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While contributing to The New Yorker and other mainstream publications as Syd Hoff, he was also contributing to The Daily Worker and New Masses as A. Redfield — the pseudonym he adopted for his radical work during the 1930s. The Ruling Clawss (1935) is a compilation of over 150 cartoons depicting the oppression of the working class and the workers’ corresponding disdain of the upper crust. The Introduction was written by Robert Forysthe — the pseudonym of Kyle Crichton, a writer/editor at Collier’s magazine (and father of novelist Robert Crichton), who also wrote a column for New Masses.
“Subtlety was not his strong point, but his portrayal of American’s economic upper crust was dead on, in part because his anger at the suffering caused by the Great Depression was so palpable in his drawings, and he took great glee in pointing his pen at those who were to blame.” — Jeff Kisseloff, American writer and oral historian.