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FIRST
AMERICAN ARTISTS' CONGRESS

Public Session
Town Hall, New York City
February 14th, 1936

OPENING ADDRESS
LEWIS MUMFORD

Friends, comrades, ladies and gentlemen:

Herewith we open the first American Artists' Congress. On this occasion we are buoyed up and stimulated by a number of fraternal greetings from all parts of the world. I won't read them in detail, but we have one from the Artists' International Association of London, one from the International Writers' Association, another from the Artists' Association of Michigan, and a greeting from the New Masses encouraging us in our step. I have the double duty as a member of the American Writers' League. It was through this organization and through the unity demonstrated last April by the American Writers' League that the artists became conscious of their own needs and their opportunity. 

Now, the question has perhaps occurred to you as you sat here tonight waiting for the Congress to open -- Why is it that there has not been an American Artists' Congress before this? I have asked myself this question and the only reply I have is a very simple one. It sometimes takes a universal catastrophe before people begin to act normally. In New York an apartment house fire is necessary before a man can get to know his own neighbor. Or a ship has to sink and cause many to lose their lives before people learn to cooperate with each other. 

We gather together tonight for the first time partly because we are in the midst of what is plainly a world catastrophe, and we have to realize what our position is, and do our best to put our hands to the oar and do whatever else is necessary to face this emergency.

The catastrophe is with us-no doubt about that! There is the economic depression which has been with us for six or more years. A depression marked for the artist not merely by his usually meager diet, but sometimes

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