Wednesday, October 21, 2015

A Daily Annoyance


When only some hundreds of New Yorkers joined the armed forces in the first days of World War One, Mayor John Mitchel built the USS Recruit in the middle of Union Square. Inaugurated on Memorial Day, May 31, 1917, it eventually accounted for 25,000 recruits.

Dorothy Day would have walked past this symbol of militarism every day while working at The Masses from May through November, 1917. The offices of the journal are marked by the arrow in the rightmost photo.


Photos: Library of Congress, Prints & Photographs Division, LC-B2- 4211-14, LC-B2- 4212-17, and LC-B2- 4238-6.

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