ened we grew more and more hopeful Somebody was hold-
ing out against the war madness. After 48 hours the jurors
came in, weary, some of them with bloodshot eyes, and
reported that they could not agree.
Ten of the twelve were for conviction; the other two
insisted that there was no evidence that we had taken part in
any conspiracy. One of the two, H. C. Fredericks, told the
others that he would hold out for us "till Hell freezes over/'
In 1923 I happened to meet Mr. Fredericks, and he told me
that, after many years of regular service on juries, he was
never again called to serve. Newspaper accounts of our trial
related that some of the jurors had complained to federal
ART YOUNG: HIS LIFE AND TIMES 339
officials that two "recalcitrant jurors who displayed Socialist
and pacifist tendencies" had blocked their efforts to send us
to prison. A "federal inquiry" was forecast by the reporters.
While our trial was in progress I had received word from
Clarina Michelson, recording secretary of the Socialist party
branch in my district, that I had been nominated for the
State Senate. To which I had responded, saying: "I am happy
to accept, but don't know whether I'll be a resident of New
York or Atlanta when election day rolls around/'
Thanks to those two jurors who had persisted in doing
their own thinking, I was permitted to take part in the
campaign that fall as a free man. I made a good many
speeches, speaking wherever I was asked to go, but learned
afterward that I had never spoken in my own district once.
Presumably the arrangements committee didn't think that
necessary, and I was told that my comrades in the 13th S.D.
gave me "the regular party vote/' That, however, was not
enough to send me to Albany.
Chapter 32
STIFLING THE VOICES AGAINST WAR
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. At the Dutch Treat Club, of which I was one of the
founders, the atmosphere exuded by some of the members
was so cold whenever I hove in sight that I handed in my
resignation. Jack Reed also quit; he had been popular and
active there, and once he wrote the libretto for a comic opera
for one of the club's annual frolics.
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. Each week he used my drawings, with
lettering such as is frequently necessary in a cartoon in
Hebrew. I liked this because it gave the pictures a decorative
effect that my plain English lettering lacked. And unfailingly
each week Marinoff sent me a check, and thus I was able to
eat and pay rent.
Early that summer Jack Reed came back from Russia,
bursting with elation over the social and economic wonders
which were being worked out by the Workers' and Peasants'
Government. He brought with him a mass of notes which
subsequently grew into his book, Ten Days That Shook
the World. In the Liberator for June he said: "Two months
ago, at No. 6 Dvortsovya Ploshod, I saw the new world
340
ART YOUNG: HIS LIFE AND TIMES 341
born/' As soon as Jack returned, he notified the District
Attorney's office that he would be ready for trial with the
other Masses defendants whenever called.
Soon after this, he and I went to Chicago to cover the
trial of the LW.W. leaders before Judge Kenesaw Mountain
Landis. They, too, stood accused of interfering with enlist-
ment. Bill Hay wood and 100 other "Wobblies" * were the
defendants — speakers, organizers, editors, corralled by a drag-
net covering many states. One of the offenses of this organ-
ization, the Industrial Workers of the World, was that it had
persisted in striking for decent wages and better working
conditions even in war-time — while the American Federation
of Labor, headed by Samuel Gompers, had in effect called a
truce in its conflicts with employers and had tamely gone
with the wind of war propaganda.
Out in the Pacific Northwest the war profiteers had
fought fiercely against an LW.W. strike in the lumber woods
for an eight-hour day, shower-baths, and clean bedding in-
stead of unwashed and lousy blankets. The timber-cutters
were working eleven or twelve hours a day. Their strike
interfered with spruce production. Spruce was needed for
aeroplanes, and the West Coast Lumbermen's Association was
grieved because the strike cut into profits; spruce was now
bringing $90 to $120 a thousand feet in contrast to a price
of only $30 a thousand a short time before.
Hot days in this Chicago court; bands below playing
national anthems, but nobody rising to their feet here as they
had in New York; many of those in attendance with their
coats off, and the judge even shedding his necktie. Frank
Nebeker, chief prosecutor; he had been counsel for big cop-
per corporations. The defense was being handled by George
F. Vanderveer, fearless labor attorney from Seattle; Fred H.
Moore of Los Angeles, who had defended Emma Goldman
in the free speech fight in San Diego; William F. Cleary, who
had been deported into the desert with the striking Bisbee
copper miners; Caroline Lowe of Kansas; and Otto Christen-
sen of Chicago.
Jack Reed's description of Judge Landis lingers in mem-
ory: "Small on the huge bench sits a wasted man with untidy
* 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.
342 ART YOUNG: HIS LIFE AND TIMES
white hair, an emaciated face in which two burning eyes are
set like jewels, parchment skin split by a crack for a mouth;
the face of Andrew Jackson three years dead. . * . Upon
this man has devolved the historic role of trying the Social
Revolution. He is doing it like a gentleman. Not that he
admits the existence of a Social Revolution. The other day
he ruled out of evidence the report of the Committee on
Industrial Relations, which the defense was trying to intro-
duce in order to show the background of the I.W.W/'
Every one of those defendants could have been a subject
for some vivid drama of struggle; they were veterans of
industrial battles in half a hundred cities — their names and
their testimony evoked pictures of war with exploiting em-
ployers in Lawrence, Paterson, Chicago, Spokane, Butte,
Seattle, Aberdeen, San Francisco, San Pedro, Everett. From
the witness stand one heard echoes of the Ettor-Giovannitti
trial in Salem; the lynching of Frank Little in Butte; the
Spokane free speech fight; the massacre of I.W.W. members
by armed business men and deputy sheriffs on the docks in
Everett, Washington; the Mooney-Billings case in San Fran-
cisco.
Plenty of publicity — of the wrong kind — was being
given to the case by the Chicago newspapers. Whatever the
testimony, almost always the inference was that these de-
fendants were guilty of treason. But the reality of the trial
was being shown to New York Call readers in daily wire
dispatches by David Karsner.
Through many days the case against the I.W.W. was
built up, mostly with accusations that these men had no
respect for property. There was testimony alleging sabotage,
copper-nails driven into fruit trees, emery dust thrown into
the cogs of machinery, haystacks set on fire — and the prose-
cution had asked the talesmen at the start: "You believe, do
you not, that all children should be taught respect for other
people's property ?" Various employers testified, and Secret
Service men, private detectives, sheriffs and deputies, gun-
men, stool-pigeons.
"The wage system/' said Mr. Clyne, one of the prose-
cutors, once, "is established by law, and all opposition to it is
opposition to law/' And again Nebeker asserted: "A man
has no right to revolution under the law/' Whereupon Judge
ART YOUNG: HIS LIFE AND TIMES 343
Landis, who occasionally surprised both sides by his blunt-
ness, commented: "Well, that depends on how many men he
can get to go in with him — in other words, whether he can
put it over/'
Jack Reed saw the defendants thus: "Inside the rail of
the courtroom, crowded together, many in their shirt-sleeves,
some reading papers, one or two stretched out asleep, some
sitting, some standing up; the faces of workers and fighters,
for the most part, also the faces of orators, of poets, the sensi-
tive and passionate faces of foreigners — but all strong faces,
all faces of men inspired somehow; many scarred, few bit-
ter/'
Bill Hay wood, head of the I.W.W., was on the witness
stand four days; and no juror ever dozed in that time; for
always the story he told, in answer to questions by Vander-
veer, was moving and vital. Through those questions Big
Bill, with his large one-eyed head, bulky body, and small
hands which seldom gestured, sat there and traced his own
life struggle — as a boy in the mines, as an organizer for the
Western Federation of Miners in territory where that meant
risking death from gun-men's bullets, as a defendant in the
famous trial in Boise, when he was one of three accused of
conspiracy to kill, and of killing, ex-Governor Steunenberg
of Idaho with dynamite; of his helping to organize the
Socialist Party, and later the Industrial Workers of the
World ; and of his part in many of the LW. W. strikes and
free speech conflicts across the land.
John T. Doran, known as "Red" because of his autumnal
hued hair, and adorned with a green eye-shade, stood up in
court with a chart before him and combined six soap-box
speeches into one which lasted five hours. That speech was a
liberal education in the details of the class struggle, what the
workers were up against, how they were invariably robbed
at the point of production. Every juror stayed wide awake
during his testimony also. When Red Dorah finished, he said:
"It is customary with LW.W. speakers to take up a collec-
tion; but under these circumstances, we will dispense with it
today/'
Ralph Chaplin, bronzed young descendant of New Eng-
land pioneers of 1638, veteran of the West Virginia coal
strike of 1913, when machine-guns mowed down strikers and
344 ART YOUNG: HIS LIFE AND TIMES
their families, and editor of the LW.W. weekly Solidarity
in Chicago, faced the jury and took full responsibility for an
editorial unequivocally opposing the entrance of the United
BILL HAYWOOD.
States into the war. He could have shifted or divided that
responsibility, but he chose the harder way.
Among the 101 defendants I was much interested in
Meyer Friedkin, a New York boy of wealthy Jewish parents.
The color of health was in his cheeks and he had bummed
the rails and taken his chances with the migratory workers in
ART YOUNG: HIS LIFE AND TIMES 345
many of the hot spots across the country. And there was
Herbert Mahler, organizer of the defense committee which
had successfully acquitted 74 I.W.W. members of murder
charges following the wanton killing of five Wobblies by a
business man's mob during a free speech fight in Everett,
Washington. No one was tried for those five deaths, but the
74 workers were held for the slaying of two sheriff's deputies.
The defense showed conclusively that the deputies were
killed by the cross fire of their own crowd.
Stories that were like moving panoramas of the class
struggle, each seen from a different angle, were related from
the stand by a long line of defendants including Jim Rowan,
who had been forced to run the gauntlet of a vigilante line-
up and beaten into insensibility near Everett shortly before
the massacre there; Vincent St. John, another of the I.W.W.
founders, former head of the organization, and once in the
thick of the troubles centering about the Western Federation
of Miners; Romola Bobba, editor of the I.W.W. Italian
paper, II Proletariat, who told of conditions among textile
workers; Jim Thompson, one of the best of the I.W.W.
speakers; Bill Moran, Australian sailor who had recruited
new members for the "One Big Union** on all the seas; and
J. A. MacDonald, organizer of migratory workers in the
harvest fields.
Defense witnesses testified that the I.W.W. had long
since withdrawn the pamphlets it once circulated advocating
sabotage. It was charged that members had destroyed fruit
trees in California, but there was testimony that the organ-
ization had widely distributed stickers bearing the words:
"Don't drive copper nails into fruit trees. It harms them."
It was Jim Rowan who was asked a pointed question by
Judge Landis. The judge stretched his thin body down from
his throne and squinted into Jim's black eyes.
"Mr. Rowan, what is sabotage?"
"Well," said Rowan, 'Td say it's givin' bum work for
bum pay/'
That jury deliberated only fifty-five minutes, although
the evidence against the 101 defendants varied greatly. It
found them all guilty, on five counts. But Judge Landis had
his own ideas about their relative guilt. He sentenced Hay-
wood, St. John, Chaplin, and some seven others to serve
346 ART YOUNG: HIS LIFE AND TIMES
twenty years in Leavenworth; another group got ten years
each; a third group drew five years; and a fourth was given
terms ranging from one to four years. Landis dealt out these
varying sentences on the ground, implied if not specified, that
the lesser lights among the defendants had been misled.
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 nerv-
ously 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.
My father was perceptibly older than when I had seen
him last. And he had changed in other ways. He voiced no
specific comment upon my opposition to the United States
entering the European war, nor upon my being tried for
alleged sedition. But I knew without his mentioning it that
he could not comprehend my reasoning. He uttered one
sentence which recalled in contrast his liking for independent
thinking when I was a boy, and when he would say: "You've
got to think things out for yourself/'
I had got to talking about some of the atrocities by Amer-
ican super-patriots against unoffending Germans — houses
painted yellow, beatings, tarring-and-feathering, and even
murder. From my experiences in Washington I cited instances
of fake news stories, widely circulated prior to April, 1917,
to arouse bitterness against a whole nation and drive this
country into the butchery overseas. And I said: "I am proud
of the German blood in my mother's veins."
Quietly my father answered: "If I were a young man I'd
go to this war/'
I said nothing more on that subject, nor did he. I could
not debate it with him. Our emotions, I felt sure, were too
close to the surface.
His arm lingered about my shoulders as he wished me
good luck when I left. He was almost eighty then, still
vigorous, and attending to business in the store daily. "But,"
he said, "one of these days the wheels will stop running/*
ART YOUNG: HIS LIFE AND TIMES 347
He died that fall. My mother, then seventy-seven, survived
him by four years*
July fourth brought a welcome holiday amid those hot
sessions in Judge Landis's courtroom, and Jack Reed and I
celebrated by going down to see Eugene Debs in Terre Haute,
Indiana* Out on bail on a sedition charge, he was resting at
home while awaiting triaL His wife greeted us at the door,
and said he was in bed; he had "not been well — not for a
whole year/* But he immediately got up, and the old fire that
I knew came back into the eyes in that worn face as he shook
hands with both of us at once.
Jack reported this event in an article for which I made
pictures in the Liberator of September, 1918. A few excerpts
from what Reed wrote are pertinent here.
"The sound of the parade came drifting down. Looking
through the darkened windows we watched the people. As
they passed the house they motioned or pointed toward it,
with expression compounded half of eager malice, and half of
a sort of fear. 'That's where Gene Debs lives/ you could see
them saying, as one would say, 'The House of the Traitor/
" 'Come on/ said Gene, suddenly. 'Let's go out and sit
on the front porch and give 'em a good show, if they want to
see me/
"So we went out on the porch and took off our coats.
And those who passed only looked furtively our way, and
whispered, and when they caught Gene's eye, bowed bver-
cordially. . . ,
"Before the war Gene added luster to the name of the
town, as well as having an immense personal popularity. In
the beginning, practically the whole population, all through
that section, was against going to war. . . . But since the
war the usual phenomenon has happened in Terre Haute.
The whole place has been mobilized physically and spirit-
ually. Except Gene Debs. The simpler people couldn't un-
derstand it. The bankers, lawyers, and merchants felt for him
a terrible rancour. Even the ministers of the gospel, who had
often implored him to address their conventions, now held
meetings denouncing 'the enemy in our midst/ "
But Debs was holding solidly to his principles. Jack asked
him if he wasn't afraid of lynching. No, that hadn't come
348 ART YOUNG: HIS LIFE AND TIMES
into his mind* "I guess I'm psychically protected, anyway/'
he said. "I know that so long as I keep my eye on them, they
won't dare to do anything. As a rule they* re cowardly curs
anyway/'
THE SOWER. Cartoon made for the Socialist Party.
I drew Gene's profile as he sat there in the sun near a
porch-box of petunias, and made a sketch of his lean, expres-
sive hands as they punctuated his contempt for the war-
makers and his hope for the future: "Socialism's on the way.
A.RT YOUNG: HIS LIFE AND TIMES 349
They can't stop it, no matter what they do. The more breaks
the other side makes, the better for us. . . /*
Debs was tried in Cleveland a few weeks later, with
Seymour Stedman of Chicago as his attorney, but he con-
ducted his own defense. He made no attack upon the prosecu-
tion's case, so far as the evidence was concerned, but he went
ahead to tell the jury about the struggle of men for freedom.
"Chattel slavery has disappeared," he said. "But we are
not yet free. We are engaged in another mighty agitation
today. It is as wide as the world. It is the rise of the toiling
and producing masses, who are gradually becoming conscious
of their interest, their powers, as a class, who are organizing
industrially and economically, who are slowly but surely
developing the economic and political power that is to set
them free. They are still in the minority, but they have
learned how to wait and to bide their time. It is because I
happen to be in this minority that I stand in your presence
today, charged with crime/'
Not one word of his speech in Canton did he take back or
try to soften. Instead he re-asserted the right of any minority,
or any individual, to speak out against war or any other act
of a nation which that minority or individual believed wrong.
The indictment charged Debs with utterances calculated
to incite mutiny in the army, stirring up disloyalty to the
government, obstructing the enlistment of soldiers, encourag-
ing resistance to the United States of America, and promoting
the cause of the enemy. Then sixty-three years old, Debs was
found guilty and sent to Atlanta penitentiary to serve ten
years.*
In August I met Jack Reed on the street in New York,
and he said: "I've just been up to Croton having a long talk
with Max. I'm resigning from the Liberator/'
He told me why, and in the September issue Jack's letter
explaining this action was published. "The reason/' he wrote,
"is that I cannot in these times bring myself to share editorial
responsibility for a magazine which exists upon the sufferance
of Mr. Burleson/' Then he stated that he didn't want to cease
as a contributor, and ended by saying: "And in the happy
* There he contracted the heart illness which shortened his life. President
Harding commuted his sentence in 1921, but five years later he died.
*50 ART YOUNG: HIS LIFE AND TIMES
lay when we can again call a spade a spade without tying
bunting on it, you will find me as you have in the past, yours
for the profound social change/'
Max Eastman's reply also appeared in that issue:
4 'I haven* t a word of protest — only a deep feeling of
regret.
"In your absence we all weighed the matter and decided
it was our duty to the social revolution to keep this instru-
ment we have created alive toward a time of great usefulness.
You will help us with your writing and reporting, and that
is all we ask.
'Personally I envy you the power to cast loose when not
only a good deal of the dramatic beauty, but also the glamour
of abstract moral principle, is gone out of the venture, and it
remains for us merely the most effective and therefore the
right thing to do/'
Recalling these letters, in the Modern Monthly for Octo-
ber, 1936, Max makes Reed's attitude clear:
"Jack thought that my editorials, under this policy of
getting by with [Postmaster-General] Burleson — I had
actually gone to see him in Washington, in company with
E. W. Scripps, and deployed 4my most bourgeois charms
against him — were getting a little yellow. (I think so too as -
I read them now.) But Jack also recognized the value of a
legal organ/ and testified to it by promising to contribute
in the future/'
And of course the Liberator, as a legal organ, had already
shown its value, particularly in enabling us to publish a
detailed report of our trial a few months earlier, and showing
what the sponsors of a magazine attempting to tell the truth
were up against in war-time.
Now we of the Masses were ordered to trial again. Reed,
who had been in Russia when we others faced the first jury,
was eager for whatever might come. All this would help
greatly to educate the public, he averreti; soon there would
be more good people in prison than outside. Glintenkamp
had not reappeared, but we heard new and unverifiable
rumors of his whereabouts — he was painting in Tahiti;
fomenting a revolution in Chile; doing wood-cuts in Cuba;
and running a duck farm near Albia, Iowa.
ART YOUNG: HIS LIFE AND TIMES 351
The second trial came in September, with Judge Martin
Manton presiding. Again Barnes was prosecutor, but this
time we were defended by Seymour Stedman of Chicago,
Charles Recht, and Walter Nelles. Before a jury chosen from
another large list of middle-class talesmen, the same evidence
was set forth, and with much the same kind of argument on
both sides.
Prosecutor Barnes, however, added some colorful touches.
Citing the name of a lawyer who had been in the army and
was killed in battle, he said, pointing reprovingly at each
defendant in turn: "He not only died for his country, but he
died for Max Eastman, he died for Floyd Dell, he died for
John Reed, he died for Merrill Rogers/' I was waiting for
him to mention me, but he didn't, and I leaned over and
asked Reed: "Who was this hero who didn't die for me?"
Just then a recess was called, and on the way out Reed said:
"Cheer up, Art, Jesus died for you/'
While Barnes was cross-examining me, he said at one
point:
"Now, Mr. Young, you have told us a good deal about
your beliefs in revolution and that you believe that the Amer-
ican Revolution was justified, but, Mr. Yoang, do you be-
lieve in the theory of the class struggle?"
And I answered something like this:
"If you've got the measles, Mr. Barnes, it doesn't neces-
sarily mean that you believe in them."
Again the jury disagreed, and one juror shed some light
on the character of the deliberations when he said to us: "It
was a good thing for you boys that you were all American
born; otherwise it might have gone pretty hard with you/'
Chapter 33
SOME OPTIMISTS LAUNCH ANOTHER MAGAZINE
"-V "TOW is the time for us to start a magazine," said Ellis
f^U O. Jones early in 1919. Ellis had been an associate
editor of Life. The war was over, and the Post Office
Department more tolerant. Survivors of the late horror were
reaching out to recover their lost sanity, and authors long
silent were writing books with the truth in them.
We agreed that people ought to laugh again (or at least
try to laugh) , and we could help them to find reasons for
fresh hope. Other writers and cartoonists liked the idea. One
factor which stirred me toward this new move was my feel-
ing of dissatisfaction with the Liberator, which was featur-
ing my work but not paying for it.
I had considered it a privilege to draw for the Liberator.
But a few of us on the staff who had always been ready to
contribute for nothing began to feel that it wasn't quite right
that engravers, printers, paper dealers, and desk- editors should
have their pay or the magazine would not go on, while those
who did the creative work had to forego compensation. That
was and still is a condition accepted by those who contribute
to radical magazines which are not self-sustaining. Yet one's
individual economic responsibilities sometimes call for a more
fruitful arrangement*
Boardman Robinson and I attended an editorial meeting
one evening, the purpose of which was to figure out some
way to pay us something for our cartoons. I remember saying
at the time that I wanted to know if I was an asset to the
Liberator or just an ass. I made a plea for at least enough
to pay for our drawing paper and ink, as a gesture in the
right direction. It was agreed that thereafter more attention
would be given to paying a fixed rate to cartoonists — "if
possible*'. Robinson and I left the meeting with those com-
forting words "if possible*' to repeat to ourselves.
I was keen about Ellis Jones's suggestion that a new
352
ART YOUNG: HIS LIFE AND TIMES 353
magazine be launched. We promptly arranged to hold a con-
ference on the question in Allaire's restaurant During the
war that old-time hang-out of the literati had become sad
and pretty much abandoned because it was German, and even
after it had been lavishly decorated with American flags, 100
per cent Americans who had once patronized it still stayed
away,
It was one of those "be sure to come** conferences, and
we gathered at a spacious table where members of the same
CHARLES W. ERVIN, managing editor
of the New York Daily Call.
group had met often to discuss the tragic aspects of a war
which we all felt had been an inexcusable wrong. Those
present included Charles W. Ervin, managing editor of the
Call; Ryan Walker, its prolific cartoonist; Charles W. Wood,
then on the World, and several others.
We thought it time to satirize the whole capitalistic
works. Not with subtle analysis of conditions in essays and
the like, but with straightforward expose in cartoons and
comment, and with comedy rampant. Certainly now the
354 ART YOUNG: HIS LIFE AND TIMES
people would respond to such truth. But we were conscious
of the fact that many radicals and liberals were weary — and
worn out with vain hope. After the Versailles treaty many
of them had thrown up their hands in despair. Wilson's Four-
teen Points, a covenant which promised the beginning of a
new and honest deal for the sorrowing world, had been
choked to death, to the satisfaction of Big Business. But in
spite of this atmosphere of disillusion, we thought the people
would see the truth that would eventually make them free.
Was there a chance for a magazine that would try to
awaken the Socialist spirit anew, give new hope, and yet
keep aloof from the bias of politics? Anyway we would find
out. This first meeting was chiefly for the purpose of choos-
ing a name for it. Never mind about the money to keep it
going — we would decide on a name, and start from there.
The business meetings would come later, and they did, often.
I had first met Ellis Jones when we were among the
founding fathers of the Dutch Treat Club. For a time, too,
he had been on the staff of the Masses. He was one of the
first to enlist for the voyage on Ford's Peace Ship, and Life
(which he had helped to edit and contributed to for years)
had publicly denounced him for this and proclaimed with
pride that he was no longer connected with the magazine.
The conferees discussed the well-known names of existing
comic papers — American, English, German, French. Then I
said, "Why not call it by some familiar name — some name
that we hear every day — ?"
Ellis chimed in with: "Like 'Good morning, have you
used Pear's Soap?' " which was an advertisment long familiar
to the public.
"That's it," I said, "Let's make it Good Morning/'
There were no dissenters, and I began to sketch out a top
for the editorial page (technically known as a mast-head) —
with a jovial figure personifying the rising sun as our emblem.
All those present promised to contribute writings or pic-
tures, and we foresaw no difficulty in getting others to help
in the same way. We would send out a call for material.
That left only the problem of finding money with which to
pay overhead. From his experience in publishing, Charlie
Ervin figured we would need $10,000 to make a go of the
enterprise*
ART YOUNG: HIS LIFE AND TIMES 355
"Certainly there must be money available to finance this
kind of a magazine/' said one conferee or another. . . .
"Satire and ridicule can be more effective weapons than sol-
emn statistics and shrill denunciation. * * . Well ask the
labor unions to take bulk subscriptions. And well get un-
employed men to sell the magazine on the streets/'
Ellis Jones and I came away with the understanding that
he and I would canvass certain likely prospects for money,
with the other conferees helping "in any way we can/' I had
high hopes that day, with the keen interest the group had
shown at the meeting at Allaire's. At this time I was 53 years
old, and a bit battered and sad to look at in my mirror. But
I felt that the magazine venture would give me a new hold
on life. I needed that as much as the public did — perhaps
more.
First I would get in touch with a well-to-do friend who
had been enthusiastic over my Washington drawings and
articles in the Metropolitan. This ^as Morris Rippenbein, a
tobacco manufacturer in Perth Amboy, New Jersey. He had
come to this country as a young man from Russia, and as he
put it, had "worked like a horse" to get on, and though he
had become rich he was unspoiled. Now past middle age,
Rip was as radical, using the word in its derivative sense, as
any of the flaming youngsters about me, but quiet about it.
He had read widely in philosophy, economics, and history;
loved pinochle and the theatre; and had a sober sense of the
ridiculous.
Long before our planning conference, Rip had hinted to
me, one evening when we dined together in the Lafayette,
that he might help finance a comic magazine edited by me
if I would start one.
So we met again and I put the question up to him. He
got out a pencil and paper and begaa figuring. Yes, he would
help, with money and otherwise, but he could not give any
great sum of money, he explained; he had to be cautious
with his income because he had a large family to support,
including aunts, sisters, brothers, nieces, nephews, and cousins
here and abroad. He was ready to be one of a group of indi-
viduals who would give $75 a month each toward expenses
— provided we could raise the essential $10,000 preliminary
fund. To have a chance of survival, the project must start
356 ART YOUNG: HIS LIFE AND TIMES
with enough cash in hand to carry us safely at least a year
without worry.
That was sound sense, of course, and I set out with confi-
dence to round up that money. Systematically I made ap-
pointments by telephone and went to see the best of the
prospects on the list — and sometimes Rip went with me and
explained better than I the importance of the proposed maga-
zine. But the going was tough. If at that time there was any
lack of sympathy in my heart for the man who finds it nec-
essary to beg, I've had a full complement of it ever since.
No harder work than that.
Some days I would do pretty well but other days were
disheartening. I could always get an entree, but when a tired
radical with a comfortable income would say, "Good luck,
Art, here's a check for fifty dollars*', I would wonder how
long it would take the Good Morning sun to rise if that was
all the encouragement it was going to get. . . . Then I'd
have a run of better days. And my spirits would lift again.
Eugen Jan Boissevain wrote a check for $1,000 and asked
if that was enough; this was compensation for all the weeks
of weariness.
Max Eastman, however, was plainly vexed at the pros-
pect of the new publication starting. He felt that our collec-
tions were cutting into the Liberator's sources of money, for
naturally we would appeal to much the same kind of people
for support. There was of course no denying that one of the
principal duties of the Liberator's editor was to raise funds
to meet the frequent operating deficit.
After three months I had gathered in about $4,500 in
cash. Meanwhile Ellis Jones, who was to be editor of Goorf
Morning, was in an office that we had rented in the People's
House, mainly occupied by the Rand School, at 7 East 15th
Street. He was impatient to go ahead — fund or no fund.
I knew from my investigations that $10,000 was little
enough to have in starting a weekly magazine such as we had
planned. But Ellis argued that the important thing was to
get out the first issue. After that — after people saw that the
magazine was a fact and not just a hope — money could be
raised more easily. He had been working on the dummy, and
was practically ready to go to press, if I would say the word.
Though reluctant, I acquiesced, much to the annoyance
ART YOUNG: HIS LIFE AND TIMES 357
and disappointment of Morris Rippenbein. "Foolish!" he
said* . . . "You're right/' I answered, "but let 'er go. I'm
not a tired radical, but I'm tired of begging for money/'
So Goorf Morning arose with this pronouncement on its
editorial page: "A weekly burst of humor, satire, and fun —
with now and then a fleeting beam of wisdom/' The first
issue of 10,000 copies was published May 8, 1919, and sold
out quickly. It looked like a success. Obviously peeved at the
premature start, Rip nevertheless paid in the promised $75
a month, and continued to do so during the three years that
the magazine lived* And now that Goocf Morning had peered
over the horizon, cheerful letters came in to commend the
new day from Hendrik Van Loon, William Marion Reedy,
Clarence Day Jr., Stephen Leacock, Horace Traubel, Oscar
Ameringer, and numerous others.
After five months, Ellis Jones, who had been writing the
editorials and a capital series called "Sinbad and the Old Man
of the Sea", which I illustrated, became critical of the busi-
ness management and resigned* There had been no business
management to speak of, ^ but his criticism was well taken.
Now it was my responsibility alone. I was editor, publisher,
and goat.
We were often hard put to raise money to pay for paper
(costly at that time) , printing, distribution, and office ex-
pense. As I remember, I received $50 a week for about four
months, and Ellis Jones received the same during his connec-
tion with the magazine. Our stenographer, who was also
receptionist, received $25 a week, although later we raised
that to $35.
For some time we got along without paying much atten-
tion to promotion or the business end of publishing. But
there was a tradition in radical circles that a business man-
ager who could get advertising and make a radical magazine
a going concern was some kind of a magician, a wand-waver
worth more than mere editors. As a consequence, prospective
business managers would call on me often, each one assuring
me that all that was needed to build Good Morning's circula-
tion to Saturday Evening Post proportions was his services.
Finally I acceded to the idea that a business manager might
be useful. But I made it plain that he would have to work
more for glory than for money. During its precarious life our,
358 ART YOUNG: HIS LIFE AND TIMES
magazine had three business managers — the last one, A, H.
Howland, generously donating his services most of the time,
as I, too, was doing. The receptionist-stenographer was
always paid first. Income from news-stand sales and 4,000
subscriptions kept us afloat and in good humor the first year.
But banquets and balls for the purpose of money-raising
and a lynx-eyed hunt for an angel willing to take a chance
on a promising magazine were vitally necessary — and we
staged social functions of picturesque character as often as we
thought our public would respond to them.
A GOOD MORNING POSTER, announcing a spring-time dance to aid
its treasury.
One of these, a Harvest Festival, is memorable for sev-
eral reasons, including the funds which it inadvertently failed
to produce. This was held in Yorkville Casino on Saturday,
November 6, 1920. Dinner and dance, with corn-stalks and
pumpkins for decorations. Charles W. Wood was chairman,
and a frolicsome note keyed the speeches. Helen Keller spoke,
saying:
"I came tonight, knowing there would be no blue devils
here. . . . You are all jolly good fellows. You have kept
alive, through the bitter winter of the world's discontent, the
spirit of spring and youth. Your gayety has blown my own
ART YOUNG: HIS LIFE AND TIMES 359
heart into a glow. . . . The world needs more of this daunt-
less spirit of laughter. . . . While we can meet together and
laugh, there is hope for the world. With laughter and hope
and the Revolution in our hearts, all the powers of earth
shall not prevail against us/'
I read my annual report on the status of Good" Morning:
"Cash on hand, $2.33, also 20 cents worth of slightly
damaged postage stamps; assets, about $49* As for liabilities,
we are liable to do almost anything. . . . Disbursements
have been considerable. Exact figures are hard to get at. Any
money that we received was so quickly snatched from us by
printers and paper dealers that we couldn't get time to record
the transaction. . . .
"One day last week two subscriptions came in the same
mail — one from a woman in Iowa, who said she was 'dis-
gusted', and one from a man in Milepost, Missouri, who said
he was 'temporarily in an insane asylum/ but that he was
'with us heart and soul/ . . . Goocf Morning was partisan
in the late campaign. It opposed Wilson and Bunk and advo-
cated Harding and Hell. Some of our stockholders think we
should have stayed out of politics, but our leading contribu-
tor, the Poor Fish, said he would resign if we didn't advocate
a change. . . /'
Charlie Wood was supposed to have followed my report
with an appeal for funds, but everybody was having such a
good time that this matter slipped his mind. I didn't notice
the omission either.
That night I met a tall young man named John Nicholas
Beffel, who had just returned from the Pacific Coast, where
he had reported for the New York Call and other labor
papers the trial of ten I.W.W. members for defending their
hall in Centralia, Washington, against an American Legion
mob. He had come back lecturing across the country on the
class-war in the West.
Tables and chairs were being cleared away for the dance
as Beffel told me about talking with Tom Mooney in San
Quentin penitentiary and with Carl Haessler, conscientious
objector from Wisconsin, in Alcatraz. Then one of Good
Morning's trusty henchmen hove in sight with a huge colored
papier-mache head of the Poor Fish, for which we had paid
$30. Instantly Beffel's husky shoulders suggested something,
360 ART YOUNG: HIS LIFE AND TIMES
and I, as president of the publishing corporation, elected him
to wear that fantastic costume. Helen Keller stood near, and
presently her sensitive hands were exploring the contour of
the Poor Fish's head, asking whether he was a whale or a
shark, and feeding him red apples.
Now the orchestra struck up, and the grand march began,
led by the Poor Fish and Polly Markowitz, bobbed Titian-
haired youngster, who was then with the Federated Press.
I was next in line, with my lovely partner of the evening,
Jessica Milne,
By the time we had swung into the dancing, Charlie
Wood remembered with chagrin that he had overlooked the
main purpose of the affair. In a valiant attempt to save the
occasion, he and others who knew what had happened, went
among the guests holding out their hats while trying to ex-
plain— but too late. The opportune time had passed. Appar-
ently the assembled merry-makers had put all thoughts of
money out of their minds. So the harvest that evening was
sparse, though as a festival the gathering was one of Good
Morning's best*
However, other dances and parties for fund-raising kept
us from bankruptcy* We had established a cartoon mat serv-
ice, which was subscribed to by many labor papers through-
out the country, but starting as an asset, it turned out to be
a liability. Our clients enthusiastically published the material
we supplied, but most of them were low on cash, and collec-
tions were difficult, often impossible.
Our mainstays among contributing writers were Charles
W. Wood and T. Swann Harding, while occasional pieces
in prose or verse came from Howard Brubaker, Samuel
DeWitt, Clement Wood, Phillips Russell, Mabel Dwight,
Miriam Allen DeFord, Art Shields, Samuel Roth, John
Nicholas Beffel, and Skepticuss.
Artists who drew for the magazine included Boardman
Robinson, Hendrik Van Loon, Robert Minor, Maurice
Becker, Reginald Marsh, Cornelia Barns, Peggy Bacon, Clara
Tice, Lou Rogers, Will Crawford, Edmund Duffy, William
Auerbach Levy, Alice Beach Winter, William Cropper,
Adolph Dehn, Frank Hanley, Norman Jacobson, Albert Lev-
ering, Frank Walts, John Barber, and F. F. Jerger.
Volunteers were plentiful in emergencies, especially when
ART YOUNG: HIS LIFE AND TIMES 361
we needed to mail out circulars* Martha Foley would often
assist in the editing, and once at least she wrote the editorial
page. Arthur Cole and Horace Reis, both of whom were then
on the Nation, would come to the office and help on make-up
nights.
Our friends among the writers and artists were glad to
contribute; all we had to do was ask them. I knew that
none of them expected pay— but once when we chanced to
have some extra cash in the bank I sent checks to about
20 contributors as a surprise; doubtless it also was a shock*
Good Morning
SMALL FAVORS THANKFULLY RECEIVED.
I remember letters I received thanking me — and saying they
never expected it.
When Woodrow Wilson spoke in Kansas City shortly
after his return from Versailles and told the real cause of the
war of 19 14-18, I made a cartoon about it for Good Morn-
ing, entitling it "Letting the Cat Out of the Bag." With
this we reproduced an all-revealing passage from his speech:
'Is there any man here, or any woman, . .- .is there
any child here, who does not know that the seed of war in
the modern world is industrial and commercial rivalry? The
real reason that the war we have just finished took place
was that Germany was afraid her commercial rivals were
going to get the better of her, and the reason why some
362 ART YOUNG: HIS LIFE AND TIMES
nations went into the war was that they thought Germany
would get the commercial advantage of them. . . . This
war, in its inception, was a commercial and industrial war*
It was not a political war/'
Max Eastman's annoyance at the launching of Goorf
Morning did not cause any break between us, and I continued
to contribute to the Liberator. Late in August, 1919, Max
and I went to Chicago to report for that magazine the
emergency convention of the Socialist party, which immedi-
ately split off into conventions at which two other radical
movements were set going — the Communist party and the
Communist Labor party.
Sitting at the press table in Machinists' Hall on South
Ashland Avenue on the opening day of the S.P. gathering,
we saw a stirring contest for power. Adolph Germer, na-
tional secretary, and member of the right wing, was in the
chair, and it was evident at the start that he faced an intense
fight from the militant left wing. The Socialist party's na-
tional executive committee had been expelling branches, locals,
and individual members all over the country for conduct
which it thought too brash and disgracefully radical.
John Reed was one of the group which was determined
to check the conservative trend of the old-line Socialists. It
was the idea of Reed, Louis B. Boudin, C E. Ruthenberg,
Alfred Wagenknecht, and other delegates that they could
capture the convention and make the party over in the image
of revolutionary Marxism as they understood it. It was wild
ferment from the beginning.
Just before Max and I arrived, Jack Reed had had a
fight with Julius Gerber of the right wing out on the porch
of the convention hall. Chuckling as he described it, he told
me that it began like a boxing-match and that, after a few
bouts, he held Julius oif at arm's length clutched by his neck.
"It was a great fight. Too bad you missed it," he said. I made
a picture of it from Jack's description, published in the
Liberator.
When it looked as if the militants actually would take
control of the convention, the police came and cleared the
hall of all persons present except those who were approved
by the right wing leaders. One of those ejected was a delegate
ART YOUNG: HIS LIFE AND TIMES 363
who had received the largest vote in Kansas, Having been
forced to leave, Reed and his allies, in a dramatic walkout,
marched to a room on the floor below and opened the first
convention of the Communist Labor party. That room not
being large enough, they moved over to the I.W.W. hall on
Throop street. A third group, made up of members of the
blavic Federations and of Michigan members of the S.P. who
had been expelled (all Michigan members had been ousted
in a bloc) hastened to Smolny Hall on Blue Island Avenue
and there held the convention of the Communist party. (Sub-
sequently, the Communist Labor party faded out and more
or less of its substance was absorbed by the Communist
party.)
Here Jack Reed was in the most playful and yet the most
serious mood in which I had ever seen him. When his group
opened their convention they sang the Internationale with a
gusto which resounded throughout the building and into the
street. Both right and left wings claimed credit for victory
that day.
I met Victor Berger, who was one of the Old Guard,
as we left the scene. "Say, Art/' he said, "you tell Jack he
better write another book."
"About what?" I asked.
"You tell Jack to write a book about the Three Days
That Shook the Left Wing."
Chapter 34
SUCCESSFUL PUBLISHING REQUIRES HARDNESS
ATER a couple of years there were times when volunteer
cooperation reached a low ebb, and I found myself
doing most of the cartoons, reading copy, writing
editorials, making up the magazine, and falling asleep at my
desk when I should have been on the move. Surely Good
Morning had given me a new interest in life, as I had hoped,
but now I knew that the burden of publication routine was
becoming too much for me.
Sometimes when my spirits sagged under the strain, I
would take long walks through quiet back streets late at
night to reflect on the future. At the age of fifty-four the
man or woman is lucky who does not have to fight off gloom.
When you reach the half-century line you begin to think
seriously about how to apportion your time, to get the best
out of yourself while the years are slipping away. As a young
man you don't care — all the time in the world is ahead,
I would berate myself for not having drawn on the stone
to get those variegated values of light and shade which make
lithography so fascinating. I wished I had not neglected
etching. I was sure I could handle the dry point stylus on the
copper plate. And why had I not done, or tried to do, car-
toons in oil-paint? Certainly all of the great paintings of
the Renaissance were basically cartoons, to propagandize the
cause of Christianity. I, too, had a cause — and why not try
to put it across in paintings? Several of my fellow artists on
the Masses had found time to indulge their talent in media
which made their work take on the look of permanent value
to connoisseurs and critics.
But here I was drawing cartoons on paper with whatever
implement was nearest at hand — pen or crayon — when not
writing and bothering about a publication with no time to
think of anything else. And how much influence did it actu-
ally have? Did it any more than touch the edge of its possi-
364
ART YOUNG: HIS LIFE AND TIMES 365
bilities? Anyway, I knew that starting with only $4,500
instead of waiting until we had raised the whole $10,000 —
or better still $50,000 — was a mistake*
These questions would come into my mind as I sat at my
desk laboring over copy* In "such an hour of retrospection I
was visited by three young men from the Art Students'
League* The spokesman, David Morrison, achieved consid-
erable note as a painter a few years later. They came as a
JAMES EADS HOW, millionaire hobo,
gave me marshmallows but no money.
committee from the League to ask if I would become an
instructor of one of the drawing classes there* When I shook
my head they told me of the simple and seemingly easy re-
quirements— just going to the school twice a week and criti-
cizing the work of the students — for which I would be
paid something like $60 weekly. But I said no, that I had a
magazine to look after which took all my time— and what
was more to the point, that I felt I was not equipped tempera-
mentally to be a successful instructor*
On another day when die problem of finances was press-
366 ART YOUNG: HIS LIFE AND TIMES
ing heavily on our minds, dear old James Eads How, the
"millionaire hobo", dropped in. While I was welcoming him,
A. H. Howland, the business manager, hastened to remove
a pile of newspapers from the extra chair, so that our caller
would be comfortable. Then I explained the situation, and
tactfully asked How if he could help out with a loan to keep
us from bankruptcy. He said something about his funds being
"all tied up", but he appeared interested and wrote down
the address of an acquaintance who might be able to aid us.
As How arose to leave he took from his coat pocket a box
of marshmallows and presented it to me. When he was gone
and I announced the net result of the conference, "an address
and a box of marshmallows", we of the office staff looked at
one another silently and solemnly shook our heads — then
laughed.
All sorts of queer literary contributions were offered to
us by amateur writers, who lived in the city as well as in the
sticks — long poems, dissertations on theosophy, cowboy
humor by drugstore cowboys, automobile jokes which were
familiar horse-and-buggy jokes adapted to the machine ^age,
he-and-she jokes, quips borrowed from vaudeville comedians,
bright sayings by children who must have fallen on their
heads in infancy, Pat-and-Mike jokes, and jokes about fu-
nerals and hangings. Most of the unsolicited manuscripts we
received came from persons who obviously were ignorant
of the underlying trend of our magazine.
Once an anxious faced middle-aged woman walked in
and asked me to read a poem comprising several typed sheets
written by her brother. It was filled with saccharine praise for
Goorf Morning. When I handed it back, gently breaking the
news that we couldn't pay for such contributions, she said:
"I'm terribly disappointed! My brother had depended on my
selling this to you — he's got to have his teeth fixed/'
For some issues of Good Morning there was a big de-
mand. Jobless radicals around Union Square, a block away,
seized the chance to make some change by selling the maga-
zine on street corners. These young men (and some not so
young) were mostly well-read and healthy minded, and were
opposed to working like slaves for the capitalist system. I
liked them, and knew many of them by name — Dan O'Brien,
ART YOUNG: HIS LIFE AND TIMES 367
Frank Strong Hamilton, Harvey Stork, Curly Daniels, the
inimitable Harry Engels, and others.
They swarmed into our fourth floor office around publi-
cation days, and I learned things from them. Many of them
had traveled widely, as sailors; others had been itinerant
workers in the lumber woods, orchards, and grain fields of
America, and some had been "over there" in the so-called
world war. Certain ones were good soap-boxers, speaking
effectively for industrial unionism, Socialism, anarcho-syndi-
calism, with variations on the pleasures and vicissitudes of
the "free life" of the hobo. A few had no regard for business
ethics, not even among friends. But all were worth knowing.
FIXING UP THE WORLD WAR SOLDIERS.
Betty Kaye, our secretary and office manager, called my
attention to the fact that many bundles of Good Morning
given out to the street-sellers on consignment were not being
paid for. She said I was too easy with them, that the office
could not be run successfully without some practical sense,
and that I ought to be firm about sales on trust. "All right,"
I agreed, "we'll be firm/' So Betty began to treat the delin-
quents with peppery resentment. She made it plain that she
was going to end this grafting by so-called comrades from
Union Square benches.
With such thoughts in her mind and fire in her eyes she
looked up from het typewriter one day while I was out, and
saw a man enter who was travel-dusty and had the untailored
look of a Wobbly. He said he wanted to see me.
368 ART YOUNG: HIS LIFE AND TIMES
"He isn't in/' said Betty tartly, "and I don't know when
he's coining back. But listen — if you want to peddle Goocf
Mornings we're through — do you hear?" "We're through
with you bums!"
Soon after I got back to the office there was a phone call
from Upton Sinclair saying he was in town, and could we
get together for dinner? He had looked in at my office but had
"met with a screen of protective coloration/' Then I told
Betty I wished I had been in when Upton Sinclair called.
"My God!" said Betty, "Was that Upton Sinclair? And
I put him out!"
Sometimes the boys would be arrested. One night Harry
Engels was trying to sell the magazine to a crowd in Brook-
lyn. He read excerpts from its pages, held up a double-page
cartoon of mine for all to see, and declared that I was "a
satirist as great as Voltaire."
A cop interrupted him. "That's enough of that. Come
with me!"
Taken to court, the prisoner was dismissed with a repri-
mand. Next day he sent me a clipping from the Brooklyn
Eagle citing the offending quotation from his speech, with a
note pointing out that those who sold Goocf Morning had to
ran risks, and that the business office ought to be lenient with
them.
Engels had a clever way with audiences, and always put
on a good show. From his well dressed appearance, he might
have been a rich man's son. He had a friend who owned one
of the better makes of automobiles. The two w6uld drive up
to a $pot where a radical soap-boxer was making a speech
to a crowd of workers. Engels would interrupt the other,
and would address the audience from a capitalistic point of
view.
"Don't we give you parks and free schools and bridges?"
he would demand. "Haven't we given you the five-cent farfc?"
And when he had got his listeners well steamed up with
indignation, he would begin talking about the merits of
Goocf Morning as a literary diet for those who were not
satisfied with the "gifts" from the capitalists.
In contrast to the rough boys who were continual callers
— one day I saw a well-groomed, cultured-looking old gentle-
man looking over a bound file of Goocf Morning in the recep-
ART YOUNG: HIS LIFE AND TIMES 369
tion room and heard Betty call him Mr. Allen* I left my desk
when I heard that name, saying to myself: "I'll bet that is
James Lane Allen, author of The Choir Invisible", and it
was! I told him his stories were prose poetry, and we had
a mutual admiration chat.
Lincoln Steffens came in soon after his return from the
Peace Conference in Versailles, where he had seen President
Wilson's fourteen-point plan for healing the wounds of war
ridiculed and spat upon by his European rivals in diplomacy,
backed by the business interests of their nations.
"You're right, Art/* said Steffens, "keep Good Morning
going. There's nothing to do now but laugh — laugh like
Hell!"
Wise sayings of the Poor Fish, a character I originated
in the early days of Good" Morning, attracted wide attention
and comment. Carl Van Doren, then literary editor of Cen-
tury Magazine, called it "a classic, a genuine contribution to
the scene and civilization/' Lincoln Steffens wrote an essay
on Poor Fish philosophy, with permission to use it if I wanted
to, in a book of pictures and sayings of the Fish — but I never
got around to assembling the material for that volume. Many
labor periodicals reprinted the likeness of the Poor Fish, in
the various poses in which I portrayed him, while emitting
his weighty thoughts on current topics. Long after Goodf
Morning had ceased to exist, some labor editors continued to
use pictures of this character of mine (without credit) but
with new sayings which they invented, not always in the
naive language of common street talk which I used as the
true Fish idiom.
Here are samples of authentic wisdom from the mouth
of the Poor Fish, taken from Good Morning:
' 'Progress is all right, but it ought to stop some-
time/'
"The Poor Fish says he knows that many of our
leading citizens got their wealth dishonestly, but we
ought to let bygones be bygones/'
"If people would work harder we would not have
so much unrest."
"Anybody who is making a good living ought to
keep his mouth dwt."
"The Poor Fish says that if there arc any ex-soldiers
Good Morning
THE POOR FISH. He appeared in many costumes and postures. Specimens
of his wisdom are cited in Chapter 34.
370
ART YOUNG: HIS LIFE AND TIMES 371
mixed up in these bomb outrages they ought to know
better/'
"If a man has saved up a billion dollars, he is en-
titled to enjoy it. Instead of trying to take his billion
away from him, every man should try to save up a bil-
lion of his own/'
"Liquor is not injurious if taken in moderation*
Unfortunately, the workingman never knows when he
has had enough/'
"The Poor Fish says agitators just stir up trouble,
and what with his two sons crippled in the War for
Democracy, and the High Cost of Living, we have
enough trouble as it is/'
We brought out a God Number of Good Morning on
July 1, 1920. "Isn't God conscripted to support war?" we
asked, "Isn't He exploited at political conventions? Why can't
He be put to the good use of the common people?" William
Blake, who illustrated his own verse, left to posterity several
pictures of God, one of which we reproduced, pointing out
that this likeness of divine omnipotence resembled a well-
known American, William Cullen Bryant.
"Other Blake designs of the Deity," we recalled, "look
more like a composite of an Indiana farmer and Moses. Every
artist who has attempted divine interpretation in sculpture
or painting insists on a portrait with whiskers. Is that set-
tled? Can't someone think of a new, rejuvenated, up-to-date
God? We really believe that God would like to see a new
portrait of himself/' Our readers were invited to send in
such pictures.
"More backbone in the public officials of the Holy Land"
was demanded in a contributed editorial represented as having
appeared in the Palestine Times, conservative organ of the
Rome Chamber of Commerce at the time of Christ's cruci-
fixion. Percy Atkinson, then circulation manager of the
Metropolitan, was the author of this editorial.
"Pontius Pilate cannot be commended too highly," it said,
"for having upheld the cause of law and order in the execution
of the so-called 'King of the Jews' last Tuesday. All right think-
ing people will sustain him. Hence, it seems all the .more regret-
table that he should have shown the least sign of weakness in
372 ART YOUNG: HIS LIFE AND TIMES
making his decision. This is bound to react unfavorably upon the
rabble who may accept 1 wash my hands of this affair* as an
incentive toward further demonstrations. . . .
"We must not forget that there are still apostles and adher-
ents of the new religion at large. Their capacity for harm is by
no means at an end. They should be immediately apprehended
and summarily dealt with.
"There are rumors that Pilate will be recalled by Rome. In
that event we trust that he will be replaced by a strong, decisive,
conservative official. At this time we need a business man at the
helm, not a weakling or a visionary.
"Another 'sermon on the mount* should be made impossible;
further spectacular legerdemain such as the 'miracle' of the loaves
and the fishes, upsetting the food market, should meet with^ stern
repression; leniency toward prostitution, another 'go and sin no
more* incident, affronting the moral sense of the community, must
not be repeated.
"If Pilate cannot deal with these conditions so vitally affecting
our business interests and our social and industrial integrity, he
should be recalled forthwith."
And in that issue, the Poor Fish said that "God will pro-
vide" but "at the same time he feels that the best planks in
both political platforms are those which oppose the high cost
of living/'
One of the most successful issues of Good Morning,
judged by sales and recorded enthusiasm, was the Harding
Inaugural Number on February 15, 192L For this I made
drawings of a grand parade in nine sections stretching across
as many pages. I can use space in this book for only two
illustrations of this magnificent turnout of notables; de-
scription of the others must suffice.
1 . First — leading the parade — came the editor, myself,
with the business manager of Good Morning and
the Poor Fish, in an automobile, all ardent sup-
porters of the 'Back to Normalcy' movement.
2. General Pershing proudly perched on a high horse
with his chin protruding to denote bravery; Presi-
dent Harding entirely surrounded by the "best
minds*' — Root, Hughes, Weeks, et aL
3. The best people of Marion, Ohio, including Henry
Deuteronomy Harding, the banker; Doctor Balaam
Harding of Blooming Grove, Cousin Em, Old Josh
373
374 ART YOUNG: HIS LIFE AND TIMES
Harding, and others. Also a bandwagon of job-
hunters playing, "What a friend we have in
Gamaliel/'
4. Group of underfed school children doing homage
to the Packing Trust (a gigantic garlanded hog).
Col. George Harvey and Lillian Russell doing their
campaign dance, the Harding Hula-Hula. Repre-
sentatives of the unemployed strewing roses and
chanting the same old hymns of hope.
5. Liberty Bonds getting kicked around and howling,
"I want to go back to par/' Dollar-a-year patriotic
profiteers, including the 57 varieties of trust presi-
dents, with Charlie Schwab sprinkling the street
with tears. (Charlie had broken down and sobbed
before a committee investigating his profits in the
war.) Ku Klux Klan, bodyguard for the profiteers
and standard-bearers of race-hatred, reaction, and
private vengeance.
6. William Howard Taft, only happy ex-President,
dancing the toddle. Old Aunty Blue Law, Herbert
Hoover, eating a 41 -cent lunch of mush-and-milk
to relieve the children of Messarabia. The railroads
(a silk-hatted figure in pauper's rags with a plea to
"help the poor/') Henry Ford throwing an anti-
Semitic fit.
7. Grand Old Mummies of the U.S. Senate taking the
air. Touching tableau of American and German
capital trying to get together after "the recent mis-
understanding/' Splendiferous float typifying the
progress of religion. (Mammon atop a church
equipped with cannon, the devil driving, Jesus and
his cross being dragged behind.)
8. Samuel Gompers, accompanied by his valet flying
Sam's overalls. And now: Hats off! The Supreme
Court (thunder from Sinai) , interpreting laws
with dignity and respect for the best people. The
Tariff Issue coming back to normalcy (a bearded
ancient sitting up in his coffin) .
9. Dramatic Troupe of Near-Thinkers (they know
something is wrong, but are not certain what) :
Fighting Bob La Follette smiting his breast. Sen-
ator Borah, who tries a little to bore from within,
The Power of the Press, ably performed by Wil-
liam Randolph Hoist and Arthur Whizzbrain.
William Jennings Bryan, playing the heavy in the
ART YOUNG: HIS LIFE AND TIMES 375
new drama, "Resurrection, or Democracy Trium-
phant". The Fountain of Wrath, Hiram Johnson,
rehearsing for his next appearance.
10, The Fag End: a private citizen (Woodrow Wil-
son) moving his household effects with the help
of Barney Baruch, accompanied by secretaries,
waste paper, points, presents from King George,
and dilapidated principles.
Arthur Brisbane never seemed to mind my cartoons show-
ing him with a bulging forehead and labeled "Whizzbrain".
Around that time he published an editorial with a reprint
of one of my drawings saying:
"Art Young will die pointing to 'tomorrow* without
ever having seen it, just as Marcus Aurelius died, or Karl
Marx, or one of the Gracchi, or Madame Roland, just as all
the young, ardent souls will die with their longings un-
satisfied/'
Goocf Morning had appeared as a weekly up to October,
1919. Then we were compelled to skip some numbers
through lack of money, and in January, 1920, we offered
7 per cent preferred stock in our company at $10 a share.*
But there was no rush to buy these shares, and in May the
magazine became a semi-monthly. We came out regularly
for awhile, then had to skip more issues. In August, Sep-
tember, and October, 1921, the magazine appeared only once
a month, although the masthead still blandly carried the
legend: ' 'published twice a month*' and it was our hope to
continue as a fortnightly.
But the October number was the last. The burden of
raising the necessary money had become too great. There are
many pitfalls in magazine publishing. The successful pub-
lisher requires a certain hardness, and he needs to surround
himself with others possessed of pile-driving energy. The
babes who enter the woods of publishing usually are not
equipped for big-game hunting and seldom escape the bears.
We made one more effort, however, in the name of the
Good Morning Publishing Company. Selecting the best of
the cartoons against war that we had used, with articles,
* Earlier we had incorporated — hopefully.
376
ART YOUNG: HIS LIFE AND TIMES 377
poems, gags, and other anti-militarist materials, we put out
an issue entitled The Soldier, and sub-titled Good Morning
Quarterly. It included a cartoon of mine showing a disabled
veteran watering a small tree that he had planted in a bat-
tered shoe filled with dirt — with the caption: "Bonus or no
bonus, Private McGinnis is going to have a wooden leg, even
if he has to grow one/'
Goad Morning
Bonus or no bonus, Private McGinnis is going to have a wooden leg, if he
has to grow one.
This edition caught the public fancy and was the most
popular issue of all. Our Union Square contingent, many of
whom had been in the war, pushed that number with the
zeal of crusaders, and brought in surprising returns. But we
were so far in the red, even after the month's receipts were
counted, that I had no heart to go on*
With that longing unsatisfied, I said to myself as I went
out for a walk: "Now what, Marcus Aurelius?"
Chapter 35
MY YOUNGER SON PICKS A COLLEGE
JACOB MARINOFF'S purchase of my cartoons for the
Big Stick continued to be my mainstay. I was still a con-
tributing editor of the Liberator, which was then in an
old building on East Union Square at the corner of Sixteenth
Street. But the Liberator had never been able to pay its con-
tributing editors or others whose creations appeared in its
pages, and my market was limited.
Though Life and Judge were friendly, it was seldom that
I could produce anything to their liking. Everything was
topsy-turvy in magazine land; old editors were frequently
being kicked out for new* In the course of three years Life
had tried out, I think, six editors — and not one of them knew
what he wanted. For a time the two Bobs, Sherwood and
Benchley, tried to keep that publication, which Mitchell had
so long guided, from slipping into "innocuous desuetude,"
but that's about all they could do — hold it, and issue some
brilliant numbers.
But in the spring of 1922 Oswald Garrison Villard
opened the pages of the Nation to me. It had never featured
cartoons before. I was permitted to choose my own themes,
with occasional suggestions from Mr. Villard or from Ernest
H. Gruening, then managing editor. My first batch of pic-
tures appeared in a full page in the issue of May 3, under the
title "Looking On." This same title was used on various pages
of mine during the next three years. In addition I was asked
now and then to illustrate an article written for the Nation
by William Hard or others. One portrait sketch I did at this
time which I like to contemplate because the subject interested
me so much was of Rudolph Schildkraut in "The God of
Vengeance."
That connection also gave me opportunity to go to Cleve-
land with Mr. Villard to cover the 1924 Republican conven-
378
Looking On by Art Young
Sbatt These Be the Guardians of Our Educationf
There are those who jay that the Dyer bill to prevent lynthiiv
is unconstitutional. Perhaps, Wt are fast harnmo who* it con-
stitutional and what is not. Child labor afftars to be unttitu-
tional. If an American speculator gets hit toes slewed on «• o
small Latin-American country, it's constitutional to kill o. feit
thousand natives. But token an Ameriean gets killed by a mob
of other Americans, maybe that »« comej tinder the toad of
"life, liberty, and the pursuit of haffwuss,^
tors, ana jiw.wr assaults on t*e C onsitiutton. x»
those happy Convention days John mat made Z>ena-
ttr; later the unthinking rabble refuted to return
him to the Senate. That Proves fas cote; doesn t ttf
"'"UP Like a Rocket and. Down £«'** a Stick,"
The Nation
LOOKING ON. One of various full pages of pictorial comment on current
happenings that I made for the Nation.
tion at which Calvin Coolidge and Charles G. Dawes were
chosen as the standard-bearers. For the -.Nation also that year
and for Life and Collier's Weekly I made cartoons calcu-
lated to aid LaFqllette's candidacy on the Progressive ticket,
and some sketches of principals at the Democratic conven-
379
Convention Notes by Art Young
The Nation
My impressions of the Democratic convention at Madison Square Garden
in, 1924.
tion in New York, where John W. Davis and Charles W.
Bryan were picked to head the slate.
Brisbane also had continued to give me assignments at
intervals. He had me make a six-column review in pictures
for the Evening Journal headed: "Art Young Sees Chatcve-
Souris- — You- Sec It With Him/' It was Brisbane's suggestion
380
ART YOUNG: HIS LIFE AND TIMES 381
that I do the theatres three times a week for that paper. I
was not sanguine about this, but being fond of the stage, and
knowing there was good money in the assignment, was not
unwilling to try it for awhile. Meanwhile, however, that
wizard of caricature, Ralph Barton, was receptive to the same
job, and presently got it. He succeeded Hanz Stengel, who
committed suicide — and a few years later Ralph Barton did
the same. Ralph was tired of it alL
This boy Barton from Kansas was a better choice for
that regular assignment than I would have been, although
he held the job only a few months. His work derived, like
The Nation
"Fight LaFollette on every foot of ground in every Northwestern state." —
The cry from the Coolidge campaign headquarters,
that of Al Frueh, Covarrubias, and Steinegas, from a school
of caricature just begining to be appreciated in America —
the arch-exponent of which was Gulbransson of Simpticissi-
mas in Germany: the school of abundant emphasis on per-
sonal characteristics, done with the greatest possible economy
of line and technique. Such caricatures as the subject looks
at and says: "O my God! Do I look like that?" Of course
people say that about any picture which does not flatter them.
But a portrait done by a super- caricaturist is like barbed
wit — not many subjects can take it.
In the same month my Chauue-Souris review appeared,
the Sunday American reprinted a four-column cartoon of
mine from the Big Stick about government ownership in
382 ART YOUNG: HIS LIFE AND TIMES
Russia, to illustrate the first of a series of articles by Frank P.
Walsh under the general title: "Russia on the High Road to
Prosperity/'
Don, my younger son, wrote from Los Angeles in the
summer of 1924 saying that he wanted to go to Dartmouth
College. Answering, I said: "All right, if that's what you
think you need/' Yet in a day or two I felt that I had been
a little too impulsive in giving that O.K. For I could see that
Don's coming East would put a new responsibility on my
shoulders. The expense of seeing a boy all the way across
the continent, plus tuition and living expenses while being
"educated/' I knew would be another big financial load for
me.
And I had met so many young men, graduates of colleges,
who were no better off in the game of getting on than those
with a simple public-school training that I was doubtful if
the so-called higher education really counted for anything.
I had always discounted the value of my own art-school
experience. Certainly I had learned much more outside the
academies than inside their walls. And what made the modern
college seem even less desirable than that of forty years earlier
was the pace young men from middle-class homes had to keep
up in their association with the sons of the rich.
But I had said yes to Don, and I couldn't reverse myself.
I figured it might be well for him to look the situation over
for himself* I sent money, and he hastened to New York.
We had a good time together for a few days, and then he
went to New Hampshire. In Dartmouth he elected to study
Spanish, Latin, and Greek, and also took English, history,
and botany.
My concern about the pace Don would have to keep up
in his new surroundings was borne out by a habit he soon
got into, of telegraphing me, usually to this effect: "Please
send me one hundred dollars. Urgent." Always urgent.
I had made the mistake of not telling him frankly the
state of my finances. Long afterward, when we had achieved
a relation in which we could discuss such things, he explained
that as he grew up in California he had gained the impres-
sion that his father in the East was well-to-do. He had heard
legends of large sums paid to artists for pictures, and sup-
ART YOUNG: HIS LIFE AND TIMES 383
posed that the rewards to workers in the pictorial field
generally were handsome. Thus he had no hesitation in ask-
ing for money, by mail or wire, feeling confident that he
would get it.
Despite a presumable steady round of social activities,
I suppose Don studied as much as a boy could be expected
to at Dartmouth, for when I saw him again he told me of his
high marks and seemed to have learned a good deal about
things he wanted to know. He spent the following summer
with me on Chestnut Ridge, and occupied himself steadily
with drawings. Not a few of the sketches he made had con-
siderable merit. In the fall he returned to college, but as the
weeks went on I saw my bank balance sink lower and lower.
For some reason sales of pictures had again fallen off.
So with regret I had to make clear to Don that I was
scraping the bottom of my treasury. Naturally disappointed,
he accepted the situation none the less cheerfully, and said
that he would leave college at the end of October, go down
to New York, and look for a job. He managed to keep em-
ployed at a fair wage, and after a while began studying
in the night classes at the Art Students' League. He pursued
sketching industriously and experimented with water colors.
What he really wanted to do was write. Making repeated
efforts to put stories on paper, and having trouble with them,
he concluded that he had nothing yet worth writing about,
and that in order to become a writer of substance he must
do some substantial living. So he set out to get experience,
and shipped as a seaman on a steamer bound for Buenos
Ayres. This doubtless was good for him spiritually, and he
seemed to have broadened mentally on his return.
Next he was off to California again, to see his mother,
and then got a job with the Associated Press in Los Angeles,
tending an automatic teletypewriter, on which news from
all the corners of the world clicked out on long rolls of white
paper. Don wasn't earning much, but he was paying his
own way, and he was proud of that.
North, my other son, showed a definite inclination to-
ward pictorial expression, which I had noticed particularly
when both he and Don were active on the Los Angeles High
School weekly. Don was editor of that paper for a season
and wrote a weekly column, while North did illustrations
384 ART YOUNG: HIS LIFE AND TIMES
for it. In short, my progeny seem to have desired the pursuit
of the creative arts, though in saying this I cannot lay claim
to having had much influence upon their development Re-
cently North illustrated a book, Manners for Moderns, pub-
lished in Boston.
Shortly after Don had left college things suddenly began
to come my way from unexpected sources* To my surprise
requests for drawings arrived from respectable magazines
which had not looked in my direction before. When I heard
from Tom Masson, then associate editor of the Saturday
Evening Post, that his chief, George Horace Lorimer, wanted
me to contribute to that conservative world-popular weekly,
I said: "Honest, Tom, you don't mean it!" He assured me
that Lorimer did want some Art Young cartoons.
I knew, of course, that my kind of propaganda would
not appeal to the makers of this magazine with its editorial
devotion to Big Business and Big Profits. But I thought of
something else which might find favor there. For a long time
I had contemplated a series of pictures to be called Trees at
Night. Often I had made sketches toward this end, after walks
under the stars on the roads near my place in Connecticut.
The first sheaf of these pictures — eleven of them, as I re-
member it — were sent for Lorimer's approval, and I got a
prompt acceptance. After a few were published, I was asked
to draw additional ones. For more than a year the series ran,
usually every other week.
My conception of trees showed them as fantastic, gro-
tesque, humanized, or animalized, with trunks, limbs, and
foliage tossed in gayety or inert and solemn against the night
sky. They were not propaganda as that term is generally
understood, but I have heard people who liked them say they
read sermons in them all. For this series I received $75 each.
I have a large scrap-book filled with complimentary letters,
poems, and tree-ideas evoked by these drawings,
One of the best of my tree drawings occupied a double
page in Life. I have always had a hopeful outlook — even
when everything seemed lost. Nevertheless, as an onlooker
I had seen so much in human life that revealed the pathos
of hope, that I had to put the theme into a picture. Among
other tragic hopes I had seen was an old man and his wife
ART YOUNG: HIS LIFE AND TIMES 385
living in poverty, but holding onto stock in one of those
kid-'em-along silver mines that they thought might some
day bring them joy. In my picture this forlorn old man is
out on a bleak hill with his hope symbolized as a dead tree.
With a sprinkling pail he waters its roots. The caption, as
published in Life, was: "Hope springs eternal in the human
breast/'
Later the Saturday Evening Post took another series from
me entitled * 'Types of the Old Home-Town/* These pictures
I regard as my best contributions to foMore Americana. Here
was work which I greatly enjoyed, conjuring up from the
days of my youth the characters that I had known back
home. And I had traveled enough to realize that they were
not just local, but that their prototypes were to be found
in hundreds or thousands of towns. The content of the home-
town drawings is suggested by some of the captions:
"Uncle Dave and Aunt Matilda — Every Saturday they would
drive in, hitch the old horse near the court-house, and do
their trading: butter and eggs for sugar, salt mackerel, etc.
Uncle Dave was a 'Greenbacker'. He said, 'Money is the
root of all evil/ but had figured it out that the more there
was in circulation the less the evil/'
''Ashley the Lamplighter — There were eight street lamps in
the business section. Our lamplighter's name was Ashley.
When he struck his phosphorus the square took on a glow.
Not much in kilowatts and such. But— that was thirty
years ago/'
ffAdnt Nancy Fillebrown — She went to all the town funerals.
No matter what she had said of the deceased in life, she
was there when it came to a post-mortem respect. Thus
everybody in town was assured of one mourner at least/'
"Pawnee Bill — -Every year the town would be visited by a
Pawnee Bill or a Kickapoo Charley, who would sell us
Indian medicine made from the roots of wild cabbage and
liniment from the bark of the snake-tree. He would cure
farmers of their rheumatism right before our eyes. Them
were the happy days/'
For these types I received $125 a drawing. With this
new income and sales to other magazines, I was enabled to
make some much needed improvements around my home on
Chestnut Ridge, Once more I was tasting the pie -of prosperity.
Chapter 36
BATTLES ON THE LIBERATOR BOARD
A ROSS four and a half years the Liberator, like the
Masses, had had a turbulent time of it. It too was a
free-lance publication, not affiliated with any political
party. Its editors and contributors theoretically formed a
united front, and they wrote on many phases of the revolu-
tionary movement, attacking the money-power from various
angles. But this united front was a good deal like the "happy
family** in P. T. Barnum's museum in New York, which
contained a lion, a lamb, a wolf, a boa constrictor, and other
oddly assorted creatures.
"And do they always get along peacefully like this?"
Barnum was asked by a visiting bishop.
"Oh, yes/* said Barnum, " — except that we have to re-
new- the lamb once in a while/*
There was frequent conflict among the contributing edi-
tors of the Liberator over the question of what it should
print, as there had been on the Masses editorial board* Often
these arguments had to do with the relative values of propa-
ganda and "pure art" or "pure literature**, but as the echoes
of the war receded and the splits in the radical movement
grew wider, battles in editorial conferences more often cen-
tered upon the matter of tactics to forward the cause of social
revolution throughout the world.
Meetings of the Liberator board were irregular and in-
formal. I attended when in town, but tried to keep out of
controversies. I was much more interested always in drawing
cartoons which would strike at a vulnerable point in the
armor of the common enemy than in battling over the fine
points of tactics. In my years as a Socialist I had attended
meetings and seen members of my party argue hotly among
themselves far into the night. I knew tactics were necessary,
but I didn't want to be bothered with them so long as I was
shooting straight and making a hit now and then.
386
ART YOUNG: HIS LIFE AND TIMES 387
Often I have been amazed at the tendency of some of the
controversialists on the left side of the political fence to
detect the darkest motives in utterances and actions of erst-
while friends whose opinions disagreed with theirs. I took
but a small part in the internecine cross-fire. I knew my forte
was drawing cartoons. Others were better fitted to endure
the polemical heat. But I would not be understood as being
unaware of the importance of official decisions and correct
shaping of social propaganda. I knew that it had to be done
with thought and care, but it could become ridiculous and
frequently did.
In February, 1919, Eugene Debs was listed as a con-
tributing editor, and K. R. Chamberlain and Minor were
missing from the roster. Minor had gone to Russia, and had
been writing articles about the situation there, from the view-
point of an Anarchist. This was the philosophy that inter-
ested him most at that time; the doctrine that the individual
should be free to live his own life unhampered by govern-
mental restraints imposed against his will.
Robert Minor, son of a judge in San Antonio, Texas, first
came into public notice through his strong cartoons in the
St. Louis Post-Dispatch. These cartoons looked as if they
had been done with a blunt marking crayon on any kind of
paper that was handy, and were never cluttered with detail
— only an eyeful, and just a glance would give you the idea.
His work was the forerunner of the crayon cartoons in the
daily press of today. In his early thirties he came to New
York, to work on the staff of the Evening World.
Once I made this comment on him in Good Morning:
"When he talks, it is as if he thought a reporter for
posterity were listening in, and his words and sentences are
formed with precision, and are grammatical enough to sug-
gest that a good college professor was lost to the world when
Bob joined the proletarian movement."
Beside Minor, many of the best artists and writers of
that period thought of themselves as Anarchists, not as Social-
ists. They wanted to be at liberty to act as individuals with-
out the restrictions of government, Mrs. Grundy's opinion,
or any other frustrating element. John Reed, Lincoln Stef-
388 ART YOUNG: HIS LIFE AND TIMES
fens, and George Bellows also come to my mind as having
anarchistic ideas in those days.
But most of the many I knew who respected that philoso-
phy lived to learn that something came before the Anarchist
dream. That something was economic freedom, without
which one could only give a feeble imitation of calling his
soul his own,
I think there is no one on earth who is not in some
degree both Anarchist and Socialist. Some there are whose
collective sense is confined to their own family. Others go
still further and include a community or their country, and
still others have regard for the welfare of the whole human
race. But within the orbit of every one's social circle is the
individual's desire to be a law unto himself.
After Minor returned to New York he was acting editor
of the Liberator in the spring of 1921, while Max Eastman
was in California finishing a book. Max criticised the April
issue by telegraph, and Bob wrote a long letter in defense.
But to me this was just one more of those hot controversial
matters, and as usual I stayed on the side-lines*
As I turn the pages of the Liberator for September, 1918,
my eye lights on another letter which takes me back to those
feverish days.
Fairmont, W. Va.,
June 23, 1918.
My Dear Comrades:
Enclosed find draft for ten dollars
paying for the Liberator.
In three weeks we have organized
10,000 Slavs who were in bondage. Put the profes-
sional murderers out of business; these Slavs were in
bad.
Tell Art Young I have been raising
H— .
Fraternally,
MOTHER JONES
I suspect that the last word in this message was subdued
as a Concession to the supercritical rules of the Post Office, for
ART YOUNG: HIS LIFE AND TIMES 389
Mother Jones had a delightfully extensive profane vocabulary
and did not hesitate to use it in conversation.
In the same issue is the black stamp of censorship, blotting
out two items listed among the book advertisements.
Thus magazine editing was a game of quiz — to guess
when you were within the law. But no lawyer was smart
enough to advise you in advance of publication what you
might legally publish.
Whenever Mother Jones came to New York she would
let me know. She was moving toward the century mark, but
she still had fire in her eye. For hours at a time I would talk
with her in her room in the old Union Square Hotel. With
a pail of beer on the table, she liked to tell me all about
"my boys" (the miners) , her experiences in jails, and what
happened during strikes.
John Reed and Louise Bryant lived at 1 Patchen place,
and I would drop in there of an evening now and then. In
memory I can see this dynamic boy, chuckling at some angle
of his daily activity and then looking at a pad of paper
on his desk as if he ought to be writing instead of chuckling.
One evening Louise told me that she had been talking
with one of Jack's Harvard class-mates. And he said to her:
'It's really too bad about Jack. He used to write good libret-
toes for light opera. Now I hear he's writing this humanity
stuff."
And this lovely daughter of a Fenian laughed in her
contagious way, and we all laughed together.
A few years after Jack's death in Russia, Louise married
William Bullitt, long a Washington correspondent, friend
of Woodrow Wilson, friend of Jack, and later Ambassador
to Russia and then to France. Poor Louise committed slow
suicide — went the sad road of narcotic escape. Only a few
weeks before she died she sent me a postcard from her Paris
studio at 50 Rue Vavin.
"I suppose in the end life gets all of us," she wrote. "It
nearly has got me now — getting myself and my friends out
of jaii — living under curious conditions — but never minding
much. . . . Know always I send my love to you across the
stars. If you get there before I do — or later — tell Jack Reed
J love him/1
390 ART YOUNG: HIS LIFE AND TIMES
I had supplied cartoons to the Liberator frequently dur-
ing its existence, and a good deal of my best work, I think,
was done in that period. As I open a bound volume, I see
one cartoon of mine, entitled We, which caused widespread
amusement. It depicted two tramps, with feet sticking out of
broken shoes, and one saying: "Say, Bill whadd'ye know
about this? — We've got to raise eight billion dollars in the
next Liberty Loan!"
The Mollycoddles Union portrayed a group of workers
registering enthusiasm as their employer announced: "Now,
boys, you've been very good, and I'm going to give each
of you a five-cent stick of candy as a weekly bonus."
That's For Us, Bill showed two disabled veterans look-
ing through a window at a Victory Dinner, $6 a plate, in
the Hotel Best People. ... As the troops came back from
France I did a cartoon of an employer telling a one-legged
doughboy; "Sorry I can't make a place for you. But you see
a soldier gets much of his compensation in glory and in the
thought that he has done his duty."
Daughters of the American Revolution Hearing a Revo-
lutionary Speech pictures some of our female patriots regis-
tering indignation; "Seditious! ... I never heard of such
a thing! . . . She's terrible! ... If she doesn't like our
government she ought to have the courtesy to keep still
about it."
When Woodrow Wilson returned from France, I did a
full-page feature on the Washington scene, reporting that
about half of the political population in the capital were no
longer standing behind the President, "except for the pur-
pose of kicking him." . . . In Six Months is a two-sided
picture, in which at the left Wilson, holding his sleek silk
hat in one hand and his Fourteen Points in the other, stands
at the large end of a horn while Fame shines upon him; at
the right he is seen with battered topper, crawling out of the
small end into the darkness of oblivion.
Early in 1922 Max Eastman felt that he had to get away
from it all. He resigned, and Mike Gold came in as the active
editor, with William Cropper, another energetic youngster,
strengthening the pictorial art in the Liberator with lively
cartoons. Presently Joseph Freeman, a young writer and
" way ward" son of a millionaire real estate operator, joined
ART YOUNG: HIS LIFE AND TIMES 391
the editorial staff. Floyd Dell was now spending a good deal
of time in Croton, working on a book, but appeared at the
office frequently to lend a hand.
Circulation had fallen off, and the going was hard, what
with the steadily widening cleavage in the radical movement
in the United States. There were vital causes to fight for —
Sacco and Vanzetti, Mooney and Billings, the liberation of
the remaining anti-war prisoners — but a large percentage of
the Liberator's audience was displaying great weariness, espe-
cially when asked to pay money for subscriptions. It was
harder, too, to get people to attend mass-meetings, even when
issues of vast import to the downtrodden were to be discussed*
Month after month the boys in the editorial office had to
go out and find money to cover printing and paper and dis-
tribution costs. Often their untiring services were paid for
in fragmentary installments — if at all. In the light of my
own struggles on Goocf Morning, I could understand their
problems.
After a few months Mike Gold reached his physical limit,
and departed for California, to rest his torn nerves and write
a novel. This left Joe Freeman holding the reins, with Floyd
Dell still faithfully co-operating.
In October, 1922, I had a note from Floyd asking me
to attend "a very important meeting, at which a decision will
be made concerning the future of the Liberator — a meeting
at which some very good news or very bad news will be
announced. " This took place in Bill Cropper's studio, three
flights up, at 149 West 14th Street. Those present, as I re-
member it, included Hugo Gellert and Joe Freeman. And
here, too, was a genuine soul of a man — Charles E. Ruthen-
berg, secretary of the Communist party in this country, then
known as the Workers' party. He had served a term in an
Ohio prison for his anti-war beliefs and had been the Social-
ist party's candidate for Governor there. Ruthenberg had
requested the meeting inasmuch as he was returning to Chi-
cago next day. Invitations had been sent to all those still
listed as editors and contributing editors, but only a few
responded. Others were out of town, and still others appar-
ently were not interested.
Floyd Dell opened the discussion, explaining that the
Liberator's financial status was steadily growing worse. The
392 ART YOUNG: HIS LIFE AND TIMES
responsibility was too great for those in charge to continue.
If we stopped publication it would be a good deal like killing
a child If we changed the magazine into an art and literary
journal, catering to those who wanted to escape from think-
ing, the effect would be decorative but of little purpose.
Ruthenberg indicated that the Communists would like
to have the Liberator, and Floyd asked us each for our opin-
ions on a proposition to merge whatever was left of the
magazine — subscription list, news-stand orders, name, pres-
tige, and good will — with the Workers Monthly, then being
published in Chicago. Naturally Ruthenberg was negotiating
not only for the Liberator, but also for the prestige of its
predecessor, the Masses, which in memory was bathed in an
aura of admiration by its readers as the first magazine of
cultural quality in America to espouse the cause of industrial
freedom.
"That goes with me/' I said in reply to the proposition.
But I remember with what indifference I supported the pro-
posal If a broker for a Wall Street syndicate had been there
and had offered a large sum of money for our name, prestige,
etcetera, as had been done with other magazines of protest —
to make them conservative while outwardly appearing the
same — I think I might have approved the sale. With a sub-
stantial cash payment, we could have sent Christmas gifts to
old contributors to both the Liberator and the Masses who
had never received a cent. I had experienced so much trouble
as an editor, publisher, and contributor that on this particular
evening I was in one of my what's-the-use? moods.
I knew, too, that the original Masses, out of which the
Liberator had evolved, had receded far enough into history
to be thought better than it really was. The Masses came
along at that well-known "psychological moment/' at least
for a few thousand people who were tired of the conventional
contents of bourgeois publications. By 1922 many" of them
had forgotten that the time and the innovation had much to
do with the loving acclaim as well as the fierce denunciation
with which our magazine was received. The devotees of the
Masses had made it a model, a shining exemplar.
Merging of the two publications was delayed for a time,
however, and the Liberator continued to be issued in New
York, with Minor and Freeman at the editorial helm, and
ART. YOUNG: HIS LIFE AND TIMES 393
with the board now including several members of the central
committee of the Workers' party* But in 1924 the move to
Chicago was made, and the Liberator name was submerged
in that of the Workers' Monthly.
Need for a magazine which would be an outlet for news
and interpretation of events bearing on the class struggle
from the leftward viewpoint, but which would not be the
organ of any political party, made itself evident in 1926, and
<
^
« HAVE 5fE.N THE FUTURE /iNJ) IT WORKS "
New Masses
STEFFENS REPORTS ON HIS VISIT TO RUSSIA.
the New Masses was born in May. Sponsored by a broad
united front of radical and liberal writers and artists, its
initial editors were Egmont Arens, Joseph Freeman, Hugo
Gellert, Michael Gold, James Rorty, and John Sloan. In
addition to these five, the executive board included Maurice
Becker, Helen Black, John Dos Passes, Robert Dunn, Wil-
liam Cropper, Paxton Hibben, Freda Kirchwey, Robert L.
Leslie, Louis Lozowick, and Rex Stout.
With the desperate Passaic (N. J.) textile strike, where
gas bombs were being used by the employers, as a cause to
fight for, the new publication got away to a strong start. It
394 ART YOUNG: HIS LIFE AND TIMES
experimented widely with literary and art forms of revolu-
tionary propaganda*
There was a long list of contributing editors, including
myself, with both old-timers and youngsters represented.
Establishment of the enterprise gave me a sense of fresh hope.
The pages of the New Masses displayed vitality that was
electric in its effect upon me, and undoubtedly upon other
creative workers.
Welcoming this magazine and expressing delight that the
infant seemed so lusty, William Allen White, editor of the
Empotia Gazette in Kansas, gave it only six months to live.
But it has survived all the fears of friends and hopes of
enemies that it might die an early death, and has gone on
functioning for the remarkable span of thirteen years.
It, too, has had its internal political upheavals, with a
changing editorial board, and repeated financial struggles, yet
somehow it has survived all vicissitudes.
I have found satisfaction in numerous pictorial contribu-
tions to the New Masses — necessarily less often in recent times
— and it is good to know that this dependable vehicle of
social protest exists.
Chapter 3 7
AN ART GALLERY AND TWO BOOKS
A time went on and other markets opened up, I began
to plan anew for the building of an art gallery such
as I had dreamed of in Paris in 1889, when with the
optimism of youth, I foresaw myself as some day having an
estate within easy distance of New York, on a broad hill of
which I would build a studio and a large picture gallery. In it
would be a Louvre Room, a London National Gallery Room,
and other rooms for the display of my selected reproductions
of the world's great paintings, etchings, drawings, and stat-
uary from the principal museums of the Old World, and of
course there would be an American room for my favorite
prints of native art, and especially the work of the early
cartoonists, including Paul Revere. However crude his car-
toons, Revere, besides being the most publicized fast rider
in American history, contributed a few notable concepts done
on copper plate in behalf of our first revolution. And I
would hang on the line Thomas Nast, Joseph Keppler, and
Bernard Gillam. There, too, would be my own drawings,
not too conspicuous, but in a spot where visitors couldn't
miss seeing them.
Basking in the glow of that youthful dream, I had not
bothered to figure out the cost in detail. Who does? Whether
you are dreamy or practical, building-construction always
costs more than you expected. All I knew was this: I had
over $6,000 in the bank, the largest sum I had ever accumu-
lated. I was affluent, and friends told me I looked like the
typical man of big business whom I liked to ridicule.
Knowing that I was going to spend money on my
"estate/' acquaintances were free with advice. Not many ap-
proved the plan for an art gallery. Some thought I ought
to be practical and build a garage; others who enjoyed sports
suggested a big swimming pool down by the creek, and a
395
396 ART YOUNG: HIS LIFE AND TIMES
tennis court to displace half of the garden. Still others felt
that I ought to build a bungalow or two to rent,
One well-meaning friend said: "Do you know what I'd
do if I owned this place? I'd have a chicken farm. There's
money in chickens/' Another spoke for a goat farm; said
there was money in goats.
Then of course there were some with "conservative" pro-
posals. They said: "Now that you are making money, invest
it. Put it into good stocks or safe securities." To me the
latter suggestion was the most comical of all — as if you could
make a "good" or a "safe" investment.
All of this of course was before the crash of 1929 — and
it still stands as my opinion of profit- enterprise in general,
with more financial crashes yet to come.
I can anticipate criticism of this book on at least one
point, by persons who have read thus far — that I am always
taking the side of the worker with apparently no under-
standing of the problem of the employer
I have already said that an artist is one who can put
himself in the place of others. All too often, I think, workers
show a talent for seeing the employer's side, which is one
cause of their subjugation. They are the apologists for their
masters; whatever they, the workers, suffer, they feel is inevi-
table like bad weather and can't be helped.
On the other hand, the masters apparently do not try
to put themselves in the place of their workers — it would not
be good business, and they do not intend to be their brother's
keeper. That's why it's a class war, whether we like it or
not, and whether the contestants realize it or not.
The story goes that Pierpont Morgan the elder was talk-
ing with a former employee of his who was relating a tale
of hard-luck, his wife and children starving, etcetera. Morgan
pressed a button on his desk and said to a flunky: "Put this
man out — he's breaking my heart."
I think I have the imagination to understand the prob-
lems and obligations of one who employs others to work for
him for wages. I had done some employing as an editor and
publisher, and had to hire and fire and learn from experience
that business responsibility is a headache much of the time —
even a small business. Nevertheless, the employed manual
ART YOUNG: HIS LIFE AND TIMES 397
worker or artist worker gets the worst of it. He is the under-
dog. The ditch digger and the concrete layer use their tools
to get results and are paid whatever the boss thinks is enough,
unless forced by unions to pay more. The draughtsmen use
pen or pencil and dig around on drawing paper in another
kind of work, for an employer who takes the finished product
and pays whatever it pleases him to pay.
Artists and ditch-diggers are alike producers, whatever the
tools used — pen, pencil, and brush, or pick and shovel. Those
who can handle these tools must work for those whose busi-
ness it is to make a profit. And there is no legal limit to profit-
making. So long as both sides are compelled to struggle for
money as their objective, it will be a class war, a war between
those who produce and those who prod the producer to work
harder and cheaper.
At the age of fifty-seven I had again become an employer
— not much of a one, to be sure, but enough to make me
understand why the master curses the worker. While my mo-
tive was not profit, it was the same in the sense that I had to
hire others at a reasonable rate and get a building job done
according to agreement.
I knew a versatile New York artist whose rent I had paid
twice when he couldn't meet it. He was a sculptor, furniture
craftsman, carpenter, painter, writer of poetry, and interior
decorator. With a wealth of self-assurance, he prided him-
self on "making the walls of a room sing" and in doing
substantial, artistic construction — "knitting with nails" he
called it.
A familiar figure in Greenwich Village, he was striking
to look at — with his long black hair, waxed goatee, and
moustache — a kind of composite of a mediaeval troubadour
and John the Baptist. Friends had said he was not exactly
reliable.
One day he came into my New York quarters, and I told
him of my plan to build an art gallery and studio on my
place in the country. My idea was to have a place for the
housing and safe-keeping of my original drawings, as well as
the exhibition of them — with a stone vault as a wing of the
building, to obviate paying storage as I had done for years.
But first, I explained, I was going to put two large statues
of toads or devils or something on the massive stone gate-
398 ART YOUNG: HIS LIFE AND TIMES
posts out by the road. This was to be the entrance to the
proposed gallery, and I must have a grand entrance.
I showed him my small clay model of a toad which I
had decided would make the best statues for my purpose, and
asked if he could reproduce two of them on a huge scale in
concrete or terra cotta. His eyes were wide with enthusiasm
as he answered that he had a secret formula for making a kind
of cement that sculptors could use like clay — with the ad-
vantage that it would withstand the elements for countless
years. He had tested it, he said, with a vase of his own making,
which had stood a long time outside his studio window with-
out disintegrating. It was a secret process — he repeated — and
he was not yet ready to reveal it to the world. But he would
not only make the toads for me — he also was keen to help me
design, and build, the gallery*
He spent a week of research in the New York public
library studying the species and habits of toads the world over
— and came back with sketches of a dozen kinds. I told him
this was all unnecessary; I knew the common American
variety of toad, and my model, though crude, was about
what I wanted. He soon agreed and told me he had enjoyed
his research studies of toads. His enthusiasm ran up to such
a degree that my own began to mount higher for both the
statuary and the gallery. His work would be initiated by the
setting up of those great squat toads of indestructible clay,
or whatever he called it.
It was early spring. We went to Bethel, and immediately
he began work on the sculpture. I was not allowed to see
him mix his new kind of cement. It must be kept a secret.
There was a fortune in it. As soon as he finished the toads,
it was understood that he would proceed with the construction
of the gallery. I agreed to pay the prevailing carpenter's
wage, with room and food free in addition. The building
was to be completed by October, and I promised to help if
necessary or to hire others if needed on the job.
But the work moved much more slowly than I had ex-
pected. It took the painter-sculptor-carpenter a month to
model the toads. When they were at last placed on their
pedestals on either side of the gate, I sent invitations to neigh-
bors and artist friends in the country surrounding Bethel to
ART YOUNG: HIS LIFE AND TIMES 399
come to the unveiling, which I assured them would be "a
memorable event in the annals of art/'
In the presence of a goodly crowd on a Sunday after-
noon, Edna Porter and Theodosia Pearce, both from New
York, pulled the covering off the statues. That was the signal
for me to march down the path from my house to make my
speech. Topped by an old high hat that I wore for fun when
such serious functions demanded it, and a Daniel Webster
coat that I found in my attic, I thanked everybody for their
attendance on this "auspicious occasion/' Clive Weed shouted:
"Hear! Hear!" The onlookers included Augusta Georgia
Gary, her young son Peter, and Dr. A. L. Goldwater.
I then told the audience what I knew about toads, and
spoke for ten minutes or so, outlining my plans for the
picture gallery toward which this toad entrance led. Some
one asked: "Why toads?"
To which I replied: "The humble toad has at last been
raised to the dignity it deserves. I plan some day to inset
jewels that will shine from the eyes of these toads of mine.
Thus I shall pay my respect to Shakespeare, who said:
'. . . the toad, though ugly and venomous, wears yet a
precious jewel in his head/ "
Three cheers were given for the Orator of the Day — and
the event thus passed into history, though unrecorded until
now.
Construction of the gallery on the foundation of the barn
which had burned down in 1914, while I was in Washington,
moved slowly. The old foundation needed rebuilding, for
the gallery must rest on a solid wall. I helped trowel the
Connecticut field-stones (which in the Mid-West were called
nigger-heads), and there was satisfaction in observing the
massive substance of that wall.
But by the time the foundation was in proper shape
more than two months had sped by. The artist-carpenter-
mason was often seized by poetic moods in which he was
impelled to climb to Lookout Point, the towering rock on
the summit of the hill behind my house. I kept saying: "Now
remember, it's got to be finished by October/' and suggested
that we hire local help.
400 ART YOUNG: HIS LIFE AND TIMES
"Oh, no, that's not necessary/* he objected. "I can do it
alone in time/'
Another month passed, however, before this genius got
around to the frame- work and the side walls on which ^he was
going to show me his way of "knitting with nails/' I had
to order many truckloads of lumber, sheathing, asbestos
shingles, and nails. With their arrival I would look at the
bills with alarm. The cost had already run higher than I had
figured for the completed job — and his poetry pangs persisted.
"I'm afraid the gallery won't be finished before snow
flies/'
"Oh, yes, it will" he assured me. "Don't worry."
I paid his daily wage, without thought of his leisure
hours on the hill — until he began putting in bills for half
hours overtime* Then the employer began to feel injured.
October clicked off all of its thirty-one days, and in the
first week of November the four walls were partly in place
and the floor was laid in a way — but there was no roof.^
One morning on arising I looked out toward "the
dream," and saw a blanket of snow over everything in sight.
In feathery, drifting white flakes, it was still falling, and
most of it seemed to fall into the open top of my studio-
gallery.
After I had fortified myself with breakfast I cursed as no
employer ever cursed before — using words that sizzled and
emitted acrid smoke — and ended my relations with the artist
craftsman who could "knit with nails" and "paint walls in
a way to make them sing." When I quieted down, I said:
"No hard feelings, but I'm through, and so are you."
Early the next spring I employed Mary Ware Dennett's
son Devon, an expert carpenter, to carry the work on to com-
pletion* Now it moved along efficiently. I noted how well he
took hold of the problem, and marveled at the agility and
skill of this young man who had a job to do and was de-
termined to do it on schedule time.
For a month his wife was in the Danbury hospital having
a baby, yet he managed to see her every day, work on the
gallery, and get his own meals. I was in New York much of
the time that spring and summer, but late in August I saw
the result of Devon's work and was well pleased.
ART YOUNG: HIS LIFE AND TIMES 401
All the gallery needed now was a pair of lamps, one on
each side of the main door. These lamps I removed from an
ancient victoria that I had bought from a veteran cab-driver
in front of the Hotel Brevoort. I have told the story of that
purchase in On My Way. All that remains of the victoria
now, beside the lamps, is an oil painting of it as it stood for
many years in venerable dignity amid the high grass under an
apple tree. This painting was done by Henry Glintenkamp
when he visited me for a week-end in 1925 to discuss our
experiences in the late war and a new way of cooking spa-
ghetti
However limited the physical dimensions of my so-called
gallery, it has been a comfortable place for me to draw more
pictures and dream more dreams. As I said in the foreword
to The Best of Art Young:
"I- look around at my own drawings occasionally all
alone, and in the quiet communion with my past, feel that I
402 ART YOUNG: HIS LIFE AND TIMES
learn something, and that, given another ten or twenty years,
I might do better/'
Here are drawing tables, large and medium sized; the
small collection of reproductions that I bought in Paris in
1889; numerous books on home-made shelves, including
a Daumier book presented to me by Erhard Weyhe; works
illustrated by Dore and others, including Phil May, to whom
I owe much as early guides; a biography of Thomas Nast by
Albert Bigelow Paine; a bound volume of the original Puck
in German; and bound sets of several magazines in which
many of my drawings appeared.
On Saturdays and Sundays in summer, my gallery is
open to the public. Not on the main highway, it is never
crowded. Those who come have heard about the place from
others; sometimes they are visitors from far away, who
perhaps have driven out from New York or down from
Boston, bringing me friendly messages from old-time friends
that I may not have seen for years.
If the toads on the gate-posts are not an identification for
those who come my way, there is a brass plate on the gallery
door that has a history:
One Sunday some eight years ago a man of seventy
walked all the way from Ansonia, eighteen miles, to tell me
he wanted to make a door-plate for me. He asked that I
sketch out an appropriate design so that he, who had worked
all his life in an Ansonia brass factory, could fashion a mold
from it in brass. I drew a design around my signature, and
in a few weeks he came over again and presented me with
the finished door-plate, which he had partly hand-engraved.
He was familiar with my cartoons in the Socialist and labor
papers, and the occasion was one of pride for me. We never
know, until some incident like this occurs, who is interested
in our work and wants to say so in his own way. That
friend's expression of appreciation in metal is one of my
valued mementoes.
For more than a year from the time we had begun to
build the gallery I had been spending many of my evenings
writing down reminiscences and reflections on happenings of
the day in a kind of diary. Some time later, at the Hotel
Laclede in New York, I showed Mary Heaton Vorse portions
ART YOUNG: HIS LIFE AND TIMES 403
of my manuscript, which by that time had run beyond 200
pages of hand-written material. She read a few pages and
said: "I'm going to write to Horace Liveright about this/'
In a few days a letter came from Liveright asking me to
come to see him. And when I was in New York again I
went to his office.
'1 want to be your publisher/' he said. "Mary Vorse
tells me you are writing a book. What is it?"
I explained how far I had gone with my reminiscences
and reflections. "But," I suggested, "here's a series of pictures
MARY HEATON VORSE
called 'Trees at Night* which have been running in the
Saturday Evening Post, and I've added a few that appeared
in Collier's and Life. Thirty- five in alL How about publish-
ing these first and giving me a few months more on the
writing of the other book?"
Liveright turned the pages of a dummy volume I had
made up of the tree drawings. "Good stuff . . . but of course
just a picture-book . . . won't sell very well. . * /'
Nevertheless he was ready to take a chance. We discussed
terms and in less than a half hour publisher and author had
come to an understanding.
For the reminiscences and reflections I had thought of
two titles — All Right So Far and On My Way. After con-
404 ART YOUNG: HIS LIFE AND TIMES
saltation with Tom Smith and Julian Messner, his advisers,
Liveright told me they all liked On My Way best,
He had enough confidence in Trees at Night to issue it at
a price of $3, though it contained less than 50 pages. It
evoked some gratifying reviews, especially pleasing to me be-
cause it meant recognition in a field apart from my politico-
economic cartoons. At the risk of violating the canons of
modesty, I will cite here some of the published comment on
that work.
Saturday Review of Literature: "It is a surprise to find
the admirable caricaturist of the old Masses in an exercise of
pure fancy. His success in the new adventure shows the ready
convertibility of great talent. Art Young has let the dis-
orderly arabesque of trees and plants against the nocturnal sky
speak to him. They have told him whimsical, grave, at times
terrible things. . . . These fantasies are rendered in black
wash with a rich and free handling which a Japanese painter
would approve. It is a book to put on one's shelves and
take to one's heart/'
Rockwell Kent, in Creative Art: "Art Young's trees, be-
cause they represent the playful fancy of a distinguished man,
are more convincing with illusion than the graphic imaginings
of the whole Rackham school of professional fanciers. A lot
of people will like as fairy tales these pictures of Art Young's.
We like them because they are drawn with the same very
personal power and sensitiveness that has made us like every-
thing he has ever done/'
Baltimore Sun: "A fine example, a lyrical cross-section of
the work of one of the few real native talents that this coun-
try has produced in art."
Edwin Bjorkman, in the Ashevitle, (JV. C.) Times: "Art
Young stands alone. In the thirty- nine drawings included in
Trees at Night he has given free rein to his pen and his
imagination."
The first edition of On My Way was published in
October, 1928, with a map showing the main trails of my
life-route used as end-papers, and with a drawing of my
friend the Brevoort cab-driver conveying me over the Con-
necticut highways on the title-page. Liveright thought so
well of this literary and pictorial enterprise that he printed a
DEFEAT
Trees at Night
ART YOUNG: HIS LIFE AND TIMES 405
handsome de luxe edition as a private gift book for authors
and other friends of the publisher and myself. The regular
edition was chosen by the Institute of Graphic Arts as one
of the prize illustrated volumes of the year. There was a
second printing in February, 1929.
Of course I was pleased by the hand given to my work
by the press. Here are selections from some of the many
reviews.
Carl Sandburg, in the Chicago Daily News: "On My,
Way is the diary of one of the sane and serene souls of the
world — sometimes getting het-up and landing a wallop.
. . . Art Young is a living definition of democracy, what-
ever that may be. He is more Jeffersonian than Jefferson,
and knows things Karl Marx never had time for. He is onto
Omar Khayyam, has Billy Sunday's number, and so lives
that each day he is ready for Gabriel's horn. We believe this
would be a better country and not so hard to save for those
who would like to save it, if On My Way could outsell some
of the best sellers/'
Lewis Gannett, in the New York Herald-Tribune: "It
has all the sentimental charm of a Currier and Ives print,
with the added chuckle and thrust that lie in Art Young's
pencil." . . . Hey wood Broun, in the New York Telegram:
"The author has made no attempt to keep his narrative
within a rounded whole. No sequence of time is enforced;
as the thoughts stray, so does the pen. The effect then, is of
some one talking at his ease in front of a log fire." . . .
Freda Kirch wey, in the Nation: "With cause, Art Young is
enormously proud of his talent; yet he is the humblest man
that ever became autobiographical."
Shaemas O'Sheel, in the Saturday Review of Literature:
"He has achieved that most difficult of all things to achieve
in letters, utter simplicity — the ability to just tell the thing,
not get tangled up in words." . . . Llewellyn Jones, in the
Chicago Evening Post: "Though the surface of his book is
a complex play of ripples in every direction, there is under
the rippling cross-currents of the surface, the steady pull of a
life that has always kept a consistent direction." . . . Harry
Hansen, in the New York World: "At my house we are very
particular about the books that go on the parlor table. Today
I am going to add another book to the pure reading matter
406 ART YOUNG: HIS LIFE AND TIMES
under the lamp. It is called On My Way/' . . . Time: "A
merry masterpiece of shirt-sleeve autobiography, sketched by
a pen that achieves with words the same quaint economy for
which its line is noted/'
Right here I think I ought to say that had the press been
hostile with reviews such as "poor old Art Young is flounder-
ing around where he doesn't belong" or 'This picture-maker
had better stick to his last" — or had refused to notice me at
all, through some "conspiracy of silence" — or had I simply
been overlooked in the avalanche of books that pile up on the
critics' desks — I was fully prepared. I was ready to take
praise, blame, or neglect — for I had become used to all of
them. There was, in fact, one review devoid of all enthusiasm;
somebody on a newspaper in Louisville, Ky., said (I quote
from memory) : "On My Way is a cartoonist gone gar-
rulous."
As I write the word "neglect" I recall meeting my friend
Richard Duffy of the Literary Digest in this period. He said:
"Why don't you send some of your recently published car-
toons to our office? I'm sure the cartoon editor would like
to reprint them."
And I answered: "Listen — I've been drawing cartoons
for labor papers for many years. If the editors of the Literary
Digest ever wanted to print any of them, they've had their
chance." Then I thought that perhaps the cartoon editor of
this magazine, the policy of which was to print both sides of
controversies, never saw any of the labor publications. Any-
way my parting word to Duffy was: "Tell the Literary
Digest editors that they have let me alone for 30 years and
to continue to let me alone — I'll survive the neglect." This
sounds a bit peevish now, but that was the way I felt that day.
When material for the fourteenth edition of the Encyclo-
pedia Britannica was being assembled, with various well-
known Americans on the editorial board, I was asked to
write an article for it on the Theory and Technique of the
Cartoon. This appeared in that useful publication when it
was published in 1930, and it was accompanied by a full
page of my pictures among representative examples of car-
tooning in this country. Subsequently the same material was
ART YOUNG: HIS LIFE AND TIMES 407
used in a large volume entitled Graphic Arts, also issued by
the Britannica company.
"Materials and methods of reproduction are merely in-
cidental in the world of successful cartooning," I wrote;
''the main factors lie in the ability to invent ideas, to compose
pictures, and to understand the value of emphasis. Creating
ideas can become habitual. As the cartoonist looks about him
he sees in the everyday walks of life scenes that he thinks
might apply to political situations. These ideas he notes and
stores away in his subconscious mind, some day to develop
and release as cartoons.
"Like the poet and the dramatist, he gets suggestions from
the natural scene, from wide and purposeful reading, or from
cartoons that have been produced in another era, endeavoring
to improve them. We might say that the cartoonist is like
the dramatist and, carrying the simile further, that the sur-
face on which he draws is at once his stage-floor and pro-
scenium arch. Within this area he creates a scene. „ . .
"Once the cartoonist has decided on his idea, then comes
the composition of the cartoon. Good composing also is
something one must feel, as there are no set rules. But just
as in literature and all of the arts, to compose well is to feel a
balanced harmony or completeness, which means that the
cartoonist has relegated to second place the less essential fea-
tures of the scene and stressed the most important, that he
is alive to the value of contrasts and above all knows when
it is time to leave off, having said enough/'
Chapter 38
I MOVE ALONG A SHADOWY ROAD
POLITICS were seething again in 1928. Another Presi-
dential year, with Herbert Hoover nominated by the
Republicans, Alfred E. Smith by the Democrats, Nor-
man Thomas by the Socialists, and William Z. Foster by the
Workers' party. That contest was notable for mud-slinging
and poisonous whispering. Ordinarily calm Republicans
solemnly warned me that if Al Smith should win the Pope
of Rome would immediately take over this noble republic.
And a middle-aged Scotchwoman whom I met in a friend's
home in Brooklyn related in awed tones that she knew "some-
body who saw a nun in Staten Island" put a curse on one of
Hoover's lieutenants there. The alleged curse involved an
elaborate ceremony, with a lot of gestures that savored of
black magic. It was evident that the narrator believed this
wild gossip.
The opening of this campaign, with all the weird voices
sounding, affected me as an alarm bell affects a fire-horse that
is tired standing in his stall. I was r'arin' to go. The New
Leader wanted my cartoons. Edward Levinson was associate
editor then, and it was through his friendly co-operation that
I did some of my best work. He insisted on large cartoons
and printed them large. And as the election drew near my
current drawings were reprinted on heavy paper and issued
in portfolio form, under the title: This 1928 Campaign in
Cartoons.
But 1928 was a bad year for the Socialist party, for
Thomas got only 267,420 votes, compared with the total of
919,799 that Debs had rolled up in 1920. (There was no
regular Socialist Presidential candidate in 1924, LaFollette
having received a combination of Progressive, Socialist, and
Farmer-Labor votes in various states aggregating 4,822,856.)
Foster got 48,770 votes in 1928, and in 1924 his total was
408
ART YOUNG: HIS LIFE AND TIMES 409
33,361. The whispering campaign had won for Hoover,
and the social millennium seemed farther and farther away.
Time marched on, but seemed to take delight in stopping
occasionally at my door just long enough to leave something
to annoy me. I could expect anything. It would have been
no surprise if some morning I had found a lusty, squalling,
red-faced infant in a clothes basket on my doorstep.
Still I didn't feel old; just tired, moody, and a bit irasci-
ble. Perhaps the great drop in the protest-vote had something
to do with my state of mind. It made me realize what a pro-
digious job of education we radicals still had to do to make
the American people see how they were being victimized by
the profit system, which the two chief political parties rigidly
upheld. The flame of my optimism was burning low.
As always, however, I found a lift for my spirits in work.
That, I believe, is generally true with any artist. If he is busy
with creative expression, in whatever medium he employs,
his mind is at ease.
And in the next few months not a few of my days were
brightened by letters, from old friends or new, in response
to what they had discovered in the pages of On My Way.
When the stock market crash came in October, 1929,
and the depression followed, all that downpull had a marked
effect upon me. Selling cartoons and actually getting money
for them became more and more difficult, and my cash reserve
steadily dwindled. Gloom dogged my steps.
It was of course no phenomenon for ijie to be passing
through a financial depression. I had seen many of them,
Republican and Democratic depressions, with no essential
difference between them. Like the lives of most artists, my
life had been one depression after another, with the intervals
sometimes only a few months long. A streamline smoothness
of financial going for a while — then a big bump.
The panic of 1929 was at first interpreted by many as
being merely psychological. It was not really "hard times'*
that had descended upon us; it was your way of thinking.
If you thought that times were hard, why, that's what they
were. I was one who had no wealth to lose (in the general
crash of accumulated wealth mine made no noise at all) but
410 ART YOUNG: HIS LIFE AND TIMES
I was having no end of trouble in adjusting myself to the
havoc wrought by the panic and its effect on my personal
affairs.
Before me was the prospect of beginning all over again
to peddle my pictures and conserve as best I could my connec-
tions with what was left of once prosperous publishing houses
on which I had long depended, I had seen so much ruin in
the wake of the stock-gambling insanity and the tolerant way
in which the people generally took it that I became sick,
mentally and physically, as I contemplated what was hap-
pening.
Now in my sixties, after all those years of effort, I was
poor and ailing, and fearful lest I become dependent on
others, I pictured myself as an inmate of the county farm —
in the old days we called it "the poor-house/* but the name
had been changed to make it sound less humiliating. I saw
myself with long white whiskers, sitting in a corner chair,
with dim-watery eyes, a blueish-pink nose, and with cracker
crumbs on my vest — waiting for the end. I could imagine
the superintendent saying to visitors:
"There's Art Young over there. They say he used to be
quite a noted feller, a c'toonist or something."
And I thought: Well, if that's to be my finish, it's no
worse than that of millions of others. But there was small
consolation in that.
I was still spending the colder months of each year in
New York. Howard Smith and I shared the fourth-floor
bathroom at 9 East 17th street with the occupants of an-
other studio on that floor. Early in June, 1930, I was re-
laxing in warm water in the tub and thinking about going to
the country soon, so as to escape from the evidences of the
depression in the city. When I got through I found that while
I was taking that leisurely bath, a sneak thief had entered
our studio and walked off with my best suit of clothes and my
pocket-book, which contained $23 in cash and a $100 check.
I hastened to have a stop-order put against the check, but no
attempt was made to cash it. Also I notified the police. The
thief was never caught.
Soon I got away to Connecticut, and my secretary, Jeanne
Duval, went along. A cheerful and conscientious youngster,
ART YOUNG: HIS LIFE AND TIMES 411
who had studied drawing and painting. She spent that sum-
mer on Chestnut Ridge, as she had the previous summer,
classifying my drawings, taking care of my correspondence,
and keeping the gallery open Saturdays and Sundays for
casual visitors. On other days, when not occupied otherwise,
she roamed the countryside painting pictures.
Going back to New York in the fall, I heard reports on
the general economic situation which caused me to have mis-
givings about my own future. Cartoons were harder to sell,
my market narrower than ever. What pictures I sold brought
in little money.
The Socialist party's national office had me do a few more
drawings for a new edition of a booklet called the Socialist
Primer, which I had written and illustrated to aid Scott
Hearing's campaign when he was running for Congress in an
East Side district This contained such questions and answers
as the following:
"Is this a spider? It is. What is its other name? The Capitalist
System* Has he got an ant in his web? He has. What is the ant's
other name? Workingman. Does the spider like to have the ants
organize? No, he prefers to deal with them 'individually.'
"See the boss and the worker. What are they doing— dividing
up? They are. Is it a fair divide? Never mind, the boss decides
that.
"Does the man like to jump like a dog for his food, shelter,
and clothing? No. But the boss pulling the strings tells him it
develops his character.
"See the oil well . . . and the river. . . . Who owns the
oil well? A private company of speculators. Who owns the river?
The public. Is not oil used by the public just as water is? Of
course. Then why doesn't the public own the oil well? That's
what Socialists want to know."
Shortly before Thanksgiving Day I got word that my
son Don was in jail in Hoboken. I asked my lawyer friend
Abe Friedman to see what he could find out about that. He
phoned, asking what the charge was, and was told: "Assault
and battery — in a street fight."
That puzzled me, for I knew Don was usually able to
keep out of trouble. So Abe and I took the ferry over to
New Jersey* We found Don in the old city jail in Hoboken —
with several other prisoners in the "bull pen/' the sight of
412 ART YOUNG: HIS LIFE AND TIMES
him as he was led out into an ante-room made me feel ill,
for his head was bound with a bloody bandage.
Then we got the story. Don had gone to Hoboken the
evening before, to see a friend off who was sailing to Europe
on a freighter. While they were walking toward the docks,
they were halted by two men who, without identifying them-
selves, began to ask personal questions which Don answered
was "none of your God-damned business/' One of the men
laid a hand on Don, who replied by soaking the stranger
in the jaw. Whereupon the questioners hauled out black-
jacks, proceeded to beat up Don and his companion, and
when they got through with that, revealed that they were
detectives.
Presently Don and his friend were taken before the
police magistrate, with Abe Friedman appearing for them.
They told their stories, and were released. Thinking of this
incident, and what could happen to innocent persons mind-
ing their own business on the public streets, I felt weak and
nauseated, Don was philosophic enough about it all, charg-
ing the incident off to experience, but it took something
out of me.
The cold early days of December seemed to chill my
bones, and I was low on energy. I would get up after a full
night's sleep, quite as tired as when I went to bed. The Seven-
teenth Street studio no longer spelled comfort. And I was
beginning to find that climbing the stairs to the fourth floor
wasn't so easy as it had been; indeed, I had never thought
of it as a hardship before. Now my heart would have spells
of fluttering like a wounded bird.
I could understand artists getting worn out when they
had been doing a kind of work under compulsion in which
they could take no real interest. But I knew I was not over-
worked. My kind of labor was fundamentally a conserver
of health and youth. Nevertheless something was the matter
with me. I was too irritable. Bills for rent, light, telephone,
and laundry would make me mad. In the ideal world I visual-
ize, these necessary adjuncts to living would not be such a
money-problem as to make them worth worrying about.
I remembered the $3,000 that the building of the gallery
ART YOUNG: HIS LIFE AND TIMES 413
had cost; I had no regrets about that, but I wished I had
that much money again.
Unquestionably I was becoming a case for the wise men
of the medical profession. "Maybe I'm one of those terrible
neurotics/' I thought.
One morning I was crossing Union Square, looking, I
have reason to believe now, 'like the wrath of God/' Half
way to Fourth Avenue, I met Eddie Levinson, who appeared
alarmed when he saw me, and said I ought to go to a doctor.
Immediately I went to see my old friend, Dr. Harry Lorber,
who stethoscoped me, and gave me pertinent advice. Then
a few days later to Dr. Abraham Stone, who examined me
further and then took me over to the Union Health Center.
There Dr. George Price and his coterie of doctors led me
to a room, where they examined the "artery transit" of my
blood stream.
I didn't look at the machine that was registering my
trouble, but I saw those doctors watch it as closely as if
they were discovering some valuable information that I ought
to know. Their eyes registered greater and greater astonish-
ment until the hand of the meter finally stopped. For a
normal man of my age the pressure was much too high — I
had read that in their faces. I asked: How high?
Dr. Price shook his head, saying: "Over two hundred/'
He questioned me about my habits. One thing he told me
Td have to do — "stop walking up those flights of stairs/*
"Well/' I said, "you advise people to do mountain climb-
ing, don't you?'*
"Yes, but not you."
After this, at the suggestion of Samuel DeWitt, I went
to see Dr. Solon Bernstein — who fluoroscoped and explored
my anatomical jungle. And I had a session with the amiable
Dr. A, L, Goldwater, who prescribed for me a strict diet.
I have always had a fondness for doctors, for they are
usually fine fellows to talk with, especially out of hours.
And I go from one to another without much regard for the
ethics of the profession — which, as I understand it, is "one
physician at a time — don't mix them/'
Eddie Levinson visited me often. He asked me to tell
him how I was fixed financially. I handed him my bankbook,
414 ART YOUNG: HIS LIFE AND TIMES
/
which showed a meager balance. Eddie promptly conferred
with Adelaide Schulkind, Norman Thomas, and Sam De-
Witt. Acting as a voluntary committee, they talked wither
wrote to others, and as a result money was raised which
assured me of being able to cover my expenses for months to
come, and to take ample time in which to get well. I was
told that I could loaf as long as I wanted to, without feeling
that I had to produce and sell pictures. But loafing was the
hardest of all things for me to do.
To eliminate the stair-climbing I moved over to the
Earle Hotel on Waverly Place, recommended as quiet and
comfortable by Deborah Camp. A month later Ben Belsky
invited me to his apartment on Columbia Heights, in Brook-
lyn, and I enjoyed some pleasant weeks there.
I looked forward to the warmth of spring. I knew I
needed to get away from the city's tumult, and again I longed
to have trees and grass around me and to walk barefooted on
plowed ground. While I rested in town, Sam DeWitt went
up to Bethel and inspected my house on Chestnut Ridge
Road, to make certain that it was in proper shape for me as
a place of convalescence. He had repairs made, bought some
new furniture, and saw to it that the kitchen equipment was
complete.
In April I took a train for Connecticut, accompanied by
a twenty-year-old nurse who had been engaged in my behalf.
It was refreshing to return to the soil and I felt that here I
would surely get well — though my energy was scant, and
it was essential that I remain in bed many hours out of each
twenty-four.
I got into the sun daily, and that was the best part of the
whole scene. Some days I spent a few minutes in the gallery,
noted the idle drawing table, and thought wistfully of all
the work I had turned out on it, but had no inclination now
to touch a pen. Looking at the backs of the books on my
library shelves, I saw old favorites that I had long intended
to re-read. Yet I opened none of them.
But a bright day came in June when I had considerable
more strength than in months, and soon afterward I went
down to New York for another examination, which showed
some hopeful signs* I was enough better so that it was pos-
sible to dispense with the nurse's services.
ART YOUNG: HIS LIFE AND TIMES 415
My chief need at this stage was not a nurse, but a man
of all work, especially one who could prepare my meals.
Accordingly the committee enlisted an old-time "Soakalist,"
as he pronounced the word Socialist, a veteran migratory
worker named Stahl, who was a familiar figure around the
Rand School, He was all right in the culinary line, but he
had one idiosyncrasy — he refused to use any of the aluminum
pots and pans which hung in my kitchen, holding that such
utensils generated poison in food. He insisted on cooking in
old tin coffee-cans.
I learned later that Stahl had been a lone beach-comber
on the south shore of Long Island for years. He had a col-
lection of reminiscences that were fairly interesting the first
time he related them, but he wore his stories thin by repeti-
tion, and after two months he had ceased to be either of real
help or a novelty to me. So I had to give him notice.
Then the committee sent up a Nicaraguan boy of excellent
qualities. He cooked well, introducing" appetizing dishes na-
tive to his home land. When he could be drawn into talk,
he had good stories to tell, and some bitter memories. For he
had seen civil war in Nicaragua, and his family were active
political insurgents, siding with the cause for which young
General Cesar Sandino gave his life. Of those memories, how-
ever, he said little, and in the main he was a cheerful person
to have around.
Though I was manifestly in better condition physically,
and though the group of loyal friends in New York assured
me" that I needn't worry, that there was no danger of my
going hungry, I still had dark hours in which I was fearful
of becoming permanently dependent upon others. Days would
come when I was weighted down with melancholy that I
could not shake off — and nights when I would lie awake
thinking of dire things which might happen to me. Often,
for no tangible reason, I would feel that I was at the end of
my long journey.
Those dark periods were lightened now and then by the
visits of friends, some from New York and others who lived
elsewhere in Connecticut They would drop in unannounced,
bringing news of the outside world, and we would repair
416 ART YOUNG: HIS LIFE AND TIMES
to the gallery and talk over old times, old battles in the
class struggle, and changing situations the world over.
On one such day an idea took hold of me which lifted
my spirits away up. . . . Before I go to the poorhouse, I told
myself, I'll write and illustrate one more book. Though
nearly forty years had gone by since the publication of my
first volume, Hell Up to Date, the curious interest I had had
then in the infernal regions once more absorbed my thinking.
I had seen so much hell on earth that I was eager now to
find out what the ancient theological region was like after
the passage of four decades.
Early in September I began to map out the new Hell
book. The morning after Labor Day was cold, but I didn't
mind that. I took the sun on my bare body for twenty
minutes, had breakfast, and got busy on the manuscript,
James Rorty happened to come over that afternoon, from
his place in Easton, and was a booster for my explora-
tion project. And in a few days Stuart Chase was a visitor,
and then Manuel Komroff, each voicing encouragement. . * .
So I descended into Hell again, this time finding an entrance
in New York City as I had in Chicago in 1892.
During my 1892 exploration of the smoky regions below,
I observed that so much mechanization had been effected
that in interviewing His Satanic Majesty I asked him if he
was not afraid that the capitalists eventually would wrest
control from him, and in the interest of progress and profit,
force him to abdicate. Satan laughed merrily and asserted
that he could handle any emergency.
But he was more confident than clever, for I found in
1931 that he had been compelled to resign his power to the
industrialists and bankers. The "malefactors of great wealth"
and the "economic royalists" who had gone there since my
first visit had arrogated to themselves the right to rule under
a constitution written by their lawyers, a Supreme Court of
their own selection, and an All-Hell Congress, representing
their interests.
Nominally, the new government was a parliamentary
monarchy, with Satan at its head. The simple natives still
called him king, but to the ruling financiers he was just a
rubber stamp. His prerogatives had been restricted to shaking
hands, receiving committees, laying corner-stones, and talk-
ART YOUNG: HIS LIFE AND TIMES 417
ing over the radio. In fact, the whole domain had become a
plutocracy, known today as a state of fascism or military
capitalism, with most of the punishments and horrors of
such governments which curse the upper world
SKETCHING DEVILS.
Art Young's Inferno
I had occasion to record in the manuscript of my book,
as it grew through the ensuing months, some pathetic re-
unions and interviews with still sturdy old-timers, Charon,
the ancient Greek ferryman of the Styx, had been compelled
to retire, being displaced by a young sinner called Gharon II,
418 ART YOUNG: HIS LIFE AND TIMES
nicknamed "the Snappy/' who captained a handsomely
equipped passenger boat, Socrates, Plato, and Homer were in
a sanitarium for the queer, where I also talked with Thoreau,
Walt Whitman, Cellini, Karl Marx, Tom Paine, Louise
Michel and many others. None of these sinners was allowed
to participate in public affairs. Their segregation was con-
sidered a necessary precaution against their upsetting the
normal thinking of the Gehenna masses.
Corporations controlling affairs in Hell under the new
regime included the Sulphur Toothpaste Company, the Smell
Syndicate, United Lava, Vitriol Distilleries, Noise Amplify-
ing Corporation, Cinders Cigarette Company, Pitch Chew-
ing Gum, Allied Alarm Clocks, Juggernaut Trucks, Intestinal
Gas Company, Amalgamated Motor Sirens, Pink Bathroom
Equipment Company, Allied Poison Gas, and Pitchforks,
Inc.
One of the oldest inhabitants complained bitterly to me
of the changes in Hell He was boiled in oil for 3,000 years,
but averred that the medieval Hades was preferable to the
new one with all its so-called comforts and compensations —
modern plumbing, motor cars, movies, jazz, and the radio.
Money, which was unknown there in Dante's time, was
now minted, and the problem of the millions of suffering
sinners was to get some of it in order to exist. There were a
Wall Street, subways, insurance payments on everything,
ear-shattering noises, sickening odors, unemployment, profit
madness, slums, pay toilets (usually two miles away) , rival
wars for certain areas of the narrowing open spaces— quite
as on the earth's crust.
When the 1932 Presidential campaign got into swing I
interrupted my work on the Hell book, and was glad to be
in another political contest The national office of the Social-
ist party had commissioned me to produce two cartoons
each week*
Herbert Hoover was running for re-election against
Franklin D. Roosevelt, then Governor of New York, while
Norman Thomas was again the Socialist standard-bearer, and
William Z. Foster headed the Communist ticket.
One of my cartoons which attracted the most comment
in that campaign was entitled "Hoover Mostly Cheek/' And
ART YOUNG: HIS LIFE AND TIMES 419
another showed the Republican and Democratic parties as
sloppy silk-hatted old reprobates lying in a gutter, while a
Republican voter was saying to a Democratic voter; "Must
we help those two old bums up again?"
This time the spirit of protest was strong again, and
Thomas came close to the Debs showing of 1920, tallying
GHOSTS. Cartoon syndicated by the Socialist Party.
*Tm the Unknown Soldier. Who are you?"
"1*01 the Forgotten Man. The way I figure it out, they make us famous
because we're nobody in particular."
884,781 votes, while Foster got 102,991. Jacob Coxey of
the famous march of ragged men was on the national ballot
also, under the Farmer-Labor emblem, and was the choice
of 7,309 voters.
I went back then to the writing and drawing for the
report on my visit to the world farthest down, and early in
1933 it was in final shape. Going to New York, I offered
420
ART YOUNG: HIS LIFE AND TIMES 421
it to four or five publishers, but all turned it down; did
not think it would be profitable.
Finally, late in the year, it was brought out by the
Delphic Studios. My book was entitled Art Young's Inferno.
It comprised 176 large pages of text and cartoons; and Jose
Clemente Orozco did a brush-drawing caricature head of me
for the jacket.
In launching this work, the Delphic Studios staged an
exhibition of my drawings which was billed as my ' 'first
and last one-man show/' Published in a limited subscription
edition, the Inferno book received a lot of favorable and
gratifying reviews though it never became a best seller.
As the months went on I drew occasional cartoons for
the radical and liberal magazines, and some for Vincent
Astor's weekly, Today, and thus managed to keep afloat But
my income was uncertain, and my spirits were up and down
from day to day. As summer waned I realized that I was
nearer bankruptcy than ever before, and the specter of the
poorhouse rose again before me. I said nothing to any one
about this fear. It was never easy to tell people about my
troubles — I have always disliked to speak of them, lest I be
thought a whiner.
But again at this stage some good friends suspected what
was happening to me, asked questions, and thoughtfully
came to my rescue. While I was in the depths of gloom a
little group in New York City got busy and arranged a
testimonial benefit for me. It was staged in the Civic Reper-
tory Theatre on Fourteenth Street on Sunday evening,
November 18, 1934. That historic old playhouse was
crowded to the doors, and from all accounts it was a memor-
able occasion. An important factor in drawing that throng
was a special Art Young Supplement issued by the New
Leader; but of greatest value was a quiet but widespread
promotion campaign conducted by the testimonial committee
under the direction of its treasurer, Adelaide Schulkind, who
has endeared herself to thousands in the Ubor movement as
the tireless executive secretary of the League for Mutual Aid.
To show the united- front character of tjbose behind the
testimonial, and as an expression of my deep appreciation, I
422 ART YOUNG: HIS LIFE AND TIMES
want to set down here the names of all on the sponsoring
committee;
Bruce Bliven, Arthur Brisbane, Heywood Broun, Earl
Browder, William E. Browder, Saxe Commins, Floyd Deli
Samuel A. DeWitt, Theodore Dreiser, Max Eastman, Morris
L. Ernst, Bruno Fischer, Elizabeth Gurley Flynn, Martha
Foley, Mary Fox, Al J. Frueh, Lewis S. Gannett, William
C. Gassner, Susan Glaspell, Henry Glintenkamp, Michael
Gold, William Cropper, Albert H. Gross, Henry Hart Arthur
Garfield Hays, Harry Kelly, Herbert Klein, Manuel Komroff,
Walt Kuhn, Margaret Larkin, Dr. Robert L. Leslie, Hiram
Motherwell, James Oneal, Frank L. Palmer, Amos Pinchot,
HEYWOOD BROUN
Charles Recht, Elmer Rice, Adelaide Schulkind, Gilbert
Seldes, John Sloan, Otto Soglow, Arthur Spingarn, John L.
Spivak, Norman Thomas, Carlo Tresca, Hendrik Van Loon,
Oswald Garrison Villard, B. Charney Vladeck, Anna Strun-
sky Walling, Harry Weinberger, Louis Weitzenkorn, Walter
White, Alexander Woollcott, Carl Zigrosser.
Unable to be present that evening, I had sent a letter to
Heywood Broun, the master of ceremonies, which he read
from the stage. In part that letter said:
'Please impress upon the audience, the performers, and
the League for Mutual Aid my sincere gratitude for this
night of celebration of my 'century of progress/ (Or is it only
sixty-eight years? Anyhow, the time doesn't matter.) As a
veteran of the radical movement, I'm a little the worse for
ART YOUNG: HIS LIFE AND TIMES 423
wear, and am advised to avoid the 'wicked city* and 'undue
excitement' for a while longer. So to my regret I cannot be
with you to enjoy the comradeship and entertainment.
"But I will try to deserve the festivities in my honor
by endeavoring to express myself hereafter with bigger and
better bitterness, for it has been truly said by some critics of
my work that I am often too gentle with the enemy.
"When one reflects upon the sorrow, misery, and death
caused by the profit system, it is doubtful if it deserves any
tolerance at all, especially at this stage of its maniacal stu-
pidity. . . .
"And yet, for all that is happening, we have good reason
to dance and sing, not only as a brief respite from the punish-
ment of having to live in this inferno, but because the end of
Capitalism is near and the principles of Socialism are going
to be applied to life and industry.
"I don't know the meaning of 'dialectic materialism/ and
many other terms used by the polemical experts, and I try
not to get overly excited about them. All I know is the differ-
ence between right and wrong. The cause of the workers is
right and the rule of Capitalism is wrong, and right will
win. . . ."
This testimonial provided a fund which has enabled
me to go on for four and a half years without anxiety about
income. When the first money from that fund was sent to me,
the committee wrote saying: "Be assured that this is given
not in any sense as charity, but as a definite tribute to the
enduring value of your work/'
And my spirit was further warmed by receiving number-
less letters of appreciation which had come to the committee
with contributions from individuals of all shades of political
opinion in the labor and radical movements, from writers,
artists, actors, musicians, and men and women in many
other walks of life.
Chapter 39
AMONG THE SILK HATS AT BRISBANE'S FUNERAL
MY Inferno book had attracted enough attention so
that early in 1935 James Henle of the Vanguard
Press indicated that he was receptive to the idea of
publishing a volume which would contain a representative
selection of my pictures, with little text* A contract was signed
and the choosing of drawings was begun by an informal
committee. A long arduous job, with much re-sifting of
material, which took months.
Publication finally came in November, 1936, celebrated
by the publishers with a cocktail party in a studio on Fifty-
seventh Street. The title of the book was The Best of Art
'Young, and it included an introduction by Heywood Broun,
saying:
"Like most efficient radicals, Art Young is utterly con-
servative in one respect. I refer to his art. The subject might
be provocative and wholly distasteful to standpatters, but the
line which he drew was tight and stern and as ruggedly in-
dividualistic as the mind of Herbert Hoover. . . . Modern
art never so much as rumpled his hair. He drew the most
shocking and scandalous cartoons, all done in the somewhat
nostalgic manner of one who had been frightened by a wood-
cut in his early life. At a distance an Art Young drawing
suggested the illustration for some moral maxim. Closer view-
revealed the fact that he was saying that every exploiter
should fry eternally for his sins/'
After that work came out, friends would ask: "Why
was such-and-such a picture omitted?" and I could only
answer that the selection was based on the best judgement
of the committee which made it, and that probably no two
persons ever could agree on what was the best of an artist's
work during fifty years as a producer.
In 1936 I was asked by a firm of New York art-book
publishers to write a biography of Thomas Rowlandson, to
424
ART YOUNG: HIS LIFE AND TIMES 425
be used with reproductions of his pictures as one of a series
dealing with significant artists. The series included an estimate
of Van Gogh by Walter Pach, and of the elder Pieter Breughel
by Aldous Huxley. I assented, signed a contract, and put in
many weeks of labor on the job.
That was an unhappy and disillusioning experience. The
book came out in March, 1938, copyrighted by an organiza-
tion I had never heard of and bearing the imprint of a com-
pany also unknown to me. I was never paid the agreed-upon
advance for this writing, nor did the publishers take me into
their confidence in making up the volume. The company
with which I had made my original contract had gone into
the hands of a creditors' committee, and my efforts to pin
responsibility on anybody were futile. The book was wretch-
edly produced, most of the Rowlandson prints being mal-
treated and cheapened in the engraving process, in a way to
discredit the English caricaturist's masterful designs.
Meanwhile John Beffel came up to Connecticut occasion-
ally, when he could get away from an editorial job in New
York, and went ahead with the assembling of notes for this
autobiography. I wrote at random on past events; we had
agreed that that would be the easiest way. Week by week
the manuscript grew. At times I was appalled by the prodi-
gious task ahead — the matter of getting dates correct, for
instance. At my age it is easy to be ten years out of the way
on some happening when thinking back. And there was the
need of recalling names of people important in my life long
ago that had faded from my memory.
But there are ways of refreshing one's memory, as I
found . to my frequent surprise and gratification. Some old
letter or newspaper clipping that we came upon in the attic
of my house on Chestnut Ridge, or in the studio, would
bring a completely forgotten episode back, as clear in detail
as a stereopticon picture thrown upon a screen.
Nineteen Thirty-Six also saw me active in the national
political campaign. Among other output I did a series of
cartoons for the Socialist Call, in behalf of the candidacy of
Norman Thomas and George Nelson, who headed the party
ticket.
In this contest, however, I found that I could not hon-
estly draw cartoons of attack against Franklin D. Roosevelt
426 ART YOUNG: HIS LIFE AND TIMES
such as I had made against Al Smith and other past can-
didates for the Presidency. All I could do was to be mildly
critical of an honorable man, one of such integrity and cour-
age as is rarely found in political affairs.
Today I think of Roosevelt's problems as being as vast
and formidable as were Lincoln's. I view him as a man hold-
ing to his duty as he sees it, while surrounded by national
and international chaos, a man who is trying to do his best
for his own country and deal as honorably as circumstances
will permit in the nation's diplomatic relations with other
^y
Socialist Call
A GREEK FABLE UP TO DATE. Orpheus plays enchanting music,
but what can he do to rescue the people? (The New Deal looked a little too
optimistic to me.)
countries. And I think of Eleanor Roosevelt as a woman of
such human and uncompromising qualities that they make her
not just in name but truly the first lady of the land*
One of my cartoons in the 1936 campaign, entitled
"Can He Save Them?" portrayed Roosevelt as Orpheus in
classic robes playing beautiful music on a lyre in the modern
Hell of war, poverty, and kindred evils, charming all who
listened, while the long-suffering multitude hopefully ex-
pected him to rescue them as the Orpheus of Greek legend
ART YOUNG: HIS LIFE AND TIMES 427
had rescued the maiden Eurydice, and all Hell had forgotten
its pain.
Yet I would hate to have it said of me that my cartoons
never hurt. To live a life as a caricaturist 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.
Sometimes his job calls for downright cruelty, but to produce
a cartoon that is nothing but an insulting burlesque of a
public man is not my idea of forceful attack. It often happens,
however, that a public man serves as a symbol of wrong
because of his record, and as such he is properly a subject
for lampooning, but to be assailed less as an individual than
as a sponsor of the idea for which he stands.
Of course when one feels that everybody, even the most
predatory of capitalists, is also a victim of the system of
(\unJ
MY SLOUCH HAT, in distinguished company at Arthur Brisbane's
funeral.
which he is a part, one's steel is in danger of not being ground
sharply enough for effective warfare. But not to hurt with
an idea and his manner of expressing it proves that the car-
toonist is nothing but a court jester whom the money mon-
archs like to have around, and when he dies they will say
"he never hurt/'
Just now an old clipping from the Rochester (N. Y.)
Herald turned up; under a photograph of myself is mention
of the Associated Press libel suit, and the added sentence:
"Young is said to be agreeable to know socially, but he puts
vitriol into his cartoons/'
I was in New York when Arthur Brisbane died on
Christmas, 1936, at the age of 72. His funeral rites were held
in St. Bartholomew's Church, and I served as an honorary
pallbearer. There was a curious feeling for me in being there,
suggested in a cartoon I drew later that day, in which my
slouch hat appeared alone in a sea of high hats. Those shiny
428 ART YOUNG: HIS LIFE AND TIMES
toppers were on the heads of big shots of finance and politics
including Governor Lehman. I noted that Mayor LaGuardia
and Vincent Astor also were among my fellow pallbearers.
I don't know what was in the minds of the notables
around me, but I was feeling sorry not only for the late
chief editor of the Hearst papers and his family, but for
everybody in the crowded church, the many who had known
Brisbane's acts of personal kindness outside of business hours
and those who knew that his unusual talent, however cor-
rupted, had often aroused4 thought for the good and true.( I
was sorry, too, for everybody who had to die — or live — in
this crooked world.
Brisbane's passing gave me much to think about, for
we had kept up our contact through the years, ever since
those few months when he had me working for him in the
Evening Journal art department around 1900. I had seen
him become more and more cynical and hard, increasingly
subservient to the Hearst interests, and a willing defender of
and apologist for militarism and the power of money.
The last time I saw him was perhaps in 1935, when I
was seldom contributing to periodicals and to all appearances
laid on the shelf. Nevertheless I was still drawing and writ-
ing, with a view to possible future publication. Always
solicitous about my work, Brisbane inquired: 'What are you
doing now?"
"Oh, trying to express myself/* I said.
He gave me one of his characteristic snap-answers: "No-
body's self is worth expressing/' and then added a tired
afterthought: "But perhaps you're right/'
Kenneth Chamberlain, cartoonist for the Sunday Ameri~
can, who saw him frequently during his final illness, told me
that he was looking over my latest book, while propped up
in bed, a few days before his death*
I remembered my first meeting with Brisbane when he
was a brilliant young man on the World, and Joseph Pulit-
zer's favorite. He had won his spurs previously under Dana
on the Sun. I recalled when he went with Hearst and got a
bonus for each thousand increase in the Journal's circulation,
and was soon getting rich. One of his first editorials in that
paper created a sensation. Headed "A little truth will do no
ART YOUNG: HIS LIFE AND TIMES 429
harm/' it had to do with an old woman outcast, whom he
described as a victim of our social system.
I remembered his love of pictures — how he could write
"all around" a cartoon that ignited his imagination; his
capacity for hard work, his gift of imagination, his original-
ity as a commentator on news, his passion for contrasts and
striking cartoons, his dislike of ornate diction. But singularly
he was attracted by pen-and-ink pictures in which there was
an abundance of technique.
He would drop me a line now and then asking me to
show him my latest cartoons when he was writing the Sunday
spread of sermonized editorials, for he always could write
best when he had a picture before him. It was remarkable
how he could amplify, quote, and discourse on whatever
theme he chose.
He enjoyed looking at the ideas that I carried with me,
briefly sketched on a writing pad. Sometimes he would O.K.
two or three at a time. He liked my way of putting an idea
across the footlights — and often, told me so. These cartoons
when finished invariably expressed my own thinking, and I
was keen to see what he had written about them when they
appeared in the Sunday American. As a rule he did not violate
my meaning, as he might have done in later years when the
Hearst policy became brutally Fascist, but held close to what
I had sought to say pictorially. In those days I doubt if any
other writer could have written under such pressure of time
and with such facility and easy-to-read clarity. His secre-
taries knew that I had the right of way whenever I called
to see him; others could wait.
It was Brisbane's idea that modern life was a matter of
sheer survival of the fittest, and his conception of the fit were
those with brains for business. I had arguments with him
about that, my belief being that the acquisitive sense and the
ability to succeed as a money-maker frequently made the
possessor the most unfit to survive.
Around 4 p.m. in the old days he would start pounding
out editorials for the next day on his typewriter. Some time
later he increased his high efficiency by installing dictaphones
in his office, home, and automobile, even using one when
traveling by rail. Once when his car was standing at the
curb outside the Hearst building with no one in it, Gene
430
ART YOUNG: HIS LIFE AND TIMES 431
Fowler, then managing editor of the American and an in-
corrigible joker, stepped into it and dictated a half dozen
paragraphs for Arthur's daily column, burlesquing the well-
known Brisbane style. He dealt with the gorilla's ability to
lick Jack Dempsey single-handed, and other favorite themes
of Hearst's No, 1 man. Brisbane's temper hit the roof when
he read the draft of this stuff typed out by his private
secretary.
He was undoubtedly the leading American apostle of
Fight Maga*inef 1933
FOR ADOPTION.
speed and success. One day we were talking in his office when
he asked suddenly: "How old are you, Young?"
"Fifty-one/'
"Just my age," he said, and added: "You'd better hurry/'
My friend Walt McDougall, who had done the first
daily newspaper cartoons in New York a few years before
I did the first in Chicago, found an exit from his chaotic
world with the aid of an old long-muzzled horse pistol in
1938. He met his end in the house where he had lived alone
432 ART YOUNG: HIS LIFE AND TIMES
on the bank of the Niantic river near Waterf ord, Connecticut.
A diary in his handwriting contained a recent entry telling of
* 'tough times/'
Walt had a son and many friends, but somehow had let
himself become isolated, and mental depression closed down
on him in his old age* I know of people who had been near
to him, and who afterward blamed themselves for not keep-
ing a better eye on his welfare. Yet I realize that in recent
years, with all the economic stress in the world, many in-
dividuals have drifted away from old associates, largely be-
cause they have had their own difficult problems to cope
with and to take on the troubles of others has become too
much for them.
Probably no cartoonist of my acquaintance had more
fun than Walt McDougalL Through his long career he was
both an industrious worker and a light-hearted playboy, and
his autobiography, This is the Life, is rich in colorful anec-
dote.
Chapter 40
OVERFLOW MEETING OF MEMORIES
HAVING written all this, I am conscious of the fact
that much has been left out of my story. I skim
through folders of letters, newspaper clippings, pages
from magazines, handbills announcing mass-meetings called
for a long succession of causes, and sheaves of notes on the
economic struggle and the passing show — and I am appalled
ROUNDING UP THE UNBRIDLED PAST.
at the realization of how many individuals more or less vital
to my life have found no place in this running narrative.
Leaning back in my chair and looking at my living-room
wall or off into the green Connecticut hills, I ponder the
decades through which I have come, and recall countless in-
cidents which might properly be set down here. If it were
possible to take an additional year, all these stray recollections
might be assembled in orderly fashion, each in its exact
niche. But that essential year is not available.
433
434 ART YOUNG: HIS LIFE AND TIMES
There is, however, another way out. Hence this chapter,
in which many extra memories can be thrown in pell-mell,
with no attempt at correct sequence and no bothering to spend
more hours checking dates. One's thoughts flow thus, so why
not one jumble-chapter in a book of reminiscence?
In putting my autobiography together, I have often
stopped short with the self-conscious feeling that some of it
perhaps would be regarded by my audience as shameless ex-
hibitionism. Yet I have kept on with the telling anyhow.
And I have tried to write honestly, difficult though it be for
any man to do that in such a narrative, for he necessarily
lacks perspective on himself.
Here, then, are odds and ends dipped from the overflow.
Seeing President Sadi Carnot of France and his wife in
the Louvre four years before an assassin stabbed him to
death. ... A night with Jack Reed exploring the Great
White Way, which resulted in an illustrated article called
"From Omaha to Broadway " for the Metropolitan Maga-
zine. . . . Mary Blair and Constant Eakin entertaining
people from miles around at an old-fashioned Fourth of July
celebration on their broad lawn at Redding Ridge, Conn.;
the host in white suit and red sash as master of ceremonies,
introducing me in a silk hat as the "renowned Senator/' My
speech contained all the spread-eagle oratory I used to hear
as a boy.
Eugene Field having me write some anecdotes, illustrated
with thumb-nail sketches, which he used in his Chicago Daily
News column. . . . Visiting the famous Hoffman House bar
in New York when I first arrived there, to see Bouguereau's
painting, "Nymphs and Satyr/' which hung beneath a plush
canopy. . . . Letter from George Cram Cook asking me to
"rearrange your entire plan of life and work" and to play a
role in a Greek play put on by the Provincetown Players —
"the part of the chief magistrate of Athens summoning the
Athenian ladies to desist from their feminist revolt against
the war with Sparta/' Somehow this seemed to call for too
much effort.
Louis Gardy, Sunday editor of the New York Call, using
a cartoon of mine in a special Child Labor issue in January,
191 7 — the one in which a devil with a forked tongue touches
ART YOUNG: HIS LIFE AND TIMES 435
an infant on the head. "The joke is on you, Baby/1 said the
caption. "They put you here with talent for music, literature,
art, and science — yes, and talent for goodness and play. But
they make you spend most of your time scheming and fight-
ing for the necessities of life. I don't like to tell you, Baby,
but it's a hell of a joke, and it's on you/1 . , . Ida Rauh
sending out a notice in 1913 of a club to be organized, where
men and women could eat, drink, and talk — which led to
the establishment of Mabel Dodge's salon at 23 Fifth Ave-
nue, . . . Frank Harris holding forth there one evening on
personal morals, with especial reference to his own love
affairs.
New York Daily Call
THE JOKE IS ON YOU, BABY.
Meeting Jack London at a dinner in New York, when the
Snark was being made ready in California for his intended
round-the-world voyage; his inviting me to "come out and
see us off/' . , . Sketching O. Henry in Luchow's in New
York in 1908, and his depicting me "as an old 'un/' as we
sat at dinner with my brother Will and Jim Crane. . . *
Buying bright colored socks three or four pairs a week till I
had an old trunk full of them. ... Voting for William
Randolph Hearst for mayor of New York City on a munici-
pal ownership platform. . . . Attempts of my brother Will,
then managing editor of Hampton's Magazine, to get me to
illustrate stories by Eugene Wood and others (around 1909),
436 ART YOUNG: HIS LIFE AND TIMES
and my saying I would not illustrate anything except what
I wrote myself — an attitude which I reversed after I joined
the Metropolitan staff.
Bob Ingersoll speaking at a rally of the McKinley League
in Carnegie Hall in 1896* Big night. Great speech. New York
Sun, in head-line, says Bob "stripped the tinsel from Bryan/'
ROBERT G. INGERSOLL
And as an example of partisan news reporting in that day,
its opening paragraph asserts that: "In the sense that the
audience was made up of persons too intelligent to be deceived
by Mr* Bryan's variety of political twaddle, the meeting was
a gathering of the classes/' , . . Getting word from a travel-
ART YOUNG: HIS LIFE AND TIMES 437
ing friend that a Texas clergyman was delivering serious
lectures on the nether world and using stcreopticon slides
made from the comic pictures in my first book, Hell Up to
Date. . . . Gaston Akoun, "concessionaire," writing me in
1907 from Norfolk, Virginia, asking for the privilege of
using my Hell drawings enlarged in an amusement enterprise
at the Jamestown Exposition to be called Up. and Down —
''not being allowed to call it Hell or any such epithet which
might offend the religious element who will attend/' . , .
I have always been interested in men and women from
other countries, in whatever occupation, that I might learn
their attitudes toward fundamental things. . . . About a
year before Ramsay MacDonald became Premier of Great
Britain, I heard him speak at a banquet in New York and
tried to extract from his address some phrase that was defi-
nite. But no — if one sounded at all positive, he would, by
circumlocution of words, qualify it beautifully in the way of
an adept statesman. Put all of his sentences into a sieve, shake
them, and they would all go through, leaving no nuggets of
convincing quality. That's what happens to one who stays
too long in politics; in his youth MacDonald was positive.
Tom Mann, the English labor leader, I saw when he was
eighty. He looked more like an ambassador representing an
old established government than the leader of a minority
group of workers. His speech calling on English soldiers not
to shoot their fathers in a bitter strike (which the Masses
published with a portrait I drew of Mann, and a cartoon of
mine to illustrate the context of his earnest appeal) was to
my mind one of the most eloquent speeches in history, not
excepting those by Marc Antony, Patrick Henry, and Eugene
Debs while on trial for obstructing the war. . . . When I
talked with George Lattsbury at a studio party in his honor
in South Washington Square, I felt that he lived up to what
I had heard about him; that he was the kind of Christian
who would try to persuade Satan himself to mend his ways.
Later he wrote asking me to draw cartoons for Lansbury's
Weekly. Another one of the things I wanted to do, but
couldn't get around to doing.
Meeting Finley Peter Dunne on the street in New York
after my arrest on anti-war charges in 1 91 7, He was no longer
438 ART YOUNG: HIS LIFE AND TIMES
a dissenter; was writing no Dooley observations now to point
out the stupidity being exhibited on many sides by the pro-
war crowd, as he had during the Spanish-American im-
broglio. He seemed a bit sympathetic toward my point of
view, but said: ''Art when the world goes crazy, you have
to go crazy too/' I said something about trying to stay sane,
... A bird flying in through the open door of my gallery
in Connecticut, one day when I was sorting pictures there,
and then, mistaking the skylight for the real sky and trying
CARLO TRESCA
to fly out again — with such anxious cries, flutterings, and
bumpings that I feared it would beat its brains out. But the
frightened creature finally found the open door and flew out.
. . . When I was fourteen on the farm, all four walls of my
room were papered with cartoons printed in that period, and
my drawing table touched my pillow. And so throughout my
life. When I get up in the morning, I look first at the draw-
ing on which I worked yesterday,
Stirring speeches by Bill Hay wood, Arturo Giovannitti
Elizabeth Gurley Flynn, Eugene Debs, Carlo Tresca, Jim
Larkin, Norman Thomas, Mother Jones, Upton Sinclair,
ART YOUNG: HIS LIFE AND TIMES 439
Meyer London, Morris Hillquit, John T. Doran, big Jim
Thompson, Ella Reeve Bloor, Herbert Mahler, and others
on many platforms, for outstanding causes — the Ettor-
New Masses
Governor Fuller: "Cheer up, Judge, it will soon be over/'
Giovannitti-Caruso defense; the LW*W* war cases; the
Mesaba Range case in Minnesota; the great Paterson silk
workers' strike; the striking Colorado and West Virginia
miners facing machine-gun fire; the Mooney-Billings, Sacco-
440 ART YOUNG: HIS LIFE AND TIMES
Vanzetti, and Terzani defenses; the fight to free the four
remaining miners among seven sentenced to life in Harlan
County, Kentucky, because strikers defended their lives
against an attack by mine guards; the Centralia defense in
Washington State; the courageous fighting of Irish and East
Indian revolutionists for independence; the Scottsboro and
Angelo Herndon defenses; the Imperial Valley strikers; and
the share-croppers in the South,
Such speeches added to my education, often moved me to
action. Going back to my drawing board, with a vivid con-
ception of some new wrong, I would do a timely cartoon,
feeling that it couldn't wait till morning. Thus I made pic-
tures to aid most of those causes, for one publication or an-
other. The list is beyond my power of estimation; there was
never time to keep systematic record. Day after day I am
reminded of work of mine, dealing with the economic con-
flict, that I had forgotten for years.
I know that in preceding chapters of this book I have
said that "some of my best work was done for" this or that
publication. And perhaps I'd better sum up here, and say that
that statement applies pretty much to numerous pictorial
contributions of mine to Life, Pack, the Masses, the Libera-
tor, the Metropolitan, and Goorf Morning.
Calvin Coolidge was the only President I had missed
seeing and putting in my sketch-book in many years. Toward
him I felt as my Uncle Lem did in 1886 when Grover
Cleveland was due to speak in his town: "I wouldn't go
'cross the street to see him." I had seen quite enough of Cal
in the news-reels, which had begun to give us Presidents
pictorially raw, sliced, boiled, baked, fried on one side or
turned over, and served in the juice of publicity. One wax-
work figure would have been plenty — so far as I was con-
cerned in the Coolidge kind of fame. ... I find pages from
the New York Herald Tribune of May 30, 1926, in which I
illustrated an article by Duff Gilfond, "The School for
Verdant Congressmen." . . .
Mike Gold phoned me one day in 1926. Would I come
over to his place for dinner next evening? Otto Kahn was to
be there. The banker wanted to meet a few radical writers
and artists. Kahn was well known for his financial help to
ART YOUNG: HIS LIFE AND TIMES 441
straggling artists. Mike's apartment was over near Hudson
Street — walk up three flights. Informal; about a dozen
present. Otto arrived around 9, his chauffeur following and
puffing as he made the climb with a satchel filled with bottles
of champagne.
I was seated next to the guest of honor, and knowing
that his father was a red in Germany in 1848 I asked ques-
ALEXANDER WOOLLCOTT
tions about Kahn senior. Otto seemed to have a great love
and respect for his memory.
Conversation turned to Italy and Mussolini's rise to
power. Something was said about the dictator's financial
backing. "You ought to know all about it, Mr. Kahn/' Carlo
Tresca spoke up. "You lent money to him." Kahn smiled,
but made no reply.
The wine had its effect upon all of us, and we unbent a
good deal. We had dined well and everything was lovely.
After we had left the table Otto began to defend and excuse
the capitalist's point of view. He told eloquently of the
442 ART YOUNG: HIS LIFE AND TIMES
responsibilities and hardships which a fortune entails upon
its owner. Being rich, he explained, meant nothing but trou-
ble and mental suffering. At that I heard Bill Cropper sob-
bing and saw him wipe his eyes with h& handkerchief. The
banker took Bill's acting as a good joke, and presently was
talking of other things.
Afterward I wished we had asked him if he knew any
rich men who had parted with their wealth, to enjoy the
serenity of want. But we were drinking his champagne, and
while the evening was pleasantly informal, we still followed
the rule of etiquette that one must not be too rough with a
guest.
Illustrating a book by that brilliant West Coast satirist,
Charles Erskine Scott Wood, entitled Heavenly Discourse, in
1927, It dealt with conversations by outstanding dignitaries
and some interlopers in the celestial regions. For this volume
I enjoyed doing some portraits of God, a venerable old gentle-
man with long white whiskers. I showed him at the wheel
of the universe, steering a course through space; in a general's
uniform, sounding a call for preparedness; and exhibiting
impatience with Aquarius for his unintelligent manner of
answering prayers for rain from Denver. . . . Illustrating
two trenchant books by Upton Sinclair about education
under capitalism in the United States — The Goose-step and
The Goslings. Both of these added materially to my own
education concerning the malforming of the thoughts of
youth by a system of colleges and schools dominated by the
moneyed interests.
Other work I did in various years — cartoons on profit-
sharing which I could sell nowhere, and tried to give to the
Socialist press, in the early years of this century, only to find
that Socialist editors weren't interested in profit-sharing, . . *
Feature article in the New York Evening World in 1907,
about my experiences as a juror, when I saw John D. Rocke-
feller Jr. sitting as a guest alongside the judge, and a stream
of misery pouring in from the, city prison. . . . Pictures for
Brooklyn Life, 1906; for Scribner's, 1907; for the Woman's
Journal, official organ of the National American Woman
Suffrage Association, 1912; Intercollegiate Socialist, 1913;
for an article by Walter Prichard Eaton, "A Poor Man's
AjRT YOUNG: HIS LIFE AND TIMES 443
Bank/' in the American Magazine, 1914; for the Sunday
World, 1925; a cartoon for the Nation showing a cat lab-
eled Massachusetts Law toying with a mouse, identified as
the Sacco-Vanzetti case. . . . Topical drawings for the
Window Ticker, a periodical leaflet showing "the world in
FOR AN UPTON SINCLAIR BOOK Illustration used on the cover
of Tht
cartoons" sold to stores for display to passersby, around
192L . , ,
Throughout all the years of the Masses and the Libera-
tor, when he was a contributor of poems with an elemental
sweep, I never happened to meet Carl Sandburg. But I think
of him as a voice of the people, and with more reverence for
the true Christian spirit and sympathy for the lowly than
could be found in an average church full of pious members
444 ART YOUNG: HIS LIFE AND TIMES
of the faith. ... A big day at the Academie Jalien in Paris,
when I won second prize in the weekly competition for
painting on a Biblical subject — with a canvas depicting
David's victory over Goliath. How proud I was when other
students congratulated me on the good qualities in my first
real effort to do an oil painting.
Speaking at a dinner to Andre Malraux in New York in
March, 1937. First time I ever spoke over the air. I hate to
be hurried, and I approached the microphone with the same
sense of caution that one feels near a red-hot stove. "I am
allotted five minutes. If I speak only four minutes and ten
seconds, Mr. Chairman, I hope you will know what to do
about it; I don't/' And of Malraux I said:
"It is one thing to sit in a quiet room and write or draw
pictures of revolt against tyranny, and quite another thing
to meet the enemy face to face in armed conflict. Our honored
guest not only has studio courage, but he has that noble dar-
ing shown by the rank-and-file fighters — those individually
unknown heroes in the desperate battle against the insane
scourge of Fascism. It is these heroes of the background — the
brave men and women of farm and factory, whether on the
picket-lines in the United States, or enduring the horrors of
Hitler's inferno, or fighting and dying for an ideal on the
barricades in Spain — it is all of these that we have in mind
when we pay our respects to Malraux. His eyes see what the
aroused working people are beginning to see the world over ;
his will is their will; his heart beats with them and for them/1
If I had no other pleasant memories to recall than those
of the beautiful women I have met who were active in pro-
gressive 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,
ART YOUNG: HIS LIFE AND TIMES 445
Crystal Eastman, Marguerite Tucker, Inez Milholland, Gene-
vieve 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.
ELIZABETH GURLEY FLYNN
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.
Delving into my note books, I come upon some pages
devoted to Edna Porter, She was born in a Socialist environ-
ment. Her father and mother were both early members of
the party in New Orleans. She went on the stage in her teens
in a small part with James O'Neill in The Count of Monte
Crist o, traveled widely with road companies, and finally
toured in Evert/woman, playing the leading role some 2,000
times. When the Actors' Equity Association was organized,
she was in the forefront of its memorable strike.
446 ART YOUNG: HIS LIFE AND TIMES
I knew Edna first at the Rand School when the Masses
was getting started. And for twenty-eight years I have re-
ceived at least two postcards from her each month from
varying parts of the world. She has a passion for discovering
people submerged yet worthy of attention — the lame, halt,
and blind. Often she has taken some struggling artist or poet
in hand and introduced him to persons in a position to aid
and encourage him. One of her services has been typing in
Braille magazine articles and even whole books for Helen
Keller to read.
It was Edna Porter who, with Dr. A. L. Goldwater and
another friend, smuggled a bust of Walt Whitman into the
CLARENCE DARROW
Hall of Fame on May 30, 1919, the day before that poet's
birthday. Next morning's papers, especially the New York
Call, published diverting accounts of the mystery connected
with this occurrence. Up to then the author of Leaves of
Grass had been rigidly barred from that holy section of New
York University, By 1932 he had been officially admitted.
I remember when I first met Marguerite Tucker — at a
memorial meeting for Jack Reed in Beethoven Hall. She sat
near me, and I was struck by the expression on her face as
some woman in black on the stage went through the convolu-
tions of a "Dance of Death/' which seemed a bit too lugubri-
ous for the occasion. For all our feeling of loss over Jack's
end, I felt that he would have preferred less grief and a more
cheerful outlook toward the future* Girls went about the
ART YOUNG: HIS LIFE AND TIMES 447
hall offering "red roses" for sale, and I heard Marguerite say
to one of them: "But these are carnations!" To which the
other said: "What's the difference? They're red/' Talking
with this animate young woman afterward, and thus begin-
ning a lasting friendship, I learned that she was a sister-in-
law of Dame Nellie Melba of Australia, and that she had seen
copies of the Masses on Melba's boudoir sofa in Melbourne.
Florence Kelley's vibrant personality comes back to me
clearly. In Washington I often heard stories of the independ-
ent ways of her father, "Pig Iron" Kelley of Pennsylvania,
who was a member of Congress for thirty years. He got that
nickname because of his insistence upon a high tariff on raw
iron.
I had a special interest in Florence Kelley because she had
been the first chief factory inspector in Illinois, appointed by
Governor Altgeld. With admiration I saw her war on child
labor, sweatshops, and laws discriminating against women —
often in the face of great obstacles, including whispering
campaigns of slander set in motion by her enemies. I can see
her now on the platform, answering a reactionary opponent
who in a debate on a vital piece of legislation, claimed to be
"open-minded." She replied that some people were so open-
minded that ideas never stayed in their heads.
In all my life from youth to the three-score-and-ten
mark I have had mating-intimacy with only eight women.
Not a record to boast about when I reflect that one of the
American Youngs had eighteen wives — and no doubt other
opportunities.
One evening when I talked genealogy with Alexander
Young, the New York lawyer, he said that all of us were
distantly related to Brigham Young. Perhaps the "distant"
relationship accounts for the difference between the Amer-
ican pioneer zeal for breeding and the cautious way of at least
one of the modern Youngs. If we could be reasonably sure
that our children would not become helpless victims of war
or poverty, then abandonment to real love with all its conse-
quences could be as nature willed it. And the arguments for
birth-control would lose some of their meaning.
Yet even without these fears, I know that there should
be scientific care in propagating children, with a view to
SELF-PORTRAIT OF THOMAS NAST, with note acknowledging a
copy of Authors' Readings.
448
ART YOUNG: HIS LIFE AND TIMES 449
quality and not quantity. But my kind of a world would be
one in which even the accidents of birth, twins or even quin-
tuplets— legitimate babies or those not quite so legitimate —
would be welcomed by their parents* And there would be no
reason for dread of their not having decent upbringing or
finding places to work according to their individual abilities.
When I sent Thomas Nast a copy of Authors Readings
in 1 897 he replied with a sketch of himself in an elocutionary
posture and this inscription: ''Will take the book in but feel
out because I am not in it."
Clarence Darrow wrote me in 1928: "On My Way is a
good book except for one thing — you didn't mention me/'
But no one has ever complained about being left out of
my Inferno.
Of this book I know that friends will say: "But why
didn't you mention So-and-so?" No doubt some dear to
memory and certain personality notations that might interest
the reader have been overlooked and the omissions will come
back to plague me in later years. And it may be that some I
have included will think there is no honor in once having been
associated or on friendly terms with one who has acted with
such impropriety against the social code.
Nevertheless, as the curtain goes down on these memoirs
I'm thinking of countless friends and acquaintances — most
of whom I have sketched and kept in notebooks, and who
belong in my life-story. Beside those already mentioned in
the foregoing pages and in the revery picture at the end of
this volume, others will read between the lines and find them-
selves.
Epilogue:
WATCHING THE OLD ORDER CRACK
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 Bernard Gillam, out-
standing 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.
Sometimes a prosperous individual will say to me: "Any
man can succeed in his ambition if he really wants to. Take
you, for instance. Haven't you accomplished what you
wanted to do?" And I answer: "Yes — " Then I have a
repentant feeling for saying that because "No" would be
quite as correct. I tell him that "Yes" is only one small word
of a full, honest answer; only a little part of the whole truth.
I point out that I was compelled to waste about half of
my life scheming and worrying over the problem of making
enough money to keep going, while attempting at the same
time to put aside some of it for lean years and old age, like
a dog hiding a bone. This exercise of my acquisitive sense,
this trying to mix business with creative ability — though it
did not strangle nay talent — might have done so except for
fortuitous circumstances, kind and encouraging parents, lim-
ited competition, and an instinct which told me it ought not
to be strangled if I could possibly help it. Or perhaps a little
bird singing in a tree-top just for joy helped to give me the
hint. Finally I achieved a kind of success.
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
450
ART YOUNG: HIS LIFE AND TIMES 451
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.
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 parisitical 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.
Of course clergymen and other paid teachers and moral-
ists 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 judgement.
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 try-
ing to succeed in a material sense, in short, to reach the goal
of a triumphant animalism.
For that was, and still is, "success/' And the more one
can acquire of physical comforts and delights the more is this
success glorified. I know of course that in these days the
measure of a man's real worth is not taken for granted because
452 ART YOUNG: HIS LIFE AND TIMES
of the size of the fortune he has piled up. But he is still^the
envied one — a shining example for having reached "the
rugged heights/' He is the winner, just as his kind were
acclaimed back in the early years of the twentieth century,
when individualism was king, and Socialism a mere theory
of the crackpots and failures.
I think of myself as a kind of sample of the human race;
in some respects a poor sample, and different, if not peculiar.
But my problems, I feel, have been in the main much like
those of most men and women, at least in this regional habitat
of the race, the United States of America,
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.
The retired millionaire trying to revert to a youthful
love for painting or other tendency in the fine arts, is almost as
pathetic as the poor man who has worked hard all his life at
something in which he has no particular interest and nothing
to show for it, in either money or recognition.
We are all caught and hurt by the system, and the more
sensitive we are to life's highest values the harder it is to bear
the abuse.
I have just looked again at a splash of cartoon-bitterness
against the money incentive which I made for an early issue
of the Masses. It was called "Compulsory Worship/' A pic-
ture of people in endless droves lashed by the demons of
Want and Fear, forcing them to kneel in shameful supplica-
tion at the altar of Mammon* It matters not whether you
ART YOUNG: HIS LIFE AND TIMES 453
believe in such idolatry — your tormentors compel your
prayers. 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.
Through the events of seventy- odd years, as recorded in
these pages, one man managed to find his direction. He
reached his maturity during the upsurge of individualism,
with its so-called "self-made" men (the profit-hounds) and
their rise to dominance over government, the press, church,
colleges, public business, and most of our country's institu-
tions. Slowly this man grew aware of the wrongs resulting
from such sovereignty, and then in his limited way tried to
help in the work of bringing about social change.
But he had to learn that many traditional customs and
beliefs, however unreasonable and absurd they looked to him,
couldn't be changed, and that to compromise with them was
no great fault He saw that there were countless follies and
minor wrongs which, while not to be ignored, were not to be
taken too seriously.
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 be-
tween the moneyed interests and the working people (includ-
ing 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.
As these final words are written, there is mobilizing and
fighting with unspeakable barbarity in many parts of the
world — the last drive of investment-finance against further
advance of our own Lincolnian ideal: government of, for,
and by the people* To describe other outstanding events in
454 ART YOUNG: HIS LIFE AND TIMES
recent years of this conflict in our own country would be
repetition — the same old fighting, except that the forces of
reaction are bolder and more ruthless.
Before finishing, I would like to speak of pleasant and
hopeful signs of the times — the splendid work initiated by
many federal projects; the awakening to the need of solidar-
ity, especially in the professional fields; the League of Amer-
ican Writers, the United American Artists, the American
Circa 1927
OVER THEY GO. Drawing for an LW.W, leaflet on labor-saving1 devices
as a cause of unemployment,
Newspaper Guild, and kindred movements, I see much new
life and beauty that give reason for rejoicing, but it is ob-
scured from view most of the time by the brutality of other
facts — dark realities like the Memorial Day massacre of
Chicago steel strikers in 1937, inhuman conditions in
the California fruit industry, the fostering of race and re-
ligious hatred, suppression of protests and uprisings of
fanners in the western states, persecution of southern share-
croppers, the 12,000,000 or more unemployed in this land
of opportunity, lockouts, lost strikes, vigilante terrorism;
ART YOUNG: HIS LIFE AND TIMES 455
the countless murders, imprisonments, and suicides caused by
the pressure of need for money; and the increase in psycho-
pathic cases growing out of mental anxiety under our crazy
economic system.
What can be done about all this? I do not believe that
making the world better depends upon each one of us becom-
ing good. That is asking too much in these hostile surround-
ings. No doubt "inner transformation*' is what we need, but
outside conditions will not give inner transformation a
chance. Yet 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. First of all, however, our social life must be rightly
conditioned before anyone can grow to a decent stature as an
honest human being or become a proficient unit in the world's
work.
By "rightly conditioned" I mean the common ownership
of land and of the means of production and distribution of
essential commodities. And this, of course, assumes the elim-
ination of private ownership of our vital industries and the
substitution of co-operative business as a public policy, with
no concern for profits beyond the self-sustaining limit of each
industry and the assured welfare of those who do the work.
This is my own definition of Socialism as I learned to
understand it and to believe that to establish it would make
the most substantial groundwork for our individual and col-
lective growth. 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 con-
tentment. From the small boy tinkering with the construc-
tion 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 demon-
456 ART YOUNG: HIS LIFE AND TIMES
strated over and over again in time of floods and other dis-
asters when the call to communal welfare is the only^incentive.
The horror of unemployment is the final undoing of the
worker. When he sees this confronting him he sells him-
self regardless of the intrinsic worth of his ability. Labor
unions and collective bargaining arose to give him some
show of power and dignity.
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 what-
ever they could get — or starve. If money, as it was once
meant to be, were a true symbol of individual worth, the
problem would be simpler, but no one is so benighted as to
believe that in this day it represents true worth any more
than it represents mere luck, favoritism, inheritance, or a
drunken thirst for money-power.
In the beginning of this narrative I told about one of my
first assignments as a pictorial interpreter of events — the trial
of the so-called "Anarchists*' in Chicago, when the primal
reason for hanging four of eight labor leaders was that they
had agitated for the eight-hour day and better wages. From
then until the present there has been savage and ceaseless
warfare. There has been so much purging of labor's ranks by
the dictatorship of the privileged interests in an effort to stab-
ilize its power that the record is one long scroll of infamy.
But the change is at hand — the old order is cracking. It has
been said before that "the cure for democracy is more democ-
racy/'
Many individuals shy at the word "revolution" because
they regard it as a plea for still more terror — still more blood
and tears, as if humanity had not had enough. When I have
spoken of revolution in these pages, it was to visualize the
cycles merging in the progress of governmental ideas through
the centuries.
Having moved from feudalism into concentrated mon-
archy, then to parliamentary and political democracy, and
still further, to include participation of all male and female
ART YOUNG: HIS LIFE AND TIMES 457
adults (without property qualifications) in elections, the
forces which shape and re-shape society are completing the
design in this epoch with industrial democracy. All this evolv-
ing did not just happen. It was accelerated by the propa-
gandists, the statesmen, the writers, the artists, and all who
believed in the natural trend and inevitable need in each
period of changing conditions. It is the opponents of change,
those who will not see that conditions demand it, who deter-
mine the kind of revolution that is impending — whether it
will involve a minimum or a maximum of obstruction and
violence.
Trying to turn back the clock of time is the traditional
impulse of the Tories. But there is still some hope that they
will awaken to the futility of hard negation, and that here
in our own country, where progressive ideas have made ma-
terial headway since 1932 and militant organization of labor
has gained more power to hold this progress, we can come out
into the light of the new democracy through conscious and
planned evolution. This is my hope, not a prediction.
While on trial in war-time I was referred to by my com-
rades as the only pacifist in the indicted Masses group. To be
thought such was pleasing to me. Yet I often wondered if I
could rightly be classed among the noble men and women of
that cause. Sometimes I asked myself: Isn't every moral prin-
ciple, every good thing in life, in danger of being carried too
far? We know it's good to eat, to sleep, to be kind, to be
cautious, and to be tolerant. But to overdo any good thing —
take tolerance, for example — should there be no limit to that
most blessed of virtues?
"Ah!" says the pacifist, "y°ur tolerance can break, of
course, but you must not use force." I ponder anew the ques-
tion: In the long run, is non-resistance the better way to make
the world right?
I do not know. This, however, I do know — 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.
Times like these test the consistency of a pacifist. One
sees the drive to plunge the whole world into carnage. Debate
goes on in the press, over the radio, and on the public plat-
458 ART YOUNG: HIS LIFE AND TIMES
form, a$ to the possibility of the United States becoming
involved again in a general wan There are those who contend
for an isolation policy, and others who raise the pointed
inquiry: Can this country stay above the battle?
As I pen these words, the old feeling stirs me anew,
that I would like to see the United States stay out of another
international conflict. Yet with all my hoping I know that
I am a realist and that new conditions make new truths. To
stay at home and be neutral is not so logical nor so possible
as it could have been in 1917. If in my time another wide-
flung conflict should come, I have no illusions about it. It
will again be a war of the investment-capitalists — the aristoc-
racy of wealth in collusion with what is left of that decrepit
aristocracy of lineage will be back of the intrigue and diplo-
macy that decide the fate of the world.
We must be ready to hear of their devotion to political
democracy — which they have learned so well how to use for
their own ends. And we must be ready to hear of their enmity
to the totalitarian state, which is just the kind of state they
want, provided it totals in every way to their credit
This is the truth as I see it. So, if governments haven't
learned that peace, not war, is what people desire, my kind of
pacifism would succumb to the hope that at last the time had
come for a general awakening to the cause of it all, and that
the next big war (if there must be a next) would end as the
last one came near ending (in Germany, Italy, and other
countries) with the rise of workers' republics in many parts
of the world.
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.
Inadequately though it may sum up, if my work can
mortise into such a future, whether near or remote, as I
believe it will — that thought is consolation and payment.
When my time comes I'll lay down my pencil and call it
a day.
INDEX
Abbot, Wyllis S., 139 ff.
Academic, Julian, 4, 8, 9, 135
Academy of Design (Chicago) , 62,
73
Ahkoond of Swat, 142-143
Alabama, visit to, 200-201
Altgeld, Gov. John P., 152-153, 154,
159, 160, 161-162, 219, 222;
anarchists pardoned by, 166-168
American Field, drawings accepted by,
68
Amnesty Association, 165, 166
"Anarchists," Chicago, trial of, 83 ff.,
101-108, 165-168; philosophy of,
387
Afbeiter Zeitung, labor views of, 80
Arketl, W. J., 118
Arnold, Matthew, 109-110
Art gallery, 395 ff.
"Art, song, and music" performance,
139-143
Art Students' League, 120
Aft Young's Inferno* 416-418, 419-
420, 424
Associated Press, libel suit brought by,
295 ff,
Authors* Readings, 193-195
Baker, Alfred Z., 214
Barnard, Frederic, 72, 130, 131
Barnes, Earl, 320, 332, 335, 337
Barns, Cornelia, 328
Barnum, P. T., 123, 233-236
Barrett, I^awrence, 92
Barton, Ralph, 381
Beckwith, Carroll, 4, 120
Bell, Josephine, 320, 324, 332, 335
Bellows, George, 388
Benefit, testimonial, 421-423
Berkmarm, Alexander, 323, 333
Bethel, Conn., home at, 229 ff,, art
gallery at, 395 ff.
Big Stick, 340, 378, 381
Black, William P., 84 ff.
Blaine, James G*, 147
Blizzard of ' 8 8 sketches, 110
Bloor, Ella Reeve, 256
Boissevain, Eugen Jan, 356
Booth, Charles, editor Monroe Senti-
nel, 31, 114, 136
Booth, Edwin, 92
Bougeaureau, 9, 10
Breughel, Peter, 133
Brisbane, Arthur, 202, 211, 256,
262, 380, 427-431
Browne, Hablot K.., 130
Brubaker, Howard, 328
Bryan, William Jennings, 192, 306,
307
Bryant, Louise, 389
Burne- Jones, 127
Burns, John, 153
Burridge, Walter, 72
Business depression (1892), 172-173
Butler, Benjamin F., 102
Cabanel, 9
Campaigns. See Political campaigns.
"Campainin for the Millenum," 211-
212, 223
Camp meeting, 47-48
Cannon, Joseph D., 298
Caricatures, early, 14, 38-39, 46-47,
52 ff.; new school of, 381
Carnegie, Andrew, 149 ff,
Carnegie Steel Company strike (1892),
150 ff.
Carruth, Hay den, 271
Chalk plates, 69
Chamberlain, K. R., 387
Chatsworth railroad disaster, 98-100
Chauve-Souris review, 380, 381
Chester, England, 127-129
Chicago, life in, 62 ff.f 144
Chicago Anarchists. See Anarchists
Chicago Daily News, 88 ff., 109-110
461
462
INDEX
Chicago Evening Mail, 69, 83
Chicago Herald f 109
Chicago Inter-Ocean, 109, 123-124,
144 ff., 173, 177
Chicago Mail, 109
Chicago Times, 109
Chicago Tribune, 109-110
Chicago World's Fair, 137, 145, 156-
158, 162-164, 169-171
Chinatown dinners, 252
Circus drawings, 46-47
Clan-na-Gael conspirators, trial of,
124
Cleveland, Grover, 92, 148, 149, 153,
158-159, 162, 163, 172
Cockerill, John A., 113
Cody, Colonel (Buffalo Bill), in
Paris, 8
Colarossi School, 8
Cottiers Weekly, 270, 379
Color printing, introduction of, 155
Coming Nation, cartoons for, 278
Concert episode, 139-143
Conde\ Jim, 245
"Conflagration Jones." See Webster.
Congress, United States, cartooning,
282 ff., 302, 315-317
Connors, Chuck, 209
Conventions, party. See Political cam-
paigns
Coolidge, Calvin, 440
Cooper Union, debating class at, 226,
247, 249, 254
Copeland, Clyde, 56-57, 177, 201
Copeland, Mrs. Clyde, 31, 32, 77,
124
Corbett, Jim, 158
Corner, Thomas, 12, 14, 17, 20
Cosmopolitan, drawings sold to, 210
Covarrubias, 381
Cox, Kenyon, 4, 120
Coxey's Army, 182-183
Creel, George, 337
Croker, Richard, 148
Cronin, Dr., murder of, 124
Cruikshank, George, 72, 130, 131f
133
Cruikshank, Isaac, 130
Cuba, war with, 195-199
D
Dana, Charles H.» 121
Danbury, Conn., 236 ff.
Darrow, Clarence, 315
Daumier, 10
Davis, Robert R, 201
Day, Clarence, Jr., 288
Debs, Eugene, 216, 257-258, 272,
387
Dell, Floyd, 297, 324, 328, 332,
335, 391
Democracy, faith in, 292-293
Democratic conventions. See Political
conventions
Dennis, Charles H., 89
Denver, life in, 178 ff.
Denver Post, 179
Denver Rocky Mountain News, 179
Denver Times, work on the, 177-
187
Depew, Chauncey M., 147
Dickens lore, 130ff.
Dore", Gustav, 10, 52, 120, 127, 133-
134, 138
Drainage Canal (Chicago), work on,
158
DuMaurier, 127, 130
Dunne, Finley Peter, 96-98, 287,
437-438
Durer, 133
Dutch Treat Club, 340, 354
Eastman, Crystal, 328
Eastman, Max, 275, 295, 320, 322,
324, 328, 331, 332, 335, 356,
362, 388, 390
Ebersold, Police Chief, quoted on
Haymarket riot, 165, 220
Economic freedom, 388
Economic struggle, awakening to,
215 ff.
Eden Musee, 119-120
"Edith," 111-112, 114
Education, widening, 215
81 Fifth Avenue, 206-211
Elizabeth, 29, 57, 61, 124, 145,
175-178, 188-190, 200-201, 205-
206, 213-214, 225, 229-230,
232, 244, 252-253, 292
Encyclopedia Britannica, article for,
406-407
Engel( George, 86, 103
Entertainment episode, 139-143
Espionage Act, Afam* trial under tin,
319 f., 331, 332 ff., 351
INDEX
463
Field, Eugene, 92-95, 113, 146, 160,
178
Fielden, Samuel, 79, 82, 86, 104,
165, 167, 173-74
Fifer, Governor, 166
Fischer, Adolph, 86, 103
Fleury, Tony Robert, 9
Flynn, Elizabeth Gurley, 444
Folwell, Arthur, 191
Foster, William A., 85
Fox, Richard K., 119
Freeman, Joseph, 390, 391
Frick, Henry C, 150
Frost, A. B., 113, 161
Frueh, Al, 381
Furniss, Harry, 283
Garden party (Monroe), 31-32
Garfinkle, 125
Gary, Joseph E., 84, 102, 167, 168
Gellert, Hugo, 328, 391
George, Henry, 122
Gerome, 9
Gillam, Bernard, 122, 190, 395
Gillray, 130, 131, 133
Gilman, Charlotte Perkins, 298
Giovannitti, Arturo, 328
Gladstone, William H., 93-94
Glintenkamp, H. J., 320, 324, 332
Gold, Mike, 390, 391
Goldman, Emma, 268, 323, 333
Good Morning, 354 ff., 387
Gould, Jay, 75
Greeley, Horace, Nast cartoons of,
122-123
Gresham, Walter, 162
Grinnell, Julius S-, 83, 168, 220
Gropper, William, 390, 39 1
Gruening, Ernest H., 378
Guerin, Jules, 72
Gulbransson, 381
H
Hallinan, Charles T., 328
Hamilton, Grant, 191
Hand, Judge Augustus, 332 ff.
Hand, Judge Learned, 320, 321
Hapgood, Norman, 298
Harcourt, Sir William, 183-185
Hard, William, 331
Hardie, Keir, 183, 211, 215
Harrison, Benjamin, 146 ff., 158, 159
Harrison, Carter H., 79, 82, 168;
murder of, 171
Haymarket riot (Chicago) , 82 ff.,
101 ff., 125, 165-168, 219-221
Haywood, William D., 257, 284,
289, 330, 341
Hearst, William R., 201, 217, 218-
219, 324
Hell Up to Date, 137-139, 143, 160-
161
Hill, David B., 148
Hillquit, Morris, 332 ff.
"Hiram Pennick" articles, 211-212,
223
Hogarth, 10, 130, 131
Holmes, John Haynes, 298
Homestead (Pennsylvania) strike,
150 ff.
Hough, C. M., 321
Howitt, 130
Hughes, Charles E., nomination, 306
Huntington, Collis P., 126
I
Illness in Paris, and recovery, 15-26,
136-137
Irvine, Alexander, 258-259
Ismay, Bruce, 126
I. W. W., 330; trials in Chicago,
341 ff.
"John Brown's Fort," 171
Jones, Ellis <X 352ff.
Judge, 61, 189, 192-193, 200, 211,
259, 270
K
Kahn, Otto, 440-441
Keene, 130
Keller, Helen, 328, 329
Kelley, Florence, 447
Kelly, Fred C., 283
Kent, Rockwell, 274
Keppler, Joseph, 122, 191, 395
Ker, Balfour, quoted, 266-268
King, Ben, 125
Knights of Labor, activities of, 75 ff.
Kohlsaat, H. H., 146 ff., 155, 173
464
INDEX
Labor, early stirrings of, 74 ff.
Labor trial, 83 ff.; 101 ff.
LaFollette, Robert M., 223-224, 299,
379
La grippe, attack ofr in Paris, 15-24
LaMotte, Ellen, 328
Lang, Andrew, 93-94
Lawson, Thomas W., 256
Lawson, Victor P., 89, 124, 165
Leer James Melvin, 191
Leech, John, 72, 130
Leslie's Weekly, cartoons for, 195-196
Libel suits, 295 ff,
Liberator, 328 ff,, 378, 386-387,
390-393
Life. 189, 191, 210, 246-247, 259,
264, 270, 379, 384
Liliuokalani, Queen, 162
Lincoln, Robert T., 147
Lincoln-Douglas debates, 33-34
Lindbergh, Charles A,, Jr., 309
Lindbergh, Charles A., St., 308-310
Lingg, Louis, 86, 104
Lippmann, Walter, 304
London, visit to, 131-135
"Looking On/' series, 378
Lorimer, George Horace, 384
Lucy, H. W., 283
Ludlow (Colo,) strike, 303-304
M
McAdoo, William G., 289
McCormick, Cyrus H., 80
MacDonald, Ramsay, 437
McDougall, Walt, 145, 147, 207,
209, 431-432
McGill, Tom, 208
McGlynn, Father Edward, 122
McKinley, William, 146, 147, 191,
211, 217
Mailly, William, 288
Malone, Dudley Field, 332
Malraux, Andre, 444
Mann, Tom, 437
Marinoff, Jacob, 378
Masses. See The Masses
Masson, Tom, 191, 384
May Day excitement, 79 ff.
Medill, Joseph, 109, 110
Messonier, 9
Metropolitan Magazine, 154, 282,
287 ff,, 302 ff., 315-317, 324-
325, 331
Michelson, Clarina, 339
Milholland, Inez, 297
Milwaukee Free Press, cartoons for,
223
Minor, Robert, 328, 329, 387
Moffatt, David H., 177ff.
Monroe, Wisconsin, 28-58, 70, 77-
78, 113, 124, 136-142, 346-347
Morgan, J. Pierpont, 311
"Mother Jones/' 303; letter of,
quoted, 388-389
Moyer, 257
Municipal Ownership League, 249
Murdock, Victor, 177
Murphy, Charles F., 148
N
Nancy Hanks, 158
Nankivell, Frank, 201
Nast, Thomas, 54, 60, 118, 121,
122, 134, 147, 155, 156, 162,
288, 305, 395
Nation, drawings for, 378
National conventions. See Political
campaigns
National Press Club, 300-301
Neebe, Oscar, 86, 104, 165, 166,
167, 220
Nelson, Knute, 308
Newell, Peter, 214
New Masses, 393
Newspaper Enterprise Association,
commissioned by, 305
Newspapers, inflammatory character
of, 74-81, 83 ff., 89-90, 101 ff.,
121, 149 ff., 159, 167 ff., 172,
217, 221, 257
New York, leaving for, 112-114;
journey to, 115-117; life in,
117ff.; return to, 188 ff.
New York Call, quoted, 296
New York Evening Journal, 201-206,
262, 380
New York Graphic, 1 1 3
New York Sunday American, 262 »
381
New York World, 113, 121
"Nig/* 42 ff*
Nimble Nickel, 62 ff.
Nixon, William Penn, 144-145, 160,
165, 168
North, Elizabeth. S>e Elizabeth
Noyea, Frank B,» libel suit brought
by, 297 ff,
INDEX
465
o
Oberlander, 133
Oglesby, Gov. Richard, 102, 104
On My Way, 402-406
Opper, Frederick, 122, 203, 204
Pall Malt Budget, 14, 173
Pall Mail Gazette, 173
Palmer House (Chicago) , silver- dollar
floor, 170-171
Panic of 1929, 409-410
Paris, first visit to, 3-25, 123 ff.; ill-
ness in, 15-26
Parsons, Albert, 76, 79, 80, 82 ff.,
103, 218, 221
Passaic textile strike, 393-394
Patterson, Robert, 110, 111
Patterson, Thomas M., 179
Peattie, Elia, 98
Peattie, Robert B., 98
Pettibone, 257
"Phiz," 130
Photography, limitations of, 58-60
Piano lessons, 41
Pinchot, Amos, 297ff.
Pinkerton thugs in steel strike, 150 ff.
Political campaigns: 1892, 146 ff.,
158-160, 162; 1896, 191-193;
1900, 211-212; 1912, 284ff,;
1916, 305 ff.; 1924, 378-379;
1928, 408-409; 1932, 418-419;
1936, 425-426
Pollard, Percival, 201
Poole, William Frederick, 71-72
"Poor Fish" scries, 369 ff.
Populist party program, 159
Porter, Edna, 445-446
Propaganda, effects of, recognized, 54-
55
Puck, 122, 191, 248, 250, 259
Pulitzer, Joseph, 113, 121, 149, 217-
218
Pullman, George M., 183
Push, 143 .
Railroad strike (1894), 221
Rankin, Jeannette, 313-314, 327
Read, Opie, 125
Reed, John, 276, 302, 303, 304,
307, 313, 322, 328, 329, 332,
362, 363, 388, 389; quoted, 323-
324, 340 ff.; resigns from Libera-
tor, 349-350
Reed, Myron, 181-182, 215
Reed, Thomas B,, 147
Reid, Whitelaw, 148, 158, 159
Reilly, Dr. Frank, 93
Remington, Frederic, 202
Republican conventions. See Political
conventions
Revere, Paul, 395
Rippenbein, Morris, 355, 357
Robinson, Boardman, 320, 322, 328,
352
Rockefeller, John D., Jr., 218
Rockefeller, John D., Sr., 158, 256
Roe, Gilbert E., 320-321
Rogers, Merrill, 319, 324, 332
Rogers, W. A., 121
Roosevelt, Franklin D., 425-426
Roosevelt, President Theodore, 197,
211, 256, 305, 306, 310, 316
Rowlandson, 130, 131, 133
Russell, Charles Edward, 221-222,
278, 305
Russia, Reed quoted on, 340
Ruthenberg, Charles E., 391, 392
Sandburg, Carl, 318, 443-444
Saturday Evening Post, cartoons for,
384, 385
Schaack, Captain, 80, 83, 101, 105,
165, 220-221
Schmedtgen, William, 105, 106
Schnaubelt, Rudolph, 83, 125
Schwab, Michael, 79, 86, 104, 165,
167
Scripps-Howard newspapers, 305
Scripps-McRae newspapers, 305
Selanders, J. C, 89
Seltzer, Thomas, 271
Sex, problems in, 36, 50-51, 111-
112, 114
"Shots at Truth," 248
Sinclair, Upton, 256
Single Tax movement, 122
"Snapshots in Hades," 210
Snowden, Clinton, 69, 74
Social injustice, awareness to, 222,
227
Socialism, the World War and, 302
Socialist Call, drawings for, 425
466
INDEX
Socialistic doctrine, growing interest
in, 254 ff.
Socialist party, emergency convention,
314-315; 1919 convention, 362-
363
Socialist Primer, drawings for, 411
Socialist sympathies, 254 ff.
South Wales colliery explosion, 183-
184
Spanish- American war, 195-199
Spies, August, 79, 80-81, 86, 103
Stanton, Theodore, 8
Stead, William T., 14, 173-174
Steffens, Lincoln, 256, 298, 302, 313,
369, 387-388
Steinegas, 381
Stengel, Hans, 381
Stephenson, Isaac, 223
Steunenberg, Governor, assassination
of, 257
Stevenson, Adlai E., 148, 150, 159
Stokes, J. G. Phelps, 315
Stokes, Rose Pastor, 315
Stone, Melville E., 86, 88, 104, 106,
124, 165
Sullivan, John L., 158
Sullivant, T. S., 191, 203, 204
Tammany Hall, 148, 149
Tarbell, Ida, 256
Taylor, Bert Leston, 191
Tenniel, Sir John, 72
Thackeray, 130
The Best of Art Young, 424
The Masses, 277, 392; beginning and
growth of, 271 ff., 282; Max East-
man appointed editor, 275; East-
man editorial in, 295; Floyd Dell
with, 297; censorship of, 318ff.
"Things That Hit Our Funny Bone"
series, 250
Through Hetl with Hiprah Hunt, 210
"Toby M.P.," 283
Today, drawings for, 421
"Trees at Night" series, 384
Tridon, Andre, 271
Trinity Church (New York) tene-
ments, 278-281
Tucker, Marguerite, 446-447
Twain, Mark, 95, 241-242
"Types of the Old Home-Town"
series, 385
U
University of Chicago, 158
Union Square (New York) bomb ex-
plosion, 258 ff.
Untermeyer, Louis, 272, 328
V
Vanderbilt, William H., 75
Vanderpoel, John H., 4, 62, 120
Vibert, 10
Villard, Oswald Garrison, 378
Vlag, Piet, 270-272
V
Wabash Railroad, strike on, 75
Waite, Chief Justice, 102
Waite, Gov. David Hansen, 185
Wales, visit to, 129-130
Walling, William English, 298
Wall Street panic (1907), 258
War, The Masses policy against,
319 ff.
Warren, Lansing, 177
Washington, life in, 288 ff.
Waterloo, Stanley, 125
Wattles, Willard, 322
Weaver, James Baird, 159
Weber, Grant, 139
Webster, Clarence, 3 ff., 24, 27, 116,
123 ff., 126, 137, 139, 142,
144 ff., 160, 173, 177
Weeks, Rufus W,, 271, 274
West Point cartoons, 153
West Virginia coal regions, 303
West Virginia coal strike, 295 ff.
Whigham, H. J., 283, 302, 310, 317
White, Butch, 89, 102, 105
Whitlock, Brand, 284
Whitney, Harry Payne, 287
Whistler, James McNeill, 8
Wilde, Oscar, 7-8, 178
Willard, Frances, 91
Winter, Charles A., 272, 274
Wilson, William L,, 148
Wilson, Woodrow, 307, 310 ff., 319
Wood, Charles W., 328
Wood, Eugene, 264-266, 271
Wood, Suzanne Ella, 139
Woodville, R, Caton, 72
Workers' Monthly, 393
World's Columbian Exposition. See
Chicago World's Fair
INDEX
467
World's Fair (Chicago) . See Chicago
World's Fair
World War, socialism and the, 302 ff.,
310 ff.
Yerkes, Charles, 177
Young, Art, trip to Paris, 3-25,
123 ff. ; home life in Monroe,
27 ff. ; young manhood, 49 ff,; life
in Chicago, 62 ff. ; life in New
York, 117ff,, 188ff., 244 ff. ; per-
sonal attitudes, 159-160, 447-449;
life with Elizabeth, 175-177,
205 ff., 213 ff., 225 ff., 243-244;
goes to Washington, 282; socialist
activities, 222 ff. ; later years,
408 ff.
Young, Charles, 37, 42, 45, 61
Young, Daniel, 20 ff., 29, 32-34, 36,
39, 346-347
Young, Mrs. Daniel, 31-32, 33, 35,
347
Young, Don, 225-226, 292, 382-
383, 411-412
Young, Elizabeth. See Elizabeth
Young, Nettie. See Copeland, Mrs.
Clyde
Young, North, 214-215, 231-233,
292, 383-384
Young, Will, 45-46, 190, 206 ff.,
213
Zeisler, Sigismund, 85
Zim, 122
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