Peter Maurin Persona List Peter Maurin

THB CATHOllG WORKER No., 10 Subecription1 Price le Vol. XIX 2lo Per Year I Unto Ages Peace Chrystie By MICHAEL HARRINGTON . .Of Age~ What does "peace" mean? Street Theoretically, this is "peace By ROBERT LUDLOW time." Yet, men die in Korea, in Twenty years ha.'lle _ gone by Indo-China, men make weapons of / Catholic Worker since the founding of the Catholic destruction in Oak Ridge and be Baptized by Fire yond the Urals. Worker Movement. Twenty years Now it looks as if there is the during which we have seen the possibility of "peace" in Korea, By TOM SULLIVAN progressive curtailment of liberty, perhaps even a settlement in Ger / After t,,{enty years of existence social liberty and individual lib many, a break in the cold war. the Catholic Worker sustained its erty. Twenty years of progres But what is peace? first major fire. This fire started sive materialization, of subjection · Korea last Saturday morning (April 19) to the unfreedom of th~ various It is now obvious that the death Welfare States. Twenty years of of Stalin started, or symbolized, a ~t five-thirty. Seven men were war and preparation for war. profound unrest in the top levels hospitalized as a result of burns Hence twenty~ years of defeat. · ·of the Soviet bu,reacracy. We can suffered during· the dis.aster. Fifty There was a time in this ·coun n.ot yet tell exactly what this three year old John Simms, who try when the tone of the day was means. Malenkov is certainly not has been with us for the past three s~t in terms of liberty. There the equal of Stalin in any sense, months helping out in the ditiing were serious offenses against lib nor is Beria subordinate to him. room, was the most badly burnt. erty, but they were regarded as Perhaps Stalin's burial signaled Four other victims of tl\e fire; offenses, they were ~ buses to be' the end of a fraction fight in the Bill Thebone, George · Lockhart, eradicated. A manr could speak Kremlin; perhaps only a begin Steve McDonough and Hank San his mind and though, by and ning. born are still in the hospital but large, there would be few to agree Whatever the . cause, . this ten are responding quite well to the with him, there would be few also dency has made certain important treatment tendered to them. - who would think seriously of ac gestures (o the West. One of these The two other men burnt by the cusing him of subversion or of is the possij)ility of a,Korean peace HW, Jimmy Rooney and Marty denying him the right to express settlement. Corbin, were dismissed from the himself. As I say it was no c~· - In the United States a change in hospital the same day they en - dition that was realized fully ·n ·governmJnt was also responsiore tered. Their burns are said to be the concrete. There were wi ch for at least a change in attitude, if minor thus they were bandaged up unts, racial persecution, a ti not approach. Eisenhower need and sent home. not fear the charge of being pro labor movements, religious bigo The fourth floor of the men's Communist (for several years, try. But it did not permeate side of the house was completely Acheson and Truman assumed that t the total atmosphere. It did not demolished by the fire. Part of any Soviet feeler was in bad faith, 1 rest as a heavy oppressive cloud the third and fifth floors display over the nation. • People still held p~obabb' -because any evid~ce of gaping .wounds as a result of the ~ expressed. In the l>eclara- co.ir::llfation 9n• ~ ·~,..w~~~w -l..liei>&e~....i:iQJJa. newspapei: accou ts r lieved that rights came ~ the appeaseme . had the buildiitg leveled to the nature of man rather than from elected by an electorate which felt ground. Thank God it wasn't that the State. But we know all that that he was a negotiator; indeed, a bad. has changed, we feel it rather than peace vote probably p'layed a role Someone _had misinformed the know it, it is a difference of at in his victory. newspapers that I had led many mosphere, the imperc'!ptible dif Because of thes.e changes, (but men and women out of tile house ference one gets to know not principally because of the Soviet) while the fire was raging. This was from a reasoned analysis of what there is now more hope of a Ko not true since I was one of the last makes it so but because one rean peace settlement. ones in the house to .be informed senses the oppression, one feels The New Line that a fire was in progress. uncomfortable. And yet we do Such a settlement would be wel (Continued on page 7l know somewhat why this is so. come on one very basic ground; We know of the disappearance of that it would put an end to the the frontier and the consequent bloodshed in Korea-and that it (Continued on page 6) (Continued on page 8) Life at Hard· Labor First _Essa}rs of By AMM.ON HENNACY "This is the Hard Labor I write -Peter Maurin about, James," I said to my boss as we chunked knee deep in m_ud SCHOLARS AND WORKERS BLOWING THE DYNAMITE The scholar has told the bourgeois 1. Writing about the Catholic seeking to channel the- rushing that a worker 1s a man for Church water to the west of the "land" all of that. a radical writer says: toward the east part which was But the bourgeois has told the "Rome will have to do more still dry. I had worked from 6 to scholar that a worker is a com than to play a waiting game; 8 p.ro. and now James came from moditr for all of that. she will have to use the milking and worked with me Because the scholar- has vision, some of the- dynamite until about 11. At the .head of the the b_ourgeois calls him a vision- Persona list Peter Maurin inherent_- in her message." .By DOROTHY DAY land where the water· came rush ary. 2. To blow the dynamite of a ing from the irrigation ditch it So the- bourgeois laughs at the message In 1932, Peter Maurin, founder of the Catholic Worker movement, was broke.the border so that this extra scholar's vision is the only way working at hard· manual labor at Mount Tremper, New York, at a boys' water in one land made it impos and the worker is left without to make the message dynamic. camp where he mended .roads, eut ice, and clid other chores winter sible for us to take care of it that vision. and summeP. and received his living, not a very munificent one, in re- night. We shut it off and started And the worker left by the scholar 3. If the Catholic Church turn. As a French peasatit he lived on soup and bread. His account is not today the next land. Then James got the without vision at the &'rocer did not come to more thap a few dollars a week. He small scraper bulldozer and made the dominant social dynamic talks about liquidating slept in the barn which was as close to the Stable as he could .get. He force slant ctiecks to the west of each both the bourgeois and the spent seven years in the vicinity of Kingston, New York, studied, land. ahead of me, five to a land, it is because Catholic scholars scholar. worked and prepared what he liked to call the Green Revolution. enough to last until morning. He have failed to blow The scholars must tell the workers finished at 1:30 and- got a few the dynamite of the Church Before this he had travelled through the States and Canada as an what is wrong unskilled laborer. Before that he had worked in France, where hours sleep until 4:45 when he had with things as they are. 4. Catholic scholars he was born, at the one thing- he was skilled at, teaching with the to get up again for the milking. The scholars must tell the workers have taken the dynamite of Christian Brothers. But he believed too, that the scholar had to become All night I didn't rest a second. how things would be, the Church a worker not only that he mi&"ht understand the conditions and prob I had already worked all day pull if they were as they should be. have wrapped it up lems of the worker, but that the worker too might become a scholar, ing weeds so when morning came The scholars must tell the workers in nice phraseology because· Peter believed in THE PEOPLE changing their own conditions. I was too tired to eat and went placed it how a path can be made He did not speak in terms of THE MASSES, bein&" swayed by some right to sleep when I got home .. in an hermetic container "' from things as they are dictator demago&"ue. • < There is not very much of this and sat on the lid. to things as they should be. Peter Maurin studied the prophets of Israel and the Fathers of the plowed land irrigating but enough The scholars must collaborate · 5. lt is about time Church; he studied Proudhon, Karl Marx, Kropotkin and familiarized of it to prove whether· you are a .

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