Ayn Rand - from Letter to DeWitt Emery dated Sep 10, 1941

March 10, 2015 Francis Luong

As to my working for P & E–I’d be delighted, if I can really go ahead with the cause. No, I’m not going to get “damned mad” about being offered a salary. I told you that I had to have a salary if I were to give the work my full time, and I won’t be any good unless I give it my full time. The job I have now takes more than eight hours a day–sometimes it’s twelve and more–so I couldn’t do any real work until I quit this. If I were a capitalist, I’d much rather work for the cause as a volunteer–but, unfortunately, I am only a proletarian defender of Capitalism, than which there is no worse thing to be. If I were a defender of Communism, I’d be a Hollywood millionaire-writer by now, with a swimming pool and a private orchestra to play the Internationale. As it is, I have to work for my living. So I’m quite definitely for sale–all of me above the next–to anyone on our side who really intends to work for our side.