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.Aclothing drive the same year noted that contributions.were not asplentiful as last year, but its proceeds were distributed to residents ofHooverville two days after Christmas.36One organization, the House of Hospitality sponsored by the Catho-lic Worker movement, came in at the very end of the Depression andpromised some hope, but its efforts missed the worst part of the Depres-sion years.The Catholic Worker movement, a form of radical Catholict h e d e p r e s s i o n a n d w o r l d wa r i i 173social activism, was begun in New York City by Dorothy Day and PeterMaurin in 1933.37 During the Depression, Catholic Worker sponsoredHouses of Hospitality fed and sheltered the poor without question.Sacramento s House of Hospitality began its operations in January 1941when a former Christian Brother, Arthur Ronz, with the help of thirteenSacramento priests, obtained three houses on Second Street in the middleof Sacramento s skid row, rented out two of them, and with the proceedsopened Queen of Peace House.The priests of the diocese purchased a carfor Ronz, and the Sisters of Mercy, the Legion of Mary of Sacred HeartParish, and other Catholic groups donated food and volunteer labor.City officials sent clothes and hauled away garbage for free.With volun-teer labor, the house fed nearly ten thousand people (many of them poorMexicans, according to Ronz) between January and April 1941.The housesoon became deluged with referrals from Traveler s Aid and the SalvationArmy.Ronz himself struggled to keep it afloat until 1942, when he reluc-tantly reported for military service.38greater rationaliz ation of so cial servicesThe sheer magnitude of the crisis made it impossible for Catholics orother social providers to really help the poor of Sacramento.However,the Depression did provide a catalyst for upgrading and professionaliz-ing Catholic social services, particularly for dependent children.Orphancare had been a ministry of the Sisters of Mercy since they arrived in 1857.In 1861 the sisters opened an orphanage in the city, which was transferredto Grass Valley in 1879.There, two facilities, St.Patrick s and St.Vincent s,were built and staffed by another branch of the Sisters of Mercy.Theseorphan asylums received per capita state aid for administrative operations.Progressive Era reforms revised child-care practices and insisted ontrained staff to manage public child-welfare services.Even private agen-cies especially those that received public funds were required to belicensed and periodically inspected.Accordingly, the Diocese of Sacra-mento opened the Catholic Social Welfare Bureau in 1930.It not onlybecame the clearinghouse for the five Catholic agencies participatingin the Community Chest the Grace Day Home, the Stanford LathropHome, the Grass Valley orphanages (which held children from Sacra-mento), the Catholic Ladies Relief Society, and the welfare bureau itself174 s a c r a m e n t o a n d t h e c a t h o l i c c h u r c hbut was also the main contact with the California Department of SocialWelfare.In 1930 Bishop Robert Armstrong hired Mary Frances Grogan, agraduate of the University of Southern California s School of Social Work,to head the new bureau.A five-year veteran of the Los Angeles Catho-lic Welfare Bureau, Grogan had been executive secretary of its VenturaCounty branch for three years.In early July Grogan set up shop in a spareroom at Holy Angels School.39 Sacramento s child-care situation, longoverdue for reform, took an important step forward.Grogan visited the decrepit Catholic orphanage buildings in GrassValley and was shocked by what she found.The nineteenth-century-erabuildings hosted about 150 waifs in separate institutions for boys and girls.In the fall of 1930 state authorities had condemned the buildings.Sacra-mento Bee reporter Bradley Riter graphically described all that was wrongwith St.Patrick s: jerry-rigged fire escapes, study halls converted into dor-mitories, and poor heating, ventilation, and plumbing.He echoed othersfears for the safety of the orphans at the dilapidated site.At Grogan s urg-ing and really having no other choice, Armstrong made plans to build anew orphanage in Sacramento on a fifty-acre parcel along Franklin Bou-levard, which had originally been a Catholic cemetery, about three-quar-ters of a mile outside the current city limits.40 The diocese then movedquickly to raise the needed funds.The citywide fund drive kicked off in February 1931, just as hard timeswere coming, but Sacramentans donated generously.Hilliard E
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