II. Dorothy Day: A Life

The life of Dorothy May Day, which began at 6:50 p.m. on November 8, 1897, in Bath Beach, Brooklyn, New York, ²⁷ and ended eighty three years later on November 29, 1980 in her Catholic Worker apartment on Third Street in Manhattan, ²⁸ is probably best understood in light of some ongoing initiatives to canonize her. ²⁹ Day's early years were anything but those of a model Catholic. Like St. Augustine, ³⁰ much of her youth was spent indulging in the offerings of the material world. ³¹ She was a hedonist who had love affairs with many men; Eugene O'Neill among them. ³² She had an abortion, ³³ an attempted suicide, ³⁴ experienced two failed marriages ³⁵ and remained the unmarried single mother of a daughter for a long period of time. ³⁶ The prodigal similarities, beyond the particulars, between the lives of Day and Augustine are evident.³⁷

Dorothy's father, John I. Day, was never close to her. In her autobiography, Dorothy maintains that none of his children ever knew him very well. ³⁸ John Day's only true loves were the racetrack and alcohol. ³⁹ In referring to his somewhat Darwinist ⁴⁰ approach to life, Dorothy noted that her father's character was "[o]therwise . . . composed of the frontier and Calvin." ⁴¹ Day uprooted his family many times in search of a permanent position writing about horses and horseracing. ⁴² Dorothy claimed that he was most troubled by those "ideas that he did not understand, and those which he thought were subversive and dangerous to the peace of the country." ⁴³ Among these were active attempts to care for the needy. To her father's dismay, "comforting the afflicted and afflicting the comfortable" were ideals that Day came to love, embrace, and personify. ⁴⁴ This exacerbated the harshness of their already cold relationship. ⁴⁵ Only later in their lives, when they put aside some of their differences and established a casual friendship, were Day and her father able to treat each other with civility. ⁴⁶

In contrast, especially during her early adulthood, Day was very close to her mother, Grace Satterlee Day, a frequent topic of Dorothy's writings throughout her life. ⁴⁷ Dorothy points out that her mother, though deprived of many material items due to the family's poverty, enjoyed the little things in life. ⁴⁸

Dorothy, the third child born to Grace and John Day, had a mixed relationship with her siblings. Her two older brothers, Donald and Sam, both of whom eventually became reputable journalists in their own right, were not close to Dorothy and receive little attention in her written works. ⁴⁹ On the other hand, Dorothy and her younger sister, Della, shared an unusually close and life-long sisterly bond. ⁵⁰ In 1912, the last of her siblings, John Jr., whom Dorothy spent much of her own childhood rearing, was born. ⁵¹

On the whole, Dorothy's family was not an easy one to be a part of. The Days usually lived in poverty, primarily because of John Day's inability to find regular work writing about his passion, the racetrack. His search, which forced the family to relocate a number of times, brought Dorothy, her mother and her siblings through California and Chicago, before eventually returning them to New York in 1916. ⁵²

Dorothy Day's first venture into religion was, at best, inauspicious. Her mother, an Episcopalian, and father, a Congregationalist, ⁵³ neither attended church services nor took any steps to bring religion into their children's lives; Dorothy and her siblings were not even baptized. ⁵⁴ Dorothy's nanny, who happened to take her to Sunday Mass on one occasion recalled, "The child had no special signs of piety; rather, she had stood in the pew and gawked at the people around her." ⁵⁵ Dorothy, who had gained the ability to read by the age of four, ⁵⁶ experienced her first religious inspiration through examining the text of "the first Bible [she] had ever seen." ⁵⁷ Dorothy's neighbors, the Reeds, introduced an eight year old Dorothy to religion by taking her to church and Sunday school. ⁵⁸ For Dorothy, this became a period of fear and confusion. She could not comprehend why the Reeds were religious; "she began to be afraid of God, of death, and of eternity." ⁵⁹ Day, a rambunctious child who had become conditioned to strike back in a fury when teased by her brothers, ⁶⁰ was eventually banned from the Reed household after fighting with one of their sons. ⁶¹

The Days moved to California in 1904, but relocated to Chicago after the great San Francisco earthquake of 1906. ⁶² Here, Dorothy and her family were exposed to a little more of the church than they had been used to. Dorothy came to meet a young girl by the name of Lenore Clancey, who gave Dorothy a book to read containing the story of her birthday saint, St. Pelagia. ⁶³ The local Episcopalian pastor invited the family to join his parish, the Episcopal Church of Our Savior. ⁶⁴ It is here that Dorothy was first attracted to the Psalms and prayers, especially the Benedictus and the Te Deum. ⁶⁵ Soon after, she was baptized and confirmed. ⁶⁶ During this time, she read the sermons of John Wesley and the lives of the early Christian saints. ⁶⁷ However, her connection with Christianity proved to be weak, at this point in her life. At the age of sixteen, she began dabbling in Christian Science. ⁶⁸ After reading Mary Baker Eddy's Science and Health ⁶⁹ and then Swinburne's Tristram of Lyonesse, ⁷⁰ Day abandoned her embryonic belief in religion, exclaiming "she would like to lie on the grass in the woods with a lover all night just like Tristram and Iseult." ⁷¹ In June 1914, Dorothy graduated from Robert Waller High School, with a $300 scholarship from the Hearst Chicago Examiner competition. ⁷²

In the fall of 1914, Dorothy began attending the University of Illinois at Urbana, ⁷³ beginning a period of further distancing from spirituality as well as one of enlightenment to social concerns. In her two years there, she performed well enough to pass all but one of her classes; all of the while aimless and shiftless, lacking purpose and struggling with loneliness. ⁷⁴ Her grades reflected a lackluster spirit as she remained a student without distinction. ⁷⁵ Her college days were marked by dissatisfaction with, and distance from, religion; "[Religion] had nothing to do with everyday life: it was a matter of Sunday praying." ⁷⁶ Recalling a professor's lecture on the subject, Dorothy summarized her attitude at this time, stating that she felt as if "religion was something that I must ruthlessly cut out of my life." ⁷⁷ She was stirred by injustices, which she believed to be the true human concern, not the anachronistic and irrelevant gospel of Christ. ⁷⁸ To this end, she sought answers in Marxism and its mandate, "Workers of the world, unite! You have nothing to lose but your chains." ⁷⁹ This, in her estimation, was where justice would be realized. ⁸⁰

Soon after her arrival on campus in September of 1914, Dorothy joined a "Socialist study club." ⁸¹ She then began her own intensive study of labor history, utilizing the biographies of those who had "resisted capitalist exploitation." ⁸² She became familiar with the Industrial Workers of the World and the Chicago Haymarket anarchists. ⁸³ Dorothy's study of the writings of nineteenth century Russians such as Gorki, Chekhov, and, above all, Tolstoi and Dostoevsky evolved into her greatest literary passion. ⁸⁴

Dorothy became a member of the Scribbler's Society in her second semester. ⁸⁵ There she met Samson Raphaelson and Rayna Simons, whom she became close friends with. ⁸⁶ Rayna became Dorothy's roommate and insisted that Dorothy allow her to pay their entire rent, since Dorothy could not afford it. ⁸⁷

Dorothy left the University of Illinois in June 1916 ⁸⁸ a different person from the impressionable, naive and relatively apathetic girl she was upon entering. She had developed a passion for a relatively new and radical movement, which was anything but widely accepted, and completely ignored or dismissed two very traditional institutions, namely religion and the university. ⁸⁹ Noting her lasting moderate contempt for the latter, she stated, "I had been there for two years and to this day I haven't the slightest idea what I learned in class." ⁹⁰

Upon her departure from the University of Illinois, nineteen year old Dorothy headed to New York City, where her father had gained a position at the New York Morning Telegraph. ⁹¹ Dorothy, also wishing to be a journalist, immediately attempted to find work but was repeatedly rebuffed. ⁹² She subsequently blamed her lack of success on her father. ⁹³ Her persistence paid off, however, and she finally received her first opportunity with the Socialist paper, the Call, a sister paper to The Masses. ⁹⁴ The Call espoused four core labor positions: support for the American Federation of Labor ("AFL"), the Industrial Workers of the World ("IWW"), anarchists, and the Amalgamated Clothing Workers. ⁹⁵ It was not a glamorous job; it was such a small paper that sometimes the editor had to take up daily collections from his own workers in order to finance each edition. ⁹⁶ Dorothy had won him over by proclaiming that she could live on $5 a week for a month. He responded that if she could do that, she would thereafter receive $12 a week. ⁹⁷ Day soon moved to the Lower East Side of Manhattan into a fourth floor, four room tenement apartment, where she occupied a small spare room. ⁹⁸ Unable to cope with the very dreary living conditions of the apartment and the neighborhood in general, Day moved into an Episcopalian Church parish hall, after residing there for only three months. ⁹⁹ The most effective speaker Dorothy heard at this time was the radical, Elizabeth Gurley Flynn, who eloquently lectured on the desperate labor plight of miners. ¹⁰⁰ Dorothy was so moved that she donated all she could, including several days worth of lunch money. ¹⁰¹ An omen of future events perhaps rested in Dorothy's first article about attempting to live on $5 per week for a month, on how it felt to be poor, live on nothing, and eat almost nothing. ¹⁰²

When the United States entered World War I, Dorothy began appearing at Columbia University students' war protests. ¹⁰³ One of these rallies, the "Anarchist's Ball," occurred on April 13, 1917 at Webster Hall, located on 12th Street. ¹⁰⁴ This event marked the end of her tenure at the Call. ¹⁰⁵ She had been rebuked by Mike Gold, a co-worker she had been spending much time with, ¹⁰⁶ for repelling a drunken anarchist's sexual advances. ¹⁰⁷ This led her to resign from the Call the next day. ¹⁰⁸ Several weeks later, she began working for the Masses, ¹⁰⁹ then under the leadership of editor Floyd Dell. ¹¹⁰ She took up residence during the summer of 1917 at Dell's apartment on MacDougal Street in Greenwich Village, New York City, ¹¹¹ trading the squalid surroundings of the lower East Side of Manhattan for a luxurious apartment in an area with an entirely different flair. In the Greenwich Village intellectual and social scene, she met Max Eastman and John Reed, ¹¹² both of whom had previously written for the Masses before the government censored the paper. ¹¹³ From 1917 to 1924, most of Day's friends and associates either lived in Greenwich Village or had some intellectual or cultural connection with it, especially as writers of new politics or new lives in America. ¹¹⁴ The most prominent of these was the playwright Eugene O'Neill, ¹¹⁵ whom she met in December of 1917 at the Village's Provincetown Playhouse. ¹¹⁶ In 1918, Dorothy began working for the Liberator, which had succeeded the Masses and had become an American voice of the Russian Revolution. ¹¹⁷ Following her need to do something for her fellow man, Day began a nurse's training course at King's County Hospital in Brooklyn, New York. ¹¹⁸ Dorothy mentioned of this period, perhaps in reference to the internal conflict she felt between her social consciousness and promiscuity, "[T]hough I felt the strong, irresistible attraction to good . . . there was also . . . a deliberate choosing of evil." ¹¹⁹

It was also at this time that Dorothy met, and became infatuated with, Lionel Moise. ¹²⁰ She often wrote of how she continued to seduce him, despite his professed coldness to her. ¹²¹ The two eventually became lovers and lived together for a brief time. ¹²² Lionel soon ended their brief romance, throwing Dorothy into a massive depression which resulted in an attempt to commit suicide by gassing: an incident she never formally discussed. ¹²³ Despite their breakup, Dorothy and Lionel continued to have romantic interludes ¹²⁴ and in 1919, Dorothy became pregnant. ¹²⁵ Moise's reaction was not a positive one and he stated to Day, " '[d]on't build up any hopes' of reconciliation. 'It is best, in fact, that you forget me."' ¹²⁶ Moise refused to marry her and she decided to terminate the pregnancy. ¹²⁷

In 1920, only months after her tragic romance with Lionel ended, Day "married a man on the rebound," Barkeley Tobey. ¹²⁸ The short-lived marriage was a disaster. ¹²⁹ In the summer of 1921, Dorothy left him, because according to her, she knew "[s]he wanted Moise 'and marriage and babies!"' ¹³⁰ She traveled to Chicago in an unsuccessful attempt to win Lionel back. ¹³¹ While there, her focus shifted and she became associated with the International Workers of the World (the "Wobblies"), which was under constant surveillance by the government. ¹³² This led to her arrest for allegedly engaging in prostitution. ¹³³ Day continued her literary efforts while remaining in the city, writing book reviews for the Chicago Liberator. ¹³⁴

In the fall of 1923, Dorothy and her sister, Della, moved to New Orleans. ¹³⁵ Day found work as a reporter with the New Orleans Item, ¹³⁶ where she related her experiences by chronicling the life of a dance hall girl. ¹³⁷ The twenty six year old's stay was short lived, and she returned to New York the following April. ¹³⁸

Upon her return to New York City Dorothy reunited with some old friends, one of whom was Sue Brown. ¹³⁹ Brown introduced Dorothy to three sisters: Rose, Lily, and Margaret Batterham. ¹⁴⁰ Dorothy became close friends with Lily, who subsequently introduced Dorothy to Forster Batterham, their brother. ¹⁴¹ A year later, the two were joined in a common-law marriage. ¹⁴² Forster, an English anarchist and biologist, ¹⁴³ was aloof and inarticulate despite his ideology and, as such, was the embodiment of nothing that Dorothy admired. ¹⁴⁴ During the winter of 1925, Dorothy spent much time indulging her many friends, celebrating and socializing at various parties; ¹⁴⁵ one of which provided her the opportunity to meet the fledgling writer, Hart Crane. ¹⁴⁶ It was at this time that her long-time friend, Peggy Baird, urged Dorothy to concentrate on writing and to buy a place in the country. ¹⁴⁷ Dorothy bought a twenty-five by fifty foot fishing shack on the shore of Staten Island, New York, where she remained for four years. ¹⁴⁸ While there, Day focused upon nature, her personal idea of God's handiwork. ¹⁴⁹ It was at this time that Day began to pray, informally at first. ¹⁵⁰ "In the winter when it was too cold to live in the cottage, Dorothy and Forster moved in to share with sister Della her New York apartment. Allen Tate and his wife, Caroline Gordon, lived across the street, and Hart Crane used to drop in at all their places for coffee and talk." ¹⁵¹ As Dorothy neared the age of 27, she became more introspective and wrote about how Batterham had been the catalyst in bringing her the peace associated with being in harmony with nature. ¹⁵²

In the beginning of June 1925, Day first began to feel physical signs that told her she was pregnant again. ¹⁵³ Batterham, however, found the prospects of a family, and especially fatherhood, extremely unattractive. ¹⁵⁴ Forster deeply resented the pregnancy and Dorothy's new-found faith in religion, both of which precipitated his long absences from the Staten Island cottage. ¹⁵⁵ Their daughter, Tamar Theresa Day, was born March 3, 1927. ¹⁵⁶

The birth of her daughter sparked events which further enhanced Dorothy's working class consciousness and simultaneously brought her closer to the Church. While recuperating in the hospital, Dorothy received from her roommate, a medal of Saint Therese of Lisieux, ¹⁵⁷ who eventually became one of Dorothy's favorite saints. ¹⁵⁸ Dorothy had also been troubled for some time about baptizing Tamar in New York's St. Joseph's Home. ¹⁵⁹ The building had been a gift to a group of nuns who lived there from Charles Schwab, a man Dorothy recognized as having ruthlessly crushed the Homestead Strikers in 1892 and generally "defrauded the workers of a just wage." ¹⁶⁰ She communicated her desire to baptize Tamar to a nun who currently resided there and was pleased by the attention she gave to her. ¹⁶¹ Years later, Dorothy recounted the resolve she had begun to feel after Tamar's baptism, stating, "I had become convinced that I would become a Catholic." ¹⁶² Day was not prepared to allow her problematic background: an abortion, a suicide attempt, a series of love affairs, a collapsed and waning marriage and a life of adultery with a man who refused to marry her, to keep her from achieving her goal. ¹⁶³ Wanting her daughter to believe in Jesus and also having come to view the Catholic Church as the protector of immigrants and common laborers, ¹⁶⁴ Dorothy decided that she would indeed provide Tamar with religious instruction one day. ¹⁶⁵

The August, 1927 execution of Sacco and Vanzetti ¹⁶⁶ induced in Forster a catatonic state and Dorothy left him the following December. ¹⁶⁷ After closing the Staten Island beach house, Dorothy moved back to Manhattan with Tamar. ¹⁶⁸ Dorothy, feeling in need of spiritual guidance, spent much of her time at Our Lady of Guadeloupe, a small Catholic Church on Fourteenth Street in Greenwich Village. ¹⁶⁹ There, she received penance and instructions from the Augustinian Fathers of the Assumption. ¹⁷⁰

Dorothy decided that this was not enough; that she needed to search for additional meaning in her life, and began to travel extensively. ¹⁷¹ She first traveled to Hollywood, where she found a position as an assistant to a movie dialogue author, and then back to New York once again, for a position writing for a publisher of Commonweal magazine. ¹⁷² Day then ventured to Mexico, where Tamar contracted malaria, forcing a move back to New York. ¹⁷³ In the fall of 1931, upon returning to New York City she moved into a Greenwich Village apartment located on East Twelfth Street. ¹⁷⁴ There, Day continued to practice her religion with zeal but, by the following summer, she sensed that her conversion to Catholicism had created distance between herself and some of her old friends. ¹⁷⁵ She did what she could to maintain these relationships, but focused her attention on praying that her talents could be used for the benefit of both her fellow workers and the poor. ¹⁷⁶

Day's introduction to Peter Maurin, ¹⁷⁷ through the editor of Commonweal magazine in December of 1931, ¹⁷⁸ was an event she later attributed to direct Providential intervention ¹⁷⁹ because it marked the beginning of the vocation Dorothy sought. Maurin was the product of a strong family of Catholic peasants from the province of Languedoc, in southern France. ¹⁸⁰ Day described him as "a short, broad-shouldered workingman" with a "high, broad head, . . . graying hair, . . . [and] warm grey eyes." ¹⁸¹ Dorothy cited Peter as the catalyst for both the establishment of the many houses of hospitality, ¹⁸² which later sprouted up across the country, and the production of the Catholic Worker newspaper, ¹⁸³ which was, in fact, created at Peter's insistence. ¹⁸⁴ Maurin deeply believed in both the dignity of the worker and the dignity of labor. ¹⁸⁵ He heavily influenced Dorothy with his teachings. ¹⁸⁶ He was pessimistic about the future, saw little hope in the rationalist idea of progress, and denied the Enlightenment dogma that truth which serves true human progress can only be found in an analysis of the " 'objective."' ¹⁸⁷ The most important belief of Maurin, the formally uneducated but autodidactic thinker, was in the practice of "personalism," ¹⁸⁸ a philosophy which directly countered the theory of the objective and affirmatively answered Cain's rhetorical "Am I my brother's keeper?" ¹⁸⁹ According to Jesus, to love one's neighbor was the second of the two greatest commandments. ¹⁹⁰ Maurin believed that this divine command could best be achieved by renewing the Christian community. ¹⁹¹

In 1932, Peter Maurin proposed the production of a multi-part action program via a newspaper, the establishment of round table discussions, the opening of houses of hospitality and the creation of farming communes. ¹⁹² Day was especially intrigued by Maurin's notion of publishing a newspaper ¹⁹³ because it offered an opportunity to counter the anti-religious message of the Communist Daily Worker. ¹⁹⁴ For fifty seven dollars, the Catholic Paulist Press agreed to print 2,500 copies of the team's eight page tabloid. ¹⁹⁵ The first edition of the Catholic Worker ¹⁹⁶ was ready for sale on May Day, May 1, 1933. ¹⁹⁷ From its inception and throughout its history, the Catholic Worker, at a sale price of one penny per copy, has been well within the financial reach of all. ¹⁹⁸

With the first issues of Catholic Worker in hand, the ink not yet dry on the pages, Dorothy and her co-workers proceeded to Union Square, New York City, where thousands of radicals were denouncing Hitler, and Communists paraded in conjunction with their Soviet counterparts marching through Red Square, thousands of miles away in Moscow. ¹⁹⁹ The Catholic Worker made its debut here, declaring its solidarity with labor and its intention to fight social injustices. ²⁰⁰ The paper was an immediate success and its readership rapidly expanded from Day's humble abode at Fifteenth Street to other nearby apartments. ²⁰¹

Their efforts in regard to the houses of hospitality began a short time after. ²⁰² Dorothy Day later wrote of Maurin's personalist philosophy about the houses:

"Every house should have a Christ's room. . . . It is no use turning people away to an agency, to the city or the state or the Catholic Charities. It is you yourself who must perform the works of mercy. Often you can only give the price of a meal, or a bed on the Bowery. Often you can only hope that it will be spent for that. Often you can literally take off a garment if it only be a scarf and warm some shivering brother. But personally, at a personal sacrifice . . . ." ²⁰³

This was Maurin's way of combating the growing, passive, fatalist belief that the state had to assume the social work which God wanted each person to do. ²⁰⁴ Day immediately adopted the idea and her Fifteenth Street apartment served as the first Catholic Worker house of hospitality. ²⁰⁵ Training those out of work was one of the key purposes behind the establishment of the houses, and in the late fall of 1933, the Catholic Worker School was inaugurated at the Fifteenth Street apartment. ²⁰⁶ Speakers included Columbia University professors and Jesuit priests. ²⁰⁷ The houses of hospitality soon attracted many young men and women who were eager to volunteer their time and energy for the benefit of the poor. ²⁰⁸

The newspaper continued to flourish throughout the early thirties. By December of 1934, the circulation of the Catholic Worker reached 60,000. ²⁰⁹ In March, 1935, in need of more space, the Catholic Worker moved to 144 Charles Street. ²¹⁰ In that month's issue, Dorothy announced the initiation of a new Catholic Worker enterprise of a combined farm and school, located near the shore in Huguenot, Staten Island. ²¹¹ By May Day of that year, the Catholic Worker newspaper had achieved a circulation of 110,000. ²¹²

1. The Catholic Worker Newspaper

The first edition of the Catholic Worker, which had been "planned, written, and edited in the kitchen" of Day's Fifteenth Street tenement, on various New York subway platforms and on the Staten Island ferry, was published on May 1, 1933. ²¹³ The fifty-four year old Peter Maurin served as the tangible "rock" upon which the newspaper was founded. ²¹⁴ Having been the eldest of twenty two children and educated by the Christian Brothers near his village in France, ²¹⁵ Peter was well aware of the virtue and value of hard work and sacrifice and had the drive needed for the Catholic Worker's success. ²¹⁶ Maurin proselytized Catholic social thought. ²¹⁷ He had originally sought out Dorothy Day, following a suggestion from the Commonweal magazine editor, George M. Shuster. ²¹⁸ His suggestion, that Day begin a Catholic newspaper for the unemployed, was almost immediately implemented. ²¹⁹ Dorothy was involved with all the work of the newspaper; fund-raising, circulation, and reporting, while Peter's role was that of theorist; his idea of fund-raising was one of divine intervention--praying for money. ²²⁰ The first issue of the Catholic Worker prompted Maurin to remark disdainfully, "everybody's paper is nobody's paper." ²²¹ He was upset over the contents, which focused on labor union strikes, race relations, labor schools, and housing. ²²² He had wanted it to revolve exclusively around his ideas, essays, and theories. ²²³ Maurin ultimately became the elder statesman of the Catholic Worker and spent the last decade of his life speaking to those interested in the paper, contributing "Easy Essays" to its pages, and moving between the New York houses of hospitality and the Catholic Worker farm. ²²⁴ Peter Maurin and his theories were the catalysts that motivated Dorothy Day to find meaning and purpose in her life. ²²⁵ Dorothy, in turn, absorbed Maurin's ideas and communicated them on paper to the rest of the population in a less harsh, more tempered fashion. ²²⁶

Although word of mouth was the primary vehicle allowing for the rapid expansion and early popularity of the Catholic Worker, Day further fostered the newspaper's readership and helped secure its financial well being by mailing copies of it to various editors, book reviewers, academics and members of the clergy, many of whom generously offered both moral and fiscal support. ²²⁷ The growth of the Catholic Worker from the 2500 copies distributed on May 1, 1933, to its peak in the 1940s was truly dramatic: November, 1933, 20,000 copies sold; March 1935, 65,000 copies sold; December, 1936, 100,000 copies sold; 1938, 150,000 copies sold; December, 1940, 185,000 copies sold. ²²⁸ Although the 91,000 copies printed for each of the seven issues in 1995 ²²⁹ indicates something of a decline since the middle of the century, the numbers are still remarkable, considering today's comparatively calm labor scene and many additional sources of information. The paper has always been sold for a penny a copy, or twenty five cents for the yearly subscription. ²³⁰ The editors continue to receive no compensation, as evidence of the paper's rejection of the capitalist profit motive. ²³¹

Most Catholic Worker articles integrate social justice and religious themes in addressing contemporary problems. ²³² For example, the May, 1935 issue included reports on efforts to organize food relief for displaced sharecroppers, poor mothers in need of child care, the Scottsboro case, ²³³ a farm labor strike, a utility stockholders' meeting, and living conditions for poor urban children. ²³⁴

The Catholic Worker was influenced by several foreign intellectual sources. One of these was Emmanuel Mounier's personalist journal L'Esprit, which focused on both religion, in the context of contemporary social and moral issues, as well as "distributism," an anti-capitalist, anti-industrialist, and anti-statist philosophy. ²³⁵ The works of Russian novelist Fyodor Dostoevsky and the religious philosopher Nicholas Berdyaev provided additional guidance. ²³⁶

Until 1940, Dorothy had not only been the editor of the Catholic Worker, she was also a reporter and columnist who contributed many articles. ²³⁷ Day's greatest pieces focused upon topics directly relevant to the general work force. ²³⁸ She developed a large working-class readership by reporting on strikes, union discussions, and other labor issues. ²³⁹ Day, who strongly supported the union movement, ²⁴⁰ came to know the influential union leaders Philip Murray, John Lewis, John Brophy, Harry Bridges, and Joseph Curran, very well, ²⁴¹ a factor which almost certainly aided in enhancing the reputation of the Catholic Worker. Day was one of only two reporters, and the only woman, to be allowed into the factory by the United Auto Workers Union during their sit down strikes at General Motors. ²⁴² The Catholic Worker found both the activities of its parent group and the opinions of its editors to be a powerful and influential source of news. In 1934, the Catholic Workers joined department store strikers in New York City and held picket signs reading "Unionization is Favored by the Pope" and "The Catholic Church Backs a Living Wage." ²⁴³ In 1935, the organization actively supported a proposed child-labor amendment to the Constitution, which fell eight states short of ratification. ²⁴⁴ The Catholic Workers' role was also pronounced in the 1936 New York maritime strike. ²⁴⁵ The group had also formed the Catholic Worker Labor School in New York. ²⁴⁶ In 1936, the Catholic Worker offered a special publication called the Catholic Worker Stand on Strikes, which outlined the paper's case for solidarity with the newly formed Congress of Industrial Organizations and support of labor in general. ²⁴⁷ The underlying purposes behind the Catholic Worker's support of striking workers were twofold. First, the editors of the Catholic Worker wished to express the paper's compassion for the worker and thus further appeal to the religious among the population by suggesting that the Catholic Worker Stand on Strikes was but one of its "works of mercy." ²⁴⁸ Second, it was felt that the special edition might appeal to those currently on the picket line who might not have been exposed to the Catholic Worker previously or, in the alternative, that it might fortify relationships with those workers already in touch with the Catholic Worker. ²⁴⁹

Dorothy Day's column "Day By Day" ²⁵⁰ was, in some ways, the centerpiece of the newspaper. It contained straightforward monthly essays presenting her personal views on issues that appealed to the common person, deliberately eschewing the often more abstract writing of other Catholic Worker journalists and contributors. ²⁵¹

The tone of her rhetoric would often generate sympathy. However, it could also be very patronizing and acerbic. On one particular occasion, she challenged the policies of Joseph Ryan, the leader of the Longshoreman's Union, who retorted, "You tell Dorothy Day she's no lady." ²⁵²

Without question, the Catholic Worker was a major supporter of both the labor movement and Christian ideals; by no means did it merely "report" the news. Its reporters were often on the scene to support a picket or work stoppage and periodically participated in these efforts. The paper consistently reiterated its fundamental faith to the Catholic Church and actively espoused the word of the Lord. Nevertheless, the Catholic Worker never became the official newsletter of any individual labor or religious organization. It always retained its autonomy; it openly commented upon a wide range of social issues and often criticized the actions of many parties, regardless of whether they were on the side of labor or not. ²⁵³

2. Catholic Worker Houses of Hospitality

The Catholic Worker movement was one of the first Roman Catholic social initiatives since the Reformation to support revolutionary Gospel applications throughout the social order. ²⁵⁴ In addition to the Catholic Worker newspaper, the ideas of Dorothy Day and Peter Maurin were implemented by the Catholic Worker houses of hospitality. ²⁵⁵ These houses distributed food to the hungry, provided beds for the homeless and served as "newspaper offices, volunteer centers, soup kitchens, boarding houses, schools" and "places of worship." ²⁵⁶ By 1938, the Catholic Worker house on Mott Street, in Greenwich Village, was feeding breakfast and dinner to an estimated 1,200 people per day. ²⁵⁷ The Catholic Worker Maryhouse, located at 55 East Third Street, also in New York City's Greenwich Village, was acquired in 1973 to alleviate some of the strain on the Mott Street operation. ²⁵⁸ To this day, the two houses continue their mission, although the original Mott Street house is now located two blocks away, at 36 East First Street where, as St. Joseph's House, it also serves as the headquarters for the Catholic Worker newspaper. ²⁵⁹ Maryhouse remains where it was, providing the same services it did almost sixty years ago. ²⁶⁰

In addition to helping the needy at the houses, each Catholic Worker volunteer engages in discovering, individually, the implications of the Gospel. ²⁶¹ The constant threat at each house of hospitality is anarchy. The members and residents are only held together by commitment, religion, friendship, experience, and spirituality; there is no constitution and generally no elections or officers. ²⁶² While there exists no requirement for a house of hospitality volunteer to do so, each traditionally takes a vow of poverty which, according to the Catholic Worker ideal, means living without attachment to the material world, so that one might be brought closer to spiritual perfection. ²⁶³ Such a practice constituted Peter Maurin's core view on how best to restore civilization. ²⁶⁴ Not all of Maurin's ideas were adopted, however, as evidenced by the deliberate creation of Catholic Worker houses of hospitality in urban population centers rather in the countryside, where Peter Maurin's "Green Revolution" ²⁶⁵ wished to develop self-sufficient agrarian communities. ²⁶⁶

Houses of hospitality soon surfaced beyond the boundaries of New York City. In 1936, operations opened in Cleveland, Harrisburg (Pennsylvania), Boston, Milwaukee, Pittsburgh, Detroit, Houma (Louisiana), Chicago, and San Francisco. ²⁶⁷ By World War II, there were thirty houses across the country, and one in England. ²⁶⁸ Today, there are more than 130 Catholic Worker houses worldwide, scattered across twenty nine states, the District of Columbia, Australia, Canada, England, Germany and the Netherlands. ²⁶⁹

Throughout the thirties and forties, Dorothy Day visited many of these Catholic Worker houses, in an attempt to provide whatever aid she could to both the houses and those who benefitted from them. Upon her arrival in February, 1936, at one particular house in Parkin, Arkansas, Day witnessed one hundred and eight people living in a tent colony on the surrounding property. ²⁷⁰ The group had recently been evicted from their employer-provided shacks because of their union activity and its incessant drive to establish a farming community on the employer's grounds. ²⁷¹ Dorothy, in an attempt to remedy the situation, immediately wrote the First Lady, Mrs. Eleanor Roosevelt, relating the purpose of her cause, activity of the union, the plight of its workers and the misery that existed in the Arkansas tent colony. ²⁷² The First Lady responded immediately by contacting the governor of the State. ²⁷³ The governor then drove to the site and looked over the situation. He said, "there was nothing wrong—just a bunch of happy go lucky people who refused to work." ²⁷⁴ The governor of Arkansas blamed the entire situation on the "bleeding-heart liberal" outsider. ²⁷⁵

By 1949, Day had returned to New York. At that time, Cardinal Francis Spellman, the Catholic Archbishop of New York, was engaged in union-breaking, considered a ruthless tactic, against the unionized gravediggers of Calvary Cemetery, Local 293 of the International Food, Tobacco and Agricultural Workers Union. ²⁷⁶ The local had gone on strike against the trustees of St. Patrick's Cathedral, Cardinal Spellman principal among them, ²⁷⁷ over demands for a pay increase and improved working conditions. The Cardinal immediately ordered his seminarians to replace the strikers, in order to provide timely burials. ²⁷⁸ He proclaimed that the union's strike was "communist-inspired," that he was "happy to be a strike breaker," and that his action was "the most important thing that I have done in my ten years in New York." ²⁷⁹ Some strikers made their way to the Mott Street house, where Dorothy was working. ²⁸⁰ Day immediately stopped what she was doing and joined the picketers at the cemetery. ²⁸¹

Dorothy Day was always a staunch opponent of war, both in her early socialist years and throughout her life with the Catholic Worker movement. She wrote in one pre-World War II editorial appearing in the Catholic Worker, "We oppose . . . preparedness for war, a preparedness which is going on now on an unprecedented scale and which will undoubtedly lead to war." ²⁸² In another issue, she openly declared that "the Catholic Worker is sincerely a pacifist paper." ²⁸³ In an article addressing the Spanish Civil War, the October 1938 edition of the Catholic Worker stated, "We are opposed to the use of force as a means of settling personal, national, or international disputes." ²⁸⁴ This pacifist stance, in the face of totalitarian fascism, brought sharp criticism from the Catholic community, which had always been opposed to anti-religious philosophy of Communism and was in support of Franco's Spanish Fascists. ²⁸⁵ Dorothy Day and Peter Maurin were also adamant in their defense of Jews, as anti-Semitic sentiment grew internationally, in Hitler's Germany, and domestically, through the words of well known figures such as Charles Coughlin, a Detroit Catholic priest with a very popular political radio program. ²⁸⁶ In the June 1940 edition of the Catholic Worker, entitled the "Peace Edition," Dorothy wrote that the Catholic Worker was opposed to all violence between countries, including the use of any violent means to resist an invader. ²⁸⁷ This editorial, naturally, drew very harsh criticisms. ²⁸⁸

Although the voices against her did not lure Day from her personal convictions, she and her movement did not go completely unaffected. Even upon the United States' entrance into World War II, Dorothy continued to urge her Catholic Worker colleagues and the rest of the world to adopt the pacifist position. ²⁸⁹ Her pleas were not generally well received. ²⁹⁰ The Catholic Worker newspaper lost over 100,000 readers. ²⁹¹ Many years later, Dorothy recalled how many hundreds of her own young Catholic Workers ignored the Catholic Worker's stand for pacifism after the 1941 bombing of Pearl Harbor, rationalizing that the war was for a just cause. ²⁹² By 1942, only sixteen Catholic Worker houses of hospitality continued to operate. ²⁹³ By 1945, that number had dwindled to ten. ²⁹⁴

Day remained unshaken and proceeded on. She explained that the Worker's remaining readership of 50,500 represented the "tried and true." ²⁹⁵ In 1946, she changed the name of her column to "On Pilgrimage," explaining that "[w]e should always be thinking of ourselves as pilgrims anyway." ²⁹⁶ The Worker, as a whole, became more focused on economic and social matters. ²⁹⁷

The Korean War brought a new set of challenges. During the course of its domestic preparedness campaign, the United States government initiated a number of Civil Defense drills, which required citizens to seek shelter, to prepare for a hypothetical nuclear attack. ²⁹⁸ A group of Catholic Worker members, headed by Ammon Hennacy, ²⁹⁹ led a peaceful civil disobedience protest against these drills on June 15, 1955, at New York City Hall, ³⁰⁰ asserting their refusal to participate, in an effort to demonstrate the insanity of taking shelter from a nuclear bomb. ³⁰¹ Similar protests were staged throughout the remainder of the decade and into the next. ³⁰²

The Catholic Worker movement has been regaining its strength ever since and is well on its way to recapturing a good part of the popularity it saw in the early thirties. During the 1960s and early 70s, the Catholic Worker once again led the way for substantial anti-war resistance within American Catholicism. ³⁰³ The righteousness of the conflict in Vietnam was not as decided as that of the Second World War, and, as a result, the entire organization received much more support from the population at large. ³⁰⁴ Today, there are 130 Catholic Worker houses of hospitality in twenty nine states, The District of Columbia, and five other nations. ³⁰⁵ The Catholic Worker now delivers approximately 91,000 copies of each of its seven annual issues from its New York offices. ³⁰⁶ Its mission and its faith continue to be known. ³⁰⁷

During the sixties and seventies, the effects of both the natural effects of age combined with depression caused by the ongoing departures of so many of her early friends from the world began to limit Dorothy's advocacy; the physical aspect in particular. Her last major political resistance and solidarity venture occurred in August of 1973, when she traveled to California's San Joaquin Valley to join Cesar Chavez's ³⁰⁸ United Farm Workers' protest against the Teamsters Union. ³⁰⁹ She thereafter returned to her Third Street apartment in the New York City Catholic Worker House, where she remained until her death in 1980 after a long illness. ³¹⁰

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NOTES

27. See William D. Miller, Dorothy Day: A Biography 1 (1982).

28. See id. at 516-17.

29. See discussion supra note 8.

30. St. Augustine of Hippo was a great Bishop and Doctor of the early Christian Church. Much of his early adult life was spent in dissolute, wasteful living. His major works were The Confessions (R.S. Pine-Coffin trans., 1966) and The City of God Against the Pagans (Philip Levine trans., 1966). For an excellent biography of Augustine, see Peter Brown, Augustine of Hippo: A Biography (1969).

31. See Mel Piehl, Breaking Bread: The Catholic Worker and the Origin of Catholic Radicalism In America 8 (1982).

32. See Robert Coles, Dorothy Day: A Radical Devotion 3 (1987); William D. Miller, Dorothy Day: A Biography 104-19 (1982).

33. See Coles, supra note 32, at 3.

34. See Voices from The Catholic Worker 79 (Rosalie Riegle Troester ed., 1993). Jim Forest commented on Dorothy Day, saying, "[O]ne of the most important parts of her intercession was praying for people who had committed suicide. She had a great deal of sympathy for them. Now probably that was partly connected to her apparent attempt at suicide when she was a young woman."Id.

35. See Coles, supra note 32, at 7-8. Day was married to Barkley Tobey and claimed a "common law" marriage with Forster Batterham, the father of her daughter. See Coles, supra note 33, at 7-8.

36. See Coles, supra note 32, at 9.

37. The Bible presents the parable of Jesus, recounting the story of two sons. See Luke 15:11-32 (Revised Standard). One remains on the farm, while the other son demands of his father his inheritance, which he subsequently squanders. See id. During a severe famine, the younger son cannot find work or food. See id. He envies the food fed to pigs. See id. He repents, swallows his pride and returns to his father to ask for work as a servant. See id. The father then orders a great feast for the returning younger son, to which the elder son objects. See id. at 15:31-32. The father replies to the faithful son, "Son, you are always with me, and all that is mine is yours. It was fitting to make merry and be glad, for this your brother was dead, and is alive: he was lost, and is found."Id.

38. See Dorothy Day, The Long Loneliness 24 (1959).

39. See William D. Miller, Dorothy Day: A Biography 5 (1982).

40. Charles Darwin was an English naturalist who originated the theory of evolution by natural selection, "which holds that all species of plants and animals developed from earlier forms by hereditary transmission of slight variations in successive generations, and that the forms which survive are those that are best adapted to the environment." Webster's New World Dictionary 359 (2d college ed. 1980).

41. Miller, supra note 39, at 5. John Calvin was a French Protestant reformer, who founded a theological system "which emphasizes the doctrines of predestination and salvation solely by God's grace." Webster's New World Dictionary 202 (2d college ed. 1980).

42. See Miller, supra note 39, at 9, 14.

43. Day, supra note 38, at 24.

44. This Dorothy Day aphorism was inscribed on the Laetare Medal, the University of Notre Dame's highest honor, awarded to Day in March, 1972. See Alden Whitman, Dorothy Day, Outspoken Catholic Activist, Dies at 83, N.Y. Times, Nov. 30, 1980, at 45.

45. See Day, supra note 38, at 24.

46. See Day, supra note 38, at 24.

47. See William D. Miller, Dorothy Day: A Biography 5 (1982).

48. See id. at 6.

49. See id. at 7.

50. See id. at 8.

51. See William D. Miller, A Harsh and Dreadful Love: Dorothy Day and the Catholic Worker Movement 38 (1973).

52. See Dorothy Day, The Long Loneliness 48 (1959).

53. See Miller, supra note 47, at 9.

54. See Miller, supra note 47, at 9.

55. William D. Miller, Dorothy Day: A Biography 8 (1982).

56. See id. at 9.

57.Id. at 9.

58. See id. at 12.

59.Id. at 13.

60. See id. at 12.

61. See id. at 13.

62. See id. at 9, 14.

63. See id. at 18.

64. See id. at 18.

65. See id. at 18-19.

66. See id. at 21.

67. See id. at 21.

68. See id. at 28.

69. Mary Baker Eddy, Science and Health, with Key to the Scriptures (1971).

70. Algernon Charles Swinburne, Tristram of Lyonesse, and Other Poems (1882).

71. William D. Miller, Dorothy Day: A Biography 28 (1982).

72. See id. at 29.

73. See id. at 31.

74. See id. at 32-33.

75. See id. at 33.

76.Id. at 34.

77.Id.

78. See id. at 34-35.

79. Id. at 35.

80. See id.

81. Id. at 39.

82. Id. at 35.

83. See id. at 35-36. The leading members of the labor organization, the Industrial Workers of the World, were "Big" Bill Haywood, Arturro Giovanitti, "Mother" Jones, Elizabeth Gurley Flynn, and Carlo Tresca. See id.; see also Dorothy Day, The Long Loneliness 44 (1959). The Haymarket anarchists were labor organizers who were convicted and executed for murders caused by an unknown bomb thrower. See id. Dorothy believed they were "framed," and "martyrs" for the cause of an eight hour work day. See id.

84. See William D. Miller, Dorothy Day: A Biography 36 (1982).

85. See id. at 39-40. The Scribbler's club was described as a club for student's adept in literary composition. See id.

86. See id. at 40.

87. See id. at 43.

88. See id. at 47.

89. See Jim O'Grady, Dorothy Day: With Love for the Poor 35-39 (1993).

90. William D. Miller, Dorothy Day: A Biography 47 (1982).

91. See id. at 54.

92. See id. at 55. When able to get past the office boy she was told that "newspapers weren't the place for young girls." Id.

93. See William D. Miller, Dorothy Day: A Biography 55 (1982). Dorothy accused her father of telling "his city editor friends to lecture me on the subject of newspaper work for women." Id.

94. See id. The Masses was "a magazine that began in 1911 as an insignificant socialist publication emphasizing cooperatives." Id. at 77.

95. See id. at 61.

96. See id. at 57.

97. See id.

98. See id. at 58.

99. See id. at 59-61.

100. See id. at 62.

101. See id. at 62.

102. See id.

103. See id. at 71.

104. See id.

105. See id. at 74.

106. See id. at 64. Gold later became the editor of the Communist newspaper, the Daily Worker, in the 1930s. See id.

107. See id. at 74.

108. See id.

109. See id. at 77.

110. See id. at 75.

111. See id. at 81.

112. See id. at 82.

113. See id. at 77. The government successfully suppressed the Masses in September 1917. See id. at 78, 82.

114. See id. at 105.

115. See id. at 105. Eugene O'Neill (1888-1953) was a playwright born in New York City. He won three Pulitzer Prizes, and, in 1936, the Nobel Prize for literature. Many consider O'Neill the greatest playwright in the history of the United States. His plays include: Ah Wilderness! (1932); Anna Christie (1921) (Pulitzer Prize); Beyond East for Cardiff (1916); Beyond The Horizon (1920) (Pulitzer Prize); Desire Under The Elms (1924); The Emperor Jones (1920); The Hairy Ape (1922); Hughie (1941); The Iceman Cometh (1946); Long Day's Journey Into Night (produced 1956); A Moon For The Misbegotten (1956); Mourning Becomes Electra (1931); Strange Interlude (1927) (Pulitzer Prize). See Biography of Eugene Gladstone O'Neill, Microsoft Encarta (1993).

Dorothy Day and Eugene O'Neill probably had a sexual love affair. See Voices from The Catholic Worker 75 (Rosalie Riegle Troester ed., 1993). "[T]o hear Dorothy talk, she and Eugene O'Neill were simply good friends. My impression of O'Neill was that if he were good friends with a woman, it tended to go beyond friendship." Id.

116. See William D. Miller, Dorothy Day: A Biography 106 (1982).

117. See id. at 119.

118. See id.

119. Id. at 123.

120. See id. at 125.

121. See id. at 128. Moise did not find Day's affections to be genuine, as "[i]t was the usual business of a young girl (Day was twenty) falling for an older man ([Moise] was thirty)." Id.

122. See id. at 131.

123. See id. at 136-37.

124. See id. at 137.

125. See id. at 138.

126. Id. at 142.

127. See id. at 140; Voices from The Catholic Worker 95 (Rosalie Riegle Troester ed., 1993).

128. Miller, supra note 116, at 143.

129. See Voices from The Catholic Worker 95 (Rosalie Riegle Troester ed., 1993).

She said when she was twenty-two, she was exhausted, so she married this sugar daddy, just to go to Europe to take a rest. What I remember about Europe is falling asleep on a yacht off Capri and having a drink in the Eiffel Tower. When I got back, we were staying in the Hotel New Yorker. One morning I got up before he did and took all the jewelry he had given me and put it on the counter and went home to my mother.

Id.

130. William D. Miller, Dorothy Day: A Biography 147 (1982).

131. See id.

132. See id. at 150. The Wobblies were under suspicion because it was the time of the Red Scare and they were believed to be a communist organization. See id.

133. See id. at 150-51. The Wobblies were known to be a male organization, and therefore Dorothy looked suspicious when she entered a Wobblies' house looking for "hospitality," and while she was undressing and preparing to go to bed, the police raided her bedroom and arrested her and her female companion. See id.

134. See id. at 157.

135. See William D. Miller, A Harsh and Dreadful Love: Dorothy Day and the Catholic Worker Movement 54 (1973).

136. See id.

137. See id. Day got a job in a Canal Street dance hall and wrote about her experiences there for the paper. See id.

138. See id. at 55.

139. See William D. Miller, Dorothy Day: A Biography 166 (1982).

140. See id.

141. See id.

142. See id. A Common law marriage is, "one not solemnized in the ordinary way but created by an agreement to marry, followed by cohabitation." Black's Law Dictionary 227 (6th ed. 1990).

143. See William D. Miller, Dorothy Day: A Biography 166 (1982).

144. See id. at 168.

145. See id.

146. See id. at 169. Hart (Harold) Crane, most noted for his work, The Bridge (1930), was an "american poet who celebrated the richness of life-- including the life of the industrial age--in lyrics of visionary intensity." 3 The New Encyclopedia Britannica Micropedia Ready Reference (15th ed. 1993).

147. See William D. Miller, A Harsh and Dreadful Love: Dorothy Day and the Catholic Worker Movement 55 (1973).

148. See Miller, supra note 143, at 170. Day later wrote extensively about her time at the cottage. See Miller, supra note 143, at 170; see also Dorothy Day, From Union Square to Rome (1938); Dorothy Day, The Long Loneliness: The Autobiography of Dorothy Day (1959).

149. See William D. Miller, Dorothy Day: A Biography 171 (1982) ("One principal theme that appears in her writing during this period is nature.").

150. See Miller, supra note 147, at 56.

151. Miller, supra note 147, at 55-56.

152. See William D. Miller, Dorothy Day: A Biography 171-79 (1982).

153. See id. at 178.

154. See id. at 179.

155. See id. at 180.

156. See id. at 182-84.

157. See id. at 185.

158. See id. at 431.

159. See id. at 189.

160. Id. Around this time, Dorothy had been reading Sigrid Undset's Kristin Lavransdatter. See id. at 193. Her conflict may have been sparked, not only by her own socially conscious past, but also by the emotions expressed by Kristin, the work's main character, who professed a profound love for the weak and downtrodden. See id. Day resolved this problem by deciding not to blame the church for "the mistakes of churchmen." Id. at 190.

161. See id.

162. Id. at 192.

163. See William D. Miller, Dorothy Day: A Biography 192 (1982).

164. See id. at 187-88.

165. See id.

166. See Commonwealth v. Sacco, 151 N.E. 839 (Mass. 1926). Sacco and Vanzetti were Italian immigrants who were convicted and executed for first degree murder, allegedly committed during a robbery. See Roz Young, Real Crime of the Century Is Still Open for Discussion, Dayton Daily News, Oct. 22, 1994, at 13A. It was widely believed that they were innocent. See id.

167. See William D. Miller, Dorothy Day: A Biography 195 (1982).

168. See id. at 200.

169. See id. at 201.

170. See id.

171. See William D. Miller, A Harsh and Dreadful Love: Dorothy Day and the Catholic Worker Movement 60-62 (1973).

172. See id.

173. See William D. Miller, Dorothy Day: A Biography 216-17 (1982).

174. See William D. Miller, A Harsh and Dreadful Love: Dorothy Day and The Catholic Worker 61 (1973).

175. See Miller, supra note 173, at 223.

176. See Miller, supra note 173, at 226.

177. Peter Maurin, 1877-1949, was one of 22 children born into a French peasant family. See Mel Piehl, Breaking Bread: The Catholic Worker and the Origin of Catholic Radicalism in America 57-66 (1982). He was an autodidact without formal education and advocate of physical farm labor throughout his life. See id. He authored "Easy Essays," which appeared in the Catholic Worker regularly. See id. For additional references, see Voices from The Catholic Worker (Rosalie Riegle Troester ed., 1993) and William D. Miller, Dorothy Day: A Biography (1982).

178. See William D. Miller, Dorothy Day: A Biography 227 (1982); Mel Piehl, Breaking Bread: The Catholic Worker and the Origin of Catholic Radicalism in America 57 (1982).

179. See Miller, supra note 178, at 231-32.

180. See Miller, supra note 178, at 228.

181. Dorothy Day, Introduction to Peter Maurin, Green Revolution (1949).

182. See Miller, supra note 178, at 232. The houses of hospitality were "for men and women who had no other place to go, nothing to eat, and were at the mercy of whatever secular or religious charity happened to be available." Robert Coles, Dorothy Day: A Radical Devotion 14 (1987). There Maurin and Day sought to provide "works of mercy" in a personal fashion. Id.

183. See William D. Miller, Dorothy Day: A Biography 232 (1982).

184. See id.

185. See id. at 243.

186. See id. at 247.

187. Id at 238 (citation omitted). The "objective" is described as a philosophy substituting individual subjective thought and behavior for supposedly ideal thought and behavior based upon establishing social norms. Id.

188. Personalism, according to Maurin, was based on the subjective ideal. See id. at 244. He often stated in explaining his design, " 'Be what you want the other fellow to be."' Id. (citation omitted).

189. Id. at 244-45 (citing Genesis 4:9).

190. See Matthew 22:34-40.

191. See William D. Miller, Dorothy Day: A Biography 244-47 (1982).

192. See id. at 252.

193. See id.

194. See id. at 254.

195. See id. at 253.

196. According to Day, Maurin originally wanted to call the paper the Catholic Radical. See id. at 254.

197. See id.

198. See id. at 255.

199. See id.

200. See id.

201. See id. at 258.

202. See id. at 259.

203. Id.

204. See William D. Miller, Dorothy Day: A Biography 259 (1982).

205. See id.

206. See id. at 265.

207. See id. at 265. Professors Carlton Hayes, Harry Carmen and Parker Moon, as well as John La Farge, Gerard Donnelly and Wilfred Parsons, all spoke at the fifteenth Street apartment. See id.

208. See id. 262-65.

209. See id. at 266.

210. See id. at 270.

211. See id. at 271.

212. See id. at 274.

213. Mel Piehl, Breaking Bread: The Catholic Worker and the Origin of Catholic Radicalism in America 3 (1982).

214. See id. at 59.

215. See id. at 57.

216. See id. at 58.

217. See id. at 58-59.

218. See id. at 58.

219. See id. at 59.

220. See id. at 59-60.

221. Id. at 60.

222. See id.

223. See id.

224. See id. at 60-61. During the winter of 1946, Peter Maurin's health began to fail and he died on May 15, 1949. See William D. Miller, A Harsh and Dreadful Love: Dorothy Day and the Catholic Worker Movement 210-12 (1973).

225. See Mel Piehl, Breaking Bread: The Catholic Worker and the Origin of Catholic Radicalism in America 65 (1982).

226. See id. at 69. For two of Peter Maurin's most famous Catholic Worker "Easy Essays," expressing the core purposes of key Catholic Worker ideas, See id. at 63-64.

227. See id. at 67.

228. See id.

229. See Statement of Ownership, Management and Circulation, Cath. Worker, Dec. 1995, at 2.

230. See id. The seven issues, at 1oe per issue, or 25oe per annual subscription, are published January-February, March-April, May, June-July, August-September, October-November, and December, at 36 East 1st Street, New York City. See id.

231. See Mel Piehl, Breaking Bread: The Catholic Worker and the Origin of Catholic Radicalism in America 67 (1982).

232. See id.

233. The Scottsboro case "is perhaps the best known example of the use of Black men as scapegoats for crime." Katheryn K. Russell, The Racial Hoax as Crime: The Law as Affirmation, 71 Ind. L.J. 593, 597-98 (1996).

234. See Mel Piehl, Breaking Bread: The Catholic Worker and the Origin of Catholic Radicalism in America 68 (1982).

235. See id. at 69-71.

236. See id. at 72.

237. See id. at 77.

238. See id. at 78.

239. See id.

240. See id. at 118. Day's support of labor, resulted in the Catholic Worker getting involved in the labor movement in a tangible fashion. See id.

241. See id. at 78.

242. See id.; see also Voices from The Catholic Worker 12 (Rosalie Riegle Troester ed., 1993) ("She climbed through the window and visited the sit down strikers in the General Motors plant in Flint. The only woman allowed in the plant.").

243. Mel Piehl, Breaking Bread: The Catholic Worker and the Origin of Catholic Radicalism in America 118 (1982).

244. See id. at 121.

245. See id. at 118. In order to assist the large number of seamen who were striking, an area was set up by the Catholic Worker where the seamen could go for food and shelter. See id.

246. See id. at 119. In the school Catholics were given help with entering the field of labor. See id.

247. See id. at 125.

248. Id.

249. See id.

250. See id. at 79. The name of the piece was changed in 1946 to "On Pilgrimage." See id.

251. See id.

252. Id. at 81.

253. See id. at 91.

254. See id. at 95.

255. See id. at 96.

256. Id.

257. Id.; see also William D. Miller, A Harsh and Dreadful Love: Dorothy Day and the Catholic Worker Movement 106 (1973) (stating that the Catholic Worker quickly outgrew the Charles Street apartment and moved to the Mott Street building on April 18, 1936, where it remained for fourteen years).

258. See William Miller, Dorothy Day: A Biography 511 (1982).

259. See Nancy L. Roberts, Dorothy Day and the Catholic Worker 14 (1984).

260. See id.

261. See Mel Piehl, Breaking Bread: The Catholic Worker and the Origin of Catholic Radicalism in America 97 (1982).

262. See id. at 98.

263. See id. at 98-99.

264. See id. at 102.

265. Id. at 115. Maurin's idea was for "urban refugees" to move to the country and "take up farming and craft production." Id.

266. See id.

267. See William D. Miller, Dorothy Day: A Biography 284 (1982).

268. See id.

269. See Voices from The Catholic Worker 569-76 (Rosalie Riegle Troester ed., 1993) (giving a complete address listing of the more than 130 Catholic Worker houses).

270. See William D. Miller, Dorothy Day: A Biography 286 (1982).

271. See id.

272. See id.

273. See id.

274. Id.

275. Id. at 287.

276. See id. at 404.

277. See id at 404. At the time Cardinal Spellman was a principal trustee of St. Patrick's Cathedral. See id.

278. See William Miller, A Harsh and Dreadful Love: Dorothy Day and the Catholic Worker Movement 223 (1973).

279. William D. Miller, Dorothy Day: A Biography 404 (1982).

280. See id.

281. See id.

282. Id. at 313.

283. Id.

284. Id. at 314.

285. See id. at 315-16.

286. See id. at 316-18.

287. See id. at 331.

288. See id. at 332.

289. See William D. Miller, A Harsh and Dreadful Love: Dorothy Day and the Catholic Worker Movement 172 (1973).

290. See William D. Miller, Dorothy Day: A Biography 332 (1982).

291. See Miller, supra note 289, at 180.

292. See Miller, supra note 290, at 344-45.

293. See Miller, supra note 289, at 174.

294. See Miller, supra note 289, at 174.

295. Miller, supra note 290, at 377.

296. Miller, supra note 290, at 379.

297. See Miller, supra note 290, at 389.

298. See Miller, supra note 290, at 283.

299. Ammon Hennacy was an activist in the 1950s who was at the center of the Worker movement and was an influential part of the Catholic Worker. Day, herself, has compared him to Peter Maurin. See id. at 266.

300. See id. at 283.

301. See id. at 284-86.

302. See Mel Piehl, Breaking Bread: The Catholic Worker and the Origins of Catholic Radicalism in America 214-15 (1982). On May 3, 1960, over a thousand protesters from the Catholic Worker, the War Resisters League, the Fellowship Reconciliation, and other pacifist groups, led a peace rally in Central Park. See id. at 215. There were even more people involved in the protests in 1961. See id.

303. See id. at 215-26, 230.

304. See id. at 230-31.

305. See Voices from The Catholic Worker 569-76 (Rosalie Riegle Troester ed., 1993).

306. See Statement of Ownership, Management and Circulation, Cath. Worker, Dec. 1995, at 2.

307. See Voices from The Catholic Worker, supra note 305, at 577-80 (reprinting the 1992 statement of the "Aims and Means of the Catholic Worker Movement").

The aim of the Catholic Worker movement is to live in accordance with the justice and charity of Jesus Christ. This aim requires us to live in a different way. We recall the words of our founders, Dorothy Day who said, "God meant things to be much easier than we have made them," and Peter Maurin who wanted to build a society "[w]here it is easier for people to be good."

....

In labor, human need is no longer the reason for human work. Instead, the unbridled expansion of technology, necessary to capitalism and viewed as "progress," holds sway. Jobs are concentrated in productivity and administration for a "high-tech," war-related, consumer society of disposable goods, so that laborers are trapped in work that does not contribute to human welfare. Furthermore, as jobs become more specialized, many people are excluded from meaningful work or are alienated from the products of their labor. Even in farming, agribusiness has replaced agriculture, and, in all areas, moral restraints are run over roughshod and a disregard for the laws of nature now threatens the very planet.

....

[The Catholic Worker Advocates m]anual labor in a society that rejects it as undignified and inferior. "Besides inducing cooperation, besides overcoming barriers and establishing the spirit of sister-and brotherhood (besides just getting things done), manual labor enables us to use our body as well as our hands, our minds." (Dorothy Day) The Benedictine motto ' Ora et Labora' reminds us that the work of human hands is a gift for the edification of the world and the glory of God.

Voices from The Catholic Worker, supra note 305, at 577-79.

308. See Nancy L. Roberts, Dorothy Day and the Catholic Worker 73, 166 (1984). Cesar Chavez led the United Farm Workers in the struggles against the California Vineyards. See id.

309. See William D. Miller, Dorothy Day: A Biography 500 (1982). In her support of Chavez and the Mexican interant workers, Day, "along with a thousand-or-so others, was arrested and briefly jailed." Id.

310. See id. at 517.