To Our Readers

For those who are sitting on park benches in the warm spring sunlight.

For those who are huddling in shelters trying to escape the rain.

For those who are walking the streets in the all but futile search for work.

For those who think that there is no hope for the future, no recognition of their plight,—this little paper is addressed.

It is printed to call their attention to the fact that the Catholic Church has a social program—to let them know that there are men of God who are working not only for their spiritual, but for their material welfare.

FILLING A NEED

It’s time there was a Catholic paper printed for the unemployed. The fundamental aim of most radical sheets is the conversion of its readers to Radicalism and Atheism.

Is it not possible to be radical and not atheist?

Is it not possible to protest, to expose, to complain, to point out abuses and demand reforms without desiring the overthrow of religion?

In an attempt to popularize and make known the encyclicals of the Popes in regard to social justice and the program put forth by the Church for the “reconstruction of the social order,” this news sheet, The Catholic Worker, is started.

It is not as yet known whether it will be a monthly, a fortnightly or a weekly. It all depends on the funds collected for the printing and distribution. Those who can subscribe, and those who can donate, are asked to do so.

This first number of The Catholic Worker was planned, written and edited in the kitchen of a tenement on Fifteenth Street, on subway platforms, on the “L,” the ferry. There is no editorial office, no overhead in the way of telephone or electricity; no salaries paid.

The money for the printing of the first issue was raised by begging small contributions from friends. A colored priest in Newark sent us ten dollars and the prayers of his congregation. A colored sister in New Jersey, garbed also in holy poverty, sent us a dollar. Another kindly and generous friend sent twenty-five. The rest of it the editors squeezed out of their own earnings, and at that they were using money necessary to pay milk bills, gas bills, electric light bills.

We are asking our friends and sympathizers to help out towards the next issue by sending contributions to The Catholic Worker, which will be edited this month at 54 Scarboro Avenue, Rosebank, Staten Island.

By accepting delay the utilities did not know that they were furthering the cause of social justice. They were, for the time being, unwitting cooperators.

Next month someone may donate us an office. Who knows?

It is cheering to remember that Jesus Christ wandered this earth with no place to lay His Head. The foxes have holes and the birds of the air their nests, but the Son of Man has no place to lay His Head. And when we consider our fly-by-night existence, our uncertainty, we remember (with pride at sharing the honor), that the disciples supped by the seashore and wandered through corn fields picking the ears from the stalks wherewith to make their frugal meals.

A VOTE OF THANKS

It is the policy of the Unemployed Councils which is recruiting members through it block committees by canvasing and by circular appeals, to keep religion out of their discussions.

The Unemployed Councils are affiliated with the Communist Party, and the Communist Party Headquarters are in Moscow, and the Moscow official religion is Atheism. But organizers are advised by the writings of Lenin to avoid the issue of religion, and not to antagonize workers who have religious affiliations.

Through this avoidance of fundamentals, the Unemployed Councils have been able to recruit a large number of Italians who are unemployed.

The aims of the Unemployed Councils, the organizers tell them, is to promote unemployment insurance,—home relief, compensation for the workers,—in other words, social justice.

If an organizers hears of a case where the family is having trouble in getting attention from the Home Relief Bureaus, a delegation from the Council goes with the mother or father to the Home Relief Bureau and demands attention, and usually gets it. They get what they are after because they are zealous, efficient, and unafraid to start a scene, a scandal, to face the clubs of police or the judge in the police court.

Indeed, they welcome disturbances and the more of their members are arrested or clubbed, the greater the organization of the Unemployed Councils grow.

“The blood of the martyrs is the see of the Church.” That saying holds good for Communists too. The more they are martyred,—more violence they can provoke, the more publicity they can get,—the more attention is paid to their demands.

And the Council grows. There are in addition to the headquarters, offices at thirty or more places throughout Greater New York. Block committees hire empty stores and put up signs in the windows. Are you being treated right at Home Relief stations? If not, come in here and we will help you. Home Relief! Are you getting it? Inquire of us what to do! And little entertainments are given to increase cooperative feeling.

One such entertainment proved a boomerang a few weeks ago at the Block committee headquarters on East Fifteenth Street, between Avenue A and B.

A group of Italian families had gathered together under the auspices of the Unemployed Councils to witness a little entertainment provided by the young people of another section. The Block Committee did not know what the entertainment was to consist of. They were as horrified as the Italian visitors when they found that the organization of children had elected to put on a drama called, “Mr. God is Not at Home,” which treated of religion scornfully and scoffingly.

The Italian audience was horrified, and one man threatened to wreck the place. There was almost a riot and the audience walked out on the show and the organizers of the Block Committee were infinitely sorry, they said, that such a scandal had taken place, as they would not for the world offend the religious sensibilities of their new adherents.

“We must not only admit all those workers who still reatin faith in God, we must redouble our efforts to recruit them. We are absolutely opposed to the slightest affront to these workers’ religious convictions,” says Lenin in his pamphlet on Religion,

“The propagation of Atheism by the Social Democracy must be subordinated to a more basic task—the development of the class struggle of the exploited masses against the exploiters.” “The Marxist must be a materialist, i.e., an enemy of religion.” … But “A Marxist must place the success of the movement above all else… the preaching of Atheism is superfluous and harmful—not from the narrow-minded consideration of not frightening the backward elements—but from the point of view of the actual progress of the class struggle which in conditions of modern capitalist society will convert Christian workers to Social Democracy and Atheism a hundred times more effectively than any bald atheist sermons. To preach Atheism at such a time, and in such circumstances, would only be playing into the hands of the Church and the priests, who would desire nothing more than to have the workers participating in the strike movement divided in accordance with their religious beliefs.” (Italics not ours.)

So the little affair on East Fifteenth Street turned out to be one of those occasions when the young Communists played into the hands of the priests, and we must thank them for their zeal.

“What a lamentable fact that there have been, and that there are even now some who while professing the Catholic faith, are well-nigh unmindful of that sublime law of justice and charity which binds us not only give each man his due, but to succor our brethren as Christ Our Lord Himself; worse still, that there are those who out of greed for gain do not shame to oppress the workingman… Indeed there are some who can abuse religion itself, cloaking their own unjust imposition under its name, that they may protect themselves against the clearly just demands of their employees… Such men are the cause that the Church, without deserving it, may have the appearance and be accused of taking sides with the wealthy, and of being little moved by the needs and the sufferings of the disinherited.”— Pius XI.