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man. He used to go on the cart, the horse and wagon, and look, absorb everything. Then when he started to sketch --

Ralph went on the cart with his father.

Ralph, yes, right. He would sketch. He would begin to sketch things about working people. Nobody paid him much mind until Milton Glaser became the art editor of New York Magazine. Milton knew Ralph's work. Milton then arranged for the first issue he put out to have a cover that was a photograph of Ralph, and on the head said, “Why is This Man Pumping Gas in the Bronx?” by Nick Pillegi, and inside were about a dozen reproductions of his paintings, and he became overnight a big sensation. So that I remember at that time his paintings were in Automation House, Ted Kheel, and then they were very well received. Ralph was selling them. He didn't know what he'd get for things.

One day he came to me and he said, “Moe, this is too much. I can't live this way.”

I said, “Why?”

He said, “I'm not painting. All I do is go from one big shot to another big shot to have dinner or cocktails, and I'm not painting. What should I do?”

Bill Cahn, who was a friend -- he's dead now -- and I met with Ralph, and Bill and I suggested, “Go to Lawrence. The mills in Lawrence, Massachusetts, exist the same way they did. They're empty. Go there and recapture, through your art, the spirit and the story of that strike, the Bread and Roses strike.”

Ralph picked up and went to Lawrence and lived in a “Y” [YMCA - Young Men's Christian Association] for three years. Every day he would come out and sketch outside the mills, paintings that he would see were inside. He also learned and became very familiar with the people in Lawrence, and he learned all about the strike of 1912. He did posters and paintings.

The first poster of Ralph Fasanella we produced. It was called, “The Great Strike,” and I got the Amalgamated Clothing Workers to cover the cost. They said, “We'll cover it,” and it had a Bread and Roses poster, “but only if we can put down that we put it out.”

I said, “You put out yours. We'll put out ours.” And that was the beginning of Ralph Fasanella's posters.