An Eye For Others: Dorothy Day, Journalist: 1916-1917

An Eye For Others: Dorothy Day, Journalist: 1916-1917, compiled and edited by Tom McDonough.  Clemency Press, 2016.  202 pages.  Softcover, $16.95.

 

An Eye For Others is an edited and annotated anthology of some notable articles by Dorothy Day, written as she was starting her career as a journalist. Tom McDonough has collected some notable works from her first two years writing for The New York Call, focusing on assorted social issues.

 

The book opens with a quote from Pope Francis’ address to the United States Congress, where he said that “A nation can be considered great when it… strives for justice and the cause of the oppressed, as Dorothy Day did by her tireless work.”  McDonough follows up this quote by writing, “Dorothy Day is identified with the radical embrace of Christ’s message. Her zeal and action for truth, justice and peace sets an example for us, and her affirmation of the dignity of every person, even the most downtrodden, puts us to shame.  This book highlights a young Dorothy Day’s compassion for the working poor and her lifelong dissent against the disordered industrial development in which she grew up and which is still with us.”

 

This anthology is filled with excerpts from Day’s reporting over the course of two years.  Supplemented with photographs and descriptive/explanatory passages from McDonough, the book provides an invaluable look at the social issues and forces that shaped Day’s mindset, though it should be noted that this is before Day embraced Catholicism. McDonough points out that, “Although at this point in her life Dorothy did not consider herself a Christian, she was deeply influenced by the spirit of the Gospel, though she looked in vain for exemplars of gospel values. [Day remarked,] “People were generally indifferent to religion. They were neither hot nor cold.  They were the tepid, the materialistic, who hoped that by Sunday churchgoing they would be taking care of the afterlife, if there were an afterlife. Meanwhile they would get everything they could in this.””

 

The news from the Call is open about its bias. Coverage of wealthy is particularly critical, such as in its coverage of the “Astor baby,” whose father famously died on the Titanic, and whose widowed mother was given an allowance to raise the baby which could have supported hundreds of children, and yet she appealed for a sharp raise in funding because she claimed she needed more to raise her son.

 

Day covered a wide variety of topics affecting poor Americans.  Early in the book, selections from her coverage of the working poor are quoted. Her use of imagery is particularly compelling, as she describes what it is like to live on an extremely limited budget, and being chastised by social workers for spending too much money on fruit and other staple foods, and straying for the set budget people who believed that they knew best had set for the poor. Details of how bleak life can get when one has to focus all of one’s efforts on survival and one has no time to enjoy one’s time on earth are particularly effectively depicted by Day.

 

Another major theme is the start of what would become known as the First World War. Day was an ardent pacifist, and she saw Wilson’s “He kept us out of the war” mantra as a self-serving bit of duplicity, as the United States was inexorably drawn into the conflict in Europe. Interestingly, we learn that Day never cast a vote in her life, because she felt it would be an immoral participation in the perpetuation injustice.

 

Numerous strips from The New Adventures of Henry Dubb are included.  The Henry Dubb comic strips are meant to point out social injustices, though perhaps the passing of a century has probably changed tastes in humor, because they are not particularly funny, and are generally heavy-handed. The problem with including the Dubb strips is that to fit them in the book, they are shrunk down to almost nothing, so the images are almost blurred and the dialogue is unreadable, so McDonough includes a transcript of the dialogue beneath each strip.  An unclear image is no good– perhaps it might have been better if the strips were included vertically in an appendix, because in that position it would be a lot easier to read the strips.

 

Late in the book, one chapter shows that Day’s reporting was not always reliable. This chapter recounts some of the coverage of Margaret Sanger and her sister, the latter being in jail for disseminating information on contraception. At the start of the chapter, McDonough reveals that most of what was reported by Day was untrue or distorted– Sanger’s sister was in good health and was never in any danger of death from her purported hunger strike. Sanger was apparently feeding the press false information, and the press was aware of it and happily printed the lies in support of the contraceptive movement. A quote seems to indicate that Day felt guilty about lying in her stories, but that her management at the newspaper insisted that she print the false information. This clashes with an earlier quote where she argued with her editor until he included details on the bedbugs that plagued single women, and it unfortunately calls the accuracy of all of her other reporting into question.

 

Though it only covers a sliver of Day’s life, this book provides a valuable look at Day’s early career and formative influences. 

This review was originally published in Gilbert Magazine.