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The Doctrine of the Just and Right therefore mother and the children must work. The Texas Farm Bureau recently advocated the repeal of the federal child labor tion to public housing is reduced law so that children under 16 to this: ‘Some people don’t want years could leave school to pick the government to help the poor.’ cotton.” Archbishop Lucey”s remarks then also covered the present situation, in which hundreds of thousands of Mexican workers are brought into the country each year for seasonal work at government-set minimum wages that are not, however, always enforced. “The homeless and persecuted millions of Europe are not allowed to enter our country,” he said; only a handful have been admitted in the past few years and they were screened to the limit. If communists, saboteurs, and the trouble-makers wish to come here they should join t -ie army of invasion coming from the south, legally or otherwise. If they have a labor contract they acn skip it and settle down in our midst.” the family gets poor wages and best social legislation has been called socialistic because there was no other way to condemn it. “The frank and honest objec Negro is still shot down and his murderers go their evil way unpunished.The Negro, the LatinAmerican, and the poor in general are denied the exercise of the right to vote by means of the iniquitous poll tax which exists in several states. Wealthy corporations furnish campaign funds to unworthy candidates for public office and the welfare of ‘the people is often forgotten by corrupt and venal politicians. “But if the temple of political welfare has been desecrated by ruthless men, what shall we say of economic freedom in this country? Is that society truly democratic wherein men are free to work for starvation wages? Where women and children wear out their strength of body and soul in factories and sweat shops to enrich their employer? “… but since gangster gQvernmerits in. Eastern Europe and the Orient have shown us to what depths of crime and injustice human beings can fall, our own Republic, imperfect and faltering, seems like a paradise. We do have unemployed but we are trying to give them work. We do have sweat shops and child labor but we are trying to eliminate them. We do restrict the suffrage of the Negro and the poor with poll taxes but only in a few states; and, thank God, murder by the mob is being conquered by honest public opinion. We do have men in office who are unworthy of the people’s trust, but … citizens themselves are learning to demand intelligence and integrity in the public service.” In the Archbishop’s view the church historically, is the primary source of the doctrines of human rights and brotherhood from which democracy takes its strength. `Free, Equal’ “Before the establishment of the Christian Church human slavery was the order of the day. A few men of ancient Greece were free; the masses were slaves. In Rome there was great wealth among the upper classes; the arts and sciences flourished according to the standards of that day. But subject races were brought to Rome behind the chariots of their conquerors. They lived and died in servitude. Before the Church was established the status of woman was wretched. She was without dignity or respect. She was merely a thing to satisfy the passions of men. Government was despotic and tyrannical. Life was cheap. “Into this scene of pagan wealth and poverty, of barbaric splendor and desolation, came the Christian church preaching a novel doctrind of human rights and brotherhood. For 300 years the men. who preached these truths were tortured to death in the Coliseum, in the amphitheatre, and in the streets of Rome. “At last the truth prevailed and persecution ceased. The Christian church came forth from the catacombs to breathe the free air of religious liberty and to teach men that in the sight of God there is neither slave nor freeman, there is neither Greek nor Jew, there is only a brotherhood of free and equal men endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights; a brotherhood of men created in the image and likeness of God; men who possessed in their very manhood a sublime dignity and surpassing destiny.” The Archbishop preaches a doctrine of the worth of a working man with unstinting and uncompromising devotion to him. One of his fundamental statements on the matter in Christianity’s lights was a talk on eco nomic ethics last February in San Antonio at a meeting of the Cathlie Economic Assn., Southwestern branch. “During His public ministry,” he said, “our Lord visited Nazareth one day preaching and performing miracles. And the people were astonished and said: ‘Where did he get this wisdom and these miracles? Is not this the carpenter’s son?’ To their way of thinking a carpenter’s son could not be the Messiah. But according to the Christian way of life a lowly position in society is not a test of values; the son of a carpenter could be the Son of God. “On another occasion Christ said to His disciples: ‘With what difficulty will they who have riches enter the Kingdom of God!’ … In the Christian way of life riches are neither good nor evil, but man is only the steward of his wealth. Undue attachment to riches is a form of idolatry. ‘You cannot serve God and Mammon’ “In San Antonio there must be something wrong with the economic system because wealth is so evenly divided.” The Archbishop went on to point out that in San Antonio, by the 1950 census, 14,300 families and unrelated individuals, twelve percent of the population, made less than $500 a year, and 42 percent, a total of 52,300 families and unrelated individuals, made less than $2,000 a year. That more than 12,000 of San Antonio’s school-age children were not in school. That of 112,000 dwellings in the city, 41,440 were substandard \(“No floorjust dirtno plumbingno waterwalls fragileroofs leakCiting statements of Popes and excernts from Catholic treatises on social morality, Archbishop Lucey defended the right of workers to organize, their duty to organize, their right to a living wage \(“… that after expenditures are deducted there will remain something over and above through which they can come into their right to social security, and their right to “self-governing industries and professions,” against their overriding duty: “Labor must do a fair day’s pay.” He quoted Pope Leo XIII, who said in 1891 that labor unions “either of workers alone or of workers and employers together” “are formed by their own right.” “Some employers have not caught up with 1891,” the Archbishop said. “It’s been almost 66 years …. Out of 60 million workers in America, two thirds are not organized. There are the poor farmers, the agricultural workers, the sharecroppers. In the urban populations many more are poor …. In Texas we have all possible repressive laws against organized labor.” `Unspeakable’ He has been especially concerned about problems of migrant labor, and in general he has taken a position of hostility toward foreign labor. Speaking in April, 1955, when the wetback influx was at its height, he remarked: “Mexican Americans, even though their standard of living is low, cannot support their families in decent and’frugal comfort on the low wages paid in Texas. They leave their homes, their schools, their churches and travel hudreds of miles seeking employment in other states. “The housing of migratory workers is often unspeakable and s o m e t i m es non-existentthey ‘just live in the brush’ or on the bank of a creek. They use water polluted by excrement, bathing and typhoid germs. The father of What’s Socialism? He has been concerned with housing in San Antonio. “A ‘visitor once came through here and made a speech, and he said there are three places in the world with terible slums, India, China, and San Antonio. Isn’t that something?” “The world is watching our treatment of minority groups,” he says. “When we allow large segments of our society to live in foul, unhealthy shacks we are accused of maintaining here a phoney democracy; we don’t really believe that all’inen were created equal.” Perhaps in defending public housing from its detractors who call it socialism Archbishop Lucey has defined his social philosophy most explicitly. Speaking to the Southwest Association of Housing Officials in 1953, he said the FHA had covered three million housing units with mortgage guarantees totaling $23 billion, “but apparently that is not socialism.” Shortly before Korea the Department of Agriculture had invested $4.3 billion in surpus farm products and “apparently that is not socialism.” But at the same time the House of Representatives forbade the Administration to spend a penny on pubic housing. “Is it possible the farm lobby in Washington likes the farmers and the National Assn. of Home Builders doesn’t like public housing? The dictionary says that socialism is a political and economic order in which there is a government ownership of the essential means of production and distribution of goods. It is difficult to see how public housing fits in to such a definition…. “The vast majority of Americans do not desire government ownership of the essential means of production and distribution of goods. I believe that some public utilities should be owned and operated by the public authority, for example water and electricpower. These are invested with a public interest which is universal …. This does not do violence to the principle of private ownership of tan d, manufacturing plants, railroads, newspapers, and so forth.” Pope Pius XI endorsed public housing, he said. “Do I hear someone saying that His Holiness, the Pope of Rome, has gone socialist? “As a matter of fact, why should -we give the socialists credit for some of the best social legislation and social achievement in our country? Are we trying to convince the low-income groups that the socialists are their best friends? Much of our and it’ fell to the ground, rolling, a grey fur ball. The dogs were on it and Bingham got it in his teeth shaking it. “Git out!” said Elmo and he gave Bingham a merciless kick. Bingham kept circling, but at a distance. He was hurt. Elmo grabbed the possum by the tail and swung it up away from the dogs and dropped it to the ground again, for it was trying to bite him. He began beating its head with the stick. After a while, I asked, “It’s not dead yet?” Elmo was giving it measured blows on the skull, which was turning soft. The blows were distinct in the quiet night air. “Take plenty,” Elmo said, beating regularly, breathing hard, “to kill one of these old possums.” “Look here,” he said. He held the stick in the possum’s mouth and the possum clamped his small teeth on the stick and held on as Elmo pulled him off the ground. “Good Lord!” I said. Elmo quit beating and said in desperation, “Son of a gun!” The possum was lying on its back, its mouth still opening slowly and closing again. “I kill you yet you little old possum,” Elmo said. He was sweating. He put his stick across the neck of the possum, and stood on the stick. Then he grabbed the possum’s tail, and yanked. The neck broke. Elmo stood hard on the stick and yanked again. Still standing on the stick, he pulled the possum upward as hard as he could, and held it there. Then still holding the possum by the tail he lifted it high in the air, and brought its head down against the ground. He did this again. I didn’t like it, but I didn’t say anything. This was the way you had to kill a possum. Elmo, I supposed, wasn’t feeling anything. “What makeS you so hard to kill, possum?” he was saying. He had his knife out and was ripping the hide up the possum’s hind legs. He carved through the fat under the hide, stripped the knobby spine of a tail out of its case, and then thrust the hide forward. White fat and tissue tore. The body was small and shiny and well developed without any hide. When Elmo had the skin loose to the neck, he began carving some more, and pulled again. The skin came forward surprising in view of the fact that so few understand it,” he said in Albuquerque last month. “Doing business with communists is always difficult and frequently futile but a cold war seems to be the only alternative to a shooting war and if patient negotiation is our last hope for peace we should follow that hope to the end.” The TIN is not perfect, since. its nations in membership are not perfect, “but it’s all that we have and the alternative to world organization is world chaos.” “Since our country belongs to the family of nations and all of us belong to the human race, those who claim that we ought to get out of the UN should tell us frankly ‘\\ how we can survive alone in a tragic and troubled world.” Thus the Most Rev. Robert E. Lucey applies a Catholic concept of Christian ethics to the troubles of his city, his state, his country, and the world. He says: “We cannot live our little lives alone.” over the head to the eyes. Anselmo cut some more, and two ovals appeared in the skin where the eyes had been. Now Elmo was down to the nose. He cut through the soft snout, and the hide fell away completely, limp and damp. Elmo stood and kicked the possum carcass. “Go to your brothers,” he said. He wiped his knife blade on the grass; snapped it shut, and put it in his pocket. “Well, let’s go,” he said. “You got the axe?” “Look,” I said. In the lantern light, the possum rose to its feet, slowly as on a hinge; it wavered a moment, dinosaur-headed, blind, started to take a step and succeeded. Elmo and I walked through the trees. The dogs were away hunting again. Elmo; stopped. “Son of a gun!” he said, sick-sounding. He turned around, facing the way we had come. He was holding his coat pocket. “I lost the ringtail hide,” he said. I had forgotten how the evening had begun, with the quick clean kill, and the taking of the pelt from the fine-haired ringtail. Elmo had begun retracing his steps. I followed. We looked for the hide with our lights, but all we saw was clump after clump of tan grass, nothing more. We went all the way back to where the possum lay. We circled the tree where the dogs had found it, and we walked off at aimless tangents from the scene of the killing. The dogs were bored, and lay down, looking dismally at me and Elmo and wondering what we were doing. “‘s gone, said Elmo at last. We started walking again. We began drifting toward the house. We walked two hours, with the dogs hunting half-heartedly and then coming back to us and following at our heels.