56 pages • 1 hour read
Dorothy DayThe Long Loneliness
Nonfiction | Autobiography / Memoir | Adult | Published in 1952A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Chapters 19-21Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Part 3: “Love is the Measure”
Part 3, Chapter 19 Summary: “Peasant of the Pavements”
When Day gets back from the protests in Washington, a man, Peter Maurin, is waiting for her in her apartment. The man looks like the workers that she has been following in DC. He tells her that the editor of The Commonweal told him to see her, as well as an Irish Communist in Union Square, who had told him that he and Day have similar thought processes. Peter Maurin is French, and still has his accent, even though he has been in the States for 20 years. He was born in a small agrarian village, raised Catholic, and is one of 23 children. Maurin came to the US in 1911. When he thinks of the “worker,” he is always thinking of the agrarian worker. In contrast, Day always thinks of factory workers. Maurin is “intensely alive” and always engaged (169). He is fascinated by ideas and theory. Lenin has said that a theory has to accompany a revolution, and thus, Maurin is very interested in developing a theory for a green revolution.
In keeping with this revolution, Maurin wants to create a newspaper to broadcast his ideas. The paper would cost 1 cent, so that even the poorest worker can buy it. Day uses her rent money to pay for the first printing. She realizes that Maurin only wants to publish a paper so that he can get his own ideas out into the world.
Before meeting Day, Maurin lived cheaply on the Bowery, and would even give his coat to someone more in need. He believes in community help over the help of the State: “Peter saw only the land movement as the cure for unemployment and irresponsibility […]” (180).
Part 3, Chapter 20 Summary: “Paper, People and Work”
Dorothy Day and Peter Maurin start The Catholic Worker newspaper together. By May of 1933, they have a circulation of 2,500. By 1936, there are 150,000 copies being distributed all over the world. There is much interest from men just out of college in working at the paper. Day and Maurin have many interns and writers. They also have a horse and cart to deliver the paper in New York City. Dan Orr, the man who drives the cart, says the horse itself is pious, and that when they pass St. Patrick’s Cathedral, the horse genuflects.
In 1933, there are 13 million unemployed people in the US, so Day and Maurin also begin to rent many apartments for the poor and unemployed to live in. Others who live there basically live in “voluntary poverty” (187); Day writes that the Catholic Worker Movement “is a permanent revolution” (186). The rising rent of the three apartments and the store that they own cause them to rent a house on West Charles Street. Some assume they are not Catholics because they are too poor, and are called communists, instead. Day writes:
Our insistence on worker-ownership, on the right of private property, on the need to de-proletarize the worker, all points which had been emphasized by the Popes in their social encyclicals, made many Catholics think we were Communists in disguise, wolves in sheep’s clothing (188).
This is frustrating to Day, who no longer considers herself a communist because she does believe that workers should own their own property, including their homes.
Maurin has a friend named Steve whom he sometimes meets in Union Square. They argue about whether people who do not work should be able to receive charity. Steve thinks that one should have to work to be able to eat. Peter believes in mercy for everyone. They do agree that workers should leave cities and go to the countryside. Peter believes in “‘Personalism and communitarianism’” (195). Day notes that the trouble is that Maurin does not link his thoughts or flesh out his grand ideas.
They rent another house with twelve rooms on Staten Island. Groups of young people pass through and they have speakers from Columbia University and from the Midwest. A woman offers them $1000 to purchase land in Pennsylvania for a farm. She wants them to build a house there for the poor and deed it to her, as she desires community. They try to dissuade her, but she is set on the idea. Later, she complains to the Church that she did not get that sense of community she wanted.
Steve gets cancer and is dying. At first, he is angry, but “[h]e began to realize that he had to die in order to live” (199). In the hospital, he receives a baptism while lying on a bed with a few other dying men. Day does not find much dignity in it, but the idea of the ritual is still somehow uplifting. In the end, Steve dies alone. Afterward, they find papers he had left behind that indicate that he wished he had been more utilized as a speaker, teacher, and writer: “That has been the lament of so many who have died with us. Just as they are beginning to open their eyes to the glory and the potentialities of life their life is cut short as a weaver’s thread” (200). Life is brief and solitary, and Day suggests that it is part of the “long loneliness” that humans experience: we spend all of our lives searching for community, but we are still mostly alone (200).
Many students come because of this sense of community and to learn from Peter Maurin. They develop opinions and political and moral positions. This love for each other helps the students to get past their hatred and fears. They also assist with the housework. After, they leave to get married or to fight in the war.
Part 3, Chapter 21 Summary: “Labor”
The Catholic Worker is directed toward the worker, but the term also means “those who worked with hand or brain, those who did physical, mental or spiritual work. But [Day and Maurin] thought primarily of the poor, the dispossessed, the exploited” (204). They want to follow Christ’s example of helping the poor, and they feel privileged because of their ability to enact this vision. They think that the poor are nearest to God, and that by helping them, they are getting closer to God, as well.
Day backtracks to discuss the popularity of the newspaper, which by the eighth issue is reaching out to an international population by discussing world news. They also cover news closer to home, like the picketing of the German consulate in 1935. They find themselves drawn into that news, as well. They picket the consulate along with the communists. The police don’t want to arrest them at the Ohrbach strike (a department store strike) in Union Square because they have written quotes from the Popes on their signs. However, they are cited. Readers respond and help to defeat the injunctions against the picketers.
Day and Maurin call the paper The Catholic Worker because they are Catholics and want to write for Catholics, but also because they want to show that Catholics do not just have a private morality and conscience, but a public one, as well. They want to show that they care about the world. Some Catholic dioceses mistake them for communists because they think that all workers’ organizations are communist.
Day goes to Tennessee for four days and finds the workers’ conditions there to be appalling. She telegraphs Eleanor Roosevelt about it and Roosevelt asks the government for an investigation. Day asserts that it is not enough to go and see what is happening around the country. Money is not enough, either; rather, “[o]ne must live with them, share with them their suffering too” (214). They develop “houses of hospitality” all over the country and live with the poor (214). Workers who have to resort to charity in the form of a bread line have lost their dignity, Day asserts. The houses give them work and a place to live and help them to reclaim their sense of self. All men are brothers and this newfound community gives them strength. Christ is also found in these communities.
It is difficult to understand, Day observes, why the clergy is so well off while the laity around the world suffer. Priests should take in the poor. Ironically, however, as soon as they strike, Catholic workers became communists in the eyes of priests, and the priests don’t want to be involved with them. Aware of this issue, a few of the seamen associated with the movement form the Association of Catholic Trade Unionists. This is to contrast themselves with both the communist and gangster elements of other unions. Peter Maurin points out that the two movements do have some differences; Maurin believes in going back to the land, whereas this association represents the urban worker. They also disagree with the way that the Catholic Worker Movement helps in any strike, whether it has communist influences or not.
The Catholic Worker and its stories about the plights of the working poor inspire priests to participate in the labor movement. The newspaper also emphasizes the need for the study of sociology as part of clerical training. Priests begin to feel that The Catholic Worker has become too philosophical and is engaged in theorizing that might be better done by priests. However, Day continues to discuss her theories. The problem, she asserts, is the State, which tries to solve the problem of poverty with bureaus and the dole. Peter Maurin does not want a welfare state; instead, he champions for workers to own the means of production.
Chapters 19-21 Analysis
Much of these chapters, and the remainder of the text, focus on Day’s relationship with Peter Maurin. After showing up as a guest in her apartment, Maurin and Day become friends for the rest of his life. He strongly believes in revolution, especially a “green” or agricultural revolution, where poor, urban workers return to an agrarian way of life. He wants to develop a theory for how it would occur, and to create a newspaper to share his ideas. At first, Day thinks that The Catholic Worker newspaper is for broadcasting theories about the worker movement in general, but then realizes that Maurin wants it as a platform for himself. Ironically, though he had lived in poverty and would give a poorer man the coat off of his back, Maurin is surprisingly selfish about sharing his ideas because he seems to believe that he is always right.
Starting The Catholic Worker leads to the creation of the Catholic Worker Movement, which not only publishes a successful newspaper but ends up creating a network for housing and feeding the poor. Day says that she loves Catholicism because it supports action, and Maurin and Day definitely live their religion through supportive actions, as well as words. Ironically, many Catholics assume they are communist, instead of Catholic, because of their support of the worker and because of their insistence on living like the people whom they help. Day points out that they differ from communists because of their support of “de-proletizing” the worker and giving them ownership of their property, but because of their strict support of workers, they are mistaken for communists.
In fact, Maurin believes above all else in “personalism and communitarianism,” which has more to do with being personally involved with his fellows and sharing resources in an agrarian, communal space, where resources are pooled but everyone has their own living quarters and personal possessions (195). Maurin has ideological disagreements with his friend, Steve Hergenhan, who believes that people should work in order to eat, whereas Maurin is more lenient. Maurin believes that everyone should receive the benefit of the doubt, working or not. This philosophy is applied to the Catholic Worker Movement, where everyone receives food and a place to stay. Day notes that the trouble is that Maurin has a lot of big ideas, but does not fill in the details. This potentially impedes him from making his back-to-the-land theories more successful, though the Catholic Worker Movement does start farms and uses them to support those who live there.
Eventually, when Steve is diagnosed with cancer, he is baptized with other men on a hospital bed. Though Day does not find much immediate dignity in this mass-baptizing, she does locate beauty in the essence of the ritual. Indeed, for Day, religious rituals form the backbone of existence. It seems not to matter how they are rendered, just that they are. Perhaps these help combat the “long loneliness” by giving people community with others and community with God.
By starting the newspaper, the friends want to show that Catholicism isn’t all inward and about preparing for the afterlife; rather, religion can also have a public conscience. Day seems to want to rectify her earlier mistake of only focusing on her own inner actualization. It is crucial to do good work in the community, whether all of the community members are Catholic or not. However, Day writes that they did inspire priests to teach more about sociology and theory to other clergy and to the laity. Their ultimate goal is to empower people to take greater control of their fates by working together in small communities, whether urban or rural. These communities will combat the bureaucratic reach of the State, as well as pervasive loneliness.
