Readings in Social Case Work 1920–1938: Selected Reprints for the Case Work Practitioner 9780231889216

Table of contents :
Preface
Contents
Basic Philosophy
General Concepts Underlying Social Work Practice
Changing Fundamentals of Social Work
Underlying Principles and Common Practices in Social Work
Social Work: Cause and Function
Philosophical Trends in Modern Social Work
Social Work and the Social Order
Philosophical Concepts in Case Work Practice
The Growth of Social Case Work in the United States
Refocusing Family Case Work
Recent Changes in the Philosophy of Social Workers
Where the Changes in Social Case Work Have Brought Us
The Status of Social Case Work Today
Social Case Work: What is It? What is Its Place in the World Today?
A General Analysis of Current Trends in Case Work
Basic Concepts in Social Case Work
Generic Concepts in Case Work Practice
Early Interviews and Exploratory Processes
The Extent of the Intake Interview
Two Interviews
A Little Matter of Self-Respect
First Interviews as an Experiment in Human Relations
Early Interviews as a Basis for Treatment Plans
The Continuity of Intake and Treatment Processes
Continuance of Study and Diagnostic Processes
Purposeful Investigation
Can Listening Become a Case Work Art?
How do we Come to an Understanding of Our Clients?
Diagnosis: A Changing Concept
What is Involved in Simplicity of Treatment?
The Diagnostic Process in Continuing Treatment
Treatment Processes
The Case Worker’s Role in Treatment
Present Trends in the Case Worker’s Role in Treatment
The Role of the Case Worker in Treatment
Some Contributions of Therapy to Generalized Case Work Practice
Factors in Treatment
Changing Practices in Case Work Treatment
Modern Use of Older Treatment Methods
Relation of Practice to Agency Function and Setting
Concepts Underlying Case Work Practice in the Specialized Fields
Problems the Public Welfare Field Presents to the Professional Social Worker
The Application of Case Work Theory to Public Welfare Practice
Social Case Work as Applied to Old Age Assistance
The Continuing Concern of Family Agencies with Economic Need
New Emphases in Family Social Work
Problems of Growth in Family Case Work
A Good Foster Home: Its Achievements and Limitations
The Mental Hygiene Implications in Substitute Parental Care
Mental Health Needs in Children’s Institutions
Problems and Trends in Medical Social Case Work
Medical Social Work in 1937
Psychiatric and Social Treatment: Functions and Correlations
Changing Concepts in Visiting Teacher Work
Discussion of Miss Hall’s Paper
New Light on Juvenile Courts and Probation
Functional Interrelationships of Case Work and Other Social Work Fields
Case Work and Social Work: The Function of Social Service
Relation of Public and Private Family Agencies
Case Work and Group Work
Social Workers and Social Action
Hospital Social Service in its Relation to Community Welfare Agencies
Community Organization in Relation to other Forms of Social Work
The Part of the Worker in the Community’s Acceptance of Social Work
Reëxamination of Child Care Functions in Family Agencies
A Reëxamination of Child Welfare Functions in Foster Care Agencies
Reëxamination of Child Welfare Functions in Family and Foster Care Agencies
Participation of Family Welfare Agencies in a Housing Program
Parole and the Family Agency
Social Legislation and the Family Case Worker
Some Aspects of International Case Work
The Relation of Social Work Practice yo its Professional and Social Setting
Social Work Against a Background of the other Professions
Sociology and Social Work
The Application of Mental Tests in Family Case Work
Studies In Coördination of Effort Between Psychologist and Social Worker
The Influence of Psychiatry on Social Work
Home Economics Service in Family Agencies
Relations Between Social Agencies and Schools
The Family Case Worker’s Contribution Toward Higher Industrial Standards
Law as a Creative Force in Social Welfare
Relation of Case Work Practice to Community and Socioeconomic and Cultural Setting
Social Planning and Social Work
Case Work in a Changing Social Order
Security, Cultural Restraints, Intrasocial Dependencies, and Hostilities
The Case Worker's Need for Orientation to the Culture of the Client
Index of Authors

Citation preview

READINGS IN SOCIAL CASE WORK 192.0-1938

READINGS IN SOCIAL CASE WORK I92.O-I938 SELECTED CASE

REPRINTS

WORK

FOR

THE

PRACTITIONER

EDITED BY FERN LOWRY

PUBLISHED

FOR

THE NEW YORK SCHOOL OF SOCIAL WORK By COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY PRESS NEW

YORK,

1939

COPYRIGHT

1939

C O L U M B I A U N I V E R S I T Y PRESS, N E W

YORK

Foreign agents: OXFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS, Humphrey Milford, Amen House, London, E.C. 4, England, AND B. I. Building, Nicol

Road,

Bombay, India; KWANG HSUEH PUBLISHING HOUSE, 140 Peking Road, Shanghai, China; MARUZEN COMPANY, LTD., 6 Nihonbashi, Tori-Nichome, Tokyo, Japan M A N U F A C T U R E D IN THE U N I T E D S T A T E S OF A M E R I C A

PREFACE

T H E PUBLICATION OF THIS VOLUME OF ARTICLES WAS UNDERTAKEN

in the hope that it might meet a need on the part of case work practitioners and students and teachers of social case work for readily available reference material, and that the bringing together of selected reprints within one volume might serve to emphasize the substantial contribution to the literature of the field which has been made through the medium of professional magazine articles and conference papers. Current thinking in the field of social case work has characteristically found expression through articles or papers dealing with specific phases of practice, rather than through the more substantial form of books dealing with the theory and practice of case work as a whole. This has meant that case work practitioners, students, and teachers have been dependent for reference material, to a large extent, upon the files of professional magazines and conference reports. It also has meant that the value of such material has been limited by the fact that it becomes lost in the back files of periodicals or conference reports, which are inaccessible to the average case work practitioner. The present volume represents an attempt to extend the usefulness of some of this material through presenting it in a more readily available form. With this objective in mind, the editor reviewed the major professional magazines and conference reports for the years from 1 9 1 8 to 1 9 3 8 . The year 1 9 2 0 was selected as a beginning point for this volume, because it seemed to present the point at which the technical problems of case work practice were beginning to be given wider consideration in the periodical literature and conference reports. Articles were initially selected on the basis of the following two questions: Does it represent a substantial contribution to thinking about social case work practice? Does it have utility or significance for the practitioner today? This initial selective process resulted in a bulk of material too great to be published in one volume. The next step, therefore, was to decide upon a scheme of organization for presenting the material and to make fur-

vi

PREFACE

ther selections within the limitations imposed by the scheme of organization and the available space. The organization of material was developed with a view to bringing out the relatedness of case work practice to the setting within which it is practiced, its relationship to the other professional fields, its relationship to the field of social work, the relation of generic practice to specialized forms of practice, and the interrelationship of the various specialized forms of case work practice. It was hoped that such an organizational scheme would serve to emphasize the fact that the problems of case work practice are larger than those of the technique itself. With this organizational scheme in mind, a further selection of material was undertaken. The articles finally included were selected with two principles in mind: first, they must present material which is of significance to the social case work practitioner today, either because of their utility in current practice or because they show some significant historical or developmental aspects of case work practice; and second, they must contribute to the perspective which the scheme of organization seeks to present. Certain other factors also entered into .the final selection, such as whether the articles were already available in pamphlet form, an attempt being made not to duplicate material already available in this form. Also, the relative accessibility of material for reprinting was taken into consideration in some instances. The volume is in no sense a source book, inasmuch as the articles were selected for their current significance, rather than their historical value. The selection is not aimed toward the presentation of a truly representative group of articles either as regards the professional literature of the field or the specialized fields of practice. W e regret that the limitations of space prevented the inclusion of all the material which would be of value to the case worker today. If the present volume proves useful to the field, it is the hope of the New York School of Social Work to continue to present, from time to time, similar volumes of articles selected from the current literature of the field. On behalf of the New York School of Social Work, under whose auspices this volume is being published, I wish to express appreciation to the authors and publishers for their generous cooperation in granting permission to reprint and for the contribution they have made in thus

PREFACE

vii

extending the value of this material to the field. I wish, also, to express my personal thanks to Miss Mabel Pierce Ashley, of the N e w York School of Social Work, for her invaluable assistance in the preparation of the manuscript for publication. F E R N LOWRY N e w York City November 30, 1 9 3 8

CONTENTS BASIC

PHILOSOPHY

General Concepts Underlying Social Work Practice C H A N G I N G F U N D A M E N T A L S O F SOCIAL W O R K ROBERT W . KELSO

3

U N D E R L Y I N G PRINCIPLES A N D COMMON PRACTICES IN SOCIAL W O R K M . ANTOINETTE CANNON SOCIAL W O R K : CAUSE A N D F U N C T I O N PORTER R. LEE

14

PHILOSOPHICAL TRENDS IN M O D E R N SOCIAL W O R K MIRIAM VAN WATERS

38

SOCIAL W O R K A N D T H E SOCIAL ORDER

54

22

KATHARINE F . LENROOT PHILOSOPHICAL CONCEPTS IN CASE WORK PRACTICE THE G R O W T H O F SOCIAL CASE W O R K I N T H E U N I T E D STATES MARY WILLCOX GLF.NN

67

R E F O C U S I N G F A M I L Y CASE W O R K

81

GORDON HAMILTON RECENT CHANGES IN T H E PHILOSOPHY O F SOCIAL W O R K E R S M . ANTOINETTE CANNON

99

W H E R E T H E C H A N G E S IN SOCIAL CASE W O R K H A V E B R O U G H T US

109

M . ANTOINETTE CANNON T H E S T A T U S O F SOCIAL CASE W O R K T O D A Y

122

GRACE F. MARCUS SOCIAL CASE W O R K : W H A T IS I T ? W H A T IS I T S PLACE I N WORLD TODAY? BERTHA C. REYNOLDS A G E N E R A L A N A L Y S I S O F C U R R E N T T R E N D S I N CASE W O R K RT. REV. MSGR. JOHN O'GRADY BASIC CONCEPTS I N SOCIAL CASE W O R K GORDON HAMILTON GENERIC

CONCEPTS

IN

CASE

WORK

THE 136 148 155

PRACTICE

EARLY INTERVIEWS AND EXPLORATORY PROCESSES THE EXTENT OF THE INTAKE INTERVIEW BEATRICE Z . LEVEY

175

T W O INTERVIEWS DOROTHY ROBERTS

181

X

C O N T E N T S

A LITTLE M A T T E R OF SELF-RESPECT FLORENCE T . W A I T E FIRST I N T E R V I E W S AS A N E. VANNORMAN EMERY

184

EXPERIMENT

IN H U M A N

E A R L Y I N T E R V I E W S AS A BASIS FOR T R E A T M E N T

RELATIONS

PLANS

187 207

L E A H FEDER THE C O N T I N U I T Y OF I N T A K E A N D HERBERT H . APTEKAR

TREATMENT

PROCESSES

217

CONTINUANCE OF STUDY AND DIAGNOSTIC PROCESSES PURPOSEFUL INVESTIGATION HELEN C. WALLERSTEIN

225

CAN LISTENING BECOME A CASE W O R K ART? N A N N I E E . D E I H L AND ROBERT S. W I L S O N

229

HOW DO W E COME TO A N UNDERSTANDING

OF OUR CLIENTS?

243

BESSIE E . T R O U T DIAGNOSIS: A CHANGING CONCEPT HERBERT H . APTEKAR W H A T IS I N V O L V E D I N S I M P L I C I T Y M U R I E L MOORHEAD T H E D I A G N O S T I C PROCESS I N A L A N D . FINLAYSON

249 OF T R E A T M E N T ?

CONTINUING

258

TREATMENT

268

TREATMENT PROCESSES THE CASE WORKER'S ROLE IN TREATMENT

281

LAURA A . MERRILL PRESENT TRENDS IN THE CASE WORKER'S ROLE IN TREATMENT

286

M A R J O R I E BOGGS THE ROLE OF THE CASE W O R K E R ELEANOR NEUSTAEDTER SOME CONTRIBUTIONS PRACTICE FLORENCE HOLLIS

IN TREATMENT

OF THERAPY

TO

294

GENERALIZED

CASE

WORK 305

FACTORS IN TREATMENT CHARLOTTE T O W L E C H A N G I N G PRACTICES FLORENCE R . D A Y

319

IN CASE W O R K

MODERN USE OF OLDER TREATMENT MARGARET M I L L A R

TREATMENT

331

METHODS

344

RELATION OF PRACTICE TO AGENCY FUNCTION AND SETTING Concepts Underlying Case Work Practice in the Specialized Fields PROBLEMS THE PUBLIC WELFARE SIONAL SOCIAL WORKER RUTH TAYLOR

FIELD PRESENTS

TO THE

PROFES-

CONTENTS THE

APPLICATION PRACTICE EMILY MITCHELL

OF

CASE

WORK

xi

THEORY

TO

PUBLIC

WELFARE 368

WIRES

SOCIAL CASE W O R K AS APPLIED TO OLD A G E ASSISTANCE RUTH HILL THE C O N T I N U I N G CONCERN OF F A M I L Y AGENCIES W I T H NEED FRANCES TAUSSIG N E W EMPHASES IN FAMILY FLORENCE T . W A I T E

ECONOMIC 381

SOCIAL W O R K

PROBLEMS OF G R O W T H IN F A M I L Y GEORGE S. STEVENSON

390

CASE W O R K

A G O O D FOSTER HOME: CARL R . ROGERS

ITS A C H I E V E M E N T S

THE

IMPLICATIONS

MENTAL HYGIENE CARE SYBIL FOSTER

376

IN

404

A N D LIMITATIONS SUBSTITUTE

417

PARENTAL 437

M E N T A L H E A L T H NEEDS IN CHILDREN'S INSTITUTIONS SYBIL FOSTER

449

PROBLEMS A N D TRENDS IN MEDICAL SOCIAL CASE W O R K HARRIETT M . BARTLETT

462

MEDICAL SOCIAL W O R K IN 1937 RUTH E . LEWIS

474

PSYCHIATRIC A N D SOCIAL LATIONS LEONA M . HAMBRECHT C H A N G I N G CONCEPTS GLADYS E . H A L L

TREATMENT:

FUNCTIONS

AND

CORRE480

IN VISITING

TEACHER WORK

510

DISCUSSION OF MISS HALL'S PAPER CHARLOTTE TOWLE NEW LIGHT ON JUVENILE FREDERICK A . MORAN

FUNCTIONAL AND

COURTS A N D

521 PROBATION

INTERRELATIONSHIPS OTHER SOCIAL

WORK

OF CASE

527

WORK

FIELDS

CASE W O R K A N D SOCIAL W O R K : T H E F U N C T I O N OF SOCIAL SERVICE MARSHALL E . ST. EDWARD JONES

539

RELATION OF PUBLIC A N D PRIVATE F A M I L Y AGENCIES M A R Y L . GIBBONS

549

CASE W O R K A N D GROUP W O R K GRACE L . COYLF. SOCIAL WORKERS A N D SOCIAL GRACE L . COYLE

55

ACTION

8

565

CONTENTS

xii

HOSPITAL SOCIAL SERVICE I N ITS RELATION TO C O M M U N I T Y FARE AGENCIES CONSTANCE B . W E B B COMMUNITY ORGANIZATION SOCIAL W O R K W A L T E R W . PETTIT

IN RELATION

TO

OTHER

WEL569

FORMS

OF 576

THE PART OF THE WORKER IN THE COMMUNITY'S ACCEPTANCE SOCIAL W O R K ELIZABETH MCCORD

OF

REEXAMINATION OF CHILD CARE FUNCTIONS IN FAMILY AGENCIES MARY A . YOUNG A

REEXAMINATION OF CHILD CARE AGENCIES ELIZABETH M U N R O CLARKE

WELFARE

FUNCTIONS

FAMILY

592

FOSTER 604

R E E X A M I N A T I O N OF CHILD W E L F A R E FUNCTIONS FOSTER CARE AGENCIES HARRY L . LURIE PARTICIPATION OF PROGRAM HERTHA KRAUS

IN

582

WELFARE

IN FAMILY

AND 611

AGENCIES

IN

A

HOUSING 620

PAROLE A N D THE FAMILY A G E N C Y J O H N B . MIDDLETON

626

SOCIAL LEGISLATION A N D THE F A M I L Y CASE W O R K E R DOROTHEA D E SCHWEINITZ

635

SOME ASPECTS OF INTERNATIONAL CASE W O R K GEORGE L . W A R R E N

644

THE RELATION

OF SOCIAL WORK PRACTICE TO

ITS PROFESSIONAL SOCIAL W O R K AGAINST SIONS ESTHER L . BROWN

A

AND SOCIAL

BACKGROUND

OF

SETTING

THE

OTHER

PROFES653

SOCIOLOGY A N D SOCIAL W O R K MAURICE J . K A R P F

665

THE APPLICATION OF M E N T A L TESTS I N F A M I L Y CASE W O R K WILLIAM HEALY

677

STUDIES IN COORDINATION A N D SOCIAL WORKER EUNICE M . ACHESON

OF EFFORT

BETWEEN

PSYCHOLOGIST 684

THE INFLUENCE OF P S Y C H I A T R Y O N SOCIAL W O R K FREDERICK H . A L L E N

694

HOME ECONOMICS SERVICE IN FAMILY AGENCIES LUISE ADDISS AND ELIZABETH GUILFORD

710

RELATIONS B E T W E E N SOCIAL AGENCIES A N D SCHOOLS

718

Lois A . MEREDITH

xiii

C O N T E N T S THE

FAMILY CASE WORKER'S INDUSTRIAL STANDARDS CHARLOTTE E . CARR

CONTRIBUTION

TOWARD

HIGHER 731

L A W AS A CREATIVE FORCE I N SOCIAL W E L F A R E JOSEPH N . ULMAN RELATION

OF

CASE

WORK

SOCIOECONOMIC

PRACTICE AND

TO

736

COMMUNITY

CULTURAL

AND

SETTING

SOCIAL P L A N N I N G A N D SOCIAL W O R K MARY VAN K L E E C K

749

CASE W O R K IN A C H A N G I N G SOCIAL ORDER HARRY L . LURIE

755

SECURITY, CULTURAL A N D HOSTILITIES ABRAM KARDINER

RESTRAINTS,

INTRASOCIAL

DEPENDENCIES, 764

T H E CASE WORKER'S N E E D FOR O R I E N T A T I O N TO T H E CULTURE OF THE CLIENT 789 MAURINE BOIE I N D E X OF AUTHORS

805

BASIC

PHILOSOPHY

GENERAL CONCEPTS SOCIAL WORK

UNDERLYING PRACTICE

CHANGING

FUNDAMENTALS

SOCIAL By ROBERT

OF

WORK* W.

KELSO

I F A SHIP, B L O W N FROM H E R COURSE, SHOULD C H A N C E BY EASTER

Island, her lookout might see upon the skyline of a deserted shore an assemblage of huge idols. They have come to us from prehistoric times. They are the spirits of the departed, bound in stone. They sit, each in his great stone chair, his back to the sea, gazing at the cloud rack, forgetful of the seasons, careless of mankind, enduring through the ages of time. They embody an idea. It is the idea of immortality. The rain courses upon their furrowed cheeks, and the salt spray drives about their massive ears; the sun parches the lentils that struggle for a footing in the hollows of their shoulders, but they remain—mute —eternal as the rock. They embody an idea at the bottom of man's notion of the nature of things. They personify a fundamental. The basic truths of human existence do not change. Our conception of them, as we come to understand with clearer mind, is always changing. Thus it is that we may speak of changing fundamentals in that process of analyzing human relations which we call social work. But contrast with a fundamental, if you will, that which is merely our conception of it. For decades science has told us that this whole universe is in a state of decline like a giant clock wound up in the beginning to run down with the passing of time. How otherwise explain the cooling of the earth and the burning of the sun? It is an assumption that has become basic in our thought. But now come radium and radioactivity, throwing off energy which comes apparently from nowhere—transmutation of matter hitherto impossible. How can we * Presidential address, National Conference of Social Work, 1922, printed in Proceedings of the National Conference of Social Work, 1922.

4

ROBERT

W.

KELSO

explain it except we assume that the life of the universe is a life of cycles, that the earth was incandescent once and likely will be again? Thus is our old concept overturned and a new hypothesis enthroned. W e see the fundamentals of our existence with the imperfect eye of inexperience and ignorance; wherefore the methods of our search into the eternal truth of things are always changing. As we see for the moment with clearer vision down that vista of science, or peer with rare opportunity over this wall of prejudice, we gain newer and ever new glimpses of those ultimate truths which we seek. The truths themselves change not; our conception of them is always changing. And there is one further distinction which we must draw. There are some fundamentals, even in method, which remain constant. In the midst of changing technique and improving ways of doing things the axiom is fixed that sound social judgment rests upon plain, sober, common sense, and by common sense I mean that robust • element which underlay Cromwell; which supported Washington; which was the mighty strength of Lincoln; which in this present hour marks the difference between the statecraft of our Mr. Hughes, looking upward to the intelligence of a thinking people, and the demagoguery of Lenin, which scorns intelligence and shouts to the emotions of the ill-balanced in all corners of the earth. Common sense is the strength of effective social service. It is a constant. As we look out over the plain of human society, we observe what we call a social complex. It is the sum total of joys, of sorrows; of comedy, of tragedy; of wealth and of poverty; of genius and mediocrity; of loyalty to friend and country; of hatred and of contempt for law and the rights of others: reactions all of them from the circumstance that we live together. These are the physical symptoms of our social complex. It is easy to observe that whatever disturbs profoundly the condition under which man lives upon the earth will have its marked reflection in this complex. The progress of invention and discovery, revealing new channels for the changing of human activity, alters the social complex. W e were one human race in the Middle Ages, with primitive language, with no art of printing, with no industrial machinery, with no surgery and little medicine. W e are another human race today, with our bewil-

ROBERT

W.

KELSO

5

dering advance toward the elimination of space and time and the uncovering of those boundless forces of nature which are made to labor in our behalf. Our complex changes, and with it change our social reactions. Wherefore it is that the basic processes in social work must change also. Bear with me, if you will, through a short analysis of some of these changes. Within a few decades there has been a revolution in the physical condition under which the people of this nation live. Less than a century ago we were a frontier people, engaged largely in agriculture. Today we are building cities, constructing single industries so large that cities must perforce spring up in a day about them to house their workers. The seat of power has forsaken the furrow; and the springs of our daily life, our leadership in business, in law, in medicine, in letters, in all thought and action, emanate from the city. Our new contacts are more intimate and more dynamic. The delightful freedom of God's sunshine has given way to man-made shadows in dull brick alleys; and our little ones must pass through the valley of that shadow. Parallel with this change in physical environment has come a development—the greatest of the last half-century—in American thinking. I may define it in general terms as the realization of ourselves as a society or community. In frontier days we were a populace made up of individuals each supreme in himself, yielding to government that grudging spark of sovereignty required to make us a nation. Government was a necessary evil: it should encroach as little as possible. The law existed to enforce only those obligations which we of our own free will have assumed. Without consent we owed no man a groat. It was an attitude which one great thinker has styled "the Puritanism of the common law." But now that Puritan individualism is passing, a revolution has come about. Dimly we have been groping for a truer basis in our philosophy of conduct. Necessity has been the mother of our invention, and the invention is this: We have made social relationship the basis of our law, and social necessity the driving force in its development. Aforetime we gave effect to the individual will. One might exact his pound of flesh if there be but the contract. Today we strive for the greatest benefit to the greatest number, at the least sacrifice to person and property.

6

ROBERT

W.

KELSO

It is the most far-reaching change in American history. For social work it is the basic fact. In those other Puritanical days a bit of alms sufficed to assuage distress. As for the individual, he had called his misery about his head. If he was a fool, let him suffer for being a fool. Where tragedy interposed, it was the device of an all-wise God. Today, when social relations are the groundwork of justice and social necessity is the driving force in the growth of our law, there has arisen the need of an analyst of our social contacts, a professional student of human relations, a statesman to shape our social thinking. So enters the trained social worker. We, and the world with us, have passed from an age of charity to an epoch of constructive social service, charitable in a truer sense, organic, reaching out toward justice. Note, then, if you will, the effect of this fundamental change upon a few of the major phases of social service. Family relief.—The historical rootstock of social work is the relief of the poor. It may be said of any people that the state of their civilization can be gauged by the way they care for their poor. It is a problem of the ages. It deals with that vast accumulation of human wreckage which lies strewn along the march of progress like a moraine. Its picturesque character, the wandering mendicant, has tramped the highways of mankind since the dawn of history—for your beggar is not a thistle blown by the vagrant breezes of the last autumn, or of the last decade, or of the last century. In all times and among all peoples he is that same dramatic figure, persisting through all change. He is the hero of the Biblical parable, the subplot of Shakespeare, the curse of empires, springing out like fungus upon the surface of decay. To this day the professional beggar plies his trade upon our city streets, and thrives. The plodder in honest toil cannot hope to earn as much. Your citizen stumbles upon him at the edge of the curb. He sees and is filled with compassion. With pity he pays, and with pride he justifies the payment. And through this bit of heartfelt sympathy he does that which man has done since there were beggars and streets and chill days, and will continue to do so long as pity rises in the human heart. In earlier days the relief of the poor meant the giving of alms. The gift was bound up in religious rite; and the good of the giver's soul was the primary aim. Then came the day when the recipients of alms and

ROBERT

W.

KELSO

7

doles were divided into groups: the sick were cared for by themselves; the aged and the infirm were herded together; and the able-bodied dependents were given a work test. This was the beginning of reason in poor relief. Since that day we have advanced far, yet there are institutions—no farther away than the great Father of Waters—where the lame, the halt, the blind, the insane, and unoffending childhood mingle with the vicious with hardly a pretense at restraint. In the early days of this colony great emphasis was laid upon the maintenance of the family. It took expression in legal directions to the householder. H e must keep his children occupied—he must eschew idleness and forbid those in his charge to run a vicious course. If he fell sick or through like misfortune came to want, it was not unusual to build him a house if need be, taking a mortgage in favor of the government. The towns of New England often owned milch cows which they placed successively with poor families, thus insuring a fresh milk supply with little wear and tear on the machinery. But in later days of heavy economic stress, it became harder to keep families together, and institutional care came into extensive use, especially for children. Today we look back to the family as the starting-point in poor relief and count our truest fundamental the working out of the personality of the individual, developing his latent power as home builder and citizen. Thus we began by relieving distress. N o w we strive to remove the causes which lead to distress. Food and shelter have given place in importance to personal service, though it is common still to enter the office of a relief agency and stand abashed before a stern old monolith whose business is the mechanical termination of the poor. This sibyl is becoming extinct. The carefully trained case worker with a heart and an imagination is taking her place: The dispenser of doles is departing, and in his stead is arising the skilled social worker—the citizen of vision who can glimpse the finished statue in the granite block; who can see the summer blossoms in the snow. Child care.—For decades we have told each other that men are born free and equal. The truest phase of that political assertion for social workers is that every child has a right to a fighting chance. WTierefore, in his days of helplessness he may command the service of the com-

8

ROBERT

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munity to start him in the way of developing into effective citizenship. If he is found in an ash barrel and no man claims him, the community is his foster parent and will bring him up to self-support and competency. If he is illegitimate, the public will see that his rights are preserved and will guard him through infancy. If he is mentally dull, the state will protect him and will look after him to see that he is not a menace to society. If, suffering from none of these tragic handicaps, he has parents who neglect him, and he becomes delinquent, the public again will step in for his protection rather than his punishment. This is the modern practice. It was not always so. Though the process of indenture, which was essentially the placing of children in free homes, was practiced in New England from the first days of the settlement, the treatment of children down to a very recent day was harsh. If the little fellow committed a crime he was sent to prison. Jesse Pomeroy, guilty of murder, went to Charlestown at the age of fourteen, there to be kept in solitary confinement for the rest of his natural life. That was before most of us in this assembly were born. Yet he is still serving his time. Like a relic of ancient days and outgrown legal systems he now walks his few paces in the prison yard; and all about him are the evidences of an enlightened probation law, a fair system of parole, a method of treating juvenile delinquents which aims to develop character and start the springs of citizenship. The first forty years of his time he spent in complete solitary. His is a living death. The little fellows who came after him bask in a sunshine the rays of which have never touched his pallid cheek. He was a great problem, but no greater perhaps than Judge Cabot of the juvenile court at Boston may have to deal with once, or perhaps twice, in a morning. From a rigid system of accountability of the citizen and a crust for misery, we have come to methods of personal service aimed at helping others to help themselves. Health.—The effect of our new philosophy of conduct upon problems of the public health is marked. Within your memory and mine a man's physical condition was his own personal business. Barring the quarantine of a few of the most dreaded diseases, the individual might take his malady where he pleased, might carry a loathsome disease to the altar and there secure the sanction of law to spread it, might run a course of debauchery leading to poverty, the ruin of his family life, and

ROBERT

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the public support of his dependents. The problem of health, to the public mind, was the problem of bad health. Our new philosophy has shifted the burden of proof. W e are becoming concerned with the problem of good health. The public good is becoming the center of anxiety. Church and science will agree that in spite of the teachings of cult and dogma; in spite of the tenets of ethical philosophy, flowering in the beauty of poetry and song; in spite of our inborn belief in the immortality of the soul—in spite of all these mental attitudes of ours, the moral stamina of a nation remains a reflex of her physical condition. Sound health in any people is essential to intellectual attainment and to the advancement of morals. From this basis it is easy to reason that that community which is shot through with syphilis and gonorrhea, which is shorn of a high percentage of its working energy by tuberculosis; which has not one perfect set of teeth in a thousand; which musters barely sixty percent of passable physiques in a war levy of her finest manhood—such a nation, except resuscitating and preventive measures be soon set up, is likely to become morally rotten and in the end Godless—likely to crumble as a power in civilization. Wherefore we are departing from our old-time negative enforcement of the police power in matters of health and are heeding social necessity by requiring the individual to guard his good health as a guaranty that he may function the better as a citizen and may ward off the danger of hurting his neighbor. Mental defectives.—Our vision of social solidarity has brought a new fundamental into our treatment of the insane and the mentally defective. Do you recall that screeching, foul, and unclad wretch in Hugo's Notre Dame, chained in a stone cage at the edge of the way where the public might cross themselves and toss her a crust? D o you recall that indelible scar branded by the demon of superstition and ignorance upon the conscience of N e w England—that tragedy to which we give the name of Salem witchcraft? Perhaps too you may remember the stirring memorial of Dorothea Dix against the inhuman shackling of the insane as late as 1845 in Massachusetts. In the interval between that day and this has grown up a science of psychology. A person demented was in that older time a person pos-

10

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sessed of a devil—a wretch accursed. Today he is a person mentally sick, deserving of kindly care and scientific treatment, capable sometimes of cure. In those primitive times the law held but two views of mentality: either a person was furiously mad so that he was non compos mentis, incapable of reason; or he was of full mental capacity, responsible as a citizen and liable for his conduct as fully as any other person whatsoever. A state called feeble-mindedness was unknown to the law. Today we recognize degrees of mentality and a condition of mental deficiency or feebleness of mind is given at least tacit recognition in our statutes. This is the new fundamental in the treatment of the insane. Lawbreakers.—Akin to this response to the reasoning of science is a great development in our treatment of lawbreakers. Our idea of justice, which is the essential element in whatever in the way of a social contract may be thought to exist, has undergone a change from a condition of punishments and rewards according to act, to a more enlightened state of punishment and reward according to desert. Now comes Social Work and says that desert is not wholly a question of intent, of the will to do; but that, on the contrary, it contains an element of the power to carry responsibility, upon which capacity the will can be presupposed; that one's just deserts rest, therefore, upon the mental equipment with which one faces the responsibilities of citizenship as well as upon the mere will content of the mind at the time of trespass. So, therefore, in our generation, justice passes into its third major phase, namely, that of punishment and reward according to capacity. For the convict this new phase means that he is emerging from that Stone Age of prison custody which is passing like the remnant of a geologic ice-time and is stepping out into the sunlight and the green pastures of humane treatment according to his condition rather than his conduct. This new fundamental means within a few years an abandonment of our time-honored practice of committing convicts to a particular set of stone walls, there to be kept for an arbitrary time, and in its stead the commitment of persons found guilty to the custody of government, an administrative arm of the sovereign disposing of them within the limits of their sentence for custody and treatment according to scientific classification based upon mental and physical capacity. It means a clearinghouse system in commitments.

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n

Public agencies in social welfare.—If we keep our social dawning in mind it becomes easy to see the meaning of recent expansion in our public welfare work, in our public service, that unhurried precinct of little men, destined in the future evolution of popular government, let us hope, to become an honored trust, where statesmanship shall ever dwell. How dear to our hearts is our backyard habit of criticizing our public service; and how fully justified, seeing that the service is a direct reflex of our own dictates as citizens! Your average public servant is an indifferent little fellow. He breaks into print and out of it again, just as we superiors do. He rages, he preaches, he stamps—his reactions are like our own, but above all he is a little fellow. To scratch him on the surface is to stir him to the depths, he is so very shallow. We rave at him, we deplore his mediocrity, we tell ourselves what we must do to elevate our civil service and dignify public office; after which we do nothing. So chronic is our ineffectiveness as a public that one may now safely define a political reform as a wish for good, lasting one term. But do you note that something important is happening in this same weed patch of the public service—happening apparently without our conscious help, and in spite of our denials of efficiency? Denial is sometimes a stimulant. You will recall that some of the best advertising the Prince of Darkness ever received came in that hour when he was accompanied to a high place and denied. The public welfare departments are the seat of a great seismic disturbance. There is hardly a state jurisdiction in which an awakening has not taken place. The auditing of doles is giving way to department conferences upon the adequacy of relief. Private agencies are being called in and their cooperation is being sought. Requests for appropriations for purposes of research are common. Governors and lesser political lights are taking personal interest in service which touches the family hearthstone so closely—and the extension of the franchise to women does not explain this virtue altogether. In some states our departments of public welfare are taking the leadership in the constructive social service of the community. Everywhere the new effort is producing men and women of power and devotion to their service. In this Conference—in this gathering—are many of the finest of our profession; and they are public social workers.

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Call to mind that basic change in our philosophy of citizenship and the reason for this renaissance becomes clear. Social necessity forces the community as an organized body to take positive action to protect the common good. Wherefore our departments of public welfare are destined to a future of leadership enviable in the profession of social work. All honor to a public service that is worthy in spite of our neglect. Industrial justice.—But if these changing concepts reveal social progress, what shall we say of that gathering storm which we call the cry for justice in industry? What„problem comes closer to the family hearthstone than that of the right to work and to earn a living wage? Is a new day dawning for the laboring man? In days gone by we have said that industrial justice is a problem for capital on the one hand and labor on the other; that they might fight it out and to the victor would belong the spoils. Our courts, recognizing the tremendous power of capital through machinery to control the working people, have gone to an extreme of expediency in placing in the hands of labor the strike, a weapon which as now practiced amounts to a conspiracy. Today we see that this battle between capital and labor is like the campaign in Belgium—it bears hard upon the place of combat. Leaders on both sides of the issue see the fallacy in our former view, and now recognize four elements in the question, namely, capital, labor, business management, and the public; greatest of these is the public. We see capital still fighting to keep labor down to a basis of contract as though social values were not involved, yielding ever so little to the urgings of social service on living and working conditions; we see organized labor, through the strike, in grave danger of becoming a tyranny; we see business management hindered and production interrupted by endless bickerings and shutdowns; and we see the public paying through the nose. And seeing these things we see all too plainly that the American laborer, bound by the iron bands of modern unit machinery, is a slave to a few motions on a single machine. From them comes his hope of bread for his little ones. Through them must come his emancipation into manhood. Not capital, but the economic trend of the world makes him a slave in industry. And seeing him thus, we say of him as we said of the slave of 1850, that the world may call him a chattel, but we know that he has a soul. Possessing that precious secret, we can reason

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i}

that justice will not obtain until industry recognizes his spiritual value. It cannot feel of his muscle, chuck up his chin, count his teeth, and say, "Yes, this is fit; I'll use it." He is worth more to industry than his power to shift levers and bend his body. His loyalty counts. His intelligence counts. His residue of strength and courage at the end of the day's labor counts. He is a living, quivering, sentient being, with a Godgiven right to the opportunity to grow and to rear his young. Nor is the recognition of his human value a denial of the truth that his compensation must be based upon the value of his industrial effort. The new fundamental in this phase of social work is that we recognize as never before the social necessities in the industrial riddle. Legal contract does not explain industry: social necessity does. Let another fifty years go by and we are likely to see our courts overruling their blanket approval of the strike because it operates as a conspiracy, and placing in its stead such a philosophy of industrial conduct as shall protect the public and the working man without denying capital its just encouragement. The correctness of the reasoning is not denied by the fact that we are still far from its accomplishment. These, then, are basic changes in the philosophy of social work. If now, by a figure of speech, we might stand upon a high place and look out across the vast plain of human habitation, seething with industry, gay with pleasure, bowed with the sorrows of tragedy, groping its way onward and upward, seeing with dim vision a future of greater attainment, struggling like a Titan against itself, yet always and forever a society, interdependent, in which no individual can be a law unto himself, and none can lead except he serve—in this ferment of mankind, with its scum at the top and its dregs at the bottom, we would see clearly the necessity for a constant and continuous service of large heart and skillful hand, grounded in scientific analysis of human relations and dedicated to the betterment of the race. Let us feel a little proud that we have a share in this service. For in that day when the enmities between men, and nations of men, shall be softened and humanity shall have gone forward toward a brotherhood of man, those who come after us may look backward and say of the social service of this decade that it helped to found a better order. Let us pause at the tasks of today, then, and renew our faith. Let us look eastward to the rising sun.

UNDERLYING

PRINCIPLES

PRACTICES By

IN

AT. ANTOINETTE

SOCIAL

AND

COMMON

WORK* CANNON

I UNDERSTAND THE O B J E C T OF THIS PAPER TO BE TO FIND E L E M E N T S ,

if there are any, which are common to the several special fields and forms of social work, and which may give us the material for the deduction of some principles which are basic to social work as a profession. These common elements or units may be of content, of objective, of method, of working condition, and of philosophical concept. Some such, I am convinced, exist. What they may indicate as to fundamental principles we can perhaps discover when we have agreed as to what they are. Inquiry into this subject may help to clear our ideas as to the old question of whether or not social work is a profession—a question of academic rather than practical interest, perhaps, in comparison with the other question of the interrelations of our special fields, yet with practical implications. In 1 9 1 5 Dr. Abraham Flexner delivered before the National Conference an epochal paper on the subject. His six criteria were reviewed by Mr. Hodson three years ago. It may be permissible to refer to them again here. Dr. Flexner said that social work met the professional tests: of being constituted of intellectual operations carrying responsibility for decisions; of having its basis in scientific learning; and of self-organization; and that it had if anything too altruistic a general objective. He said that social work seemed to fail to meet the test of having a definite, practical purpose of its own, accomplished by direct effort. As to the test of the "educationally communicable technique," he was doubtful, and he quoted an educator of social workers as saying, "We don't know exactly what to teach them." Dr. Flexner said that the social worker both utilized the professions—medicine, law, education, the ministry—to * Printed in Proceedings of the National Conference of Social Work, 1928. Reprinted in the Family, July, 1928.

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give needed services, and supplied the social complement to those professions. H e said that personal qualities such as judgment and understanding, rather than technical skill, were the desirable equipment of the social worker. It is true that social work has been practiced as a part of medicine, a part of psychiatry, a part of the legal or judicial system, a part of education, and a part of church work, besides being practiced under its own auspices as family and children's case work and as community organization. It is true, too, that these several alliances have developed a tendency in social work to separate into specialties, and that education f o r social work has been to a considerable extent preparation for special fields of practice rather than education in common social work techniques and knowledge. A n d it is true that social case work, even when practicing under its own organization, depends much upon the community's professional resources f o r the effects it wishes to see accomplished. Have we, then, as a group of social workers, disintegrated, and do we see ourselves as an interstitial or as a catalytic element in society, supporting the functioning cells or stimulating the ions to complete activity? On the contrary, I believe that the most significant developments in social work now in process are in the integration of social workers as a group, the defining of common interests, objectives, and methods, and the working out of a basic education. I see social work entering upon an era not of specialization but of generalization, and not of supplementary but of intrinsic function. What may come after the generalizing we can only surmise f r o m the growth of other highly organized human activities. T h e experience of society with law and medicine, together with the content of social work as we see it now, would lead us to expect another period of specialization, upon the general foundation now being laid down. T h e specialization of the present is not, as I see it, evidence of any late stage of development of social work. It is rather, as D r . Flexner found it, evidence of undevelopment. It is a pre-general rather than a post-general specialization; not a differentiation of a vast, homogeneous body of subject matter, but a preliminary upgathering in various quarters of the subject matter which will be assembled and organized as the common basic material of social work. A s yet we practice as specialists

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in social work rather than as social workers, and our common foundation is not clear to us because it has not yet been built. This is by no means, I believe, an unprecedented experience: "Science is born of art"; practice precedes principles; our activity is specific first of all, meeting specific needs, which upon later inspection are found to have much in common. There were among primitive men, Osier tells us, specialists in trephining the skull, thousands of years before there was general surgery. Later, among the Egyptians, medicine was practiced "on a plan of separation." "Each physician," said Herodotus, "treats a single disorder and no more; thus the country swarms with medical practitioners, some undertaking to cure diseases of the eye, others of the head, others again of the teeth, others of the intestines, and some those which are not local." There may have been some generalization of medicine then, but still later, in Europe, the main divisions of medical practice, medicine, surgery, and obstetrics, developed among separate groups before the common foundations of anatomy, physiology, and pharmacology were laid in the universities. We could search history for other illustrations of this theme but it is not necessary. We can probably accept our place in a young but true profession without either depression or delusions of grandeur, provided we can begin to be clear as to even a few common fundamentals. It is in the division of social work which we call social case work that we have the greatest number of varieties of practice. This is due to alliances with other professions, each of which recognizes in itself a social component, conditions by its major interest the social practice within its field, and contributes through its social workers, to social work as a whole, knowledge of some special aspects of human life. Besides the hyphenated varieties of social work thus engendered we have at least two major varieties practiced independently—family and children's social case work. A few years ago a group of representatives of national social case work organizations, the Milford Conference, began meeting to discuss their working interrelationships. The first question they could not collectively answer was, "What is generic social case work?" Accordingly they appointed a committee to which they entrusted the task of answering this simple question and after two years the committee brought in a tentative report. I wish to quote some of the main propositions of that

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report, and to ask you to consider their bearing not only upon social case work as a whole but also, perhaps in some modified form, upon community organization as well, and to say whether they do not suggest elements which are common to social work and which may yield us some fundamental principles. T h e first statement has to do with the kind of human situation with which social case work deals. "Social case work deals with the human being whose capacity to organize his own normal social activities may be impaired by one or more deviations from accepted standards of normal social life of which the following are typical." Then follow about forty "deviations," personal and environmental in nature, a list intended to be indicative and concrete rather than exhaustive or logical. This statement at once suggests the distinction between the individual client of social case work and the group client of community organization. A t the same time it suggests an objective common to both divisions of social work, namely, capacity to organize normal social activities. The difference between an individual as member of a group and a group as made up of individual members implies many differences in problems attacked and in methods of attack, as between case workers and community workers. Y e t these concepts are the same for both; the individual in his social relationships, the group to which an individual belongs as suffering or profiting by his relationships to it, self-maintenance as socially desirable f o r individual and f o r group, organization of social activities as a necessity of social life, norms of social activities. Other professions have social concepts and social objectives, but I think that only social work never has a purely individual objective. The lawyer will defend his client against all other persons, against the State if need be; the physician's patient may be bounded by the skin; the tutor's aim is the growth in knowledge of each single student; to the church each soul is in itself of value. But the most individualistic of social case workers must think, as he treats his client, of the reaction of such treatment upon the client's family, his associates, and the community. The treatment is f o r the purpose of furthering his capacity to organize his own normal social activities. Miss Richmond's definition truly says that social case work "consists of those processes which de-

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velop personality, by means of adjustments . . . . between man and his social environment." The development of individual personality as such, however, seems to me more normally the aim of the teacher, psychiatrist, and priest than of the social worker, whose concern is with the personality in interaction with the social environment. The psychiatric social worker, who is prone sometimes to follow exactly the psychiatrist in his pursuit of personality objectives, probably becomes less of a social worker and more of a psychiatrist's aide in proportion as she lets the patient's group subordinate itself to the patient in her work. This is equally true of medical social work, and indeed of all the special forms of social case work. It was a physician who made me realize that to take a sick person out of an environment responsible for his sickness and let a well person take his place in the same environment was poor social medicine and not social work at all. We have said that a concept of normal social activities is common to all forms of social work. Have we then any accepted definition of social norms? No, and that is one reason why the specific purpose of social work has been obscure. But norms do not have to be defined in order that the concept of a norm may be active. The Milford Conference committee report says, "A recognition by social case work of norms of human life and human relationships is implied in its concepts of deviations and of social treatment." This, I think, could be said of community organization as well as of social case work. The chapter of social science which deals with normal social activities would be the logical scientific basis of social work but I believe it cannot be written until through social study and treatment of deviations the normal structures and functions appear. It seems to me inevitable that social work should produce the material for such a chapter of sociology. Every case study and community study which appears is a contribution to it, if the study gives us any truth as to what is socially wrong and why, in a given situation. Granted that social work has a common objective, namely, the capacity of communities and individuals to organize their own social activities, has it any means of its own of reaching that objective? Dr. Flexner says that the social worker brings to bear the expert resources of the community but has no tools for direct treatment of a situation. The Milford Conference committee, however, lists certain "established

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methods" in use by social case work in all its fields. Many of them are methods of community organization also. My own list, made with the whole of social work in mind, would include: investigation, diagnosis, planning, treatment. Investigation and treatment are by means of techniques, namely: interviewing, group conference, organization of experience. It is clear that these procedures are, in one material or another, common to other professions. Directed to the object of social work they have taken on specific character and I think we can fairly say that we have a communicable technique. The whole method seems to me more closely allied with educational method than with the method of any other profession. The essential difference between social work and teaching seems to be that, whereas in teaching there must usually be a well-understood subject to be taught, as well as a student, in social work the subject and student are one and the same. You teach your client to himself, your community to itself. The practice of social work is pedagogic but not academic. In this it is allied to psychiatric method, but it differs from psychiatric method, as does education, in concerning itself with adding new experience, instead of focusing on the use the client can make of his past experience. A principle inherent in this common method of social work is one which has been called participation. The client or community takes active part in making and carrying out the plan of social organization. In group conference and in some interviews the practice of "interpenetration" calls for participation by each member of the group or party to the interview in the production of joint thought. Interpénétration seems as definitely a tool of social work as argument, instruction, and psychoanalysis are tools of other professions. The Milford report speaks of the "particularization of concepts of normal life and activities and of deviations from them," by means of the facts assembled in the social case history. Here again a distinction is evident between social case work and community work, but the principle of particularization seems to remain for both an essential. This case is a case, let us say, of desertion; and, particularly speaking, it is the case of the desertion of a certain family by a certain husband and father, under circumstances which combine differently from the circumstances of any other desertion case. The situation is not to be dealt with, therefore, routinely, by its label of desertion, but individually,

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according to its particular combination of circumstances. The Milford committee says, "Nowhere in our analysis of social case work does its essential unity appear more strikingly than in the comparison of the range of social history which is considered important by the different specialized fields." Comparison of the range of social history of communities considered important in community organization does not show any such unity of form and detail; but such publications as the recent Case Studies in Community Organization (W. W. Pettit) bear out my contention that in this field too the situation dealt with must be particularized as well as classified, by means of historical facts, including, as the case history does, both past and present, both personal and environmental data. One more statement of the Milford report seems to have bearing on the question of underlying principles: "Inherent in the practice of social case work is a philosophy of individual and social responsibility and of the ethical obligations of the social worker to his client and to the community." This statement just as it is phrased seems to be true equally of social case work and community organization. For definition of our philosophical concepts we are almost as much at a loss as we are for definition of social norms. Here again practice comes before preaching. And if it is true, and I think it is, that we do in fact expect social workers to maintain in their practice certain kinds of relationships to and between community and clients, then sooner or later the philosophical thinking in regard to those relationships will find expression and we shall have a social philosophy as well as a social work sociology to discuss for us our underlying principles. To sum up, I suggest the following as some of the underlying principles of social work, based upon common elements in the practice of the several special fields: 1 . It is an objective of social work to develop normal interrelationships between members of social groups. 2. Self-maintenance on the part of individuals and of groups is an interest of social work. 3. Social activities can be organized both by groups and by individuals. 4. Social work is methodical and proceeds by investigation, diagnosis, plan, and treatment.

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5. The method of social work is primarily of educational character, the subject taught being the social life of the client (individual or group), past, present, and future. 6. Particularization of the situation under treatment is necessary in all fields of social work. 7. Participation of client (individual or group) is essential to the securing of a social work result. 8. Inherent in the practice of social work is a philosophy of individual and social responsibility.

SOCIAL

CAUSE

WORK:

By PORTER

SOCIAL

WORK

IN

1929

is

A

AND R.

DEVELOPING

FUNCTION*

LEE

FORCE

IN

A

CHANGING

world. From a movement dominated largely by motives it has developed into a movement in which motives compete for dominance with intellectual conviction. Fifty years ago charity was the mainspring of social work. Today its driving power is a conception of social welfare. The whole significance of this development is yet to be understood. In the present discussion I shall attempt only to sharpen some of the questions which it raises. In order to provide a background for this discussion, I should like to interpret social work as having had, both in its historical and in its modern forms, the characteristics of a Cause; and to interpret its development during recent decades as having added to its character as a Cause the character of a Function of well-organized community life. A cause is usually a movement directed toward the elimination of an intrenched evil. This may seem a narrow conception, since many of the historic causes of mankind have been directed toward the establishment of a new way of meeting human need or a new opportunity for human satisfaction. Nevertheless, when the origin of such causes is considered, it seems to be true that they have been inspired more frequently by a desire to get rid of evils than by a desire to bring in a specific new order of things. By way of illustration, the struggle for democracy may be interpreted as a cause. But James Bryce tells us that: neither the conviction that power is better entrusted to the people nor the desire of the average man to share in the government of his own community has in fact been a strong force inducing political change. Popular government has been usually sought and won and valued not as a good thing in * Presidential address, National Conference of Social Work. Printed in Proceedings of the National Conference of Social Work, 1929, and in the New York School of Social Work Publication, Social Work as Cause and Function (New York: Columbia University Press, 1 9 3 7 ) .

PORTER

R.

LEE

23

itself but as a means of getting rid of tangible grievances or securing tangible benefits. 1

Whether we emphasize the elimination of evil or the establishment of a positive good as the objective of the cause, it seems to be true that once the elimination of the evil is accomplished, once the new positive good is established, interest in it is likely to slacken. The momentum of the cause will never carry over adequately to the subsequent task of making its fruits permanent. The slow methodical organized effort needed to make enduring the achievement of the cause calls for different motives, different skill, different machinery. At the moment of its success, the cause tends to transfer its interest and its responsibility to an administrative unit whose responsibility becomes a function of well-organized community life. In the sense in which I am using the term, charity in its origin and in its finest expression represents a cause. The organized administration of relief, under whatever auspices, has become a function. The campaigns to obtain widows' pensions and workmen's compensation have many of the aspects of the cause. The administration of these benefits has become a function of organized community life in most American states. The settlement movement began as a cause, and the activities of many of its representatives still give it that character. In general, however, it has developed as a function of community life. The abolition of child labor has been, and still is, a cause. As the result of its success as a cause, it again has become a well-established function in many American states. A cause is usually the concern only of those individuals who accept its appeal and who are willing to devote themselves to its furtherance. Its adherents may believe their cause to be so essentially right that all mankind should rally to it. There is, however, no obligation upon any individual to do so unless he wishes to. A function, on the other hand, implies an organized effort incorporated into the machinery of community life in the discharge of which the acquiescence, at least, and ultimately the support of the entire community is assumed. Since cause and function are both carried on by human agents, they make use of the same human characteristics. Nevertheless, their em1

James Bryce, Modern

Democracies

(New York: Macmillan Co., 1 9 2 1 ) , p. 41.

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PORTER

R.

LEE

phases are different and their demands in the long run require different combinations of human qualities. Zeal is perhaps the most conspicuous trait in adherents to the cause, while intelligence is perhaps most essential in those who administer a function. The emblazoned banner and the shibboleth for the cause, the program and the manual for the function; devoted sacrifice and the flaming spirit for the cause, fidelity, standards, and methods for the function; an embattled host for the cause, an efficient personnel for the function. W e may now abandon this flight into rhetoric and come back to the practical consideration of current social work; but I hope we may bring with us a conviction that this rhetorical contrast has a measure of validity. For an outstanding problem of social work at the present time is that of developing its service as a function of well-organized community life without sacrificing its capacity to inspire in men enthusiasm for a cause. The change in the nature of social work from that of cause to that of function has aroused apprehension in many minds. As one writer has reminded us, "The curse of the poor is still their poverty," but as compared with an earlier day the voices which are proclaiming this fact have rather less of the clarion quality. There are still deeply rooted evils concerning which the American public everywhere not only needs to be informed and organized but needs also to be aroused. Moreover, both in the ranks of the general public and in the ranks of social work there are those who have apparently been lulled by the very bulk of our diversified efforts to promote social welfare into a feeling that little remains to be done to bring in the millennium, except the unhampered prosecution of these efforts. In this situation it is not to be wondered at that some persons with the temperament of the prophet rather than that of the executive deplore the preoccupation of social workers with organization, technique, standards, and efficiency which have followed the development of social work from cause to function. The development of social work from cause to function was inevitable; it was also indispensable to the permanence of its own great contribution as a cause. Once the objective of a cause is reached, it can be made permanent only by a combination of organization and education. The effort to put its results into effect must be maintained over a long period. As compared with the dash and drive necessary to achieve those

PORTER

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results, this subsequent effort is humdrum and routine. Its chief reliance may have to be upon routineers and experts, whereas the chief reliance of the cause may have been upon inspired leaders. It is natural that this subsequent period of organization and technical effort should seem to have abandoned most of the zeal which characterized the cause. Zeal alone, however, is a frail equipment for those who are genuinely interested in human welfare. Its fluctuations are great. Organization and technical efficiency are by no means guaranties of sound social programs; but they are, on the whole, as valuable contributions to human progress as the zeal and idealism which inspire them. A modern historian, after noting the influence of the Roman governmental organization upon the English church, has proceeded to discuss the centuries following the Roman occupation of Britain, during which the zeal of the church which had blazed militantly during preceding centuries deteriorated almost to the point of extinction. It did not die out completely because, as he says, "Good organization can survive periodic lapses in zeal." 2 The functional development of social work may be interpreted, therefore, as essential to the permanence of its results as a cause. This conception of the development of social work from cause to function has some practical implications. Its most important significance, in my judgment, lies in the field of motivation. As a cause, a movement secures solidarity and force from its inherently dramatic appeal. The motives of those who enlist in a cause, whatever their derivation, come to a focus in a personal ought to help. The motives of those who support a function come to focus in a community ought to provide a service. The motives which lead men to support a function as an obligation of citizenship are in no sense lower or less worthy than those which lead men to enlist in a cause. They are likely, however, to be less personal, less dynamic and less dramatic in their expression. The appeal of the cause is to the sympathy of men, to their sense of justice, to their humanitarian instincts. The appeal of the function may reach all three but it does so less directly. It depends much more upon reaching the intelligence of men and their sense of social obligation. In the long run, I doubt whether any substantial functional develop2 G . M. Trevelyan, History of England (New York: Longmans, Green & Co., 1928), p. 61.

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ment can be supported by an appeal directed chiefly to the motives which support causes. Social work must decrease relatively its reliance upon sentiment and increase relatively its reliance upon an intellectual conviction on the part of its supporters. The recent record of social work affords a great deal of evidence that this change in the basis of its appeal is already in process, for much of preventive social work and much of our research program could have been accepted and supported only on the basis of intellectual conviction. Sentiment does not readily respond to the appeal of prevention or research. W e may carry the significance of this change still farther. The successful development of intellectual conviction in the public which supports social work inevitably means that social work comes under increasingly critical scrutiny from those who support it. A movement of the cause type can enlist support from anyone who believes in its program and has faith in its leaders. I f its active personnel are satisfied with its results, its adherents are likely to be. As a functional agency, on the other hand, the organization which expects support must prove its case. Zeal is no longer a sole test of merit; efficiency is asked for. To the community as a whole a cause may be justified by the faith and purpose of its adherents. A function must be justified by demonstrated possibilities of achievement. At this point we may well ask whether we are not attempting to carry on functionalized social work with many of the habits, methods, and machinery which are more appropriate to the cause. I f we are, we may be crippling ourselves by the use of equipment which is not adapted to our changing responsibility. It is characteristic of the cause that it tends to overstate the possibility of results. Most advocates claim more for their favorite projects than those projects can reasonably be expected to deliver. In so far as we continue to justify social work in terms exclusively of faith in its program, we are relying in a sense upon the philosophy and the ethical basis of the cause. I realize that reliance upon the cause philosophy is still necessary because to a large extent the American public needs to be aroused as well as informed. I realize that the American public in its support of social work responds more generously, both in attention and money, to a sentimental than to an intellectual appeal. Nevertheless, the establishment of social work as a

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function, necessary as it is to insure the permanence of its fine results as a cause, changes radically the relationship of social workers, both professional and lay, to the public. If I were to put this change into a sentence, I would say that the historic obligation of social workers to the public for leadership had changed to an obligation for leadership supplemented by accountability. In discharging the obligation of accountability we may easily put an unnecessary strain upon the community's acceptance of our leadership by a tendency to claim more than we can perform, through a desire to be uncompromisingly cosmic instead of being, for part of the time at least, reasonably but idealistically mundane. The confusion between cause and function in the status of social work will perhaps become more evident if we examine some of our current practices. I have selected three for illustration. Prevention as a leading objective in social work is not new. It has steadily gained in force and we are beginning to accumulate convincing evidence of its possibilities, chiefly in the field of public health. In a world which had accustomed itself to the acceptance of misery as a part of the divine order of things, the campaign to establish prevention as a practicable objective has had many of the aspects of a cause. The practical working out of preventive programs has all of the aspects of a function. It may be questioned whether our zeal for prevention has not, in some ways, loaded the philosophy of prevention with a greater expectancy of results than can at present be achieved. We hear it said with increasing frequency that prevention is cheaper than cure. It is certainly better than cure and on the face of it prevention ought to be cheaper, but we are far from being able to demonstrate that it is always cheaper. For one thing, the costs of cure are probably more definitely measurable than are the costs of prevention. This is because, except within narrow limits, we do not know what a preventive program implies. Certainly, thus far preventive social work has revealed some new problems as difficult to handle as those which it has seemed to prevent. No small amount of the work which is now being done, both by curative and by preventive agencies, has developed as a by-product of preventive work. Workmen's compensation is not wholly a preventive measure, but it has had some important preventive aspects. So far as I know, no estimate has been made of the comparative costs of compensa-

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tion and the costs of the former haphazard methods of dealing with industrial accidents. The financial costs of compensation may be less. Even if they were not, the gains, ethical and otherwise, would have been worth the increased cost. Nevertheless, workmen's compensation has not been undiluted gain. These laws have certainly complicated the problem of the old man in industry, for they have been one factor in making him ineligible for employment. Does good social work create the necessity for more social work? I am inclined to think it does, and nowhere is this more evident than at the point where preventive work is applied. After many decades of advocating prison reform as social work's dominant note in the field of delinquency, we have in recent years placed increasing emphasis upon the prevention of crime. Will the prevention of crime be cheaper than cure? Probably it will, partly because there has been too little cure in spite of the huge sums spent on the custody of the criminal. But prevention of crime involves factors so enormously complex that we cannot even be sure what they are. The reform school, the juvenile court, the probation system, organized recreation, vocational training, the psychiatric clinic, and that unstable but promising adolescent, "characterbuilding activities," have all in their time been conceived as contributions toward the prevention of crime. Practically all of them have made demonstrable contributions to this end, but crime is still with us. Does all this lead to the conclusion that our faith in prevention is unjustified? Not at all. The abolition of poverty, the prevention of crime, the elimination of preventable disease, the reduction of industrial handicaps to the worker are causes. They need no justification save their own inherent appeal to the justice and enlightened social consciences of men. If experience counts for anything, however, the complete achievement of these objectives is still far in the future. Before they are reached we shall have to follow a long, slow program of functional experiment and practice. Prevention will bring us closer to the millennium than cure ever can; but that millennium is not just around the corner. Nor can we assume that for every evil which we are now trying to cure, piecemeal fashion, a sure-fire program of prevention can as yet be offered. Neither, I submit, can we be sure that the cost of keeping evils prevented, if I may be permitted so awkward a phrase, will in every case be cheaper than cure. In both its preventive and its

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curative efforts, social work has demonstrated a capacity to assist civilized society to find its way out of its uncivilized habits. We may be doing an injustice to this capacity of social work by seeming to offer a more rapid and less costly rate of progress toward that end than is humanly possible. It is part of functional responsibility that its problems be accurately measured, that the facilities required for its task be accurately estimated, and that its operation be not impeded by overloading its machinery because its supporters have an unreasonable expectation of results. The expectations of the public in terms of the results of social work are largely those which social workers themselves suggest. I have already stated that an overestimate of possible results seems to be inevitable in the promotion of a cause. It can easily be a grave handicap in the discharge of a function. The distinction is relatively easy to make but exceedingly difficult to apply in practice. The effort to apply it, however, can hardly fail to strengthen the status of functional social work. It can hardly fail, either, to conserve the interest of the public in the validity of causes. Like the emphasis upon prevention, the use of the demonstration is a method of long standing in social work which has recently come into more active use. The principle of the demonstration involves the establishment of a new service in a community, sometimes carried on under more or less tentative administrative and financial auspices, until its permanent value is so apparent that it will be established by the community as a part of its permanent social equipment. Demonstrations by that name have been most conspicuous, perhaps, in the fields of public health, mental hygiene, and recreation. The demonstration, however, has long been a recognized function of private agencies in many fields as a preliminary to the transfer of specific services to governmental auspices. For the purpose of this discussion, also, I am assuming that much of the extension work carried on by national organizations in new communities is like the demonstration in nature. The value of the demonstration cannot be questioned. Properly used it insures earlier attention to community needs than would otherwise be given. It saves many communities the loss of time, money, and enthusiasm which the delays and mistakes of the trial-and-error method of organization frequently involve.

30

P O R T E R R. L E E It is logical to read into the philosophy of the demonstration that its

ultimate development means the spread of specific services until they reach all those who have need of them. Once the value of a treatment service or of a preventive program has been demonstrated, then its spread, so we reason, ought not to stop until every person and every community has received its benefits. T h e demonstration is a functional device whereby the objectives of many of our causes can be brought nearer to complete realization. This logical extension of the demonstration principle raises some questions. D o the two factors of qualified personnel and financial resources put a limit upon its practicable extension? Perhaps not, but an interest in functional efficiency would seem to suggest that we face the question, however much our zeal in the cause of human welfare may blind us to its practical importance. T h e problem of personnel is already acute. A l l professions, the older ones and many new ones, are competing f o r personnel. Some of the older ones may be overcrowded, but none is overcrowded with really able practitioners. T h e functional demands of modern social work call for no less insight and leadership than did the older type of social work, but they require in addition a scientific foundation and a trained capacity f o r efficient practice. T h e modern social worker, as compared with his or her predecessors, is meeting more exacting demands for performance, is assuming a more specific type of responsibility, is meeting with fair success more intricate and elusive problems. But at his best the social worker does not exist in sufficient numbers to meet the demand for him. This excess of demand over supply f o r competent social workers may be interpreted as one evidence that good social work creates the necessity f o r more social work. W e may concede that the extension demand f o r new developments in unorganized fields has been to some extent artificially stimulated, but it must nevertheless be true that the remarkable spread of social work to new areas is largely the result of demonstrated achievement. So far it is a justification of social work both as cause and as function. But our very success may imperil both our functional efficiency and our leadership if we try to develop opportunities for service beyond our resources in qualified personnel. I realize that those agencies responsible f o r the

finding

and placing of

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personnel are alive to this dilemma. The answer is not easy. Would it strengthen or weaken the status of social work if we put ourselves on record as being willing to make use of the demonstration and extension principles only to the extent that we can support them with qualified personnel? What about the costs of social work? How much social welfare can we afford? There are several quick answers to this question. The chests talk about "the saturation point." The professional money raisers tell us that there is no limit provided the cause is legitimate and the campaign properly organized. Some of us believe that, whatever our resources, we cannot afford to stop our efforts to rid the world of evil, no matter what expenditures for luxuries need to be curtailed or what new methods of money raising need to be devised in order to find the ways and means. The question has both theoretical and practical implications. The budget idea has not yet been applied to the total expenditures of a nation. But in the long run a nation, like a family, cannot spend more than it earns without sooner or later seeing its standard of living come down with a crash. If we may judge by the steady increase in the wealth of this nation and by the increase also in the sums which the American people make available for social welfare, we have not begun to exhaust our resources for such purposes. Thus far, however, we seem to have assumed that the sources of support are inexhaustible. We have devoted ourselves to the task of devising measures which will promote sounder, more wholesome life, confidently content to place the responsibility for financing them where the responsibility for financing the national debt of our first government was placed by Alexander Hamilton—on the broad backs of the American people. I believe this question to be important for social workers because I think we have never faced the cost of the logical extension of our demonstration programs to all those persons in American communities who might benefit by them. Some of these services, like vaccination, are relatively inexpensive. Others, like treatment for personality disorders, are enormously expensive. In between and outside and all around are services and potential benefits in health, in economic security, in education, in cultural opportunity, representing all degrees of costliness. Can civilization afford all of the benefits which it knows how to create? I incline,

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temperamentally at least, to believe that it cannot afford to do without them. I believe, furthermore, that as a nation we have neither realized our full productive capacity nor devised an economical method of allocating and distributing its output. In the last analysis it is not for social workers to say how much money shall be spent for social work. This is the right of the community as a whole, and its decision will be influenced both by its resources and by its own ideals for the society of which it is a part. This question has a more practical significance for social workers. Whether you agree in thinking that, despite the wealth of this country, its expenditures for social welfare, like its expenditures for anything else, must be determined in the long run by its income, actual or potential, all of you will perhaps agree that the money available at any time for social welfare is limited to that which the most efficient moneyraising measures can secure from contributors and legislatures. All sorts of factors may enter into the fixing of a saturation point for giving and appropriating in a particular community. There may be disagreement between a chest, for example, which senses acutely the growth of giftresistance in its public, and the executives of social agencies, who sense the acuteness of human need. But both will concede that for practical purposes and for the time being a maximum may be reached, even though the process of education may, and ultimately must, raise the apparent maximum. The experience of those who have assumed the responsibility of financing social work, both in chest and in non-chest cities, is that a point is always reached when the rate of increase in legitimate ways of spending money is greater than the rate of increase in the money available. Sooner or later this will necessitate a process of selection among the various legitimate purposes to which available resources may be put. This means a selection not only among the various specific agencies and fields of social work but among the other cultural fields with which social work competes for contributions and appropriations. That is to say, in the long run the distribution of a community's expenditures for social purposes involves a comparison not only of the programs of social agencies with each other but of these programs with public education, with recreation, with health facilities, with libraries, with police and fire protection.

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Who shall make this selection? Ultimately the community itself must do so. I believe, however, that a community may reasonably expect of those who are responsible for the functional administration of these community services that their separate requests for support be determined in the light of a total community need. Here is a real task for leadership. Here is one of the highly strategic points at which the character of any cultural service must be both cause and function, for at this point a community has a right to ask both what values in social life it should expect for itself and what distribution of these values among its people it is willing and able to accomplish. As a third recent development in social work where the distinction between cause and function is easily confused, we may take the growing interest in the measurement of results. The measurement of results is distinctively the mark of the function as contrasted with the cause. It represents a comparatively old quest by social workers which has recently been sharpened into an urgent demand. Statistics, case accounting, case studies, scoring devices, rating schedules, indices of dependency, and other problems are all methods of measurement entirely valid for experiment in the field of social work. Few of them have as yet proved themselves entirely trustworthy but all of them have given results sufficiently informing to justify their continued experimental use. Not all of the problems and efforts of social work, however, lend themselves easily to measurement. In dealing with the problems of instinct, habit, personality, public opinion, adjustment, and character building with which all of social work is ultimately concerned, we shall hardly find checks upon the efficiency of social work as specific and convincing as costs, sales, and earnings provide in industry, or even as the death rate and the incidence of disease provide in the field of public health. Nevertheless, the measurement of results is an obligation of the functional development of social work which we have been slow to recognize. When we present this obligation, however, in terms of evaluation, it becomes more complicated. Measurement may be expected to give us certain facts regarding social work which may be compared with some accepted standard of achievement. Evaluation, however, suggests both measurement and the approval of the standard. By what standards shall we measure social work? As a functional enterprise the work of

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an organization can legitimately be measured in terms of economy and efficiency, in terms of a ratio between effort and result. Social work, however, is cause as well as function. Much of what we do in social work we do because, on the whole, we prefer a civilization in which such things are done to one in which they are not. Some values are beyond measurement. One cannot measure the results of higher education in mathematical terms or in any other terms that actually prove its efficiency. Professor Thomas Nixon Carver, in an address, once referred to an efficiency engineer who had seen a father amusing his child by tossing it with his own arm. It occurred to the engineer that there was considerable waste of energy in his crude and primitive method and that he could invent a machine by which the father could toss the child twice as high and many times as fast with less expenditure of energy. 3

The efficiency of such a machine could no doubt be proved. Its economy of energy as compared with the waste in the method of the father could no doubt be demonstrated mathematically with approximate accuracy. There is, however, a good deal to be said for a civilization in which fathers toss their own children (although child tossing may by this time have been ruled out of court by the modern doctrines of child hygiene). I doubt if efficiency in terms of economy of expenditure, in terms of a reasonable ratio of result to effort expended, can ever be established completely for many forms of social work. Moreover, I believe that it does not need to be so established in order to justify such effort. Much of the work of settlements, much of social case work, much of recreation, and much of public health needs no other justification than that, on the whole, we prefer to live in a society in which such services are maintained for the benefit of those who need them. Here, again, we have a strategic point at which social work must continue to be a combination of the cause and the function. The reluctance of social work to find its own methods of measurement may be interpreted as a failure to realize that the time has come when the cause must be incorporated into the function. On the other hand, too great an insistence upon the possibility of measuring the results of social work may blind the functionally minded social worker to its great mission as a cause. 3

T . N. Carver, "Home Economics from a Man's Point of View," Journal of Home

Economics,

Oct., 1 9 1 3 .

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A modern writer has suggested that a part of the genius of every civilization is its capacity to give corporate life to an idea. 4 The functional development of social work I interpret as the effort of our civilization to give corporate life to the ideas which have inspired the world's great causes in behalf of suffering, underprivileged humanity. Civilization, however, is dead unless it retains the capacity to develop new ideas as well as to insure the permanence and efficacy of those to which it has given corporate life. T o what extent can social work as a handmaiden of civilization combine within itself the capacity to administer functional responsibility and to inspire in men an interest in causes? That new causes need to be initiated every social worker is painfully aware. Efficient social work everywhere means the constant discovery of new evils, of ancient evils in new forms which are taking their toll of men. Good social work creates the necessity for more social work. A modern philosopher tells us "that in any specific reform we may succeed but half the time and in that measure of success we may sow the seeds of newer and higher evils to keep the edge of virtue clean." 5 Miss Jane Addams wrote twenty years ago, "The good we secure for ourselves is precarious and uncertain, is floating in mid-air, until it is secured for all of us and incorporated into our common life." 6 In our economic and political system, in our conventions, laws, and intrenched attitudes regarding family and sex, and in many other areas of human interest, we as social workers are aware of problems which our functional activity does not touch. Each of them suggests a potential cause which looks for leadership in part to social work. Can we discharge this responsibility? It must be admitted that the task presents to the current generation some difficulties which older generations did not face. Our very success has increased these difficulties. In many places and to some extent throughout the country some of the obvious steps toward social welfare have been taken. Later steps always demand greater caution, a more comprehensive search for facts, a more careful study of remedies. Furthermore, the success of social work as a cause in arousing the American public to the necessity of correcting outstanding evils and its later success as a functional organiza4

Trevelyan, op. cit., p. 180. 'Quoted from George Santayana by Charles Evans Hughes in address before the Bronx County Bar Association, Jan. 25, 1929. "Jane Addams, Twenty Years at Hull House ( N e w York: Macmillan Co., 1 9 1 0 ) , p. 1 1 6 .

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tion in dealing with those evils have made the shibboleths of social work and the discussion of social responsibility something of a commonplace. So familiar have they become that, compared with thirty-five years ago, the appeal of the social worker to the social impulses of men falls upon satiated ears. This, however, can only be interpreted by the personnel of modern social work, both professional and lay, as a challenge—a challenge to their authoritative knowledge, a challenge to the vitality of their conviction regarding human welfare. We cannot meet this challenge by going back to a day when social work was exclusively or predominantly a cause. We must meet it with the sober recognition that it is and must be both cause and function. What does this mean to the individual social worker? It must be admitted, as we glance over the history of human progress, that few individuals seem to have combined within themselves the qualities of the dynamic leader of the cause and the efficient executive in charge of the function. The two do not often appear at their best within one temperament. As one of my predecessors in the presidency of the Conference, Miss Vaile, pointed out, it is not too much to hope that social work may continue to produce some individuals who present this happy combination. It would, however, be unfair to social work to expect that progress in both directions is possible only if we are able to produce such geniuses in large numbers. Each of the great cultural agencies of social life, the church, law, medicine, art, education, has progressed because, in addition to those outstanding personalities who combine both leadership and functional expertness, its active personnel have included very many more who were outstandingly either one or the other but not outstandingly both. Recognizing this fact, I think that social work at the present time need not fear comparison, in either its leadership or its expertness, with other professions. As I see young people entering the ranks of social work, both professional and lay, I believe there is no reason to be apprehensive about the comparison in the future. In the last analysis I am not sure that the greatest service of social work as a cause is contributed through those whose genius it is to light and hand on the torch. I am inclined to think that in the capacity of the social worker, whatever his rank, to administer a routine functional responsibility in the spirit of the servant in a cause lies the explanation

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of the great service of social work. This capacity is perhaps a higher qualification for leadership than the ability to sway groups of men. According the fullest respect to our outstanding leaders of the past and present, we may nevertheless assert that social work never would have achieved its great service to mankind without its growing army of less conspicuous men and women who have seen no necessary inconsistency between idealism and efficiency. Its future, moreover, is largely in their hands.

PHILOSOPHICAL

TRENDS

SOCIAL By

SOCIAL

WORKERS

MIRIAM

HAVE

NOT

IN

M O D E R N

WORK * VAN

WRITTEN

WATERS

DOWN

THEIR

PHILOSOPHY,

absorbed as they are in dealing realistically with human experience. Social workers' case records contain detailed observations of life on a scale comparable only to those of the works of the great Russian novelists, with this important distinction: the facts of the social workers have been lived exactly as recorded. Their reality has been tested, verified, and classified by means of the scientific method, whereas the observations of the Russian novelists are the outcome of constructive imagination and the personal philosophical viewpoints of the writer. The philosophy of the social worker one can infer only from his records and his acts. When we try to state the philosophy that underlies social work we have to describe both an attitude and a system of ideas. W e have to account for the various impulses that lead social workers to devote their lives to a new kind of pursuit. W e have to examine the system of ideas by means of which, in a sense wholly new, the human scene is grasped as a whole. For social work is international in scope and interracial. Its methodology is useful in solving the human problems of the happy and adequate individual, as well as the problems of the unhappy and handicapped. One method of discovering the systems of ideas current in modern social work is to examine the major preoccupations of the National Conference of Social Work for the last fifty-seven years. Looking backward to the themes of social work discussed in the reports of the National Conferences from 1 8 7 4 , the date of the first publication of annual proceedings, until the present meeting, we dis* Presidential address, National Conference of Social Work, 1930. Printed in the Proceedings of the National Conference of Social Work, 1 9 3 0 .

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1

cover certain broad trends. The first meeting was in 1 8 7 1 ; it was called the National Conference of Charities and Correction. It arose out of the desire of members of the state boards of charities and correction of New York, Pennsylvania, Illinois, Massachusetts, Michigan, Wisconsin, Connecticut, Rhode Island, and Kansas to become better acquainted with one another, to meet for mutual benefit and encouragement, and to discuss questions in which they had a common interest. For the first six years, the conference met in conjunction with the general meetings of the American Social Science Association. In 1880 it separated itself from that group. The scene presented by the first conference was vastly different from tonight's. The membership in 1 8 7 4 was seventy-nine, including the newspaper reporters, and with the exception of one intrepid soul, all were men. Moreover, most of the group were public officials. After the first meeting, some representatives of private charities were anxious to join, and were permitted to do so. From 1 8 7 4 to 1890 the public charities predominated, both in membership and program, but since 1890 private agencies have increased, and now provide the largest field of influence. The theme of the first decade of conference meetings may be summarized as the Era of Big Buildings; it was the brick and mortar period. As Amos Warner said, the almshouse was the fundamental institution in American poor relief. The almshouse contained the insane, the paupers, the feeble-minded, the illegitimate and dependent children, the prostitutes, and the unmarried mothers, or such of them as were "abjectly destitute, not otherwise provided f o r . " Historically, however, outdoor relief antedates the almshouse in nearly all the states, because at first there was so little "pauperism" that a building seemed unnecessary: often the almshouse arose as a "reform movement due to excessive relief and its attendant evils." As Edward Devine remarked: "There has been no period within the century when the system of public outdoor relief has gone unchallenged." In the almshouse were often found the insane chained in cages, the handicapped of all sorts, blind, deaf, crippled, idiots, imbeciles, and morons, the aged poor, thieves serving short time sentences when there 1 For this summary I am indebted to Helen Eaves's unpublished thesis for the University of Minnesota.

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was no jail or it was full, orphaned and deserted children, and children born in the almshouse. The almshouse, usually lodged in an old farmhouse, lacked even the sanitation of the period, and it was managed by farmers who knew little save farm work and had no idea of how to care for the wretched people under their supervision. The jails of that date have been described by Frederick H. Wines: Most of them are unsanitary, owing to their location or to their architectural construction. Many of them are overcrowded, almost to suffocation. They are often terribly filthy. They are centers of tuberculosis and syphilitic contagion The associations, the language, the practices in vogue are vile beyond description. The inmates are corrupted by compulsory association in enforced idleness. The worst of these prisons are cesspools of moral contagion, propagating houses of criminality, factories of crime, feeders for the penitentiary, public nuisances, the disgrace of modern civilization.2 This description must stand today as an accurate picture of the majority of our county and city jails. The building of vast new structures to care for the insane, and for the removal of dependent and delinquent children from almshouse and jail, characterized the years 1 8 7 4 to 1884. Sponsors for this program were filled with optimism, emphasizing the curability of the insane, and our responsibility for the youthful offender. Cures were estimated on the basis of the numbers admitted to the institution at the beginning of the year, minus those discharged at the end of the year. 3 States entered into competition to see which could build the most beautiful and costly building. Cost per capita mounted. Applications of the insane for admission were so numerous that the quota was full before the paint was dry. Conference papers of this period were full of warnings against "needless extravagance." That institutional care was needed no one denied, but the Conference advocated less money for buildings and more for treatment. As Dr. Herman Adler has since pointed out, a hospital, though it is a marble palace, may become, in the hands of the wrong surgeon, a morgue. In 1 8 7 7 Dugdale read his famous paper on the Jukes. For the next half-dozen years the Conference was plunged in pessimism due to be2 Frederick H. Wines, "Abolition of County Jails," Proceedings of the National Conference of Charities and Correction, 1 9 x 1 . 8 Dr. Pliny Earle, "Curability of the Insane," Proceedings of the National Conference of Charities and Correction, 1880.

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lief that everything from insanity to laziness is inherited. The five subjects for the decade, ranged in degree of attention, were insanity, pauperism, dependent and neglected children, charity organization, crime and crime prevention. Gradually insanity, as chief topic of discussion, gave place to charity organization and dependent and neglected children. By 1 8 8 4 a note of optimism was sounded, and in the next decade, 1884 to 1894, we find the Conference concerned chiefly with problems of administration. A f t e r buildings had been secured, attention was naturally drained into the problem of how to run them. Papers dealt with the need of women doctors for women patients, and the growing disfavor of the use of mechanical restraints. The child was emerging as a problem. Some argued that he should be put in the reform school, which was envisaged as a kind of nursery. Country placing of children was favored; carloads of children picked up from the streets were placed with farmers, usually with little or no investigation of the home, and with uncritical expectant optimism as to results. Statistics were much in favor. It was noted that the census of insane and dependent persons always increased when a state building was advocated for their care. Frederick H. Wines pleaded for uniform statistics. In this ten-year period, the charity organization movement was beginning. Alexander Johnson gave the report of the standing committee. The fundamental idea of private charities was to improve the condition of the poor by other methods than relief-giving. The techniques of investigation, cooperation, and registration were established. Thus modern case work was evolved. The third decade, 1 8 9 4 to 1904, shifted emphasis to a demand for trained workers. Trained nurses and trained social workers were gradually supplanting the volunteers. Prison reform was talked of; release from the convict labor lease system and need for industrial training, education, and recreation were stressed. The honor system was set forth as a means of discipline. It was not until this time that epileptics were put into institutions by themselves instead of being housed with the insane. The feeble-minded menace emerged as a problem; social workers were beginning to recognize the concept of mental defect, and there were demands that the feeble-minded be segregated.

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The fourth decade, 1 9 0 4 to 1 9 1 4 , marks a radical departure in the thinking of the Conference. Formerly, heredity and the personal characteristics of clients were relied on as causes; now, we note attention to social environment. A great program of legislation was called for: "Minimum Wage and Minimum Wage Boards" and " T h e National Child Labor Movement" were among the titles discussed. The problem of fatigue, occupational diseases, health of workers, sanitation of factories, safety, regulation of hours, and social insurance occupied most of the program. Three constructive viewpoints are noted: that public health is a positive ideal to be attained by use of preventive measures, that neighborhood life is an asset to be conserved, that immigration is a tremendous challenge to Americanization. Gradually a sense of social relationships was dawning; medicine, religion, school, labor unions, and commercial organizations were woven into the social worker's fabric. The fifth decade, 1 9 1 4 to 1924, saw the definite expression of selfconsciousness and self-criticism on the part of social workers. Mary Richmond's definition, "Social case work consists of those processes which develop personality through adjustments consciously effected, individual by individual, between men and their social environment," 4 is the first clear statement of the new goal. Social workers had been practitioners in a field of emergencies; now they become analytical, searching for causes and methodology. They begin to stress record-keeping and to attempt an evaluation of their social process by some more searching tests than adding and subtracting. The war years concerned the Conference and shifted attention to specialized needs and problems, but on this phase we will not dwell. Definite attempts to mold public opinion on a large scale were made, particularly in the field of medical social work, and in control of communicable diseases. The community chest idea for raising finances appeared as a new project. The juvenile court movement, the psychopathic hospital, social legislation dealing with unemployment, and a new attitude toward illegitimacy mark these years. Social hygiene as a constructive force received attention, and became an ideal to work for. Finally, the new era dawned, the day of mental hygiene with its concept ' M a r y Richmond, What Is Social Case Work? tion, 1 9 2 2 ) , pp. 97-98.

(New York: Russell Sage Founda-

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of adjustment. Social workers at conferences peered anxiously into the faces of their comrades with the unspoken question: have you been psychoanalyzed? Indeed there was no need to ask. The freshly psychoanalyzed social worker is immediately discernible. His speech is both cryptic and dogmatic. His curiosity about the way of life of his friends is second only to his intense preoccupation with his new self. Speaking very generally, the trends in social work have been: first, the attack on concrete problems of human distress; second, a change of emphasis from amelioration to prevention; third, a program which embraces both but enlarges its scope to include constructive activities for the adequate and the happy. N o field illustrates these trends better than that of the family. First attention focused exclusively upon those isolated fragments of the broken family in the almshouse; then attention passed to the family in the tenement, struggling to keep itself together. Today new techniques, even a new vocabulary, are sought. For example, the April Compass5 solicits a term to describe the social worker who is placed in the home where the mother is absent or incapacitated. Formerly the children would have been placed out; now the homekeeping activity is maintained by a worker who is more than a housekeeper. Finally we listen to the positive message of those who wish to educate young people for marriage and parenthood, and the community for fresh ideals of family formation. Our sixth decade, beginning in 1924, has been called the Era of Research. Its chief characteristic is a change in attitude. On the one hand, we find growing out of the common background of social case work an intensive specialization; on the other hand, the growth of scientific skepticism. W e look before we leap, we make a survey before we build. Not that this caution is wholly new. As early as 1883, a delegate to the conference said, in wonder, "It seems almost as if one institution is no sooner established than it develops the need of another." 6 Thus in 193O) in the state of N e w York, we find Governor Roosevelt securing from the legislature as an emergency matter $18,300,000 for the addition of 6,000 beds for mental hospital patients, at the same Publication of the American Association of Social Workers, Vol. XI, No. 8. Reports from states, in the Proceedings of the National Conference of Charities and Correction, 1883. 5

6

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time predicting there would be in five years 18,000 more patients than could be accommodated by the present state hospitals. Nothing short of another $50,000,000 bond issue, the Governor reports, will care for the needs of the insane in New York. At the same time, President Hoover signs a bill appropriating $15,950,000 for new hospital construction for disabled veterans, of which approximately $6,800,000 will be allotted for 2,600 additional beds for mental patients. The latest report from the United States Veterans' Bureau states that 12,780 mental patients are under care in government hospitals, or twice as many as suffer from tuberculosis. It has been noted that effective social work tends to produce the need for more social work, and this has sometimes been deplored. A similar tendency in education does not alarm us. Good schools increase desire for more schools. If the thinking behind our social work activities and our education is sound, and if our goals are clear, the mere multiplication of our activities is nothing to deplore. There is no indication that the number of insane, handicapped, or maladjusted persons is increasing. It is the social workers who are increasing. An increase of social workers brings about an increase in social problems in proportion as each social worker is a social thinker. As we think more clearly we become more sensitive. As we become more sensitive our standards of life are raised. We are unwilling, in behalf of those we serve, to accept life on any terms, for we have embraced a vision of life abundant, wherein "humble men may realize beauty and the joy of living." The present Conference deals with all the problems known to the first meeting. We do not solve our problems by the techniques we evolve; we merely outlive them. We shift the emphasis of our attention. As far as outward problems go, we live in all five decades simultaneously. We are still in the Era of Big Buildings, for example, but the wise value them only when they appear as the conscious symbol of a sociological wisdom, rather than as costly warehouses where mistakes are stored. We know now that we do not need more prisons. Massachusetts has shown a better way, in her use of probation and a statewide mental hygiene program. Good administration we still need, but we cannot substitute procedure for knowledge of human character. We still need trained workers, but they must be human personalities worthy of training, in the first

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place, and in the second, able to understand the mechanizing effect of their techniques. It has been asserted that social work is a profession and that social workers are a professional group. The attributes of a professional group are four: first, acquisition of special skill based on training; second, a function to perform that is recognized by public opinion; third, a feeling of kinship, or consciousness of kind due to common training experiences, and to public recognition; fourth, a sense of loyalty, or honor expressing itself in a code of ethics in the field, of mutual relationships between clients and workers and the public. The social worker has fulfilled these conditions in whole or in part, let us assume. The skill and the function of the social worker are based necessarily upon the development of the social sciences and share consciously or unconsciously their philosophical assumptions. The social sciences are those that deal with what takes place in man himself. "Phenomena related to group activities are commonly called social phenomena, and the sciences which classify and interpret such activities are the social sciences." 7 Social work deals with common, not separate, wants; it does not, for example, seek to aid a man to become a better mathematician, but a better member of his household and community. Some specialists deny this assumption—that is, they deny the possibility of a direct attack on the problem of human welfare. For example, this statement by a psychologist: "He who dedicates his services to 'human welfare' is rather less likely to ease the progress of mankind than, say, an ear doctor who limits his attention to a narrow field." 8 This is the kind of positive dogma which remains true only when not applied. We live in a social order based on the personality of man; if we attempt to ignore the complexities of human relationships we not only contribute nothing to "easing the progress of mankind"; we do not even make life worth while to the man who has been cured of an earache. "The subject matter of social work is the adjustment of men to their environment." 9 This definition indicates the vast scope of an enterprise 7 E. R. Seligman, "Development of Social Thought and Institutions," Encyclopaedia of the Social Sciences, Vol. I. ' T r u m a n , L. Kelley (Professor of Education and Psychology), Crossroads in the Mind of Man (Palo Alto, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 1928), p. 1. 9 Porter R. Lee, Proceedings of the National Conference of Social Work, 1920.

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devoted to the quest of a way of life, rather than the acquisition of several goods. W e cannot here point out how the social worker's task differs from that of the physician, teacher, lawyer, or clergyman, each of whom is engaged in one or more aspects of adjustment. It has been said that the social worker merely supplements the inadequacies of home, school, court, clinic, church, or other social institutions, beginning only when they have failed and the individual has been cast forth —that is, has become a problem. This does not describe the whole field. The social worker assumes the responsibility for integration, the process of making whole, the various resources of well-being in the community. For example, it is the business of certain specialists to give concrete directions; thus Health says, " W e must be well" whatever else we are. But there are situations when we prefer to safeguard other values, and these values may range from an injudicious extra cup of coffee to the sense of duty such as that which kept a social worker, a Los Angeles school teacher voluntarily with her clients in the roped-off bubonic plague area. Mental Hygiene may say, "Whatever happens we must be integrated," but there are situations where we lose more than we gain by the process of emotional adjustment. The questions put by the social worker are": Why take this direction? Where are we going? If I am challenged to furnish evidence that social workers have staked out this high-sounding claim, I offer: "The family case worker recognizes that case work like social reform is not an end in itself, but that both are to be tested by their effect upon the quality of life with the individual and his enhanced capacity for creative striving." 1 0 A n interpretation of what a family welfare agency considers its function has been given by the Jewish Social Service Association of N e w Y o r k . 1 1 It wishes to make it possible for the family to take part in what goes on around it with the full enjoyment of which the members are capable, to make them a productive, useful, contented, and harmonious group. It wishes to give the family a strong confidence in itself and a substantial belief that it can overcome its own difficulties. This resourcefulness may be 10 Vocational Aspects of Family Social Work ( 1 9 2 6 ) , prepared by a committee consisting of Betsey Libbey, Mary F. Bogue, Edith Spray, Louise McGuire, Dorothy Kahn, Margaret Rich. n Fifty Years of Social Work: the History of the United Hebrew Charities of the City of New York ( 1 9 2 7 ) , pp. 93, 108-9.

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information, or it may be a new attitude toward life Certain essentials are necessary to the realization of this end . . . . a home in which healthful, comfortable living is possible, food, clothing which not only meets material needs, but which provides . . . . expression of individual tastes . . . . educational opportunities in accordance with ability to make use of that opportunity; work which is congenial and offers progress; recreation . . . . ; some means for spiritual development and growth; and with all of these, happy and wholesome relationships within the family group This requires of the workers, before all else, an understanding of the individual, his capacities and his hopes, his successes and his failures in his relation to the world about him. Next there must be the ability with this understanding as a basis to lead the individual toward the development of his fullest capacity for life. If each of its members can be helped toward this equipment for his personal life, which includes his relationships to his family and the world outside, the family as a group will then be ready to face not only its present difficulties, but also those which the future holds for it. What are the philosophical trends behind these statements of purposes and goals? Our social situation today has similarities to that of the Greeks after their victory over the Persians, the period twenty-four centuries ago ( 4 6 9 - 3 9 9 B.C.), which produced the Sophists. There was then as now thirst for knowledge that could be turned immediately to human uses, for "man was the measure of all things." The increased eagerness for knowledge that could be used as a tool in getting rich, as a means for social and political advancement, as a means of stabilization after the shocks to religious and moral belief, was expressed in a popular demand for teachers of adult education. Popular education had its usual effect: it comforted and inspired more persons in their strife for the material good things of life and it brought new viewpoints that shocked those already comfortable. The important social difference in our modern situation is our concern with the problem of the maladjusted, an intellectual concern which has come to the aid of our compassion. The Greeks would have interpreted a social worker's concern with the defective as sure evidence of the worker's own defectiveness, either in sense or in morals. There is a modern voice that says the same thing, as witness Nietzsche. But the social worker's attitude does not spring primarily from his compassion. He sees the suffering individual as an integral part of the whole, not as a burden but as a challenge. This change in attitude is an indication of the social worker's philosophy.

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Of the various meanings of the word "philosophy," the social worker is concerned with two: the study and knowledge of the principles that cause, explain, or control human facts and events; and the development of a viewpoint combining the serenity and practical wisdom which come from the knowledge of the principles underlying human life. With the technical problems of philosophy, the nature of knowledge, and the ultimate essence of things, the social worker is not concerned. He could do his work as readily in the mental world of Plato as in that of Dewey; whatever the ultimate nature of reality, the social worker deals with the vital part of philosophy, that which concerns itself with the quest for a way of life. The potential contribution of social work to philosophy is greater than the contribution of philosophy to social work. Social work has put new meaning into our collective life. If we tried to explain our purposes to the assembled philosophers of all time Spinoza would understand us best, for Spinoza aimed "neither to revile, nor to deride, but to understand human conduct." For Spinoza, ethics was the most important problem, and the moral life of man involved seeing the universe as a complete unity of which all things, including human beings, are infinitely varied expressions. "To understand an object or event it is necessary to follow up the innumerable conditions on which it depends. We can never halt, although these ramify in every direction, until we comprehend the whole, which is God." The emphasis placed on the possibility of understanding human beings is a dominant note in the social worker's philosophy. Human personality has intrinsic value for the social worker, not because it can be molded or rehabilitated, but because it is worthy of respect in its own right. N o rehabilitation is required to make a human being worthy of respect. Expressed in other terms, the social worker, through an endless series of recorded experiences of human personalities in difficulties, has built up a concept of the laws which lie at the foundation of behavior. The social worker is no longer bewildered by the old conflict of free will and determinism. When the idea of causation emerges, praise and blame disappear. We hear no more about the "worthy poor." The attitude of the social worker toward human beings is one of respect.

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The social worker does not pity his clients, nor does he call on them for repentance. The social worker is probably unaware how close he is to Spinoza in the field of ethics. Spinoza was of the opinion: Pity is sorrow, and therefore is in itself evil The man who has properly understood that everything follows from the necessity of the divine nature, and comes to pass according to the eternal laws and rules of Nature, will in truth discover nothing which is worthy of hatred, laughter, or contempt, nor will he pity, but so far as human virtue is able, he will endeavor to do well . . . . and to rejoice.12 Spinoza warned against those emotions which spring from "want of knowledge and impotence of mind." For this reason, confidence, despair, gladness and remorse are signs of weakness of mind. For although confidence and gladness are emotions of joy, they nevertheless suppose that sorrow has preceded them, namely hope or fear. Repentance is not a virtue, that is to say, it does not spring from reason; on the contrary the man who repents of what he has done is doubly wretched or impotent. For, in the first place, we allow ourselves to be overcome by a depraved desire, and, in the second place, by sorrow.13 The family case worker and the psychiatric social worker are alike in their reliance for treatment upon constructive attitudes, stressing competence and adequacy rather than humility and dependence. Thus the social worker is sharply differentiated from his ancestor, the philanthropist. His attitude toward personality sets the social worker far apart from the social reformer who adopts a program of militant social welfare and fights the opposition with hatred. In so far as public opinion is aware of social work it identifies it with reform or uplift movements. This is a mistake. There is evidence that social workers derive from trends of thought quite distinct from those that produce reformers. Reformers have commonly a low opinion of mankind. The problem for the militant reformer is bounded by his concept of human nature, which is similar to that of Hobbes. The reformer is like Hobbes who "specialized profoundly in omniscience," 1 4 that is to say, the reformer would like you to believe he knows, better than you yourself know, what is best for you to do. The Philosophy of Spinoza (New York: Modern Library, 1 9 2 7 ) , pp. 279-80. Ibid., pp. 278-79. " H . Laski, "Rise of Liberalism," Encyclopaedia of the Social Sciences, I, 1 0 9 - 1 1 . 12 u

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For Hobbes, the State was concerned not with social good but with restraint; possibly restraint may be conceded to be evil, but it is necessary because of man's appetites. His problem was how to make a common life for men whose actions are always born of fear and self-interest, and this was the more difficult because he had " n o confidence in any power but the sword, no belief in any motive save the meanest in human nature." Hobbes' theory is congenial to the reformer by fiat, and also to the "one hundred percent American" as he is popularly understood. T h e political doctrine of Hobbes was that every state is a "completely self-sufficient organism which does not need to look outside of itself for the sanctions of his conduct." This type of philosophical thinking has been repudiated by social work. It is antagonistic to its fundamental assumptions concerning human nature. T h e social worker has been criticized for not knowing right from wrong, but thinking in terms of adjustments, maladjustments, and complexes, and he is jointly indicted with psychologists and psychiatrists. Thus Dean W i g m o r e : " W e say to the devoted social workers and the cold scientist 'do not think that you have a right to demand that all crimes be handed over to your charge until you have looked a little more deeply into the criminal law and have a better comprehension of the whole of its function.' " T h e functions of criminal law are explained: "First, to reaffirm the moral law (the only agency in modern life now doing i t ) ; second, to threaten and deter potential offenders; third, to handle the individual, now caught, so as to prevent repetition by h i m . " T h e social worker is in no position to demand that all offenders be handed over to his charge. His presence in the juvenile courts, in the schools, and in the clinics for truants has made him know that force is powerless without rational understanding. H e suspects that wherever there is crime, there also is to be found a sociological wrong. A social worker could not run a prison that would be satisfactory to the politicians, who insist upon a combination of profit and revenge. T h e social worker does not go so far as the early Christian philosopher Tertulliano 5 who taught that no Christian could properly hold the office of judge, in which he would have to doom to death, chains, and imprisonment. (So far as I know no social worker ever became a judge anyway, M

A.D.

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but some judges are trying to be social workers.) The social worker has some follies and inadequacies at his door, but he can never be said to have had charge of the system which produced prison riots in Auburn, Folsom, et cetera, and the burning of over three hundred men to death in Columbus. Taking stock of social work in the twentieth century, we note a change. Older social workers expressed more faith and enthusiasm in human beings than social workers do today. Thus Octavia Hill in a 1873 letter to a would-be contributor, who did not wish his name placed on an inscription: "It is not necessary that you should measure the amount and form of your faith before helping us To me the real man is the man when his hope is brightest, and the vision of what may be almost trembles into certainty, that that best thing is." In reply to his doubts, she says, I am sure you must always have felt it, and acted on it, with children, with wrong doers, when they, whom you have watched and cared for, have wandered from what is right: whenever you have tried to reconcile a quarrel, whenever you have tried to forgive anyone who had done you a wrong. I think all the sense of peace one is able to have in this world comes from this conviction: certainly all who have tried to reform themselves owe their strength to this faith. It seems to me the only ground for preaching freedom, and the only right foundation for hope for any of us. 16 This is the familiar doctrine of Perfectionism, whereby the moral attainment of gifted individuals encourages the imaginative construction of ideals of human life which become standards to strive for. It has been of great use in the world. It is true that we are more successful in reforming ourselves "when hope is brightest" than when we are •oppressed by a sense of guilt. But we no longer find attraction in the ethics of perfectionism. It is not necessary to our peace of mind to ignore the fact that man is a "sinner." For us the "real man" includes all that he is. Jack Black, as a criminal, was essentially the same personality as the Jack Black who conquered drugs and gave up crime: his qualities of loyalty, courage, and frankness were merely directed to different ends when he encountered loyalty, integrity, and sympathy in a man like Fremont Older. 17 19

Letters of Octavia Hill (London: Macmillan, 1 9 1 3 ) , pp. 3 0 1 - 2 . See Proceedings of the National Conference of Social Work, 1929, p. 196.

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The modern social worker does not deny reality to any phase of human conduct. The problem of evil is not attacked as a philosophical entity, but as a genetic concept, explained by an infinite series of childhood experiences and relationships. The past has "gnawed into the future." There is no fundamental difference between old and new social workers. Both are illumined by conviction that the spirit of service is an expression of the highest development of the human personality. The pioneers are marked by serenity and gladness: no one ever heard of a disillusioned, pessimistic veteran social worker. Both love beauty. Octavia Hill broke down in service, went to Tyrol, and wrote lyrically beautiful letters to her friends; she was sensitive to the beauty of the print of the chamois foot on the snow. She returned to end her life in her profession. She wrote, " I do not know that I have much that is beautiful or helpful to tell you, except the natures of people; those are the loveliest things that I see; and they are lovely—some of them." A past president of a state conference became president of the National Garden Association; 18 when she was invited to this conference she replied that she would go next year; this year she is editing a book on cactus. This reminds us of Voltaire's Candide who fulfilled his life by cultivating his garden. It reminds us that the social worker's art is that of the gardener in human relations, accepting nature without malice. It has been said that the younger social workers, by whom I presume the middle-aged are intended, have lost their faith, if not their charity, as they have become increasingly conscious of the magnitude of problems and their own limitations. Porter L e e 1 9 pointed out that change in emotional attitude which comes when we recognize that we are engaged, not in a crusade, but in the performance of function. This does not imply that we are done with emotion. It is nonsense to say that great social work can be done without great emotion. Our emotion is composed of the feeling that what happens to flesh and spirit is important, plus courage, joy, satisfaction, and love of our calling. But it has sometimes happened that the great emotion has existed with18

Pearl Chase, Santa Barbara, California. Presidential address, Proceedings of the National Francisco, 1929. 19

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out its union to great ideas. The union of emotion and idea is the beginning of great social work. Social workers have been criticized for having no inclusive program of social betterment. This is partly true. Social work is identified with the philosophy of liberalism. Liberalism has not yet succeeded in expressing itself in our institutions. Liberalism is a method of thinking, not a program. For brief periods in human history vast programs for human betterment, drawn up by movements, such as Utilitarianism or Positivism, for example, have glittered alluringly. Comte affirmed that we should one day worship man, when as the result of collective endeavor humanity would become worthy of being viewed as the Great Being, the object of religious service. But Comte, founder of the Positivists, was not a strict Positivist; he severely criticized the actual state of mankind, and held up ideals derived from something beyond him. Social work has realized that a program cannot make men moral, religious, or happy. The strength of a program depends upon the morality and the religion and the happiness of those who build and execute it. The true springs of action are in the internal nature of man. Hence the uselessness of programs, particularly those dependent upon state action or force. When they succeed they are no longer needed. Social work is not materialistic nor idealistic. It is animated only by a philosophy of understanding life, and it gives to those who practice it the ability to face life realistically, as it is, and life as it may be, courageously, without dogma or fear.

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bearer and minister of first aid if it does not interpret the frustration and the pain, and help to justify the courage and the hope, of the people. The essence of social work is understanding. In its philosophy there is no common man, but there are common needs whose satisfaction is the goal of individual striving and social organization. It has been said, " I must speak of things that come out of the common consciousness, where every thought is like a bell with many echoes." Interpretation of human need, crystallization of social purpose, and transformation of the social order are supremely difficult. Our deepest thoughts are hardest to express. Programs of social action which attempt to build upon existing foundations, having due regard for the stresses which may be imposed without danger of collapse, usually lack popular appeal. Yet general ideals find very slowly their practical exemplification. "The difficulty is just this," Alfred North Whitehead has pointed out to us. "It may be impossible to conceive a reorganization of society adequate for the removal of some admitted evil without destroying the social organization and the civilization which depends on it." 1 The great task of the twentieth century is the reconciliation of individual freedom and social security. Involved in this issue are definitions of freedom and its practical limitations in organized society, of security and the extent to which it may be realized. In his fascinating book, Adventures of Ideas, Whitehead describes the transition, covering some 2,500 years, from a civilization based on * Presidential address, National Conference of Social Work, 1935. Printed in the Proceedings of the National Conference of Social Work, 1935. A l f r e d North Whitehead, Adventures of Ideas (New York: Macmillan Co., 1 9 3 3 ) , p.

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the presupposition of slavery—however mitigated—to a civilization based on the presupposition of freedom—however qualified. Western civilization is now bewildered by the breakdown of the unconscious mechanisms and controls of capitalism, challenged by the idea of human security without which human liberty is but an empty phrase. Some believe that we shall be forced to choose between a system of private profit without social security, and state dictatorship, fascist or communist, without individual freedom. Others dare to hope for a developing economic order that will afford security without sacrificing essential aspects of freedom. Some are impatient with gains which appear to be in sight, because they fall short, it seems to them, of what might have been attainable. Still others lend enthusiastic support to measures which they believe represent substantial progress. Professions, like persons, come to maturity only through testing and suffering. The economic crisis through which we are passing is the first major emergency in American history in which social work has played a leading role. With the onset of widespread unemployment, which eventually removed from wage-earning approximately one-fifth of the employable population, social work in the United States first mobilized private resources which were available mainly in cities, and then undertook, in cooperation with public officials and citizens' groups, the establishment or expansion of public relief departments. As unemployment mounted and need increased, organized social work and individual social workers assembled evidence in support of Federal and state programs and gave active leadership in the shaping of legislation which finally accepted for the Federal government responsibility for the major share of unemployment relief. In assuming burdens of emergency relief, social work uncovered needs antedating the depression. From 1 9 2 2 to 1 9 2 9 an average of eight percent of the industrial workers in the United States were unemployed. In 1929, 18,000,000 persons, constituting forty-four percent of all those gainfully employed, exclusive of farmers, had annual earnings of less than $1,000. For the first time on a nation-wide scale public concern and social work influence have extended to men, women, and children living in impoverished rural areas and isolated mountain districts. Social work has emerged from the status of an infant profession to a calling which is an integral part of our political and social life. Qual-

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ified members of the American Association of Social Workers number almost 9,000. In the United States a member of the Association, Frances Perkins, is in the Cabinet and presides over the Department of Labor, whose functions are of primary importance in the "New Deal." She has also served as chairman of the Cabinet Committee on Economic Security. The most gigantic public relief program in history has been directed by social workers. The organizing and executive capacity of Harry Hopkins, his willingness to experiment and drive for action, have given him an outstanding position in the Federal administration. Some of the most effective state relief programs are directed by social workers. The demand for experienced social workers far exceeds the supply. Intertwined with the activities of professional social workers are those of thousands of other persons engaged in service to families and individuals on relief. Some have brought to the task broad experience in other fields, and many have the enthusiasm and challenging outlook of youth. Numbers of these workers desire opportunities for professional training and recognition. N o profession has ever had to meet a more challenging situation. Social work, together with other recently developed functions of government, is now under attack, chiefly from those who wish to maintain privilege and power to which they have become accustomed. Resistance and opposition have come also from those who make thè common mistake of oversimplifying the task of helping people and who lack knowledge and understanding of past experience and tried methods. In some important centers the opposition is particularly powerful and leaders who have given valiant service have been sacrificed. The assumption of responsibility always involves liability to assault and opposition to social work is an indication that it has been in the thick of the fight. Let no one think that public social work alone is under fire. Public social work and private social work have common methods and leadership and are supported by the same people, whether in the role of taxpayers or contributors. Interpretation of the purposes and methods of social work is one of the most challenging tasks confronting us in the coming year. Public relief must be looked upon as a necessary and dignified part of social security, a part which should involve neither humiliation nor demoralization for the recipient. Homer Folks's great plea for "making relief respectable," for accepting it courageously and realistically, sounds

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the keynote for this endeavor. The reabsorption of workers into full employment at a living wage must be the main objective of industrial recovery, but we must also develop sound systems of public relief for those who cannot be afforded opportunity of employment or drawn within an unemployment insurance system. After six years of heroic effort to relieve the distress caused by unemployment and economic depression, social work, in general, in common with other professions, is now facing the need for thinking and planning in terms of profound and permanent changes in our economic and social structure. Transition from economic individualism to social planning and control can be made only with great travail, in which social workers, like all others, must share. Laissez faire in economics, private judgment in religion and morals, changing concepts of family life and individual responsibility, the immense complexity of the task of introducing order and balance into production and distribution, and constitutional difficulties involved in our dual form of government bewilder and discourage us. Individually and socially we hunger for standards and tests by which values may be judged and goals determined, and for more effective methods of developing public understanding of the issues involved. At the 1 9 3 4 National Conference of Social Work many speakers emphasized our concern not only with the adjustment of the individual to the conditions of his life, but also with social change that will tend to minimize individual suffering and privation and to make possible "the good l i f e " for increasing numbers of people. These conceptions are in harmony with the history of the National Conference, which in succeeding decades has shifted its emphasis from care to cure, from cure to prevention, from prevention to the positive values of individual and social well-being. It is with gratitude that we recall the great social pioneers who in the face of opposition and discouragement have accomplished reform, shaped objectives, and developed method. Some of these leaders are still in the vanguard of social action. In philosophy and program social work has tended to be pragmatic and relativistic. It has been concerned with: ( 1 ) provision of a material basis for life, health, and decency for those in need; ( 2 ) adjust• Homer Folks, "Making Relief Respectable," Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, Nov., 1934, pp. 1 5 1 - 6 1 .

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ment of individuals to their own capacities, limitations, and environment; and ( 3 ) an economic and social order which will produce a fair balance between effort and reward—in other words, social justice. Nonsectarian social work has taken over from historic charity one of its two aims, provision f o r the physical necessities of the destitute and the sick, and has translated the other objective of charity, the salvation of the soul, into the attainment of social adjustment. On the whole, modern social work has affected crime prevention and correction far less profoundly than it has influenced charity, and training programs have given more attention to method than to the development of leadership for effecting social change in the direction of social justice. Emphasis on materialistic aims is strongly justified by the appalling lack of an adequate economic basis f o r family life and individual development. With approximately

20,000,000 people in the United

States, including more than 8,000,000 children under the age of sixteen years, dependent upon the public f o r the necessities of life, the primary functions of social work must be to serve as a medium f o r the administration of relief, to promote measures of economic security, and to soften the devastating psychological effects of unemployment and family disintegration. Y e t if we could imagine a social order with all these objectives attained, life would still be empty if it were not somehow in contact with a reality outside itself; a purpose which finds fruition in both individual freedom and social collaboration. The quest for such meanings should find in social work its natural affinity, for social work is concerned with enlarging and enriching human life. Release of personal energy through favorable social environment and liberating human relationships must be accompanied by the development of power which comes from coordination of effort to achieve the general ends of the social group, and the attainment of inner stability and endurance which proceed from apprehension of eternal realities. T h e desire of the individual f o r submergence in the social group and identification with the universal purpose may be as real and as significant f o r social planning as the desire for self-expression and personal achievement. In summary, the emerging purposes of social work may be grouped as follows: 1 . Material security through economic and political organization that

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will assure every individual and every family the means of satisfying basic material wants. 2. Emotional security through personal and social adjustment. 3. Social justice through fair and ordered relationships between groups, with adequate opportunities for all groups. 4. Social achievement through collective endeavor. 5. Spiritual power through philosophic and religious insight and adventure. It is comparatively easy to measure the extent to which the present social order on our continent meets or fails to meet absolute tests of this kind. General standards of living which under normal conditions are high in comparison with standards prevailing in other countries have been accompanied throughout our history by increasing concentration of wealth and power in the hands of a few; recurring cycles of economic depression and unemployment; and exploitation of human resources through child labor, starvation wages, and sweatshop conditions. Emotional security has been hard to maintain under rapidly shifting conditions and standards. Social justice has been thwarted not only by economic exploitation, but also by unreasoning race prejudice, misunderstanding of persons of alien origin and discrimination against them, and political favoritism. Social achievement has been hampered by routine processes, inequality of bargaining power, political incompetency, uncertainty of aims, high-powered propaganda which fails to harness reason with emotion, and conflicts as to methods. Widely diffused spiritual power has been hard to generate in a period of revolt from or indifference to old forms of belief and practice. Measured in the light of history, the picture is, perhaps, less dark. Western civilization emerged from slavery and feudalism, led on by the dream of human liberty. T o the presupposition of freedom we are now adding the presupposition of collective responsibility for individual welfare, involving an ordered economy with final acceptance by government of social responsibility. The contribution which social work makes to the general acceptance of the objective of social security and the development of effective instruments for collective action will determine in part our success in uniting economic security with cultural freedom and spiritual achievement based on widely varied interests and associations.

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Among the instrumentalities available as a medium for collective action in areas of life where social cooperation and social control are imperative, government may prove to be the only one having the range and power necessary for dealing with the most complicated and difficult situations. A basic problem, therefore, is that of making government an effective agency of social control. Transfer or consolidation of economic or political power, in whatever form and at whatever rate it may be accomplished, can meet the tests of social work only in so far as it serves social purposes, and releases or generates power to make these purposes effective. Social effectiveness depends primarily upon the willingness of the public to use wealth and power for social ends, and to support public administration based on a civil service selected and maintained solely for ability and integrity. In these directions government in the United States has made less progress than government in Great Britain and certain other European countries, notably Denmark, Norway, and Sweden. Recent Supreme Court decisions have made it much more difficult to develop nation-wide methods for dealing with nation-wide problems. Resistance to taxation is a major obstacle to the development of effective public programs. Yet the conditions of our life compel collective performance of functions beyond the capacity of the individual citizen, and the extension of Federal power to deal with national problems impossible of solution by state action alone. Increase or reapportionment of tax funds is necessary in order that the social services may receive adequate support. Development of sound methods of taxation in the central government and the coordination of local, state, and national tax and funding systems are essential. The United States civil service system is on the whole effective and progressive in its areas of operation, but practically all emergency agencies are outside its scope. Only nine states have state civil service systems in operation, and some of these are weak and inefficient. Experience in public welfare administration during the last year gives striking evidence of the imperative need for civil service protection against political patronage. In several states competent public officials in departments which should be entirely outside of political influence have been replaced by persons without qualifications or training for the responsibilities placed upon them. The very survival of social service, as it is

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incorporated in government, depends upon its recognition as a profession, and upon public appreciation and support of sound methods of personnel selection and management. Taxation for social uses and civil service based on merit involve a philosophy and a method which affect all phases of governmental activity, and aiford the basis for collective action in specific fields. The "New Deal" in the United States has entered new types of Federal government activity directed toward social ends. These programs have either undertaken to provide new methods of association and negotiation of conflicting or competing interests, as under the National Recovery and Agricultural Adjustment administrations, or they have lifted into full public view the great human needs of hitherto neglected and forgotten people—stranded miners, casual laborers, slum dwellers, mountaineers, tenant farmers. They have also involved major questions of relationship between the Federal government, the states, and the local communities. Many similar developments are under consideration or in operation in Canada. In many of these programs the state or the province occupies a key position. Nation-wide policies, adapted to state conditions, and through state agencies translated into local programs, affect individuals only in their home communities. The cooperative relationships between the Federal government and the states provided for in various titles of the Economic Security Act, which follow in general the precedents established under the older grants-in-aid systems, should afford opportunity for the development of sound Federal-state relationships based upon long-time planning and mutual cooperation, and should encourage effective state administration. There is urgent need, also, for the further development of mutually creative relationships between state and local welfare service. Study of the history of public administration yields plentiful evidence of the danger of developing either the state or the local unit without opportunity for interchange of services and integration of programs. In a social order as individualistic and complex as that in the United States and in Canada, full opportunity for voluntary association for social purposes is an essential condition of social achievement and individual development. In the industrial field, trade unions, employers' associations, and collective bargaining rest upon this right of voluntary

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organization, which in these respects has become one of the most controversial features of the " N e w Deal." Private social work tends to become hesitant in its program and insecure in its support as more and more responsibility for social services is transferred to government. Yet under any form of government that allows for individual initiative and voluntary association, private social work will have important and vital contributions to make to social welfare. The economic security program, for example, will provide only a basic minimum in certain fields of economic or social need, affecting especially people and communities which have been relatively untouched hitherto by social and health services other than emergency relief. Within this general framework should come increasing opportunity for private service, which should be able to enlist greater participation than ever before because of the human needs which will be brought to light. Public relief and child welfare programs leave many families and children outside their scope, and fail to provide adequately for many human needs among those whom they reach. It seems clear that private family welfare agencies and private child caring organizations will continue to be needed. In both public and private social agencies well-rounded case work programs should provide for integration of techniques and utilization of those best fitted to the needs of the individual clients served. The principle of public control of public funds should be insisted upon as a primary rule of governmental social service. Programs too highly specialized, and those so generalized as to fail to stimulate awareness of special needs and development of special skills, should be avoided. The National Conference of Social Work is a yearly forum for discussion of major issues and professional methods. Problems of governmental and of private planning, organization, and method will be considered in the four sections provided under the new conference structure •—case work, group work, community organization, and social action. Six special committees and the associate groups afford opportunity for more intensive discussion and for presentation of subjects not dealt with elsewhere. The function of the National Conference and its associate groups includes discussion, orientation, and inspiration. The professional organization of social workers, with its chapters and delegate conferences,

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affords opportunities for continuing discussion throughout the year and for appropriate action in behalf of legislation or administrative measures. One of the most significant developments of social work in the last two years has been the "rank and file movement," which is well represented at this conference. Young people in direct daily contact with those served by social work are developing, through practitioners' groups and discussion clubs, challenging and vigorous points of view and programs, and are emphasizing association with other groups. Cleavage between seasoned leaders and recruits in social work should be minimized by mutual understanding and respect for differences of opinion, fairness and integrity of administration, and participation of all groups in study, discussion, and professional activities. Important problems of professional organization and practice must be dealt with in the coming year. W e shall experience many divergences in theory and in method as we come farther into realms of experiment and adventure. W e shall need a more adequate foundation of economics, industrial relations, government, and individual and social psychology than most of us possess. W e shall find ourselves intimately concerned with problems of relief, social security, labor, education, community organization, and public understanding and support of social programs. W e may find moorings swept away and possibilities of social progress radically altered by the breakdown of effort to keep peace among nations. War, disease, poverty, and greed continually threaten the foundations of social cooperation and the possibilities of individual security and achievement. The contribution of social work will be determined finally, not by efficiency of organization or technical skill, but by the character of the individuals who make up the profession. O f the true social worker it may be said that he has integrity, vision, enthusiasm, patience, hope, insight, compassion, tolerance, and self-discipline. Great social work requires knowledge derived from study, wisdom distilled from experience, emotional maturity wrung from rich personal friendship and generous personal love, and spiritual strength achieved through faith. The pioneers of social work exemplify these qualities. It is for us to carry on the task of interpreting human need and helping to infuse social purpose with transforming power.

BASIC

PHILOSOPHY

PHILOSOPHICAL CASE W O R K

CONCEPTS PRACTICE

IN

THE

GROWTH IN

THE

By MARY

OF

SOCIAL

UNITED

WILLCOX

CASE

WORK

STATES*

GLENN

S O C I A L CASE W O R K CONSISTS OF THOSE PROCESSES W H I C H DEVELOP

personality through adjustments consciously effected, individual by individual, between men and their social environment." This definition of Mary E. Richmond's applies to a systematic method of service which dates only from the beginning of the twentieth century. But in the last quarter of the nineteenth century a few men and women in the United States were learning, as protagonists of the charity organization movement, to use with growing facility these essential tools of the presentday social case worker—accurate observation and the premeditated interview—and to make records of their findings and conclusions. The ground our American pioneers broke had been fertilized by many European precursors who, sometimes in isolation, sometimes in concert, contributed to the liberal procedure of helping men, suffering from varied disadvantages, to achieve equality through the use they made of opportunities offered to them as individuals to win and to maintain independence. The social grain we of the United States have produced has drawn sustenance from the fields the Europeans sowed. Without their early tilling of the soil we should have reaped a scant harvest. Because of our indebtedness as an international conference to the indefatigable energy of Dr. René Sand, it is pertinent to note a sixteenth-century contribution to the literature of what is now termed social case work. A Spaniard, Juan-Luis Vivés, who had married and was living in Belgium, addressed a letter 1 in the year 1 5 2 6 to the * Prepared by Mrs. Glenn as chairman of the Section on Social Case Work (Section III) of the International Conference of Social Work, Paris, 1928. Printed in three languages and distributed there. Reprinted in the Family, Dec., 1928. 1 Translated from the Latin by M. M. Sherwood and printed in 1927 by the New York School of Social Work.

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senate of Bruges, which was entitled "Concerning the relief of the poor or concerning human need." The letter states that character is of first importance; that intelligence, learning, and good sense come next in order; then health, so that the body may serve the mind; and lastly, wealth and material resources. Investigation into the needs of the poor, the writer enjoins, should be made humanely. Remedies for the mentally afflicted should be adapted to the individual patient. Questions about the young should include: what are their potentialities? About the wrongdoer: who is to blame? Concern should be as great for the sons of the well-to-do as for the indigent. Farther in the background of our common social heritage stands the medieval saint, Francis of Assisi, who had what may be described as case work intuition. He saw in spite of external appearance what a man in reality was. He employed psychological means in his work of helping to liberate the human soul. Service he carried into the home, offering it to the spiritually needy whether rich or poor. Toward the foreground stand those practical spiritual leaders, St. Vincent de Paul and Frederic Ozanam of France, Casper von Voght and Daniel von der Heydt of Germany, Thomas Chalmers of Scotland, Octavia Hill of England. Every man was to them an individual as well as a social being. Each of them instinctively searched for a man's inner attributes which his obvious failings obscured. A man's potentiality was their concern. Pauperism, in their philosophy, was a disease of the body politic and, as such, was the product of bad economic conditions. Indiscriminate almsgiving served but to "palliate and increase the disease." Poverty they knew to be something distinct from pauperism, definable in relative rather than in positive terms. Their practice was to be definite in thought and speech, so that Thomas Chalmers' axiom "do not generalize except from facts accurately observed and carefully noted" would have been acceptable dogma for any one of them. May I on behalf of my fellow workers in the United States express our sense of obligation to these God-fearing innovators who as realists faced life without fear or dissimulation, seeing man as complex and capable of infinite variety of expression and as holding a spark of the divine—the spark which might enkindle an energizing, purifying flame? May I voice also our recognition of their value as liberals who, without revolutionary action, furthered the slow process of bringing people to think

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of one another as fellow citizens rather than as members of divisive classes? And may I add that the purpose of our social work is at one with theirs? The almshouse was "the fundamental institution in American poor relief" during a great part of the nineteenth century, and as such in the early decades included all types of destitute and afflicted persons. The story of the gradual recognition of the fact that a group with such varying needs should not be housed together does not belong to my subject. What is pertinent is that indoor rather than outdoor relief was accepted by our public as a primary obligation to be met by taxation. The attacks made throughout the century in the United States by socially minded men and women on the granting of relief in the home from public funds met, therefore, with weak opposition, even though almshouse administration continued (except in a few states) to give scant attention to a study of the inmates before or after their admission and to their selective treatment within the institution. Among those who helped to undermine the system of public outdoor relief was Josiah Quincy, the president of Harvard College, who reported in 1 8 2 1 to the general court of Massachusetts, as one conclusion of the committee of which he was chairman, that "of all modes of providing for the poor the most wasteful, the most expensive, and most injurious to their morals and destructive to their industrious habits is that of supply in their own families." J . N . Yates as Secretary of State of N e w York made to the legislature of his state in 1 8 2 4 a searching report which was similar in tenor and in the effect produced. A vigorous movement of private charity was inaugurated toward the middle of the century, a movement based on the Elberfeld and Glasgow experiments. Though the organizers of the societies which were then founded wished to base service to individuals and families on ascertained need, they failed to develop a method of administration and of training of their personnel which would make their social intention a matter of practice. These societies of the late forties and early fifties continued to function, but only as relief-giving agencies of a type which their founders had tried to make obsolete. From the standpoint of the development of social case work their effort was abortive. Isolated men and women, however, who as volunteer members of relief societies became acquainted with men and women in poor homes received an

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initiation which prepared them to take an active part in the next movement for the organization of charitable work. This movement which in October, 1 9 2 7 , celebrated its fiftieth anniversary in the city of Buffalo was derived from the London Charity Organisation Society. The tentative beginning of the development of social case work in the United States came shortly after the close of our Civil War, and in cities of the victorious North. One peculiarly responsible for interpreting and fostering the principles on which the new social departure was grounded was Josephine Shaw Lowell, a young war widow, who never lost her poignant consciousness of personal and corporate suffering. She, the founder of the N e w York Charity Organization Society, was fitted by temperament as well as by hard experience to value independence for one's fellows as well as for oneself. The practical first step taken by the charity organization movement was the attempt to organize existing charitable institutions and agencies, so that duplication in relief might be avoided and resources husbanded for the benefit of the recipients of aid. Organization of charity involved from the start more than exercise of thrift or prevention of imposition. It implied the ordering of a mood, the creating of a social habit. It became a cooperative endeavor in which the peculiar service of a particular agency would be fully utilized. Long after the event, R. M . MacIver, one of the vice presidents of our Section III, put into words what was known to our founders, namely, that "a society is best ordered when it best promotes the personality of its members." True character, not personality, was their descriptive term. The adjustments they aimed to effect were economic rather than physical and psychical. But untrained visitors, paid and volunteer, went in the spirit of brotherly love and with the fear of God in their hearts in and out of poor men's homes. They cared profoundly for the people they learned to know and they reflected on what they discovered. They ploughed unbroken ground. Their method was, necessarily, one of trial and error; but they were honest with themselves and with their public. They would not modify a principle to win a quicker acceptance. Their grip was tenacious. Their ardor of desire to be faithful to their conception of charity as a social force accounted for an inflexibility which brought their disciples under the suspicion of a lack in human sympathy. The popular tendency to criticize the motives of charity organization society workers

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at the end of the nineteenth century and the beginning of the twentieth seems ironic to one who has been on the inside. The workers' failures as relief administrators grew partly, it should be said, from their acceptance of the economic doctrines of the theorists, and from a belief that relief is in itself an evil and that the smaller the sum granted the less demoralization will result. Their saving service was a firm hold on their conception of investigation as a positive, not a negative, groundwork for helpfulness. This enabled them to lay the first stones of our American social case work foundation. The charity organization workers began in the last quarter of the nineteenth century to develop devices which should serve as tools. One example is the confidential (later termed the social service) exchange. The exchange keeps a card index of recipients of social relief. On each card is certifiable data, such as name and address or addresses of persons or family aided, as well as the name or names of the agencies which have assisted. The societies using the exchange agree to submit names of applicants systematically. Directories of charities issued by various charity organization societies have been another means of facilitating the development of method in case work. They not only have made information about agencies readily available, but through a descriptive classification of resources have stimulated a selective usage. Our recently established councils of social agencies, composed of delegates from practically all the recognized social and philanthropic organizations of a city, are a direct outcome of these earlier developments and of the case conference. The case conference from the beginning has been utilized as an instrument for discovering resources as well as for extending a knowledge of the purpose and significance of the charity organization movement. The conference is not new; but in view of the growing appreciation of its value as a means of furthering social accord (which has come in part as a result of the practice of the League of Nations), one cannot refrain from emphasizing the fact that charity organization has consistently used the case conference as a way to reach a common understanding of a dependent family's situation and to provide a solution of its problem. It is true that, latterly, we of the United States have been inclined to neglect, as an available case work resource, the case conference composed of people with varied, and therefore dissimilar, expe-

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riences of life or of types of training. Our negligence is due to our current emphasis on technical training and on the importance of noninterference with conclusions reached by the skilled social worker. But in my judgment, we shall again recognize its value as a means of evoking the liberal spirit. We shall continue to make it serve through bringing into a common stream of human experience opinions (adverse as well as favorable) and intuitions along with verifiable data. We shall use the conference as testing ground for the workable scheme—to determine what may prove to be acceptable alike to our clients (the subjects of our service) and to the supporting public. The growth of social case work has depended in a large measure on our readiness to take steps to remove the disadvantages under which we have found individual families to be staggering: for instance, utilizing accumulated instances of' sickness and unsanitary housing as data for launching campaigns to fight tuberculosis and to secure fit dwellings for poor people; or making widely known the hardships borne by individual children employed in factories and sweatshops, at home or in the mine or field, in order to secure and enforce prohibitive child labor legislation. The reflective study of people's response to efforts made in their behalf has put the social case worker at an advantage. He has always been in a position to test a scheme for legislative redress or reform through the eyes of the alleged beneficiary, and to recognize as traits of human nature that men are alike in their disposition on the one hand to resist reglementation and, on the other, to accept bounties. Sentiment for people as people has made the social case worker ardently desire to put no easy expedient in the way of a man's making provision for himself and for his family. This last attitude of mind should be considered in relation to the traditional position of many of our charity organization leaders in regard to various forms of private as well as of public outdoor relief. It is important to reiterate that the teachings of Chalmers and also of the Oxford student, Edward Denison, had a profound influence on the trend of our movement. Chalmers' "invisible fund" was a positive factor. The aim was to uncover as wide a variety of normal resources as possible so that self-help should be stimulated. The paralysis of effort which recourse to state aid engendered was thus to be obviated. The fundamental reason why charity organization played so leading

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a role in the unfolding drama of social work lies in the persistence of its faith in training. When there were no schools, the apprenticeship method, as in the early stages of the development of any profession, was the one adopted. A few apprentices became loyal disciples of the founders and bettered their instruction. Gradually the leaders came to realize the sum of effort necessarily involved in making correct observations and fruitful contacts in the work of rehabilitation. A more select few got a vision of the long, tiring road that must be traveled before a new profession could emerge which should be destined to adjust human relationships on the plane of a social force. These last were responsible for the founding of the first schools of social work or schools of philanthropy, as they were designated in the nineties, the decade of their inception. That social case work was responsible for the establishment of the first schools is a fact of prime importance in view of the prevailing temper of mind in the closing years of the nineteenth century and the opening years of the twentieth. These were periods of optimism in the United States, years when the public had faith in preventive measures because of a naive belief that the common run of needy people are inclined to make ready response to plans devised to lift them out of their social difficulties. Gains in social case work have come as the result of a disciplined routine, tempered by minds alert to follow new leads no matter how many obstacles lie in the way. Through acceptance of discipline, skill has been acquired, first in making observations of human behavior and of social environment; then in the selection of material and in its arrangement so that inferences about people and their situations may be verified. Judgments have become fairer and plans have been made with reference to the main objects to be attained. Consideration has been given to the way in which the process itself may be held fluid. Records have been kept so that they may have value not alone for use in relation to the particular case, but also (in a few societies) for purposes of study and research. There can be no comprehension of the present status of social case work in the United States unless one has in mind that to its adherents it is not as yet a profession. It is an established service in the process of becoming professional as far as it may, in view of the fact that its work lies in the realm of human adjustments. This implies that its true function is to develop an art which shall be at home in the sci-

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ences. In so far as it gains mastery through skilled, wise use of science, it can be the creator of a new vocation. Incidentally, may one say that we need to find a terminology more descriptive of our service than the one we have borrowed, for the nonce, from other fields? Let us hope that through the discussions of Section I I I a beginning may be made in the search for precise terms. Perhaps we should look to the staffs in migration service to furnish the words we need, because of the international character of their practice. One realizes, however, that a winged word, a word which is acceptable for common usage, comes spontaneously to the mind through a flight of the imagination. Strenuous searching may drive the right word to cover. T h e American Association of Social Workers is now making analyses of the distinctive jobs included in social work. Through the analyses of social case work, decisions are being reached as to the qualities needed to fit a man or woman to be accepted for training. Faith and interest in people, insight, balance, patience, freedom from prejudice; power to suspend judgment, to lead, to evaluate findings, to organize are recognized as necessary attributes of persons who should be sought and accepted for training. Analysis of the work to be done is now seen as a prerequisite for the selection and the appropriate training of a personnel. But, in process of becoming something more than it now is, case work maintains its intensely pragmatic, realistic nature. It is doing things with individuals. It is getting a person to talk about himself so that he may reveal his actual needs. It is bringing people to make their own plans, to be their own masters. It is interpreting the community first to one, then to another. Holding individuality in respect, it is facing inequalities with a determination to treat different people differently so as to lay the most durable foundation for equality. It is sharing experience, worker with client, so that each derives a benefit from the contacts made. Such mutuality of experiences is being treated as a trust. Through the close contacts made with man as an individual compounded of many qualities, the perspective has changed and material relief has come to be recognized as not in itself an evil if it be used as a resource in treatment, a tool which can be handled creatively if the user has a sure touch. Like any other tool, it must be adapted to the purpose of its employment and must be recognized for what it is. In the mind

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of the disciplined family case worker in the United States, money allotted is considered no less a form of relief because it bears the name of pension or subsidy or is drawn from public rather than from private funds. But relief is no longer under suspicion because it is administered by public rather than by private agents or agencies. The present query is: How is it used—as a bounty, an alms, a dole, a right, or as one resource in a plan of treatment whose end is to put a family (or an individual) ultimately in position to be independent? It is seen, moreover, that to attain such an end more rather than less money in some instances may need to be expended, and it may be drawn from both public and private sources. The present development of departments of public welfare and their close cooperation with case-working societies is being studied and encouraged. Private societies and public departments alike need to win the participation of the families under care in making and carrying out plans if they as community agencies are to be a factor in the stimulation of good citizenship. Chalmers' doctrine of the "sufficiency of the poor" cannot safely be scrapped. In spite of the theories of radicals who are skeptical as to there being an inherent value in family life, social case work with a deepening conviction bases its services on the family as essential to society. Family relationships are studied because they are fundamental. The responsibilities involved and obligations assumed in family life are stressed. Functions and activities are weighed in terms of strength and weakness as well as of obsessions and liberating forces. Gains and losses in modern family life are being noted. The relative advantages and disadvantages accruing from rapid changes in social habits and customs are being evaluated. A study of homeless men was one of the first case work studies made of a selected group of dependents. This study of a thousand homeless men 2 who had applied to a business district of the Chicago Bureau of Charities from 1900 to 1903 inclusive proved that before the visitor could adjust a vagrant to society, she had to know his home and consider the problem of his rehabilitation in the light of his normal relationships. Our social case workers as a whole are realizing that the common need of each field of service is to diagnose and to begin the treatment of an individual as a member of a family group. Differen* Alice W . Solenberger, One Thousand Homeless Men, New York: Survey Associates.

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