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by the inability to get so much as the bare food necessary for life. And there is imminent another large catastrophe, on even a larger scale, even more dire in its threat, and that is the threat of war. Soldiers have a very simple cure for economic crises- it consists of shooting everyone who does not share their limited opinions and their bellicose attitudes. We have seen in our country, as people have seen in other countries, that depression and repression go hand in hand. When the economic situation gets so bad that people's minds must be moved from their own desperate plight, there is nothing so effective as to give them something else to think about, namely, a war. As you know, it is a sort of counter-irritant. 
 That is one alternative. Now let us look at the other alternative that is being presented to us by some people: Fascism. Look Fascism in in the face and what do you discover: that it had one common animus with war, and that is the ruling class notion of exterminating every other type of person-ality and every kind of social and political group. 
 Unfortunately, people who like extermination dislike culture. They wish to simply matters by solving matters by solving the differences within a society by use of force. They resent arts-and-science people as they resent thought itself- chiefly because the latter stirs them up, irrates them, makes them feel inferior. In Fascist form government some one person, usually with a silly face, a Hitler or a Mussolini, becomes the model which every subject must imitate and salute. Anyone who dares to dislike that sort of uniformity, that sort of standardization, is regarded by Fascists as an enemy of society. Anyone who laughs at those stupid mugs, or incites other people to laugh at them, is a traitor.
 I think that is the reason why dictatorships fear artists. They fear them because they fear free criticism. They rightly believe that if the forces rep-resented by the artist are allowed to exercise their will, they will disrupt the Fascist program.
 The forces that are bringing on war, that are preparing larger and better economic depressions in the future, are at odds with all the forces of human culture. The time has come for the people who love life and culture to form a united front against them, to be ready to protect, and guard, and if necessary, fight for the human heritage which we, as artists, embody.

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WHY AN ARTISTS' CONGRESS ?

STUART DAVIS,
Secretary, American Artists' Congress

 The American Artists' Congress is unique in the history of American art. That it takes place now is no accident. For it is the response of artists to a situation facing them today. How can we describe this situation?
 Its immediate background is a depression unparalleled in history of this country. The cracks and strains in the general social fabric resulting from the economic crisis inevitably reached the world of art, shaking those psychological and esthetic certanties which had once given force and direction to the work of artists.
 In order to withstand the severe shock of the crisis, artists have had to seek a new grip on reality. Around the pros and cons of "social content," a dominant issue in discussions of present day American art, we are wit-nessing determined efforts by artists to find a meaningful direction. Increasing expression of social problems of the day in the new American art makes it clear that in times such as we are living in, few artists can honestly remain aloof, wrapt up in studio problems.
But the artist has not simply looked out of the window; he has had to step into the street. He has done things that would have been scarcely conceivable a few years back. 
Nearly two years ago prominent New York artists started a campaign through the Artists' Committee of Action for a Municipal Art Gallery to provide a badly needed outlet for the artists of this city.
When the city administration finally took up the idea, without recognition of the Artists' Committee of Action, it opened a gallery in a remodeled private house early in 1936, on a basis of discrimination against non-citizens and censorship of art disapproved by the administration. Such reactionary ideas could never have been introduced under a truly democratic manage-ment of the Municipal Gallery by the artists themselves, which the Artists' Committee of Action had repeatedly called for.
What's more, leading New York artists, together with the Artists' Union, showed that they would not stand for such practices by making a prompt and emphatic protest. The result was an immediate victory! Both citizen-sheip and censorship clauses were speedily withdrawn.
Sharp necessity likewise drove the most hard-pressed artists into organized efforts for Federal Government support. Their opportunity had come through the initiation of a limited Government art project in December, 1933. This

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