"Everybody," the penultimate section of poem, continues with details about amount of carpets used and addresses directly the very people unable to experience any of the luxuries of the Waldorf.
"[1] Surrounding the two-page poem the illustration appears to be a faithful depiction of an advertisement with bold, creative headings, but the caricatures in the large hotel in the center of the poem show people drinking and carousing while a car driving through the picture appears to be riding on a street made of the faces and bodies of other people.
[2] The disparity between the rich and poor was widening at the onset of the Depression and Jim Crow laws furthered that economic hardship along racial lines.
[2] When it was published in The Big Sea in 1940 Richard Wright wrote of the poem that it exemplified the toughness of Hughes that he could approach even the solidarity he feels with the working class with "humor, urbanity, and objectivity".
[4] Critics have argued that by parodying a high-priced advertisement for an even higher-priced hotel and juxtaposing those images with the most economically disadvantaged and those who would never be able to take advantage of the amenities offered by the hotel that Hughes was writing with the ideals of worker rights in mind that would later form the basis for the political and social ideals collectively referred to as the Popular Front.