ABSTRACT
To any one living in a working-class district of a great city to-day, the question must arise whether it be at all worth the cost to try to perpetuate art under conditions so hopeless, or whether it be not the only rational or even possible course to give up the struggle from that point, and devote every energy to "the purification of the nation's heart and the chastisement of its life." Only by re-creation of the source of art can it be restored as a living force. Every man working in the joy of his heart is, in some measure, an artist. The destructive force of the ugly is its heartlessness. A man's happiness, as well as his freedom, is a necessary condition of his being artistic.
