The discussion up to this point has dealt with the family which has not fallen into distress. It has been confined to problems of adjustment. But there are numerous families which fall into distress and need the services of the social case-work agency. Because of limitations of space and because the principles applying to their care and treatment apply to other kinds of service, the following discussion will treat only of agencies concerned with the care of immigrant families in need of material aid. Of the 8,529 families cared for by the Cook County agent, 6,226 were from the foreign groups, and of the 569 under care by the Cook County Juvenile Court in its Funds to Parents' Department, 386 were foreign born.[72]

Attention is called, however, to the fact that the special application to the care of foreign-born families of the principles supposed to guide the conduct of good agencies in their care of any family calls for the elaboration of much more skillful devices and for much more extensive and closely knit organization than has yet been developed. This chapter deals only with these special applications of general case-work principles.

The principles of care in any case of need are: (1) That such care shall be based on adequate understanding of the immediate individual problem; (2) that it shall be adapted to the special need; (3) that it shall look toward the restoration of the family to its normal status; and (4) that treatment, whether in the form of relief or service, shall be accompanied by friendly and educational supervision and co-operation.

These are no simple tasks when the family is English speaking, native born, and when no particular difficulties arise from difference in language and in general domestic and social habits. With the non-English-speaking family, the agency is faced with difficulties at each of these points. There is first the problem of getting at the facts as to the nature and extent of the distress and the occasion of the family breakdown.

In addition to the foreign-born families who actually need material assistance there are many who, because they are laying aside part of their income either to meet past debts or future needs, are living below the standard prevailing in their community. This family needs to be urged to spend more rather than to save. Unless the agency coming in contact with it digs below the apparent poverty and finds the real income, it will be tempted to give pecuniary aid rather than the personal service the family is in need of. Its service must not result in increased dependency.

Special care in applying this principle of all good case work needs to be exercised in the case of the foreign-born family. Moving from one continent to another, with almost every element in the situation changed, makes the adjustment of the family to normal and healthy standards a delicate and important one. We have been told, for example, by thoughtful members of the Italian group, that in their judgment their fellow-countrymen are often led, through unwise alms-giving, not only to pretend to be poorer than they are, but to live in conditions of squalor detrimental to their well-being.

In fact, in order to understand that normal state from which the family departs when its members become applicants for aid from a case-work agency, the representatives of the agency must have at command facts with reference to the standards and practices prevailing in the particular community from which the family under consideration comes. Only then can the need of the family be estimated with any degree of exactness.

When the facts are learned and the nature and extent of the need are understood, there is the question of resources available for treatment and the question of methods to be used in building and maintaining the family life and in fostering the process of adjustment between its life and that of the community as a whole.

To be able fully to utilize resources, to forecast the effect of certain kinds of care, it is surely desirable for the agency to know the life of the national group into which the family has come, the resources to which the family itself has access, and the ways in which others of the group expect care to be given.

THE LANGUAGE DIFFICULTY

The social case-work agency is faced, then, with several quite different and quite difficult problems in equipment. There is first the question of overcoming the language difficulty. The use of the foreign-speaking trained visitor would probably be regarded as the best way of doing this. The supply is so inadequate that the choice has been generally between a person speaking the language and a person knowing something of methods of case work. And unless the visitor is a fairly competent case worker she would probably better be used as an interpreter and not be given responsibility or allowed to make decisions.

The use of an interpreter gives rise to many difficulties.[73] Because these difficulties are so universal and so important to the full use of the opportunities lying before the case-work agency, an attempt was made to obtain information as to the practice and as to the desires of a number of case workers. Case-work agencies, the district superintendents and visiting housekeepers in the United Charities, the Jewish Aid, the Juvenile Court in Chicago, relief societies in other cities, and the Red Cross chapters throughout the country, were consulted.

Six of the ten districts of the United Charities had foreign-speaking visitors. There were 14 in all—3 Italian, 8 Polish, 2 Bohemian, and 1 Hungarian. Nine of these speak other languages besides their own. All the Jewish Aid Society visitors speak Yiddish. The Funds to Parents' Department of the Juvenile Court has no foreign-born workers, but the Probation Department has 3—Polish, Italian, and Bohemian.

The five Red Cross chapters answering the questionnaire—New York, Brooklyn, Rochester, Buffalo, and Philadelphia—all employ foreign-speaking visitors—11 Italian, 8 Polish, 8 Yiddish, and 2 Russian.

Sixty-one of the members of the American Association for Family Welfare Work replied to questions about their methods of work and the devices they had found successful. Twenty-eight of these were not doing work with foreign born or were not doing work along the line indicated. The other 33 described their work and their difficulties, and made suggestions.

Twenty-two of the thirty-three agencies did not make use of the foreign-language visitor, although Fall River in the case of the French, and Topeka in the case of the Mexicans, overcame the language barrier by the fact that their secretaries spoke the language of their largest foreign-born group. Three others did not have foreign-born visitors on their staff, but reported that they had foreign-born volunteers. It is interesting to note that among the 22 cities without foreign-language visitors there are 9 cities with over 100,000 inhabitants, and all but 2 of them have large immigrant populations. The other 13 cities on the list are all places of less than 100,000 inhabitants, and it is probable that the case-work agencies in most of them do not have more than one worker.

The case-work agencies in some cities with large foreign-born populations come in contact with many of the foreign-born families in distress, but not in sufficiently large numbers to take the entire time of a visitor. In other cities, however, a large part of the work is with foreign-speaking families. In Stamford, Connecticut, for example, 70 per cent of the families cared for are foreign born, and 44 per cent are Italian. In Paterson, New Jersey, 120 of the 840 families were Italian.

Eleven case-work agencies did employ foreign-born or foreign-speaking visitors. Eight of these were in cities of over 100,000 population—New York City, Philadelphia, Boston, Cleveland, Pittsburgh, Milwaukee, Cambridge, and Grand Rapids. The other three were in smaller places; Waterbury, with a population of 73,000, El Paso with 39,000, and Kenosha with 21,000. While these 11 agencies do employ foreign-speaking workers, it appears in every case that they either do not have workers of all the groups with which they work, or do not have enough foreign-language workers to do all the work with the foreign-speaking groups. New York City, for instance, has 5 workers who speak Italian, of whom only 1 is an Italian and served in the course of a year over 1,000 Italian families. Philadelphia has only 1 foreign-speaking worker, who speaks Italian and some Polish. It reports the number of families as 526 Italian, 229 Polish, 69 Russian, and 43 other Slav.

There is, however, a decided difference of opinion as to the value of the visitor from the foreign-born group. All the agencies testify to the difficulty of getting workers with the same education and training demanded of the English-speaking visitor. One of the district superintendents of the United Charities of Chicago, who in despair of her work with interpreters began to use foreign-born visitors, speaks of success with exceptional individuals, but says:

For the most part the foreign workers we have had have gained a certain facility in handling the general run of cases, but there is a discouraging lack of initiative or daring in their efforts. They seem to go just so far. It has seemed hard, too, to strike the happy medium in their attitude toward their own people; they seem either blindly sympathetic or peculiarly indifferent. In part I feel that this is an impression they give as a result of their lack of power of self-expression, and lack of confidence in themselves—this would undoubtedly be remedied by further education.

As a result of my efforts with about ten foreign workers I have traveled a complete circle in my way of thinking. I have come back to the conclusion that we cannot get satisfactory results if we accept very much less in the way of scholastic training or life experience, than is required of other workers.

Most of the agencies that have tried foreign-speaking visitors feel that in spite of these disadvantages it is a gain to the agency to have such visitors on the staff. This is especially true with those agencies that have or have had visitors with educational equipment that is comparable with that of most of their English-speaking visitors. One agency, for example, has only one foreign-born visitor, a Russian who speaks several languages and had a teacher's-training course in Russia. The superintendent reports her "gratifyingly successful in her work with foreign families."

The Charity Organization Society in another city is divided in opinion about the foreign-born visitor. During the panic of 1914-15 they had a Russian man who had had a good technical education at the University of St. Petersburg, and two years in a medical school in this country. The assistant case supervisor of that organization reports that he not only accomplished a great deal with the unemployed men in the district, but also helped the district workers to understand the Russian, Slavic, Lithuanian, and Bohemian families in the district, and "demonstrated what the possibilities might be if we could have foreign-speaking people with requisite training and the proper spirit to work intensively with the families." On the other hand, the superintendent of this organization, who was not with them in 1915, says that their experience with foreign-born case workers has not been successful, and suggests as an alternative the instruction of American case workers in foreign languages.

The New York society agrees that better results are obtained by having native-born case workers learn the language of the group with which they are to work. They have found it possible to have native-born workers learn Italian, and have found them better workers than any Italians they have employed who were people of less background and training.

STANDARDS OF LIVING

Secondly, there is the problem of building up in the family asking and receiving aid, domestic standards appropriate to the life in the community. This raises, first, the question of the responsibility of the case-work agency for the adjustment of the family life to such standards in household management and in child care as might be formulated on the basis of expert knowledge of community needs; secondly, the question as to ways in which such adjustment may be accomplished if the agency feels under an obligation to undertake it.

A number of the thirty-three case-work agencies which discussed this subject indicated that they thought this task one that should not be assumed by the case-work agency. Four agencies said they were doing nothing in this direction, though one of these was looking forward to the employment of a visiting housekeeper. One agency said that there was no difference in this respect between the care of native born and foreign born, and that all families were given such instruction as occasion demanded.

Seven agencies met the problem by co-operating with some of the public-health nursing organizations, especially the baby clinics, and one of the agencies said that the nurses were doing all the educational work possible. Four other agencies supplied milk and co-operated with the public-health organizations of the community and also with visiting housekeepers in the service of settlements.

Two supplied milk where it seemed necessary, and three co-operated with agencies teaching food conservation. One of these supplied interpreters, organized classes, and helped the agent of the County Council of Defense to make contact with women in their homes. Another co-operated with a class of college students who were making a dietary study. The third had its own organization, which taught the use of substitutes and their preparation, in war time. Its work differed from that of others in that it was not organized for war-emergency purposes and was under the control of the case-work agency.

Several agencies mentioned the fact that their visitors gave advice as the case required, and it is probable that this is done in other cities also. Such advice, of course, would not necessarily conform to the standards formulated by home economics experts, but rather to the common-sense standards of the community at large, or rather that circle of the community from which the majority of charity visitors come. The difficulties inherent in such a situation were recognized by the secretary of one society, who wrote, "Our staff has made an effort to become somewhat familiar with dietetics, but is having difficulty with foreign families because of failures thoroughly to understand their customs and the values of the food to which they are accustomed."

Other agencies are not so definite in their view of the problem. Thus one reports that they are not successful in their work on the diet problem because "the Italians, Polish, and Lithuanians prefer their own food and methods of preparing it." Another says, "They seem to know their own tastes and will do their own way mostly."

In Chicago some of the superintendents explain their difficulties in raising housekeeping standards by characterizing the women as "stubborn," "indifferent," "inert," "obstinate," "lazy," "difficult but responsible," "easy but shiftless, and not performing what they undertake." It is only fair to state that these were usually given as contributing causes of difficulties. Most of the superintendents saw clearly that the main difficulties were in the circumstances under which the people had to live, and the defects in their own organization, which was handicapped by lack of funds and workers.

There is little that need be said about the work of these agencies as to other phases of the problem of housekeeping. Only one does anything to help the women buy more intelligently, except in the way of such spasmodic efforts as are made by visitors who have only their own practical experience to guide them. Similarly, little is done to teach buying or making of clothing except that in some instances women are urged to join classes in sewing. One agency speaks of teaching the planning of expenditure by the use of a budget.

Most of the agencies that leave the problem of diet to the public-health nurse leave to her also the problem of cleanliness, personal hygiene, and sanitation. The majority of the agencies report, however, that their visitors are continually trying to inculcate higher standards. One agency says it is the stock subject of conversation at every visit. No agency reports any attempt to reach the women in a more systematic way than by "preaching." One agency only, that in Topeka, Kansas, reports anything that shows a realization of the peculiar problems of the foreign-born woman in this subject. In Topeka, American methods of laundry are taught to Mexican women in the office of the Associated Charities.

VISITING HOUSEKEEPERS

On the other hand, there are twelve agencies that approach the problem, or at least attempt to approach the problem of household management from a scientific standpoint, so that the work done shall be a serious attempt to adjust the standards of the foreign-born women to the standards formulated by the home economics experts for families "under care." There are several methods used in this work. The first and most common is the employment of visiting housekeepers by the case-work agency; another is that of referring families to another agency especially organized to give instruction in the household arts, such as the Visiting Housekeepers' Association in Detroit; a third is the one used in New York City, that of a Department of Home Economics within the organization, and still another, used in Boston, is a Dietetic Bureau.

The cities in which there are visiting housekeepers in connection with the case-work agency are Chicago, Cleveland, Pittsburgh, Worcester, Fall River, Cambridge, Stamford, and Springfield, Illinois. In Brooklyn the visiting housekeepers are not employed by the case-work agencies, but are student volunteers from Pratt Institute. The visiting housekeeper in Springfield has worked almost exclusively with English-speaking families, and the one in Worcester "has had at different times foreign-speaking families." In other words, in two cities with large foreign-speaking populations the visiting housekeepers only occasionally helped immigrant families to adjust their standards and methods of housekeeping to the new conditions found in this country.

The work that is expected of a visiting housekeeper has been frequently described. As it demands the combined qualifications of a case worker and a skilled worker in home economics, an attempt was made to learn the education and training of the various workers in the field. Information was available in only a few cases, but these cases seem to point to the fact that the visiting housekeeper is usually trained for one phase of her work only—either as a case worker or as a home economics expert. In either case she can be expected to give the type of service her position demands only in the field in which her interest and training lie.

Interviews with the five visiting housekeepers employed by the two largest relief agencies in Chicago in general bear out the impressions obtained from the statements of the agencies in other cities. None of those in Chicago speaks the language of the people with whom she works, though one agency is now training a young Italian girl to be a visiting housekeeper.

Most of the visiting housekeepers claimed very slight knowledge of what the diet of the family was in the old country, although they had considerable knowledge as to what was customarily eaten here. They had made very little study of the habits and tastes of their group; and although they were agreed that in most families the diet was inadequate, they had apparently not looked far for the cause. Ignorance of food values and ways of preparing food seemed to them the chief reason; poverty, racial prejudice, and laziness might be secondary features.

Since the visiting housekeepers deal almost entirely with dependent families under the care of a relief agency, their work in helping the women provide for the clothing needs of the family is quite largely concerned with making over old clothing.

In the effort to raise the standards of cleanliness and sanitation the visiting housekeepers meet with great difficulty. One thinks the greatest difficulty is indifference on the part of the housewife and a lack of anything to which the visitor can appeal; another thinks that her greatest difficulties are that the mothers are usually overworked, that frequently they are kept worn out by having one child after another in close succession, and sometimes a woman has had to contend with a drunken husband. These cases she finds especially difficult to deal with. Some of them lay stress on the economic factor and point to the fact that most of these families are deprived of the conveniences which would make housekeeping a comparatively simple task. As one of the visiting housekeepers has said:

With modern equipment, steam heat, electric utensils, and new and sanitary apartments, it is not a difficult task to keep the quarters fresh and clean, but in rickety, shadowy apartment buildings or houses where the floors are worn and rough, with no hot-water service, and too often without even gas for lighting, we can at once recognize the trials and handicaps which confront the housewife in the poorer districts.[74]

The visiting housekeepers interviewed saw many discouraging features of their work. All stated that improvement came very slowly. One worker stated that she had worked three years in her district and she had some families under care all the time, but that she was just beginning to see the results of her efforts. Others pointed out that their constant supervision was essential, that as soon as they relaxed their efforts at all the families dropped back to their old habits. There was, however, general agreement that in time, by much expenditure of effort, constant visiting, teaching, and exhorting, they did help some families to a better standard of living.

It was impossible to get an estimate from most of them as to how many families they thought they had helped, but the worker in one district said that for the three years it would not be more than five or six. Two workers who estimated the number of families with which they could work at one time, put the number at between twenty and twenty-five, and both thought that they could do much better with twenty than with twenty-five. They did not know with how many families they were working at present, but thought they were not trying to do intensive work with many more than that number.

The explanation of failure may be that not enough care was taken to make the Old-World habits of cooking and diet the starting point of instruction in the use of American foods, utensils, and diets. Such procedure would be based on sound pedagogy in starting from the known and familiar and leading to the new and unaccustomed.

However, it may be true that even after sound methods have been given a thorough trial, arduous effort still will fail to bring desired results. Case-work agencies, however efficient, may not be fitted to raise the standards of living in the homes of immigrant dependent families. It may be taken care of by other community forces and only be effected in the way that the independent family's standards are changed and improved. The task for the case worker is to help the family make the natural connections with their neighborhood and community, which are the most effective means for creating and sustaining social standards.

Certain limitations to the present work of the visiting housekeeper appear in the above discussion. These are, the lack of persons with combined training in case work, home economics, and knowledge of immigrant backgrounds, the limited number of families with whom intensive work can be done, especially if the visiting housekeeper tries to do all the work with the families she visits, the hardship to the family in the duplication of visitors if the visiting housekeeper tries to render only specialized services to a larger number of families.

Attempts have been made to overcome these limitations while still retaining the visiting housekeeper. In Cleveland the visiting housekeepers do all the work with the families assigned to them, as well as instruct the other visitors in the elementary principles of home economics and give advice on individual families, as occasion requires. Their work has been materially lightened by the adoption of a standardized budget prepared under the direction of a well-known expert in home economics. The superintendent of the Cleveland organization expressed himself as well satisfied with the work of the visiting housekeepers. It should be noted that one of the visiting housekeepers in that city not only is a skilled case worker with good training in home economics, but also is of foreign-born parentage and speaks most of the Slavic languages.

In other cities, however, notably New York and Boston, case-work agencies have given up the employment of the visiting housekeepers. In New York there is a Home Economics Bureau and in Boston a Dietetic Bureau. The organization of the two bureaus differs, but the underlying principle is the same. Both are organizations of home economics experts, who give advice to the regular case workers both as to general principles and as to individual problems. They also make studies from time to time of problems in national groups. As its name would indicate, the scope of the New York organization is wider. It takes up problems of clothing and other phases of household management as well as of food.

The advantages claimed for this plan are that the home economics experts can devote their time exclusively to their own field. The visitors are thus enabled to advise the individual families with more effect than can the specialized worker. The question as to the best way of rendering to the family under care this combination of services is by no means yet decided, and it is evident that further experiment in the various methods is necessary. They are, in fact, not mutually exclusive, and perhaps combinations of various kinds of the skill of the home economics expert, of the skilled social worker, and a generalized helper, may yet be developed.

A third task to which some agencies address themselves is that of providing educational opportunities for the immigrant family. This effort often consists first of inducing the mother herself to enter a class, and, second, of securing the attendance of the children at the public school rather than at the non-English-teaching parochial school. The difficulties in the way of securing the mothers' attendance at a class have already been described. It need only be pointed out here that the case worker who has won the mother's confidence may often persuade her to go when the stranger will fail. Where a regular allowance is given and support for a considerable period is contemplated, it has been treated as something in the nature of a scholarship or educational stipend and conditioned on the mother's fulfilling definite requirements in the way of better qualifying herself to use the allowance.

The subject of establishing connections between the members of the families and such educational opportunity has been somewhat confused by the fact that the case-work agency often depends upon the settlement to supply certain recreational facilities for the children in the families, and there is a temptation to use the settlement club or class rather than the school for the mother.

With reference to having the children attend the public school or the school in which all instruction is given in English, it would be less than frank to ignore the difficulty often occasioned in the past by the nationalistic and separatist Church. The society may be faced with a real dilemma here, since it desires the co-operation of the Church and is loath to weaken any ties that may help in maintaining right family life. And so, when the Church conducts the school in which the mother tongue is used, and in which English is either inadequately taught or not taught at all, the relief agency may be practically forced into a policy involving the neglect of English in the case of both mother and children.

KNOWLEDGE OF BACKGROUNDS

These have been some of the fundamental difficulties in the relationship between the case-work agency and the immigrant family. The knowledge of the Old-World background and the impressions made by the experience of emigrating that should illumine all the work of the agency, are generally lacking to the case worker. Of course there are brilliant exceptions. One district superintendent of the Boston Associated Charities, for example, whose work lies in the midst of a Sicilian neighborhood, will have no visitors who are unwilling to learn the language and to inform themselves thoroughly concerning the history and the habits of the neighbors.

Her office has been equipped so that it takes on somewhat the appearance of a living room. It is made attractive with growing plants; an Italian and an American flag are conspicuous when one enters the room; a picture of Garibaldi and photographs of Italian scenes are on the wall. Books on Italy are to be found in the office, and with the aid of an Italian postal guide the superintendent has made a card index of the home towns from which her families come. From one town in Sicily of seventeen thousand inhabitants, 108 families have come to the district office. Such an index is acquired slowly and must be used with great discretion. It is of assistance to one who understands how to use it, but it may suggest hopeless blunders to workers unfamiliar with the group.

In making plans for the care of families, leading Italians, such as physicians of excellent standing, with a practice in the district, a member of the Harvard faculty who has unusual interest in his less fortunate fellow countrymen, and others who have special knowledge along certain lines, are consulted.

One of the workers connected with the Vocational Guidance Bureau in Chicago has been trying an interesting experiment in the same direction of establishing contacts with the group among which she works. Many of the children who come to the Bureau for jobs are Polish children. She is, therefore, taking lessons in the Polish language from an editor of one of the Polish papers in the city, and through his interest has secured board and room in a home for working girls that is run by one of the Polish sisterhoods. In a month's time she has learned a vocabulary of some hundred and fifty Polish words, and has gained an insight into the Polish attitudes toward some of their problems that she considers invaluable. She found the Polish people with whom she consulted as to the best means of learning the language very much interested and anxious to be helpful in any way in their power.

It is, in fact, clear that by the interpreter, or the foreign-speaking visitor, or the American visitor who learns the foreign tongue, the language difficulty must be overcome. In the case of the foreign-born visitor it should be noted that workers coming from among the various groups encounter difficulties not encountered by the American visitor. They seem to the members of their group to enjoy very real power, and they are often expected to grant favors and to exert influence. A Polish visitor in the office of a relief society in Chicago finds it very difficult to explain to her friends why they do not always receive from her fellow workers what they ask.

In another neighborhood three Italian sisters, better educated than their neighbors, have become visitors. One works for the Catholic, one for the nonsectarian, charitable agency, and one for the social-service department of the public hospital. They seem to have a real "corner" on the aid given to applicants from their groups.

TRAINING FACILITIES NEEDED

It is clear, then, that before case-work agencies can be adequately equipped to perform these services, the supply of visitors trained as has been suggested will have to be increased, and certain bodies of material with reference to the various national groups will have to be organized and made available in convenient form, both for use in courses in colleges and schools of social work and in the offices of the societies.

One way in which an effort might be directed toward bringing about an increase in the supply of trained visitors would be the establishment of scholarships and fellowships in schools of civics and of social work, by which able persons from among the different national groups might be encouraged to take advantage of such opportunities as those institutions provide. This procedure has been elaborated in Chapter VIII in connection with service to nondependent families.

Special funds might also be provided in connection either with the various agencies or with schools of social work, which would render possible the collection and organization of such facts as would be valuable in understanding the problems presented by families from any special group. This body of fact would, of course, increase as sound, sympathetic, and thorough work was developed.

Such studies would include information about the communities from which different groups come, as, for instance, the practice and influences prevailing in different villages in southern Italy, in Sicily, in northern Italy. The religious, national, and village festivals differ in almost every place. A native of Villa Rosa now receiving care from a public-health agency in Chicago has carefully pointed out to a visitor the differences between the festivals of Palermo and Villa Rosa. The different ways of preparing for and meeting the great events of family life, such as death, marriage, birth, are of vital importance.

Most important are the food practices, and the attitudes toward the care and discipline of children. A similar point has been developed in Chapter VIII and it need not be stressed. The fact is that while really sound and thorough case work cannot be done without such information, few agencies have such information, and all devices for accumulating it should be made use of.

The gathering of this body of information and its application require considerable time. In the meantime, while differences of opinion among the existing agencies on such questions as the use of the foreign or the native-born visitor who speaks the foreign language, the visiting housekeeper, or the specialized bureau, are being worked out, specialized agencies for dealing with the problems of the immigrant family should be developed. Such agencies as the Immigrants' Protective League could prove of very great service in discovering promising visitors, in accumulating experience as to the nature of those problems, and in furnishing opportunities to professional students for practice work under supervision.

Further, there is the question of the resources within the group and the ways in which they can be taken advantage of. Reference has been made to the problem of securing and retaining the co-operation of the national Church. There are often national charitable societies. The case worker should be able to explain the methods and purposes of her society to these immigrant societies; but often there is a complete failure to interpret, and the two agencies go their separate ways, sometimes after the demoralization of the family both try to serve.

A few years ago a group of foreign-born men, prominent in business and politics in Chicago, organized a charitable association within their own national group. They felt that the United Charities did not understand their people and were not meeting their needs. These men had no understanding of accepted case-work principles, and the superintendent of the society herself says that she does not use scientific methods and does not co-operate with the United Charities. She doubts whether her organization is doing much good, but she sees that the lack of understanding of the traditions and habits of the people on the part of the United Charities cripples their work among her people.

THE TRANSIENT FAMILY

The case-work agency as now organized might be equipped with trained foreign-speaking visitors and with visiting housekeepers or dietetic experts who know their neighborhoods, and the needs of the situation would still be far from fully met. It was pointed out in the first chapter that many immigrant families have to change their place of residence, often more than once, before they settle in a permanent home. The nature of their hardships and the slender margin of their resources have been pointed out. Special misfortune may therefore befall them at any point in the experimental period of their journey, as well as after they have reached their final and permanent place of residence.

The important moment in social treatment, as probably in any undertaking, is in the initial stages. "The first step costs." This brings us to the enormously important fact that distress outside the relatively small number of larger communities in which there are skilled case-work agencies, either public or private, will probably mean contact either with the poor-law official under the Pauper Act, if it is a question of relief,—or with some official of the county prosecuting machinery or of the inferior courts, if it is a question of discipline.

The case of an Italian woman may serve to illustrate the contact with both these groups of officials. Mrs. C. was married in 1902 in a Sicilian village, at about sixteen years of age. In October, 1906, the husband came to the United States. In November, 1907, she and her one surviving baby, a girl of two, followed, going to the mining town in western Pennsylvania where he was working. There they lived until March, 1913, occupying most of the time a house owned by the company for which he worked. About 1913 she moved with her children to a near-by city, where, on June 3, 1914, she was arrested for assault, and the next day for selling liquor without a license and selling liquor to minors. After some delay she pleaded guilty and was sentenced to pay the costs of the prosecution ($76.42), and released on parole.

She then seems to have moved to a mining town in Illinois, and there lived with Mr. A. as his wife until March, 1916, when he was murdered. The union paid his funeral expenses of $186.75, and she also, as his widow, received his death benefit of $244.33. Through the summer of 1916 the Supervisor of the Poor gave her $3 every two weeks. On May 20, 1916, she applied for her first citizenship papers, and on September 1st she was awarded an allowance of $7 a month under the Mothers' Aid law, this being granted her under her maiden name, as mother of a child born in Illinois in 1915. She was helped not only by the public relief agencies, but by the priest ($11); and the Queen's Daughters, a church society of ladies, gave her the fare to Chicago, where the Italian consul gave her money to go home again. The undertaker and other kind persons gave her and the children aid.

By December the union and the county agent both thought it would be well to shift the burden of her support, and gave her the fare back to Chicago. By the time she reached Chicago she was a very skillful and resourceful beggar. In Chicago she was a "nonresident," ineligible for a year to receive public relief under the Pauper Act and for three years under the Mothers' Aid law; and so she obtained from a Protestant church, from the Charities, and from an Italian Ladies' Aid Society relief of various kinds and in various amounts.

The story is a long and a continuing one. Two points are especially important from the point of view of this study. One is that the burden not only of her support, but of her re-education, fell ultimately upon Chicago agencies, and the cost to them is measured as it were by the inefficiency of her casual treatment at the hands of both the courts and the less competent relief agencies along the way. The other is that such varied treatment leaves its inevitable stamp of confusion and disorganization upon the life of such a family. To find American officials getting very busy over selling liquor without a license, and at the same time ignoring adultery or murder committed in an Italian home, must surely result in confusion with reference to American standards of family relationship and to the value placed on life by American officials.

NEED FOR NATIONAL AGENCY

Irrespective of whether the family is of the native-born or foreign-born group, the problem of the case of those in distress should not be regarded as solely a local problem. It is indeed of national importance. Poverty, sickness, illiteracy, inefficiency, incompetence, are no longer matters of peculiar concern to a locality. The causes leading to these conditions are not local; the consequences are not local. The agency that deals efficiently with them should not be entirely local.

Yet at the present time there is lacking not only a national agency and a national standard; there is often lacking a state agency and a state standard.[75] In Illinois, for example, the Pauper Act is administered in some counties by precinct officials designated by county commissioners; in other counties by the township officials.[76] The Mothers' Aid law is administered in Illinois by the juvenile court, which in all counties except Cook County (Chicago) is the county court. There is no agency responsible in any way for the standardization of the work of these officials, and niggardly doles or indiscriminate relief without either adequate investigation or adequate supervision, often characterizes the work of both.[77]

Not all states are in as chaotic a condition as Illinois. A few states have developed a larger measure of central control. Massachusetts, California, and New Jersey, for example, secure a certain measure of standardization in the administration of their Mothers' Aid laws by paying part of the allowances, in case the central body approves—the State Board of Charities in Massachusetts,[78] and California,[79] and the State Board of Children's Guardians in New Jersey.[80] Pennsylvania secures this by assigning to the Governor the appointment of local boards and providing central supervision, while in other cases there may be inspection, the preparation of blanks and requiring reports. A member of the State Board of Education is supervisor of the Mothers' Aid law administration in Pennsylvania.[81]

The case cited above illustrates the way in which the demoralizing effects of unskillful treatment in Pennsylvania and then in Illinois lasted into the period in which Chicago agencies tried to render efficient service.

It would not be possible to develop at once a national or Federal agency for rendering aid to families in distress. Nor would such an agency be desirable if characterized by the features of the old poor law. But the development of a national agency for public assistance will undoubtedly be necessary before such problems as these can be adequately dealt with. It should be based on such inquiries as the United States Children's Bureau and other governmental departments can make as to the volume and character of the need and the best methods for dealing with that need. Undoubtedly the Grant in Aid, as proposed in the bill introduced into the Sixty-fifth Congress to encourage the development of health protection for mothers and infants, will prove the quickest path to a national standard. Careful study into the kind of legislative amendment necessary in the various states in order to reduce the chaos now existing in the exercise of these functions should also be made.

The present is in many ways an unfortunate moment at which to suggest the necessity of developing such an agency. The War Risk Bureau, created to provide certain services for the families of soldiers and sailors and others in the service, through the failures and imperfections of its service, has discouraged the idea of attempting such tasks on a national scale. It should be recalled, however, that the assignment of the War Risk Bureau to the Treasury Department concerned with revenue instead of to the Children's Bureau concerned with family problems, rendered it practically inevitable that such limitations of skill would characterize its work. Neither a taxing body nor a bank should be chosen for the supervision of work with family groups.

The "home service" work of the American Red Cross constituted such a national agency during the period of the war, and if the so-called "peace-time program" is successfully developed, the need urged in this chapter may be met.

The efficient local private agencies suffer in the same way from the lack of a national agency and a national standard in case work. The American Association for Social Work with Families, and the National Conference of Social Work, attempt by conference and publication to spread the knowledge of social technique and to improve the work done by existing societies. But there are whole sections, even in densely populated areas, in which there exists no such agency.

If, then, the benevolence and good will of the community are to be embodied in such service for foreign-born families that fall into distress as will not only relieve but upbuild the life of the family, interpret to them the standards of the community, and help them to become a part of the true American life, a national minimum of skill and information must be developed below which the agencies for such care will nowhere be allowed to fall. From the experience both of these foreign-born families and of the communities into which they finally come we learn again the doctrine laid down a hundred years ago by Robert Owen, that the care of those who suffer is a national and not solely a local concern.