THE CATHOLIC WORKER Subscription: Vol. XL No. 9 DECEMBER" 1974 25c Per Yeor Price 1¢ Behold, He Comes As One Who Is Poor -Housing Journeys By DOROTHY DAY By LARRY ROSEBAUGH What did Holy Mother the City do (These notes from the diary of Fr. in the Thirties-those grim days of the Rosebaugh are a "poor man's journey." Depression? Now we are having what Written in the Fall of last year they tell broadcasiters call a recession and infla­ of his life with the destitute of our cities. tion combined, and people are homeless "The Holy Spirit was calling me," he again and breadlines grow longer and writes, "to the experience of being the there are more of them. Sugar is exor­ poor man to whom the soup was ladled bitant and rents of slum apartments are out.'; Fr. Rosebaugh is an Oblate priest. a hundred dollars a month and more. He spent 20 months in prison, 10 of When people are evicted, landlords close them in solitary, for his part in the down the apartments and then entire "Milwaukee 14" raid on a Selective buildings and wait for slum clearance Service office in protest of the Vietnam and speculators and developers. People War. After his release he ran a job re­ sleep in doorways, empty buildings and, ferral center for the unemployed in if they are lucky, get tickets for a night's Milwaukee. At present he is on the road lodging or two in "flop houses." to Brazil, journeying to work with Dom As small children, we used to read Helder Camara. Eds. note.) Horatio Alger and .the plight of home­ Milwaukee, November 11.-A year or less newsboys. Dickens and Upton Sin­ two ago, when I was making a r~treat, a clair later gave me pictures of poverty woman prayed over me and discerned in our American cities. my direction. As I recall it, it had to do Hoos~ the Homeless with my becoming a· vagabond, a wand- My generation experienced the De­ erer, one on the road. · pression and the work of public author­ The priest upstairs talks of Harlem, ities trying to handle it. The Roosevelts of the conditions there, his experience in and their Work Projects: Artists, Wri­ the subways, and how we identify with ters, -!J.'heatre projects, civilian conserva­ this condition; that's precisely where the tion corp camps, the latter showing great challenge exists. How prone I am to .imaginatia11 and bancmna the probl~ of surround myself with thiJ! world's com­ jobless teen-agers. forts until they overshadow my true But it is -:he city homeless I want to calling! . write about. Our back files are not The need to go deeper into myself and available to me as I write, as I am to the Spirit who speaks there has been spending Thanksgiving Day on Staten vital. This summer 1· changed my living Island, so I will trust to my memory. I quarters from a shared apartment to an wrote a number of articles in the paper empty garage space, walking out on close about the municipal lodging houses, friends to follow an inner drive. Then I visiting them over a period of years, and built a tiny shack and lived there in the looking back I repent me of the harshness experience of silence. The need for pray­ of my judgment of the city's work. Now er, for _quiet is fl gift; and that gift has I realize how much was done in those been a further revelation into the reality nonviolent days, before wars brutalized of the Gospel as it is meant to b~ carried our population. · Wars conducted by out by me. The last two and a half years those same benevolent authorities. here in Nlilwaukee have brought me -to During those years, before W.W. II the point where, after testing myself in brought employment to all, we had not a whole realm of lived-out experiences only a succession of municipal lodging of street conditions, the need to move on houses, all in mid and lower Manhattan, as a priest, an Oblate, overwhelms me. but "the longest bedroom in the world," I have seen a certain level of human -a pier at South Ferry, where double­ tragedy lived out by men and women decker beds stretched down the long in the State Street area of Milwaukee; length over the water, and the heat was Fritz Elcbenberc the despair of drugs and confusion of piped in by the same system that heated people's minds as they. go in and out of those skyscrapers which made N.Y. our city's mental wards. My inner drive famous. is to see more of the reality ~ncountered In addition to that, there was another by men and women of our city streets. pier stretching out into the East River "From the beginning, my Church has been what it is The people who show up at Salvation which, as I remember it, was like a today, and will be until the end of time, a scandal to the Army Shelters, _missions, for free meais-;­ bazaar with many booths stretching the are a portion of those who know desti­ length of it. Here men could get a shave, strong, a disappointment to th~ weak, the ordeal and the tution . but if is among these that I a haircut, have their clothes cleaned and consolation of those interior souls who seek in it nothing but feel presently affiliated and with whom pressed while they waited, and so on. I am being called to identify. Hitting the These were public facilities to take care myself. Yes, ..• whoeuer looks fot me there will find me there; road by way of thumb, and b'Jarding of the homeless and unemployed. but he will haue to look, and I am better hidden than people down in the Skid Row facilities of our One of the municipal lodging houses cities draws a whole new dimension from for women (we all called these.buildings . think, or than certain of my priests would haue you belieue. the gut: fear. the "Muni") was on West Fourteenth St., November 15 and 16. How does one some old houses adjoining, with all their I am still more difficult to discouer than I was in the little ba.Sements forming a large dining room stable at Bethlehem for those who will not approach me recount what was in effect· a prayer un­ which was so cozy and attractive that one folding, a step into the dark, truly a faith of my old friends (unemployed) confess­ humbly, in the footsteps of the shepherds and the Magi. It is excursion? ed that she went there for her Thanks­ It was good going through the exper­ giving and Christmas dinners. It was true that palaces haue been built in my honor, with galleries ience here in Milwaukee, a registering better than the C.W.Lshe said-you could and peristyles without number, magnificently illuminated day and going through .the formal indoc­ be anonymous and independent on those trination that precedes admission into feastdays and just walk in. (Today, one and night, populated with guards and sentries. But if you want the Rescue Mission (a very cold, cal­ of our "Ladies" is going around sampling to find me there, the .deuer thing. is to do as they did ·on the culated speech given by one of the staff the dinners served by the Volunteers of ministers on Jesus' love and forgiveness America and the Salvation Army. It is old road in Ju·dea, buried under the snow, and ask for the only along with a series of q\lite personal a beautiful, sunny, mild day of holiday thing you need-a star and a pure heart." questions about myself). But the Mission cheer.) was clean, served good food, ,:and pro- (Continued OD pap Z) George Bernanos (Continued on page 3) THE CATHOLIC WOl{KER December, 1974 . · Vol. XL, No. 9 December, 1974 a Farm With a View By DEANE MARY MOWRER --Wintry winds wail about the house, our pr6blems will become more acute. roar symphonically among late Novem­ The crowding together of too many CAlliOU( ~WORKER ber's naked boughs; stirring wild music people of such varied and disparate out of dead leaves and the organ reson­ backgrounds, age groups, and personal­ Published Monthly (Bi-monthly March-April, July-Aqust, ance of pine and hemlock trees. White­ ities often makes for difficult living. October-November) caps surge on the river, prancing in futile Sucll conditions become more formidable ORGAN OF THE CATHOLIC WORKER MOVEMENT protest against December's icy shroud. when exacerbated by too· many mental· PETER MAURIN, Founder Juncos swerve- through the winds, look­ cases and seribus alcoholics. Yet God DOROTHY DAY, Editor and Publisher ing for snow. Melanie, voice vibrant willing, with the help of friends and PATRICK JORDAN, Managing Editor with joyful anticipation, cries-"Snow readers, we hope to persevere. Associate Editors: is coming." Then between gusts of wind Remembering the primacy of the and waves, chickadees call: Christmas JAN ADAMS, CHARLES BUTTERWORTH, JACK COOK, MARTIN J. CORBIN, spirit, as Dorothy Day has taught us, we RITA CORBIN (Art), CLARE DANIELSSON, FRANK DONOVAN, EILEEN EGAN, is coming. Drop down dew. · Let earth shall certainly need to spend more time EDGAR FORAND, ANNE MARIE FRASER, ROBERT GILLIAM, WILLIAM bud forth a Saviolll'. in prayer. For those of us who like to HORVATH, HELENE ISWOLSKY, KATHLEEN DE SUTTER JORDAN, WALTER Up in the field the goats skip to warm spend part· of our prayer-time in the KERELL, ARTHUR J.