He values artistic success over financial success for himself.
Harburg describes the terrible experience of experiencing the Great Depression of the 1930s, the greatest economic crisis in history that has led to bankruptcies, companies, material losses of families and the decline of American income as a whole.
However, Harburg is able to describe a positive lesson in losing all of his assets during the crisis. He knew another world, a world he probably would not have known if he had not lost everything in the crisis. It is the world of literature, an art that became a new way of earning a living, but for which he fell in love.
