©U.S. Catholic Historian, Vol. 22, No. 2 (Spring 2004), 99-120.

William Issel, San Francisco State University

In August 1968, San Francisco mayor Joseph L. Alioto gave the nominating speech for presidential candidate Hubert Humphrey at the Democratic Convention in Chicago. The pairing of Humphrey and Alioto made sense to Democratic Party leaders because the mayor had demonstrated an ability to appeal to conservative and moderate voters in the second largest city in California. In his successful 1967 campaign for mayor, the Italian American lawyer advertised himself as a moderate liberal who was independent of any party factions and capable of appealing to mainstream voters in both major parties. He insisted that the general good of the community as a whole should be taken into account when addressing the particular demands of specific city constituencies, whether business, labor, African Americans, Asian Americans, or Mexican Americans. He called for cooperative public – private partnerships for urban development, promised to expand social and economic opportunities for ethnic and racial minorities and the poor, endorsed environmentalist values, and insisted that the forthright defense of "law and order" was a necessary foundation for civic progress.¹ This essay argues that Joseph Alioto’s practice of urban liberalism grew out of his commitment to religious principles of moral economy and moral social order, principles central to San Francisco Catholicism from the 1930s through the 1960s.

Joseph Alioto was born in 1916 and grew up in the Italian-American North Beach district of San Francisco, where he attended Saints Peter and Paul Elementary School*. He graduated from Sacred Heart High School in 1933 and received his B.A. magna cum laude from Saint Mary’s College in Moraga, California, in 1937. A leader in school

affairs in high school and college and valedictorian of his class at Saint Mary’s, Alioto excelled in debate and public speaking. A scholarship to the Catholic University of America School of Law took him to Washington, D.C., where he received his LL.B. in 1940.²

A summary of the highlights of Alioto’s public service from the 1940s to the 1960s reads like a textbook sidebar illustrating the pursuit of postwar "Vital Center" Democratic Party urban liberalism.³ When he returned to San Francisco after wartime work in Washington, Alioto opened a law practice specializing in private antitrust suits. *From 1948 to 1954 he was a member and then president of the Board of Education, moving to the San Francisco Redevelopment Agency from 1955 to 1959.

A Democrat, Alioto served under Republican Party Mayor George Christopher, and the two native San Franciscans shared a belief that bringing municipal government into partnership with business and labor would insure economic growth and stimulate urban development. When Christopher ran for a second term in 1959, Alioto served as the mayor’s campaign co-chairman along with Republican stalwart Walter A. Haas, Sr., and when the mayor’s dairy business faced unfair practices complaints in 1961, Alioto successfully represented Christopher against the charges in court. Running on centrist platforms in 1967 and 1971, Alioto stressed his independence, his business successes, and his commitment to a program of economic revitalization, moral and cultural regeneration, and the preservation of the city’s natural environment.⁴ He described his goal as the assembling of "a grand urban coalition" and served two terms as San Francisco mayor (1968 – 1975). When asked to explain his philosophy of government fourteen years after he retired from public office, the former mayor replied, "I came out of the New Deal."⁵

When Alioto referred to the New Deal as the source of his urban liberalism in 1989, he also emphasized the Catholic character of his New Deal experience. Alioto explained that his public philosophy derived from his service as an administrative assistant to Monsignor Francis J. Haas when Haas served in the Department of Labor and then the Fair Employment Practices Commission.⁶ The influence of Catholic social justice theory is therefore evident in Alioto’s own testimony concerning the principles that guided his public career. His testimony takes on greater significance when considered in the context of San Francisco Catholicism. Even before Alioto left for law school, and after he returned to San Francisco, the future mayor associated himself with a network of Catholic activists in San Francisco, men and women who worked to infuse everyday life and public policy with Catholic Christian principles.⁷

Coadjutor Archbishop John J. Mitty initiated a San Francisco Catholic Action campaign on May 7, 1932 with a speech at a reception for the Archdiocesan Council of the National Council of Catholic Women (NCCW). Five weeks earlier, Mitty had arrived from Salt Lake City to take up his new responsibilities under Archbishop Edward J. Hanna (Mitty succeeded Hanna when he retired in March, 1935). During his first weeks in San Francisco, Mitty and John J. Burke, the General Secretary of the National Catholic Welfare Conference (NCWC) corresponded about the need to intensify the Church’s efforts to mobilize laymen and women in legislative lobbying. Burke shared with Mitty his pleasure at having the complete text of a papal encyclical published in The Congressional Record for the first time (Quadragesimo Anno). However, he urged Mitty to take pains to convince bay area men and women to write to their congressmen and senators opposing legislation such as the Sheppard-Towner Maternity Bill. That bill and others, according to Burke, "assumes for the Federal Government an authority and an administration which our Federal Constitution never contemplated, and its gross paternalism [is] particularly injurious in that it moves farther away from the individual citizen that civic responsibility which rests upon him and of which he should be actively conscious." Burke also urged Mitty to encourage opposition to a Senate Bill, still in subcommittee, that given its origins in the lobbying of "Mrs. Sanger" would "promote the propaganda of birth control."⁸

In the May 7 speech that initiated his Catholic Action campaign, Mitty told the NCCW women in his audience that he wanted "greater effort and activity on your part" to monitor and shape the work of "our State Legislature and our National Congress." "You have to take an active part" and "prevent over centralization and too much bureaucracy" and "bills [that] totally ignore fundamental Christian and American principles." Then Mitty moved beyond political action and called for a broad campaign on several fronts. "Catholic Action" the Archbishop reminded his audience, "has been preached to us in season and out of season" and it was time to move beyond rhetoric to practice. "Our aim [in this campaign] is to bring the ideals and principles of Christ into every phase of human life, into our own individual life, into family, social economic, professional, political and national life. We are striving to advance the interests of Christ, to bring the spirit of Christ into our homes, our reception halls, our workshops, our offices, our legislative assemblies. We have a duty to make a contribution of Christian ideals and principles to the nation." The "purpose and object" of lay organizations, Mitty stressed, "is not political. Neither as a Church nor an organization are we interested in any political aim or any political party." However, "We cannot live as if we were not part of the country" and we must "work unceasingly for both Church and country, for both Cross and Flag."⁹

In his position as Coadjutor Archbishop, Mitty continued to boost the expansion and activism of the NCCW. By the end of 1934, with the support of Archbishop Hanna, who served as Chairman of the Administrative Committee of the NCWC, all thirteen counties of the Archdiocese had established chapters. The work proved slow and difficult, as suggested by a Mrs. W. H. Culigan in a letter to the Archbishop in March 1933. We have "a hopeless case here in Santa Clara" because of "too much foreign element and too few women of the stamp needed to get together a suitable quorum for organization." In San Francisco, where the campaign proved most successful, the Archdiocese sponsored the first regional conference of the NCCW in February 1933, highlighted by a "mass meeting" at the War Memorial Opera House in the Civic Center. In May 1933, the Industrial Problems Committee of the Archdiocesan NCCW co-sponsored, with the Social Action Department of the NCWC, an Industrial Problems conference in the city. By February 1935 an estimated 4652 women belonged to the 21 of 45 parish women’s organizations affiliated with the NCCW. Another 6679 women held membership cards in the 33 non-parochial NCCW affiliates (the largest groups were the Loyola Guild, the alumnae of Sacred Heart Convents, and the Ladies Auxiliary of the Apostleship of the Sea). The numbers may strike contemporary readers as impressive, in these days of "bowling alone" and the alleged "death of the commons." However, the group’s secretary, Christine Regan O’Toole, urged the Archbishop to continue his boosterism during his annual address to the local NCCW "because so many are present, who are indifferent to the work of the Council."¹⁰

Catholic Action during the last three years of Archbishop Hanna’s service (1932 – 1934) and during Archbishop Mitty’s tenure from 1935 through the rest of the decade of the 1930s developed through the efforts of lay activists like Christine Regan O’Toole. They built the infrastructure of their organizations in a process that included cooperation with the Chancery office and deference to the hierarchy’s authority. However, the initiatives of the Archdiocese and the work of O’Toole and others did not take place in a vacuum, because like other residents of San Francisco and the bay area they found themselves forced to meet the challenges posed by the Pacific Coast maritime strike from May through July of 1934. Catholic activism in the labor field took shape as unionists sought to implement the policies of Pius XI in competition with Communist and other leftists involved in the dramatic struggle over power on the waterfront. On June 9, at the end of the first month of the strike by longshoremen and sailors, the official Archdiocesan newspaper presented the Church’s point of view in a front-page editorial on "The Maritime Strikes." "The rights of the ship-owners over their ships do not give them the right to impoverish the whole community; nor do the rights of the striking workers include the right to pursue their aims regardless of the consequences to the third party in the dispute, namely the people who are not directly involved, but whom depend upon cargoes for their livelihoods and sustenance." The Monitor urged, "all Catholics, who are employers, or who are in any way directly connected [with management] to read and know the contents of the encyclicals…that treat of the problems of capital and labor…and to acquaint their associates and acquaintances with the contents of these encyclicals and to give them copies of them." Should Catholic San Franciscans fail in this duty, according to the editorialist, "then those Catholics will be held to answer."¹¹

On July 13, with the city in the throes of a General Strike, the Archbishop addressed San Franciscans in a speech broadcast over radio stations KGO, KPO, and KFRC. Returning to the themes enunciated in his newspaper’s June 9 editorial, the Archbishop explicitly endorsed both labor unions and collective bargaining, and condemned employer exploitation that ignored "the human character of the worker." Then, in a blunt rejection of the Communist Party slogan "class against class," Hanna criticized unionists who premised their activities on the necessity of "conflict between class and class," and warned leftist unionists that "rights must be religiously respected wherever they are found." Both sides in the waterfront strike, Hanna insisted, should move quickly to accept the results of arbitration, keeping in mind the "underlying principles which have ever been the teaching of Christianity during 2000 years."¹²

Moderates from business and labor working closely with the Church and local government constructed a settlement and brought the strike to an end. These leaders, and the city press, particularly The Monitor, immediately set to work representing the outcome of the strike as a victory for business unionism, with its emphasis on putting pork chops on the table, and a defeat for radical unionism, with its call for proletarian revolution in the streets. The city’s voters expressed their moderate character in many ways, perhaps none more dramatically than by reestablishing the right to peaceful picketing by unions while at the same time consistently choosing moderate businessmen over leftist reformers for mayors and supervisors. Tension persisted in the city’s public life. Business leaders’ rhetorical affirmation of labor’s rights clashed with their practical desire to limit union power, but the Catholic principles that had shaped the outcome of the Great Strike became increasingly a part of San Francisco’s public culture in the decades to come.¹³

When Archbishop Mitty took office in March 1935, he followed up on the waterfront strike settlement by encouraging additional lay activism on the political and cultural fronts. Support for patriotism and opposition to communism constituted an important element of this effort. On March 22, the Archbishop encouraged local participation in the "proposed mobilization plan of the Knights of Columbus." The San Francisco efforts paralleled the national "Mobilization for Catholic Action" drafted by William P. Larkin and distributed by the K of C Supreme Council in New Haven, Connecticut. Demonstrating the executive abilities that would be a hallmark of his entire tenure, the new Archbishop, through Rt. Rev. Monsignor Richard Collins, State Chaplin, fostered "A Plan for the Knights of Columbus in California."¹⁴ Drafted by San Franciscan William T. Sweigert, State Deputy, the seven-page Plan outlined an ambitious program: "The present loose association of councils must be replaced by something more sensible and more conducive to progress and action." (bold face in original) San Francisco Knight Edward Molkenbuhr, Chairman of the Department of Parish Cooperation and Catholic Activities, explained that the purpose of "the mobilization of Catholic man-power" was "to effectually [sic] combat the destructive forces and the "isms" [sic] that are becoming so rampant, and which are undermining Christianity and the welfare of nations." Pleased that "the Knights of Columbus have had bestowed upon them the appellation, ‘Standard Bearers of Catholic Action’" Molkenbuhr urged "every member of our Order to enlist under this banner, and zealously work in its interest."¹⁵

Molkenbuhr and his colleagues, along with numerous lay volunteers worked closely with the Archbishop to limit the influence of the Communist Party during the next several years. Archbishop Mitty also made common cause with the American Legion (he served as director of the California department of the organization in 1935) and with several local business leaders affiliated with the Industrial Association of San Francisco. On January 5, the Archbishop spoke out against "a new philosophy abroad in the world today, the philosophy of the Totalitarian State" at the golden jubilee dinner of the St. Vincent De Paul Society. He published his speech alongside a reprinting of Pope Leo XIII’s encyclical Quod Apostolici Muneris in the official newspaper on Washington’s Birthday, under the bold headline "Communism, a Monstrous Evil." In June, in a speech that brought the Regional Catholic Conference on Industrial Problems to a close, the Archbishop argued that "we cannot put religion in one compartment and industry in another, and social amusements in another, and political and legislative in another. Religion is worthless unless it has its message for human beings in every phase of human life [and] before we can attempt a satisfactory solution of the problems of industry … we need a renewal of the Christian spirit in our own hearts and our own souls."¹⁶

To his credit, the Archbishop refused to encourage the personal vilification and character assassination of longshore union president Harry Bridges (who we now know to have been as secret member of the Communist Party and its Central Committee), in contrast with the most aggressive of the local super patriots. Mitty also decided, after an investigation that yielded ambiguous information about the personal history of the organizers, not to affiliate the Church with an American League against Communism that appeared in the city in 1936. However, he did assist in the organization of a "United Front" against "Radical and Communistic Activities" organized by the American Legion, the K of C, the Ancient Order of Hibernians, and the Young Men’s Institute. In addition, Mitty received detailed reports of the activities of several Communist Party activists in San Francisco from private investigators hired by Hugh Gallagher, Chairman of the Pacific American Shipowners Association. When Communist Party front organizations successfully attracted hundreds to public meetings in 1936 and 1937, the Archdiocese responded with programs that drew thousands to Kezar Stadium and the Civic Auditorium. At the Kezar Stadium event, Mitty forthrightly condemned "appeals to class warfare" and the "philosophy that at once blasphemes Christ and aims to destroy our Government."¹⁷

On May 12, 1935, Sylvester M. Andriano gave the commencement address at St. Mary’s College in Moraga. A 1911 graduate of St. Mary’s, Andriano spoke on "Catholic Education and the Lapse of Catholic Action." Six days later, Archbishop John J. Mitty thanked the San Francisco attorney and added that he was "delighted beyond measure" with the talk. A lay activist for years, Andriano founded and presided over the city’s Young Men’s Institute Forum and the Laymen’s Retreat Movement. In 1922, the Italian born attorney (he became a naturalized citizen in 1914) founded the Dante Council of the Knights of Columbus (K of C) affiliated with the Italian national parish operated by Salesian priests in the city’s North Beach neighborhood. In 1937, Mitty appointed Andriano director of the Holy Name Society, and in January 1938 the Archbishop asked Andriano to head a new Catholic Action men’s organization. James L. Hagerty, a philosophy professor at St. Mary’s College was named executive secretary of the new group.¹⁸

Hagerty edited The Moraga Quarterly, a journal of literary and social criticism that addressed Catholic readers throughout northern California. Eighteen months after Sylvester Andriano’s 1935 commencement address, Hagerty published a speech by another North Beach resident, his St. Mary’s philosophy student Joseph L. Alioto. Alioto’s title was "The Catholic Internationale." In his prize-winning speech at the St. Ignatius Council of the Young Men’s Institute, twenty-one year old Alioto warned that "Communism has attained the position of a universal power [and] stands today as a cancer in the world’s social organism." Given its international scope and its appeal as a "counterfeit religion," only a true religion "that is likewise international" would be able "to cut away this cancerous growth." "There is only one power in the world which answers that description: the Roman Catholic Church. The battle lines . . . are clearly marked: It is to be the Catholic Internationale arrayed against the Communist Internationale; Rome against Moscow; Christ against Anti-Christ."¹⁹

In 1939, the Quarterly published another recent speech by young San Franciscan, this one devoted to "the preparation for entrance into the field of labor relations" and titled "The Catholic College Graduate and Labor." The author was John F. (Jack) Henning, a recent St. Mary’s College graduate who later became the head of the California State Federation of Labor as well as Undersecretary of Labor in the Kennedy and Johnson administrations. Henning argued that "The army of the Church is today engaged in a stern struggle" and "the need of the Catholic Church for an articulate laity in Labor is too gigantic to question." He stressed that Catholics in labor relations needed to fight both "American Way" individualism and the "painted panaceas" of "the land of Communism or the land of Fascism." Henning praised "those who act only as the voice of the membership, the voice of the rank and file, who administer their offices upon the direct rule of the majority of the membership." He also urged Catholics in the labor movement to avoid red baiting: "question the motives of those leaders who brand every militant surge of rank and file activity the result of ‘red agitation.’ " Catholic workers should endorse genuinely democratic unionism and get involved with the "Association of Catholic Trade Unionists, the Catholic Worker movement, and other similar enterprises which sponsor Catholic labor schools."²⁰

In the autumn of 1938, Jack Henning, John F. Maguire, and Laura Smith had organized a San Francisco chapter of the Association of Catholic Trade Unionists (ACTU). ²¹ The new organization, its membership restricted to Catholics, ratified a constitution that declared its purpose in language that Henning used in his St. Mary’s College speech: "To foster and spread . . . sound trade unionism built on Christian principles." The ACTU program drew upon Catholic labor teachings and stressed both the rights and the duties of workers. The rights included job security, an income high enough to allow a family to live a decent life, collective bargaining through independent, democratic unions, a decent share in employer profits, the right to strike and picket for a just cause, a just price, and decent hours and working conditions. Duties including performing an honest day’s work, joining a union, striking only for a just cause, refraining from violence, respecting property rights, living up to agreements freely made, enforcing honesty and democracy in the union, and cooperating with employers in establishing industry councils and producer cooperatives. In San Francisco and elsewhere, the ACTU sponsored educational programs designed to increase the number and influence of Catholic unionists as organizers, officers, and negotiators. Later (in 1948), the local chapter amended the constitution to add clauses requiring "strict honesty within the union and a square deal for everybody regardless of race, color, or creed" and prohibiting membership to anyone "who is a member of any subversive organization.²²

Archbishop Mitty gave the ACTU his "wholehearted approval," and he gave his blessing to Rev. Hugh A. Donohoe’s request to serve as its chaplain, the only ACTU office that was not an elective position. Initially, the Archbishop instructed Donohoe to steer the ACTU away from "political activities and from possible difficulties between various labor organizations." However, as Mitty became convinced of the ACTU’s commitment to the spread of unionism based on Christian principles, he quickly recognized the organization’s potential to counter the influence of communism within the local labor movement. The archbishop praised the organization as an excellent example of the type of Catholic worker societies called for in Quadragesimo Anno. He assured business leaders that the new organization had the endorsement of the Archdiocese and encouraged Catholic workers to join the group.²³

Jack Henning and his colleagues brought Catholicism into the labor movement by means of the ACTU. Sylvester Andriano and James L. Hagerty pursued a Catholic Action agenda through the medium of a new organization called The Catholic Men of San Francisco. Andriano graduated from St. Mary’s College in 19ll, Hagerty in 1919. Andriano immersed himself in his San Francisco law practice and public affairs in city government and in the North Beach Italian American community. Mayor James Rolph appointed Andriano to the Board of Supervisors, and Rolph’s successor Angelo Rossi, mayor from 1931 to 1943, appointed his friend and personal attorney Andriano to the Police Commission. When Mayor Rossi assembled a Citizen’s Committee of 25 during the "July Days" of the 1934 strike, he appointed Andriano one of the members. Andriano later recalled being the sole pro-union voice in an otherwise hostile business and professional group; he vigorously and successfully argued that the mayor should not request a martial law proclamation from Governor Merriam. In contrast to Andriano’s active public life, Hagerty, a bachelor, pursued a more contemplative career devoted to his students and to the cause of Catholic Action. He began teaching at his alma mater immediately after receiving his baccalaureate degree, earned an M.A. in 1921, and commenced a career as a philosophy professor at St. Mary’s that continued until his death in 1957. Hagerty edited The Moraga Quarterly from its first issue in 1930 through the years of World War II.²⁴

Two years before Hagerty received his bachelor’s degree, Andriano and a partner established an Italian Catholic Union in North Beach and the group began publication of a weekly newspaper, L’Unione; the Archdiocese assumed responsibility for the weekly in 1927. Andriano maintained a residence in the town where he was born, Castelnuovo Don Bosco, and in 1931 during a summer trip to Italy he "became really interested in Catholic Action and upon my return to San Francisco undertook the study of it in earnest." In 1935 Andriano spoke at the Archbishop’s request on Catholic Action to the graduating class at St. Mary’s, and in the following year the Archbishop asked him to address the combined Catholic high school graduation ceremony at the city’s Dreamland Auditorium.²⁵

Andriano’s high school commencement address came four weeks after the nationwide radio broadcast of Baltimore’s Auxiliary Bishop John M. McNamara’s speech at the annual Notre Dame University reunion in Washington, D.C.. McNamara renewed the call for lay men and women to "share in [the mission of the hierarchy]… to promote the good of human society throughout the world and to combat the evils which make for its destruction." By this time, Hagerty and Andriano had formed a Catholic Action prayer and study group and they asked Archbishop Mitty to approve and endorse plans for a more extensive program of study and action. While impressed with their zeal ("Mr. Andriano has probably read everything that has been published on the subject and has the Catholic ideal of it"), Mitty proceeded cautiously. He dispatched Rev. Thomas N. O’Kane of St. Joseph’s College to meet with Andriano and Hagerty and their colleagues "so that the group would keep within the reservation."²⁶

By the autumn of 1937, Andriano and Hagerty had met with the pastors of each of the sixty parishes in San Francisco to solicit support for a citywide Catholic Action lay organization, and they presented the Archbishop with a draft "Plan for Catholic Action."

In the introduction to the "Plan," the authors defined the problem and outlined a solution: "Despite flowery statements perhaps Catholicity is not making much progress. Perhaps barely holding its own. Perhaps really losing. Not only in numbers but also in fervor and fidelity. Birth Control, Practical cessation of immigration, the American materialistic environment, atheistic anti-clericalism. The old self-sacrificing, self-denying Catholicity would seem to be rapidly dying out. A fervent few . . . an overwhelming majority of normal Catholics. Communistic propaganda may have made far more inroads than it appears. AND NOW THE SUGGESTED REMEDY. The best defense is an attack. Systematic, co-ordinated, directed, expository, Nationwide evangelization (italics and upper case in original) Under direction and control of the Apostolic Delegate and Bishops." The plan of action called for a "constant, patient, consistent Crusade," including a diocesan "truth crusade," diocesan mission bands of priests who are "young, zealous, enthusiastic Americans," adaptation of Mormon, and various other missionary methods for laymen and laywomen, pamphlets and lectures, Catholic shelves in public libraries. The goal: "Arousing the zeal of pastors for this work by propaganda, assistance, suggestions, and contact."²⁷

On December 22, 1936, the Archbishop invited several dozen men from throughout the city for a meeting in the basement of St. Mary’s Cathedral to discuss "uniting the parishes of San Francisco in a definite program of Catholic Action." In addition to representatives from the largest parishes, the invitation list included high-ranking officers from the more important municipal government departments and executives from the city’s largest and most prestigious business firms. Most of the men who attended this first meeting on February 12, 1937 continued to gather every other week during that year for focused discussions on how to move from the theory of Catholic Action to the practice. Then, on the Feast of the Epiphany, January 6, 1938, between 200 and 250 men gathered in the Cathedral basement and formally inaugurated The Catholic Men of San Francisco. James L. Hagerty announced that "Confirmation is the Sacrament of Catholic Action, making men soldiers" and suggested that the assembled volunteers should regard themselves as part of the "priesthood of the layman." The Rt. Rev. Monsignor Charles A. Ramm stressed that "personal sanctification [is] necessary in order that the Holy Ghost might find them fit to be the instruments of the work; second, the necessity of remembering that this ‘participation in the apostolate’ meant the saving of souls to compose the Mystical Body of Christ."²⁸

Mitty appointed Sylvester Andriano and James Hagerty to the positions of president and executive secretary of the new organization, and in March, Andriano traveled to Rome to secure official Vatican approval of the Catholic Action initiative in San Francisco. Pope Pius XI gave the group his blessing, and Giuseppe Cardinal Pizzardo, the Chief Assistant for Catholic Action in Italy, and Monsignor Luigi Civardi, author of the official Manual of Catholic Action (1935), assured the San Franciscan that his plan was a sound one. On October 29, 1938, the eve of the Feast of Christ the King, Archbishop Mitty announced that "I like to sum [Catholic Action] up in one phrase: That what the Holy Father wants you to do is to vitalize your religion, make it something really vital in your lives." The Archbishop criticized the notion that "Religion is not supposed to come out of that ["certain limited"] compartment and overflow into our being. We have a feeling of inferiority about religion, due to an historic situation where we were out-numbered. But there is no necessity for it today. Human life has been practically denuded of Christian principles. What the pope wants is to vitalize them. That is the meaning of Catholic Action – no more, no less . . . in doing that we not only make a contribution to the progress of the Church, but we are making a substantial contribution to the welfare of our own land, a contribution to America which it badly needs; we are making a contribution to human civilization, until we bring about a right balance between material and spiritual things, which are going topsy-turvy."²⁹

From 1938 until the beginning of 1942, when World War II sidetracked their work, Andriano and Hagerty gradually built up the numbers and expanded the activities of the organization at the citywide and parish level. The Archdiocesan Council operated as a bay area lay interest group, working with the K of C and AOH. They successfully lobbied for local ordinances prohibiting sexually explicit magazines from sidewalk news kiosks and magazine racks, and they boycotted movies that sympathized with the Spanish Republic or included licentious behavior on the screen. Parish Councils, charged with organizing Catholic Action Circles in each of the city’s 60 parishes, pursued a three part agenda of devotional revitalization involving individual sanctification; sanctification of the home; sanctification of society. The program included participation in parish holy hour devotions; regular celebration of annual feast days; blessing of homes, grace before meals, family communion and renewal of marriage vows daily; parish Sunday mass crusades aimed at increasing regular attendance and limiting latecomers and those leaving early; use of the missal and active participation in rosaries, benedictions, and stations of the cross. By mid-1941, according to an official report, 90% of the parishes in the Archdiocese, 160 parishes, had established Catholic Action Circles involving 1500 men and 300 women. Catholic Action schools for parish priests and parochial school teachers operated in San Francisco, Alameda, San Mateo, and Santa Clara counties. The Archbishop published a layperson’s guide to Catholic Action work and dispatched the group’s chaplain, Rev. John J. Hunt to instruct the priests of archdiocese in the work. The Archdiocesan Council published a monthly newsletter and operated a Speakers Bureau that dispatched lecturers to meetings and radio programs in all the bay area counties. St. Patrick’s Seminary in Menlo Park added a required Catholic Action course to its curriculum. Bay area Catholic high schools established student Catholic Action Circles.³⁰

Attorneys in the organization established a separate Catholic lawyer’s guild called the St. Thomas More Society. The lawyers organized a Spanish Relief Committee and raised funds for reconstruction of battle – scarred communities. In 1937, the Committee published Democracy! Which Brand, Stalin’s or Jefferson’s by Umberto Olivieri, a professor at the Jesuit-run Santa Clara University. Sylvester Andriano wrote the preface, arguing that "the Red Government of Spain, far from being the champion of democracy, is a regime of tyranny, persecution and barbarism and the only hope for the triumph of order and justice and of true democracy lies with the Nationalists." ³¹

Archbishop Mitty’s Catholic Action campaign included legislative activism as well as building a Catholic labor movement and encouraging laymen and women to revitalize their personal faith and become political activists dedicated to infusing public life with Catholic principles. During his first year in office, the Archbishop delegated legislative work to Msgr. James Cantwell, a member of the Archdiocesan staff. Cantwell worked with pastors of northern California parishes to develop a database that could be used during political campaigns. The priests responded with information on the socio-economic background, religious affiliation (and sometimes local gossip) and voting records of members of the California State Assembly and Senate in counties within and beyond the Archdiocesan boundaries. From 1935 to 1939, Andrew R. Johnson, a San Francisco Realtor and insurance broker, monitored the legislature’s activities and lobbied Sacramento legislators on behalf of the interests of the Archdiocese. Attorney Andrew Burke, a member of the law office of Garret W. McEnerney, the counsel for the Archdiocese, worked with Johnson in Sacramento. (In the late 1930s, Burke and McEnerney played key roles in the national campaign to deny Franklin D. Roosevelt a third term because, like numerous Catholic critics across the country, they regarded FDR's attempts to "pack" the Supreme Court a sure sign of his dictatorial propensities.) During the first four years of Mitty’s tenure, Burke and Johnson kept Mitty apprised of the introduction of numerous bills and solicited his advice on how to proceed during the legislative process. In 1935, for instance, Mitty opposed a bill (it never passed) that would have created a State Department of Eugenics with responsibility for forced sterilization of prison and mental hospital inmates. During the second half of the decade, the Archbishop attempted unsuccessfully to convince bishops in the other dioceses to cooperate with him in coordinating legislative work on behalf of the Church in California. Mitty aimed to improve the efficiency of the Church’s organized lobbying activities, and he tried to eliminate duplication of effort between diocesan legislative representatives and lobbyists from the K of C. Although a variety of measures met defeat due to lobbying directed by the Archbishop, notably a law to empower the State Board of Education and State Superintendent of Schools to approve private school curriculum, Mitty’s attempts to improve organized Catholic legislative work seem to have had only limited success.³²

Archbishop Mitty’s efforts to improve the effectiveness of legislative lobbying at the statewide level proved disappointing, but the outcome of political lobbying in San Francisco was more positive. In 1937 and 1938, Mayor Rossi signed into law a spate of anti-smut and anti-prostitution ordinances passed by the city Board of Supervisors after being introduced by board members close to Sylvester Andriano. Though primarily symbolic (and often not enforced in years to come), they did signify that the city respected Catholic principles. In 1939, Catholic Action won another victory. The Catholic Men of San Francisco convinced the administration of the upcoming Golden Gate International Exposition to cancel an exhibit in the Hall of Science sponsored by the Birth Control Federation of America. Margaret Sanger happened to be speaking to the League of Women Voters of San Francisco the same week that the Exposition announced the cancellation of the birth control exhibit. Sanger expressed her disappointment to a reporter for The People’s World, the local Communist Party newspaper: "Wherever I go I meet the same opposition – and I must say that it is most insidious and effective."³³

The work of the Catholic Men of San Francisco, like that of the Archbishop and the other lay men and women described above, provides direct evidence of the causal importance of religious faith in the public policy process in San Francisco. It was in the context of the San Francisco Catholic Action campaign that Joseph L. Alioto developed the moral agenda that energized his political career in San Francisco. Alioto’s own testimony attests to the importance of Catholic religious beliefs in his public career, and his testimony takes on added significance when considered in the context of his commitment to the principles of San Francisco Catholicism. Joseph Alioto’s association with Catholic Action began with his 1936 "Catholic Internationale" speech to the Young Men’s Institute. Four years later Alioto wrote to his former philosophy professor James Hagerty about a Moraga Quarterly article on "Catholic Action and the Lawyer," pointing out that although he was living in Washington, D.C. he kept informed about San Francisco Catholic Action by reading The Monitor.³⁴ Later that year, Alioto became an associate in the San Francisco law offices of Brobeck, Phleger and Harrison. Partner Maurice Harrison, an activist in the California Democratic Party, helped organize the St. Thomas Moore Society. Harrison believed that the exemplary public stand of the recently canonized St. Thomas More provided "to Catholics in general, and to Catholic laymen particularly, the true answer to the problems which confront the world today." After a brief association, Alioto left Brobeck, Phleger and Harrison for a position with the federal government’s Board of Economic Warfare. In 1942, Archbishop Mitty invited the lawyer to address the First Regional Catholic Congress on the topic of "The American Catholic Tradition." The event was organized by the Archbishop in connection with the wartime Bishop’s Committee to Unite the Catholic Youth of America.³⁵

By the late forties, Alioto backed causes similar to those supported by centrist liberals elsewhere, such as promoting school bonds and higher salaries for teachers and removing a Board of Education ban against teachers participating in political campaigns after school. Like other Catholic anticommunists, Alioto critiqued the textbook selection process, arguing that too much material sympathetic to communism was allowed to find its way to students in the city’s public schools. Alioto’s concerns about left-wing influence in San Francisco were realistic given the size and political activism of the city’s Communist Party. Beginning in 1948 the local Party launched an offensive to stem the tide of Catholic activism. At the Party’s county convention in 1948, CP delegates discussed strategies to combat Catholic power in local government, the press, and the labor movement and issued a single-spaced eight-page report on the subject. By the early 1950s, however, the city’s CP was in decline, and nothing more than newspaper articles came of Joseph Alioto’s charges made at a Board of Education meeting that several members of the faculty at San Francisco State College were sympathetic to Communism.³⁶

During his tenure on the city’s redevelopment agency, Alioto drew upon Catholic moral philosophy principles regarding organic communal solidarity when he argued that land use policy necessitated careful balancing of the interests and needs of all residents.³⁷ In his first inaugural address as mayor, Alioto urged San Franciscans to construct a just society and a moral economy, rejecting a standard derived from "the standard of Jeremy Bentham" which was "no longer acceptable as a criterion of government. Closer to the mark is the more ancient philosophy which views government as an ordinance of reason for the ‘common good’."³⁸

During his two terms of office, serving from January 1968 through December 1975, Alioto continued to stress the common good and governed as a centrist, supporting both downtown commercial redevelopment and residential construction for moderate and low-income residents. He drew explicitly on the concept of subsidiarity when he argued – as he did in his second inaugural address – that "what our City needs, what every big city needs, is a ‘Declaration of Independence’ from unwieldy state control. What we need is more local autonomy, more local sovereignty, if you will, to meet our problems head on and seek our own unique answers to them." His call for charter reform, "expanding the City’s grant of power" to insure that "the State Legislature be forbidden to mandate programs of any kind unless it provides the money to cover the cost of those programs", proved unsuccessful. However, he did manage, with support from the Chamber of Commerce and organized labor, to convince the state of California to transfer ownership of the port from the state of California to the city.³⁹

The mayor also initiated more comprehensive urban planning guidelines and endorsed strong measures to preserve the city's aesthetic beauty and environmental quality. He failed in his efforts to demolish the Embarcadero Freeway, but he convinced the federal and state governments to move a section of Interstate Highway 280 away from a proposed lakefront site along city-owned property in San Mateo County.⁴⁰

Alioto supported the Catholic campaigns for racial equality in employment, campaigns endorsed by Rev. Hugh A. Donohoe as Auxiliary Bishop in the late 1940s and expanded in the 1950s by Jack Henning of the California State Labor Federation and Jesuit priest Andrew C. Boss of the Labor Management Program of the University of San Francisco. Prior to his election Alioto supported the call for racial justice by the Catholic Interracial Council, established in1960, as well as Archbishop Joseph McGucken’s 1964 Social Justice Commission.⁴¹ He appointed numerous African American, Mexican American, and Asian American officials to city government posts, and his administration worked with both city agencies and private employers to begin recruitment programs for minority workers.

During the student and faculty strike at San Francisco State College from November 1968 to March 1969, Alioto affirmed the right of dissenting students to express their grievances, but he also refused to allow violence on the campus. He insisted that violence against persons and property damaged the social contract and would not be tolerated, authorized mass arrests by police tactical squad members, and personally facilitated settlement of the strike and the restoration of campus operations.⁴² A long-time supporter of organized labor since his days as Monsignor Haas’s administrative assistant, Alioto defended the right of public employees to unionize and to strike, and he aggressively used his powers of persuasion to bring about several timely settlements between labor and management. His long-standing commitment to Catholic labor relations doctrines and his decades long personal relationships with San Francisco’s labor priests brought him the robust support of numerous AFL-CIO union leaders, many of whom had been active ACTU members. The mayor reached out to members of the independent, left wing dockworkers and warehouse workers union in his appointments to city commissions, a strategy that included the tactic of naming Harry Bridges to a seat on the Charter Revision Committee and to the position of Port Commissioner of the City of San Francisco. David Jenkins, a longshoremen’s union leader and former Communist Party activist recalled in 1989 how die-hard comrades shunned him when he compounded the disgrace based on having left the Party by becoming a collaborationist in Catholic liberal Joseph Alioto’s "grand urban coalition." Other veterans of the battles between Catholic Action labor activists and Communist Party unionists during the 1930s and 1940s appreciated the combination of magnanimity and Machiavelli demonstrated in this aspect of Joseph Alioto’s practice of urban liberalism. ⁴³

1. For a detailed analysis of the 1967 mayoral campaign, see William Issel and John J. Rosen, "Democratic Party Urban Liberalism in Transition: Joseph L. Alioto’s 1967 Mayoral Campaign," unpublished paper in author’s possession.

2. See William Issel, "Joseph L. Alioto," in The Scribner Encyclopedia of American Lives, Volume 5 (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 2002), 10-11.

3. The phrase originated famously with Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr., The Vital Center: The Politics of Freedom (Boston: Houghton, Mifflin Co., 1949). For urban "growth" liberalism, see Alan Wolfe, America’s Impasse: The Rise and Fall of the Politics of Growth (New York: Pantheon Books, 1981) and Kenneth Fox, Metropolitan America: Urban Life and Urban Policy in the United States, 1940-1980 (New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 1985). The San Francisco case is detailed in William Issel, "Liberalism and Urban Policy in San Francisco from the 1930s to the 1960s," in The Western Historical Quarterly XXII (November 1991): 431-450, and "New Deal and World War II Origins of San Francisco’s Postwar Political Culture," in Roger W. Lotchin, ed., The Way We Really Were: The Golden State in the Second Great War (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2000), 68-92.

4. John J. Rosen provides a detailed analysis of the 1971 San Francisco mayoral campaign in " ‘It’s a Tough Job and Alioto’s Doing It!’: The 1971 Campaign," unpublished paper in author’s possession.

5. Joseph L. Alioto at the conference "Labor and Politics: Who Pressures Whom?" San Francisco, 7 February 1989. Audio TS, side one, in Northern California Labor Archives and Research Center Collection, San Francisco State University.

6. Ibid. Monsignor Haas’s work in the Department of Labor and as Chairman of the FEPC is detailed in Thomas E. Blantz, C.S.C., A Priest in Public Service: Francis J. Haas and the New Deal (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 1982), 180-227.

7. On Catholic Action, see Prayer and Practice in the American Catholic Community, edited by Joseph P. Chinnici and Angelyn Dries (Maryknoll, N. Y.: Orbis Books, 2000), Part 3, The Era of Catholic Action, 115-179; Joseph P. Chinnici, O.F.M., Living Stones: The History and Structure of Catholic Spiritual Life in the United States, second edition (Maryknoll, N. Y.: Orbis Books, 1996), 166-213; Jeffrey M. Burns, Disturbing the Peace: A History of the Christian Family Movement, 1949-1974 (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 1999), 13-18. See also Dennis Michael Robb, "Specialized Catholic Action in the United States, 1936-1949: Ideology, Leadership, and Organization," Unpublished Ph.D. dissertation, University of Minnesota, 1972, Jay P. Dolan, In Search of An American Catholicism: A History of Religion and Culture in Tension (New York: Oxford University Press, 2002), 154-55, 157, 177-78, 160, 186-87, and John T. McGreevy, Catholicism and American Freedom: A History (New York: W.W. Norton & Co., 2003), chapter five "The Social Question," and chapter six "American Freedom and Catholic Power." Monsignor Francis J. Weber, Archivist of the Archdiocese of Los Angeles has recently described forty Examples of Catholic Action in the Archdiocese of Los Angeles (Missions Hills, California: Saint Francis Historical Society, 2003).

8. John J. Burke to John J. Mitty, Feb. 5, 1932, May 6, 1932, May 23, 1932, Correspondence files, 1932, NCWC 1 of 2 folder, Chancery Archives of the Archdiocese of San Francisco (CAASF).

9. Sermon by Coadjutor Archbishop John J. Mitty to the Council of Catholic Women, May 7, 1932, Mitty Sermon Collection, CAASF.

10. [Mrs.] W. H. Culigan to Dear Archbishop, March 29, 1933; Announcement of the First Regional Conference of the NCCW, both in Correspondence files, 1933, NCWC folder 2 of 2; Christine Regan O’Toole to Most Reverend John J. Mitty, Feb. 15, 1935; "Catholic Action" nd, four page report by the Archdiocesan Council, both in Correspondence files, 1938-39, NCCW/NCCM folder 2 of 2.

11. The Monitor, June 9, 1934.

12. San Francisco News, July 14, 1934. Archbishop Hanna, having been involved in a variety of labor arbitration roles during the 1920s was then serving on President Franklin Roosevelt’s National Longshoremen’s Board. Sam Kagel, interview by author, June 15, 1998. See also David F. Selvin, A Terrible Anger: The 1934 Waterfront and General Strikes in San Francisco (Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 1996), 100,159.

13. For a detailed analysis of these developments see Issel, "New Deal and World War II Origins."

14. Jeffrey M. Burns, "Mitty, John Joseph," in The Encyclopedia of American Catholic History, edited by Michael Glazier and Thomas J. Shelley (Collegeville, MN: The Liturgical Press, 1997), 967-68; "Life Summary of Archbishop Mitty," The Monitor, Aug. 31, 1935, 2; William T. Doyle to John J. Mitty, March 22, 1935, Correspondence files, Knights of Columbus folder, 1933-36. "A Plan for the Knights of Columbus of California," Ibid.; "Plan for Council Participation, Knights of Columbus, Mobilization for Catholic Action," Ibid.

15. Edward Molkenbuhr, "Catholic Action in Our Order," in Knights of Columbus Historical Review (1936): 35.

16."Address at St. Vincent De Paul Golden Jubilee Dinner," Jan. 5, 1936, Mitty Sermons. The Monitor, Feb. 22, 1936. "Closing Address, Regional Catholic Conference on Industrial Problems," June 9, 1936.

17. Author’s interview with Jack Henning, October 7, 1998, San Francisco. Joseph S. Connelly to Rev. Dr. Thomas A. Connolly, Aug. 31, 1936; Ret. Rev. Thomas A. Connolly to Joseph S. Connelly, Sept. 2, 1936, Correspondence files, 1936, Communism 1936-37 folder. Hugh Gallagher to Most Reverend John J. Mitty, June 5, 1936, Aug. 3, 1936, Nov. 2, 1936; "9^th Convention of Communist Party in America" handwritten notes, Sept. 1936; "Special Memorandum in re: Harry Bridges, Oct. 25, 1936; "San Francisco Mailing List of the American Friends of the Soviet Union" nd; John J. Mitty to My dear Jim, Nov. 13, 1936, marked "confidential"; John J. Mitty to Rev. Bryan J. McEntegart, April 14, 1937, all in Correspondence files, 1936, Communism 1936-37 folder, CAASF. San Francisco Chronicle, Oct. 25, 1936; San Francisco News, April 29, 1937. The Communist Party membership of Harry Bridges is addressed by Robert W. Cherny, "Harry Bridges and the Communist party: New Evidence, Old Questions; Old Evidence, New Questions," a paper delivered at the annual meeting of the Organization of American Historians, April 4, 1998, copy in author’s possession. See also Harvey Klehr, John Earl Haynes, & Fridrikh Igorevich Firsov, The Secret World of American Communism (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1995), 127.

18. John J. Mitty to Sylvester Andriano, May 18, 1935, Correspondence files, 1935, A folder, Chancery Archives of the Archdiocese of San Francisco (CAASF). The Monitor, May 11, 1935. Sylvester Andriano to James L. Hagerty, March 10, 1935, Box 237, James L. Hagerty Collection, St. Mary’s College Archives.

19. Joseph L. Alioto, "The Catholic Internationale," The Moraga Quarterly, VII, 2 (Winter 1936): 68-72; The Monitor, March 21, 1942.

20. Jack Henning, "The Catholic College Graduate and Labor," The Moraga Quarterly, IX, 3 (Spring 1939): 165-70.

21. Henning interview. Laura Smith to Msgr. Connolly, enclosing a copy of a mimeographed pamphlet, "It’s Our City Too," Sept. 26, 1938, Labor file, 1934-1939. Gus Gaynor, Brotherhood of Railway Clerks, press release dated Oct. 18, 1938 in Labor file, 1934-1939, CAASF.

22. "ACTU Preamble, Constitution, Pledge" and "Proposed Changes…San Francisco Chapter 6" (mimeo, July 8, 1948), in the Labor Management School Records/ACTU Records) Archives of the University of San Francisco.

23. The Monitor, Sept. 9, 1939; May 10, 1941; August 28, 1943; Nov. 18, 1944; April 26, 1947; March 5, 1948. Mitty to Hugh Gallagher of Matson Navigation Co., March 20, 1941, Labor file, 1939-1943, CAASF. The role of Catholic Action in the San Francisco labor movement is analyzed in William Issel and James Collins, "The Catholic Church and Organized Labor in San Francisco, 1932-1958," in Records of the American Catholic Historical Society of Philadelphia, Vol. 109 1 & 2 (Spring and Summer 1999): 81-112. A revised and expanded version of that article is  William Issel, " ‘A Stern Struggle’: Catholic Activism and San Francisco Labor," in American Labor and the Cold War: Grassroots Politics and American Political Culture, edited by Robert Cherny, William Issel, and Kieran Taylor (Piscataway, NJ: Rutgers University Press,  2004).

24. St. Mary’s Collegian, Sept. 13, 1957.

25. Sylvester Andriano to James L. Hagerty, March 10, 1943, Hagerty Collection, St. Mary’s Archives; email letter from Rose Marie Cleese (Angelo Rossi’s granddaughter) to Bill Issel, Jan. 24, 2002.

26. Ibid.; "Bishop McNamara Defines Catholic Action in Address at Notre Dame U. Reunion," The Monitor, May 2, 1936; John J. Mitty to Sylvester Andriano, March 4, 1936; Correspondence files, 1936-37, A folder; John J. Mitty to Rev. Thomas N. O’Kane, October 7, 1936, letter marked Confidential, Correspondence files, Catholic Action 1936-1940 folder, CAASF.

27. "Plan for Catholic Action" in Correspondence Files, Catholic Action 1936-1940 folder; Andriano to Hagerty, March 10, 1943, Hagerty Collection, St. Marys Archives.

28. John J. Mitty to various addressees, Dec. 22, 1936, Correspondence files, Catholic Action folder, 1936-1940, CAASF; uncorrected draft "Catholic Action Group" marked "News item: The Monitor, and attached typewritten notes of January 6, 1938 meeting in Catholic Action folder 1936-1940, CAASF.

29. John J. Mitty, "Address on Catholic Action," Oct. 29, 1938, Mitty Sermons and Addresses, CAASF. Sylvester Andriano to Most Reverend and dear Archbishop, May 19, 1938, Correspondence files, Catholic Action 1936-1940 folder, CAASF. Mgr. Luigi Civardi, A Manual of Catholic Action (New York: Sheed and Ward, 1943 [1935]).

30. James L. Hagerty to Most Reverend John J. Mitty, March 28, 1938; Catholic Men of the Archdiocese of San Francisco, "Summary of State of Organization Following Spring Series of District Meetings, 1941," both in Correspondence files, Catholic Men folder 1 of 2, 1938-1941, CAASF. Sylvester Andriano et al, Catholic Action – The Church in Action (San Francisco: The Catholic Men of San Francisco, 1939); James L. Hagerty also published an article "Catholic Action – What’s the Idea?" in The Moraga Quarterly, Vol. XI (Winter, 1940): 67-78; Rev. John J. Hunt, the spiritual director of the Catholic Men of San Francisco, authored Catholic Action and the Priest, (San Francisco: The Catholic Men of San Francisco, nd) and presented an address to the priests of the Archdiocese of at a conference on March 12 - 14, 1940; see also John J. O’Connor, "Emphasis on Action," St. Anthony Messenger (February, 1942); Sylvester Andriano to James L. Hagerty, March 10, 1943, Hagerty Collection, St. Mary’s Archives. 

31. Umberto Olivieri, Democracy! Which Brand, Stalin’s or Jefferson’s? (San Francisco: Spanish Relief Committee, 1937). One leading attorney in San Francisco, John Francis Neylan, who like Andriano had close personal ties with Archbishop Mitty, lashed out at the New Deal with particular fury on the grounds that it violated morally acceptable relations between the central government and American citizens. Neylan served as general counsel to William Randolph Hearst’s business empire from 1925 to 1935, and in a lengthy address to the San Francisco Bond Club on April 28, 1938 entitled "The Politician – the Enemy of Mankind" he excoriated "mad schemes and ambitions which are fundamentally responsible for the amazing conditions existing in this country today." Neylan especially castigated "the multitudinous schemes of spending public money" by "the coterie that has controlled patronage, appropriations and relief expenditures." See John Francis Neylan, The Politician – The Enemy of Mankind (San Francisco: The Bond Club of San Francisco, 1938).

32. John J. Mitty to Most Reverend Robert Armstrong, D.D., 18 March 1939; John J. Mitty to Most Reverend John J. Cantwell, D.D., January 6, 1937; John J. Mitty to Hon. Culbert L. Olson (Governor of California), 27 November 1939, all in Correspondence Files, Legislature 1935-1939 folder 2 of 2. See also Msgr. James Cantwell to various pastors and letters from pastors to Cantwell, various dates in 1935, in Correspondence files, 1935-1939, Legislature folder, 1935-39, folder 1 of 2, folder 2 of 2, CAASF; Andrew Burke to Most Reverend John J. Mity, March 26, 1935, CAASF.

33. Sue Barry, "News and Views," The People’s World, May 22, 1939; Anthony B. Diepenbrock to Board of Directors, Golden Gate International Exposition, March 4, 1939, Correspondence Files, Golden Gate Exposition folder 1 of 2, 1939-1940, CAASF.

34. Joe Alioto to My dear Mr. Hagerty, nd (1940), Hagerty Collection, St. Mary’s College Archives.

35. Alioto’s position as an associate with Brobeck, Phleger, and Harrison is listed in Brobeck, Phleger, and Harrison – The Earlier Years, a booklet dated November 1973, in carton 2, Herman Phleger Papers, Bancroft Library, University of California, Berkeley; Maurice Harrison, "St. Thomas More," The Moraga Quarterly, XII (Autumn 1941):26; " ‘Youth and America’s Crisis’ Subject of Forum," The Monitor, March 21, 1942.

36. "Catholicism in San Francisco," Subject File, Communist Party, 1948, Southern California Library for Social Studies and Research, Los Angeles.

37. Unidentified newspaper clippings, Sept. 17, 1948; Feb. 28, 1949; June 22, 1949, April 5, 1950; San Francisco Chronicle, Feb. 4, 5, 7, 8 1953, in Joseph L. Alioto news clippings envelopes, San Francisco History Center (SFHC), Main Public Library, Civic Center of San Francisco; San Francisco Call Bulletin, Aug. 14, 1956; San Francisco News, nd, 1957.

38. "Inaugural Address by the Honorable Joseph L. Alioto, Mayor of San Francisco,"

Jan. 8, 1968, in Joseph L. Alioto Papers, Box 17, folder 35, SFHC.

39. "Inaugural Address by the Honorable Joseph L. Alioto, "For American Cities – A Declaration of Independence," Jan. 8, 1972, Alioto Papers, Box 17, folder 36, SFHC; Frederick M. Wirt, Power in the City: Decision Making in San Francisco (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1974), 198-199.

40. See William Issel, " ‘Land Values, Human Values, and the Preservation of the City’s Treasured Appearance’: Environmentalism, Politics, and the San Francisco Freeway Revolt," in Pacific Historical Review, 68 (1999): 630, 644-45.

41. The Catholic racial justice movement prior to the 1960s is described in William Issel, "Jews and Catholics Against Discrimination," in California Jews, edited by Ava F. Kahn and Marc Dollinger (Waltham, MA: Brandeis University Press and Hanover, NH: University Press of New England, 2003), 123-134. See also "Black Church-Labor Endorsements, Ingleside for Mayor Committee," nd (1971), Box 18, Folder 2, Alioto Papers; Rev. G.L. Bedford, "The November Election and the Blacks of San Francisco," Oct. 13, 1971, Box 18, folder 5, Alioto Papers; Joseph L. Alioto, "State of the City Message," Oct. 5, 1970, Box 17, Folder 54, Alioto Papers.

42. Mayor Joseph L. Alioto, "Statement before the Select Committee on Crime, House of Representatives, Washington, D.C., July 29, 1969, Alioto Papers, Box 17, Folder 75.

43. Wirt, Power in the City, 175-176. David Jenkins at the conference "Labor and Politics: Who Pressures Whom?" San Francisco, 7 February 1989. Audio TS, side two, in Northern California Labor Archives and Research Center Collection, San Francisco State University; Charles H. (Henry) Issel, president of Local 6, International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers (author’s late father), conversation with author, May 1969.