New Homes for Old Part 21

TRAINING FACILITIES NEEDED

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

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

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

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

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

The gathering of this body of information and its application require considerable time. In the meantime, while differences of opinion among the existing agencies on such questions as the use of the foreign or the native-born visitor who speaks the foreign language, the visiting housekeeper, or the specialized bureau, are being worked out, specialized agencies for dealing with the problems of the immigrant family should be developed. Such agencies as the Immigrants'

Protective League could prove of very great service in discovering promising visitors, in acc.u.mulating experience as to the nature of those problems, and in furnis.h.i.+ng opportunities to professional students for practice work under supervision.

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

A few years ago a group of foreign-born men, prominent in business and politics in Chicago, organized a charitable a.s.sociation within their own national group. They felt that the United Charities did not understand their people and were not meeting their needs. These men had no understanding of accepted case-work principles, and the superintendent of the society herself says that she does not use scientific methods and does not co-operate with the United Charities.

She doubts whether her organization is doing much good, but she sees that the lack of understanding of the traditions and habits of the people on the part of the United Charities cripples their work among her people.

THE TRANSIENT FAMILY

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

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

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

She then seems to have moved to a mining town in Illinois, and there lived with Mr. A. as his wife until March, 1916, when he was murdered.

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

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

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

NEED FOR NATIONAL AGENCY

Irrespective of whether the family is of the native-born or foreign-born group, the problem of the case of those in distress should not be regarded as solely a local problem. It is indeed of national importance. Poverty, sickness, illiteracy, inefficiency, incompetence, are no longer matters of peculiar concern to a locality.

The causes leading to these conditions are not local; the consequences are not local. The agency that deals efficiently with them should not be entirely local.

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

Not all states are in as chaotic a condition as Illinois. A few states have developed a larger measure of central control. Ma.s.sachusetts, California, and New Jersey, for example, secure a certain measure of standardization in the administration of their Mothers' Aid laws by paying part of the allowances, in case the central body approves--the State Board of Charities in Ma.s.sachusetts,[78] and California,[79] and the State Board of Children's Guardians in New Jersey.[80]

Pennsylvania secures this by a.s.signing to the Governor the appointment of local boards and providing central supervision, while in other cases there may be inspection, the preparation of blanks and requiring reports. A member of the State Board of Education is supervisor of the Mothers' Aid law administration in Pennsylvania.[81]

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

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

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

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

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

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

FOOTNOTES:

[72] _Charity Service Reports, Cook County, Illinois_, Fiscal Year 1917, pp. 74, 350.

[73] Richmond, _Social Diagnosis_, p. 118.

[74] V. G. Kirkpatrick, "War-time Work of the Visiting Housekeeper,"

in the _Yearbook of the United Charities of Chicago_, 1917, p. 18.

[75] _Illinois Revised Statutes_, chap. cvii.

[76] _Illinois Revised Statutes_, chap. xxiii, sec. 298.

[77] Abbott, E., "Experimental State in Mothers' Pension Legislation,"

_National Conference of Social Work_, 1917, pp. 154-164, and _U. S.

Bureau of Labor Statistics Bulletin, No. 212_, p. 818. See also _Inst.i.tution Quarterly of Illinois_, March, 1916, p. 97.

[78] _Ma.s.sachusetts General Acts, 1913_, chap. 763, sec. 3.

[79] _Deering's Political Code of California_, sec. 2283 fol., p. 571.

[80] _New Jersey Acts, 1915_, p. 206 fol.

[81] _Laws of Pennsylvania, 1914_, p. 118; _1915_, p. 1085.

APPENDIX

PRINc.i.p.aL RACIAL ORGANIZATIONS

The following list of racial organizations has been generously compiled by the Bureau of Foreign Language Information Service of the American Red Cross. Only those of national scope have been included, with the exception of those starred, which, although not strictly national, have a more than local importance. It contains those organizations and societies doing benevolent, philanthropic or educational work, and, in a few instances, those primarily political or religious in character whose activities have been extended to include other work.

The list was compiled in March, 1921, and, although it is reasonably inclusive, the organizations, the officers, and the addresses are constantly changing.

CZECH

Catholic Sokol Union Secretary: 5798 Holcomb Street. Detroit, Michigan