Broken Homes Part 8

A young Irish rigger, with a capable wife and two pretty babies, lost his job after a quarrel with his boss rigger. He was a genial, popular chap, always "the life of the party" in his circle; and his companions encouraged him to feel that he was a much injured man.

They also helped him to fill his enforced leisure with too much beer. When the family received a dispossess notice the wife's patience was at an end, and acting on the advice of a society engaged in family case work, she put the furniture in storage and went to a shelter where she could leave her children in the daytime, while she was at work, and have them with her at night. The man was told to s.h.i.+ft for himself until he could get together sufficient money to re-establish the home. The arrangement continued for nearly two months, during which the man lived in lodging houses, had an attack of stomach trouble, and was altogether thoroughly miserable.

Every night he waited for a word with his wife on a corner that she had to pa.s.s in coming from work. Finally, when it seemed to the social worker and to the wife that his lesson had gone far enough, the home was re-established, with only a small amount of help from the society. During the five years since that time, no recurrence of the trouble has come to the attention of the agency interested.

This experiment was realized to be a ticklish one, as a man less sincerely attached to his home might have been turned into a vagabond by such treatment.

In general, it may be said that, as there is less to work on constructively with the non-supporter, court action has more often to be invoked. If the non-supporter is a "chronic," his path must not be allowed to be too easy. "Sometimes you just have to keep pestering him"

was the way one social worker put it. A Red Cross Home Service worker successfully shocked one elderly non-supporter into going to work, as described in one of the Red Cross publications:

"Well, Mr. Gage," I said, "I see you're not working yet."

"No, Mrs. c.o.x, the coal company promised to send for me."

"Well," I said, "I think you've been pretty fair with that company.

You've waited on it for three months now. If I had the offer of another job I'd feel perfectly free to take it, if I were you."

"Yes," he said, "I think I should."

"All right, I have a job for you," said I. "My husband wants a man now at his garage, to clean automobiles. The hours are from 6 p.m.

to 6 a.m., and you'll earn $15 a week."

His paper fell from his hands to the floor; his jaw dropped, and he just looked at me. Then he tried to crawl out of it and began to make excuses.

"I haven't time to argue with you, Mr. Gage," I said. "I'll keep the job open till seven o'clock tonight and you can let me know then whether you'll take it or not."

At seven he came to say he'd take the job.[45]

If in desertion cases the interest centers very vividly about the absent man, in non-support cases the reverse is likely to be true, because he is often not very interesting per se, and because, moreover, he is always on the spot and does not have to be searched for. Familiarity certainly breeds contempt for the non-supporter. Consequently the social worker may easily fall into the danger of disregarding the human factors he presents, and either treating the family as if he did not exist or expending no further effort on him than to see that he "puts in" six months of every year in jail if possible (since the law usually secures to him the privilege of loafing the other six). It is not safe, however, to regard even the most leisurely of non-supporters as beyond the possibility of awakening. One district secretary who had thus given a man up had the experience of seeing him transformed into a steady worker after a few months of intensive effort by a first-year student in a school of social science, whose only equipment for the job was personality and enthusiasm. So remarkable are some of the reclamations that have been brought about with seemingly hopeless non-supporters that all possible measures should be tried before giving one of them up.

His Scotch ancestry, a good wife, luck, and a friend with insight and skill, pulled Aleck Gray out of that bottomless pit, the gutter. Aleck had been a bookkeeper; but he didn't get on well with his employers, lost his job, got to drinking, and went so far downhill that his wife had to take their two children and go home to her people several hundred miles away. Aleck finally drifted into a bureau for homeless men, where the agent became interested in him and worked with him for six months, getting him job after job, which he always lost through drink or temper. He seemed incapable of taking directions or working with other people. In all that time the agent felt that he was getting no nearer the root of Aleck's trouble, though he came back after each dismissal and doggedly took whatever was offered. Finally, the agent's patience wore thin, and when Aleck had been more than usually dour and aggravating it went entirely to pieces. Aleck listened to his outburst apparently unmoved; then said, "Very well, if you want to know what would make me stop drinking, I'll tell you. If I could see any ray of hope that I was on the way to getting my home and family back, I'd stop and stop quick." On the agent's desk there happened to be a letter from a friend who wanted a tenant farmer. He thrust it into Aleck's hand saying, "There's your chance if you mean what you say." The man's reply was to ask when he could get a train. At the end of several weeks Aleck wrote that he had not drunk a drop and was making good, which was enthusiastically confirmed by his employer. He begged the agent to intercede with his wife, and a letter went to her which brought the telegraphic reply, "Starting tomorrow."

How they got through the first winter the agent never knew exactly.

But they pulled through and the next year was easy, as country-born Aleck's skill came back. Six years later, during which time the agent heard from them once or twice a year, Aleck was still keeping straight, the children were doing well in school, and the family, prosperous and happy, had bought a farm of their own in another state.

FOOTNOTES:

[40] The deserter who does not fail to support is usually safe from punishment no matter how aggravated his offense. A man living with his wife and five-year-old boy in an eastern city eloped with another woman to a city in the Middle West. The couple kidnapped the boy and took him with them; and the distracted woman, bereft of both her husband and child, had no recourse in any court, since the father was continuing to provide for his son.

[41] Proceedings of the New York State Conference of Charities and Correction, 1910, p. 76.

[42] Loane, M.: The Queen's Poor, p. 102. London, Edward Arnold, 1905.

[43] Solenberger, Alice Willard: One Thousand Homeless Men, p. 22. New York, Russell Sage Foundation, 1911.

[44] For a consideration of possible lines of treatment for the non-supporter and his family, the reader is referred to Chapter VII, where is discussed the treatment of the deserter who is willing to return.

[45] Behind the Service Flag, pamphlet ARC 211, American Red Cross, Department of Civilian Relief.

IX

NEXT STEPS IN CORRECTIVE TREATMENT

Any discussion of laws, their application, and enforcement, must perforce be very general, since the different states vary greatly in laws governing desertion and in equipment for their enforcement.

Suggestions for a uniform federal desertion law are not considered here; the term "next steps" should be read as meaning not plans in actual prospect but rather the increase in legal facilities desirable from the social worker's point of view. In communities where no such facilities exist, social workers are in a good position to collect ill.u.s.trative material and push for desirable changes in law and law enforcement.

Especially advantageous is the position of the legal social agencies such as legal aid societies and special bureaus and committees for increasing the efficiency of the courts, many of which are affiliated with or maintained by the large family work societies.

1. Measures for the Discovery, Extradition or Deportation of the Deserter.--The nation-wide registration of males between certain ages, under the Selective Service Act, was widely utilized by social workers in finding deserting men, with the hearty co-operation usually of the draft boards. This fact forms no argument for universal registration as it was carried on in Germany before the war; no system which meant such c.u.mbersome machinery or so much interference with the freedom of the individual ought to be advocated for a moment if it were solely for the purpose of keeping track of the small percentage of citizens who wish to evade their responsibilities, marital and other. Even such a non-military device as that which obligates every person to register successive changes of address with the postal authorities to facilitate delivery of mail would be contrary to the American spirit and easily evaded by people interested in concealing their whereabouts, unless enforced with all the rigor of the European police system. But though we can advocate no system of manhood registration, we can avail ourselves of the incidental benefits of any that may be in force.

The Federal Employment Service offers a promising means of help in discovering the movements of deserters whose trade and probable destination are known. It should be entirely possible to work out a system by which the managers of the local employment bureaus should be furnished with name, description, copy of photograph, and so on, of a deserter who is being sought, so that the man if recognized could be traced or quickly apprehended if a warrant is already in the hands of the local police authorities. It may even be possible, under the federal employment service, to develop the long wished for national registration of casual and migratory labor. Need for some such system has been felt by all agencies trying to deal constructively with vagrants and homeless men. Little track can be kept not only of the individual wanderer but of the ebb and flow of the tides of "casual labor" without some system of this sort. If employment bureaus were required to forward to a central registry the names and some identifying particulars of every non-resident who applied for employment, the problem of finding the deserter would be rendered ten times easier than it is now.

One present obstacle to this and other improvements is the att.i.tude of authorities--city, state, and federal--toward wife desertion. We have already mentioned the way in which the task of tracing the deserter has been thrust back upon the wife and the social worker, as if he were not an offender against the community as well as against his wife and children. Almost as widespread is the reluctance of the proper authorities to arrest the deserter and bring him back after he has been found. A general atmosphere of indifference and despair of accomplis.h.i.+ng anything worth while surrounds any attempt to push the prosecution of a man who has taken refuge outside the community. Hope for the future lies in socializing the point of view of court officials, police, and district attorneys--a process in which the social worker must play a large part. No chance should be lost to drive home the social and economic waste involved, by using the ill.u.s.trative material which abounds in the files of most case work agencies.

The pernicious system by which the wife is required to serve summons and warrant upon the offending husband who is still in the same city, should be done away with entirely. The social agency, public or private, which has had to support or a.s.sist the man's family ought to be able to prefer a charge for non-support, and to take out a summons or a warrant and serve it without the wife's being present. The agency should in this case protect itself by securing from the wife a signed affidavit and authorization to act in her behalf. It may seem unimportant whether the wife makes such complaint in the court or to a private society. The psychological effect upon the man is, however, very different. If his wife initiates the complaint in court, his resentment is directed toward her--a fact which renders reconciliation more difficult if this is later attempted. In other cases, for the wife to make the complaint puts her in actual physical danger from the vindictive husband. If he is brought into court on the complaint of a social agency, part of that resentment at least is transferred to the intrusive social worker, who is not usually seriously troubled thereby and is far better able to bear the weight of the husband's displeasure than is his poor wife.

The absence of any treaty with Great Britain by which family deserters can be extradited to or from Canada makes the Dominion a place of refuge for many American evaders of family responsibilities. The National Conference of Charities and Correction,[46] at its meeting in Cleveland in 1912, pa.s.sed a resolution on the need for such a treaty. As a result, largely through the efforts of Mr. William H. Baldwin, the treaty was signed and sent to the Senate for ratification in December, 1916. It was referred to the Committee on Foreign Relations, where it met with objection and has remained without action up to the present. The National Conference of Jewish Charities, at its meeting in Kansas City in May, 1918, sent urgent representations to the Senate Committee, which it is hoped may result in ratification after the pressure of war-time legislation is relaxed.

We should not stop when reciprocal extradition with Canada has been secured; there is a similar situation on our southern border in states from which escape into Mexico is easy. While American deserters are not likely to go to other more remote countries than these two, immigration into America from other countries creates desertion problems in other places and presents us with a cla.s.s of undesirables with whom it is difficult to deal under existing immigration laws. In 1912 a report was submitted to the Glasgow Parish Council showing the alarming amount of dependency created in that one city by the emigration to America and the Colonies of men without their families, and who subsequently drifted into the status of deserters. This report makes the interesting suggestion that no married man be permitted to emigrate without his family unless he presents a "written sanction of the Parish Council or other local authority," and further, that he be bound, under penalty of deportation, to report himself to some authority in the country of his destination, which would satisfy itself as to his conduct and insure that he did his duty by wife and family.[47] Such a provision would of course involve the revision of our own immigration laws, making wife and family desertion a crime thereunder.

At present the law provides deportation only within five years after entry, and for "persons who have been convicted of or admit having committed a felony or other crime or misdemeanor involving moral turpitude," or who are sentenced to a term of one year or more in this country, within five years of entry, for such crime (or who may suffer a second conviction at any time after entry). This would clearly cover bigamy committed within five years after entry; whether it could be stretched to cover lesser forms of marital irresponsibility remains to be determined. (It should be remembered that a man who brings in as his wife, or later sends for, a woman to whom he is not married, can be deported under quite other sections of the immigration law.)

2. Improvements in Court Procedure.--A sore point with the social worker is the often ridiculously inadequate amounts that unwilling husbands are put under court order to pay. They accuse the courts, whether rightly or wrongly, of considering first what part of the man's alleged earnings will be needed for him to live upon comfortably, and then of making the order for whatever may be left over.

Onofrio Mancini was under court order to stay away from home and pay his wife $6.00 a week for the support of their two children, He drove a two-horse truck, and, at that time, must have been earning not less than $16.00 a week. Mrs. Mancini fell ill, whereupon Onofrio promptly ceased all payments. The social agency interested was permitted to make a complaint on producing a doctors certificate that Mrs. Mancini could not appear in court; but Onofrio, when he appeared, put up such a hard luck tale of earning only $8.00 a week that the judge, without investigation, cut the order down to $4.00 a week and _ordered Onofrio to return home to live_.

A bulletin issued by the Seybert Inst.i.tution of Philadelphia gives a very interesting set of diagrams showing the relation (or lack of relation) between the amount of man's income, size of family, and the court order issued in the Philadelphia Munic.i.p.al Court.[48]

This report gives a series of ill.u.s.trations, where glaring inconsistencies between the man's earnings and the court order were observed by visitors to the court. A sample of the reports made by these visitors is as follows:

"Man earning $30 to $40 a week at ammunition factory. Can earn $20 with no overtime. Has been sending woman $10 a week but has threatened to leave town. Judge said: 'You can't keep up $10 a week--how much can you give?' Finally ordered $8 a week. Woman said she couldn't live on that and Judge told her she had to go to work herself then; that they should live together anyway. Woman says she is unable to work--is ill. When man stated he was giving $10 great consternation seemed to take hold of the entire court force. He did not say he couldn't pay $10; the judge simply told him he couldn't keep that up."

The practice of a.s.signing less than half the man's weekly earnings to the wife and children has been defended on the ground that if he is forced to live too economically, he will disappear and the family will be left with nothing. This would seem to be a self-confession on the part of the court that it cannot enforce its reasonable requirements. It would appear that the first thing to be considered is the minimum needs of the wife and children, taking into consideration whether the wife can be expected to contribute anything toward her own support or whether all her time is needed for her children. This amount should be cut down only when there is actually not enough left for the man to live on; and his wife and children should not be pinched for necessities in order that he may have luxuries or indulge in vices. The habit some judges have of accepting the man's own statement on oath as to what his earnings are is responsible for many unjust orders. A man who does not want to contribute to his family's support is almost sure to understate his earnings, oath or no oath; and the confirmation of his employer (or when the employer is suspected of being in league with him, the inspection of the employer's books by the probation officer) is often needed. Probably the most difficult form of evasion to combat is that of the man who deliberately takes a lower salary than he is capable of earning, so as to have less to give his wife. Surprising as it may seem, this is a common practice; but skilful probation work can nevertheless find a remedy.

In cases of suspended sentence, payments ought always to be made through the court and not handed by the man to his wife. It is better to have the amount received and transmitted by some bureau attached to the court, and so managed that the man can send the money in without "knocking off work" to bring it and that the woman can receive it by mail. The probation officer should not be bothered with the actual handling of the money, but he should be promptly notified of any delinquency in the payments.

Whether the man under court order is on probation or not, the cessation of payments should automatically reopen the case. At present, in most courts, the order goes by default until the wife comes in to make another charge. This, through discouragement or fear of a beating from the man, she often neglects; with the result that the orders of the court mean little in the eyes of the men, and that arrears, once allowed to mount up, are never cleared off.

This statement applies as well to long term orders for separate support where the circ.u.mstances are such that no reconciliation is contemplated.

These orders are now made for a definite period of months, at the end of which time the case drops unless the wife renews charges. A case of this sort ought not to be terminable without a reinvestigation and final hearing in court. Indeed it would seem, in such cases, that the children involved should have at least as much protection as the children in b.a.s.t.a.r.dy proceedings, and that the order should be made to cover the term of years until the oldest child becomes of working age.

The most important step in advance with regard to payments is undoubtedly the law which has been tried with signal success in the District of Columbia and in the states of Ohio and Ma.s.sachusetts, requiring men serving prison sentences for non-support and abandonment to be made to work, and a sum of money, representing their earnings, to be turned over to their families.

In an interesting paper in the _Survey_ for November 20, 1909, ent.i.tled "Making the Deserter Pay the Piper," Mr. William H. Baldwin discusses in detail how this plan was made to work successfully in the District of Columbia.

The movement for special courts to consider cases of juvenile delinquency and marital relations has gained such headway that no word needs to be said here in its favor. In communities where the volume of court business permits such courts to be separately organized, they are generally accepted as the only means of handling these matters. In smaller communities the need may be met by setting aside regular sessions of the magistrates' courts for this purpose.