Circumstances Alter Cases: "Positively disgusting! It's an outrage to public decency to allow such exposure on the streets!"

In 1910, Sloan joined the Socialist Party. Two years later he began acting as the art editor of The Masses, a leftist journal run as a cooperative venture. Sloan's own contributions to The Masses reveal his concern for social injustices in their poignant commentary upon issues such as women's rights, big business, and political corruption. This drawing implies that it is in fact the wealthy women in their transparent dresses who are "an outrage to public decency" rather than the ragged beggar woman whom they thoughtlessly censure.