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The Catholic Worker Movement in America
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 25 October 2024
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New York, Mott Street, Chinatown ... It is the district of the Law Courts, the prisons and Police Headquarters. Only poor Italians and Chinese live here. At night sightseeing buses come down from Times Square filled with tourists from Europe and the “West” who want another thrill out of this amazing cosmopolis. There is only one bright spot in this ugly place which has grown like a cancer from avid speculation and deforms the gigantic body of New York. It is a square cemented site surrounded with chicken-wire fences, a playground for the poor children of the immediate neighbourhood—another humane deed of Mayor La Guardia and his energetic and efficient assistant Mr. Moses, who has dotted the huge metropolis with playgrounds and parks. Yet even this playground would be sad and dull, were it not filled with the laughter, the singing and screaming of poor Italo-American children and their gossiping mothers. It little resembles our European playgrounds, with their shrubs and lawns, their flowers and shady paths. It looks more like an open wound amidst the ghosts and skeletons and sub-human mansions called tenements. Yet if not here, the poor little boys and girls would have to seek their exercise and amusement on the littered streets, in dark and damp backyards, and between parked cars.
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- Copyright © 1938 Provincial Council of the English Province of the Order of Preachers