Faith & economics: comments from sixty years
Mercier, Louis J.A. & Camara, Helder & Dybeck, Stuart & Kyne, Martin C. & Frei, Eduardo & Loftus, John A. & Michel, Virgil & Somerville, Henry & Day, Dorothy & Cort, John C. & Woodlock, Thomas F. & Belloc, Hilaire & Editors, The & Rice, Charles Owen & O'Gara, James & Sisk, John P. & Ryan, John A.
Comments from sixty years
'NORMALCY' & ITS DISCONTENTS T !O SOME PEOPLE man is a machine, and man is no more than a branch of physics. To other people man is an animal --mere!y-and economics,...
...Above all, what light does our inherited corpus of doctrine cast on the difficult question of how much gov-ernmental intervention in business is to be advocated without compromising the property rights of individuals...
...The Editors, "Week By Week" September 28, 1927 BISHOP-BASHING T HE COMMERCIAL status of the "Bibb Manufacturing Company, of Macon, Georgia," is unknown to us, still more so the social significance in his community of Mr...
...They lack freedom and security.9 Under the present system a good labor union is the only thing that can give them even a modicum of freedom and security...
...Recently I went with two of my sons to Nicaragua...
...Over 100 of every 1,000 children born died as infants...
...Men whose interpretation of things necessary for salvation the godly South is quite prepared to write into its legislation are represented as careless, insincere, and subject to "sinister influences" the moment their counsels leave the sphere of divinity and enter that of dividends...
...For South America capitalism up to now is a formula which has failed, since the great mass of her people is prey to the greatest poverty...
...It applies likewise to invest- ments made from savings, to family- operated businesses...
...He died on the pervisor who took the position that since Mrs...
...mLouis J. A. Mercier, "Capitalism and the Facts" January 8, 1937 VICIOUS DEGRADATION T HE ARTICLE on "Capitalism and the Facts" by Louis J. A. Mercier in the Commonweal of January 8, is a most important one, and raises some rather fundamental points for discussion...
...what was commonly --but wrongly In the 1980s that sociological trend The problem today is not one of imthought to be an "affluent society...
...It might be useful to take some of the major points made by these two great popes and see how much they have guided not only the American labor movement but also American employers and American government...
...She'd been surviving for two months on what she had been able to borrow from relatives and friends most of whom were little better off than she was...
...He is in a terrible bind...
...Briefly stated, here is the central prob- lem of our future: How can we see to it that our economy will provide jobs for all who need jobs, so that an available abun- dance will replace the scarcity under which a large portion of our people his- torically have suffered...
...The cities are, more mediate vision but rather of how to inter- In part, that was a result of a new sociol- than ever before, warehouses for those pret what the eyes -- or the media -- see...
...Just because capitalism is doomed, it is imperative for Christians to look not backward but forward...
...The Sandinistas have curbed dissent, and shown little sensitivity to the people's religious yeprnings or the truly revolutionary possibilities a Christian spirit offers...
...But even on Father Michel's own description, capitalism does not stand condemned...
...Virgil Michel, "Facts about Capitalism" March 12, 1937 I CHRISTIANIZING CAPITALISM ST AS THE notion of individual rights must be comromised if the term individualism is loosely denounced, the notion of private property and capital is undermined if capitalism and capitalists are indiscriminately condemned...
...They are individual items of cost and not persons with souls, aspirations, self-determination, etc...
...Yet this is a profoundly unchris- tian notion...
...An ecumenical monthly edited by lay Catholics, the REVIEW has been characterized by Newsweek x as "thoughtful and often cheeky...
...For them capitalism is a doctrine and an economic fact that leads to the accumulation of wealth in the hands of a few, subjecting nations to international monopolies, and resulting in a low standard of living for both industrial workers and rural populations...
...during the operation...
...Thicken your hide against assaults from the Right to Left...
...We do this, primarily, because it is right and good and, secondarily, that all men may know the Catholic stand...
...If we divide the productive factors into brain, brawn and capital, as economists do, and ask ourselves which factors ontologically play the important role causally in producing the combined effect, the economically valuable product, our answer will be that all the factors are necessary, but that the ontological scale of value assigns primacy tO the efficient cause (all active human contributors...
...Last spring, Pittsburgh was stirred by an A.F.L...
...To do this means to keep the national income at a high and steady level.., and to ensure that it shall be distributed broadly enough to provide demand for what the nation produces...
...Hence monopoly cannot be tolerated ex- cept where necessity requires it, and in such cases it had best be operated either directly by the government or by means of a public corporation in order to safeguard the public interest...
...Heaven knows I have not the capacity for the first, and I hope I have not the hypocrisy or impudence for the second.9 If I knew how to become rich quickly, I doubt if I should share the knowledge...
...They said they had to cut a hole in his Agency approved $15.00 for a refrigerator...
...in St...
...inevitably facile and futile...
...Thus the family farm becomes the classic form of true private property, the right to which must be defended at all costs...
...developed and ready to be carded out, but the kind of enterprise we have in mind here should be a continuous feature of our economy, to be put under wa)~ as rapidly as re- sources and circumstances allow, since in the long run they will serve to increase effective national demand and supply sorely needed expansive factors...
...He would not think it possible by himself of course, nor would he trust the Lord to fall in with his seemingly presumptuous plans...
...tracheotomy and massaged his heart but he died...
...Nothing in peacetime more greatly con- tributes to juvenile delinquency than lack of opportunity to work...
...He tells us that "capitalism stands generally for an economic system in which capital plays the preponderant part...
...Just try it...
...The first and immediate apostles to the workers ought to be work- ers...
...The way to safeguard our liber- ties is through what may be called Christian individualism, and the way to social justice is through what can only be, in some form or other, a Christianized capitalism...
...and within twenty-four hours both were proven right, and also wrong...
...He's dead...
...5) Capitalism has ceased to be the promoter even of the best possible material and social progress.9 Because of the high- powered investment in gigantic centralized machinery, it can- not afford to keep pace with new inventions for human good in so far as these mean the scrapping or replacing of machinery long before the expected profit has been made from it...
...trial he testified in the union's behalf...
...I could use his twenty-five dollars to buy us some "How's he doing...
...The principle of a minimum wage is surely based on the moral law...
...If, when this interfer- ence lessens, private enterprise goes back to its old ways, the popular mind is likely to jump to the extreme conclusion...
...Since this condition is basic, the com-- mon good- the public interest- requires that any activity which potentially may prevent the achievement of this condition shall be subject to restraint by the munici i Robert Coles on NICARAGUA Arturo Cruz, who resigned as Nicaragua's Ambassador to the U.S., wrote in Foreign Af- fairs that the Sandinista Revolution's "rank and file" is made up of "idealistic boys and girls...
...Especially is this the case when this form of ownership concentrates vast power in the hands of managers who are not themselves owners...
...I think there is something about the American people that makes them, by inclination and experi- ence, more receptive to the popes' middle way of rights and duties, of cooperation without collaboration, of impersonal justice and personal charity, than any other people on earth...
...continues apace...
...We have no sort of opinion as to whether the Yale professor of economics or the Boston master of financial statistics knew more of the facts, or which of them judged the facts more scientifically, but we would venture the opinion that fundamentally both gentlemen really functioned more as philosophers than as adding machines.9 --The Editors, "Trumpet of the Dawn" September 25, 1929 SUPPLYING WORKERS' NEEDS i NDIRECTLY AND by implication, the Senate Committee on Recent Economic Changes suggests a more acceptable remedy for the kind of unemployment which is now puz- zling students of the problem.9 It endorses the "principle of high wages and low costs as a policy of enlightened industrial practice in a period of stationary cost of living --the recognition of wage-earners as the great domestic market...
...Anderson, its president...
...1) Because economically capitalism calls for an unba-lanced and unbalancing distribution of the gross returns of its enterprises...
...The future of poverty MICHAEL HARRINGTON that persisted on either side of the feder- is still great confusion about poverty, I ally subsidized highways that led from even a tendency for "informed" opinion N THE 1950S, Americans literally did the office to the new homes on the urban to say that it has been greatly exagger- not see the poverty which existed in periphery...
...and, therefore, to Catholics, economics is a branch of ethics...
...Roger Babson could, and did, issue directly contradictory accounts of the situation...
...The problem of the distribution of the wealth made possible by recent scientific progress is then most complex and difficult to solve...
...Subsequently at an N.L.R.B...
...An adequate and proper diet for the American people is directly dependent on adequate jobs...
...Hence on the one level (the KK/HEY WANT security...
...What was black to one was white to the other, what one predicted with cold, scientific certainty, the other flatly denied with equal assurance...
...4. Economic planning with a view to maintaining full employment, "namely that the opportunity to work be pro~ vided to those who are able and willing to work" through maintenance of " a right proportion among wages and salaries .9 . . and prices" (Quadragesimo Anno...
...And yet, there preferred simply to describe ghettoes...
...managed to exist for two months without aid then apparently "But howl --didn't they tell you how...
...John P. Sisk, "Security First" August 19, 1949 A LATIN PERSPECTIVE F OR North Americans capitalism represents a practical formula which has proved successful: as a nation they have reached the highest level of wealth, and as indi- viduals the highest standard of living.9 For South Americans the capitalistic system represents exactly the opposite...
...But some risk takers are Horatio Alger level) it makes much of striving, thrift, the needed" is the title of a recent Life editorial...
...The Editors, "Week By Week" May 4, 1927 CERTAINTIES BEFORE THE CRASH ,,~ALL STREET may not seem exactly like an arena of philosophy.., yet, as an ironical editorial writer in .9 .9 the New York World pointed out the other day, when thb market was behaving like a seesaw in the playful hands of drunken sailors, two such great experts in finance as Professor Irving Fisher and Mr...
...Yet there is no doubting widespread unemployment, which to a large extent is the result of conflict between the owner and the worker, and the effect of competition between manual labor and machine labor...
...Once they didn't know them, because - to be frank -we didn;t teach them...
...They also feel that there is in it a danger of blunting and confusing the dividing lines between labor and management...
...I had an impulse to hang up...
...Hence the useof "Catholic Radical" Alliance, both to shock and to inform...
...Hilaire Belioc, "Money" May 7, 1930 REMEDY FOR CURE-ALLS IMPLICISM IS a habit of mind prompting thinkers to ignore difficult technical aspects of a problem in favor of a solution drawn with neat logic from high and remote abstractions...
...under contem-porary conditions this power may exceed that of the state and constitute a threat to the welfare of the community...
...Kristol wrote,'Those whoe receive the least are going to be 'the poor...
...In such an underdeveloped region.., anybody who feeds the hungry, who clothes the naked, who improves the slums, who fights illiteracy, who opens orphanages and medical first-aid centers, is received well, especially by the rich...
...A similar point minus the humor was made by editor- writer Irving Kristol in the New Leader...
...Investigate the issues, giving the worker the benefit of the doubt...
...We feed, shelter and clothe the poor, counsel and aid the workers, picketing with them, feeding them, addressing them, defending them from attack...
...but its attractive power will be over-whelming if our economy fails to do its job, especially in view of the presence in the population of twelve million dis-charged service men, habituated to disci- pline and security...
...Helder Camara, "Conscience and Anti-Communism" December 18, 1964 WHEN LOGIC BOI"TOMS OUT T WO ILL-MATCHED CritiCS recently took exception to the current war against poverty, on more or less similar grounds...
...If no policy is found to remedy from its foundation the origin of this political process, democracy will disappear in South America...
...the apostles of those who follow industry and trade ought to be from among them themselves" ( Quadragesimo Anno...
...That's why the Catholic Radical Alliance was formed...
...That is not to be misled by the application of epithets...
...strike at a monster food products factory...
...Direct state ownership is so subject to abuse that it should exist only where there is no alternative...
...Pius XI saw this planning as being carded on not only by the state but primarily by labor and management themselves meeting in industry councils under government supervision...
...When she first contacted me her new landlord had given her a five-day eviction notice...
...But this is still only 39 percent of the 43,000,000 estimated "organizables...
...9...
...Williams...
...Government has gener- ally recognized the obligation since the Roosevelt administra- tion...
...Under So- moza, half the country had an income of less than $100 a year...
...Capitalism and private property stand or fall together because the word capitalism cannot be dissociated from the possession of capital, and capital is merely a surplus of private property...
...The Wall able reluctance that I really tried, in The The Other America, Socialism, and The New Street Journal has published some of the New American Poverty (Holt, Rinehart American Poverty (Holt, Rinehart, and finest reportage in this area, and televi- and Winston, $17.95,271 pp...
...Corporate ownership is normally the only kind possible for large-scale enter- prise...
...Funds I [] Sample copy...
...Williams had operating table...
...Side by side with planning of this type there is a secondary variety of planning designed to raise the over-all standard of living of specific geographical areas...
...How are you, Mrs...
...This policy would provide the most humane and the most easily available remedy for the persistent overproduction and underconsumption that afflicts our industrial system...
...Then Bertha Williams called me up...
...He knows there are tough ideologues hard at work among the Sandinistas -anxious to give short shrift to the desire many have for a social democratic outcome...
...Here in New York, for example, better than three-quarters of a million indirciduals live in families in which the total income is less than $40 a week...
...9...
...It is always grandiose...
...I think not...
...They must alsobe "pro" something...
...They may not be doctrinaire socialists, seeing the remedy for the abuses of capitalism in a total denial of all property rights, but they may be socializers--on the one condition that there be no other remedy at hand, for socialization does tend to expand the power of the state, and that power must be limited if we are to avoid tyranny...
...In New York, our breakfast line, which began with a single friendly pot of coffee on the stove.., grew and grew until now we serve breakfast to approximately 1,000 men...
...In any society in which income and wealth are unequally distdbutecl," Mr...
...John A. Ryan, "The Experts Look at Unemployment" October 16, 1929 BELLOC ON MONEY T HE MOMENT a man sets down the title "Money" over a bit of writing, or brings out the word "money in conversation, the first idea everyone must have is that he is going to do one of two things...
...Idealism seemed very much in evi- dence...
...There was "This is Mrs...
...Otherwise the concepts of the dignity of the human per- son and of democracy in general are meaningless...
...The real income of the farming community--owners, tenants, sharec-roppers and casual labor alike--must be kept reasonably constant and adequate...
...Try to get your pictures taken down there, being sure to have a few pretty girls in the foreground so that the picture will stand a good chance of being printed...
...Eduardo Frei, "Two Views of Capitalism" May 26, 1950 I LIVING UP TO THE ENCYCLICALS T HIS MONTH marks the anniversaries of Pius XI's Quad-ragesimo Anno and Leo XIII'-s Rerum Novarum...
...How did Irwin make out...
...6) Capitalism has prostituted culture to the seeking after material gain...
...Dorothy Day, "Houses of Hospitality" April 15, 1938 Christianity & capitalism: a debate A LONG WITH the indiscriminating denunciation of indi- vidualism, there has evidently developed lately, even among Christians, a no less unguarded condemnation of capitalism...
...Hence there is no theoretic or histori- cal reason why Catholics may not advo- cate socialization where it is necessary...
...hadn't been replaced...
...American employers still follow the lead of the National Association of Manufacturers, which takes the position that there can be no peace with labor until the unions forfeit or are relieved of the right to insist that all workers in a given plant belong to a union.9 2. "The worker must be paid a wage sufficient to support himself and his family" (Quadragesimo Anno...
...But even without such a detailed town-by-town analysis, it should be clear that poverty in America is real --at least as real as Clare Boothe Luce and Irving Kristol...
...I advised her to discuss it with a doctor...
...A sys- tematic educational campaign, building up moral sanctions, and the enactment of minimum wage laws of universal appli- cation, coupled with the establishment of unemployment relief standards truly adequate to cushion dislocations, can help to change our traditional attitude...
...Tll leave him on," I said...
...ens and dying mill towns...
...The numbers are not so large, but if the reader will just contemplate saying to himself, "Two or three friends and I will undertake to feed 350 people a meal every day," not just for one day but indefinitely.., he would be aghast...
...Williams out of a jam she should never have been in during my first winter as a caseworker...
...Yet if we are thinking in terms of personal responsibility, to those who sit around and say,"Why don't the priests do this or that...
...Discuss social issues for a time...
...Wait until a strike bobs up in your vicinity...
...It was one of those things...
...Let us then accept, as the encyclicals do, the challenge of the day: the necessarily larger capitalizations and organizations of our day...
...I Berkeley, CA 94706 | PAYMENT MUST ACCOMPANY ORDER | D m m mm m m m mam m mlm m mm amm mm m m mm m m m m m m m m m | m I .9NAME (Please print or type) I I STREET ADDRESS | m CITY STATE m m m m m mml m m mlmm m m m m ZIP CODE m m m m m m mm m m mm modity, to be bought in the open market--which induces powerful in-terests actually to favor unemployment, because unemployment depresses the labor market--must be modified...
...Let no one suppose that an all-powerful state will long remain tolerant of a genuinely Christian church...
...To Catholics man is a rational animal endowed with free will, and an immortal soul...
...Well, what is wrong with capital playing the preponderant part...
...Is the notion of a war on poverty a kind of statistical con game...
...In doing this capitalism degrades men to mere economic factors of cost, to be bargained for at the lowest possible market prices...
...in Pittsburgh 200...
...And when "free enterprise" ownership as-sumes a corporate form, in which the owners are totally divorced from physi- cal contact with what they own, the situa- tion is likely to become even less tolera- ble...
...As has been said, the basic need is the achievement of an economy in which no considerable section of our people is re- quired to live at a level below what our society generally views as a decently comfortable minimum...
...Thanks," she said...
...Recently businessmen of a large city issued a statement in which they advised the changing of the wage-system to one of partnership and profit-sharing...
...Oh, we of little faith...
...what we need, then, are not onslaughts on capitalism which, by befuddling the issues, may so easily lead to lawless- ness, but objective studies of the actual benefits and possible abuses...
...Capitalist activity can in reality flourish and in- crease only through an increase of purchasing power among the rank and file of the people, whereas the dynamism of capitalism depends on and demands the ever greater accumula- tion of capital in the hands of the few, and new labor-saving devices have helped much to decrease still further the general purchasing power of the people.9 (2) Capitalism is linked up with a financial structure oranized to supply means of investment and only those, whereas the great need in an age of potential plenty is a system that can supply greater purchasing power...
...We didn't know them ourselves...
...When I tigation...
...Herald Tribune, Clare Boothe Luce uses satire on President Johnson's crusade: "So long as the economic structure of society remains that of a pyramid, the bottom cannot be eliminated...
...We lined up the facts in the case, got in touch with the strike committee, heard their side of the story and the next day two priests and four of the laity were down on the picket line...
...I appreciate it...
...He's dead...
...American employers have taken a few steps toward profit- sharing and stock-sharing...
...A doctor explained that the boy had a for Irwin and mailed it to Mrs...
...but if we cannot solve it, most of the more specific social problems will remain unsolved...
...I didn't tell them I was a case-worker...
...The Somoza family alone owned a quarter of all our arable land...
...hot" Frigidaire...
...Many of our students have never ipal, state or federal governments...
...estimates the weekly wage neces- sary to support a modest family of four (two children) at approximately eighty-three dollars a week...
...The strike was proceed- ing according to schedule...
...I think we have come a long way since 1931, and a much longer way since 1891...
...Comments from sixty years 'NORMALCY' & ITS DISCONTENTS T !O SOME PEOPLE man is a machine, and man is no more than a branch of physics...
...But] even these hold- ings are largely in the hands of those in the higher paid positions, and the rank and file of employees have small representation...
...and that "their rights are reduced to the right of accepting work at the proffered price or else starv- ing" ? Capitalism at least saves from starving those it employs...
...Williams...
...Capitalism is precisely an economic system in which capital (or goods used in the production of further goods) plays the predominant part.9 Hence the system is vicious, both ethicall and ontologicaily...
...the same time...
...The disputes on such social legislation now rage over how far and how much...
...Someone may wonder how one gets a thing like the C.R.A...
...What did all this mean...
...We need the help of our bishops and church leaders," he is reported as telling his brother members of the Georgia Association of Cotton Manufacturers recently, "but not at the point where they are seeking to inject themselves...
...A great step forward would consist of giv- ing labor a g.:auine participation in man- agemen t . The relatively new device of the public corporation (such as the vari- ous "port authorities"), financed and in the last analysis owned privately, but the management of which is disassociated from this ultimate ownership--appointed by the state under certain limi- tations to prevent such appointments being purely political--holds much promise for the future...
...American workmen, in the mass, are in the toils of an unjust wage slavery...
...Every economic advantage attainable by a nation .9 . . has been lavished upon us...
...But: "For over four decades we lived with fear and bitterness every day here, and we knew that the outside world, by and large, didn't care much that we were a country enslaved," he pointed out to us, to my sons especially, who kept wonderinghow it was that a country they love - our country -could be so indifferent for so long to the ordeal of Nicaragua under Somoza -and now be so vigorously sensitive to the |is- takes and wrongdoings of the Sandinistas...
...And their rights are re- duced to the right of accepting work at the proffered price or else starving...
...To other people man is an animal --mere!y-and economics, like psychology, is no more than a branch of biology...
...Nineteen of every 1,000 shares of preferred stock are owned by workers in the concerns listed...
...Our students have learned these statistics...
...she wondered whether she should have corrective ,surgery "Yes...
...For some reason I didn't believe her...
...started...
...What have our ethical abstractions tO offer that will remedy the evil of recurrent underproduction in an economic r6gime confessedly domi- nated by the profits motive...
...pious Right...
...Why this combination, Catholic and Radical...
...Joint action by two or more states can produce such useful enterprises as the Port of New York Authority...
...This practice, however, is unworkable when it is not voluntary and when the size of the social unit prevents the close inti- macy essential to its success...
...The economic dogmas of liberalism-- repeatedly condemned by the Church, as well as by many Protestant and Jewish thinkers--have so deeply permeated all our lives that we accept them unthink- ingly, as though they were moral or natural laws...
...Peter has always pointed out that ac- cording to canon law, all bishops should be running hospices, or houses of hospitality...
...Ownership is a trust, a loan from God, Who is the Father of all, to be used for one's own and the common benefit...
...It is Christianity which set every individual man free to strive and to find his place in the social order according to his ability...
...Of course Leo and Plus made observations relevant to present-day issues...
...George Meany was not too far wrong...
...They did all they could --performed a "Who am I speaking to, please...
...I have visited all the hospices run by Catholic Worker groups, naturally, and they all have the same difficulties and the same problems and are all run on the same lines...
...But still, add it all up, divide, subtract, condense, boil and remove the impurities, and what do you find...
...The plant and machinery are far more important, and still more the brains that have organized the plant and developed this machinery...
...A small group got together, decided they wanted a headquarters for propaganda and meet- ings, and rented a store for $10 or $15 a month...
...7 m (regularly $12) I [] Three-year subscription...
...And our much-vaunted way of life, our political institutions, our freedoms will melt away under the searing effects of the protracted depression which will be the inevitable result of large-scale un- employment...
...But pro what...
...we ought to deny ourselves nothing, makes us want to do At any rate, one opposition of capitalism, one of its anything but live thriftily, makes us afraid to take a chance (we paradoxes, is that while for its internal health as a system of might fail and lose everything), and works against indi-ideas it depends upon a self-denial and a willingness to take a vidualism: first by tending to monopoly if not checked con- chance, still once it descends into the market place it seems to stantly by forces outside itself, and second by telling us constantly how important it is to be like everyone else so far a the acquistion of material goods.., is concerned...
...He can close his factory and dis- charge all those dependent on it for a livelihood simply because that factory is not as profitable as he might wish...
...A decent housing program is impossible unless people have money to pay for it...
...It is the tendency to find single cure-alls and panaceas for complex diseases requiring each its particular treatment...
...The last thing to be said about money is, I think, the most important, and surely it is very simple...
...3. Obligation of the state to pass laws which "undertake the protection of life, health, strength,family, homes, workshops...
...For as soon as the feeding began -- as soon as the mood of hospitality began to make itself felt --lines formed at the door, and continued day after day...
...The more one rereads with reverence those two greatcharters of Catholic and intelligent social action, the Rerum Novarum and the QuadragesimoAnno, the more one is struck by their perpetual mediating between the extremes into which we are constantly and alternately in danger of falling: the indifference of the State tosocial injustice, and that il- legitimate interference of the State...
...There are also a number of labor schools conducted by these organizations . . . The Young Christian Workers, where established, have done good work among the younger dement...
...4) Capitalism has starved the souls of millions, even of many whom it made materially rich...
...I think many of us have been shaking our heads about the past and trying to work for a better future...
...State government can often play a useful role in extending electrification...
...Something like 150,000 have incomes of $100 or less a month...
...I don't knQw...
...heart defect which had gone undetected and his heart failed At first I didn't recognize her voice...
...We do all this because, primarily, it is the Christian thing to do...
...they" are the 1949 graduating class who are said Yet on the other level (that of the market place) it tells us that to lack significantly the spirit of adventure generally as-the good life is really easy .to obtain, tells us beguilingly that sociated with a college diploma...
...She was overruled, however, and the "I guess they did...
...addressed a pre-election mass meeting...
...They all started with no funds at all...
...For North Americans the terms capitalism and democracy are synonymous...
...The U.S...
...She wanted some advice on her 'Tm calling to find out about the funeral," she said...
...How could he be dead from a hernia operation...
...If we cannot learn to man- age our economy for the benefit of the people as a whole Within the democratic process, some other process will take its place, and that other process will inevita- bly be statist or totalitarian...
...It must be deciphered, as soon as possible, by all those in Brazil --and throughout Latin America --who have any measure of responsibility and lead- ership...
...Signs were carded proclaiming the justice of the strikers' cause and our support for them...
...Ameri- can government has followed the policy in such laws as the Wagner Act, but...
...The more such planning can be done by private groups--trade associa- tions, farm organizations, labor unions, large industries, local authorities--the better, subject always to the planning process not degenerating into disguised monopoly...
...7. "Side by side with these unions there should always be associations zealously engaged in imbuing and forming their members in the teaching of religion and morality...
...Williams...
...Philip Murray, the late president of the CIO, and his aide John Brophy were both Catholics who were familiar with the encyclicals, They incorporated this idea into the Industry Council Plan, which formed the subject matter of a unanimous resolution at CIO conventions every year and then gathered dust until the next convention.9 A very few employers have looked kindly upon it, but in general management regarded it as galloping Socialism or worse, and government has tended to ignore it in the face of such strong opposition.9 5. Defense of private property, the wage contract, and a moderate degree of competition...
...It meant that a Catholic group had taken action on behalf of the workers, had helped them mate- dally, had won their gratitude and had effectively spiked Communist reports that the Church was for the rich and against the poor...
...Anderson's concep- tion of the functions of ministers of religion is a rigidly spiritual one...
...Let them beef their heads off, you will be doing fight and God will bless you...
...families live on less than forty dollars per week...
...The labor angle is just one facet of our program...
...I told her that was forms . . . I'm sorry, Mrs...
...This attitude has soured many labor leadrs on profit-sharing...
...A tax policy which acts as an incentive to in- vestment, and particularly to equity in- vestment (common stocks as distin-guished from bonds, debentures, prefer- red stocks with fixed dividend rates) in new enterprise is highly desirable...
...For we surely have a long long way to go...
...It i s very far removed from the "free enter- prise" concept of absolute ownership, under which an owner is free to do almost anything his whim may dictate...
...But such matters of detail take a back seat before the inner implications of this Georgia cotton ba- ron's ukase...
...A particularly conspicuous manifestation of the simplicist mentality is found in the triumphant I-told-you-so tone with which "Apostleship-of-the-obvious" writers point out the re- levance to current economic problems of various passages in the two famous encyclicals...
...In Sep- tember of this year Pius XII again con- demned the absolute conception of prop- erty rights: "Where . . . capitalism is based on such false concepts as to arro- gate to itself an unlimited right over property without any subordination to the common good, the Church has con-demned it as contrary to the natural law...
...I hung up and my phone rang almost immediately...
...Got that, stupid...
...Well yes...
...Cooperative ownership is a useful and tried device whereby consumers or pro- ducers can band together in order more effectively to safeguard their interests...
...9...
...They had liv- ed in a protected world of their own...
...Henry Somerville, "A Guild Plan for Industry" February 10, 1926 D URING THE LAST two or three years, the balance sheets of industry and finance have, indeed, looked very favora- ble...
...6. Profit-sharing, stock-sharing, and co-determination...
...A Christian can support any of these movements without having to believe that it is the all-embracing program for a new social order.9 But he cannot refuse to support at least one of them without being guilty of neglecting his social duty and of allowing iniquitous capitalism to lead to its logical conclusion in either communis- tic collecti~,ism or the equally totalitarian fascism.9 --Virgil Michel, "What Is Capitalism...
...There should of course be a sheaf of such public works (court houses, post offices, super high- ways, libraries, etc...
...Thomas F. Woodlock, "A Catholic Economic Program" December 2, 1925 O UR POLITICAL systen~ contrasts with our industrial system...
...The proper functions of state and Federal government is to integrate and correlate what should principally be done by private initiative...
...The first thing that occurs to me is this: let us avoid like an in- tellectual and moral plague.., the quite modem and quite des- picable illusion that the possession of wealth is something to be worshipped and the lack of it something to be despised...
...Williams...
...9 . . Here in Recife, the capital of the Northeast, it is sufficient to see one algado (marshland slum) or the mocambos (dry slums) to realize intimately that there are human creatures living more like cactuses than like human beings...
...All Catholics, as Catholics, are, or should be agreed that there must be such a limitation upon the operations of competi- tion as will prevent the imposition upon any social class of living conditions incompatible, at a minimum, with the dig- nity of human personality...
...It had been a very bad winter with many spells of zero weather...
...Study proposals for what they are --not for what some- one else calls them...
...The one is democratic while the other is not -- it may be described as distributed autocracy, with a rapid tendency to become concentrated autocracy...
...Luce at this point inserts a parenthetical explanation: "(This can be readily understood if the reader will construct a small paper pyramid and then cut off the bottom.9 He will see that the layer above the discarded portion will then become the bottom...
...But in order that potential demand may be equalled by effective demand, government at this point in the process must intervene and adjust minimum wage rates, unemployment compensa- tion rates and taxes...
...James O'Gara, "Poverty, Pyramids, and Eggs" March 29, 1964 THE STATE OF WELFARE I T HAD BEEN a year and a half now that I'd been representing the bureaucracy, promising people aid they never got, jobs where there weren't any, medical care from butchers, sending them to psychologists who tried to help them accept their poverty, poking my nose in, spying -- that's what the job basically was --the spying...
...One of our boys asked why he'd never been told about how his own people live...
...This, in summary statement, is the Christian concept of priyate property...
...But with impressive statistics and charts, that was, then, a shock to discover the misery the media have, On the whole, done an convince us that we are not really seeing excellent job of keeping the images of what in fact we see...
...9...
...3) Capitalism has reduced hundreds and thousands to a state of chronic malnutrition and even of starvation...
...to draw a Winston), is a National Co-Chair of the sion has regularly visited the soup kitch- map of the statistical maze...
...tell the undertaker to call me and I'll make out the performed now or wait until he was older...
...Such a cam- palgn would involve governmental gui- dance in restoring fertility to worn out soils and would have to include actual government aid of the FSA variety in order to make smaller farming once again an available and rewarding way of life...
...Her case record was lost and her aid checks undelivered...
...When we speak of planning, we mean merely an extension and integration of a procedure with which American business is already familiar.Thus, for example, the American Telephone and Tele-graph Company has long had a depart- ment whose task it is to determine future needs for telephones, taking into account population trends, business develop-ments, etc., so that its subsidiary man- ufacturing concern, Western Electric, would not over-expand its facilities and yet would not fail to produce equipment when it was needed...
...strictly a medical decision which I couldn't make, but that I did "Thanks," she said and hung up...
...April 29, 1938 i ii Action on behalf of the workers N IEARLY A YEAR ago in press dispatches, mostly from Pittsburgh, a word combination, that startled many a reader, began to circulate...
...9...
...For the war has shown men and women that it is possible for America to operate at full speed, for everyone to have a job, for the national income to reach new record highs...
...Unfortunately, in many dioceses there has been no action at all on this papal concern...
...clothes for the funeral...
...In Boston they feed 250 men a day...
...I didn't understand astounded at receiving his back rent, got us a good deal on a them...
...Of course, every strike situatioti is different, every union is different and changes in technique are required...
...know that scar tissue heals faster at a young age...
...2) their principles and aims are in harmony with the Christian ideal of life...
...She wanted some advice...
...a carpent- er's tools...
...But if we are moved by this thought to sit down and smugly 'contemplate our own superiority, God help us...
...The acceptance of hazard and rugged competitive individualism...
...Only the ownership of such property as immediately supplies its owners' needs, without involving the needs of others, even approaches an absolute right...
...Louis 200...
...19 (regularly $36) ~ One-year Canadian or foreign subscription . . . $11 ,| (regularly $17) Payment must be drawn in U.S...
...in Detroit 400...
...In a similar category are an artisan's tools, a fisherman's boat, a widow's competence...
...Groups in New York, Boston, Pittsburgh, Chicago, Detroit, Milwaukee, Troy, St...
...Hence capital is essentially the reward of virtues --superior capacities, industry, foresight, abstinence --even though it can be acquired by taking it wrongfully from those who exercised them...
...or "Why don't they [that indefinite they] do this or that...
...We reach a second stage in the definition of prop- erty...
...Louis, Houma, Louisiana, and Windsor, Ontario, have started what Peter [Maurin] himself called from the beginning houses of hospitality, where those in need can receive food, clothes, and shelter, and hold round table discussions...
...This proposition we deny...
...I am referring to the cooperative movement, of which much has already been writ- ten in these pages, and of the corporative order of Christian II ii i I sociologists, of the personalist movement of the Amis d'Esprit in Europe and of the distributist-agrarian movement of Eng- land and America...
...The foundations can do a great deal to further the cooperative move-ment, to study the problems of housing and medical care, etc...
...Certainly, the Pope refused to do that in the Quadragesirao Anno...
...The latest figures show that for the average factory worker wages are about seventy-eight dollars per week.., and it is estimated that 20 percent of U.S...
...What corre- lation can be established between Catholic theory and measur- able facts in the economic order...
...and the effects of its solution or non- solution will be principally felt in these areas...
...9...
...As soon as anybody attempts to conscientizar the masses, he is singled out as a pro-Communist...
...Up to this point private enterprise can do substan- tially all the work and make all the deci- sions...
...In the early Church, the property of all believers was held in common, for the advantage of all, just as it still is in the religious orders and in a very few of the more simple and primi- tive regions of Europe...
...9 . On the face of it, and without having read the report, a course in economics and mill management does not strike us as necessary before forty-one presumably educated men can speak with conviction on what they haveseen, heard, and smelled around them...
...It is the inexpressible value --and, therefore, dignity --of human personality which makes economics a Catholic matter, and.., this is the main cause of quarrel between the Catholic church and the competitive system of production and distribu- tion...
...During negotiations, later on, one of us sat in on some of the conferences...
...When the strike ended in an agreement for an election, priests from the C.R.A...
...It was with consider- MICHAEL HARRINGTON, whose books include suffering before the people...
...Her voice was flat and hollow at nothing anybody could do, he said...
...Stuart Dybeck, "Charity!' December 10, 1971 FAITH & ECONOMICS: A NEW NUMBERS GAME...
...In Mr...
...In all, about one million New Yorkers live in poverty in 1964...
...It's simple.9 You get a group of kindredspirits to-gether...
...It should not be forgotten that "peak" periods like the present constitute real tests of the ability of the capitalistic system to promote the general welfare better than any other system of distribution could...
...B EFORE LISTING some of the means whereby we may work to achieve an economy of abundance, certain terms and concepts need to be clearly defined...
...I managed to talk the landlord into turning her heat back on and lifting the eviction notice.9 When I went to the office from which her case had been supposedly transferred, I found her case record and checks among the myriad memos that had accumulated on the desk of her previous worker...
...The phones were ringing...
...They on the boy like affecting his interest in sports or his entrance gave me the runaround until I started hollering about an inves- into puberty...
...It cent sweatshops of the computer age...
...what part of the big fortunes of the country is represented by plants, equipment, replacement funds, and thus instead of being a private preserve, really promotes the welfare of the community...
...The school's principal, Edwin Maradiaga, a na- rive-born priest, was eloquent in his description of what has taken place: "For our students this was the opportunity of their lives...
...Meany's words, this position has "fit in with the American scheme of things," though not perhaps "perfectly...
...I wish someone would tell your people how many of our young people from very co|for-table families have been given a real jolt of idealism by this Revolution.'" But he is a reflective priest, by no means willing to allow the above observations to take complete control of his mind...
...The authors, firmly committed to both a Judaeo-Christian and a democratic philosophy, therefore feel that it is the duty of all of us to take stock, to see what means are at our disposal to preserve our freedoms both as democrats and as Chris- tians...
...For the modem world, then, there are available several altogether licit and practical forms of ownership, better cal- culated to serve the common welfare than the liberal-capitalist ownership of the past...
...9 . . Essential to any over-all solution of the problem of our American society is the acceptance of planning on a national scale...
...3.50 | I Make check payable to NEW OXFORD REVIEW and I mall to: m NEW OXFORD REVIEW |, Room 420 I 1069 Kain$ Ave...
...As the sole natural check on its irresponsibility is the necessity of mak- ing profits, society must devise other checks to prevent abuse of its power...
...Most of them began fearfully and are continuing fear- fully...
...we should reply, "Why don't we all...
...We talked I listened to the phone buzz for a while and then dialed about the possible effects growing up with a hernia might have County Hospital...
...It will not do for them to be merely "anti" this or that, least of all to be merely anti-communistic...
...In "the minds of many, Catholic and non-Catholic, lurks the thought that the Catholic Church is primarily a conservative, nay reactionary, force, while, as a matter of fact, she is dynamic, crusading and radical...
...I would have Democratic Socialists of America...
...Why not give us a try ! (Please allow 2 to 8 weeks for delivery of first issue) mmm m mmm mare am m lm | um m mo | nl mm aml m amm am am mn Ul qm alm mum an lm nm uu gu | | | m | m | m w m m m | | m m | n SPECIAL DISCOUNT RATES FOR FIRST.TIME SUBSCRIBERS I : [] One-year subscription . . . $9 (regularly $14) I [] One-year student or retired person's sub...
...Department of Labor...
...it will go beyond desiring reasonable government regulation and decide that only by means of an all-powerful state can our great natural wealth and energy be harnessed to the welfare of the entire community...
...I said I was returned to the office I wrote out a referral to County Hospital with the Mayor's Office...
...Only as the number of non-family employees increases does the right of ownership become more sub- ject to regulation in the general interest...
...It has commercialized our legitimate stage, still more the cinema and popular literature...
...Who can look into the future and determine the right technical structure of a Christian order...
...9 . . A most helpful development would be the systematic encouragement of di- versified farming and of production for home use on the farm, whatever soil and weather conditions permit...
...The labor movement has welcomed this one and the odds are that the popes' support helped labor to increase its membership from 3,000,000 in 1931 to more than 17,000,000 in 1956...
...John C. Cort, "Social Encyclicals: Progress Report" May 25, 1956 THE SUBVERSIVE SITUATION O NLY WHEN one lives in an underdeveloped country does the expression" sub-human conditions" become visible and tangible...
...How to act in this delicate situation is an enigma...
...When the primer of the Movement for Basic Education (sponsored by the Bishops of Brazil in the poor areas of the country) was accused of being subversive, the Bishops coun- tered with the statement that what is really subversive is the condition of the rural masses...
...right away...
...I'm sorry," I said...
...American government has also followed this policy, and American labor has been overwhelmingly loyal to it...
...In the meantime there are various movements for social reconstruction under way even now, that have two points in common: (1) they are opposed alike to capitalism, com-munism and fascism...
...Williams trusted me...
...What part of the large personal fortunes of say the last seventy-five years have gone into endowments for the benefit of the public...
...ated...
...It is the urge to reduce all the tangled threads of causation to a single irrelevant generality...
...Her landlord, throat but that it didn't work...
...One is not permitted to destroy what might be serviceable to others even if one owns it...
...But in fact is that what is being done...
...The traditional capitalist "and Ameri- can attitude toward labor as a mere comi forgotten the experience of going into the barrios, and teaching children their own age how to read and write...
...In our industrial system, the worker is indeed the smallest factor of the efficient cause...
...It is wrong to identify capitalism with the institution of private property, since that institution flourished 10ng before the ad- vent of modern capitalism...
...what part of profits can be taxed without endangering the social efficiencyof such concerns...
...None of them ever knew where the next month's rent was coming from...
...The Editors, "The Business Boom" January 4, 1928 T HAT AMERICAN industry is not on the high road to demo- cratization through the diffusion of stock ownership is shown by an analysis of the latest report of the Federal Trade Commission on National Wealth and Income...
...Many of the lines of approach we have suggested are the sort of thing to which thoughtless persons apply labels.9 There is only one important thing for all of us to do if we are to avoid the tragedy which would spring from another major depres- sion...
...He had quit over a month before and still It's not that serious...
...But when the latter cracks the whip over "forty-one southern bishops and ministers" who have lately issued a report describing the conditions in mill villages as "deplorable" and urging their abolition, we hope the thoughtful world is listening in...
...among those who helped in that effort were upper and middle class youth in Ma- nagua who attended a Roman Catholic school...
...Charles Owen Rice, "Policy and Action" July 29, 1938 A postwar proposal for the economy I N THE MIDST of war we can already clearly see the central problems of peace for the people of the United States...
...So passes another myth which has furnished material to many imaginative writers...
...In- stead of seeking to arouse new wants in the jaded appetites of the rich and well-to-do, why not supply the proper and reason- able wants of the toiling masses...
...and so on...
...Writing for the N.Y...
...If any of them ever thought they were going to have to feed the numbers they are feeding, they would never have had the courage to start...
...Actually she had called me up about a month before and asked me to drop over...
...Not one to overestimate her readers, Mrs...
...But hell, I thought, at least I'm trying to do something...
...Williams again...
...a family farm...
...Martin C. Kyne and the Editors, "The Problem of our American Society," November 3, 1944 I CULTURAL CONTRADICTIONS succeed in proportion as it induces the public to value luxury and security above everything...
...our budget for next month.., do you have to take Irwin off "Yes...
...In this country there are about eight chapters of the Association of Catholic Trade Unionists plus a few other kindred organiza- tions...
...It will either seek to corrupt it, or to destroy it, seeing in it the only social force which by its very nature must remain morally au- tonomous, and therefore a potential moral rival...
...To live in a sub-human condition means to live in a home which is not a house, to be constantly ill-fed, to be dressed in rags, not to have the slightest guarantee of work, notto enjoy a minimum of education or even of spiritual care...
...What is certain is that it cannot be solved by indis- criminate denunciation...
...The company bought page ads in every daily, accused the union heads of being Communists, claimed that a few agitators were responsible for the trouble, that its employees were eminently satisfied but that outsiders were stirring some of them up...
...The accumu- lation of capital cannot be avoided if there is to be progress...
...It is this, one should never sell oneself...
...Today the laboring clas- ses have come to a common consciousness of spiritual starva- tion as human beings...
...They did not seem to be aware of the fact that such a fundamental change as giving up the primacy of capital over labor would put an end to tradi- tional capitalism...
...Moreover, is it true that capitalism necessarily "degrades men to mere economic factors of cost to be bar- gained for at lowest possible market prices.., as individual items of cost and not persons with souls, aspirations, self- determination, etc...
...American employers have sometimes fluctuated between devotion to the more cut-throat varieties of competition and an inclination, once on top, to destroyany and all competition, whether it be fair or unfair...
...Brazenly make statements on everything ger- mane to our field...
...What does our remote academic ethical science teach us, relevant to the "trend of bigness" which so obviously binds into one the separate fates of many economic units and spreads economic misfortune over wider areas, and which works so insistently today even though statistical evidence shows a very much higher rate of return on more moderately capitalized industrial units...
...It is the defense- reaction which escapes analytic thinking by claiming the solu- tion is ready to hand...
...Go down to the picket line and carry signs favoring them...
...Municipal gov- ernment can implement housing prog- rams...
...The simplicist attitude is doing the church no good...
...I had been very lucky in helping Mrs...
...They and a handful of cronies had total power and huge wealth, while 80 percent of the people had no water, and two thirds of them no electricity, and half no sanitary facilities at all, and nearly three quarters lived in houses with dirt floors...
...The Federal government can create TVAs --as it is proposed that it should now do in the Missouri Valley, the experiment in the Valley of the Tennessee having been so successful.9 The execution of such plans should not be viewed as mere public works, serving a pump-priming function in the face of depression...
...I do not know where M. gets the "primary" meaning of capitalism as "the state of having capital or property...
...Like him, our writ- ers work out of a radically Christian sensibility -producing an unconventional magazine that transcends the debilitating dichotomy of "secu- lar Left" vs...
...wages and labor hazards.., with special concern for women and children" where these matters have not been properly provided for by private agencies or associations.9 Labor has certainly supported this papal position...
...But do or do not those papal documents lay down a tangible program of resettlement that is, in some not-too-remote way, applicable to economic maladjustments in America today...
...We must remember that existing minimum wage legislation does not cover whole classes of workers--agricultural labor, domestic help, etc.--and that present unemployment re- fief varies greatly from state to state and is in most states not only niggardly but disproportionately low in view of the funds actually available in state un-employment relief reserves...
...Why is modem capitalism doomed...
...But little by little these things were contri- buted...
...ogy of vision caused by large numbers of who have been left behind by progress, Today it is not so much the social-people moving to the suburbs and losing many of them black, a fair number "un- geographical structure of the society but contact with the poor who, in great num- documented" and working in the renas- sophisticated theories, often buttressed bers, remained in the central cities...
...Private ownership of an almost abso- lute character is essential in the realm of personal property--the family's house, clothing, food...
...This planning can be done by such pri- vate agencies as the great endowed foun- dations, by municipal government, state government, joint action by two or more states, and finally by the Federal gov- ernment...
...For only by thinking clearly and freshly can we even approxi- mate a decent world to live in...
...Obviously, if one defines the poverty lin e as that which places one-fifth of the nation below it, then one- fifth of the nation will always be below the poverty line...
...9 . . Individualism, capitalism, even laissez-faire, in the sense of freedom of initiative, are part of the Christian inheritance as opposed to the slavery of the ancient world...
...He pointed out fundamental principles of Christian social recon- struction and left the rest to time and to us...
...If we can solve this problem, we shall not have solved all problems...
...To do so required governmental interference with the normal course of private enterprise...
...Extracted from the April 1984 NEW OX- FORD REVIEW If this kind of portraiture strikes a respon- sive chord, consider the NEW OXFORD RE-VIEW, where Robert Coles writes a regular col- urnn titled "Harvard Diary" in which he speaks out on the issues of the day...
...The true Catholic doctrine is such dynamite that statements of this kind are always newsworthy...
...I asked for information about Irwin...
...I had a violent argument with my su- "He's dead," she said, "that's all I know...
...Or to affect the functioning of those forces that, in periods of prosperity, cumulatively aug- ments capital funds until the two irreconcilable correlatives of over-expanded industry and undistributed buying power snap sharply apart to let in the floods of misery...
...Williams made the mistake of moving from a condemned building...
...Are ten-year-old son, Irwin, He had a hernia, she explained, and you all gonna pay for it...
...Thus the notion that prop- erty rights are absolute is probably ac- cepted by the vast majority of Ameri- cans, no matter what their religious con- nection...
...while as for leaving money alone, why, to pay no attention to money means, nowadays, to neglect keeping alive...
...Make a statement in the workers' favor, if they be in the fight, as they generally are...
...The problem is to Christianize them, to make them amenable to moral law...
...usually eloquent...
...The literacy program has been dramati- cally effective...
...She had worked in a factory stuffing jock straps in boxes until she was knocked down by a lift truck and her spine injured...
...I hate to bother you but on Did he have his operation...
...In addition, there is our House of Hospitality, where 350 are fed daily, our Farming Commune, our education and propaganda activi- ties...
...she didn't need it...
...Usually there was no money for paint or soap or mops or beds or stoves or cups...
...Capitalism, in this obvious sense of the accumulation of wealth, is essential for human progress and naturally in full accord with Christian ethics...
...A group with the weird title Catholic Radical Alliance had been formed in that grimy town and was saying and doing things which attracted public notice...
...But too many of the profit-sharing enthusiasts . . . look upon it as just a handy little device for keeping the union out...
...If now, when all the means are at Faith & economics I our disposal, we cannot do something in the way of social improvement, there is little reason to believe we ever can, under the same management...
...He can keep thousands of acres lying fallow while his neighbors are landless and hun- gry...
...It is above all dangerous to labor, since under it there is a tendency to deny the right to strike-- ultimately labor's only weapon, and the hallmark of a free economy...
...But if private initiative refuses to plan for itself, or to plan with proper regard for the general welfare, a far more direct and active form of government planning is inevitable...
...This is Mrs...
...I m ,,7-Working His Salvation --Jean Chariot, August 5, 1938 The encyclicals...
...It is equally wrong to identify capitalism with high-powered technological mass-production, as M. does at times, for then Russian Communism would be capitalistic...
...The employers, by and large, have fought it with epithets ranging from "Com-munism" to "creeping Socialism...
...Mrs...
...We become capitalists as soon as we produce more than we consume...
...Relations between whites and Negroes will deteriorate even further if a scarcity of jobs perpetuates economic discrimina- tion...
...Her apartment had no furniture --some boxes and a mattress on the floor, a hot plate, but no refrigerator.9 She had been keeping her perishable foods on the windowsill, pulling them in at intervals so they wouldn't freeze, until someone got wise and stole them...
...Either to advise them how to become rich quickly, or to advise them to have nothing to do with the beastly thing at all...
...But now.., those in need are turned over to agencies, to the city or the state...
...It is a problem at base economic, but it covers areas moral, social, politi- cal...
...She was a lovely, gentle woman whose husband deserted her five years ago, leaving her with four kids to support...
...Even our newspap- ers with few exceptions are no longer purveyors of the truth, but capitalistic enterprises for greater profit, public lie and scandal sheets...
...Louis J. A. Mercier, "What Price Definitions" June 18, 1937 THE CULPRIT CONDEMNED g APITALISM IS SO DOOMED to extinction that it can continue to exist only in so far as it ceases to be capitalism...
...To get an accurate picture of poverty in the nation as a whole, a similar analysis would be necessary in each town and region...
...1. Support for union organization...
...Who knows, outside of some relatively learned men.., that the Church is the friend of the worker and the poor...
Vol. 111 • November 1984 • No. 19
