Smitter worked the early part of his career in advertising for one of the "Big 3" auto makers.
He soon left that career and moved to California, where he worked selling and transplanting trees and wrote on the side.
Detroit, which was made into the 1941 movie, Reaching for the Sun, starring Joel McCrae and Ellen Drew.
[1] Smitter's anti-industrial views, particularly of the auto industry in Michigan, where he began his career, permeate his creative works.
His obituary was published in the New York Times on November 9, 1951 (p. 27)[2]