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novelists, the dramatists--all those who fashion ideas, concepts and forms that give meaning to life and furnish the patterns of conduct.  It is they who really construct the world we live in, and it is they who, with sensitive awareness to human perplexity and aspirations and with the power of imaginative presentation, can speak effectively to a distracted world." Consideration of the artist's role in such a light makes his survival individually and collectively in our society of paramount importance.

Looking a little more closely into the economic environment of our artists, I wish to quote some of the figures compiled by Miss Elizabeth McCausland in 1945 and published in her article, "Why Can't America Afford Art?", in the Magazine of Art for January, 1946. Five hundred leading artists were sent questionnaires, and about 40 per cent replied. Of these, 44 per cent of those reporting "depend largely or entirely on incomes from other sources than art". She further stated "that for these 200 painters and sculptors, with an average of four years devoted to an art education, and an average of twenty years devoted to the practice of their professions, such a costly long-term social investment of time, study, skill and creative energy brought back just this much in worldly goods: an average total income for 1944 of $4,144 and an average art income of $548. Such was the economic picture in a year of high incomes."

In answering the question, "How does the artist live?", Miss McCausland reported that 42 per cent of the painters and