Social Work as Cause and Function and Other Papers 9780231890830

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S O C I A L W O R K AS C A U S E FUNCTION And

Other

Papers

AND

SOCIAL

WORK

AS C A U S E A N D

FUNCTION

And Other

Papers

By

PORTER

R. L E E

Published, THE

NEW

YORK

SCHOOL

By C O L U M B I A

for OF S O C I A L

UNIVERSITY

New York : Morningside 1

937

WORK

PRESS

Heights

Copyright. 1957, by COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY PRESS Printed in the United States of America

FOREIGN

AGENTS

O X F O R D UNIVERSITY PRESS, Humphrey Milford, Amen House, London, E.C.4, England, and B. I. Building, Nicol Road. Bombay, India; K W A N G HSUEH PUBLISHING HOUSE, 140 Peking Road, Shanghai, China; MARUZEN COMPANY, LTD., 6 Nihonbashi, Tori-Nichome, Tokyo, Japan

PREFACE T H E written words of a man who, like Porter Lee, has long played a leader's part in some field of human endeavor are of interest because they reflect interaction between a person and the times in which he lives. Mr. Lee's professional life covers, to date, thirty-four socially momentous years from 1903, when he graduated from Cornell University and took his first job in the Buffalo Charity Organization Society, to this year, 1937, which finds him completing his twenty-fifth year of educational activity in the New York School of Social Work, and his twentieth year as its director. In that time social work, always a "cause" to a few, has become also a "function" of society. Porter Lee has been an active participant in that change. He served his apprenticeship just before the advent of formal education for social work, fortunately under the tutelage of a pioneer of social work, Frederic C. Almy. He went from Buffalo to Philadelphia to be executive secretary of the Society for Organizing Charity. These were years of industrial development and scientific advance in America. T h e young Porter Lee was concerned with community plans. He began to be interested in the possibilities of social work as a more methodical procedure, with perhaps a "communicable technique"; his belief in a technique was always balanced by a vital feeling for the human objectives, immediate and remote. [v]

PREFACE In 1912 he went to New York to begin his work as an educator. The war years following had their influence upon social work. Relief for war victims was organized on a large scale, under the Red Cross. Mr. Lee contributed to the determined effort which was made to give thousands of inexperienced persons some preparation to make them useful in the emergency. He also stood firmly for the maintenance and growth of a more normal and permanent form of education and practice. As director of the New York School he has helped to guide the thinking and activity of social workers through another cycle of national up-building and disaster. By 1929 they had established themselves as a professional group, with an organization, and with many subdivisions or "specialties." It was in this year that Mr. Lee was president of the National Conference of Social Work. In the year following, just after the financial crash had inaugurated another period of severe social strain, he spoke to the American Association of Social Workers on the subject of their future. Since then he has taken part in the organization of relief plans by the Federal government, and has led his own school through a series of efforts to help meet a present need for workers in quantity, and to go forward toward a better qualitative standard of preparation. This collection of short papers represents the four main lines of his contribution to the development of social work. He has been a student of the culture of family life, and has taught that subject to many generations of students. Four of these papers treat aspects of this subject. He has been an educator and has studied the method of [vi]

PREFACE teaching social work. He writes of pedagogical problems in the four papers entitled respectively "Technical Training for Social Work," "A Critical Period in Education for Social Work," "Providing Teaching Material," and "A Study of Social Treatment." Closely allied with education is the advancement of social work as a profession. This interest inspires the address which he made as president of the National Conference of Social Work, which has been chosen as the keynote paper in this collection, and it is the basis also of the address on "The Future of Professional Social Work," delivered to the American Association of Social Workers, and of the Alumni address which he called "Social Workers: Pioneers Again." Finally, he has been deeply concerned with the relation of social work to the community at large, which sustains it in both public and private form, and he has given thought especially to that group of citizens who voluntarily assume moral and financial support of expert services. In his paper on the death of Robert W. de Forest he expresses his thought and feeling as to the value of lay responsibility, and he expresses it again, differently, in the New York State Conference paper entitled "The Social Worker and Social Action." Except for the opening paper, which in a way sums up these several interests and therefore is made to give theme and title to the book, the papers are presented here in chronological order. They have been selected to represent the period of twenty-five years over which they were written. Thus they reflect changes in social work, in edu[vii]

PREFACE cation for social work, and in the need of society for social work from 1912 to the present time. W e , Mr. Lee's colleagues of the Faculty of the New York School of Social Work, have wished to bring together this collection of his papers for several reasons.

First, it

gives us pleasure thus to commemorate the twenty-fifth anniversary of his coming to the School.

Second, we think

that his many other friends, both in and out of social work, will also take pleasure in the book.

A n d third, we believe

that for social workers of the future there is a value in such a representation of some of the earlier phases of their profession. THE

FACULTY

OF T H E N E W

S C H O O L OF SOCIAL

April, 1937 New York

[viii]

YORK WORK

CONTENTS iPORTER R. LEE

frontispiece

.'SOCIAL W O R K AS CAUSE A N D FUNCTION Presidential address. National Conference of Social Werk, 1929, published in Proceedings of the National Conference of Social Work, 19*9.

1

T E C H N I C A L T R A I N I N G FOR SOCIAL W O R K Address delivered at the beginning of the 1913-14 school year. New York School of Philanthropy, published in Charity Organization Society Bulletin, Russell Sage Foundation, October, 1913.

25

T H E C U L T U R E OF FAMILY LIFE Address delivered at the National Conference of Charities and Correction, 1914, published in Charity Organization Society Bulletin, Russell Sage Foundation, June, 1914.

37

SOCIAL W O R K W I T H FAMILIES AND INDIVIDUALS A Brief Manual for Investigators. Published by the New York School of Philanthropy, January, 1915.

49

PROVIDING T E A C H I N G M A T E R I A L 63 Address delivered at the National Conference of Social Work, published in Proceedings of the National Conference of Social Work, 1920. CHANGES IN SOCIAL T H O U G H T AND S T A N D A R D S W H I C H AFFECT T H E FAMILY 85 Address delivered at the National Conference of Social Work, 1923, published in Proceedings of the National Conference of Social Work, 1923, and in the Family, July, 1923. A STUDY O F SOCIAL T R E A T M E N T 107 Address delivered at the Connecticut State Conference on Social Work, 1923, published in the Family, December, 1923.

[ix]

CONTENTS T H E F U T U R E OF PROFESSIONAL SOCIAL W O R K

13,

Address delivered at the Annual Meeting of the American Association of Social Workers, 19:6, published in the Compass, JulyAugust, 1926. CHILDREN AND LEISURE

15 !

Address delivered before the Child Study Association of America, 19*7, published in Child Study, February, iga8. AN E R A PASSES W I T H T H E D E A T H

OF

R O B E R T W. D E F O R E S T

165

Bulletin of the New York School of Social Work, October, 1931. SOCIAL WORKERS: PIONEERS AGAIN Address delivered at the Conference of

the Association of

the

New York School of Social Work, 1933. published in the S u r v e y , September, 1933. A C R I T I C A L P E R I O D IN E D U C A T I O N F O R S O C I A L W O R K Bulletin of the New

801

York School of Social Work, October, 1934.

SOCIAL CASE W O R K

215

Address delivered before the Mobilization for Human Needs Conference, Washington, 1934, published by the Community

Chests

and Councils, Inc., 1934, reprinted in the Family, November, 1934. W H A T IS T H E BASIS O F P U B L I C C O N F I D E N C E

IN

SOCIAL WORK?

231

Address delivered at the Conference of the Association of the New York School of Social Work, 1935, published in the

Bulletin

of the New Yòrk School of Social Work, July, 1935. T H E SOCIAL W O R K E R A N D SOCIAL A C T I O N Address

delivered

before the

New

York

State Conference

257 on

Social Work, 1935, published in the Quarterly Bulletin, New York State Conference

on Social Work, December, 1935.

[X]

SOCIAL WORK

AS C A U S E

AND

FUNCTION Presidential Address, National of Social Work !929

Conference

S O C I A L work in 1929 is a developing 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. T h e 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 form and in its modern form, 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. T h i s 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

[3]

S O C I A L W O R K AS CAUSE A N D

FUNCTION

inducing political change. Popular government has been usually sought and won and valued not as a good thing in 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. T h e momentum of the cause will never carry over adequately to the subsequent task of making its fruits permanent. T h e 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. T h e organized administration of relief, under whatever auspices, has become a function. T h e campaigns to obtain widows' pensions and workmen's compensation have many of the aspects of the cause. T h e administration of these benefits has become a function of organized community life in most American states. T h e 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. T h e abolition of child labor has been, and still is, a cause. As the result of its success as a cause, it too has become > James Bryce, Modern Democracies, p. 41.

[4]

T h e Macmillan Co., 1921.

S O C I A L W O R K AS C A U S E A N D

FUNCTION

a firmly 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 emphases 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. T h e 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. We 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. [5]

S O C I A L W O R K AS C A U S E A N D

FUNCTION

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, " T h e 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. T h e 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 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 natu[6]

SOCIAL WORK

AS C A U S E A N D

FUNCTION

ral 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 throughout 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 T h e 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. T h e motives of those who enlist in a cause, whatever their derivation, come to a focus in a personal ought to help. T h e motives of those who support a function come to focus in a community ought to provide a service. T h e motives which lead men to support a function as an obli2 G. M. Trevelyan, History of England, 1928.

[7]

p. 61.

Longmans, Green 8c Co.,

S O C I A L W O R K AS C A U S E A N D

FUNCTION

gation 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. T h e appeal of the cause is to the sympathy of men, to their sense of justice, to their humanitarian instincts. T h e 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 development 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. T h e 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. We may carry the significance of this change still farther. T h e 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. If its active personnel are satisfied with its results, its adherents are likely to be. As a functional agency, on the other hand, the organiza[8]

S O C I A L W O R K AS C A U S E A N D

FUNCTION

tion which expects support must prove its case. Zeal is no longer a sole test of merit; efficiency is asked for. T o 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. If 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 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 account-

[9]

S O C I A L W O R K AS C A U S E A N D

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ability 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. T h e 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. T h e 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 [10]

S O C I A L W O R K AS C A U S E A N D

FUNCTION

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 compensation 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, "character-building activities," have all in their time been conceived as contributions to-

[»]

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ward 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. T h e abolition of poverty, the prevention of crime, the elimination of preventable disease, the reduction of industrial handicaps to the worker are causes. T h e y 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. N o r 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 continuing the prevention of evils will in every case be cheaper than cure. In both its preventive and its curative efforts, social work has demonstrated a capacity to assist civilized society to find its way out of its uncivilized habits. W e 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 sup[12]

S O C I A L W O R K AS C A U S E A N D

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porters 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. T h e distinction is relatively easy to make but exceedingly difficult to apply in practice. T h e 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, a method of long standing in social work, has recently become more active. 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. T h e 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. T h e value of the demonstration cannot be questioned. Properly used it insures earlier attention to community [iS]

S O C I A L W O R K AS C A U S E A N D F U N C T I O N 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. 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. The 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. Do 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. All professions, the older ones and many new ones, are competing for personnel. Some of the older ones may be overcrowded, but none is overcrowded with really able practitioners. The 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 for efficient practice. The modern social worker, as compared with his predecessors, is meeting more exacting demands for performance, [14]

S O C I A L W O R K AS C A U S E AND F U N C T I O N 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 for competent social workers may be interpreted as one evidence that good social work creates the necessity for more social work. We may concede that the extension demand for 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 for the finding and placing of personnel are alive to this dilemma. T h e 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 ['5]

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luxuries need to be curtailed or what new methods of money raising need to be devised in order to find the ways and means. T h e question has both theoretical and practical implications. T h e 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. T h u s far, however, we seem to have assumed that the sources of support are inexhaustible. W e 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 Alexander Hamilton placed the responsibility for financing the national debt of our first government—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 [16]

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how to create? I incline, 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. T h i s 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. T h i s 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 money-raising 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. T h e r e may be disagreement between a chest, for example, which senses acutely the growth of gift-resistance 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. T h e experience of those who have assumed the responsibility of financing social work, both in chest and in nonchest cities, is that a point is always reached when the rate

[>7]

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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. T h i s 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. T h a t 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. W h o 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. T h e measurement of results is distinctively the mark of the function as contrasted with the cause. It [18]

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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 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 ['9]

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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 T h e 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 3 T . N. Carver, "Home Economics from a Man's Point of View," Journal of Home Economics, October, 1913.

[20]

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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. T h e reluctance of social work to find its own methods of measurement may be interpreted as resulting from 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. 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 T h e 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 phi* G. M. Trevelyan, History of England, p. 180. 19*8.

[21]

Longmans, Green & Co.,

S O C I A L W O R K AS C A U S E A N D

FUNCTION

losopher 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, " T h e 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." 8 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 some difficulties to the current generation 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 organization 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 5

Quoted from George Sanlayana by Charles Evans Hughes in address before the Bronx County Bar Association, January 25, 1929. s J a n e Addams, Twenty Years at Hull House, p. 116. T h e Macmillan Co., 1910.

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worker to the social impulses of men falls upon satiated ears. This, however, can be interpreted by the personnel of modern social work, both professional and lay, only 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 predominately 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. T h e 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, either in its leadership or in its expertness, with other professions. As I see young people en[23]

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FUNCTION

tering 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 of the great service of social work. This capacity is perhaps a higher qualification for leadership than is 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.

[*4]

TECHNICAL

TRAINING

SOCIAL

FOR

WORK

Address Delivered at the Opening of the New York School of Philanthropy

W H A T do we mean by "trained social worker"? W h o first thought of him? What conditions did he grow out of? What is he supposed to be? Any new conception is sure to be vague at first. It is just as sure to become more clearcut and more definite the longer it is studied and applied, unless it goes quite the other way and disappears altogether. T h e trained social worker represented a new idea not very long ago. If he was ever a vague abstraction he has long lost that character and has come to mean something quite definite, although different things, doubtless, to different people. I have not tried to trace his lineage, nor do I know whether the attempt has anywhere been made. It is not difficult, however, to discover some of the changes in life, habits, and understanding which have influenced both his development and points of view regarding his value. It is easy, for example, to reconstruct the struggles of social workers of past generations to get results with obsolete methods, to set up standards of achievement where none had been before—standards that would reflect the lessons which experience had taught. T h e erection of progressive standards in social work carved out of experience, which marked dissatisfaction with past efforts in the light of newly perceived possibilities for the future, is an item in the genealogical history of the trained social worker. But the profession of social work rests on something more than dissatisfaction with results. Growth in human knowledge has been a still greater factor. Achievements are possible to us now which earlier generations could not

[27]

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conceive of. Science has opened to us so many avenues of activity which lead placidly past obstacles formerly regarded as insurmountable that we sometimes grow hysterical over the infinite variety of ways in which we can keep ourselves busy. This again is a development which is responsible in some degree for the trained social worker. He has come into being partly because there are so many things to be done, things which we did not dream of doing until science began to reveal to us the possibility of a new and better human race with a new and better world to live in. There is another modern fact which has a bearing on the emergence of the trained social worker. It is the fact of complexity in modern life. As people become more numerous, as they find new needs and science finds new needs for them, as new ways for meeting those needs appear, life grows increasingly complex. Human relationships become blurred, as do obligations. Opportunities become confused with privileges and the balance is hard to keep. Nobody knows how much of the misery of the exploited, the needy, the lawless, and the vicious is due to the change from the simple to the complex in the industrial, civic, and social lives of men. Whether or not these reasons for the trained social worker are all there are, he is here as a concept at any rate; and if the results of the School of Philanthropy for several years past signify anything, he is here as a live efficient factor in progress. What makes him a social worker? What has the School of Philanthropy to give an intelligent person which makes him a trained social worker after he has been through the process? T o answer this question we [28]

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must understand clearly the atmosphere into which he will go from the School and the problems he will find there to study and—if he lives long enough—perhaps to solve. We may take for granted the tremendous change in the habits of thought, the ideals, the philosophy, and the perceptions of men which has made social welfare paramount in the outlook and activity of the individual. Certain characteristics of this change are significant. If social responsibility is anything more than an abstraction, it rests solidly upon the shoulders of the individuals who make u p society. It gives the individual a definite concern for the effect which his actions, his habits, his whole point of view produce upon the welfare of other men. Most people, when they realize this, are straightway anxious to discharge the obligation imposed—to do something. When enough people begin to feel the glow of the same enthusiasm, the new ideals, the new social concepts begin to crystallize into programs. A new law is proposed, a new movement is started, a new committee is formed, or a new spirit is breathed into an old institution. Now the crystallizing of enthusiasm into programs is a wholesome development. It betokens an awakened community alert to its social obligations; and an awakened community is a bulwark of progress. Moreover, concepts, ideals, and enthusiasm are of little effect until they do crystallize into programs. Enthusiasm without an object is as dangerous as an object without enthusiasm is barren. A program ought to represent the sober visualizing of the achievements and the steps that lead to them which the social seer has apprehended. This has been the history of social progress and we are still making history along the [29]

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same lines. We find suggestions for social readjustments everywhere. They grow out of our contacts with human misery; they grow out of meditation; they grow sometimes out of disappointed hopes. We are trying new experiments on needy families and on political campaigns. There is no mistaking the trend towards social justice, and the red-blooded man can have nothing but enthusiasm for it. There is, however, a danger. We have been extremely fortunate that our social enthusiasm, loosed so suddenly and in such volume, has not oftener led us astray. Enthusiasm is a mighty motive power and it thrives on the congenial atmosphere which the trend of things today affords in abundance. This danger the School of Philanthropy not only has found but is trying to meet. It is the danger that enthusiasm will outrun progress. There is significance in the phraseology which speaks of waves of enthusiasm and steps in progress. Progress is the result of action, which brings us to another phase of the problem faced by the trained social worker. Social ideals grow out of new habits of thought and are crystallized into program; but programs are not carried into effect automatically; and the power to carry out programs is an important part of the trained social worker's equipment. It is technique. It is drudgery where the evolving of social concepts is inspiring; it is prosy where enthusiasm sparkles; it reaches units where the proclaiming of social ideals reaches masses. T o go from concept to program and from program to technique is to take the long dreary drop from ideals to routine, from the heroic to the humdrum, from enthusiasm to devotion. But technique is still the factor which rounds out our march [3o]

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towards social justice and every social program must in the end stand or fall upon the quality of its technique. I do not wish to be understood as describing the procedure of getting things done, the methods of social work, a knowledge of the ways in which the successive steps in a program are achieved—this I do not describe as uninteresting or dull. I said "drudgery," "humdrum," and "prosy" in connection with it just now because it could not appear otherwise to the person whom theories and concepts alone intoxicate. Technique, however, seen in its true relation to the other aspects of social work is as vivid and as appealing as the ideals which ought to guide it. What is technique and what can technical training be made? Technical training assumes that in the work of dealing with social problems and giving effect to social ideals certain standards have been raised. These standards are only the lessons of experience made definite as a guide to future effort. They represent the attempt of a person with social intelligence to sift over experience, to separate for purposes of study the good results from the bad, and to understand what methods, what points of approach, what resources led to success here, to failure there. When the first social worker fired by an ideal decided that a certain result of his work was good enough to achieve again, that another was bad enough to be avoided forever, that another was promising enough to be improved upon, and when he went further and discovered what methods made some results good, what methods made other results bad, and what methods would make other results better, then the first step towards technique was taken. A beginning had been made towards the carving of standards out of experience [Si]

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for future guidance; and this is the solid foundation upon which technique rests. If this position is sound, technique is needed wherever social workers try to do things. T h e r e is technique in probation, in family rehabilitation, in children's work, in administering a financial department, in organizing a legislative campaign, and in carrying out a housing program. Every one of these forms of social work rests upon some social concept which enthusiasm has crystallized into a program. Every one of them owes such success as it has achieved to this enthusiasm plus its technique. Every one of them owes its failure to realize much of its program to defects in technique. (We must of course recognize how the difficulties imposed by social conditions, unsocial habits of thought, etc., often bar the way to the progress of particular movements.) Taking one of the less thrilling of the illustrations I have cited, consider for a moment the administration of a financial department. T h e r e is no doubt that to many people the contributing of money to social work is a social obligation having behind it as genuine a concept of service as any other act. Just how far one could bring the element of enthusiasm into financing the budget of a modern social agency from the point of view of either contributor or official, I am not prepared to say. At any rate, we know now that the difference between success and failure in financing a society is largely a matter of technique. I n other words, certain methods, certain times for appealing, certain forms of appeal, certain kinds of publication, certain types of mailing lists, all have an effect on results which other considerations lack. If this is true of raising [32]

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money, it is overwhelmingly true of other forms of social work when the still more fundamental interests of governmental forms and of family life are dealt with, both of which are the concern of the social worker and the field of his technique. There is a good and a bad way of doing things, an effective and an ineffective method of work. Technical training is training in those methods of achievement which experience has shown to be effective. We spoke earlier about the danger of enthusiasm which outruns progress; and we have now intimated that progress is largely a matter of technique. Let me again speak of a danger. Technique can never be justified for its own sake. Unless it be fired by an ideal and controlled by a rational object it is a source of positive menace. Moreover, nothing can so quickly deaden enthusiasm as its complete eclipse by technique. No training problem seems to me more important than that of preserving the balance between the pressure of social habits of thought and the mechanical tendency of pure technique. T h e two things are complementary and the School tries constantly to present them so to the students; but their real interrelation, social workers generally have perhaps not fully appreciated. It may be suggestive to speak in conclusion of the experiments in technical training which the School is making. Let me preface this by a brief statement, a summary perhaps of what I have said already, of what I conceive the task of technical training to be. The task of social work as I see it is to develop (1) a socially enlightened public, (2) a program of social welfare, and (3) skilled workers who know how to achieve both and who see their connection. [33]

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T h e trained worker—the product of training—will first of all have behind all his activity a concept of social welfare and a fund of information regarding social processes. He will have acquired a familiarity with the best that the experience of other social workers can teach him. He will have had opportunity to do field work with the actual problems which organized social work is trying to solve, under the leadership of an expert in the field and of the same teacher who has given him his first familiarity with the experience and resources of social work. Finally, he will have a balance between ideals and routine which will save the former from sterility and the latter from mechanicalism. T h e one finally successful way to give this training properly has not been found. T h e curriculum of the School has undergone constant changes since the opening, and further changes will doubtless be made as long as social work continues a live field of action. Two phases of the technical training of the School are fairly well established. T h e technical courses are based, and have been for some time, on actual experiences used not as illustrations for lectures but as problems presented to the classes for solution. This case system, which has been brought over from the medical and law schools, gives a zest and value to class discussion impossible in lectures, and it also brings the students closer to the facts of their future work than is possible in class otherwise. T h e other phase of the School's technical training is the field work, of which each student has twelve hours a week. This is done partly in the office of the Charity Organization Society and partly in other agencies whose cooperation [34]

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we have secured. About fifteen such agencies are directing the field work of students at present, and many others are ready to do so when needed. This cooperation has been most helpful and deserves recognition and appreciation in this connection. This cooperation in field work suggests one final observation. We in the School realize that we are not conducting an educational experiment for its own sake any more than we are developing enthusiasm and technique for their own sakes. We are trying to develop trained workers who can carry the program of social work along in the way it should go. We realize therefore that our ideas of pedagogy, social theory, and the problems of social work as guides to our training standards are much less safe than the needs of social work, as they are being revealed daily in the routine of organized agencies. So we deliberately plan to keep the School constantly in touch with the firing line, and we hope to adjust its service to the needs of organized workers rapidly, as we learn of them and can see how to make the adjustment effective. This means that we regard the development of concepts and the searching of experience for standards as a vital part of our function.

[35 J

THE CULTURE Address

OF F A M I L Y

LIFE

Delivered at the National Conference of Charities and Correction

I N OUR present movement towards a better society four tendencies are discernible which from the point of view of the charity worker are of first importance in the culture of the family. T h e first is the movement for the prevention of human misery through legislation and education. Second is the tendency to deal with certain contingencies and needs of men on an insurance or community service basis, open to all members of the community on the same terms, rather than on the basis of relief. T h e third tendency is the development of generous and varied schemes of relief for those whose powers are not equal to the demands of self-maintenance and welfare. T h e fourth tendency is the development of comprehensive standards and sound methods of social treatment into which such relief schemes should be incorporated. T h e interest of the charity worker—and by him I mean all case workers—in the first and second of these tendencies and in the importance of the family as a fundamental social institution, I must ask you to take for granted. It is certain less discussed implications of the third and fourth tendencies that I wish to examine. T h e program of every agency for the culture of family life looks forward to a family responsible for its own culture—a family establishing its own ideals, meeting its own emergencies, developing its own powers, resting solidly upon its own resources, receiving constant stimulus, suggestion, service, and enjoyment from cooperative contacts with other families and with the organized activities of the community. It is when a family's powers are not equal to its [39]

THE CULTURE

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own needs that it becomes the client of the charity worker; and his task is to develop those powers as rapidly and as completely as possible This task calls for an understanding of some of the distinctive responsibilities of the family. As I see it, these responsibilities are two: responsibility for self-maintenance, for earning an income; and responsibility for transmuting income into welfare, for keeping well, for educating children, for living in wholesome surroundings, for ideals, for useful contacts with neighborhood and community. Not every family faces the responsibility for self-maintenance. Some escape it through inherited wealth. Others are maintained by relief. It is characteristic of the third tendency of which I spoke that it is developing increasing generosity in old forms of relief, and almost as rapidly is evolving entirely new forms of relief. Widows' pensions, school lunches, and free, or reduced price, milk for babies are illustrations of the latter. This is at bottom a wholesome tendency. "Our use of relief has been most sparing and timid," wrote Mr. Devine ten years ago. T h i s development—which has resulted, for example, in striking increases in the per capita relief given by many relief agencies, although such relief is still deplorably inadequate—will give us, rightly handled, a necessary physical basis for the culture of family life, which older ideals of relief giving did not achieve. I am not here to recount the classic dangers of relief giving. I want, rather, if I can, to identify some possible results of our newer relief programs with those ancient dangers. Relief, I take it, is the gratuitous provision of commodities or services for a family which society, at that

[4o]

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particular time, commonly expects its members to provide for themselves. T h e label which a service bears does not alter either its nature or its consequences. Relief, whether it is an uncommercial school lunch, a quart of modified milk, a charitable allowance, or an outfit of clothes to make possible a sojourn in a mountain sanitarium is relief, and nothing else. Properly handled, the dangers of relief may be minimized and its great possibilities made to yield a hundred per cent. In so far as relief is a danger to the culture of family life, the danger arises from our assumption that it can be substituted for self-maintenance in the family economy with little bad effect, provided only it be ample in amount. T h i s ignores the fact that relief is only a substitute for something else, and we have the authority of the advertisers, at any rate, for believing that no substitute is as good as the real thing. It is to assume that in losing a wage earner, a family has lost only a wage earner. It is to credit the discharge of this fundamental responsibility for selfmaintenance with none of the results in character, service, and stability, which are the flower of family culture, whereas the story of any family income is a story of preparation, sacrifice, planning, ambition, and ideals. These are incidents which may also follow from other family experiences than the earning of an income, but they do not follow from the mere receiving of relief. T h e development of minimum standards in the various phases of human life is a noteworthy contribution to social progress. For large numbers of families such minimum standards—of health, education, and diet, for example—must be supported by relief in some form. But to

[4i]

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regard the standard and ignore the family is to make relief nothing but a problem in mathematics. Minimum standard food cost multiplied by number of units in the family equals the normal family budget for this item. Some such process, doubtless, the normal family may follow in expending its own income. We should be better off if more of us did. But there is a difference between the deliberations of a family upon its own budget and somebody else's mathematical calculation. Some such conditions as these are inherent in the problem of relief. They do not appear upon the surface, but they do lie at the bottom, and analysis and search will reveal them. The solution which they suggest is clear, if one will analyze and search, but it is not easy. Clearly, if the loss of the power of self-maintenance is an irreparable loss of a definite responsibility whose discharge is vital to family integrity, then the promise of the family life is in what it has left and not in what relief would substitute. Not in liberal relief, important as that is, but in our second phase of family responsibility, the transmutation of income into welfare, lies the success of a rehabilitation program. Here emerges the delicate and complicated task of social treatment, for social treatment is at bottom the direction of family resources and cooperative services into the channels of family welfare. T h e transmutation of income into welfare involves the whole range of qualities which are at the basis of family life. It is in our budgetary choices, as Professor Patten defines them, that we show our strength and weakness, our ideals or the lack of them, the essential and the nonessential from our point of view. How we spend our [42]

T H E C U L T U R E OF F A M I L Y L I F E money—what we get in health, in education, in adornment, in pleasure, in material possessions, in spiritual development for what we spend—is a sure index to the quality of the stuff we are made of. We satisfy these fundamental human wants by seizing our opportunities and by utilizing the knowledge which the past has bequeathed us. In a normal family this involves the use of agencies, officials, experts, and knowledge whose separate and unrelated services, secured at our own initiative, are standardized and coordinated by the control which we exercise over our needs and their satisfaction—a crude and incomplete control sometimes, judged by its results, but sufficient nevertheless. This transmutation of income into welfare proceeds almost automatically with normal families. Charity workers are concerned with its operation in families who cannot control the process. It is in making this transmutation sure in such families that social treatment finds its largest significance. The development of specialists in social treatment is a long step in the direction of efficiency. It signifies the splitting up of the problem into units upon each of which we can concentrate, developing an intimate understanding and a resourcefulness in action which would not be possible otherwise. Any community which has added to the almoner of ancient lineage the nurse, the charity organization secretary, the visiting housekeeper, the truant officer, the probation officer, the medical social service worker and others, not to mention many different varieties of some of these, has seen the tremendously increased possibilities of modern social treatment as compared with its non-specialized predecessor. If this specialization is to continue its [43]

T H E C U L T U R E OF FAMILY

LIFE

contribution to the culture of family life, it must avoid what may easily be a fatal handicap. As the number of case workers has increased, the pressure of our treatment upon the families we are trying to help has become almost appalling. T h e head of a large relief society recently prepared a hypothetical case, which was true to type, in which fifty-seven agencies had participated. A family in the neighborhood of a New York settlement was recently receiving at one time the ministrations of thirteen persons, representing as many different kinds of social work. The evil possibilities of this in sheer waste of effort are obvious. Far more insidious, however, is the inevitable bad effect upon the family whom in the name of social service we thus abuse. T o o commonly case workers go to a home independently of each other. T h e coming of a baby, the health of a child, a tubercular breadwinner, the training of a boy, the need for relief—any one of these may be the reason for our errand. With our attention riveted upon the one need that takes us there, we formulate our plans for its correction, inviting, demanding, or forcing the cooperation of the entire family. When several such plans are presented simultaneously to a family, indifference, confusion, or antagonism on the part of the bewildered father and mother are the only logical results. Increasingly we are striving to correlate our efforts in this matter, but the evil grows nevertheless. We have the story, quoted by Miss Byington in her pamphlet as an argument for the confidential exchange of information, of a mother advised by one nurse to give her baby one kind of treatment and by another nurse to give treatment quite dif[44]

THE

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ferent. Each nurse was ignorant of the presence of the other in the situation. T h e tragic result of the baby's death was unwittingly achieved in the name of efficiency. If the family's responsibility for its own welfare is fundamental, we need to change radically our method of approach in the matter of social treatment. Since families in need of relief cannot discharge their first responsibility for self-maintenance we have an increased obligation to put or leave in their hands this second responsibility. A case worker's services ordinarily should contribute to a family's own efforts in this direction and should not dominate them. T o dominate is to ask response and not responsibility. Our purpose cannot fairly be to achieve the success of our own plans, but must be to leave the family fit to formulate and work out its own. Let us admit frankly that the process of unifying and correlating the services rendered to needy families through different and necessary forms of case work is not simple. A good deal of honest experimenting may be required before we can determine what is necessary and what unnecessary in our ministrations. Certain steps, however, I believe we can take. First of all, for the protection both of the poor and of earnest case work, we need a steady facing of facts—all the facts. A social worker in New York city recently argued impressively for pensions to widowed mothers on the ground that the mother's place is in the home looking after the children. He deplored the social neglect which forced her to earn a living while her children needed her care, the care for which there is no substitute. Perhaps he forgot another occasion some weeks earlier when he had

[45]

T H E C U L T U R E OF F A M I L Y L I F E argued with equal emphasis for the right of a New York schoolteacher to continue her teaching against the decision of the Board of Education even though she had a child of her own. Such inconsistency is not uncommon, but facts would dissolve it. Too many programs begin with a respectable body of facts and then proceed to wall them in with blindness and dogma which prevent forever the addition of other facts, although in these days new facts are discovered almost daily. T h e difference between a static program and a dynamic program is largely in an attitude towards facts. In the second place, consider a family situation in which the interests of an individual member seem to conflict with the interests of the family as a whole. If there is such a conflict in human interests within the family, it is likely to express itself in a similar conflict between the agencies for social treatment whose efforts are based upon those interests. T o keep a promising boy at school after the legal working age, to provide costly treatment for a sick girl, to force a well-to-do relative to support his kinsfolk, to punish a deserting husband, to withdraw wage earners from unwholesome work, may each represent to some specialist the supreme duty of organized social work in the one family where each of these needs is apparent. It may not be possible to meet them all at once, and it may be that some cannot be met at all without sacrificing other important factors in the family welfare. It is just as true in the economy of the family as it is in the economy of society at large that the interests of the individual—for his own good and for society's—must be adjusted to the interests of the whole. The recognition of this by specialists is [46]

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necessary if we are to avoid danger in social treatment. Here, evidently, clear thinking and honest discussion are called for. This conflict can be avoided only if we are willing to study the whole problem of family responsibility. Prejudice in favor of one's own specialty must be abandoned, and the matter decided in each individual case disinterestedly by the agencies concerned, on the basis of all the facts obtainable. As a final consideration, I urge the importance of correlation in case work, not merely in those cases where there is a difference in emphasis, but in all cases without exception where the services of more than one agency are necessary. However unrelated our efforts may be, no such unrelatedness exists in the human need we are trying to meet. Sickness, ignorance, unemployment, and waywardness in children have a way of appearing like a horribly harmonious and coherent combination to an overtaxed mother. T h e unity which characterizes them ought to give to us case workers, intent upon our special missions, an important cue. However sharply distinct our separate functions may seem to us, our successive and uncoordinated suggestions must be very bewildering to the family which receives them. I doubt if even an intelligent mother can always tell a school nurse from a visiting nurse or an infant mortality nurse or any one of the three from a relief agent or a probation officer or a visiting dietitian. Surely it is too much to expect her to take the separate items of a welfare program which we severally present to her and piece them together, either to her satisfaction or to ours. It might be possible sometimes if she were let alone, but always there is the embarrassing factor of the Hydra-headed [47]

T H E C U L T U R E OF F A M I L Y L I F E authority to whom, instead of to herself, she is responsible. Two considerations at least offer relief from this crosspurpose work. In the first place the use of an exchange of information is one basic condition for efficient case work. The lack of such an exchange, which safeguards both the sensibilities of the poor and efficiency of case work, is evidence of nothing less than criminal neglect. Again in the development of our specialties we have acquired an extent of common ground which is much wider than we realize. In method, in accumulated information, in point of view, in objective, we are covering to a large extent the same things. When we recognize this, the possibilities of better understanding and cooperative work increase enormously. In addition I wish to suggest—at some risk of being misunderstood—that we have too many subdivisions of case work. I do not believe that the miseries of any family require the service of fifty-seven different social experts and very few families require even thirteen. Either the equipment of our case workers is not broad enough, or as a whole our work is badly organized. Moreover, in no other field of organized effort is expertness so easily assumed as in social work. In my judgment this question merits serious consideration by those agencies which sense these dangers to the splendid promise of social treatment for the welfare of the needy. The culture of family life from the point of view of the charity worker is not a problem of meeting certain needs. It is a problem in the development of family powers and responsibility which will meet those needs without the charity worker. [48]

SOCIAL

WORK

AND A Brief

WITH

FAMILIES

INDIVIDUALS Manual 1

for

915

Investigators

P E R S O N S who need charitable assistance are not different from other persons except in the power, or the inclination, to satisfy their own needs. Whatever it is that enables non-dependent families and individuals to meet the contingencies of life through their own knowledge and effort is the particular thing which the dependent lacks. Primarily it is not the loss of a job, sickness, lack of income, bad habits, or other disability that leads a man to ask for charity. If it were, most people would be dependent frequently, since these liabilities are not confined to the poor. In any community more of those who are affected by them are above the line of dependence than below it. It is only those who lack the power of self-maintenance who become dependent. It is true that social work is organized for the most part in terms of material needs. We have laws for the preservation of health, for the protection of those who work, for the protection of children, and for compulsory education. We have public departments for the administration of the machinery which these laws create. We have official and voluntary agencies for the improvement of housing conditions, for the care of the sick, for the provision of material relief, for the care of children. We have agencies for the study of working and living conditions with a view to the improvement of such as are prejudicial to the common welfare; and we have a steady emphasis laid by all agencies upon the need for changes in our common habits and practices which affect the welfare of the community and all its members. [5>]

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These organized activities, however, are not intended to lift from any person responsibility for his own welfare. They are rather the effort of the community to help him discharge that responsibility more successfully and more easily, and at less cost to himself and society. Any activity —whether in legislation, in relief, in medical treatment, or in industrial reform—which seeks to meet the normal needs of men from the outside rather than to develop within men the power to meet their own needs represents a low plane of social work. T o develop the power of self-maintenance, while he recognizes and provides for immediate disabilities, is the important problem for the social worker. Disabilities do not stand alone. If they did, a charitable agency might conduct its work very much like a business house. The applicant, like a customer, might ask for what he needed. T h e only question facing the social investigator would be whether the commodity or service requested is part of its stock in trade, and if so, whether it desires to place them at the disposal of this particular applicant. T h e disabilities of the poor, however, are even more varied than the forms of social work, and they rarely come singly. Inefficiency, ill-health, waywardness, unemployment, and unstable character have a way of intertwining themselves, and in the atmosphere in which they develop are found also many attendant evils like bad housing, ignorance, and immorality. Unlike a business house a charitable agency cannot deal alone with the one disability for which an applicant seeks its aid. There are usually others just as urgent, and one cannot be successfully treated without taking account of them all. T h e precise request made by an applicant may represent [52]

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his greatest need and it may not. Usually it represents his own selection from among a variety of needs, any one of which would justify long and intelligent interest by a social worker. What he asks for—commitment of children, transportation, relief, hospital care, institutional care for ii defective child—may seem to him to meet his most obvious need; it may be the most urgent thing; it may be merely the thing he thinks he is most likely to get; it may be what a neighbor did actually succeed in getting. Whatever the reason behind, it should signify to a social worker an opportunity to study the applicant's whole situation, in order to discover how many and how varied his disabilities may be, and what service the community has made available in its organized social work to help him meet them. Diagnosis of the disabilities of applicants and the cooperation of different agencies in treating them have come to be part of a definite process. Every charitable service to a disabled family or individual should be preceded by an inquiry into the history and present condition of the applicant which will yield the facts necessary to intelligent action. This inquiry has come to be known technically to social workers as an investigation. There are many misconceptions as to the purpose of an investigation. No intelligent social agency investigates merely in order to separate residents from non-residents, or the worthy from the unworthy. T h e unworthy poor, to an older generation, included all those degenerate, shiftless, dishonest, lazy, deliberate victims of misconduct who do not readily respond to benevolent interest. A large part of modern social work, on the other hand, is dedicated to the defense of society against misconduct and of the "un[53]

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worthy" against themselves. The medical treatment of inebriates, farm colonies for vagrants, and colonies for the feeble-minded contrast with the harsh and uncharitable treatment which was formerly given. It is a misconception to think of an investigation as an attempt to establish the truth or falsity of an applicant's statements, or as causing procrastination in relief. Social investigation should expedite relief. T h e fact is that the more thorough and specialized the treatment of disabilities becomes, the more important it is that we have information regarding the disabilities before taking any but emergency action. A well-known physician says that whereas a generation ago ten minutes would serve for the diagnosis of most diseases, an average of an hour is required at the present time. This is largely because we know more about disease, have better facilities for studying it, and see its relation to many other factors in the life of the patient. This is equally true in the treatment of social disabilities. The need of hospital facilities may prompt an application to a charitable agency. Behind the illness, in work, habits, or home environment, lies a cause. These social disabilities may need treatment quite as urgently as the illness. No permanent result from any charitable relief can be hoped for until the social cause is known; until account has been taken, on the one hand, of all the other disabilities, and, on the other, of the family assets in character, earning capacity, income, and moral influences. These assets are the foundation upon which the power of self-maintenance may be built. T h e facts regarding these disabilities and assets must be

[54]

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ascertained at the outset. If the situation is critical, emergency treatment such as shelter, food, or hospital care may need to be secured at once without waiting for investigation. If the agency receiving the application is not able to give this emergency assistance, it must be obtained from some other organization. Such emergency action should not interfere with the securing of facts as a basis for extended treatment. If this is not done, short-sighted, inappropriate, or utterly ineffective service may be given, or even an actual injury. T h e kindest service and, in terms of family welfare, the least costly service is that service which is most intelligent. T h e most intelligent service is that which leads to results of permanent value. T h e process of discovering a family's assets and needs is not a separate and different process covering distinct ground according as it is made necessary by ill-health, inefficiency, lack of income, law-breaking, or orphanhood. A man can present only one character, one personality, one history, one life, whether he stands before the application desk of a hospital, a relief society, a shelter for homeless men, a domestic relations bureau, or a police station. A human being presents the same set of traits to reckon with or build upon wherever he may be. He has just one set of weaknesses, one set of prejudices, one set of strong points, one personality, one temperament. T h i s is true of the family as of the individual. Just as different traits group themselves into an individuality, so different disabilities and different resources group themselves in the family problem and must be considered together. It is not five different kinds of welfare that five different social organizations desire for one family in which all are

[55]

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concerned. There may be many different factors in the achievement of social welfare. One may be more interested in one factor and another in another. But all are interested in securing that combination of circumstances upon which social welfare depends. It is the task of a social worker in his investigation to analyze the needs and assets of his families in some such process as this. T h e information necessary can be acquired only in certain fairly definite ways which have come to be established as the method of social investigation. We know what a man's health is, what his capacities, habits, temperament are, when we have made use of certain definite sources of information. The health of an individual is a prime factor in any plan for his welfare. This is obvious when his application to a charitable society is due to sickness. It is also true when other needs, like employment or relief, are more apparent. His present state of health can be ascertained by medical examination. Frequently, however, it is desirable to know his previous health history. This can be learned partly from his own statement, and partly, in many cases, from some institution where he has been under treatment. Disabilities of many kinds are so often due to poor physical condition that definite information on this point should be part of practically every investigation. The earning power of a family is important. Children in New York state are forbidden to work until they are fourteen years old, and between fourteen and sixteen only after reaching certain standards of education and physical development. T h e capacity of a worker chiefly deter[56]

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mines his earning power. This can be ascertained for both adults and children by consultation with former employers and this inquiry will frequently lead to valuable information regarding habits and general intelligence. T h e personal qualities of a man are important factors in any treatment. Intelligence, reasonableness, reliability, moral standards, thrift, and general responsibility are traits which make self-maintenance possible once the opportunity is given. Their absence will wreck any plan which the social worker may make. T h e degree to which a person possesses them cannot often be determined in one interview. One must know his habits, his reactions upon others, his response to those persons and organizations that have a claim upon him. T h i s knowledge may be gained by conference with relatives, employers, schoolteachers, friends, pastors, and others who have known him. It is usually well to avoid inquiries in the neighborhood where a family lives. Such inquiries nearly always lead to embarrassing publicity. T h e same sort of inquiry will reveal the help, financial and otherwise, which many of these same relatives, churches, benefit societies, and friends can contribute to the particular plan of treatment necessary to restore a family to some degree of normal living. Not every case of need will require so extended an investigation. T h e inquiry should go far enough, however, to enable the social worker to discover the strong and the weak points of the individual members of the family and to formulate clearly a plan of treatment which with the aid of the city's organized social service will develop the strong points to overcome the weak. [57]

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Investigation may show that the action required is not a function of the agency or department receiving the application. A full measure of responsibility on the part of such an agency, however, demands that such application be not dismissed summarily, but referred to some one of the community's organizations whose function it is to receive them. New York city has many facilities for dealing with the disabilities of the poor. Laws and institutions abound. Societies and public departments exercise various functions. It is not to be expected that the poor will know which to call upon or how to use them all. Hence a large part of the task which every application presents to a social worker is the calling in of the appropriate services of other organizations. This responsibility demands of social workers a knowledge of the city's resources and of the procedure for using them effectively, and in meeting it the use of the Charities Directory is indispensable. Some of these agencies confine their work to certain districts, and some cover the entire city. Most of them have fairly definite functions. A social worker whose duties are limited to a particular district should familiarize himself with the resources of the district—hospitals, dispensaries, nursing service, milk stations, relief societies, probation officers, tenement inspectors, public schools, playgrounds, settlements, employment agencies, and police stations. He should know their general powers and the scope given them by law or by their own organization. He should know how to secure the services of each. The more personal and informal the cooperation among such agencies the better for those in need of help. [58]

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T h e most important single factor in the use of the other agencies is the Social Service Exchange, with telephone service. T h e efficient social agencies of the city which deal with families and individuals use the Exchange regularly. By inquiry of the Exchange the social worker receiving an application from a family in need can learn at once what other organizations have inquired concerning the same family. He can then put himself in touch with these agencies and receive the benefit of their experience. This avoids duplication of work, but more important than this, it enables him to learn how his families have responded to other forms of social treatment, and this in turn will help him in deciding upon his own plans. T h e division of labor in social work has proceeded so far that the cooperation of charities is no longer an exchange of courtesies merely. No one agency can meet all the needs of any one family. If the service needed is found to come more appropriately from some other agency, or if one's own organization can meet only a part of the difficulty, then the social worker must assume the responsibility of intelligent cooperation with others. For example, the commitment of children may be a function of the Department of Public Charities or of the Children's Court. If an application for commitment is rejected for good reasons after inquiry, but the family situation requires strengthening in other ways, the Department or the Court has not discharged its responsibility until its social investigators through their own efforts or in cooperation with the community's voluntary or official agencies have made sure that these other phases of the situation will be met. If the children are committed, the [59]

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public interest in the rehabilitation of the home is still more direct. Whatever conditions made the commitment necessary—the lack of the power of self-maintenance—must be removed before the children can be returned. Otherwise the work of the Department and the Court with the children will be wasted. T o discover just when its disabilities have been overcome, so that the children may wisely be returned, is as elementary an obligation as the commitment when that is necessary. Cooperation among charities, like all relationships, is a process of give and take. As long as social work is in a tentative stage, there will be different standards in different agencies, different ways of meeting similar problems. T h e response of other organizations for cooperation will not always be what is expected. Demands upon an organization may exceed its financial resources or its legal powers. Its experience, with the full force of which other agencies are unfamiliar, may dictate policies which at first sight seem unreasonable. One cannot expect others, however, to concede the validity of his experience in his own field unless he makes a similar concession to them. Those who attempt to cooperate with other agencies, as all social workers must, may well consider in this connection those factors which make any human relationships run smoothly and with satisfaction to those concerned. In social work, besides these general considerations, there are others of practical value in relations with other organizations. Personal acquaintance with workers in other organizations makes results possible where correspondence and telephone communications alone do not. Knowledge of the charitable resources of the city and one's [60]

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district should include such acquaintance. Definite suggestions as to the sort of action which a given situation requires are better than general requests for cooperation. This implies a thorough knowledge of one's own case and of the point in a plan of treatment at which the cooperating agency can enter. Negotiations with other agencies should go far enough to enable all parties to understand one another. Plans involving several organizations may well be worked out in conference. A situation should never be left indefinite. There must be agreement on some plan of work in which all concerned, including the family itself, have a definite part; and there must be readiness to assume one's own full measure of responsibility. T h e following considerations lie at the basis of good social work: (1) Action should not be confined to the particular request which an applicant makes. T h e aim should be to meet the actual needs and, when possible, to bring about the self-dependence of the family or individual, with all that this implies. (2) A plan for relief involves a foundation of facts gained through a careful investigation. This investigation involves the use of certain definite sources of information, including the family itself, in order to understand both its disabilities and its assets. (3) T o carry out the plan usually involves the use of other agencies in a definite arrangement for cooperation.

[61]

PROVIDING TEACHING Address Delivered at the National of Social Work 1920

MATERIAL Conference

T H E means of providing teaching material for the training of social workers cannot be discussed satisfactorily without considering the objectives of the teacher. T h e product of successful teaching in social work is the trained worker, a product never so much in demand as now, the trained worker a term never so confidently used. What is the trained worker? How can we tell one when we see him? What has he that untrained persons have not? As I see it, the equipment which justifies us in regarding a person as trained for social work has three aspects: first, it implies the possession (in the full sense of that word) of a philosophy of life both individual and social; second, it implies knowledge of a wide range of facts which define and to some extent explain the problems of human adjustment to environment, and the powers and opportunities by which men may approach a solution of these problems; in the third place, training implies the possession of a definite kind of skill in handling concrete situations. Philosophy, knowledge, and skill are the three essential ingredients of training. It is difficult, if not impossible, to separate them. It is difficult to direct training toward the acquisition of any one of them without developing some measure of the other two. It is impossible to conceive of the highest development of one without the highest development of the others. In a person called upon to deal with practical situations sound philosophy does not develop without accurate and comprehensive knowledge and a high degree of skill. Knowledge unaccompanied by philosophy and skill is definitely limited in its [65]

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cffect; and skill which is not directed by both philosophy and knowledge would be dangerous and ineffective. It is not possible to separate these three aspects of training but they are nevertheless acquired by different means. Philosophy is largely a by-product of the use of knowledge and skill. It comes at its best with experience. It is possible in a curriculum to assist students to the development of a sound philosophy by courses which have this as their direct purpose. Of teaching material for such coursestreatises, textbooks, and other forms of recorded experience and thought—there is almost no lack. It is probably more abundant than teachers who see its possibilities. The knowledge which should enter into the training of social workers is by no means complete but it is nevertheless abundant. Social research of one kind or another has given us an impressive accumulation of facts regarding social organization, the structure and nature of communities, problems of disease, industrial life, education, and many other phases of our environment, our social order, our institutions, and the individuals who are affected by them. Such knowledge is as yet fragmentary and much of it will no doubt be made obsolete by future advances in science. It is nevertheless sufficient to provide a solid foundation for this aspect of training. It is possible to find in a well-organized modern library sufficient teaching material to build distinctly "knowledge" courses, courses whose function is the definition and description of the problems of social work and the forces which may be developed in order to meet them. This is not true of teaching material primarily for the development of skill. Such material is as scanty as other [66]

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forms are abundant. I intend to devote this discussion to ways and means of providing teaching material which can be used directly in the development of skill. T h e subject matter of social work is the adjustment of men to their environment. This is a large field. It carries us all the way from the task of assisting an individual whose own powers of adjustment have become impaired to the task of studying and modifying some widespread condition such as low wages, which may impair in men their power to make such adjustments. T h e problem of adjustment to environment is the problem of life. Into its solution the individual puts his entire equipment for life—his tastes, his ambitions, his ideals, his intelligence, his physical powers, his knowledge, his hobbies, his culture, his craving for companionship. His problem of adjustment is solved to just the extent that he is able to effect a satisfying working relationship between these things, which are himself, and the experiences, opportunities, material factors, and other human beings, which are his environment. T h e necessity for social work arises because of the difficulties faced by men in making this adjustment. These difficulties are sometimes in the man and sometimes in the environment. Some factors of the environment bear too heavily upon all men, some bear too heavily upon a smaller number. Some highly equipped individuals succeed in their adjustment because of their equipment, others fail because such equipment has never been highly enough developed in them although it might have been. A large part of social work is conducted with the purpose of softening the effect of environmental factors which [67]

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bear with undue severity upon all men; another large part of social work aims at the development of greater resourcefulness in all men in meeting environmental demands. T h e greater part of social work, however, is at present devoted to the development of a higher degree of adjusting power in those persons who are most handicapped by environment or a modification, in so far as is possible, of those particular environmental factors which handicap them. All this is by way of saying that the tasks of the social worker, unlike the task of practically all of the other professions, is the task of making it possible for those in whose behalf he works to do for themselves the very things which make life, or might make it, rich, satisfying, and successful for himself. His skill therefore, when, for purposes of analysis only, it is divorced from considerations of philosophy and knowledge, is seen to lie in a certain understanding and power to control the factors that enter into sound wholesome human relationships. A skilled person is, among other things, one who has mastered certain methods of work. He has acquired a technique. His technique enables him to approach a problem, analyze it, discover possibilities of solution, decide upon the most promising one, and work toward its accomplishment with a confidence, a sureness of touch, a lack of self-consciousness, an economy of effort, and a definite expectation of a probable result which in an unskilled person would be impossible. What is the nature of the technique of the social worker? Like other forms of technique it is a habit of mind. It is the power of thinking in the presence of a particular kind of phenome[68]

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non in accepted ways. It is the ability to see all of the implications of a given situation in the light of a given purpose and to choose the particular way out of that situation most likely to achieve the purpose. "Freeing the mind," says Hocking, "is the function of all technique." A technician expends a minimum of time in wondering how to proceed. H e looks, with the confidence of one who knows, for the aspects of the situation which are familiar to him and because he is a technician he brings to bear upon those aspects the kind of resourcefulness which is indispensable to successful treatment. Technique is the power to think systematically and economically through a particular kind of phenomenon. I wish to give technique its proper place in the training of social workers— neither overemphasizing nor underemphasizing it. Both overemphasis and underemphasis have characterized some of our thinking about training. Philosophy may be acquired by reflection, knowledge by study, technique only by practice. A curriculum for the training of social workers therefore must include practice. There has been since the beginning of the movement for training in our field a recognition of the importance of field work, the function of which has been to provide just this opportunity for practice. It is apparent, however, that the practice which leads to the acquisition of a technique involves more than field work. A large part of the practice through which technique is acquired may be organized in a training scheme in addition to field work. From the point of view of wellrounded training it is essential that this be done. Technique represents a particular habit of mind in the use of [69]

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certain definite materials. This habit of mind may be developed in class apart from the field, provided the right materials are used. If a class of students is presented with a concrete situation taken from the records of a social agency and representing a problem which the agency has worked at, the class has evidently the same opportunity that the agency had to show a skilled handling of the situation. Being students and not trained workers they will not arrive as quickly at a program of the steps to be followed. It is possible, however, to provoke a discussion of the suggestions made by the class which will epitomize the entire experience of the profession of social work through which it arrived at the methods of work which the agency used. Generations of social workers, by the trial-and-error method, have developed such technical methods. Any good training school should provide opportunities whereby students can, as a part of their training, go through the same trial-and-error process in reaching the same methods of finding sound ways of handling concrete situations. Teaching material for this aspect of training is the record of work done by a social agency put in a form that makes it available for class use. Such material is almost wholly unavailable at the present time. The providing of it is the greatest problem which professional training in this field faces. There are many reasons why it is difficult to obtain. First, records, whether of social case work, of surveys, or of community organization, are prepared to be of value to trained workers rather than to students. T h e preparation of such records for teaching purposes brings out points in the process quite different from those which it is neces[70]

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sary to emphasize in preparing a record for use in the work of an organization. Second, it is only recently that the possibilities of the case method of teaching have been realized. Cases have been used as illustrations in showing the soundness of principles didactically presented for a long time. In the training of social workers, however, courses designed to develop resourcefulness and the right habits of thought by the case method are comparatively new. Third, it is not easy to prepare records for this purpose. For this kind of teaching the most important aspect of a record is not the results to which it led but the actual steps that were taken and the reasons why these steps were taken. As an exercise for students a concrete situation has educational value because it imposes upon the students the necessity of developing all possible alternatives of action and a decision upon one of them as representing the most promising. T h e record in question, if it has been properly prepared for teaching purposes, should then show what alternative was decided upon in the handling of the situation and why. If the class decided upon the same alternative and the record is one of successful work its reasoning has been justified. If it decided upon a different one it would have to justify its decision, and the result of the work shown by the record would, or would not, give a basis for this justification. T o secure such records means first of all that situations which call for skillful handling must be discovered in the experience of social agencies. These discovered, it is necessary to analyze the processes followed by the worker. This is not easy. T h e tendency is to look for results rather than for methods. Few records as they stand can be [71]

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analyzed for teaching purposes without getting from the workers who did the work much suggestion as to the processes followed. Many workers are wholly unconscious of their processes, and their most important reasoning is usually unrecorded. Some attempt to secure teaching material in regard to the technical aspects of social work will illustrate both the difficulties and the possibilities. As I have said, any situation which has required and received skillful handling is good material for this purpose, provided the way in which the skillful handling was applied can be shown as well as its results. In a search for such material I once encountered a case in which a discouraged, crippled, unskilled youth of nineteen, unable to work, and distrustful of every human being outside of his household, became, through the efforts of a social worker, a skilled telegrapher with a steady job. T h e record of this case as I found it in the agency under whose auspices the work was done listed entries from time to time, culminating in a highly successful result. There was no hint of the methods used by the worker, although in the progress of the case situation after situation was discovered or hinted at which called for the most skillful handling. It took an entire afternoon with this worker to discover just how he proceeded at these various crises and what factors in the situation led him to proceed as he did. H e had been wholly unconscious of methods but his entire handling of the case was full of skillful methods of which a less competent person would have been incapable. Many people less competent have been trained to do work as skillful. Such training will be easier hereafter if we can include in it [72]

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such teaching material as this case, when analyzed, provided. Recently I had an interesting conference with a man who has been remarkably successful in developing interest in community activities in villages and small cities. His experience would yield an abundance of the richest kind of material for teaching purposes. He has been called into various communities, sometimes by invitation of prominent citizens, sometimes by a church, sometimes by the grange, sometimes by private individuals, practically always with the request that he make suggestions as to how the community may accomplish some specific purpose. His aim has been, while meeting the immediate request which occasioned his coming, to develop the interest of the members of the community through some sort of organization, either an existing one or a new one, which would make such community interest available for meeting the continuing community needs. T h e university with which he is connected has issued a monograph on community organization outlining the methods which should be followed in such work. Among other things it contains a number of brief records of what has been accomplished in particular communities, community action for the study and control of health problems, school situations, pageants, contests for the development of better quality livestock or agricultural products, cultural activities of one kind or another. Anything which represents a community need and can be made a conscious community interest has served as the starting point for developing an organization of citizens prepared to lead in activities of all sorts. From the point of view of types of situations which require ex[73]

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pert handling, from the point of view of results which may be achieved, these records were illuminating and suggestive and in the form presented would make useful documents for the discussion of certain problems of community organization. For training purposes, however, the significant aspects of this piece of work were entirely omitted. If the experiences of this worker were to be formulated in order to provide teaching material in methods of work they should have been analyzed in order to show some such phases as these: This worker never undertakes to work out a program for a community until he is invited. Why not? In a given situation he received an invitation from two or three responsible citizens, one of them perhaps a clergyman, two of them farmers. He paid a visit to the community and talked with these men. In this conversation it was revealed, let us assume, that certain health conditions in the town were bad. This community organizer as a result of this conference suggested that a meeting of citizens be called at a later date which he would attend. In organizing a community did he always suggest that a meeting of a larger number be called? No, he did not. What different next steps did he at different times suggest? Sometimes he suggested that a specific subject be presented at a Sunday-night service at the church, sometimes he suggested a private conference with one or two other persons, sometimes that the next meeting of the grange be devoted to the subject, sometimes that no meeting at all be held but that certain other information be gathered by some particular person in a position to do so before further steps were taken. Why is one kind of procedure sound in one case and not in another? Why [74]

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did he decide upon the particular procedure he did in the particular case under discussion instead of another? A similar analysis could be made of each successive step in the situation. T h e purpose of such an analysis is to develop all of the possible alternatives at each step and to discover the reason why some are rejected and a particular one decided upon. When an experience is analyzed in this way the particular situation may be presented to a class and its members required to think out the proper procedure from the beginning, their decisions at each step checked up by the actual procedure that was followed. Here is another illustration of the difference between analyzing experience in the routine of social work for the record of a social agency and analyzing it for teaching purposes. A physician was called upon to treat a case of illness in the household of a well-to-do family in which certain information regarding the routine of life in the household and some intimate details as to the reactions of various members was essential. H e sent a social case worker to spend a week end in the household with the approval, of course, of the family concerned. She was there from Saturday afternoon until Monday morning. For the purposes of the medical and social treatment of this case her record of the experience would include certain facts which she observed and certain recommendations as to diagnosis and treatment. From the point of view of instruction, however, it would be possible to make a very different record of this experience. As a social case worker I am interested in what she observed and in the conclusions which she drew. As a teacher of social case [75]

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work, however, I am interested in this aspect of her experience, but even more in another. I wish to know how a case worker would meet the constantly recurring situations, some of them minutes or seconds apart, upon which depended her success in winning a place in the household, in gaining and holding the confidence of the family, and in making herself persona grata to its members without smothering their spontaneity, and how she would at the same time accomplish her main purpose of acquiring information. How did she get the information that she wished? If she saw the possibility of getting a revealing insight into a point of view or habit, provided she could find some member of the family in the right mood or could talk with one of them under the right circumstances, how did she contrive to bring about these circumstances, or to what extent could she make her association with the particular person concerned such as would develop the mood that would bring out the things she sought? The power to conduct one's self so as to accomplish this is the power that we ascribe to a social worker when we say that he is trained. An agency for social work which takes pains to equip itself with trained workers assumes that they will have this power. It is therefore something taken for granted as lying behind the actual incidents in a particular piece of social work. The method of using this power never gets into the record. The record is devoted to a statement of incidents, and the conclusions that are drawn from them. Obviously such records must be analyzed from an entirely different point of view if they are to be made available for teaching purposes. Teaching material for the technique side of training [76]

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for social work must be drawn directly from the experience of social workers. It has no other legitimate source. Moreover, such material can rarely be found in the records, as they stand, which social workers make of their experiences. Such records, so far as they define the situations dealt with and show the results achieved, indicate the possibility that the teaching material exists. If it exists, however, it exists largely in the minds of the workers. In order to provide it, therefore, social workers who have done their work well must be encouraged to analyze their work from the point of view of the methods used. Such analyses then become the best possible textbooks for use in the training course. How are we going to accumulate such material? T h e very limited amount that we have has been prepared by busy case workers and a few teachers (we have very few teachers in this field) who have taken the time to dig it out in order to meet a pressing training need. If it is to be accumulated systematically and in sufficient quantity I believe the process must begin farther back. In the first place the schools which are training social workers ought to give their students not merely training in the methods of social work but an insight into the importance of this sort of analysis and some training in the power to make it. Analysis of this kind is valuable not merely for teaching: it is exceedingly valuable to case workers themselves in that it reveals to them the actual process by which they get results. It is of the highest possible value to those who are supervising case work. If students in professional schools can be trained to make this kind of analysis we shall be adding every year, through our graduates, to the [77]

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number of social workers who appreciate the importance of building up a supply of teaching material and who have been given a start at least toward acquiring proficiency in preparing it. A part of this training in case record analysis in the schools should be actual experience in the whole process that I have described—experience, that is, in getting behind the actual sequence of events in any given piece of social work in order to discover the methods used. If this is systematically done by schools and training classes we may expect to get a substantial increase in the amount of material for these courses. T h e records of social agencies, however, represent by no means the only sources of teaching material for training social workers. Earlier in this discussion I spoke in some detail of human adjustment as the field of social work. This necessarily sketchy discussion was designed to indicate that a large part of the skill of the social worker is rooted in his own power of adjustment to his own environment. Every human being has had experiences in handling situations, or in being a party to situations handled by others, which are highly suggestive from the point of view of the social worker. In conversations regarding social case work, for example, we constantly hear discussions in which emphasis is placed upon how important it is that the case worker give something of himself in his contact with those with whom he deals professionally. We suggest now and again that the best case worker is he who can share the rich experiences of life, or their results in character or spirit, with those whom he is aiding professionally. I suspect, however, that despite a genuine assent to this proposition a line is drawn by too many case [78]

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workers between life as they know it themselves and life as it is lived by those with whom they deal. This is not necessarily from snobbish motives. It is rather because we do not tend to realize the essential unity of life or the value for every human relationship of all that enriches, strengthens, or stabilizes any such relationship. I am inclined to think that we have overlooked a fertile field of teaching material in those areas of human interest that are not regarded as the field of organized social work. Records of human relationships of whatever kind or wherever found are entirely relevant material for teaching in the field of social work. I have discovered within the past year, for example, a wealth of new material for the teaching of social case work in an analysis of novels and plays in which there is a record of the effort of one person to influence, guide, or control the conduct or the well-being of another. Many books describe this kind of case work with such abundant detail as to the method used that sometimes a teacher sighs for a novelist in the case record writing departments of our social agencies. Another interesting possibility for giving students "the feel" of case work in action would be an opportunity to know what it feels like to be treated by a case worker. I do not know where such records can now be found. If I am right, however, in thinking that case work in its essence is deliberate human relationship at its best, some useful teaching material may be secured by asking anybody, the more intelligent the person the better—case workers themselves, for example—what considerations have led him to respond at any time to the influence of another person. What has given him confidence in the leadership [79]

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of experts of one kind or another? I am confident that analysis of this sort would be rich material for training case workers. Analysis of the case workers' methods which I discussed a few moments ago reveals the kind of thinking through which a case worker goes in working out his plans. The response which people make to leadership would give us an insight into the emotions and other reactions of an individual who sees case work coming toward him head on, so to speak. In order to test the possibility of getting this sort of information I made an experiment in a casual conversation recently. I was talking with a woman one of whose children had been ill for a long time. She had consulted two different physicians in different cities, having moved from one city to the other. I discovered that she rated both physicians equally from the point of view of professional ability. It was when I discovered that she had greater confidence in the medical treatment of one than she had in the medical treatment of the other, although she regarded them as equally able, that I tried to ascertain why her response to one physician was more complete, more open, readier, than to the other. The result was of course quite unscientific and I should hardly record it here if I had not later discussed it with some physicians who thought it was highly significant from the point of view of those factors in a patient's personality or thought which determine in a large measure the success of prescribed medical treatment. T h e woman whose experience was analyzed found herself, in the case of Physician Number One, distrusting his grasp on the problem despite his having given every evidence of devoting him[80]

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self unqualifiedly to it. In the case of the other she had complete confidence in his leadership. When I asked her what the difference was between the two men the following five points emerged from a somewhat rambling discussion: Physician Number T w o , who had been successful in winning her confidence, seemed to her first of all thoroughly and completely honest. She did not question the honesty of Number One but she had an uneasy feeling that he was not always frank. She was ready to believe that he had good professional reasons for not being frank. Physician Number T w o evidently did not recognize the same reasons for he had used frankness in certain matters where Number One had not. In the second place she believed that to Physician Number T w o any matter that was of vital concern to the patient was of concern also to the physician. He did not assume an obviously artificial interest in unrelated matters but he gave the appearance, at any rate, of considering factors which seemed to the patient to be important. She did not feel this to be true of Number One. In the third place Physician Number T w o revealed an imagination which had a certain "feel" for unvoiced considerations on the part of the patient. For instance, the suggestion of an operation by the physician at a somewhat critical time was accompanied voluntarily by a discussion of certain matters regarding this particular operation which loomed large in the consciousness of the patient, but which without the physician's leading would probably had been unexpressed. In the fourth place Number T w o rather tended to probe for the reasons which might underlie prejudice and unresponsiveness in an attempt to remove them. Finally, the whole continuing [81]

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contact of Number T w o was marked by a certain warmth of relationship which was not exaggerated or feigned, but was essentially human. I mention this instance not because it has scientific value but because it seems to me to be a quite empirical but excellent illustration of an entirely sound and highly important kind of research. Any social case worker who would take time to analyze his own reactions in similar situations could not but have, to families and individuals whom he has under treatment, a power of approach quite different from his power of approach if his technique were gained wholly out of an objective analysis of situations as situations. Case work is fundamentally the influence of one personality upon another. Part of the technical equipment of a case worker is derived from his power to appreciate and understand what it is that leads human beings to respond to the influence of others. T o develop this appreciation and understanding as a matter of training we must have teaching material. W e shall make a mistake if we confine ourselves for this phase of training to material that is drawn from the records of social agencies. Wherever throughout the range of human life as we know it we can find instances of the successful influence or control of one human being over others we have potential subjectmatter for a training course. It needs only to be analyzed in order to understand the processes which lay behind the successful exercise of such influence or control. If this whole discussion could be summed up it would come to this. T h e training of the social worker on the technical side is training in certain habits of thought in the use of a certain kind of material. Technical profi[82]

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ciency can be acquired only by practice. That which prospective social workers need to practice is exactly what trained social workers are doing. The subject-matter for such training must be the situations with which trained workers deal. T o make this subject-matter available for teaching it must be analyzed in order to show not merely what such trained workers have accomplished but how they have accomplished it. In other words, a particular piece of social work to be made valuable for teaching must be analyzed so as to reveal the whole body of reasoning, conceptions, and mental habits which in the trained worker entered largely unconsciously into his actions. For the purpose of training is to enable the student to enter into such a definite possession of these conceptions and mental habits as will enable him to work with the same lack of consciousness of technical method. T h e preparation of this material can only be undertaken by those who are themselves social workers. I believe the schools have a responsibility, first, to perceive the possibilities of its use; second, to train their graduates to analyze experience in terms of the methods that underlie experience; and third, with the cooperation of their graduates and others to accumulate records of successful achievement in social work analyzed in this way. This paper started with the proposition that the training which marks the social worker is a combination of philosophy, knowledge, and technique. I wish to emphasize, in closing, the essential need of this combination. This discussion has been concerned almost wholly with teaching material for the development of technique, not because it is necessarily more important than the other two but be[83]

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cause for its development we have available less teaching material than for the others. It is perhaps unnecessary to add that it is hardly possible to direct training toward the development of technique without at the same time emphasizing the importance of comprehensive knowledge and the driving power of a sound philosophy.

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Address Delivered at the National of Social Work

»923

Conference

T H E form of the family is largely determined by tradition, by law, by convention, and by religious sanction. All these are the product of slowly maturing human experience and the instinctive reactions of human beings developing throughout their history constantly more definite forms of social control. An institution so founded, with the authority of the ages behind it, is not lightly to be modified. It is not my purpose to suggest what particular modifications in the form of the family are desirable. I wish rather to call attention to a phase of our responsibility which, in our sound desire to conserve the best in our heritage from the past, is too easily overlooked. I believe that in our effort to maintain the integrity of the family we do not sufficiently consider the extent to which, under modern conditions of thought and life, its integrity is assailed by some of the traditions and sanctions which have safeguarded it in the past. Let us take as our ideal for the family that which is based upon monogamous marriage founded upon love between man and woman and entered upon with an assumption in favor of permanence. This is an ideal to which perhaps every school of thought would subscribe. T o consider whether changes should not be made in our present form of the family is not necessarily to challenge this ideal; but it may very well be to challenge the adequacy of some of our historical methods of safeguarding it. W e may well consider whether what we know of human nature today and the experience and the attitudes of man in this present age do not give us some new factors to take [87]

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into account whenever we try by legislation or otherwise to regulate the form of the family. We are not here seeking to set forth profound scientific or philosophic truth. We are attempting rather to probe the facts of daily life for the light they may throw upon the problem of maintaining under modern conditions an ideal of the family whose chief protection thus far has been tradition from the past. Let us begin with comradeship, a phase of human experience which must be studied chiefly in a succession of commonplace incidents. Married life means to most people at the present time permanent companionship which at its best may become comradeship. Is comradeship in the present day, in marriage or elsewhere, an easier thing to achieve than it formerly was, or a more difficult? In human experience does it become easier or more difficult for people to live together? When two persons undertake to live with each other they take their courage in their hands. As the days pass into weeks and the weeks into months and the months into years, their foibles, their weaknesses, their prejudices, and their sterling qualities as well stand out in bolder and bolder relief. Considered simply as a problem of getting along together the selection of a housemate is almost wholly an experiment. Its success depends upon many factors, of which that almost intangible thing—compatibility—is among the most important. Does this problem of the adjustment of personalities to each other grow more complicated? I think it does and the reason is that the individual of today is more of an individual than he ever was before and has developed a wider range of interests than his ancestors dreamed of. Consider what science, invention, and the spread of learning have [88]

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added to the range of interests open to the human being of modern times. Reading, music, and recreation alone, with the varied ways in which we have made them accessible to the mass of mankind, represent constantly increasing opportunities for the development of individual interests. This development of individual interests has at least two important implications: In the first place, it means an increase in the number of outlets for self-expression open to the individual. It means many more ways in which he can become conscious of possession. It means more directions in which he can feel that he is making an investment of himself. The development of romantic music in the eighteenth century was more than a stage in musical history. It reflected a profound change in the development of individuality in men. A modern critic has said of classical and romantic music that when hearing the former, one feels that he listens to music written for the human race; when hearing the latter, he feels that he listens to a message to his own spirit. In the second place, this increase in individual interests means the development of a greater number of points of contact with other human beings. Here is its significance from the point of view of comradeship between those who undertake to live together. A widening range of interests may mean potentially the development of greater depth of feeling, certainly around some of them. Next to the possession of a deeply treasured interest, the richest experience one can have is the sharing of it with another personality to whom it means much the same. So far as this factor goes, modern marriage offers the opportunity of many more points at which the interests of man and woman can be [89]

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dovetailed, and to that extent it offers the possibility of a richer, more permanent comradeship between them. But this is only half the story. One may have in a wide range of interests the possibility of much greater penetration into another life, but he has also the possibility of many more points of incompatibility. If among one's greatest interests in life are cooperative marketing, baseball, the music of Chopin, steam turbines, bridge, electric cooking appliances, and the novels of Joseph Conrad, one will ordinarily be able to develop the greatest degree of intimacy with a person who claims the same interests and attaches to them the same kind of values. On the other hand, for a person whose chief interests are those we have mentioned, life would be lacking a necessary element if lived with another who shared none of them, and would become intolerable with one who scoffed at them. A wide range of interests, therefore, while it offers the possibility of richer companionship, carries also the danger of making companionship more difficult. Compatibility between persons of diverse interests is just as possible today as it ever was. There is no question, however, but that it is easier when one is free to choose his companions knowing what manner of persons they are. T o be forced to live with one whose interests are not known is putting a handicap upon the growth of comradeship. Is the problem of comradeship easier or more difficult within marriage than outside? Easier beyond question because of the love interest in which our ideal marriage, at any rate, has its roots. But at this point modern experience presents a new complication. The interests whose correlation is so essential a factor in comradeship tend to become [9o]

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crystallized later and later in life. T h e interests which go most deeply with human beings in the sense of possession are cultural, vocational, and avocational. T o a large extent these interests in the form in which they persist through life are the products of maturity. Education, professional training, the higher demands of skilled work tend to prolong the period of preparation. Many interests do not become fixed until the period of preparation is over, and one is more or less settled in the direction in which he wishes to go. Ordinarily the interests of mature years do not become crystallized until possibly the late twenties. This is the age, in other words, at which the nature of one's lasting comradeship is likely to be more firmly based. Young men and young women, however, do not and should not wait until the late twenties before they fall in love. And however much economic considerations may be driving us into late marriages, this tendency cannot but be deplored by those who believe both in the right of youth to love and in confining its deepest expression to the marriage relationship. We may well believe that compatibility between man and wife is essential to family life. We may believe that marriage as an institution is so important to the welfare of society that men and women must be urged to achieve compatibility at whatever cost. We do ourselves a wrong, however, if we do not recognize that the growth of human comradeship is a bigger problem than it ever has been. The love of man and woman simplifies the problem but marriage intensifies it—since comradeship may be more difficult of achievement on the part of those who feel themselves driven by circumstances to achieve it. We have [9i]

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taken as our ideal of the family the monogamous marriage, which is based upon love and entered upon with an assumption in favor of permanence. That ideal can be retained by the race only if it recognizes the increasing difficulty of attaining it in our present social arrangements and adapts its forms of legal, religious, and conventional sanction to that fact. In discussing the features of modern life which affect the future of the family, the record must include reference to the profound influence of the newer position of woman in society. Politically, economically, and socially, woman in modern times has achieved a new status. Through education and experience, she is qualifying for its responsibilities. T h e implications of this development for the family are profound. They have already been discussed before this Conference, notably by Professor Tufts in 1915, and there is no lack of continuous thoughtful discussion of it elsewhere. It will suffice for this paper, therefore, merely to record the importance of the new status of woman in any consideration of the future of the family. Another characteristic of modern thought which has a bearing upon family life is its attitude toward authority. There is a widespread feeling that human beings in these times show an increasing disrespect for authority. Some writers will have us believe that disrespect for law, if not more widespread, is at least more conspicuous. It is suggested also that many of the older sanctions, religious and conventional, command a lesser degree of allegiance from the present generation than they did from the past. The growing independence of children of the present day, representing a relaxing of parental authority, is an illustra[92]

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tion of the same thing. Certainly in the field of politics men have become increasingly restless under traditional forms of authority: autocratic governments are overturned completely, and representative governments have in recent years experienced more frequent changes in tenure. If we turn from institutions claiming a measure of authority over groups of persons to the human being himself, what attitude toward authority shall we find? I am inclined to think that most human beings like authority. Men like to be led. They like to take cues from others. They like to find a formulated doctrine which they can follow. They like the security that comes with realizing that there is authoritative backing for that which they believe. In order to reconcile these apparently paradoxical assumptions, suppose we analyze a bit the nature of authority. There is a kind of authority that goes with status. T h e president, the king, the priest, the teacher, the manager, the parent, the policeman carry authority regardless of the qualifications of the person who holds the office. Whatever the source of such authority, it is recognized generally and traditionally receives respect. This is constituted authority, if we may spread a bit the strict meaning of this phrase. It is the authority of the office. An unworthy incumbent may lessen the respect accorded it but cannot wholly destroy it. It is authority in which the subject not only acquiesces but, in many of the illustrations mentioned, the authority is given as a result of the subject's deliberate act. Constituted authority, however, is not the only type which human beings follow. The guide, counselor, and [93]

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friend is usually an authority, but he does not derive his authority from his status. Rather, he derives his status from his authority. Civilization has become so complex that no man can be an authority with respect to all matters that are vital in his life. In politics, in finance, in health, in recreation, in religion, in philosophy, in his vocation, he needs outside assistance. Anyone whose judgment in any one of these fields he respects may be to him an authority. Authority in this sense is not constituted. It is rather inherent in the wisdom and understanding of the individual. Inherent authority is the authority of experience and learning, leading to judgments which less experienced, less learned persons are willing to follow. Inherent authority is the authority of those whose lead we follow without any compulsion to do so. I am inclined to believe that the growing disrespect for authority is disrespect for authority which is constituted but not inherent. Men are no less willing than they ever were to accept leadership, to be told what to do, but they are increasingly restless when advice or instructions come from persons who have only a constituted right to give them and no inherent authority with respect to them. Political dissatisfaction is not so much due to unwillingness to be controlled as it is unwillingness to be controlled by those who do not combine with the constituted right to control the inherent authority which makes the control wise. What bearing has this upon the family? T h e family is a less formal organization than the state, the church, or an industry. Nevertheless, it is an organization, and within the family parents occupy the position of constituted [94]

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authority. Happy is that family in which the constituted authority of parents is also inherent, in which the respect of children may be gained not merely because children must obey their parents but because with regard to the important issues of life the judgment of parents has earned respect. Both tradition and law grant parents almost complete control over their children. Just now there is a deepening of interest in the whole subject of the relationship which should exist between parents and children, and this is an interest which goes far beyond the mere question of control. It is none too soon for this interest to show itself. In the education of children there has been very little which fitted them for the art of parenthood. Most of the contributions toward home making have been in terms of labor-saving machinery, budgets, and mastery of the domestic arts. We have gone serenely along in the belief that the solidarity of the family group under the leadership of parents could be preserved on the old basis of parental control and such measure of companionship as an assortment of human beings could spontaneously achieve. In the meantime, more and more of us have been educated, deeper and deeper have sunk ideas of liberty and selfexpression. All of which has been approved by our philosophers and deliberately fostered by our leaders. No one would claim that we have yet achieved an undue capacity for independent thought, but the result of the process of education and the result of our struggle for liberty have nevertheless tended toward independent thinking. Whatever else a desire for independent thinking and for the selection of one's own authorities may lead to, they have

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clear indications with regard to the organization of family life. If respect for parents is an important element in holding the family together, that respect must not only be accorded by children—it must also be won by parents. It is not possible in this brief discussion to consider what this means in terms of the education of parents. We need only suggest that respect is ordinarily accorded those whom one feels to share one's own interests and to some extent to have an authoritative judgment regarding them. T h e authority of a father over his son totters on its foundations when the son asks for assistance with his arithmetic lesson and is met by complete indifference. It totters only slightly less when the child is met by cordial interest and abysmal arithmetical ignorance. T h e interests of childhood are not the interests of the adult or vice versa. Nevertheless the two have points of contact, and authority in the household hinges very largely upon the success of the parents in making their leadership attractive at these points of contact. It may be too much to expect that middle age or old age can ever wholly appreciate the point of view of youth, but we can no longer be content with a philosophy of family life which makes it one of the first responsibilities of parenthood to secure in children the greatest measure of conformity with adult standards. T h e yearning for authoritative leadership on the part of youth can be satisfied only by authority which is inherent. T h e whole trend of our education, the whole atmosphere of modern life is toward the acceptance of inherent authority, and toward the distrust of any authority, however firmly constituted, which is not also inherent.

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Respect for authority as bearing upon the family goes farther than the responsibilities of parenthood. Others than parents are exercising authority with regard to the form and functions of the family. T h e church, as it has always done, exerts a powerful influence upon the institution of the home. For the greater part of mankind the ceremony of the church is still the gateway through which family life is entered. Its interpretation of morality, its doctrines with regard to divorce largely determine both flexibility and permanence in the family. Like parents, the church is a constituted authority. Behind its doctrines is all the momentum of tradition and sanctity. It may well be, however, that with respect to the family the same tendency to insist that authority be inherent as well as constituted may in the long run affect its influence. No thoughtful person would urge that the influence of the church upon family life should be lessened, any more than one would urge that the influence of parents over their children should be lessened. Certainly this discussion points in no such direction. Its significance is rather that parental authority and ecclesiastical authority both must seem, to those whose respect they ask, to rest not merely upon status but also upon a clear understanding of the facts of life and of human personality. This discussion cannot omit the effect which the present outspoken interest in sex is likely to have upon the family. This development has given many people a feeling of grave apprehension lest its consequences be entirely disastrous. It has given many others a faith that out of it will grow a saner attitude toward family life and a greater measure of security for the family ideal in which we believe. Neither [97]

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apprehension nor faith alone is a completely satisfactory starting point for action if it is possible to put facts at their service. We are far from knowing the whole truth about sex. What we do know, whether revealed by experience or by philosophy or by science, is not enough to justify abandoning entirely either apprehension or faith in regard to the future. Nevertheless we do know more about sex than any previous generation knew. Psychiatry, tentative as it is, and the study which lies behind the movement for birth control, for a more righteous attitude towards illegitimacy, have taught us something. Traditional attitudes toward sex will not be continued unless they survive the honest appraisal of newer facts and judgments based upon these facts. We know that the sexual instinct is among the most powerful in human nature. Of all human instincts it has been the most persistently kept under cover and the most rigidly disciplined. As a result it may be that it is, in proportion to its power, the least well understood; and if it is the least well understood our attitude toward it may be the least intelligent. What are some of our traditional attitudes toward sex? T h e belief is general that sex is essentially indecent. T h e common attitude is that even within marriage sexual relations between men and women are a concession to animal nature and justified only by biological necessity. From the most widely accepted moral point of view sexual intercourse is legitimate only when its purpose is procreation. Finally, our civilization has pinned its faith to a program for the control of the sexual impulse in which fear and

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repression and insistence upon self-control with no adequate appreciation of its cost are leading factors. These are no new attitudes. It may well be that whatever success the human race has had in organizing its sexual nature is due to them. In practice, however, it is clear that they are being steadily relaxed. T o many people the relaxing of these attitudes marks an inevitable tendency toward complete moral degeneration. It must be admitted that here and there a voice is raised in favor of the complete abandonment of all moral standards as the soundest social philosophy. As between no moral standards whatever and moral standards too rigid for present-day needs there could be no hesitation in making a choice. Better to trust blindly the experience of the race through the ages than to abandon it wholly in order to follow the impulse of the moment. I do not believe that we are confined to these alternatives. I think, on the contrary, that an honest facing of the facts gives good reason to believe that the relaxing of some of our traditional attitudes toward sex will mean a sounder moral standard for the future. Certainly in many specific directions our practice does not conform to these traditional attitudes. T h e practice of birth control, in spite of its being hedged about with legal restrictions, has become widespread among persons whose moral standards cannot be questioned. Moreover, the movement to modify the legal hindrances to voluntary parenthood grows in momentum and its adherents are neither the unintelligent nor the immoral. Very slowly we are coming to have a different attitude toward illegitimacy. Illegitimacy as a social problem has in the thinking of the

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past been rooted in immorality. T h e traditional attitude toward women and children tainted with illegitimacy has been dictated by our traditional feeling of the essential indecency of sex; and modification of that attitude indicates a change in our thought about sex. Despite efforts to check it, divorce is increasing and it is noticeable that the greatest increase is in divorces secured on the initiative of women. Current newspapers, magazines, and books indicate how widespread among the present generation is the discussion of sex. A l l these evidences of a change in our attitude toward sex may be interpreted as having sinister significance. This, however, is not a complete interpretation. Certainly the drive for sex education not only has the soundest of arguments behind it but, to thousands of human beings for whom life has been complicated through ignorance, it suggests the possibility of a saner outlook upon existence for the newer generation which an older generation achieved only after the most terrific struggle, if at all. T h e current interest in sex cannot all be bad. If we have sufficient honesty and courage to face facts we shall discover that, however much good may be credited to our traditional safeguards around the subject of sex, they must be charged also with a considerable measure of evil. In common knowledge they have been responsible for no small measure of marital unhappiness. T h e family physician, the confessor, the guide, counselor, and friend long preceded the psychiatrist in coming to a realization of the terrific problem of adjustment within married life which sex imposes. What has been a burden to be borne it is reasonable to expect that sex education, psychiatry, and a [100]

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saner attitude toward the biological nature of man may succeed in lightening. We are learning also through the revelations of psychiatry the terrific cost of our traditional program for the control of the sexual impulse. Repression and fear as a basis for the organization of oneself are a foundation of sand. How much of human unhappiness, how much of the sense of failure, how much of the antagonisms which lead to open strife among men are due to these repressions we do not know, but modern psychological science affords ample reason for seeing a cause-andeffect relationship between them. Our traditional attitudes toward sex are based upon a conception of society in which marriage is the normal state for adult human beings; and no other conception of society would meet our highest ideals. T h e fact is, however, that marriage as the correlative of love between man and woman to some extent grows more difficult under modern conditions. Economic considerations tend more and more to lead to the postponement of marriage. No reliable statistics have been compiled as to the rate of increase of unmarried persons. T h e tendency, however, at certain points is distinctly noticeable. Professional life and the exigencies of far-flung industrial organization make it necessary for more and more persons, both men and women, to establish themselves in new communities or to lead an almost nomadic existence. Schoolteachers, social workers, nurses, traveling salesmen and other business representatives, groups constantly growing in numbers, more and more find themselves living under circumstances which certainly do not simplify the question of finding a mate. T o the extent to which neighborliness has declined in [101]

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American city life the problem of developing acquaintances for newcomers is intensified. If acquaintance is difficult, marriage is still more difficult. There have always been human beings who have successfully negotiated celibacy; but celibacy is not normal and in the nature of things it never can be normal. An increase in celibacy may well be as grave a matter of social concern as an increase in sexual immorality. Once more we must recognize that the maintenance of an ideal is today a bigger problem for human beings than it ever was before. From still another point of view the adequacy of our traditional attitudes toward sex may in the light of recent experience be challenged. There are differences of opinion as to the form which sex education should take. There is little disagreement as to its importance. T h e purpose of sex education must be either to teach youth the truth about sex as a natural function, as natural as any other biological function, or to teach him how to control his sex impulse, or both. If both, the validity of the arguments for control must be made as apparent to him as the truth about sex. But our traditional arguments for the control of the sex impulse are the products of ages when we did not know as nearly as we do now the truth about sex. Every other form of education, if it is good education, has for its purpose the development of some capacity in the boy or girl and the provision of opportunities for its use. In the case of sex education alone we endeavor to reveal to youth the truth about one of his most fundamental capacities and we then tell him that only under certain restricted circumstances must it be used, and not for many years after he has come to understand it. [102]

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T h e r e are the soundest biological and ethical arguments for the control of the sex instinct, the reasonableness of which even youth may be expected to understand.

We

must recognize, however, that we cannot give him both knowledge of his sex nature and the reasons for its control, without his giving sex a place in his scheme of things. Under traditional moral standards, sex outside of marriage has had no legitimate place in the scheme of things.

So

drastically has convention enforced this standard that even a normal consciousness of sex interest has meant for the conscientious person a feeling of guilt.

T h e results of

education in knowledge of sex and acceptance of standards of self-control inevitably mean for youth a consciousness of sex interest.

If we believe in sex education we must be

ready to lift from youth this burden of guilt. I am advocating neither free love nor sexual promiscuity. I am advocating an attitude toward sex that will u p hold monogamous marriage.

I am pleading for recogni-

tion of the formidable nature of the task of self-control and for recognition of the fact that to be conscious of a sex instinct which needs to be controlled need not in itself involve a feeling of moral guilt. In the face of increasing marital unhappiness, of an understanding of the bad effects of the repression of the sex instinct, in the face of an increase in enforced celibacy, in the face of a widespread conviction that sex in some of its phases has never been adequately understood and not always sanely safeguarded, those of us w h o are interested in maintaining an ideal of family life would do well to consider whether our traditional attitudes toward sex do not need considerable modification, if that ideal is to be [103]

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safeguarded. I am not one of those who believe that sex is essentially indecent. T o regard the experience through which the richest of spiritual gifts comes to men and women, the gift of children, as indecent in itself is abhorrent to every fundamental sense of decency. I am not one of those who believe that indulgence of the sexual instinct is a concession to animal nature legitimate only when its purpose is procreation. Under the refining influence of the human spirit seeking its way upward, beauty has been found in every function of the human personality. If once we could free ourselves of the dead load of fear we should find, all of us, as indeed many of us have found already, beauty in the sex relationship in and for itself. This is not an argument for the relaxing either of self-control or of social control. It is an argument rather for an honest search in the light of modern knowledge and modern thought for new bases of self-control which will preserve our ideal of family life. Sex is at the foundation of family life. Sex influences family life as long as it lasts. It must be admitted that we have made little effort to understand it. It has been accepted as a biological necessity. T h a t it could have in the development of human beings any spiritual significance whatever, men have never been ready to admit. Another generation may find that a saner attitude toward sex within marriage, with implications that are spiritual as well as biological, has given them a saner attitude toward the whole problem of sex in human life, and a sounder basis for its control. One cannot consider the effect of changes in social thought and standards upon the family without considering the effect of those changes upon the whole range of [104]

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human life. Throughout human history there has been a steadily maintained tendency toward the development of the human being to think and act for himself. T h e growth of scientific knowledge, the development of a wider and wider range of interests in life, and the tremendous spread of education have given him some of the equipment necessary for this responsibility. T h e equipment thus far has been inadequate and it will continue so for a long time to come. Nevertheless, leadership by fiat and constituted authority alone is losing its hold upon men This does not mean that men are losing their faith in ideals. T h e ideals of liberty, of religious experience, of service, and of family life are as sound as ever. Coming generations of men, however, are likely to ask of their leaders that the social arrangements designed to protect these ideals be adjusted to the facts of life and to the justifiable faith of the individual man in the inherent soundness of his own judgment.

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Address Delivered at the Connecticut State Conference on Social Work »923

A G R O U P of case workers would probably agree that treatment—that part of the process directed toward the reestablishment of a client as a self-maintaining person—is the most important factor in social case work. In a sense, of course, every step in the case work process is directed toward this end; and it is true also that many of the most important concrete steps in treatment itself are taken during the process of investigation. We may, however, properly narrow a discussion of treatment to those steps which are taken with some specific treatment purpose in mind. Treatment presupposes an adequate investigation, a diagnosis, and a plan, all of which we will take for granted. We are concerned rather with the task faced by the case worker after these preliminaries have been accomplished. Before analyzing that task it will be helpful to consider some of the factors which impose a limitation upon successful treatment: (1) The element of time. Most case work agencies are overworked and most case workers have insufficient time for the quality of work on all cases of which they are capable. (2) T h e facilities with which we have to work. These include the entire range of social resources of the community—agencies, services, privileges, laws, and so on—of every conceivable kind. Under this heading, also, might be included the general public understanding of social case work which to a certain extent determines the standards of work permitted in the community. (3) The degree of responsiveness shown by clients.

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Lack of responsiveness may be due to defective intelligence, to willfulness, to distrust, or to any one of a number of factors. T h e degree to which responsiveness exists determines to a considerable extent the quality of the case work. (4) T h e status of scientific knowledge of human personality, of our social environment, and of their interplay. We have still much to learn about ourselves and about the environment in which we live—both the natural environment which was created for us and the social environment which we have largely created for ourselves. In so far as successful treatment depends upon accurate knowledge, it will be limited by the extent to which that knowledge has been revealed to us. (5) T h e equipment of case workers themselves. Social treatment will be no better than the conception of its possibilities held by those who practice it. It will be no better than the possibilities of the trained equipment which we bring to it. Ideally this equipment would include the qualities with which we were born plus that part of the experience and scientific knowledge of the race which bears upon the problem of human relationships. If we scrutinize this list of limitations, it will become clear that they are in differing degree subject to the control of the case worker. T h e element of time is at present controllable by the case worker only to a limited extent. This is also true of the facilities with which he works. Both of these factors are dependent upon the money available for the support of case work, upon the intelligence of the community and its interest in case work, and upon the efficiency of case work organizations for which case workers themselves are not usually fully responsible. [no]

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When we come to the responsiveness of the client, we have another factor which is frequently, if not usually, beyond the control of the case worker; but we have a good deal of evidence that a well-equipped case worker can secure a greater degree of responsiveness from clients than used to be thought possible. In the equipment of the case worker and the availability of scientific knowledge, we have two factors well within the control of the case worker (at least in the sense that no one else is likely to contribute to their control in anything like the same degree). New knowledge about human beings and their problems, of the kind that can be used by social case workers, must in the future be carved largely, if not chiefly, out of the experience of case workers themselves. The organization of the knowledge thus gained into serviceable equipment for social treatment must also be made by case workers themselves. Of these five possible limitations upon the quality of social treatment, then, three are largely within the control of social case workers. It would therefore seem that the study of social treatment on the one hand and the study of the equipment of social workers on the other are the two most promising leads for us in our attempt to discover how the quality of social treatment can be improved. Just what do we do in social case work when we follow through a program of treatment? I have looked through a number of case records for treatment items which might give concreteness to our discussion. From five such case records I have taken the following items, all of which, clearly, are parts of social treatment. I have used the language of the case record, but for convenience in discussion [in]

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will divide the items into two groups—my choosing, n o t that of the case workers: Group I T h e boy should be transferred to another school. Get the boy into a Boy Scout troop. T h e girl should be sent to a camp this summer. T h e boy's adenoids should be removed. T h e family should be moved to more suitable rooms. T h e boy's teeth should be attended to. T h e girl needs treatment to correct defective vision. Arrange for vacations for children in the country after school closes. Secure pension for the family. Establish the boy in a paper route. Secure library privileges for the child. G r o u p II Some plan should be worked out whereby the mother may have opportunity for contact socially with other women and thus be removed from isolation. Gradually raise household standards. He should receive a certain amount of intelligent discipline. With fairly close supervision and with help from his mother the progress can be accomplished. The attitude of the parents toward the boy must be changed. An effort should be made to render the home more receptive to medical advice. T h e psychological attitude of the household must be improved and if the boy's assistance is indispensable, it must be gained through a more cooperative spirit and not be left entirely to mere compulsion. The school must be made to see . . . Father's interest should be secured so he will work with the mother in training the children and gaining their confidence. T h e child should be given the right type of companionship.

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Get the mother to realize the danger in her attitude that the boy is necessarily going to follow in his father's footsteps. With repeated constructive explanations and understanding supervision, the outlook is moderately good. The boy's confidence should be won. Parents should observe the child more closely at home and supervise him carefully. T h e mere reading of these two groups is probably enough to make clear a great difference in the tasks which they respectively present to the case worker. Let us for convenience in this discussion call Group I the executive aspect of social treatment, because it involves chiefly the discovery of a particular resource and arranges for its use; and let us call Group II the leadership aspect of treatment because it involves primarily not the use of other resources but the influence of the personality of the worker. Both are executive, both are leadership; but the executive aspects of treatment seem to me more outstanding in the first group, and the leadership aspects more outstanding in the second. It is in the executive aspects of treatment that we have thus far achieved our most numerous successes. Thirty years ago in this country family case work agencies were struggling to get their communities to accept the philosophy that the best form of charity was " t o help the poor to help themselves." In applying that philosophy concretely annual reports, letters of appeal, public addresses, and other forms of educational effort talked about material relief as a wholly inadequate solution for the problem of the poor. T h e y emphasized finding jobs, providing medical treatment for the sick members of the family, keeping C113 3

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children in school, moving families to better housing conditions, forcing non-supporters to support their families, and so on through a list of items very like those which we have included in Group I. Attention to these matters is still an important part of treatment. With the rapid increase in the number of community facilities—medical clinics, psychiatric and psychological clinics, special classes in the public schools, laws for the protection of deserted families, facilities for recreation, and so on—it is possible now to organize programs of treatment for disorganized families which include far more of these tangible benefits than was possible thirty years ago. A reading of case records, however, leaves the feeling that even with respect to this aspect of treatment we do not take full advantage of the facilities which American communities offer. T h e quality of social treatment on this executive side depends largely upon the resourcefulness of case workers themselves. It requires in the first place an alertness to the varied needs of a family. It is easy to think of treatment in terms of certain routine possibilities: insistence upon children's going to school, attention to obvious physical needs, housing conditions, and so on. Beyond these rather obvious needs, which every case worker has schooled herself to look for, lie others which are apparent only to one who is alert and whose conception of treatment is as broad as human need and as specific as the entire range of community resources. Miss Richmond once suggested that a wholesome practice for case workers would be to consider occasionally what sources of information they most habitually use in making investigations, in order to discover whether they were ["4]

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tending to omit certain sources of information because through less frequent use they went more or less out of mind. She mentions one group of case workers who discovered by this process that they were consistently neglecting teachers and former employers. An equally wholesome exercise for case workers would be to study the whole list of social resources in the community to see which of them they have infrequently or never used. I have recently heard psychiatric social workers attach considerable importance to the use of the public library by children in need of recreation. If the library can be an important agent in bringing about readjustment for a child who presents mental difficulties, might it not be an equally effective treatment resource with children who present other social problems? T h e discussion of ways and means whereby the executive aspects of treatment can be more effectively organized could be continued for an indefinite time. I wish to leave it at this point, not because we have exhausted it but because this aspect of treatment at present is much more effectively handled than the other. Dipping for a moment into the history of social case work, we will find that thirty years ago family case work agencies were urging not merely that certain objective difficulties in the way of self-help be removed, but that we recognize the importance of the personal element, through the medium of which stimulus, encouragement, and hope might be imparted to lives made dreary by poverty. This sort of case work, carried on largely through the medium of friendly visiting, but also through the personal contacts of professional case workers, was an emphasis upon the

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leadership aspect of treatment. T h e psychological problem of treatment is at the heart of all good social case work. Over and over again, the kernel of our problem is the changing of an attitude—an attitude in a client, an attitude in a possible cooperator, an attitude in the case worker herself. How does one go to work to change an attitude? Following the phraseology of our second group of items, how is a boy's confidence won? What does "fairly close supervision" mean? How does one "get the mother to realize the danger in her attitude"? How is the attitude of parents towards a boy changed? How can a "home be made more receptive to medical" or any other kind of advice? How can a "school be made to see"? When one discusses the possibility of developing in social case workers or others the power of influencing other human beings, the capacity to draw out the best in others, the gift of human leadership, one is likely to be met with the comment that these are qualities that cannot be acquired; one has them if one is born with them; some people are just naturally effective in their human relations and some are not; the gift of dealing helpfully with human beings cannot be taught. My answer to this is two-fold: First, in schools, in medical practice, in social case work, every day the highest form of professional skill is being wasted because those who practice it are limited in their gift for ordinary human relationships. In social case work sound plans of treatment, developed after highly skillful diagnosis and based upon facts secured in the most complicated investigations, are failing because fundamental in those plans is the problem of changing human attitudes, and in the task of changing human attitudes we have thus [116]

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far been left to our own devices. T h e race has almost never studied its own experience in order to put the lessons of that experience at the disposal of those who wish to learn how to deal helpfully with others. Second, we may agree that if one has not been born with the gift of human leadership he cannot acquire it. T h e plain fact, however, is that, left to our own devices, some of us social case workers have grown in the art of human relationships. We are better case workers at the age of thirty than we were at twenty, at forty than we were at thirty, at fifty than we were at forty, and so on to the end of our days. This growth has been due to an ability to profit by our own experiences, plus an ability to benefit by observing good examples. In a very real sense every case worker who has developed the art of leadership, who has developed a facility in changing attitudes, has achieved this through learning how to practice the art. T h a t which can be learned can be taught, once we discover the method and secure the organized subject matter of instruction. At present, with respect to this most important aspect of social treatment, we have neither the method nor the organization of the subject matter. We have the experience, however, which if properly studied would make the task easier. Take, for instance, the subject matter in the following: Here is a family consisting of a mother who drinks but in spite of this supports herself and her son aged twelve. Her husband has deserted her. There is no positive evidence of immorality on her part but she has a number of men friends who spend a good deal of time with her, and the meagerness of the home equipment is such that neighbors and others do L117 ]

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not hesitate to gossip about the impropriety of her conduct. O n one occasion the attention of the S.P.C.C. was called to the situation, but they could find no basis upon which they could take legal action against her. Twice when out of work she had to appeal for charitable assistance. A l l of this has had an effect upon her somewhat sensitive son, who is ashamed of his home life, who resents the influence of several of his mother's friends over her, thinking them responsible for her drinking habits, and who in consequence is having some trouble with his work at school. T h e principal of the school has tried to discipline the boy, and, with real sympathy for his difficulties, has tried to get the mother to see the desirability of a different way of living. One or two other social agencies at one time or another have been concerned with this family situation. From the mother's point of view none of them has been helpful. She has reached the point where she is hostile to the approach of any social worker. T h e boy, whose pride has been deeply touched, shares his mother's feeling to some extent. T h e matter comes to the attention of an organization interested in family case work, which, after a brief contact, realizes the difficulties but would like if possible, in the interest of the boy particularly, to accomplish something. They finally define their procedure for the moment as follows (and this I take it is really the formulation of a step in treatment) —"get the boy's confidence." Suppose the case worker entrusted with the carrying out of this decision finds on her calendar this item, "get the boy's confidence," and, with respect to other active cases, other items such as, "secure widow's pension for Mrs. A , " "arrange a summer camp for Lucy B," "find a j o b if possible for Mrs. D . "

W i t h respect to the last three items, the

case worker would find in the slowly growing body of technical literature in our field a substantial n u m b e r of suggestions.

T h e policies of her organization would afford [118]

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still more. In her own experience she has learned how to itemize the procedure involved in every one of those tasks. But where will she find concrete suggestions in the matter of winning the boy's confidence? How does one win confidence? In my judgment there is no greater problem before us as case workers than the problem of defining this task of leadership—which is the task of winning confidence and changing attitudes. It is a problem of discovering methods used by human beings when they succeed in this task. It is an elusive problem and its solution is no less so. It is no more elusive, however, than was the problem of measuring human intelligence, with which psychologists have made amazing progress. W e may admit its difficulties and yet not shrink from the task of finding a solution. I believe that its solution lies in the hands of social case workers. Certainly their experience is one of outstanding success in solving the problem in case after case. What we need to do is to make available to ourselves the significant factors in this success. I wish to suggest a method of study which seems to me to promise progress in this direction. T h e subject matter for a study of the art of changing human attitudes must be found in the achievements of social case workers. In so far as this is being done at the present time, they are doing it. Every one of them has at some time or other gone beyond the executive aspects of treatment and won an outstanding success in reconstructing the point of view or changing the attitude of a client. Where is the record of it? T h e case record in such an instance gives the results of their work. It does not tell how it was done. What we need to do is to get behind [»9]

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the results of such efforts in order to see the effort itself. W e need not only the recital of the steps the case worker took, which are desired by her organization for its case record; we need the revelation of her thinking, of her ingenuity, of her understanding, as she would talk about these to an intimate friend who believed in her and to whom she was willing to confide without fear of being called conceited. T h e record of a substantially successful piece of case work read by another case worker would stand out as the record of an achievement which could only have been done by a skilled person. But the nature of the skill, the subtle ways in which it showed itself, the alternatives which it considered and rejected before finding the right one in each of the recurring crises that make up successful case work, the record does not reveal. And yet this aspect of social case work must be revealed if we are to make progress in the leadership which is the foundation of successful work. Let us contrast the bare statements in a given case record with the revelation of skill which is possible when case workers begin talking about the way they deal with their clients. Mrs. Mary Parsons, a woman of thirty, called at the office of a children's agency to ask for help in finding a home for a five-year-old boy whom she had adopted three years before. Mrs. Parsons was a woman of refinement and education, dignified and courteous, giving an impression of self-confidence and a commendable independence of judgment. She stated that she had been ill with tuberculosis for some time, had been advised by her physician that she was going to die, and that she wished to find a home for the boy, to whom she was deeply attached, before she became too ill to attend to the matter [120]

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personally. She lived in a small community but had come to this city because she thought the range of choice in homes for the boy would be greater. In the case record the first interview contains only one sentence which refers to Mrs. Parsons' physical condition: Mr. Parsons died of tuberculosis and before Mrs. Parsons left her home town, a specialist told her that both her lungs were badly diseased and that there was no hope for her recovery. As one reads on in the case record, it is quite apparent that this case worker, sensing the attachment between Mrs. Parsons and the boy, was loath to be a party to the separation of the two unless it were absolutely necessary. She felt that she wanted to satisfy herself regarding Mrs. Parsons' physical condition before she took any such step. Probably any good case worker would have felt the same way. We are not surprised, therefore, when the case record states under a date two days after the first interview: Visitor called on Mrs. Parsons at the home of her cousin, Mrs. Rankin, to suggest a temporary placement of Edward with Mr. Oonnison, who had asked for a boy about his age. Visitor talked with Mrs. Parsons alone. She does not want to place Edward temporarily as she feels her mother can care for him for the present and she does not want him to have to get used to two new homes. Mrs. Parsons promised to consider going to the tuberculosis clinic and said she would let the visitor know about this. If we were studying this case record for evidences of skill in social treatment on the part of the case worker we would be justified at this point in finding one in Mrs. Parsons' promise to consider going to a clinic for exami[121]

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W h a t happened between these two interviews so

briefly recorded?

W h e n one considers the impression of

self-confidence made by Mrs. Parsons, the evident fact that she was used to making her own decisions, it occurs to one that here was an illustration of an attitude which has beg u n to b e changed.

If we could follow the reasoning of

the case worker during the first interview and through the t w o days following, as she thought about Mrs. Parsons, possibly w e should have an interesting revelation of the way in which human leadership functions.

W e can visu-

alize this to a limited extent, but not completely, for this was a modest case worker and she wrote only a sketchy story of her work.

From the whole story, which she wrote

on request, I have taken the following statements which have a bearing upon Mrs. Parsons' decision: Mrs. Parsons impressed the case worker immediately as being an unusually high type of woman, one who was accustomed to making her own plans and capable of doing so. She said her husband had died of tuberculosis and that before leaving her small home town a tuberculosis specialist had told her both her lungs were badly affected with the disease and there was no hope for her recovery. She had confidence in this doctor . . . She had no doubt but that she was going to die soon . . . She had resigned herself to the separation by thinking of the opportunities which might be given Edward in a good home. T h e case worker soon saw that suggestions about further medical attention or the possibility of somehow making plans whereby the family could be kept together were not welcome. Mrs. Parsons was courteous in her manner, but she made it perfectly plain in her nice way that she had not come to our office for advice in making her decision or as to what course to follow. She had fought out all that with herself and was only asking us to provide, if we could, the necessary adoption home. [122]

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T h e case worker therefore talked only about the possibilities of our helping with this plan. We felt very much concerned about Mrs. Parsons' health and were anxious to be able to establish a friendly basis on which to talk with her further about it. She had insisted that Edward was not affected with the disease, and it had not seemed wise at the time to insist that he have an examination for tuberculosis until we were sure of being able to place him in case he was o.k. physically. We had on our lists, however, a family who would take a small boy free, temporarily. So in a couple of days the case worker called on Mrs. Parsons, at the cousin's home, with this suggestion as an excuse. She was able to talk with Mrs. Parsons alone and in a more confidential manner than at the office. Mrs. Parsons did not care to have Edward taken care of temporarily. However, during the conversation the worker found it possible to talk about a tuberculosis specialist in whom the community had a great deal of confidence. She offered to take Mrs. Parsons to him at the clinic, if she would consent to go, so that she might receive any treatment which was possible. Mrs. Parsons hesitated to consider this plan as she felt she was beyond help and "knew" that very little could be done for her trouble in this advanced stage. After the visitor had given her an account of the pleasant experiences a friend of hers had had at the County Tuberculosis Hospital as a pay patient, however, Mrs. Parsons grew more interested. It was evident that, although she had no hope whatever of her own recovery, she did regret being dependent on her relatives, and the possibility of being taken care of in a respectable way elsewhere was attractive. She promised to think about this plan for herself and to let the worker know her decision. Mrs. Parsons went to a clinic for examination. T h e physician told her that she had a good chance to make a fair recovery. After some skillful work by the case worker, Mrs. Parsons was willing to accept the physician's judgO23]

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ment and to go to a sanitarium for treatment, although she felt that the result was still so uncertain as to make it wise for her to carry out her plan to give u p Edward. At this point in the case record itself is the following entry: Mrs. Parsons told visitor about the diagnosis which the doctor had made of her case. She is very happy and is planning to be ready to go to Hillcrest next week. Visitor asked that she come to the office to talk about plans for Edward. Later: Mrs. Parsons in office. Visitor persuaded her to keep Edward. "Visitor persuaded her to keep Edward" is another of those brief entries in the record behind which there seems to be a story. Here again the case worker has done less than justice to herself, but her annotation gives us much more of an understanding than the record does of the way in which Mrs. Parsons was persuaded to keep Edward. The worker now had a basis on which to talk to Mrs. Parsons about other plans for Edward than those she had decided upon. She found that Mrs. Parsons, even with the hope of recovery, had steeled herself to the decision that Edward must have a better home than she would be able to offer him. After much persuasion, however, the worker succeeded in convincing Mrs. Parsons that the love which she and her mother could give the boy after all were worth more than anything else, and that this love would be sufficient to inspire Edward to provide for himself opportunities for the best preparation for life. The visitor went into the whole problem of the value of responsibility and a certain amount of hardship in training for life, if there is a true incentive of love backing up youth. Mrs. Parsons was glad to accept this theory once she was convinced it was sound, and rejoiced greatly in the anticipation of keeping Edward and having this incentive to drive her in her fight for health. [124]

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We have before us only two of the outstanding incidents in this case story. If we were to analyze the story, however, not from the case record but from the case worker's frank narrative of the way in which she went at this task, we should be able to put our fingers upon a number of respects in which the case worker showed undoubted skill in leadership. Some of them are worth mentioning: (1) As a case worker she sensed at the outset that her problem was more than finding a home for the five-yearold boy. She must somehow win her way past Mrs. Parsons' decision and reticence to the point where she could get for Mrs. Parsons the best possible medical advice. She did not, however, speak about this objective as soon as it came to mind. She waited until the opportunity offered. (2) She allowed Mrs. Parsons in the first interview to define the situation which she wished the case worker to attend to, and she conducted her whole discussion from that beginning. (3) In the second interview, in which she persuaded Mrs. Parsons to keep Edward, she used arguments none of which could have been wholly unfamiliar to Mrs. Parsons but which apparently had a certain authority because they came from the case worker, and this in spite of the fact that the case worker had been a stranger to her less than three weeks before. (4) It is apparent throughout this story, more so perhaps at other points than those which I have quoted, that the case worker gave Mrs. Parsons the feeling that her right to make her own decision was respected, and that her personality and judgment were being accorded full credit. From the point of view of developing the capacity of [125]

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case workers for the art of leadership, what is the significance of such an analysis as this? Certainly the four items which we have mentioned are more or less obvious, but I have found that when case workers, after analyzing the Parsons case, proceed in the same way to analyze the story that lies behind another case, and another, and another, they have been a bit startled to find that the secret of success apparently involves similar factors. For example, a moment ago I mentioned as one evidence of skill in this situation that in the second interview quoted, Mrs. Parsons was influenced to keep Edward by the arguments of the case worker. Would these arguments have had the same authority if the case worker had used them at the beginning? Obviously not. For one reason, they were most effective coming after the doctor's prognosis. But another and stronger reason is that in the first interview Mrs. Parsons did not recognize the case worker as an authority in anything, except perhaps in the finding of foster homes. If, then, we could deduce something which looks like a principle—if we were willing to call it that (which I hope we are not) —we might say: "Don't act like an authority until your authority is recognized." This sounds like a pleasant little aphorism imposing a bit of homely philosophy, the soundness of which everyone recognizes. But when in the study of case after case one sees it functioning as an explanation of success, or the lack of it as an explanation of failure, it has an impressiveness which it lacks when it simply stares at one from the wall, where it has been tacked as a useful motto. Suppose we examine this particular suggestion a bit further. In what are case workers authorities? They are regarded by an [126]

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increasing number of people, like Mrs. Parsons and other clients, as authorities with respect to the possibility of securing certain kinds of services—authorities, in other words, with regard to those things which lie chiefly on the executive side of treatment. In the field of human attitudes, however, in regard to the objectives of human life, they are not regarded as authorities for the very good reason that in this field every human being is his own authority. One may accept with respect the suggestions of a physician with regard to his health, because he recognizes that the physician is authoritative in that field. One does not easily, however, take the advice of others with regard to conduct, attitudes, and purposes, because in this field the human being is traditionally his own master. T h i s does not mean that advice in this field is never accepted but rather that it is accepted only from those whose authority in such matters we respect. All this discussion is in the direction of a kind of analysis of social treatment totally different from any we have been accustomed to make. W e need to accumulate the narratives of case work like those which the case worker wrote in regard to her efforts in behalf of Mrs. Parsons. T h e study of such narratives would, I am convinced, reveal in time the whole art of human leadership, would make clear that human leadership, in professional work at any rate, is the more or less conscious use of certain principles of human relationship, certain ways of meeting reactions, emotions, attitudes of other human beings, with which we have long been familiar but which have not been discussed, defined, studied, and made available for conscious selection. Social treatment itself we have considered as a [127]

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combination of two types of effort, one of which we have called executive and the other leadership. With respect to the executive aspect of treatment, improvement is relatively simple: It consists chiefly in a greater alertness on the part of social case workers to the needs of their clients and to the facilities offered by the community. It will be promoted through a somewhat better organization of the time and the effort of case workers as they are. It will also steadily improve as community facilities for treatment improve. Improvement in the leadership aspect of treatment depends upon a more profound understanding of human relationships than we now have. It consists primarily in bringing to bear upon the problems of other personalities the resources of sympathy and understanding directed toward some definite end. Concretely, the problem takes the form of changing attitudes, winning confidence, developing a greater degree of responsiveness, or releasing a client's own powers. With all these problems, case workers have achieved outstanding success. What we lack is an analysis of that success in terms of the thinking, the ingenuity, and the resourcefulness which lie behind it, an analysis comparable to the analyses of the steps in investigation, the resources, the procedure that make up the content of treatment on the executive side. Analysis of the leadership aspects of treatment cannot be made solely from case records. W e must find our way beyond the case records into the thinking and experience of case workers themselves. This is a process in which no one can help us; this mine must be worked by our own efforts. I suggest, as a practice promising greater im[128]

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provement in the quality of our case work than would follow from any other, the regular analysis by case workers themselves of the factors which have entered into their conspicuous successes and failures in human leadership.

[i«9j

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PROFESSIONAL WORK

Address Delivered at the Annual Meeting of the American Association of Social Workers

1926

B E C A U S E I believe that the future of social work should be in the hands of social workers, I am interested in discussing this topic chiefly from the point of view of the development of our profession. Within the last quarter century, the attitude of the American public toward social work has undergone a profound change. Some results of this are obvious: more widespread interest, more general participation in social movements, greatly increased financial support. Other results, less clear, however, have equal but somewhat different significance. In the last decade or more of the nineteenth century, we witnessed in this country a remarkable development of public interest in the problem of social welfare. A new social philosophy was being preached and the gospel of social justice was in the air. It almost seemed as though the general public appreciated for the first time that poverty, sickness, and stifled life are not burdens to be borne helplessly but are evils which can to a large extent be corrected and prevented. Under the influence of this teaching, new movements were born with almost incredible speed. It required very little more to secure moral and financial support for a new organization than the statement of an evil to be attacked and the formulation of a program. Many factors entered into this development, but of peculiar interest to us is the influence which was exerted by certain dominating personalities. Into positions of leadership in social work came at that time an inspired group of men and women with a clear perception of the cost of

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human misery, abiding faith in the possibility of reducing it, and the prophet's power to tell the story in a way which fired the imagination and enlisted the support of the rank and file of men. T o many of us who followed in the train of these leaders, it was evident that there was something dramatic in the sudden discovery of social service. One could, with little effort, assemble data regarding the obvious evils of child labor, preventable sickness, bestial poverty, unprotected children, truancy, the hazards of industry, and a score of other matters and with as little effort could stir an audience, a Board of Directors, and even a Legislature to the point of trying to do something about them. It required little research and less science to demonstrate the utter unreasonableness of child labor, the terrific cost of preventable disease. It was an era in which social work enthusiastically accepted the task of educating the public. Largely as the fruit of this age of the prophets we have seen a philosophy of social responsibility spread to almost every sphere of public interest. Medicine, law, education, architecture, politics, and business now contain within themselves in varying degree the same socializing tendencies which have been characteristic of the philosophy of social work. This widespread development has both simplified and complicated the present task of social workers; for the discussion of social problems and programs for dealing with them has become commonplace and has thereby lost much of the dramatic appeal which it carried a generation ago. It is no longer possible to secure moral and financial support for a social movement merely by pointing out an [»34]

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evil that needs to be corrected and suggesting a program directed towards that end. Any proposal to enlist public support must in 1926 demonstrate its soundness. Demonstration calls for a more careful analysis of data, a more intelligently reasoned plan than propaganda. T h e present generation of social workers must dig deeper for its facts, must study farther into their significance, must present them with a more carefully reasoned argument than did its professional forebears. As a corollary to this, it is significant for us that in its appeal to the service motive in young men and young women, potential recruits for the profession, social work is competing in 1926 with a large number of other vocations which make the same appeal with quite as much justification. This was not true a generation ago. T h e college graduate of the late nineteenth century was likely to find nowhere, except in social work, an opportunity to realize a social purpose. At present, while the world is very far from being completely socialized, the college graduate conscious of a social purpose has a good reason to expect that he can find an opportunity for realizing it in medicine, law, or education, and even in industry. Turning from the contrast between 1926 and 1900, we may find in the present situation another challenge. Critical scrutiny of professional social work on the part of other organized groups is becoming intensified. This closer critical scrutiny comes from two directions. It comes in the first place from those other professional fields which have learned to make use of the social worker. We find social workers in medical institutions. We find them as visiting teachers in our public schools, as probation of[»35]

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ficers in our courts, as welfare workers and personnel officers in industrial establishments. Medicine, law, education, and industry are not social work. T h e i r standards, objectives, and procedures are their own. T h e y are using social workers as aids to their own programs. T h i s is a gratifying development, for social work would not be used by these other professions if its service were not of value to them. At the same time this exposure of our professional selves in intimate daily association with members of other professions opens the door to a more critical scrutiny of our contribution than we have previously been subjected to. Critical scrutiny from the outside comes to us from another direction. T h e r e are those who believe that we are approaching in some cities of this country the saturation point in the matter of financial support for social work. As the demands of our programs press more insistently upon the limits of practicable financial support, we find that chests, foundations, community trusts, and, to no small degree, individual contributors are asking more searching questions than ever regarding the value of our achievement. No social worker would admit that the purposes of our field are less worthy of financial support than are the purposes of any other field of public interest. We have taxed our ingenuity to the uttermost in devising methods of publicity and propaganda which would tell our story. I am inclined to think, however, that we have been less thoroughgoing in our analysis of the story itself than we have in our study of ways of telling it. I do not believe that social work is in any danger of losing its hold upon the American public. I do believe, however, that if [136]

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that hold is to be retained with as tight a grip as it has heretofore had, it will need to be reinforced. T h e reinforcement needed is an increase in the established scientific knowledge regarding the problems and distinctive procedures of our field. When as a result of analysis and study we have substantially increased such knowledge, our story will carry a greater measure of conviction. I have spoken thus far of two developments in the general situation of social work which have, to a large extent, been imposed upon us. As a factor in our future development we may now mention the cheering implication which there is in the successful achievement of this Association during the last five years. T o have maintained a professional organization for five years is one of the most significant facts in the history of American social work during that period. For in the Association we have for the first time an articulate voice for the whole profession. We have for the first time an organization interested in standards of work in terms of the whole field. We have for the first time an organization which is independent of the requirements of specialized fields, of local peculiarities, of the relentless pressure of insistent problems to be solved with which our communities have loaded our social agencies. It has been no easy task for the Association to find its way. It has faced and weathered successfully the delicate problem of avoiding absorption in the problem of hours and wages and has made a beginning towards the study of professional problems which must underlie all successful work to raise professional standards. Against this hastily sketched background, what specific developments for the immediate future can be suggested, ['37]

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as having special interest to the members of this Association? I disclaim any interest in trying to read the future. I am assuming only that the continued usefulness of social work will, if experience means anything, be possible only as it succeeds in attaining constantly higher standards of achievement. What are some essentials to a steady improvement in standards of social work? If we are to insure the steady development of our standards we need to consider even more thoughtfully than we have already done the personnel of our profession. In the impression which we make as a professional group, we are to a greater extent than are other professions at the mercy of our personnel. There is not, as there is in medicine, law, teaching, and, in some places, architecture, any control by state or sect of the right to practice. Anyone can practice social work who can secure a job with a social agency. We have, therefore, no protection against the recruiting of unqualified persons except in the discriminating judgments of those who make appointments. This should not be understood as an attempt to cast aspersions on any of our professional colleagues. I am interested only in pointing out that the demands upon the social worker grow more complicated all the time. Successful social work means a higher order of skill than it ever did before and there is no reason to believe that this tendency will change. We need the finest personalities, the finest type of intellect, human beings with the broadest outlook upon social work. As compared with other professions, I think we have our full share of such but the competition for them grows stronger constantly and for a long time to come we shall

[^8]

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be without the sifting process which regulation of the right to practice provides in other fields. Through the Vocational Bureau, the Association has had this problem steadily in mind. In our membership requirements, we have had definite standards of what constitutes a social worker, not always easy to apply but looking nevertheless towards a desirable minimum of professional proficiency. It has, however, a stake in the quality of the profession as a whole quite different from the stake of any other agency. T h e Association can control its own membership standards. It must rely upon the members themselves, however, to see that at least equivalent standards are maintained by the agencies which they represent. T h i s question is larger than the mere matter of selecting the right persons for social work. It is a question also whether such persons in the early years of their professional careers as students in a school, as apprentices in an agency, or as employees of an organization will receive the foundation experiences desirable in the development of a social worker. Are we trying to make of our recruits good case workers, good scout executives, good social investigators, good community organizers or are we trying to make them good social workers? It may be urged that a good specialist is a good social worker but I do not believe this is necessarily true. Certainly, if we are to meet the challenge of other professions, we must present ourselves not as an aggregation of specialists but as a unified profession whose practitioners use their professional skill in specialized ways. These two things are not the same. It was no small task in the development of social work to gain recognition for the necessity of specialized agencies. ['39]

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A t present, there is good reason to believe that the development of specialized activity may have carried us too far. T h e time is past when any social worker, however able, can qualify as an authoritative spokesman for many different fields of social work. In other words, we are almost driven to be specialists in our practice; but we need not be specialists in our interests or in our thinking. There was never greater need than now for an integration in social work, for emphasizing in the equipment of our personnel those broad factors of fundamental interest which bind social workers together. T h i s is not a problem of organization but is rather a problem of the type and equipment of personnel. It is one of many aspects of our present situation which seem to point to the conclusion that the quality of social work in the future will depend, more than upon any other single factor, upon the quality of its practitioners. Still looking ahead, we find in another direction the strongest possible reason for strengthening our professional association. A t the present time, except for the National Conference, whose function is limited to discussion, the Association represents the only articulate voice of social workers as a professional group. In addition to other considerations already discussed the necessary concentration of our activities in organizations make such a voice imperative. W e have no instances of the individual practice of social work. It is carried on universally through organizations. Organizations become constantly larger and in certain respects more machinelike. T h i s is inevitable. T o the extent that an organization grows in complexity and scope, it decreases the relative responsi[140]

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bility of every individual connected with it. Our purposes, our programs, to a considerable extent our philosophy are largely organization expressions. In those happy instances in which staff members of an organization are permitted to participate in the formulation of its policies, the individual social worker has an opportunity to express himself. Despite difficulties in the field here and there, our present expression of the thought of social workers through organizations probably represents us at our best. Social work, however, both in its spirit and in its activity has still a strongly personal character. Without suggesting distrust of the organization principle in social work, we may still take satisfaction in the Association as a medium for voicing the thinking of individual social workers. Without it, we might find ourselves at some time facing a crisis in which our standards, erected with no small difficulty, are endangered through the demands of organized situations. With all its blessings, the principle of organization as it permeates our civilization has endangered individual expression. Individual expression we cannot afford to lose in social work; neither can organizations for their own purposes afford to see it decline. In the long run, the standards of social work will be safer in the hands of social workers themselves than in the hands of organizations. From this point of view, the continued life of the Association as the mouthpiece of social workers themselves seems to me to be indispensable. As a special phase of this particular problem, the development of social work under public auspices has for us a significance of its own. T h e discussion of legitimate lines [>4i]

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of division between public and private effort goes on as the increasing development of public social work goes on at the same pace. From the point of view of cost alone, there is every reason to believe that these public developments will continue, with no reason to believe that private effort will diminish. Public administration presents all of the difficulties inherent in the general problem of organization with some others peculiar to itself. We have not discovered in this country how to eliminate political considerations in the vulgar sense from public administration. We have learned how to reckon with them; at times to find our way around them; at other times to turn them to advantage. We would not choose them, however, as ruling factors either in determining the programs of public social work or in selecting personnel to administer them. In the field of health there is at least some assurance that health officers will be physicians. There is no assurance that those appointed to administer public social work will be social workers, although social workers are in increasing numbers finding their way into the public service. In so far as these positions in public service lie within a specialized field we may depend upon the organizations, local and national, which represent such fields to exert their influence towards the appointment of qualified persons. Here, however, is another problem concerning which we ought to be able to exert the influence not merely of the specialists concerned but of the whole profession. At this point, the possibilities of this Association become clear. As the Association grows in strength and influence, no other agency is likely to contribute more towards the raising of the standards of public administration in social [>42]

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work. It is through the Association that the professional character of our standards will become generally recognized. T h e recognition of a growing professional character in social work will be, in a sense, evidence of increasing stability in the profession itself. It would be interesting to study what are, for the older professions, the permanent sources of stability. Neither tradition nor a record of service is an adequate explanation of their intrenched positions. Contributing to this situation I think we find three factors, each playing an important part. They are a recognized system of professional education, some control over the right to practice, and a well-established professional organization. In social work, we have made a beginning in regard to professional education. It is still erratic, tentative, and, the country over, not well-organized. Those of us who are concerned with it cherish the hope, however, that it is already contributing towards the stabilizing of social work and the maintenance of its standards, and we believe this contribution will grow in value. No state, so far as I know, has ever taken over the licensing of social workers although it has on occasions been proposed. T h e right to license, however, exercised by practically every state in regard to physicians and lawyers and by some with respect to architects, exercised also by ecclesiastical organizations with reference to the minister, has been a strong factor in stabilizing these professions. We are a long way from any such development in social work and to many social workers it is not clear that it will ever be desirable. There remains the influence of the professional organizah43]

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tion. T h e influence of these organizations in the other professions can hardly be overestimated. It is probably true that standards of professional education and extension of the principle of licensing practitioners have both been due to the activity of such organizations. I do not believe that we shall ever find in social work any substitute for a strong professional association in the achievement of similar ends. Indeed, the development of social work along specialized lines gives such an association an importance for us which it does not have in these other fields. We stand in greater need than other professions of cohesive instrumentalities of which, for social work as a whole, we have few at the present time. T h e National Conference of Social Work, the National Social Work Council, and the American Association alone are exerting a cohesive influence. Individual social workers at times may question whether membership in the Association gives them value received. Mr. Klein in his report, at this annual meeting, indicates a number of substantial ways in which the Association has contributed directly to the benefit of its members. We might, however, leave them all out of account and the Association would still be worth all it costs in money and time to the individual social workers of this country as the sole medium through which they can achieve their common objective of a unified professional development. What is the greatest professional need of social workers in terms of their own highest professional interests? In my judgment, our greatest need is a procedure within this Association which will stimulate study and discussion of professional problems by its membership. What is the [»44]

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ordinary procedure of other professional organizations? Regular meetings of local medical societies are devoted largely to discussion of professional problems by their own membership. Almost any physician who becomes especially interested in some particular phase of his practice can be sure of an opportunity of presenting to his professional colleagues the results of his study. His results are not always accepted at his evaluation of them. Into discussion of the medical society, however, criticism of material presented for discussion is much more likely to be on a higher level, devoid of personal implications, than is true in ordinary affairs. This general procedure seems to me responsible in part for the widespread feeling among the medical profession that in so far as the individual practitioner engages in scientific study of his own work, he may be sure, when the time comes, of an interested hearing for his results. In fact, such study and the presentation of results is definitely encouraged by leaders in the profession. Within the past few days, another member of the American Association of Social Workers has called my attention to the following passage from the life of Sir William Osier: "In addressing a group of young physicians at one time, Dr. Osier after pointing out that their training was incomplete, that they must be students always since medicine unlike law and theology is a progressive science, urged them to keep up with their reading, to cultivate books, to get in the habit of attending societies and reporting experiences, thus cooperating with journals." What is the situation in social work? T o what extent are we urging social workers to be "students always" since [»45]

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social work "is a progressive science"? T o what extent are we encouraging them " t o get in the habit of attending" regular meetings for discussion of professional subject matter and "reporting experiences"? So far as I know, almost nowhere are we encouraging the rank and file of social workers to set about the study of their tasks and their experiences with those tasks so that two, three, five, ten years from now they may as professional men and women have something authoritative to say. Nor have we thus far realized the tremendous potentialities for the development of our entire profession that lie in the deliberate encouragement of individual social workers to undertake such study. I believe there is no more important step for this Association to take than the development of a procedure that will accomplish just this purpose. Social work needs nothing more imperatively than that its practitioners wherever they are should be exploring their responsibilities and achievements, charting those explorations, and interpreting their results. As a practical matter, I suggest that the Association at its national headquarters hereafter keep a continuous record of every study in the field of social work that is undertaken by an individual member of this Association or by groups, local societies, and national organizations wherever the Association membership is represented. I suggest that this project be so handled as to convey to the members of the Association the definite feeling that their profession is interested in output of this kind. T h i s development seems to me the crux of the problem of raising standards. There is not time here for detailed discussion of projects [146]

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which might be studied in this way. Possibilities are as wide as the social work itself. Many such projects are already being studied. Usually, however, they are being studied through committees appointed for the purpose and this method has given us some valuable results. We need to go a step beyond committee studies, however, and encourage individual social workers to begin digging in our professional subject matter. No profession ever found itself solely as the result of work by committees or organizations. Its stability rests far more upon the scientific output of its individual practitioners. What we need in social work as evidence of our growth towards stability is the emergence of individual social workers as outstanding authorities. Outstanding authorities on what? On anything in our field concerning which we know that we ought to be informed, be it problem, procedure, theory, method, fact, custom, or other phenomenon. It may be stated at this point that we have some such outstanding authorities but we have too few and we seem at times to confuse authority with reputation or length of service. For the next five years, I suggest that this Association spend a considerable part of its time and strength in providing the setting at least which will stimulate production of outstanding authorities who have become such through their own initiative powerfully reinforced by a consciousness that they have with them in their explorations the respect and interest of the entire profession. The bearing of this whole discussion is toward a recognition that the future of social work is a matter of clean-cut, ever-advancing standards of achievement. Standards are [>47]

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elusive. T h e y are not easy to define. It is not easy to suggest the combination of elements which produce them. T h e r e are many avenues which lead to them. None seem to me more important than those we have discussed this afternoon. Quality in our personnel, recognition that the profession itself, and not organizations or other professions, is the despository of our faith, our skill, and our authoritative experience—and the development of a practicable procedure which will enlist as many of our members as have gifts for such work in the study and analysis of those phenomena which constitute social work. T h e future of social work holds many elements of uncertainty. Anyone familiar with the rapid development of the last twenty-five years would hesitate to define even the area in which it will operate twenty-five years hence. It would be even more difficult to forecast its status among the professions. But with two possibilities certainly we are squarely faced. First, the nature and place of social work twenty-five years hence will be determined by other groups than social workers—educators, physicians, lawyers, business men, politicians—unless social workers themselves become more coherent, more articulate, more convincing, though not necessarily more vociferous, regarding the full implications of their distinctive contribution to our common welfare. In the second place, there are in the total contribution of social work ample data for a demonstration both of its scientific character and of its indispensable service to mankind. How are we to establish this scientific character and demonstrate the indispensability of the service founded upon it? It can only be done by more consistent, [148]

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more systematic study of our experience, participated in by a larger number of our personnel. This is an obligation that rests squarely upon our own individual shoulders. Social work is not an aggregation of agencies. It is in the last analysis the trained men and women who are carrying it on. Their collective voice is the only authoritative voice in respect to our purposes, our methods of work, the ideals which inspire our effort. T o give authority and carrying power to that voice is the most important function of this Association.

[149]

CHILDREN

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Address Delivered before the Child Study Association of America

1927

L E I S U R E , as I understand it, is a temporary state in which one is free from the pressure of circumstance, obligation, or demands imposed by other persons. Perfect leisure, within the meaning of this definition, may be difficult to obtain, at any rate in modern city life. Nevertheless, an approach to this conception of leisure seems to me indispensable to any satisfying existence either for a child or for an adult and it has important possibilities for the development of character. Character as a term is part of our common speech. We speak of strong characters and weak characters, of interesting characters, of moral characters. T h e term suggests a combination of traits "which give to a person his moral individuality." It suggests "that combination of properties, qualities, or peculiarities which distinguishes one person from others." It suggests the quality of sturdiness in the judgment with which one meets the crises of life. It is, in our tradition, something to be desired and its development has been an implied objective of education and of religious training. What is the process whereby character is developed? An attempt to analyze this process easily leads one into the fog. Apparently character is largely a by-product of experience in life. Nevertheless, there are some commonly accepted agencies for character development to which the human race has pinned its faith. T h e preaching of such virtues as obedience, respect for authority, and temperance has in part, at least, been directed deliberately toward this end. T h a t character is developed through ad[>53]

C H I L D R E N AND L E I S U R E versity has always been a cherished axiom in the folklore of our civilization. The list of character-building agencies is a long one. I suggest that analysis of the experiences which seem to develop character will reveal a fundamental element in this development, practice in which involves the use of a capacity which is just as significant in the building of character as the process of drawing is in the development of the skill of an artist. This element I believe to be the opportunity to choose among several possible alternatives in conduct. The capacity to make one's own choice among alternatives seems to me the fundamental capacity in character building. Conformity to adult standards, the development of obedience through discipline, the absorption of moral principles through preaching may contribute to the development of character. In my judgment, however, these and other factors make this contribution only when they are incorporated into the behavior of the child as a result of his own choice and not primarily through the pressure of outside influence. What is the bearing of this conception of the process of character development upon the use of leisure? The first responsibility of parents in regard to the use of leisure by children would seem to be to make sure that children have leisure. This means that children should have some time when they are free from the pressure of circumstance, obligation, and demands imposed by other persons. Possession by children of leisure in this sense, as part of the regular routine of life, offers them an untrammeled opportunity to choose their own activities and thereby provides [ x 54]

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them with one of the most potent opportunities for the development of character. If this begins to sound like a mandate to parents to allow children frequent opportunities to do as they please, regardless of other persons, I may as well confess at once that this is exactly the idea which I mean to convey. There are few adults who would not consider occasional opportunities to do as they please indispensable to a satisfying existence. Let us admit that there are difficulties in applying any such philosophy in the round of home life. T o be emotionally satisfying to its members, family life must be organized. T h e recurring responsibilities of meals, cleanliness, and repairs must be met; the competing interests of the different members of the group must be harmonized; facilities of time and space must be provided for the legitimate activities of different individuals; children must be sent to school; budgets must be planned and followed (or abandoned); homework must be done; opportunity must be found for some kind of common fellowship; and everybody must sleep. I believe there are few organized situations which are so difficult to conduct according to schedule as a home. I believe further that a close approach to highly systematized routine in the home always involves the risk of reducing its emotionally satisfying possibilities for those who live it. The complex of duties, conflicting interests, obligations, and chores which constitute the problem of organization in home life is increased in its complexity for the modern family because it has less and less space available for its habitat. Where in the round of family life in a modern apartment can time and space be [ »55 ]

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found for leisure in the sense in which we are using the term? T h e task of providing leisure for children at home and insuring a wise use of it may become simpler if we analyze human relationships from the point of view of experience rather than from that of science. For the individual human being, particularly the human being in pursuit of leisure, human relationships have two important aspects. These two aspects I should like to call privacy and fellowship. By privacy I mean the possession of time, facilities, opportunities, or material things the use of which is, for the time being at least, within one's own control. Privacy in this sense is indispensable to satisfying existence. It does not suggest anything antisocial. It does not mean solitude which connotes a status in which intercourse with other human beings is more or less impossible. Privacy, on the other hand, suggests a deliberate withdrawal from immediate social contacts for purposes which may be highly social. A sense of privacy may be achieved by as simple means as the possession of one end of a shelf in a crowded home which is sacred to one's own belongings. It may come on a grander scale through possession of an apartment of one's own with time in which to use it by oneself. Privacy is a form of human experience within which one may guide his own destinies, reach his own decisions, make his own choice among all possible alternatives unhampered by the demands of others. It is indispensable to the development of independent judgment. Fellowship I conceive to be the possession of a status with respect to other persons within which, on a basis of [156]

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equality, one finds satisfaction in experience shared with others. It is the medium through which with a minimum of emotional conflict one acquires the art of tempering his judgments, his right of choice, his sense of values, by the adjustment of his personality and its needs to the personalities and needs of others. Life in modern society is full of situations in which neither privacy nor fellowship in this sense is achieved. There are contractual obligations, there is constant pressure of the necessity of earning a living, there is the unremitting threat of illness. There are relationships involving obligation or authority, in which one must participate on a basis of non-equality. All of these social relationships may have important character-building possibilities. I believe, however, that they do not compare in significance, particularly for children, with experiences which do have characteristics either of privacy or of fellowship. If these reflections have any value, it should be possible to translate them into practical terms. T h e leisure time of children for which parents are responsible is ordinarily time when they are not in school or otherwise engaged in necessary occupations. T h e r e is nothing in our conception of leisure which makes it unwise for parents or unprofitable for children that much of this free time should be devoted to activities planned for them by parents primarily for their educational, disciplinary, or service value. In so complex a situation as home life, children cannot always choose for themselves and parents cannot always take time for those reasonable explanations which are supposed to lead children to fall in readily with the [157]

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parental point of view. T h e process of explaining to a child the reasons for wearing rubbers or for preferring that wallpaper be not decorated with products of infantile art or why the nervous systems of adults are unreasonably sensitive to excessive noise is frequently as long and tedious as it sounds, and short cuts are sometimes inevitable. Despite all this, there must be time when a child is free from pressure of circumstance, obligation, or demands exerted upon him by other persons. In his daily program there must be leisure. T o the wise parent, the initiative towards the acquisition of leisure comes not from the parent but from the child, and in a normally constituted household, regardless of its philosophy of parental supervision, the child is constantly taking the initiative in this direction. T o supply youngsters with ample opportunity for leisure involves the creation of no new facilities, of no newly acquired technique on the part of parents; it requires merely the use by parents of opportunities which children are constantly thrusting at them. These opportunities are of two kinds. They consist, first, of those spontaneous impulses towards activity on the part of the child which are part of natural self-expression. They consist, second, of equally spontaneous proposals to parents that they participate in enterprises conceived by the child himself. The consistent application by parents of two cardinal principles of the parental relationship would go far towards insuring children the regular experience of leisure and use of such leisure to its maximum possibilities in the development of character. These principles are: never say "No" to a child with respect to anything he wishes ['58]

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to do, if it is humanly possible to say "Yes"; and further, let there be in every day's routine some occasion when the parent responds on the child's own terms to a request for the parent's participation in something the youngster wishes to do. The free application of these two principles would not only insure leisure to a child but also a measure of privacy and fellowship in the use of it. I number among my acquaintances an interesting young lady, aged four. She has not yet learned to read but one of her favorite occupations is to possess herself of a book— anything from Peter Rabbit to the Education of Henry Adams will do—which she holds before her in the posture of one absorbed in reading and then proceeds to concoct a story aloud, turning the pages as the story progresses precisely as any well-trained reader would do. Seated in the living room, she achieves in the process both leisure and privacy. She is in perfect possession of privacy regardless of the number of persons who may be scattered about the room. It is apparently a matter of no concern to her that others may be present provided they do not look at her or make any comments on her activity. Any such attention directed towards her, however, she resents as an intrusion upon her privacy—and rightly so. There is every reason to believe that the privilege of reading aloud to herself in this way, without the intrusion of adults, represents a source of security to this young lady and I have confidence that her unfettered control of the whole experience, including freedom to select the times at which she will engage in it, the book she will use for the purpose, and the place where she stages this activity, are minor but quite logical factors in her character [»59]

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She is exercising the power of choice among

alternatives with highly satisfactory results to herself and in general without undue inconvenience to others.

I say

in general

times

because there are, of course, particular

when the reading aloud of a four-year-old who cannot read does interfere with the plans of other members of the family having an equal right to the use of the living room. H e r e w e have an illustration of the age-old clash between the rights of the individual and the rights of the group. In this particular family, it has been found possible to solve this difficulty.

It is solved at times by permitting

the y o u n g lady to read in the living room, thereby granting her both leisure and privacy usually at the expense of everybody else.

It is solved at other times by suggesting

a satisfactory substitute for the living room to the reader, coupled with what she accepts as valid reasons for the suggestion, on social grounds.

Finally, on other occasions,

it has been possible to lead this four-year-old personage to abandon her use of leisure through privacy, by inviting her to join some general family activity, thereby offering her an equally acceptable leisure satisfaction through fellowship. I realize that whatever may be ideally desirable, it is practically impossible to conduct a household without ever vetoing a child's choice of activities.

Nevertheless, our

traditional reasons for such vetoes have been largely in terms of adult standards and the adult sense of what is fitting and safe.

T o reduce the n u m b e r of occasions when

the parent says " N o " to a child's choice of an activity inevitably means an increase in disorder,

inconvenience,

noise, destruction or defacement of that which ought not [160]

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to be destroyed or defaced, and at least some risk to physical well-being. All of these possibilities can, of course, be largely prevented through an autocratic, disciplinary regime which, through the exercise of authority, keeps tjie behavior of children fairly well within the boundaries of adult standards. But they can also be largely prevented through a non-autocratic type of parental leadership. Moreover, it is reasonable to believe that if these principles were applied with discernment and leadership from infancy on, they would be followed by fewer disquieting consequences than parents of the autocratic type might think. I should like to be even more heretical. Order, neatness, peace, and good health are desirable features of human life. T h e human being, however, is not born with an uncompromising zest for them and I do not believe that it is possible for children to achieve an adult standard with respect to them without sacrificing other experiences that are much more important for character development. In regard to the fellowship aspect of the use of leisure, and the parent's obligation to provide it, we must recognize that a normal child has in some degree a craving for companionship. He will, as he grows older, offer his parents continuous opportunity for participating with him in activities which he has devised for his own edification. Every parent knows that children seem born with a knack of requesting cooperation from parents at inconvenient times. One cannot always drop some other parental pursuit in order to read to a child when he wishes to be read to. One cannot always schedule a trip to the zoo on the spur of the minute. Nevertheless, an ungrudging response to such requests [161]

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from children on the children's own terms is one of the keys to a wise use of leisure in terms of its contribution to the development of character, for such overtures from children are an expression of their own individual choice of fellowship as a medium of human relationship. Unfortunately, it seems to be inherent in the parent's concept of his responsibility to his children that his participation with them in games or other pursuits should be colored by his adult notions of the way such pursuits should be carried on. " I am building a farm out in my sand pile," said a youngster to his father, "won't you come out and watcli me do it?" Now spectatorship, when invited by those who are supplying the spectacle, is frequently a very fine form of fellowship. Whether he was conscious of this or not, this particular father responded to his son's suggestion. Upon arriving at the sand pile, he found a partially constructed farm. He was somewhat weary after an afternoon at golf and he picked out, as the most comfortable spot for the grand stand, the base of a tree which stood at the margin of the sand pile. "Don't sit there," said the boy, "you are sitting in the well." "Let's put your well somewhere else," said the father. "This is the most comfortable place to sit." It was quite evident that the site of the well had been selected with some care. There were difficulties about locating it elsewhere which to the father were unconvincing. T h e result was the selection of another site for the well. It began to look as though this experience was not going to be fellowship in the real sense of the word. This adult [162]

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was not participating in the young man's program on the young man's own terms. This farm evidently could not be finished without pressure of one sort or another from outsiders which would rob the experience of the basis of equality with which it started. T o the critical outsider it would seem that the father had missed an opportunity to contribute to the boy's sense of confidence in himself which might have been made by a somewhat different attitude toward results of the boy's initiative in building the farm and inviting his father's participation in the experience. The point to which this whole discussion comes is that opportunity for leisure in the sense of time free from the pressure of circumstance, obligation, and demands exerted by others is presented to parents by children themselves. Children may find such opportunities for leisure in the midst of school work, in the midst of home responsibility which may be assigned to them. Leisure in this sense is not a matter of outward freedom from any particular kind of necessity. It is a matter, rather, of the child's state of mind. Character is developed not through the child's familiarity with moral concepts and with adult standards of life. It is developed solely through the use which he makes of such material and the infinite variety of other material which makes up our social heritage. Even more specifically character is developed through the child's own choice of the uses which he will make of these. Parents make their finest contribution to the development of the character of children through the use of leisure when, within the limits prescribed by the other obligations of home life, they concede children the maximum oppor[163]

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tunity to do as they please, and when they themselves make the maximum response to overtures from children for participation in their childish activities on the children's own terms.

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AN E R A P A S S E S W I T H T H E D E A T H O F R O B E R T W. D E F O R E S T 1

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1

O N May 6th, 1931, Mr. de Forest died. He had been a vital part of the School from its beginning in 1898, taking a leading part in its establishment, its support, its administration, and at times in its instruction. His service to the School, like his service to many other civic and social movements, was that of a conscientious citizen with an inspired social philosophy. As such, he was one of the large group whose interest, leadership, and active support provided the foundation upon which in this country all civic and social movements have rested. T h e generation to which Mr. de Forest belonged has largely passed from active service. His relationship to the remarkable development of public and private activity in the field of social welfare was one which is likely to be less and less familiar. It was a generation which received its inspiration for service partly as a heritage but even more dynamically as a result of first-hand experience with social problems. It entered upon this relationship not primarily through membership on boards and committees but by performing the tasks which have since been gradually taken over by the professional social worker. Its passing emphasizes the change in American society marked by increasing reliance on experts in all fields of human interest. This change offers the possibility of a greater enrichment of human life since the use of experts may make possible more direct, more substantial, and more readily available application of knowledge to the business of living. It is a change which suggests infinite possibilities of discussion. In this report we select only one of these possibilities—the [,67]

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one which seems to us of greatest significance for the professional social worker. We wish to point out the peculiar debt which the professional social worker owes to the generation of which Mr. de Forest was an outstanding representative. T h e professional social worker was not self-created. He was the product of the remarkable quickening of interest in social welfare which began in this country during the last two decades of the nineteenth century. He owes his origin to the spirit of an age for which no one individual and no one group of individuals was alone responsible. Nevertheless he owes the relative ease with which he has acquired a dignified and important place in American social life directly to Mr. de Forest's generation. He came into being largely because men and women of that generation recognized a need for him and set about to develop the resources and training which would produce him. Professional social work could hardly have achieved its present stature without their initiative and steady support. Whatever struggle social workers have had to make for recognition has been much less than would have been required had not the generation of Mr. de Forest discerned and created a place for them. T h e professional concern of social workers has been the development of more humane and more effective ways of dealing with handicapped persons and the modification of social arrangements which have seemed to increase unnecessarily the handicaps under which men live and work. They have recognized from the beginning that such efforts to be successful must be based upon the moral and financial support of the community. No community will tolerate, much less support, [168]

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a program for aiding its handicapped members unless its citizens as a whole are aware of the social conditions which handicap and are inspired by a desire to improve them. A community's standards for its own well-being determine in the long run what its social work is able to achieve. T h e methods and objectives of social work are constantly changing in response to growth in our knowledge about human need and social life. If these changes are to be permanent, they must be reflected in similar changes in a community's standards. This means that developing knowledge and growing efficiency in social work can be put into effective practice only as the purposes behind them are acceptable to the community as a whole. T h e vitality of social work is dependent upon its correlation with the understanding and purposes of the public. U p to the present time it has been relatively easier for social work to feel the pulse of its public and to reach its ear with new proposals than it will be in the future. In the past we have had, in Mr. de Forest's generation, a substantial group who have always been aware of the necessity for social work. They were a public which did not need to be "educated." On the contrary, they have represented one of the most effective channels through which the findings and proposals of the professional social worker could be passed on to a wider public. They were thus an asset to the program of social work which is not likely to be replaced. This is not to ascribe to socially minded men and women of the past a finer quality of devotion to the public interest than can be expected of citizens of the present or of the future. T h e difference between the present and [»69]

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future generations and that which Mr. de Forest represented is that his generation gained its knowledge and developed its social conviction largely out of first-hand experience. W e shall continue to have boards of directors, committees, and volunteers in substantial numbers representing interest in and responsibility for social work. Even in the field of public welfare we are likely to make use of citizen boards. Future recruits to this citizen relationship to the organization of social work will not come with the same knowledge or depth of conviction which the older generation brought. T h e normal processes of education in college and experience may give to the citizen of the future a greater superficial knowledge of social conditions and of the effort to improve them than his predecessors had. T h e actual work of the world, however, is now so largely left to experts that no one person, including the expert in social work, is likely to acquire experience in more than a restricted area. T h e support of social work by Mr. de Forest's generation was founded upon a broader and more profound experience. It was founded largely upon its own independent knowledge of poverty and social injustice, upon strong social purposes, largely the product of such knowledge, and upon its faith in the professional social worker for whose development it was largely responsible. T h e faith of America in experts is remarkable but there are signs that expert leadership is no longer taken at the expert's evaluation of it. Social work in the future will have to prove its case to a generation ready to follow its lead if convinced. Social work in the past was forced to prove its case but was aided in the task because allied with [170]

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it was a group of staunch men and women already convinced. Social work has lost this distinctive asset which Mr. de Forest's generation represented. This loss has greater significance because it comes at a time when the relationship of social work to its public was never more critical. T h e steady success of social work has added enormously to the scope and quality of its service to finer community life. By that very fact it faces a graver responsibility than ever for interpreting its contribution to the public. It is now reaching, in such fields as public health and personality adjustment, many of the hidden areas of human need. It is discovering problems and developing methods of service which rarely come within the conscious day by day experience of the ordinary citizen. It continues to ask the community, however, to support its appeals for money through philanthropy and taxation and to support, also, proposals for legislation and new types of service of the need for which the community cannot possibly be aware. Many of these newer proposals in social work involve assumptions the validity of which has hardly been proved. Behind our public health programs and our programs for the adjustment of personality are the assumptions that all men should be healthy and all men should be adjusted. Implied, also, in these programs is the assumption that a civilized community has the resources to accomplish these ends. A further implication is that the community which must provide the financial resources accepts the program as desirable. We are here, however, working in areas where the general public does not always automatically follow. T o secure their sympathetic understanding and

[»7»]

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support presents to social workers a much more formidable problem of interpretation than they have ever before faced. They face this problem moreover without the reinforcement in a program of public education which the loyalty and sympathetic understanding of Mr. de Forest's generation represented. If social workers believe in the logical extension of programs whose soundness has been demonstrated, they must be prepared to take the public into their confidence. This means more than the devising of ways to tell the public what they are trying to do. T h e responsibility goes beyond the mere effort to inform. T h e effort must be made in ways which will insure that the public really does understand these programs and accepts or rejects them for valid reasons. This is not different in essence from the modern conception of the responsibility of the teacher. At one time it was assumed that the teacher had no responsibility but to teach. It was the pupil's responsibility to learn. T h e most successful educators now believe that the primary function of the teacher is to make it possible for the student to learn. Efforts to educate by relieving the student of his responsibility to learn have not been conspicuously successful and we need not relieve the general public of its obligation to become informed regarding social problems which are either created or perpetuated by its ignorance or negligence. Nevertheless it gets us nowhere to place the blame for bad social conditions solely upon the whole community. It rests there in the nature of things but it must be placed also upon those experts in our social life who know what social evils need to be corrected and [172]

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who have not developed any adequate methods of relieving the general public ignorance with respect to them. Mr. de Forest's generation brought the professional social worker into being. It provided him with a status at the very outset of his existence. It fought his battles with the lethargy of the community in behalf of its handicapped members. This is a heritage which the professional social worker cannot afford to dissipate. T o conserve and perpetuate it he needs more than a high degree of expertness in his own professional field. He needs a high degree of sensitivity to the purposes and understanding of his public. He needs also the capacity to keep the public abreast of his own discoveries and the will to relate those discoveries to the purposes which animate all socially minded men and women.

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Address Delivered at the Conference of the Association of the New York School of Social Work

*933

M Y TOPIC seems to suggest that the age of pioneering in social work has been left behind in the somewhat remote past; that we are to resume in the face of the problems which beset us in 1933 a kind of adventuring which in recent years has fallen into disuse. There have always been pioneers in social work. At times the call to the pioneering spirit is stronger than at others; at times the response, however insistent the call, is less spontaneous and inspired. But pioneering in some form or other we have never been without. The pioneering spirit in social work has given us some of our great crusaders: the Gracchi in ancient Rome, St. Francis of Assisi, Dorothea Dix, Jane Addams, Mary E. Richmond, Graham Taylor, Edward T . Devine, Florence Kelley, and others whose achievement has been less conspicuous have blazed new trails in social welfare at times when only the pioneer could blaze them. Their wilderness was the wilderness of static conceptions of human welfare, of brute force as an ethical form of social control, of complacent acceptance of the inevitability of human suffering and of an overemphasis on the sweet uses of adversity as the route to character and well-being. It was a wilderness of apathy, ignorance, and exploitation. It was no less a wilderness because it existed in the midst of a civilization in which some of the finest expressions of altruism and concern for the underprivileged were potent factors in social life. The pioneers of social work took up unpopular causes. They fought gross evils and they struggled to bring in the new day with more widespread justice, greater [ »77 ]

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humanity in our charity, adequacy in our efforts to protect the weak. T h e wilderness into which the pioneers of social work entered is still with us although as a result of efforts which they initiated and the efforts of later generations fired by their ideals it is no longer a completely uncharted noman's-land. As we look back upon the past twenty years in social work, however, it must be admitted that the pioneering spirit has been less conspicuous than the more sophisticated process of building on a foundation which pioneers have laid. For twenty years in social work we have not had to wander far from a well-established base. For the true pioneer there is no base save his own dauntless spirit, his courage, his faith, and his ceaseless hard work against the pressure of forces which he must conquer or to which he must yield. Isn't it true that for two decades at least we have fought for standards of social well-being, for the development of social work as a form of service to mankind without being threatened by some of the pressures with which our professional forebears had to reckon, and that we have been able throughout this period to maintain unbroken contact with the diversified bases from which we have derived support and security? National organizations, steadily mounting financial resources, a public constantly more willing to approve and support our efforts, and a growing body of tested experience and technical equipment—each of these has served as a base of supplies, so to speak, the very existence of which has differentiated our status from that of the pioneer. Not that progress or security or the results we have sought have come for the asking. We have had to work [>78]

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for our achievement and that achievement has never yet been in balance with the need we have seen or the responsibility we have assumed. There are still areas of outer darkness on the map of human well-being which will yield only to the pioneer spirit. Moreover we find ourselves in the year 1933 with much of the edifice we have built toppling, and toppling partly because we underestimated the forces with which we were dealing, partly because our efficiency was not equal to our vision, partly because the sources of human weakness and the wise, efficient way to deal with them are still beyond our ken. For four years the creeping paralysis which has afflicted our civilization and its institutions has disclosed to us the wilderness aspect of the world in which we work. We are suddenly aware of helplessness in the face of forces which we have hitherto manipulated with confidence. We have come to distrust many of our methods and we have begun to realize the inadequacy of some of the foundations upon which we have built. What had come to seem a reasonably well-charted territory has again assumed the aspect of a wilderness in which new trails must be blazed. Trailblazing is not a task for the settled denizen of a sophisticated social order. It is a task for the pioneer. It calls for faith, competence, and the adventurous spirit. We may well ask, "What is the task we face, what are some of the major problems which call for the shaking off of settled habits of thought and work and the assumption of new responsibilities in the spirit of the pioneer?" I should like to define four problems which seem to me inherent in our changing situation in America, all of which have special significance for the social worker as pioneer: [>79]

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(1) We face an indefinite continuation of greatly reduced resources for social work outside the field of relief and with a diminishing support already apparent even for relief programs. And this in the wealthiest of modern nations. (2) We may expect for a considerable period the persistence of widespread economic insecurity. We may expect for a long time to come to count our unemployed by millions, with their inevitable dependence upon community support. And this in a country which historically has had so little poverty that to millions who have come to it as a haven it has seemed the promised land. (3) There is in this country a growing and inevitable tendency, based upon conviction, to develop the scope, the support, and the standards of governmental activity for human welfare as the foundation of our social program. And this in a country whose governmental I.Q. has never been high. (4) We are aware of a growing uncertainty as to the role of philanthropy in a progressive human society, and this in a country which has probably led the way in the use of private wealth for social betterment. These four major trends seem to me to force us to reexamine in its entirety our social program, its traditional implementation, and the philosophy upon which it is built. I have purposely stated each of these trends so as to contrast their sinister implications with some of the ideals and cherished assumptions underlying traditional faith in the social well-being of America. I have stated this contrast in no spirit of cynicism, with no purpose of indictment, but because I believe that if these trends present some [180]

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serious problems to us, new at least in their magnitude at the moment, the ideals and the cherished assumptions are equally valid facts whose persistence, if we have the wisdom to perceive it, may be essential parts of the foundations upon which we must build. What should be the attitude of the professional social worker in the present period of retrenchment and in the period of adjustment which lies ahead of us? As I see it, we can make retrenchment a virtue of necessity, resisting it at every step, yielding to it when it can no longer be resisted, justifying our reluctance to cut budgets, to discontinue service, to limit organization on the ground that we must fight to the last ditch to conserve what, during a half century or more, we have so painstakingly built. Or we can conceive of the period through which we are passing as an entirely normal phenomenon in civilized society as civilization has developed up to the present time, and regard it as presenting the most exacting kind of test to resourcefulness and statesmanship. Retrenchment can be a rout or we can make it a masterly retreat. It can be a period in which we abandon temporarily some of our most cherished projects, in which we shelve for the time being some of our ambitious plans, in which we make temporary adjustments in organization and service until the storm blows over and we can once more resume the work of permanent social welfare on the old basis with the old traditions, the old methods, the old conceptions, the old institutions. On the other hand, we can interpret no small measure of our present confusion and organizational chaos as in itself evidence of the inadequacy of the structure which we have built and [181]

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perhaps also of the uses to which we have put it. Circum stances may force us to re-examine our objectives and our methods but we may fairly ask in whose hands is such reexamination likely to be the more fruitful for human betterment—in the hands of him who bows to the inevitable or in the hands of him who welcomes the necessity as an opportunity to think of the future unhampered by an emotional allegiance to a past which may have been overinstitutionalized. At this point I am moved to refer briefly to queries which come to me increasingly. Is there a future for social work? Is our profession losing status and influence and thereby quality as a result of this depression? Has the American public become skeptical as to the value of social work? Do we face just around the corner a coming in of a new social order in which social work will be unnecessary? I have no final answer to these questions but in passing I should like to point out some facts which seem to me not without significance. It is true that many social workers find themselves now without employment and many others are none too secure in the positions they hold. Nevertheless, judging from such information as I can find available, there seems to be less unemployment at the present time among social workers than among any other professional groups with the possible exception of medicine and the United States army. Again, it is probably true that during the past three years this nation has increased its expenditures in only one area and that is the area of social welfare. T o be sure it has reduced its support of many forms of social work and the increase is due entirely to the colossal expenditures for [182]

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relief. Nevertheless the total expenditure for social welfare has increased—and for precisely that kind of social work most needed in this depression. I think, also, that there can be no question but that we have greater evidence of public conviction regarding the importance of social work than ever. Despite the reduction in total money available for many forms of social work, despite the failure of chests to reach quotas, the fact remains that never have so much conviction and hard work been exerted by lay groups for the maintenance of social work as have been exerted during the last three years. Finally, to those who suggest that we may have lost our conviction, to say nothing of our standards, in social work as a result of the pressure of sheer relief and the lack of support for other forms of work, I should like to point out that for the first time in a major crisis of this sort we have a substantial body of well-qualified professional social workers. T o suggest that standards have been permanently lost, that the impetus for the resumption of service in this country will not be forthcoming is to deny the fundamental significance of the professional competence represented by the whole body of social workers. Standards in social work, conviction as to its possibilities for human welfare do not reside in books, in laws, or in the archives of social agencies. They are the spiritual and intellectual possessions of a group of professional men and women. T h e competence of the social worker is as accessible to a society in need of its service as is the competence of physicians, architects, engineers, lawyers, or clergymen. Like the competence of these other professions it can have 110 outlet except as society is conscious of a need for it. [»83]

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In a message to professional social w o r k e r s in 1921 a n A m e r i c a n p h i l o s o p h e r w r o t e as follows: N o profession can pretend to determine what the individual shall be, or what society shall be; the person must take his own ultimate responsibilities. A n d neither a Spencer nor a Marx, a Marshall or a Jefferson, a philosopher or lawyer or social worker as such can prescribe what society ought to be. Disappointed as we may be by this or that voice or act of the people, it is none the less this will which in the long run must choose its path, making its blunders and learning by experience the emptiness of its superficial goods, the meanness of its low desires, the folly of selfishness and isolation, the penalties of greed and indifference. You will as social workers need to be modest in your claims as well as your expectations, and you will find patience as often needed as courage. But if you can not arrogate the authority to direct, you may, if you understand human nature and human maladies, social structures and social functions, d o much to make clear to individuals and communities the meaning of life, and the possible ways of achieving some at least of its goods, and avoiding some at least of its worst blunders. Y o u may not assume to decide for society whether it shall be capitalistic or socialistic, acquisitive or cooperative, but you have the duty, if you have the proper scientific equipment, to point out what all these various ideals will mean, and how the well-considered choices of men, for decent homes, steadier work, richer leisure, juster laws, fairer distribution may be put into effect. 1 Social workers, then, can n e v e r b e b u r e a u c r a t s creating j o b s for themselves, they can n e v e r d e m a n d that society shall avail itself of their services but, unless history

is

w i t h o u t significance, it is n o t likely that a t i m e w i l l come w h e n society w i l l b e u n a w a r e of its n e e d for e x p e r t leader 1 James Hayden Tufts, Commencement Address, New York School of Social Work, 1921, printed in the Alumni Magazine, Julv, 1921.

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ship in the effort to promote its own well-being. T h e future of social work, as we know it, does not hinge upon the public willingness to support a social-welfare program. I think rather it hinges only upon the ability of the professional social worker to disclose to the public his possession of the kind of competence which will give the public confidence in his leadership. Can we be more specific in our analysis of the task that lies ahead of us? In the space which is available I shall confine my discussion to three problems about which fundamental thinking by social workers seems essential if we are to play our responsible role in the period of reconstruction. I believe the most important responsibility resting upon social workers at the present time is to divest themselves so far as possible of what I can only define as the vested-interest attitude. I venture to quote at this point William James's phrasing of a truth which has had more acceptance than practical application. He states: "Most human institutions, by the purely technical and professional manner in which they come to be administered, end by becoming obstacles to the very purposes which their founders had in view"; and the philosopher whom I quoted earlier in his address to social workers remarked, " T h e tendency of every institution, of every profession, of every impersonal group, is to become partial, mechanical, and rigid." 2 It is perhaps beyond reason to expect complete selfeffacement on the part of every individual with respect to the essential nature of his own job, of every organization 2 Ibid.

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with respect to the importance of its own function, and of every group with respect to the importance of its own field in the whole constellation of social work. Nevertheless social work has grown in efficiency by reason of its concentration upon responsibilities, functions, and services more and more clearly defined. T h e inevitable result has been to develop a partial conception of social work rather than a comprehensive one, to develop rigidity in specialization instead of flexibility in our total organization, to overemphasize the technical, mechanical content of forms of service instead of the fluidity of such service as a part of the larger conception of service itself. In my judgment the greatest obstacle to statesmanship in the present necessity for liquidation in social work, for the cutting of budgets and the simplification of organization, is the too rigid insistence of individuals, organizations, and fields upon the importance of preserving the integrity of jobs, functions, and fields as we have known them. Somehow or other we must break through this vestedinterest complex. Somehow or other, however specialized our function, we must acquire the habit and the wisdom necessary to see social welfare whole. This is a responsibility which rests not only upon those in positions of community and agency leadership but upon the whole rank and file of social workers. Whatever may be true of other professions, architecture for example, no single item of social work has any justification except as one part of a larger service which embraces the whole of social work. A professional practitioner who has spent years in training and experience to develop competence in the use of professional craftsmanship which, given the opportunity, will ['86]

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enable him to produce results of a high order may be pardoned for resenting a crash in civilization which robs him of his opportunity. Precisely this is the predicament of many of us at the present time. It is impossible, with curtailed facilities, with the tremendous overload upon social workers, to reach anything like the standards of achievement which we have so laboriously and conscientiously carved out of experience. If this experience were forced upon one as the result of a passing emergency, one might be justified in biding his time until the opportunity for fine-grained professional practice returns. If, however, the emergency continues and it becomes clear to the thoughtful mind that it has gone so deep, it has persisted so long as to create a new world, the highest form of professional service may be to adapt oneself to reality and to be content to build anew from whatever beginnings may be feasible. T h e plea which I am making for a change in the vested-interest attitude is a plea that the professional social worker meet probably the severest test a human being can meet. William M. Evarts, in his defense of President Johnson during the impeachment proceedings, told of a friend of his, an elderly woman whose Calvinistic religion had been one of her most cherished possessions all her life, who replied with despair to an ardent young friend who was arguing with her as to the soundness of her theology, "If you take away my total depravity, you take away my religion." T o many of us to take away or even to reduce the service to which we are professionally committed is to take away not only our own individual usefulness but to eliminate an essential part of social work. [.87]

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If this were not in large measure true, there would have been something essentially unsound in our whole professional development. Nevertheless, like any other form of human effort which tends to become institutionalized, social work at the present time, by the purely technical and professional manner in which it has come to be admin istered, has become to some extent an obstacle to the very purposes which its founders had in view. T h i s tendency to crystallize, to be inflexible in the face of a need for change, is always a matter of personal attitudes. If we can break through the attitude of vested interest toward job, function, or field, we shall have taken the first great step towards competence for the supremely responsible tasks which lie ahead of us in all the various fields of our professional activities. W e cannot be content, however, with a philosophy, however adequately it may meet the requirements of a retrenchment period, which stops there. It would be temperamentally impossible for social workers to face the future in any spirit except that of determination to extract from the present crisis the utmost of constructive suggestion for the social welfare of this nation during the long future which will begin when this depression lifts. I have neither the time nor the competence to formulate a charter of social justice nor to sketch a chart of the social organization which is needed to bring it in. I should like only to point out the peculiar responsibility which will rest upon us as social workers if we are to achieve what seem now like two major objectives whose acceptance has been all but assured by the lessons of this depression. These objectives are economic security and the acceptance [188]

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of governmental activity in the field of social welfare as the foundation of our whole social program. T h e most important assumption which we need make with reference to the achievement of economic security and of efficiency in governmental administration in the field of social welfare is that both will take an indefinitely long period of time. T h e long pull ahead in the fight for economic security and efficiency in governmental social work is to me almost the primary fact in defining the responsibility of social workers from now on. Let us put ourselves on record as unwilling to participate in a civilization, to say nothing of profiting by one, which does not work ceaselessly and fruitfully towards the achievement of economic security. T h a t hundreds, thousands, millions of human beings, despite their integrity, earnestness, and willingness to work, should live for days, weeks, and years with no assurance from day to day that either food or shelter or the wherewithal to secure them can be made available is abhorrent not only to an exalted sense of justice but to a sense of common decency. What have we as indications that a program is in formation which will bring economic security nearer than it has been? We have discussion of unemployment insurance, the thirty-hour week, and minimum-wage laws and we have some proposals looking toward the stabilization of industry. Perhaps we should add that we have also a much more strongly held conviction that economic security must be achieved. If we credit these proposals with the maximum possibility of adoption and later accomplishment, we must admit that we are still a long way from a program which will insure economic security. Moreover the wisest [189]

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and most experienced of economists and industrialists have little confidence as yet that the formula has been found which will prevent a recurrence of industrial depressions or that, given industrial depressions as inevitable, our devices for dealing with unemployment can be made adequate. Nevertheless there is at the present time a highly encouraging determination to set to work at this problem and to be satisfied with nothing but continuous progress towards its solution. Nothing is more important by way of psychological preparation for the task than that we should recognize its difficulty and set ourselves no time limit within which final results must be secured when we know that to assume quick results to be possible can only lead to disillusionment. Let us note next the obvious fact that the development of a national program looking towards economic security must be a cooperative task. Such a program will require the contributions of economists, those skilled in the art of legislation, public administrators, industrialists, social scientists, social workers. T h e danger is that any of these groups may impede progress in one of two ways. They may arrogate to themselves as experts the right to determine what the program should be in some aspects with respect to which they are not professionally competent. T h e other risk is that some of these groups may impede progress by failure to handle adequately that part of the program which lies within their competence. T h e most effective contribution which any participant can make to a cooperative enterprise is to carry his own assignment with the greatest possible efficiency. What does this mean for the social worker with respect to the

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national effort to secure economic security? It calls first for an understanding of the total effort which is to be cooperatively made. We must be as keenly aware of the role which can be played only by economists, industrialists, and other groups of collaborators as we are of our own and we must be prepared always to test their contribution and ours both by those broad human considerations which make economic security imperative and by the practical workability of the total program which evolves. Here again we cannot be specialists in our philosophy. T h e next step is to consider precisely what the professional competence of the social worker can contribute, what it will mean practically to the effort to insure economic security if the social worker performs adequately his part in this cooperative enterprise. As I see it, social workers are in a position to present and interpret the data which demonstrate the economic and human cost of insecurity. They are in a position not only to establish the need for a program but to provide some of the tests by which the adequacy of such a program must be judged. This is no new assignment for social workers. They have throughout their history, from the days of the pioneers down to the present moment, been disclosing to the American people the cost in human deprivation, demoralization, and suffering which follows when men can find no opportunity to meet their elementary economic needs. Social workers have also something to contribute with regard to the workability on the administrative side of specific measures such as unemployment insurance and minimum-wage laws; and they can legitimately, because of their authoritative knowledge of the need which must be [191]

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met, participate in the effort to secure the enactment of such measures. If I am right, however, in suggesting that the achievements of complete economic security will come only in a remote future, I am inclined to believe that our most important part of this cooperative task will be in the development of standards of efficiency and adequacy in the administration of relief. Relief seems to me thoroughly unsatisfactory as a route to economic security for any large part of the population. Nothing less than stability of employment and insurance against the irreducible hazards of unemployment can satisfy us as the established means to economic security. Pending greater assurance of achieving both in adequate measure, we shall have to depend largely upon relief. I should like to say at this point that, recognizing all its defects and limitations, I regard the relief program of this country during the present depression as, on the whole, a magnificent achievement, but it can be so regarded only in contrast with previous efforts and in comparison with the magnitude of the task which was precipitated upon us. If we use other measurements our relief program makes a dismal picture. It has not assured economic security to the unemployed and its administration has revealed a disquieting combination of efficiency, bungling, and lack of control. Despite the helplessness of our profession in the face of this bungling, I believe that no other group has the qualifications to formulate a program of relief that would be adequate in amount and administered with a minimum of sting. If, as most of us at some time have been, we are tempted to indict economists and industrialists because

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they have not been successful in their task of stabilizing industry, perhaps we should remind ourselves that we have been equally unsuccessful in our task of establishing a sound relief program. T h a t task will require more penetrating thought, more concentrated effort than we have yet put into it. It will be a long-time j o b and when, as a result of thought and effort, we have evolved a sound relief program, we shall have another long j o b in securing its acceptance by the American public. This, I submit, is a task for social workers with the pioneer spirit. W e have a vision of economic security. Some of us have a passionate commitment to the task of achieving it, to the crusade if need be, which will give that vision reality in the lives of men. T h e true pioneer has always a vision. T h e vision alone never carried a pioneer through his hardships. For the sake of his vision and in the faith that he can bring it to reality, he is willing to work, to suffer, and to endure, to overcome obstacles, to find his way around difficulties, but always endlessly to work, and never can the pioneer depend for the realization of his vision upon any reinforcements to his own faith, courage, and competency except as they may come from his fellow pioneers. No less difficult seems to me the task of establishing high standards in the public administration of social welfare activities nor can I see this ultimate objective as one that can be obtained any more quickly than we can obtain economic security. It is, however, obtainable. Progress in the improvement of public administration in the United States has been steady during the past four or five decades. T h i s has been true in the field of social welfare as it has [»93]

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been in other fields but we are still politically an inept nation. T o have secured a widespread conviction that governmental activity is the foundation of our entire social welfare program is a tremendous advance. It is, however, only one stage on the road that we have to go. Prior to January 1 last there were not more than ten states, if that many, with an adequate public-welfare law including an efficient state department. T h e number of states so equipped as a result of legislative action last winter may have been increased to twenty. In most such states, however, we have at best the legislative foundation and the administrative structure which are essential to efficient relief. W e have, however, neither the personnel nor the public conviction, to say nothing of adequate tested experience which insures the best results from existing legislation and administrative structure. Public administration in the United States has traditionally been governed by political considerations of a low order. It must be governed by political considerations because government is a political enterprise. T o men and women schooled in the atmosphere of party politics, public administration presents no difficulties. T h e difficulties are apparent only to one who tries to use non-political standards—such as professional standards—in a political setting. T h e peculiar task, however, of combining professional competence with adequate political sense is one with which we have not as yet become highly proficient. Moreover we have a tradition in the field of social welfare that makes wholly invidious distinctions between public and private effort. T o some extent this is only a tradition. T o some extent it is also an evidence of the

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vested-interest complex. In any event, we shall need to deal with this problem with the fundamental philosophy which recognizes the essential unity of human welfare and the equally essential unity of our program to promote it. T h a t program will include the public welfare department, other governmental departments, such as schools and health, and private agencies. T h e first essential to good social planning and sound community social work is to conceive of all of these activities, under whatever auspices, as related parts of a whole. W e have a formidable task of readjusting our conceptions of private social work but we have, on the whole, a longer experience of successful experiment in the establishment of standards in private social work than we have in the field of governmental effort. I conceive the responsibility of raising the standards of public service in social work as resting upon the entire profession. Social workers are social workers whether their support and the support of their programs is paid for by the general public in taxation or directly in philanthropic contributions. In my judgment the most immediate professional responsibility for all social workers is to contribute in every possible way towards the development of efficiency in public agencies. If this contribution is to be acceptable to the American public and their governmental officials, it cannot be conceived as a contribution of private social agencies to a decrepit and unenlightened public service. It must be conceived as the contribution of a recognized profession as much concerned with standards in the achievement of its government as with those in the achievement of private groups. T h e present situation in social work, therefore, calls for [195 ]

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a re-examination of the whole attitude of social workers with a new focus at two points. First, the elimination of the vested-interest complex, whether held by individuals with respect to their positions, or by organizations with respect to their functions, or by special groups with respect to their special fields. It calls, second, for a recognition that we have a long pull ahead of us in the achievement of our two most important objectives—economic security and the establishment of sound standards of public activity in social welfare. I should like to discuss briefly the place of private philanthropy in a new social order which, whatever else may distinguish it, will provide economic security and be administered largely by an enlightened government. I do not believe that philanthropy is now breathing its last gasp. I believe that it is inherent in civilized human nature and an indispensable ingredient in human relationships within any society which is to achieve, let us say, such far-reaching ends as economic security and adequate governmental administration. I believe philanthropy to be like the family, like special-interest groups, an indispensable medium for the expression of interest and concern in the well-being of others which in a less personal and more formalized sense is still the motivation behind the determination to achieve economic security and governmental efficiency in social welfare. T h e present development of private philanthropy has been in many ways a distorted, forced overdevelopment. T h e extension and refinement of overorganization and the high-pressure methods to which we have had to resort to raise money have robbed private philanthropy of much of its spiritual [196]

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character. Public expenditures for social welfare may be forced upward without violating in any way the essential philosophy which justifies such expenditures. Private contributions for philanthropic purposes cannot be pushed beyond a certain point, never possible of definition, without destroying much of the philosophy upon which such expenditures are justified. Nevertheless, there is a role for philanthropy which I think can be established without its being a mere rationalization of a sentiment. Those of us who count our experience as social workers in decades recall vividly a stage in the social thought of America when private charity represented the normal process of dealing with human need —the American way, to use a term which came much later into our jargon. Under this conception the public responsibility was a vistigial one, caring, through its almshouse and other institutions, and through its public outdoor relief, for the chronics, the unimprovables—those hopeless members of society who were not amenable to normal methods of care. As I see the role of the private agency it, rather than the public, is vestigial in character, although at once I should like to withdraw the term vestigial because I think it applies neither to the function of the public nor of the private agency. I see the function of private agencies as a flexible one, different in different communities. In a community whose educational or recreational systems have not developed some of the opportunities which normally belong in such programs, I see private agencies filling that need. In other communities where a sluggish public opinion or an uninspired administration restricts a relief program, [197]

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leaving many imperative needs unmet, I see a private agency supplementing the program of the public department. In a period in which adequately trained personnel for public departments are needed, I see the greater mobility of private agencies producing trained, mature personnel more rapidly than public departments can develop them. This adaptation of the private program to the immediate current status of the public program seems to me achievable only if we abandon the vested-interest complex, abandon also any hard and fast logic defining respective functions in public and private efforts, think always of our social program as a whole with unity running throughout its parts, and conceive the program of private agencies as essentially opportunistic. I can see, then, three directions in which private agencies may fill an indispensable place. First, they may play in the individual community an entirely pragmatic and opportunistic role determined by the current development of public work. If our conception of the essential unity of our social-welfare program be kept alive this would mean that any current division of labor as between social agencies, public or private, would continue until developments suggested the wisdom of a change, with the development of public work under the influence of competent professional leadership as the most important factor in determining the need for change. Second, I see an inevitable lag between any kind of statutory provision for meeting human need and the scope and character of such need in the community. Mothers' assistance, workmen's compensation, old-age pensions, the enforcement of immigration laws—to mention only a few [>98]

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well-established areas within which the government functions with respect to human beings—all present, even under our most enlightened administration, limitations beyond which statutory effort cannot go even though the human need towards which it is directed has no such limitations. Third, human need is always relative, the standard of living is relative, poverty is relative, economic security is relative, standards of efficiency are relative. It is quite apparent that the function of experimentation and demonstration which we have been accustomed to assign to private agencies must take on new meaning in the years ahead. Experimentation and demonstration are entirely possible under public administration but despite the strides that have been made in public education we are finding that private educational efforts are still contributing impressively to advance in educational methods. So I conceive of private social agencies contributing to the advance of our social program into areas which it has not yet reached and contributing to its advance also in higher standards of work in its more traditional activities. What is the vision which we hold of the new social order? Mine does not go beyond the day when, for the purpose of increasing for all men the way and the means to richer living, we make better use of the ideals, the wisdom, the knowledge, and the resources which we now possess and of the increment in all of them which their intelligent use will create. We shall not make better use of these possessions if we continue to venerate the work of our hands because it is our work; if we continue to dignify our own stupidity, blindness, and self-interest by miscalling [•99]

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them conservatism and service; and if we continue to assume that to think and act cooperatively must involve a loss of sparkling individuality. It is the ideals, the wisdom, the knowledge, and the resources already in our possession that furnish the groundwork of our faith in the future, and not the structures which we have created to give expression to them. I believe that our ideals, our wisdom, our competence are entirely adequate for the task that we have ahead of us if we are willing to make the fundamental adjustments in our own attitudes which now rob them of their full fruition.

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R E G I S T R A T I O N in schools of social work, which has been steadily increasing for a number of years, has reached a peak in the fall of 1934. This increased enrollment represents a current demand for professional education which cannot be met by existing facilities. It is difficult to estimate the probable duration of the demand on its present scale but it is clear that if it continues some critical problems will arise which may well affect the whole future of professional education for social work. Among the many elusive factors that have contributed to this situation some reasonably specific ones can be recognized. The scholarship plan of the Federal Emergency Relief Administration will bring to the schools of social work during the current year approximately one thousand students. This number represents approximately thirty per cent of the total number registered on November 1, 1933, as students majoring in social work in the schools which comprise the American Association of Schools of Social Work. On July 1, 1934, the new terms of eligibility for membership in the American Association of Social Workers went into effect, making at least one year of training in a professional school a requirement for senior membership and requiring two years of candidates with less than five years' experience in the field. As senior membership in the Association is a credential with increasing value in determining the status of social workers the effect of this change in the Association has been to stimulate applications to the schools. One effect of the depression has been to reduce the number of openings available [203]

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in other professions, especially those open to women. As a result there has probably been on the part of college seniors a swing in vocational choices away from other occupations and toward social work. In addition to these three factors, there has been a growing demand in local communities coming from practicing social workers connected with agencies, particularly in public relief, for an opportunity to carry on professional study, usually one course at a time, which would extend their qualifications for their professional responsibilities. It is impossible to predict the future of this demand but some items seem clear. It is probable that the expansion of public relief alone has more than doubled the number of persons filling social work positions, a large percentage of whom may be expected to be permanently in the field of social work. It is also likely that the value of membership in the American Association of Social Workers will continue to stimulate both new recruits and workers in the field to the completion of the amount of professional education for credit necessary to qualify for membership. T h e future of the Federal Emergency Relief Administration is not certain but, if it continues and if its experience with this year's experiment seems successful, there is reason to believe that the plan of providing training for public welfare personnel through scholarships will be continued. Assuming that some at least of these factors will be constant, it seems reasonable to expect that the demand for training for social work for some time to come will be considerably beyond the capacity of the existing schools. This situation is not new. T h e schools have never provided all of the trained workers which organized social [204]

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work has needed. Prior to 1929, however, we were approaching a state of balance between the demand for training and the ability of the schools to provide it. This was partly due to an increase in the number of schools and partly to expansion in the facilities of existing schools. The current situation is novel chiefly because of the magnitude of the demand and the urgency with which it is pressed. Its gravity lies in the danger that in the effort to meet its emergency and urgent aspects the educational standards which have been slowly rising in the schools will be lowered and that the structure of professional education for social work as represented by the leadership of the well-established schools and the Association of Schools will be weakened by the emergence of new training programs inadequately conceived and inadequately supported. There seem to be three possible ways of meeting this critical situation: through the assumption of new responsibilities by existing schools, by agencies seeking to maintain standards of work through qualified staff personnel, and by universities and other groups in communities where conditions permit the organization of new schools. Schools of social work represented in the Association of Schools may reasonably be expected to expand their facilities for the accommodation of students just as far as is consistent with the maintenance of sound educational standards and as far as available resources permit. This problem of expansion will present different phases to different schools but it may in general be said to involve the following questions: How large can a professional school become, in size of faculty and in size of student body, without sacrificing [2°5]

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the peculiar kind of unification essential to professional education? How can competent teaching personnel be secured for expanding school programs? T o what extent must the size of a school be determined by the number of educationally valuable fieldwork opportunities available within its geographical reach? Where can schools able to expand safely their facilities for class instruction and for field work look for the necessary financial support? None of these questions can be answered with confidence at the present time and to some of them, notably the question of finances, some schools for the present will be able to find no answers whatever. Theoretically an educational institution may grow just as far as its resources for good work will permit. T h i s may be a realistic rather than a theoretical observation with respect to general cultural education. T h e distinctive requirements of professional education, however, may limit the size of an institution when financial and other resources would not necessarily do so. Medical schools and law schools, and to some extent teachers' training schools, have quite generally limited enrollment. T h i s has been done in many instances in order to avoid an overcrowding of the profession, a consideration which would hardly affect schools of social work at the present time. Other considerations, however, do affect them. Professional education is focused upon a particular field of activity. T o a considerable extent its value lies in a successful organization of its component parts into one coherent whole. T h i s coordination of the educational [206]

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program to achieve the specific common purpose of students and faculty involves some conscious relationship among students and a considerable degree of conscious interrelationship among the members of the faculty. When the growth of a student body or of faculty passes some undefined point this problem of conscious interrelationship becomes more difficult and the presence of the difficulty tends to reduce the efficiency of instruction as professional education. Those schools of social work whose faculties have been recruited largely from the leadership of the profession find themselves handicapped to some extent by this sudden problem of expansion because they may be less expert educationally than they are professionally. T h e desire to be of the maximum service to social work frequently leads to an underestimate of the threat to educational standards which undue expansion may mean. Schools of social work are of comparatively recent origin and an oversized demand for their instruction is a new phenomenon. They have little valid experience to guide them in the consideration of this problem of a desirable maximum of students and faculty for the most efficient professional education. T h e present situation precipitates this critical problem, nevertheless, and the schools face the difficult assignment of finding a solution for it while they are heavily overtaxed by the current demand. T h e problem of available teachers is more concrete. There is no dearth of competent social workers available for teaching positions. There has always been, however, considerable dearth of persons who combine professional competence with the qualifications for teaching and for

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the kind of scholarly study and research which curriculum development demands. T o a considerable extent the schools have solved the problem of teaching personnel for the more definitely professional courses by enlisting for part-time teaching competent professional workers in local agencies. T h i s device has had the undoubted advantage of keeping professional instruction closely related to current practice. Where it is the sole or chief reliance, however, and where part-time instructors greatly outnumber full-time instructors, the problem of achieving a desirable degree of integration in both instruction and faculty becomes serious. T h e problems, responsibilities, and character of social work are changing so rapidly that the professional school is under the necessity of studying continuously the development of the field and testing its curriculum in the light of the results of such study. This is a time-consuming process and calls for a degree of commitment to the educational as distinct from the professional obligations of the school which it is not possible to achieve adequately with a part-time faculty. Nevertheless the use of part-time instructors seems to be a necessary recourse if the schools are to discharge their reasonable obligations in the face of the present heavy demand for professional training. Field work is another concrete problem. As a result of statesmanlike cooperation in planning and administration on the part of schools and agencies, field work has developed from the low status of visits of observation to a sound educational status in which supervision in the field is as carefully conceived and applied as is instruction in courses. Most schools reject opportunities for so-called field work that [208]

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do not assure students reasonably educational supervision. T h e number of available places offering such supervision is limited in any community. Many agencies whose standards and whose staff supervision would be wholly adequate for the field work of a school of social work are unable to take students because of the pressure of their own work. Unless, however, there are enough good places for field work available there can hardly be a justification for the organization of a school of social work, however adequate in other respects its educational offerings might be. T h e number of students admitted for full professional training, therefore, will always be limited by the number of field-work places available to the school. In the larger c ities this number can be increased as the school works out with educational agencies a sound plan for field-work supervision. T h e field-work program of a school, however, is even less susceptible than its program of courses to this sudden expansion in order to meet an emergent need. We have frequently extended our use of fieldwork agencies in order to meet an emergency but, on the whole, we have not done this except where we could accept field work below standard educationally for the time being with confidence that the continued relationship of school and agency would result in its being brought up to standard within a reasonable time. T o a considerable extent the expansion of a school of social work to the maximum point consistent with good professional education and through the addition of qualified instructors and acceptable opportunities for field work will be determined by the amount of money available. Most schools of social work in this country are organic [209]

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parts of colleges and universities. Few of them had, even before the depression, enough money for adequate development. Most of them have found their financial resources curtailed during the depression in spite of the steadily mounting demand for their services. At the present time the financial problems of schools of social work are more serious than they have ever been. T h e scholarship program of the Federal Emergency Relief Administration makes reasonably adequate provision for the cost to the schools of this training although it does not cover it in toto. T h e demand upon the schools from other sources represents either an actual increase in money cost to the schools or the kind of lessening efficiency to which overworked faculties and overcrowded classes always lead. Both tax-supported state universities and privately supported educational institutions in this field are suffering from inadequate funds and there seems no reasonable expectation of decided improvement in the near future. One ominous recent development has been the announcement by one foundation with a history of liberal giving for professional social work that it is about to withdraw its support from this field. T h e current pressure on schools of social work could be measurably relieved by the establishment of new schools. Practically all of the problems which have thus far been mentioned as conditioning the expansion of facilities in existing schools will operate with equal force in determining the practicability of establishing new schools. T h e availability of teaching personnel and of opportunities for field work with the funds necessary to provide both are the leading sources of difficulty. Insofar as these difficul[210]

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ties can be met by schools which insure sound professional education such new ventures in this field should be welcomed and encouraged and they should be able to count at least upon the moral support of the older schools in their efforts to contribute to the solution of a critical problem. T h e establishment of new facilities for the training of social workers, however, has many pitfalls. There is grave danger that from a practical point of view anything will seem so much better than nothing that we shall see set up and accredited some training programs which are totally inadequate when tested by the best criteria of professional education. In particular the urge on the part of undergraduate colleges to meet the increasing interest of students in social work as a profession by providing for credit special curricula containing a minimum of sound professional courses adequately taught but without adequate field work may lead us astray. T h e American Association of Schools of Social Work now includes twenty-seven schools. T h e standards of the Association which must be met by schools applying for admission are definite but are none too high. It would be unfortunate if the Association found it desirable to lower these standards in order to admit some of these newly developed curricula. There is no present evidence that it will but the risk is clearly inherent in the growing interest in the development of new schools and new curricula for social work. It seems unlikely that the existing schools and new schools could among them fully meet the present demand for training. One other resource remains which has not been sufficiently explored. It is clear that agencies which look to the schools for the training of their staffs are fre[211]

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quently asking the schools for service which could be more usefully and more effectively rendered through more adequate staff supervision in the agency. A school of social work must provide its students with the broadest possible professional education. It must direct its education always towards its later practical usefulness to the student when he becomes an employee of a social agency. It cannot, however, present to the students all of the minutiae of setting, of specific problem, of detail of method and procedure, which are more logically the administrative concern of the specific agency or even of the specific field than of an educational institution. Social work has ceased to be an aggregation of different specific fields and has steadily developed as a unified professional field in which the backgrounds, the professional knowledge, the technical methods which social workers share in common are of greater importance than the sharp differences in setting, organization, and procedure which mark their different fields of work. Professional education is less likely to produce workers of immediate efficiency in a specific agency than a system of apprenticeship training could. It should, however, produce workers who in the long run provide the agency with a scope and clarity in their thinking, with a precision and productiveness in their effort, and with a reach in their imagination which no apprenticeship system could provide. Agencies, however, are still sending students to the schools to find the answers to questions to which there are as yet no answers and answers to which can never appear in the teaching of a school until they have been discovered in the field. T h e schools have demonstrated that they can offer prac[212]

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tical instruction to practicing social workers of the very greatest value, the best illustrations of which are the highly concentrated institutes for selected workers which are now a feature of the year's work in many schools. This type of instruction, however, lies close to the boundary line between the responsibility of the professional school and the responsibility of staff supervision. T o a considerable extent the use of the schools by social agencies for staff instruction has behind it a desire for school credit. There is no doubt, however, that a considerable part of it represents the agency's use of the school to perform a function which might more logically be performed by its own supervisory staff and frequently with greater profit to the agency. This problem of the distribution of responsibility for the training of agency personnel between the schools and the agencies has always existed. The present overloading of the schools raises it in acute form. It may well be that in the interest of finding an adequate solution to the problem of overtaxed training facilities and in the interest also of saving the schools from the inevitable disaster which persistent overloading will ultimately mean, agencies must assume greater responsibility than they now do for the development of their own personnel. This would not be a radical new step. As a matter of fact the educational character of staff supervision in agencies has been steadily extended. As a method of providing for staff development it has been as adequately tested as has been the use of professional schools. If this extension of educational supervision could reduce the attendance at schools of workers already filling positions, the schools could more nearly meet the demand of the field for new workers who [213]

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have received their professional education before taking professional positions. T h e gist of this discussion is that the standards of professional education for social work which have been slowly built up during the last thirty-six years are being threatened by the overloading of the schools with an acute and emergency demand wholly beyond their resources. Insofar as this demand represents a firmly grounded recognition of standards it is altogether encouraging. Interest in standards of social work, however, expresses itself at the present time in a variety of ways. Standards are recognized by community chests, by national agencies, by local agencies, by the Association of Social Workers, to an increasing degree in civil service examinations, and in various proposals for the certification of social workers. An interesting feature of the standard-setting procedures in use at each of these points is their reliance upon training in schools of social work as the most tangible and sometimes the only evidence of qualifications in the worker. T h e field of social work, therefore, at the present time seems to be relying upon the schools for qualified personnel in order to maintain high standards of work and at the same time it is quite unconsciously threatening those standards by asking the schools to carry an impossible load. Thus far standards in professional education have been the exclusive concern of the schools. From now on they will have to be the concern of the profession also if they are to survive.

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Address Delivered before the Mobilization for Needs Conference, Washington 1 934

Human

T H I S country seems to be on its way out of the depression. T h e signs the economists study seem to favor that interpretation of the trend in general economic conditions.

We

who are primarily concerned with the country's program for social welfare may as justifiably be heartened by this change for the better as is the business world.

But for

us this first stage in progress toward recovery brings also the sobering certainty that we face the most difficult year of the depression.

Decline in the need for relief always lags

behind business recovery.

W e face the necessity of main-

taining all our social services at their peak at a time when the public mind tends to assume a steadily declining need for them.

As a preparation for this effort we should have

a very clear understanding of the fundamental purpose behind our relief program and of the measures needed to give it effect. T h e purpose of our national relief program is to provide the physical necessities of existence to those of the population nearest to destitution, and to do it in such a way as to prevent a breakdown in the capacity for selfmaintenance—which will be the essential factor in the resumption of self-support by the individual when general economic conditions permit.

T h i s program calls first

of all for the provision of the material necessities: food, shelter, and the other items on this familiar list.

T o ac-

complish this is the easier part of the task, difficult as it is. Despite the strata of inefficiency, of political pressures, and of inadequacy in our administration of relief, we have succeeded in this depression in making relief greater in [217]

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amount and more evenly spread over the whole area of need than in any similar crisis. Every man and woman who has had any direct contact with the administration of relief knows, however, that physical need is not the whole of our problem. T h e status of being, despite one's most earnest and desperate effort, without the means of livelihood is a morale-shattering status. It means a continuous consciousness of deprivation, of failure, of isolation, of loss of standing in the eyes of one's fellowmen. Furthermore, the experience of enforced idleness has a merciless way of weakening habits of industry and determination to struggle against odds which are the very fiber of character—a truth that every man knows who has been coddled through a long illness, who has lived upon inherited wealth, or who has experienced an extended siege of involuntary unemployment. Again, to be forced to live dependent upon others for one's livelihood when the normal goal, accepted by all and achieved by most, is to be dependent upon one's self is a morale-shattering status. However kindly the help be given, however reasonable the explanation for his dependence, the person dependent against his will is the victim of an unremitting psychological bludgeoning which at best leaves its mark and at its worst means permanent impairment of his capacity to meet the world on even terms. Both dependence and the relief which we offer it contain the elements of other evils. Not that the emergence of these evils is inevitable in everyone who is without the means of livelihood or dependent upon relief. It is, however, as certain as actuarial mortality that they will emerge with sufficient frequency to justify any nation's distrust

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of a relief program that provides the poor with no service but relief. We may roughly classify all human beings in adversity regardless of their economic status, you and me among the others, into three groups: (1) those who find their way out of adversity with little help save their innate qualities of resourcefulness, determination, and industry; (2) those at the other extreme who sink beneath their adversity, content to let others support them in it; and (3) between the two, what I believe to be, all men considered, the largest group of the three, those who ultimately find their way because somebody stood by to reinforce their own best efforts with the kind of help—material, spiritual, or advisory—which fitted their individual needs. For the first group a relief program pure and simple may be sufficient provision until normal economic development restores the opportunity for self-support through earnings. Of service in other forms they may need little, but that little is all-important. It may be nothing but the discriminating judgment of the relief administrator that this man can and should be left to find his way with no help but relief or the provision of a job. It may, if the man's hardships are prolonged, be the same discriminating judgment detecting the first signs of a breakdown in morale which may be averted by the right kind of understanding interest and help. T h e second group, those who have sunk beneath their adversity, content to let others support them in it, present one of the most difficult of all problems to their own circle of acquaintances and to society at large. They may be the victims of misfortune, but they are also the victims of their own weakness of temperament or character. They [*»9]

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are content to let others provide for them. T h e y are not without a human capacity to suffer, but their dependence does not seem to be irksome. T o give relief to them without plunging them still more deeply into dependence, body and soul, calls for the most competent service. T h e y need help in developing both the will to stand upon their own feet and in finding a way of life that will enable them to do so. Economic relief unaccompanied by painstaking service will be of no lasting benefit to this group for it can never reach the heart of their problems. For the third group, those who ultimately find their way because their own efforts are reinforced, the precise need for service accompanying relief may be less obvious to those of us who are reasonably above the poverty line unless we can identify their problems of morale in the midst of adversity with our own. For I take it that the most fortunate of us is not immune to adversity. Illness, family incompatibilities, injustice, the conduct of children, the burden of responsibility when grave issues are at stake, the sense of inadequacy in the face of responsibility—these become shatterers of morale when they are persistent factors in anyone's life. A woman who, through a widowhood of twenty years, has struggled successfully to support and bring up three children, finds herself beset by conflicting advice as to the best plan for a son afflicted with tuberculosis. She has never been near the relief line, has never been in touch with a social agency, meager as her resources have been. Her son's illness is the hardest blow life has dealt her. She needs advice and reinforcement. Where does she get it? [220]

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From a kinsman with w h o m she has had a pleasant but more or less superficial relationship.

His judgment, sym-

pathy, and some measure of active work in her behalf put a p r o p under existence for her, and she carries on. A man of thirty-four, with a family of three, three years out of work, despite his efforts to find it and his demonstrated professional competence, and facing the expenditure of his last twenty-five dollars, calls upon

a

stranger for a letter of introduction to an employer who lie thinks might employ him.

T h e stranger hesitates, dis-

cusses the reasons for his hesitation frankly, and listens to the man's story.

T h e y converse over the general situation,

particularly the difficulty of getting access to men who might have employment to offer.

T h e stranger calls up

his friend and learns that the possibility of employment with him is remote b u t that he would be glad to have the man call.

T h e stranger never sees his caller again, but

six months later receives a letter from him saying that he had f o u n d a j o b of his own seeking two months before. H e is writing partly because he thinks the stranger may be interested and partly to tell him that his courtesy, sympathy, and fine sensitivity at the time of his call were in such marked contrast to the treatment he had usually received in his job-seeking that they gave him a substantial measure of courage and self-respect at a time when his morale was at a low ebb. T h e s e are two simple stories to illustrate the fact that morale is a many-sided phenomenon, that adversity is not altogether economic, and that those of us who never ask [221]

S O C I A L CASE W O R K for relief are nevertheless dependent upon wise and discriminating help in adversity. They suggest a further fact. When we need such help, where do we get it? We get it from friends, acquaintances, and others with whom our relationship is such that we can be sure of help without humiliation. Common enough in the lives of most of us is the role of guide, philosopher, and friend; and for most of us the role is one that now we play ourselves, and again benefit by when it is played in our behalf by someone else. In other words, most of us command within our normal relationships help for times of adversity. But there are those whose lives are barren spiritually as well as economically, who can neither earn a livelihood nor command the discerning help which holds morale steady. This country has decreed that the unemployed can command the means of subsistence; but we cannot stop there. Unless, as part of our deliberate community provision, we provide also—for those who lack psychological and spiritual resources—the sympathetic, discriminating service of conserving morale, our relief in the long run will wreck as many lives as it will save. During the last fifty years in this country the development of our relief program has gone along with the development, chiefly in private social agencies, of this kind of service under the designation of social case work. It has been placed at the disposal of stranded travelers; it has brought up to a high standard the care of children in foster homes; it has been the outstanding service of the private family agencies to the needy; it has slowly been adopted by public relief agencies within the limits of their responsibility for mass relief; it has contributed to the [222]

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correlation of attention to physical, mental, and social needs in the work of hospitals and clinics; and it has as probation been a constructive force in criminal and juvenile courts. Social case work has demonstrated its capacity to supplement relief with the only service that will steady morale in those who have not the capacity to safeguard their own morale unaided: the service of sympathetic understanding supported by practical ability to advise and plan. It has no record of one hundred per cent efficiency, for its practitioners are human instruments and its problems are enmeshed in all the elusive qualities of human nature. At its best its practitioners see adversity not as a peculiar affliction of the poor but as the common lot of mankind, to be met in the recipient of relief with precisely the same insight into human nature and the same sensitivity to temperamental need that they are familiar with as part of a total life experience. T o this they add a degree of familiarity with the resources of a community upon which anyone may draw and which in their totality are usually unknown to most of us. T h e maintenance of social case work is imperative because the problem of relief demands the preservation of morale and the capacity for selfmaintenance as well as the saving of physical life. T h e most immediate concern of this audience is with the support of private social agencies, and my assignment on this occasion is to clarify the argument for social case work in such agencies and for its support when every dollar secured for its support must be coaxed from a public with mounting tax obligations and with declining conviction that private agencies administering case work programs are [223]

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either necessary or practicable in the face of staggering governmental expenditures for relief. I quite realize that the situation tends to precipitate attitudes that are emotional rather than rational in character. There are those who are indignant at the evidences of inefficiency everywhere apparent in our current administration of relief. Others are resentful at the apparent usurpation by government of many of the traditional prerogatives of private citizenship. There are those who fear the destruction of many of our finest instruments of culture, built up slowly through the history of this country by private philanthropy. Others are disgusted by the persistence of ancient evils in our social order and are vehemently demanding deep-seated changes. These emotions of indignation, fear, apprehension, impatience, and disgust seem to me inevitable and even justifiable, but they undoubtedly hamper us in our efforts to carry on intelligently. Any adequate analysis of this difficult background against which the plans of this Mobilization must be made are beyond the scope of my assignment and wholly beyond my powers. T h i s much reference to it is necessary, however, because the emotional response of the giving public toward the recognition of government as the chief source of relief cannot be discredited. If it cannot be discredited, it may perhaps be overcome. But it can only be overcome by a rational analysis of our purposes which may lead to conviction regarding the program of private social work, conviction supported by those more beneficent emotions which have built it up and which are quite as indispensable to the building of a public welfare structure. In my mind the argument for social case work in private [224]

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social agencies lies first in the needs of those who seek help. It lies next in the conviction that public relief can never be a complete provision for all forms or degrees of adversity to which a civilized community would like to extend its aid. It lies finally in the relationship, at least in the immediate future, between efficiency in public relief agencies and the maintenance of standards of social case work in private agencies. In order to define the function of the private social agency it is necessary that we see our problem whole and conceive of provisions both public and private as coordinate parts of a unified plan. Both traditional thinking and current emotional attitudes make this difficult. But history and dispassionate analysis alike indicate that neither private nor public relief alone is a complete program for the achievement of a community's objectives in relief. Private agencies have never been equal to the total burden of dependence, and experience in this depression has brought this fact home as never before to general public perception. For handling the problem of mass relief private resources are hopelessly inadequate and public relief is indispensable. On the other hand, however efficient public relief may be, there are areas of human need that it cannot reach—areas that lie outside its necessary preoccupation with mass relief, outside its statutory limitations, outside its adaptability to many human problems which are covered by reticence and sensibilities. These are areas that the private agency with its maturing program of social case work must occupy. Social case work must be incorporated into our public relief, continuing the beginnings in this direction which were dis[225]

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cemible here and there prior to 1929 and which have been greatly accelerated by the influence of the Federal Relief Administration and some of the state commissions. But the mass relief problem ahead of us is so vast that there is no possibility that social case work can be made available under public auspices for more than a small part of it. Those persons in trouble whose need for other kinds of help and reinforcement transcends their need for relief must be provided for largely through private agencies. This assumption involves no discrediting of public welfare methods. Their limitations are inherent in the insufficiency of their resources for social case work, and to some extent in the statutory limitations under which they work. Statutory provisions can rarely be so defined as to cover all the need toward which they are directed. They may, and in many instances they do, cover the bulk of it, but the law defines limits which human need does not recognize. Workmen's compensation, mothers' allowances, and old-age pensions represent forms of need for which these special provisions have been made and which may, and in some states do, take their beneficiaries out of the category of relief. In New York state we now have each of these special provisions, and workmen's compensation under the administration of Miss Perkins as Commissioner of Labor came as near meeting the economic problem of the victim of industrial accident as it was humanly possible to make it under the existing statute. We have recently completed a study of one thousand families under the care of the New York Charity Organization Society on April 1, 1933. Among these families were widows with children, men and women over seventy years of age, and victims of industrial [226]

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accidents. Why should these families have received the service of a private social agency when provision for their major disabilities has been made by the state? Partly because for these particular families the state has made nothing but an economic provision, partly because the economic provision was inadequate, and partly because the economic provision was available only on terms that, frequently through no fault of their own, these families could not meet. In practically every one of these cases the service of the private agency was that of social case work as we have been discussing it, to which whatever relief they gave was incidental. If we are to provide such service beyond the limits of statutory provision, it is imperative that our community provision include both public and private resources and that we maintain a flexible relation between them. T h e private agency therefore must perform a function which is beyond the present scope and beyond the present inherent possibilities of public relief. In the immediate future I believe it has another important function in relation to public relief. Deplorable as our mistakes have been, I think we must nevertheless agree that in view of the magnitude of its task the record of governmental relief administration during this depression has been outstandingly good. Certainly it takes on that character when compared with the whole history of public relief in this country. But the crux of our problem during the next decade and more lies just there, for both the depression record and our previous history will influence the future development of public relief administration, and with some conspicuous exceptions our previous history had been al[227]

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most wholly bad. Our great problem is to make expenditures for public relief efficient in the sense of realizing for all of us our purposes with respect to those with whose need we as members of civilized communities wish to be concerned. It will be a long job. Moreover, when this depression lifts it will be a job that will have to be carried on without the dynamic national psychology that makes relief of foremost public interest in a time of great crisis. When the rolls of the employed rather than those of the unemployed are swelling, when the consciousness of steadily improving business conditions becomes widespread, unemployment and relief will cease to be news. When public opinion takes relief out of the glamorous atmosphere of the New Deal, it will be administered in the much less inspiring atmosphere of governmental bureaucracy, subject to all the peculiar pressures and distortions that have characterized our public life. It must not be allowed to sink into inefficiency under those pressures, and nobody familiar with the administrative foundations that have been laid in this depression believes that it need do so. But it will take continuous effort on the part of publicspirited citizens upholding the efforts of conscientious public officials to prevent it. N o public agency can in the long run rise much higher in its conception of its task than the level at which public opinion will support it. In no matter of social concern is there so little public understanding as in the broad field of social welfare as this group would understand that term. If we are really in earnest about social welfare, it must be clear that the permanent organization of citizen and professional interest in private agencies is an indispensable focus of public [228]

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concern with its social problems. This service of initiating and informing public opinion is not only one that private agencies have always rendered our public agencies, it is a service that public officials concerned with high standards of work have persistently sought. With the inevitable lessening of public interest in relief I do not see how public standards can be upheld, however able our officials, without such service from private agencies. Efficiency in public relief is even more a matter of personnel than of public opinion. T w o years ago the majority of our most competent workers were in the employ of private social agencies. Within that period these workers have been steadily drafted by developing public departments. This transfer of personnel, in my judgment, is one of the greatest services which private agencies have rendered the cause of social welfare in this country. Board members and staff members of such agencies who have found positions of responsibility in the public welfare field have carried with them standards and methods in the administration of relief and in social case work which are the unique contribution of private social work in America. This transfer of personnel must continue. Public agencies will undoubtedly assume an increasing responsibility for training their own personnel, but for adequate professional education of competent social workers for public welfare, private agencies are indispensable. With most of what I have said thus far I suspect that most of this audience have always been in agreement. But this is 1934. Money is scarce, taxes are mounting, and demands are heavy. Uncertainty is in the air. Most of us have had to realize that many privileges and posses[229]

S O C I A L CASE W O R K sions once apparently indispensable to comfort and convenience can be dispensed with. We will not let people starve but if the government is to continue to take our billions to prevent starvation, why should we ourselves, through our private agencies, spend our paltry millions or even thousands for the same purpose, plus the luxury of providing social case work to a minority of those in need? This question cannot be dodged. I believe the answer to it can be found only in a searching of our most cherished purposes with respect to life. What kind of social life do we want in this nation, whatever be the social order in which we have to live it? If we can include in it the service of man to fellowman in adversity, then we must at all costs keep alive and vital those forms of organization and relationship through which this service can be rendered. The list of these is long and distinguished on the roll of human achievements. During the last fifty years social case work and the private social agency have earned a certain, if modest, place among them. Their claim upon the participation and support of the American people is not their service to the capitalist system, or the rights of the professional group who administer them, or the privileges of the wealthy to be philanthropic. Their claim is exactly that of medicine or education or engineering: they represent a form of service that has demonstrated its power to enable human beings to achieve their civilized purposes with respect to one another. We have come to regard them as indispensable. They assume the character of indispensability because on the whole we prefer a world in which such attributes of civilized living are present. [230]

W H A T IS T H E B A S I S O F

PUBLIC

C O N F I D E N C E IN S O C I A L W O R K ? Address Delivered at the Conference of the Association of the New York School of Social Work 1

935

W H A T E V E R be the philosophy of social work—and we are constantly groping for it—it has always included recognition of a vital relationship between social work and the public. T h i s relationship was described not long ago by the leader of one of our national organizations as partnership with the public. A partnership between social work and the public would, I believe, represent a common purpose, shared concerns on the one hand and divided but related responsibilities on the other. One of the two vital facts behind the tremendous development of social work in this country today is the faith in it which has been manifested by the American public. T h e other is the extraordinary combination of vision, resourcefulness, and skill with which professional social workers in cooperation with the public have carried on their program. T h e faith of the public in social work has been demonstrated by steadily increasing financial support, by the collaboration of lay groups and professional workers, and by the moral support of public opinion behind legislative and other proposals in behalf of human well-being. Without public interest, without public confidence, without public support no profession and no form of expert service could survive. Social work has had a full share of all three. I should like to discuss this evening some reasons why I believe this confidence to have been merited by social work and some changes in the attitudes and habits of social workers which seem to me essential if, as a professional group, we are to retain it. T h e r e is some reason at the present time why the mem[233]

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bers of our profession should be apprehensive with respect to their relationship to the public. Criticism of social work and criticism of the competence of professional social workers have never been as acute. T h e investigation of the Aldermanic Committee represents the most malicious and potentially the most injurious attack which has been made upon social work in this country during the thirtytwo years that I have been familiar with it. But the growing criticism of social work in this city is not due entirely to the Aldermanic Committee. As far back as 1932 the New York Evening Post, with a fine tradition of faith in social work and with a constituency which largely shared that faith, described social workers as a special interest group dominated by the irrational, menacing attitude of "spenders." Followers of current newspaper publicity in New York are becoming familiar with the designation of social work as a "cult" and "racket." Comment of this character has been especially prolific in New York city but it has begun to appear elsewhere. Let us admit frankly that as human beings whose motivation probably compares favorably with that of other human beings we are sensitive to these criticisms and let us add that they create in us a feeling of deep concern about the future. Those who believe that social work is a "cult" and a "racket" would no doubt assert that this concern relates only to our own economic security, to the possibility that we may lose our place in the sun. There may be social workers whose concern is just this and no more. It is not true, however, of most social workers, whose concern is not primarily for themselves or their professional group but for helpless human beings, victims [234]

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of circumstance and the predatory aspect of modern life, in whose behalf social work is carried on. No one individual and no one group of individuals could possibly be indispensable to the well-being of society. Society might survive the elimination of the entire present personnel of social work. It could not survive as civilized society, however, without the services which organized social work represents, and those services cannot be rendered without competent personnel. I do not see our problem, therefore, as one of justifying ourselves before the public but as one of developing such a relationship to the public as will prevent the impairment of these services to human beings in need. Here we may ask why any re-examination of our relation to the public is necessary. Why should we who have covered tons of white paper with educational publicity, who constantly discuss social work with audiences which if laid end to end, etc., who have held conferences without number, who have resorted to all of the arts of education and interpretation, now find it necessary to start again almost from the beginning in thinking about our relation to the public? T h e answer to this question is that this reexamination is necessary because our efforts to maintain effective public relations have not been sufficiently successful. In spite of the white paper, in spite of the addresses, in spite of the publicity, we find social work misunderstood and attacked and we have ready no completely convincing reply and none too many champions among the general public ready to make it for us. I believe that many of the essential materials for the reply exist, but evidently some more intriguing and convincing use of them [235]

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than we have yet devised is needed. Until we work as continuously and as effectively in the field of public relations as we do in our technical practice, the phrase, "partnership with the public," never will be anything more than an empty slogan and we may steadily lose ground, leaving the heaviest costs of our failure to be borne by the groups whose helplessness and need we serve. At the outset of our search for the basis of public confidence we must recognize that the purposes of the community and the purposes of the social worker with respect to human welfare have a common origin. T h e history of social work is the history of effort in behalf of human need initiated and carried on for centuries by human beings of enlightenment and compassion without benefit of a professional class. W e who have within the short space of three generations brought the stabilizing factor of professional spirit and equipment into social work are carrying on a tradition which was born of the humanitarian impulse of mankind. Moreover we are operating through an organized movement which is to a large extent the creation of the same impulse working in non-professional groups. Conceptions which underlie much of the practice of social work—such as feeding the poor, medical charity, charity for the widow and the orphan, popular education, and child welfare—have not been introduced into the philosophy of life by experts. They represent widely held human convictions. In a real sense, therefore, the social worker is the deputy of the community, charged with the responsibility of giving effect to community purposes. If this conception is sound, what accounts for the apathy of the general public, for the outcroppings of criticism [236]

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and hostility to measures designed to promote social welfare? I think there are at least three factors which account for the difference in the tempo with which the general public and the professional social worker discover a need for social work and accept responsibility for dealing with it. In the first place the fundamental purposes of a community with respect to human welfare are rarely sharply defined or focused. T o the layman, relief of the poor is the providing of food, shelter, and clothing, and something in his conception suggests economy and discrimination in its administration. T o the professional social worker, on the other hand, relief of the poor is all of this and it is also social case work, behavior problems, morale, categorical relief, "public or private," work relief, etc. T h e professional social worker, in other words, tends to see farther into the problem of poverty than the layman, breaks it up into parts which must be handled differently, and becomes aware by experience or experimentation of diversified methods by which the common purposes which he shares with the public may be achieved. T h e interest of the public is either quite general or quite specific. It is rarely either comprehensive or implemented. T h e interest of the social worker on the other hand is much more sharply focused. It tends to see problems in their different aspects and to adapt methods of work to these differences. It is obvious that the professional social worker by reason of his concentration and skill has gone farther than the general public can be expected to go. T h e significance of this is that, while social work represents a tested method of dealing with problems, its practitioners must [237]

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inevitably be ahead of their public in their understanding and in their realization of the significance of these problems to the common welfare. But if the discoveries and conclusions of the social worker are valid they ought gradually to become part of that general knowledge which is essential to sound public opinion. T h e greater grasp of detail and the more authentic knowledge of the social worker are acquired by reason of his continuous concentration on his task. Obviously no such concentration is possible for the layman and his knowledge of social problems and social work must therefore grow largely by the process of absorbing what the social worker has learned. We may assume that there is no irresistible inner urge on the part of the layman to acquire such knowledge. T h e lag, therefore, between the learning tempo of the public and that of the social worker can only be corrected as the social worker makes his knowledge available to the public in ways that capture the layman's interest and lead to conviction. A second explanation of the difference in tempo between the public and the professional social worker lies in the fact that social work proceeds rapidly from awareness of problems and standards which are, so to speak, obvious to an awareness of problems and standards whose seriousness and validity are not obvious but must be demonstrated. T h e difference between the obvious and the demonstrated seriousness of social problems probably causes more confusion and disagreement between the social worker and the public than any other phase of their common interests. A good illustration of this difference is seen in the development of social and legislative standards with respect [238]

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to child labor. T o the large majority of humane citizens the industrial employment of children below the age, let us say, of ten would be an obvious evil. In some states the minimum age at which children can now be employed is, under some circumstances, eighteen. T h e employment of children of sixteen and seventeen is not nearly so obvious an evil as is the employment of children under ten. In fact, to many humane and intelligent citizens it may seem a positive advantage to the children. T h e employment of children of the older ages must be demonstrated as an evil to the general public however obvious it may be to the professional worker. This trend towards higher social standards which is the product of more and more penetrating understanding of the effects of the environment upon human beings is one of the products of good social work. Each successive rise in these social standards, however, brings us farther into a field where an honest difference of opinion even among informed people is possible with respect to what is socially desirable. Experience and professional competence have demonstrated for the professional social worker the need for higher standards. T h e general public, however, cannot arrive at any such conviction as a result of its own experience. The social worker's problem, therefore, is now much more difficult because he cannot carry conviction in the mind of the public merely by disclosing the obvious. He is under the necessity of demonstrating the case for higher standards about which it is entirely possible for human beings to disagree. This sketchy analysis of the difference between the tempo of the public and the tempo of the professional [239]

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social worker is of course nothing but a discussion of some factors in the general relationship between the expert and the public. T h e expert tends to be better informed technically, more competent, and professionally more sensitized to opportunities and methods for the social uses of his skill than the layman can possibly be. T h e expert and the layman have some common purposes and objectives. T h e layman is understandably loath to yield to the expert in the determination of what fundamental objectives are sound. He does, however, and in a complex civilization he must, yield to the expert in the matter of developing sound programs by which alone those objectives can be achieved. Modern civilization cannot be maintained without the expert service. T h e development of expertness, however, always carries two risks. T h e first is that the expert will assume too easily the readiness of the layman to accept his judgment as to the terms upon which lay objectives can be accomplished. T h e second is that the expert's consciousness of his expertness in any activity tends to create an assumption in his mind that it covers a much wider field than it really does. T h i s leads him into two weak positions. T h e first is that of pontificating with regard to matters about which he knows no more than other laymen and the second is that with the widening of the legitimate field of his operations he may fail to take into account the extent to which their success and their social utility depend upon their correlation with other expert efforts. It may be doubted whether the web of life for all men with its elements of safety, convenience, comfort, opportunity, and the diversified forms of zestful living can ever [240]

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be fully supplied, maintained, and g u i d e d solely by the thinking and achievement of experts and groups.

professional

Into its direction as well as into its composition

go the tastes, the intuitions, the purposes, the inner strivings, the common sense, and the temperamental choices of those w h o are neither professional nor expert

in

any

capacity as well as of those whose expertness is unquestioned.

T o q u o t e a recent writer:

the acknowledged expert shares the qualifications but also the limitations of his type. Possessing infinitely greater knowledge and capacity than any layman can hope to acquire, he is subject to the temptation of confusing the part which he knows best with that whole of which we all know so little. Soldiers, bankers, educators (and may I add social workers?), to cite only outstanding groups, cannot frequently be left to themselves. T h e y are liable in all honesty to identify the well-being of the community with that of their particular institution, organization, professional coterie, or social class. Under conditions of popular self-government the expert must inevitably share responsibility with those who are less well informed and less efficient. He may lead, he may guide, but he cannot run counter to or ignore his colleagues in other professions. Nor is he obliged to reckon only with fellow professionals. He is in the web of life equally with them. He is judged finally by uninstructed common men. He helps to mold but he does not govern public opinion. 1 If social work is to retain the confidence of

"unin-

structed common m e n " what can w e set d o w n as the basis of that confidence?

Public confidence in social work will

first of all be based upon faith in its program. ' The Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching, nual Review of Legal Education (1934), p. 26.

[Ml]

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T h e program of social work might be defined as follows: Organized services to individuals and groups. T h e development of a better organization of social life. T h e discovery, through experience, study, and experiment, of new objectives and new methods which will promote the common welfare. I believe that the details of this program, into which I have not time to go, justify the support of the American people as in the main essential to the realization of our highest ethical concepts of social well-being. I believe that it offers the American public a feasible and at the present time the most practically feasible means of accomplishing their purposes with respect to the most sorely beset members of our society. Furthermore I know of no social order now being administered or promoted in which the essentials of this program of social work would not be necessary. It is a program based upon sound expert knowledge and developed with fidelity to the ideals of humanitarianism and justice. T h i s is not to suggest that it is in any way adequate or final. Much less is it to suggest that the results which we achieve are at all commensurate with its possibilities, nor can we claim that we have as yet been able to put this program into full effect. Nevertheless we do offer it as sound in its essentials—and as having inherent within it the achievement of many of our highest ethical purposes. But as we look forward to the future usefulness of social work I think we need to ask ourselves in all soberness whether this is the social program of the American public or the program of American social workers? If my as[242]

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sumptions with regard to the relationship of the social worker to the public are sound, one of our major responsibilities (as great as assistance to those in need, the prevention of disabilities, the extension of richness of living, and the promotion of social security) must be the incorporation of this program or an acceptable substitute for it into the social convictions of the American public. It is not there in all of its essentials now; and we can no longer regard the simple disclosure of social problems as sufficient to put it there. We must demonstrate our case as well as disclose it. In considering our changing problem of public relations there are developments in the status of social work which we need to bear in mind. In the first place the change in the character of our program from the "obvious" to the "demonstrated" brings us into situations where the expertness of the social worker must be contributed in collaboration with the expertness of other professional groups. The program for social security, for example, rests only partially upon the philosophy, the knowledge, and the skill of the social worker. Its successful incorporation into American social life involves the collaboration of widely different functions and widely different disciplines. This is a type of widespread enterprise in which the tendency of experts to overstep the bounds of their own legitimate fields may work havoc. T h e public at large is bound to be influenced by differences between experts and social work has evolved to the point where by reason of its very efficiency it is much more likely to be a party to such differences than at any time in the past. The faith of the public in the program of social work will in the future be [243]

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affected by the success with which our contribution is geared with the thinking and skill of other groups. Furthermore the developing program of social work also brings us into situations where it must compete for attention and support with other public activities. No one has yet devised a formula for determining the relative importance of health, education, social work, fire protection, research, agricultural improvement, the promotion of commerce, and the maintenance of a military establishment. W e cannot pretend to decide the matter for the general public whose interest grows in acuteness but we can at least make sure that the case for the program of social work is adequately presented and, what is quite as important, that we have an appreciation of the social importance of the programs with which ours must compete for confidence and support. Another factor in the public reaction to our program may seem a minor one to us but is in reality one with considerable influence upon public response. This is our tendency to use technical terms in public discussions. T h e development of a technical vocabulary is not only inevitable, it is indispensable in the achievement of accuracy and precision in the use of our growing body of knowledge. Technical terms, however, are usually meaningless to the general public and frequently repulsive. W e labor under the disadvantage, compared with some other professions, of applying technical terms to situations, problems, methods, and phenomena which to the general public seem to need no such alien and strangesounding designations. "Intake," "behavior problem," "interpénétration," "positive level," "collaterals," "control [244]

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group," "client," "technique," and "prospect" may be timesavers and insurers of accuracy within professional circles but they are likely to be unintelligible, alienating jargon to the public. Theoretically, the public may carry a primary responsibility for the perpetuation of social problems and for the development of measures to remove them. Actually, however, such responsibility can never be as personal and direct as is the responsibility of the professional worker to make it possible for the public to understand and to act. The mere telling of the story, the mere demonstration of the case does not discharge this responsibility of the social worker. He must so manage the telling and demonstrating as to capture the interest and lead to conviction in the mind of the public. Obviously the use of terminology which is either unintelligible or offensive not only fails of its purpose but creates an additional handicap for the social worker. One other aspect of our program and its significance for the public should be mentioned. Much of our thinking and no small part of our effort are directed towards the better organization of social life. Legislation, new administrative structures, and the development of common services for the use of the entire community have for years been accepted parts of our program. Beyond these traditional objectives many of us in these days are pressing for fundamental changes in our social order. If we are less in agreement with regard to this new objective than with regard to the older ones, it is nevertheless a legitimate part of the program of social work. I think, however, both because of our own lack of surefootedness in this field and because of the equally valid judgment of [245]

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other groups on the issues involved that it will be more difficult here to carry the public with us than with respect to other aspects of our program. T h e present situation is confused and volatile. Prejudices are as easily aroused as enthusiasms. I see no escape from an overdose of both but the danger of an overdose seems to me no reason for attempting to curb the enthusiasms or disregard the prejudices. I do believe, however, that the confidence of the public in the judgment of social workers regarding a new social order will depend largely upon its confidence in the validity of the more traditional program for which social workers have been responsible. There is, therefore, a danger that our advocacy of fundamental changes in the structure of society may be inacceptible to a public with which, during the last decade or so, we have not kept sufficiently in touch and a further danger that dissent from these structural proposals of ours may lead to public questioning of the whole traditional program. I would not overemphasize this danger in either direction. I think, however, that its possibilities are clear enough to justify the argument for much more intelligent, effective effort to bring the whole program of social work home to the knowledge and conviction of the public. Social work for almost twenty years has lived a sheltered, almost a cloistered, life. During the nineties and for a considerable period thereafter it gained the increasing confidence of the public as it pursued a program almost entirely obvious in character. For the past twenty years we have been digging more deeply, spreading more widely, building more elaborately, with a tradition of confidence [246]

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in our program carried over from those earlier days. During these twenty years the character of our program has steadily changed from one whose validity was obvious to one whose validity needs to be demonstrated. During the same period we have lost that generation of supporters who, as board members and volunteer workers, promoted the development of a professional group and stood shoulder to shoulder with us as interpreters of our program to a broader public. So strong was the tradition of confidence in the objectives and methods of social work, so easy was the problem of finance and so preoccupied were we with the development of skill and the extension of our service that beyond question we outstripped the public in progress towards the understanding of social problems and of our methods of dealing with them. As a result we face the sobering question, "What is the program of social work which commands public confidence? Is it the program of 1935 or is it the program of 1914?" If it is nearer the latter than the former then social workers are living in a fools' paradise, and the sooner we make plain to the public just what we stand for in 1935 the sooner can we count with confidence upon the permanence of those parts of our program which, by right of their contribution to the civilized purposes of mankind, ought to endure. T h e basis of public confidence in social work in my judgment lies also in its faith in results. In the last analysis, results are the crucible in which most human efforts are tested. They are not the only test but they are an inevitable one. Sooner or later those who provide the money and those who lend their moral support to any [247]

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movement will inquire as to the extent and quality of achievement which money and effort have produced. These are obvious reasons for being concerned with the results of our work. Social workers themselves have, however, an increasing need for data on the results of their work. We have, to mention only one example, almost no objective criteria by which to judge of the efforts of untrained people in social work, however competent they may be in other fields. There is widespread conviction among social workers, which all of our available data seem to justify, that training is essential for good social work, that the distinctive competence of the professional social worker is a reality and that nothing short of it will serve to discharge acceptably the responsibilities which lie in his field. This, however, is largely a matter of conviction on the part of those who know, chiefly social workers themselves. There is a growing conviction on the part of others that people who are competent in other fields are just as well qualified to do social work as social workers themselves. In this situation we have very little with which to combat this point of view except another point of view. T h e test of these two points of view obviously lies in the results to which they lead. I suspect it might be stated that social workers believe in their competence because they have seen its value demonstrated. Nevertheless insofar as the public is concerned with the question of qualifications it is likely to judge both trained social workers and untrained people doing social work by results. We might as well admit at this point that we have [248]

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few objective criteria derived from results which any disinterested, intelligent outsiders could apply to the work of these two groups in the effort to determine this issue. We are not of course wholly without evidence of the results achieved by social workers. The fields of disaster relief, for example, of foster home placement of children, and to a limited extent of community surveys have clearly established results which meet legitimate objective tests. In other fields we have complete confidence in results but it must be admitted that in most of them the record is not available. I do not think we can continue to command public confidence without such a record. Admittedly it will be difficult to compile. There are many forms of social work whose results cannot be measured at least in comparison with other methods. For example, if one compares foster home placement with institutional life for children, selecting good examples of both, one may find oneself in a dilemma. Some objective tests of both are available which so far as they go may leave little to choose between the two forms of child caring. I am conscious of having picked up a live wire in referring to this particular matter. Nevertheless as I have read the evidence of results it seems to me that one's preference for a good institution over a good foster home, or the reverse, depends to a considerable extent upon one's judgment as to which is the preferable way of life for children. I am admitting all of the other factors, particularly those affecting individual instances, but in the final decision this question, like a good many others, comes down to this preference for a particular way of life for human beings [249]

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rather than to a matter of demonstrable comparative efficiency. With full allowance, however, for such imponderables I think the demand for appraisal of results in social work is legitimate. T h e difficulties of the task only add to the importance of our making a resolute and adequate beginning at it. W e may have to experiment for some time with methods of evaluating before we devise some that will produce dependable evidence of the results of our efforts. If, however, we were as energetic in our pursuit of this objective as we are in our pursuit of technical proficiency I do not think it would be long before we could lay before the public evidence of the value of social work which would be completely convincing to "uninstructed common men." Public confidence in social work is based finally upon faith in its personnel. Faith in human beings is one of the stabilizing factors in social life. Faith in its responsible personnel is among the greatest assets any movement or any society can have. It is not easily acquired. It is based usually upon the test of experience in which the tested person has been tried and found adequate. Whatever other grounds for confidence the supporters of a movement may have these blend finally into faith in those who administer it. I am inclined to think that at the present time faith in the personnel of social work is the leading, and in some places the sole, basis of public confidence. T h i s is a tribute of the highest order to professional social workers. Just what, however, does it mean? It means first of all that the American public believes in us, not necessarily [250]

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in our program or in our results but in us. This is not to say that there is disbelief in the program or skepticism as to results, however much ignorance there may be, but only that our program is not in its up-to-date essentials understood and that our results are largely unrecorded and therefore to a considerable extent unavailable for public appraisal. Insofar as the public has access to social work, so to speak, it has access to its personnel, not to the significant part of its record, not to the full implications of its program. Confidence in the social worker is distinct from confidence in his program or his results must rest upon the belief in his competence. Large numbers of the public have seen us at work. It may be assumed that they like the way in which we approach our tasks and are impressed with what we tell them about our methods. In spite of admitted inadequacies in our performance, in spite of current criticisms, we have acquired a substantial reputation for competence. I think that sober self-appraisal of our professional development, without any sacrifice of modesty, justifies the belief that we have made steady progress in achieving the kind of competence which, from the beginning, we have sensed as essential to the discharge of the responsibilities which comprise our professional field. We need be neither apologetic nor defensive when we assert the necessity for qualified social workers in responsible positions in social work. T h e justification of this assertion does not lie in any assumed rights of our professional group for recognition. It lies in the demand for skilled performance inherent in our program and in the necessary relationship between [25i]

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results and skillful practice. The most effective answer to criticism of the social work "racket" lies in authentic knowledge of the program and results of social work and recognition of the distinctive character of the competence necessary to give it effect. It does not seem unreasonable to suggest that a public which has manifested its confidence in the social worker will sooner or later ask what is the basis of this confidence. At the present time we can tell "uninstructed common men" that their confidence in us can be justified by a combination of program, methods, and results but we have available for their use no adequate, reasoned statement of the program, no clean-cut formulation of methods, and almost no written record of results. Without such supporting material, confidence in personnel alone will sooner or later decline. Faith in personnel by itself is a frail reliance for any movement. If it is leaned upon too long without being endorsed by confidence in a program and without the clear evidence of results achieved I think the personnel of the movement may fairly be indicted for failure to justify the confidence imposed in them. One may ordinarily count upon the support of friends but if he has given them nothing but faith with which to support him he leaves them at a time of crisis without the materials with which they can champion the cause in which these friends as well as he have some stake. We ourselves are aware that our problems as we have come to understand them demand a degree of competence which is still in the making. Foundations of efficiency have been laid and we have begun to build a superstruc[252]

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ture but in many respects we are still vague about it and do not find it easy even among ourselves to define it. T h e derivation of the competence of the social worker has thus far been almost wholly empirical. It is almost entirely the product of experience and only to a limited extent is it scientific or scholarly. We begin to see the possibilities of incorporating science into our knowledge and methods but in the practical work of every day we have not begun to equip ourselves with the science and scholarship characteristic of many of the older professions. Empirical experience is an entirely valid basis for practice. It is indeed an important factor in the practice of other professions much more highly endowed with science and scholarship than ours. T r u e professional work, however, can never become stable, its fundamental conceptions can never be clear, its relationship to the whole web of life can never be established until the equipment of its practitioners is marked by growth in science and scholarship as well as in technical proficiency. These are qualities which come slowly in the development of any profession. They are not acquired by bargaining with scientists and scholars. They are part of the development of professional subject matter by practitioners who are aware of a growing need for them as their professional horizons widen and their recognition of tasks beyond their immediate competence grows clear. I think there is some relation between our lack of science and scholarship, our somewhat befuddled thinking about our program, and our comparative failure to make both it. and its results convincing to the public. Competence which is derived solely from experience in one field may [253]

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not seem essentially different from the competence of any intelligent person whose experience lies elsewhere. Would it be unfair to ourselves to describe the status of our competence at the present time in such terms as these? (1) It is still chiefly empirical and very little scholarly and scientific in origin. (2) T h e r e is little recorded evidence which discloses it. (3) It is largely unrelated and confused when it finds itself in collaboration with the competence of other professions. (4) T h e skill which is one of its chief components has not been analyzed. (5) It enables us to commend ourselves as professional persons when we talk convincingly about our program and methods but it has not sufficiently enabled us to create among the general public enlightened champions of social work. T h e essence of this discussion is that in the long run the purposes of the community as a whole and the purposes of professional social work are identical. They are identical because both are derived from the ideals which a civilized society maintains for itself. Social work has developed a capacity for insight into some of the problems of social life, a program, and a method for attacking those problems all of which are essential to the realization of these civilized ideals. Inevitably, as society becomes more complex, as our professional knowledge and insight develop, we do as a professional group find ourselves far ahead of the general public in the realization of what is necessary by way of planning, resources, and effort if [254]

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those ideals are to be realized. Social ideals and social purposes belong to the public and are ours primarily only because we are part of that public. We have a professional obligation to maintain the kind of partnership with the public which will insure that our partners in this enterprise have an opportunity to learn what we have learned, to accept us and our program because we have given them the opportunity and the materials by which they may themselves judge of its soundness. Public confidence in the program and the results of social work will lead to continued confidence in the personnel of social work and in the long run there is no other route to this end.

[ 2 55]

T H E S O C I A L W O R K E R AND

SOCIAL

ACTION Address Delivered before the New York State Conference on Social Work 1

935

I N T H I S discussion I am taking the term social action to include any effort designed to promote social welfare outside the direct and indirect media represented by our service agencies, national organizations, etc. Social action seems to suggest efforts directed towards changes in law or social structure or towards the initiation of new movements for the modification of current social practices. Promotion of the idea of crime prevention as a public obligation is social action. Activity on behalf of a political party—republican, democrat, socialist, communist, or labor—when undertaken in the belief that the party's success would result in a greater measure of social welfare is social action. T h e organization of special-interest groups to achieve through the class struggle a shift in the control of economic power, with the same belief behind it, is social action. Participation in movements to achieve social security or the abolition of child labor by legislation is social action. Safety campaigns and the promotion of the cooperative movement are social action. T h e continuous need for social action is probably a phase of the process of growth in any society. Recognition of it sometimes leads to fantastic and irrational proposals for change and is sometimes the starting point for statesmanlike planning. At critical periods like the present we are likely to have both in doses of assorted size and virulence. As professional persons, I take it, we should be concerned with statesmanlike planning and that assumption ought to clarify somewhat the problem of the social worker's participation. [259]

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Statesmanlike planning for social action certainly involves the use of all the varied forms of competence that society can command. On this ground it becomes apparent that professional social workers (and on precisely the same ground the members of other professional and vocational groups) have an obligation to engage in social action and that it is essential to any balanced progress in our social life that they do so. Any working group having a continuous and distinctive experience in the administration of programs designed to provide commodities, service, protection, or opportunity has a potential con tribution to sound social action which can be made by no other group. T h e problem of determining whether the social worker has obligation or responsibility in the field of social action seems to me no problem at all. He has both the obligation and the responsibility that goes with it. I believe this because I believe some commonly held objectives in civilized life, achievable only through social action, cannot be achieved at all without the distinctive professional contribution of the social worker. Our problem is rather to determine the nature of that contribution and the terms on which it can be made. In this discussion, owing to the limitations of time, I shall be less concerned with the nature of our contribution than with the terms on which it can be made. In discussing the terms or conditions which should or will determine the participation of the social worker in social action I should like to distinguish between professional factors and what we might call the emotional milieu which affects the operation of professional factors. Participation in social action may be analyzed as pre[260]

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senting two types of activity: leadership or advocacy on the one hand and support on the other. T h i s may seem a distinction too finely drawn to have practical significance but I do not believe it 'is. T o establish its significance we need to make some more distinctions. T h e participation of the individual social worker in social action is likely to be governed by the following: his sense of professional competence, his consciousness of intellectual conviction in areas where he lacks technical competence, and his temperamental selection of interests. Leadership and advocacy seem to me roles for which competence with respect to the matter at issue is an indispensable qualification. Neither conviction without competence nor temperamental interest justifies anyone in assuming them, and we might add that the tendency to do so is a menace to sound social planning. Leadership and advocacy in social action on issues with respect to which one is professionally competent are direct authentic professional activities. T h e social worker can play those roles by right of his professional qualifications, qualifications essential to the formulation of a social program and qualifications possessed by no other group. In much of our current discussion any such conception of the role of the social worker in social action has seemed more restrictive than many of us have been willing to accept. T h e feeling is growing, however, that our sense of restriction under this conception may be due less to its fettering effect than to our unreadiness or inability to make good on our own assumptions of competence. W e have been a long time building our knowledge and developing our skill. It is all there in our experience, in our files, and in [261]

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the increasingly well-disciplined minds which we bring to daily practice. But it has never really been sorted out, arranged, formulated, and interpreted so that when the crises of social action arise it is readily accessible to ourselves, to say nothing of the laymen and experts outside our ranks whose attitudes, proposals, and activities in the field of social action we think could with profit to society be influenced by what we have learned. Nevertheless we do have competence of a distinctive character. It gives us what I believe to be our only justification for assuming as professional social workers the roles of leadership and advocacy in social action—or in any other field. I am speaking of course of the profession as a whole and of the professional qualifications which training and experience develop. Plenty of our members have added to these other training and experience that add scope to their professional competence. There may be social workers who are expert on taxation, on collectivism, on constitutional law, on the proposal to make the production and distribution of milk a public utility— but they did not become expert in these matters as a result of their training and experience as social workers. Unless he has had other training I do not see how any social worker could assume the role of leader or advocate in these legitimate fields of social action without risk both to these programs and to the status of social work. The nature of social work, however, brings its practitioners into situations where they have to take responsible action which is beyond their technical competence. In such situations they cannot avoid reaching convictions and lending support, though if they are professionally honest [262]

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they may well be wary of assuming leadership or advocacy. T h e i r role here seems to me one of support rather than of leadership. With respect to all kinds of issues vital to social work, the problem of participation arises. W e can't escape taking sides in political campaigns, in controversial legislation, in the birth control movement, with respect to the role of the federal government in social welfare. Many of these have fundamental aspects beyond our professional competence but well within our professional interest. Insofar as we can tell which is which, I think our own sense of competence should determine the nature of our participation, whether it is to be leadership and advocacy or much less aggressive support. If we can't tell which is which, I think genuine competence would say that the greater service to social work lay in keeping out of leadership and avoiding advocacy. How does temperamental interest affect the nature of the social worker's participation in social action? There is probably as great a diversity of temperament among social workers as there is among physicians, fiction readers, college professors, and those who eat cereal for breakfast. It is usually not accident that turns some of us to social case work, some to the promotion of legislation, some to group work and some to the children's field, some to research, some to the field of health. W e may give an intellectual acceptance to all of these and others, as important and essential parts of our professional milieu, but one's capacity for the absorbing and dynamic interest which is indispensable for effectual participation cannot possibly run to the whole subject matter of social work, to [263]

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all of its fields or to all of its legitimate concerns in the area of social action. For all of us some concentration is inevitable because of sheer temperamental limitations to say nothing of efficiency. T h e total of one's committee and organizational memberships is no evidence whatever of one's usefulness or the versatility of one's competence, but may well be evidence of his inadequacy as a social worker. It seems less important to me that any one social worker be identified with this or that movement, however high it may rank in importance, than that his participation in social movements be guided by his sense of professional competence and his ability to bring to them the dynamic power of his temperamental interest as well as his trained capacity. T h u s far I have been trying to sketch the case for the participation of the social worker in social action—through leadership in matters in which he is professionally competent and through support in matters in which he recognizes a professional stake and a conviction but which involve consideration beyond his competence. T u r n i n g to the actual problem of participation we find that procedure is not as simple as this would suggest. Competence is not easily defined, inertia is not easily disturbed, and enthusiasm without knowledge is not easily restrained. And yet in the face of issues, however precipitated, forces pro and forces con struggle in the effort to bring social workers in or to keep social workers out. There is at times with respect to such issues both bustling activity and indecisiveness, both of which are attributable to intellectual fog when clear vision is needed. When one is quite honestly unable to find his way rationally through an issue and is at the same [264]

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time subject to the pressure of self-respect or propaganda, the emotional urge to activity as a substitute for thought or to indecisiveness as an ethical sanction for either ignorance or incapacity is frequently too strong to be resisted. On the one hand are those who believe that anything would be better than what we have now and on the other are those who would like something different but do not know what. In his recent book Bertrand Russell writes that "the world is suffering from intolerance and bigotry, and from the belief that vigorous action is admirable even when misguided." T h e temptation to indulge in vigorous action is strong when one has exhausted the power of his own competence without finding within it the solution to grave social and economic problems. I see no reason why, at such a point, the social worker should not select from among the far-flung proposals for economic readjustment which others more competent or less timorous than he are promulgating, and lend to those he selects his whole-hearted support if he has an intellectual conviction about them and finds them congenial to his temperamental interest. I cannot see, however, that he can base his participation in such movements upon his professional competence as a social worker. T h e obligation of the professional social worker as such to engage in social action through advocacy does not in my judgment run to matters beyond his professional competence and other matters about which he has a strong intellectual conviction based upon the judgment of others whose competence he has reason to trust. Advocacy and support of programs of social action, the full implications of which one has not thought through, may be an understandable human escape [265]

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from the agony of indecision at times of crisis, but it is hardly evidence of a high sense of professional responsibility. This is not to dignify either inaction or indecisiveness. It is much more a challenge to social workers for commitment to the degree of intellectual effort needed to broaden and reinforce their own competence. Another problem which becomes complicated by emotional factors is the effect upon our current service programs when social workers become preoccupied with issues in the field of social action. A t the present time we are seeing in a good many different directions an emphasis upon the self-interest of social workers as a major professional preoccupation. Boards of directors here and there frown upon such preoccupation and employees of social agencies begin to organize to protect their economic interests. It is also suggested at least by implication that social workers ought to identify themselves with labor in order to secure a transfer of the control of economic power to the labor group. These various developments are resented or applauded by social workers chiefly because of the social worker's self-interest. I have no quarrel with any of them and believe firmly that self-interest is not only biologically inevitable but ethically justifiable as a motivation even for a social worker. I would defend vigorously the right of any group to protect its own interests as they see them by almost any means they choose although I am by nature a pacifist and have little faith in the enduring value of results secured by force. My concern here is that we already have some evidence that the effort to promote the self-interest of social workers [266]

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in such ways as workers' organizations or insistence upon the right to follow one's own judgment in the support of measures in the field of social action is embarrassing those service programs for which we are professionally responsible. In spite of the impressive indictment that can be made of our economic system and its responsibility for many of our social ills, I still think that the major responsibility of the professional social worker is the service programs of social work and leadership in those forms of social action which are within his professional competence. I believe we are right in spite of public opposition to make our legitimate professional contribution to social action and I believe that workers' organizations have an important contribution to make to the administration of social work. I also believe that the furtherance of these two interests can, if we are inept in our choice of means and time and emphasis, seriously embarrass our service programs. It is quite true that social workers, ready to make their natural and entirely valid contribution to social action, have at times been embarrassed and checked by conservative donors and boards of directors who have disapproved of what is known in popular jargon as "radical tendencies." It may be added that others have never been so restricted. But it might just as well be recognized that at the present time the efforts of many social workers to promote justice and human well-being are often quite as much embarrassed by the unintelligent intrusive methods of radical propaganda as ever they have been by the equally unintelligent restrictions of the conservative donors and boards of directors of their institutions. [267]

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As a final complication in any rational approach to the participation of the social worker in social action we have to consider the rapid and, to me, deplorable spread of intolerance. T o quote Bertrand Russell again, "What is needed in our very complex modern society is calm consideration, with readiness to call dogmas in question and freedom of mind to do justice to the most diverse points of view." Intolerance and bigotry are not conducive to calm consideration. I am especially concerned here with intolerance within our own professional group. A passionate devotion to the cause in which one believes is entirely understandable. Equally understandable is the tendency to rate high in importance as compared with other matters the enterprise, the field of work, the cause to which one is committed. As has already been pointed out, however, temperamental interests differ, judgments differ, and in the present state of our ignorance regarding human nature and human society it is neither scientific nor sensible, to say nothing of intellectual honesty, to assert that any one route to social salvation is the one authentic way. Neither is it reasonable to expect that those whose genius or capacity runs more sure-footedly through administrative responsibility than through speculative or philosophic thought should be able to master the intellectual complexities of sweeping programs of social reform. I do not believe that any social worker can afford to be apathetic towards the need for fundamental social readjustments in this country but plenty of social workers, conscious of no competence whatever in such matters, are sticking to more direct professional responsibilities not through apathy but [268]

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through a sense of responsibility quite as high as that which drives others into the field of social action.

T h e intoler-

ance which attempts to read for everybody a categorical " m u s t " into every dogma, every program in which one himself believes, assumes a simplicity in the problem of human life and social organization which as yet does not exist.

A t the present time it seems to me more important

that we preserve complete "freedom of mind to do justice to the most diverse points of view" than that we assume an ability to develop any one point of view which can or should demand the same allegiance from all of us.

T h i s is

not a mere assertion of the importance of intellectual freedom and freedom of speech.

It is the assertion rather that

diversity in point of view and in method is in itself an indispensable constructive mode of progress. I have endeavored in this paper to distinguish t w o separate realities that at the present time govern the relationship of the social worker to social action.

O n e is the

reality of the social worker's normal legitimate professional contribution to social action.

T h e other is the reality

of the emotional milieu in which self-interest, drives, prejudice, bigotry, and the will to be blind, whether they are manifested by the social worker or by the general public, not only limit the efficiency of his participation in social action but menace the efficiency of all of his service programs.

T h i s emotional milieu is always with us in social

life but its power and influence become especially crippling, and perhaps especiallv energizing, at a time of great social upheaval like the present

H u m a n beings are prone

to these emotional excesses and social workers are human beings.

Nevertheless a profession, whatever the defects [269]

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of its practitioners, is by its very nature a demonstration of the capacity to think rationally, to work ethically, and to control the emotional factor in judgment—and social work is a profession.

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