President Johnson had just declared war on poverty, and Mr. Harrington, an avowed socialist who had started out on the staff of Dorothy Day's Catholic Worker, had been among the first to enlist. On this show (the first Firing Line taped, though not the first aired), Mr. Harrington begins by describing the despair and consequent lack of initiative engendered by poverty; WFB engages him on the issue of whether we can hope to alleviate either material or emotional poverty through government action. MH: "Being kicked around and being pushed down, living in dense, miserable housing, and dealing with cockroaches and rats are not the kinds of things that make one a balanced, content, normal, and adjusted healthy personality." WFB: "I couldn't agree with you more. But I'm trying to raise the following question: To what extent... can we count on [a poverty program] to alleviate all these concomitant miseries?"