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only orders from government and corporate enterprises to be counted on, and of these there were precious few. Only the top-notch artist, men always in demand, were obliged to pay income taxes. For the most part, they considered themselves lucky. 

In those black years, as Mr. Peixotto put it, "naturally the thoughts of artist were bitter." Not that they were unaccustomed to economic insecurity. To that most artist reconcile themselves long before they got their first gray hair. But seeing so many million others in seeming economic insecurity turned thoughts to society in general and its "systems," and these were often hard and sharp thoughts. But a year of work has made a difference, it would seem, in many an artist's receptivity to influences from the revolutionary side of the Rio Grande, from the banks of the Moskva, where it winds past the Kremlin.

Unlike the amateur leaf rakers and snow shovelers and those who scrape the lateral roads of a nation in the name of work relief, a P.W.A. job for an artist usually evokes arduous labor.

"Most of them are really working hard," Mr. Peixotto has observed. "Much more than the four days a week for which they are paid. After so many years without the commissions, they are enthusiastic, as a group. It is not in the nature of an artist enthusiastic in his work to watch a clock, to soldier on the job.

"all of us are looking forward to the World's Fair in Queens in 1939. I hope the World's Fair people will see the need for mural paintings from the beginning, instead of dragging it in at the end. I think this fair can leave us a fine artistic legacy, just as the Paris Exposition left that beautiful bridge, the Pont Alexandre-Trois, across