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INDEX
VOLUME LXIX
JANUARY 1933— DECEMBER 1933
twu;
NEW YORK
SURVEY ASSOCIATES, INC.
112 EAST 19TH STREET
16725
Index
January 1933 — December 1933
VOLUME LXIX
The material in this index is arranged under authors and subjects and
in a few cases under titles. Anonymous articles and paragraphs are
entered under their subjects. The precise wording of titles has not been
retained where abbreviation or paraphrase has seemed more desirable.
A. D. 1933 (verse), 213
Abbott, Edith, 55
Abbott, Grace, 245
Child health recovery. 349
Abortions, 350, 415, 420
Academic failure, 167
Accident prevention, 327
Accidents, 297
Acts of God, 225
Addams, Jane, 245, 249
Adler, Felix, obituary, 193
Adolescent girls, 267
Adopted orphan, 354
Adult education, 121, 198
Des Moines, 161
Unemployed, 82
Advertising radio, 383
After prison, 410
AAA and FERA, 380
Akron, 330
Health education, 116
Alabama, 122. 169
Medical relief, 358
Albright, H. M., 186
Alcatraz Prison, 382
Alcohol, 46
Alderson, W. Va., 162
Allegany County, N. Y., public-health
nursing, 324
Alleghany County, Pa., work relief, 38
Alliance, Ohio, 201
Alms, 149
Altmeyer's, The Industrial Commission
of Wisconsin, 364
America, lifting her out of the soup
(cartoon), 402
American Association for Social
Security, 239
American Association of Social
Workers, 51, 52
American Civic Annual, 129
A. F. of L., New Deal and, 374
American Legislators' Association, 106
American Public Health Association,
emergency committee, 75
American Public Welfare Association,
advice from, 85
American Relief Caravan, 11
Americans, one-hundred-percent-plus
woman, 68
Amidon, Beulah, When standards break,
20
Andress, Bart, The silent partner speaks
up, 341
Antioch College, 35
Appointments, 303
Appraisal, 397
Apprenticeship, 327
Arkansas, 122
State relief, 360
A. I. C. P., report, 195
Atlanta, 115, 198, 392
Australia. 95
Automobile accidents, Ohio. 421
Automobiles, Client's car, 204
Fewer fatalities, 112
Relief for owners of cars, 103
B
Baby show, new kind, 296
Baker, H. C., A century of progress in
welfare, 251
Baker, N. D., 339
The state key to relief, 1
Baker Memorial Pavilion, 78
Baker's Displacement of Men by
Machines, 426
Ballet, Letson (letter), 92
Baltimore, 331, 391, 423
Garment strike, 20
Mob spirit, 413
Baltimore and Ohio railroad, 112
Bane, Frank, 52, 84
Bank accounts, relief for persons with,
347
Bank holidays, relief during, 199
Barnard, C. I., 169
Barnes, G. W. (letter), 236
Barometer of books, the, 280
Barrett, L. R., 283
Barter, 70, 428
In relief, 360
Labor for produce, 6
Literature on, 130
Questionnaire, 289
Self help and, 329
Story, 272
Bartholomew's Urban Land Uses, 234
Battle Creek, 117
Bedinger, G. R., 416
Beer, Massachusetts and, 227
Beers, C. W., 224
Begging, 277
Behavior, 41
Schoolboys, 42
Belknap, W. B., 106
Bellevue Psychiatric Hospital, 420
Benjamin, Herbert, 56
Bequests, 161
Berkeley, Cal., 423
Best, E. L., 418
Bigelow, G. H., 296
Billikopf, Jacob, 52
Birchfield, W. T., 6
Birmingham, 331
Birth and Death Registration Areas, 421
Birth control policies, 30
Bittner, V. A., 53
Black Mountain College, 388
Blackwell, A. S. (letter), 46
Blake, S. R., 227
Blanket Recovery Code, White List and,
292
Blauvelt, W. S. (letter), 44
Blind, the Dog guides for, 121
Talking books for, 77
Blindness, 264
Babies' 224
Bluestone, E. M., The case of the
chronic sick, 353
Bolan, J. A., 295
Bolt, R. A., 350
Bond, E. D., honors for, 161
Bondy, R. E. (letter), 268
Booklet reviews, 331
Books, Barometer of, 280
By their books ye shall know them, 92
Professional, how to get, 204
Reviews, 40, 88, 126, 171, 202, 233,
264, 298, 332, 362, 394, 426
Short reviews, 43, 91, 129, 235, 267,
300, 364, 396, 429
Bosses, political, social work attitude
toward, 408
Boston, Aged men, extra-mural care for,
294
Community chest, 381
Mothers' milk, 79
Boston State Hospital, 420
Bourke-White, Margaret, photograph,
210
Bourne, Dorothy, 295
Bowman, Isaiah, 336
Boy Scouts, 399
Boys, Bad, 385
Cleveland, homeless, 163
Ethics for, 42
Idle, 190
New blood in work for, 76
Runaway, 99, 101
Boys' clubs, 172
Boys on the loose, 71
Boys on the road, 356
Bradley, R. M., Wanted: a national
center on medical costs and care, 108
Brammell, P. R., 324
Brandeis, L. D., chain store case and,
159
Brasstown, N. C., cooperative enterprise,
414
Brazil, mental hygiene, 297
Breshkovsky, Catherine, 46
Bridgman, L. W., 83
British National Insurance Act, 325
Brooklyn, N. Y., social planning, 114
Brookwood Labor College, 80
Trouble, 165
Brown, C. S. (letter), 130
The churches in their blindness, 17
Brown's Immigration, 333
Bruno, F. J., Planning for a good life,
244
Bryan, J. S., 339
Bryn Mawr Summer School, 197, 230
Buck, Pearl, 18
Speaks to Negroes, 23
Buffalo, N. Y., Relief in, 321
Study of employment and
unemployment, 33
Buhler, Kan., 164
Building, Seattle study, 386
Building men — growing trees, 186
Burgess, J. S. (letter), 173
Living on a surplus, 6
Burhoe, B. W., Every bed a school, 352
Burlingham, C. C, 153
Burnett, M. C. (letter), 204
Burnham, W. H., 19
Burns, A. T., 181
Burns' Leisure in the Modern World, 41
Burroughs, O. W. (letter), 132
Business, Ethics, 126
Young groups learning, 327
Business men, small, 409
Butler Hospital, 196
Buttenheim, H. S. (letter), 44
Emergency message to community
leaders, an, 217
New philosophy of giving, the, 343
Cabot, F. P., 88
California, 96, 122
Cooperatives, 236
Drifting boys, 101
Full time with over-time, 158
Institute of Child Welfare, 356
Schpolhouses, 205
Social-welfare laws and certification
of workers, 384
Social workers, legislative
representatives, 194
State labor camps, 86
Unemployed Cooperative Relief
Association, 6
Unemployment insurance, 32
Whittier School, 292
Cameron, Donaldina, 89
Camps, 420
Stay-at-home, 384
Cancer, 31
Massachusetts history, 296
Publicity, 78
Canfield, Alice, 250
Canfield and Gruenberg's Our Children,
89
Canned goods, grades on labels, 323
Canning industry, New York State, 80
Capital punishment, 236
Caribbean seminar, 419
Carnegie Corporation, 77
Carolina School for Workers, 397
Carr, C. E. 32
Case work, 342
Changing social order and, 61
Respect for personality, 195
Case workers, morals and, 204
Catholic Charities, 378
Century of progress in welfare, exhibit,
251
Chain gang, 132
Chamber of Commerce, public health and
the, 359
Chapel Hill, 74
Chen, K. K., 112
Cheney, S. M. (letter), 204
Chicago, 124
Clerical work-relief projects, 76
Community chest, 381
Complaint mechanism, 201
Delinquency (mural in social-service
exhibit), 251
Developments, 87
Government, 171
Health service for self-supporting
women, 78
Racketeering, 16
Schools, 26
Settlement houses and relief, 9
Social work exhibit at Century of
Progress, 251
Special relief bureaus, 423
Work relief, 86
Workers' Committee on
Unemployment, 9
Child care, 126
Child Guidance, Institute for, 388
Child Health Day, 116
Child health recovery, 349
Child labor, 33, 119, 132, 259, 327
Indiana, 197
Pennsylvania, 229
Shift in, 187
Standards, 80
Will the codes abolish?, 290
Child Labor Amendment, 165, 230, 383,
386
Child Labor Day, 418
Child welfare, Missouri, 162
Silver Lake, N. Y., 297
Childbirth, 74, 350
Children, Code, 357
Death rates, 30
Dependent, New York State, 319
Dependent and neglected, census of,
416
Employment of subnormal, 32
Exploiting of, 277
Foster-family care, 294
Industrial accidents, 386
Malnutrition, 325, 381
News code and, 35j
Picture show of, 296
Problem children, 31
Radio programs and, 167
Safeguards, 118
Unemployment, effect of, on children,
325
Unusual children, 34
Children must live their own lives, 376
Children's Bureau, 349
Report, 26
Children's Welfare Federation, 296
Chimpanzee and child, 299
Chinatown, 89
Christmas seals, 389
Christoffersen, C. M., 173
Christopolus, Peter, 354
Chronic patients, 353
Churches, 130
Foreign missions and, 17
Social trends and, 64
Churchill, H. S., Where the rent money
goes, 315
Cigar makers and machines, 418
Cigars, 118
Cincinnati, Community reorganization,
412
Unemployment-school census, 262
Cities, relief action, 361, 422
Citizens, public officials and, 221
Citizenship, 127
City planning, National Conference, 383
Civil Works Administration, 403
Plan, 403
Projects, 404
Wage scales, 404
Civilization, 205
Clague, Ewan, 416
Clark, Evans, 3
IV
Index
Clerical workers, 425
Cleveland, 331, 390
Anti-sweatshop campaign, 326
Clinic plan, 5
Clothing collection, 263
Confinement cases, 350
Expectant Fathers, 421
Health Association, 228
Medical care, 358
Music School Settlement, 316
Nurses, 239
Transient boys, 163
Clinics, Cleveland plan, 5
Clothing pool, 28
Coal industry» Colorado, 197
Coale, E. H., 121, 425
Coat and suit industry, labels, 417
Codes, Social work, 354
Standards, 414
Steel industry under, 413
Will they abolish child labor?, 290
Coe's Educating for Citizenship, 127
Colcord. J. C., 207
New relief deal, 179
On conference attendance, 173
Collective bargaining, 326
College women, advisory service for,
198
Colleges, Courses for the unemployed,
120
Preparation and highschools, 419
Collier, John, 207, 248
Colliersville, Tenn., 263
Colorado, 391, 422
Colorado Fuel and Iron Co., 418
Columbia National Forest, workers
(ill.), 178
Columbia University, Commission on the
machine age, 70
Commodity distribution, 380
Common welfare, 22, 70, 110, 159, 192
224, 259, 292, 322, 354, 381, 413
Publications, 161
Commons (J.R.) Research Library, 197
Commonwealth College, 80, 197
Communications, 44, 92, 130, 172, 204,
236, 268, 301, 365, 397, 430
Communities, emergency message to
leaders, 217
Community chests, 232, 393
Campaign results, 21. 26
In a recovery year, 339
Poster for fall campaign (ill.), 306
Situation, 381
Community Chests and Councils, Inc.,
239, 249
Community, a, learning how to play, 283
Community reorganization, 412
Company unions, 326
Campaign against, 327
Compton, Cal., 6
Conferences, Attendance, 45
Elections, 48
Who shall attend?, 172
Conflict, 41
Connecticut, Factory law, 327
Old-age relief, 76
Rent and water supply, 421
Tuberculosis, 359
Conservation, 129
Conservation program, 186
Consumers, how organize, 365
Consumers' Cooperative Services, 414
Consumers' League White List, 292
Cook County (Chicago), Bureau of
Public Welfare, Public Relations
Bureau of Public Welfare, statistics,
261
Cooperation, 148
Cooperative School for Student
Teachers, 35
Cooperatives, California, 6, 236
Cosmetics, government control, 383
Lostigan, E. P., 51, 84
Cotton, Red Cross, 84
Cotton, H. A., 224
Courage, 15
Courts, New York City, 41
towgill, E. L., Detroit's new district
plan, 214
Cox, W. B., 115
Coyle, D. C. (letter), 8, 244, 430
Primitives of a new age, 246
Crafts, M. E., 81
Crime, 298, 302, 357
Control of youthful, 28
Organized, 16
Psychopathology, 202
Youti! and, 295
Crippled children, 82
Cross-eyes clinic, 31, 93
Croxton, F. C., 54, 181
Cuba, seminar, 419
Cubberly, E. P., 198
Cummings, H. C., 268
Cutler, .1. E. (letter), 268
Cutsforth's The Blind in School and
Society, 264
Davidson, Flora (letter), 237
Davis, H. J., Uncle Sam and medical
relief, 351
Where relief includes medical care,
155
Day nurseries, 44
Richmond", Va., 29
Deafness, school children, 162
Deathrate, Children, 30
Infants, 359
New York State, 164
Deflation where is thy sting?, 184
Delaware, old-age relief, 416
Denison, Isabelle, One hundred percent
plus, 68
Dennison's Ethics and Modern Business,
126
Denver, 301
Dependency, 357
Dependent children in New York, 319
Dependent families, 345
Depression, Eugenics and, 430
Family health as affected by, 417
Des Moines, Adult education, 161
Forums, 387
Design for nursing, 313
Detroit, 133
Clothing pool, 28
Conference program, 189
Dentistry for school-children, 228
National Conference, 243
New district plan, 214
Social workers, 184
Wage relief, 124
Welfare cafeterias, 39
Deutsch's Psychoanalysis of the
Neuroses, 264
DeVilbiss, L. A. (letter), 430
Devine, E. T., 65, 392
Diabetic diet, 164
Diabetic islands of safety, 116
Diabetes, 421
Dimnet's What We Live By, 40
Diphtheria, toxoid, 358
Disaster relief, 225
Discussion groups, 132
Dismissal-wage plans, report on, 81
Dixon, R. B., 295 •
Doctors, 3, 5
Hospitals versus?, 110
Incomes, 30
Need for better, 22
Dodds, H. W., 270
Dog guides, 121
Doniger, Simon (letter), 45
Drake, H. L., 259
Dramatic sketches, 418
Dublin, L. I., 75
Duke Endowment, 417
Dunham, Arthur, Building men —
growing trees, 186
Du Puy's Hawaii, 395
Earp, J. R., Teaching sex to young
people, 223
East Harlem Health Center, 74
Eating the surplus, 380
Ebb-tide of employment, 279
Economic Reconstruction Legislation,
418
Economic security, 310
Economy councils, 160
Education, 34, 82, 120, 166, 198, 327,
387, 419
Emergency, 166
FERA and, 415
Life, 394
Notes, 35, 121
Of the unemployed, 82
Pamphlets, 387
Regional conferences, 420
Waste in, 167
Educational planning, 128
Educational welfare, 217
Edmonds, F. S., 107
Electric light and power costs, 71
Ely, Richard, 336
Emergency conservation work, 178
(ill.), 186, 231
Emergency medical relief, 195
Emergency Relief Act, 179
Emergency relief work, 204
Emergency Work Bureau, 371
Emerson, R. W., 15
Emotions, 332
Employe stockholders, 326
Employment offices, tests for jobs, 385
Employment, ebb-tide of, 279
Enameled stoves, 166
Engineers, 123
England, relief, 37
Ephedrine, 112
Epstein, Abraham, New standards for
unemployment insurance, 281
Epstein's Insecurity, 394
Estill, C. L., 54, 56
Eugenics, depression and, 430
Every bed a school, 352
Eye services, 227
Fall River, Mass., 125
School costs cut, 328
Family, 128
Budgets, 161
Exploiting the children, 277
' Problems, 376
Family relief, 345
Bank accounts, cars, etc., 347
Family welfare, plan for, 416
Farm colonies, 28
Farm philosophy, 255
Farming, 132, 365
Industry on the farm, 118
Farnham, Henry W., 368
Fathers, 83
Expectant, 421
Fear, 13
Four kinds, 13
Fechner, Robert, 186
Federal Council of Churches, 64
Federal Emergency Relief
Administration, 284, 399
AAA and, 380
CWA and, 405
Developments, 329, 391
Education under, 415
Inaction, 414
Policies, 260, 360
State action and, 344
Federal help (cartoon), 146
Federal relief, Educational purposes,
327
Kinds and amount, 288
Local administrative units, 287
Local participation, 286
Minimum standards of service, 286
New deal, 179
Personnel and service standards, 288
State and local participation, 330
State cooperation with, 344
Threefold, 159
Transients, 289
Two months of the new deal, 284
Types of relief, 287
Fiddles and food, 316
Filene, E. A., on wage reductions, 111
Fitch, John A., The AF of L and the
new deal. 374
Fitzpatrick, Aileen, 95
Fitzpatrick cartoons, 50. 402
Flop-house (verse). 318
Florida schools, 205
Folks, Homer, 244
Food, 115
Dependent families' choices, 295
Distribution to the destitute
unemployed, 354
Food and Drug Act, 414
Food and drugs, 383
Forbes, A. W. (letter), 397
Forced labor, 267
Foreign missions, Laymen's Inquiry, 17
Forest expeditionary force, 231
Forestry Camp No. 10, 102
Forums, Des Moines, 387
Fosdick, R. B., 405
Foster, J. H., Dependent children in
New York, 319
Foster day care, 44
Foster-family care, 294
Foundations, 22, 77
Fox, Hugh F., 27
Full time with overtime, 158
Games, 90
Gang prevention, 227
Gangsterized industry, 1 6
Garbage-picking, 277
Garden farms, 28
Gardens, 170
Garment labels, 417
Garment makers, 236
Garrett, Ind., 81
Gas ranges, 166
Gates, V. V., Flop-house (verse), 318
Gaumnitz, W. H., 82
Geddes, A. E., Relief in a rising market,
345
General Welfare Tax League, 26
Geneva, 431
Shorter work week, 119
German insurance, 266
German refugees, 382
German visitors, 400
Germany, Relief, 37
Social work in, 226
Get help through, 211
Gibson, C. D., drawing, 242
Gibson Committee, 154, 371
Gillin's Social Pathology, 266
Girls, Idle, 190
Tuberculosis, 78
Givers, social work and, attitudes on
various aspects, 341
Giving, Money in 1932, 77
New philosophy of, 343
Glands, 202
Glueck's Probation and Criminal Justice,
128
Goiter, 228
Gofd mining in the West, 92
Gold standard. 193
Golden Gate Bridge, 165
Goldrich, L. W., 34
Goodyear Tire and Rubber Co., 33
Gossip, 47, 94, 133, 175, 207, 239, 270,
303, 335, 367, 399, 431
Government, economy in, 71, 160, 225
Government officials, bad repute, 221
Graham's The Abolition of
Unemployment, 171
Grand Rapids, 87
Green, William, 53, 56, 374
Greene, F. E., Social work and the
Philistines, 408
Greenville. Pa., 416
Gries and Ford's Home Ownership, 91
Guaranteed wage plan, 158
H
Haig, R. M., 107
Hair dye, 117
Hall, A. M., An emergency message to
community leaders, 217
Hall, Helen, 56
Hansen, A. H., Minnesota plans for job
insurance, 58
Hardie, A. D., on conference attendance,
172
Harrisburg. Pa., 393
Hartford, Conn., 124
Hatton, A. R., on government economy,
Hawaii, 395
Hay fever, 296
Hayes, M. H. S., 35
Health, 30, 78, 116, 163, 195, 227, 296,
324, 358, 388, 420
Budget, Chicago, 324
Health Department obstacle, 66
Literature, 31, 79. 116, 164, 195, 228,
297, 324, 358, 421
Notes, 31, 117
Price of, 381
Schools, 324
Health conservation contest, 325
Health councils. 78
Health plan for the nation, a, 373
Health services, first aid for, 75
Healthwin Sanatorium, 228
Heart disease, 110, 325
Heidbreder's Seven Psychologies, 235
Henderson, Leon, 414
Henderson, Yandell (letter), 365
Henry Street Settlement, Fortieth
anniversary of Miss Wald's coming,
192
Summer camp (ill.), 274
Herring, H. C., 419
Herring's Social Planning and Adult
Education, 426
Hidden resources, relief problems in
case of, 406
Highlander Folk School, 198 328
Highschools, 388
College entrance examinations, and,
419
Hillman, Arthur (letter), 174
Hillquit, Morris, 393
Hinkley. Alice. Venturing for idle boys
and girls, 190
Hiscock's Community Health
Organization, 41
Hitch-hikers. 411
Hodson, William (letters), 93, 238
Mobilize for the new deal, 245
Social workers in a changing world,
Hoehler, F. K. (letter), 93
Hogg. M. H., Ebb-tide of employment,
279
Hollander, J. H., 20
Home, 127
Home-Building Conference, 225
Home Economics. Bureau of, 113
Home Relief Bureau, 66
Homeless Americans, 212
Homemakers' clubs, 424
Homes, ownership, 91
Honorary degrees, 270
Hop Light Ladies, 224
Hope, 14
Hopkins, E. J., 42
Hopkins, G. B. (letter), 130
Hopkins. Harry L., 243, 284
Federal relief job, the. 247
Horse laugh '(cartoon), 106
Hoskins' The Tides of Life, 202
Hosmer, G. E. H., A volunteer among
the veterans, 257
Hospital care, group payment for, 359
Hospital councils, 163
Hospitals, 117
Doctors versus?, 110
Middle-rate plan in Boston. 78
New Jersey aid, 296
Problem, 5
Work up, funds down, 323
Hostetter, G. L., Gangsterized industry,
16
Housing, Activity, 336
Bills, New York State, 160
Census statistics, 57
Chicago conference, 225
Exhibit, 160
Information, 163
New York City. 315
Public, 382, 415
RFC, Loans, 193
Under NRA, 355
Index
How the other half lives on relief, 379
How we behave in other people's houses,
218
Howe's the Children's Judge, 88
Humanology, 302
I think I'd better call the nurse, 253
Ice Cream Co., 158
Ickes, Secretary, rebuilding slums, 382
Idle hands (cartoon), 50
Idleness, sickness and, 388
Illinois, 422
Changes, 123
Health Department, 227
Prisons, 384
RFC aid, 200
Relief manual, 194
Relief rents, 413
Sales tax, 231
Tuberculosis tests at State Fair, 358
Illiteracy, 83
Illness, Chronic, 353
Idleness and, 338
Uneven burdens of, 3
Immigration, 333
Indian Bureau, 207
Indiana, 195, 422
Child-labor law, 197
Health club plan, 421
Propagandizing, 385
Relief, 231
Indianapolis, 226, 422
Indians, 425
Children's day or public schools, 34
Cultural heritage dissipated, 42
Individualism, socialized, 151
Industrial accidents, children. 386
Industrial Research Group, 81
Industry, 32, 80, 118, 165, 197, 229, 326,
385, 417
Gangsterized, 16
Literature. 118, 229
Medical code for, 389
Notes, 33
Pamphlets, 386
Steadying jobs, 81
Insanity, 224
Insley, J. K., 20
Institute of Economic Research, 336
Institutes, 367
Institutions, census of, 416
Insurance, 22
Insurance Authority, 275
International living, American and
European youth, 82
Interstate Legislative Assembly, 106
Issler, A. R., Full time with overtime,
158
Jacobs, P. P., 113
Jenkins, E. C, (letter), 397
Jewisff social service. 249
Code for workers, 259
Jewish students, 428
Jewish Welfare Board, 384
Jews, Deaths compared with non-Jews,
30
Settlement on the land, 162
Tob-line that cost $28 million, the, 371
Jottings, 425
Judd, Ruth, 236
Junior Achievement, 327
Juvenile Court Judges, 304
Kahn, Dorothy, 245
Kansas, Social-work organization, 76
State organization, 85
Kansas City, 124, 331
Karpman's Case Studies in the
Psychopathology of Crime, 202
Keener, R. D., A. D. 1933 (verse), 213
Keeping doctor and patient together, 220
Kelley, Florence, In memoriam, 292
Kellogg's The Ape and the Child, 299
Kelly, Genevieve, 250
Kennedy, Thomas, 53
Kenney, L. E. (letter), 44
Kensington Day Nursery, 114
Kentucky, 168, 268, 344, 390, 422
Nurses, 421
Kern's I Go Nursing, 428
Kidde, Walter, 293
Kilbreath, M. G., 56
Kilpatrick's Education and the Social
Crisis, 128
Kimble, G. E. (letter), 301
King, C. L., 106
Kingsbury, J. A., A health plan for the
nation, 373
Kirkpatrick, E. L. (letter), 398
Farm philosophy, 255
Riser's Sea Island to City, 300
Kleeck, Mary van, 322
Knickerbocker Village, 315
Knight, H. R., 249
On conference attendance, 172
Knott, cartoon, 146
Knott County, Ky., 118
Kohn, R. D., 382, 415
Kosmak, G. W., 74
Kurtz, R. H., American Relief Caravan,
11
On the governors' door-steps, 344
Relief from relief, 403
Two months of the new deal in federal
relief, 284
Labels for fair goods, 197
Labor, idle, exchanged for produce, 6
Labor Action School. 418
Labor camps, California, 86
Labor laws, uniform, 119
Labor pamphlets, 368
Labor schools, 80
LaFollette, R. M., 51, 84
La Guardia, F. H., slum clearance, 415
Land tax, 44
Lane, W. D., After prison, 410
Lankford, Eugene (letter), 302
Larson's Lying ajid Its Detection, 428
Lasker, L. D., Taxes and social services,
8
Latin, 328
Laundries, minimum wages, 385
Lawrence, Alton, and Others (letter),
397
Lead poisoning, 31
Enameled stoves, 166
Leadership, lack of, 13
Leake's House of Refuge, 128
Lee, P. R., Social workers: pioneers
again, 307
Leisure, 41, 124
Organizing for, 405
Women workers and, 420
Leisure Hour Clubs, 226, 227
Leland, S. E., 77
The invasion of green tax pastures,
106
Lerrigo, R. A., Community learning
how to play, a, 283
From alms to welfare, 149
Pennsylvania's welfare set-up, 188
Letchworth Village, 224
Lewis, Morris, 213
Libraries, 120
Demand for books, 280
Lie-detector, 428
Lies's The New Leisure, 394
Life, 40
Lindeman, E. C., 93
Social workers hesitate and then — ?,
13
Lip-reading, 162
Liquor control, 365
Little Cabinet, Washington, 207
Little theatres, 426
Living on a surplus, 6, 173
Loan sharks, hunting, 259
Lobenstine Midwifery Clinic, 296
Local relief agencies, 285
Locke, Alain, The Negro in times like
these, 222
Long, H. F., 106
Lorand's Psycho-analysis Today, 264
Lorimer, V. L. (letter), 397
Los Alamos, Cal., 163
Los Angeles, 330
Summer school for workers, 418
Los Angeles County, 6, 101, 173, 227
Relief, 231
Training public workers, 250
Louisiana, 169, 232, 330, 391
Children's code, 357
Lovejoy, O. R., 71
Uncle Sam's runaway boys, 99
Lovell, Philip (letter), 238
Lumpkin's The Family, 203
Luria's The Nature of Human Conflicts,
41
Lurie, H. L., Case work in a changing
social order, 61
On relief, 53
Lynchings, 77, 233
Mob spirit and, 413
M
Ma Huang, 112
McAllister, J. R. (letter), 205
McCleary, George, 244
McConnell, Beatrice, The shift in child
labor, 187
McDonald, James G., 382
MacDonald, Malcolm, 23
Machine-age commission, 70
Machines, 118, 426
Taxing, 418
McLeod, Christine, 294
Magazine salesboy abuses, 230
Major, D. K., Jr., 186
Malady, O. A., 150
Malnutrition, 196, 325
Manchuria, conflict around, study
course, 34
Mangold, G. B., 28
Manners, social workers', 218
Marcy, W. L., Ill
Marriage, books on, 299
Martin, Tevis, 194
Maryland, Federal aid, 231
Old-age relief, 416
Unemployment insurance bill, 165
Maryland, University of, 121
Military training case, 328, 425
Martens, E. H., 34
Martens, R. C. (letter), 92
Martin's Prohibiting Poverty, 40
Martinsville case, 71
Massachusetts, 125
Beer to the rescue of old-age pensions,
227
Maternal mortality, 74. 414, 415
Studies, important, 420
Matthews, William H., Job-line that
cost $28 millions, the, 371
Portrait, 370
May, J. V., 420
May Day. 116
Mead's The Changing Culture of an
Indian Tribe, 42
Medals, 303
Medical care, 358
Abuses under the workmen's
Compensation Act, 196
Costs, 297
Federal relief, 351
New York State, 260
Public, 322
Where relief includes medical care,
155
Medical Care, Committee on the Costs
of, Pamphlets, 78
Reports, 30, 108
Medical code for industry, 389
Medical relief, 66, 195
Medical services, Consumers of, 3
Doctors disagree, 22
Meikeljohn, Alexander, 420
Melrose, Mass., 424
Memphis, 331
Mental hygiene, 18, 19, 79, 332, 421
Courses^ 366
Religion and, 256
Mental hygiene movement, 224
Mental illness, 420
Mental patients, home care. 164
Merriam and Others' The Government
... of Chicago, 171
Merrill-Palmer School, 198
Merson, F. G. (letter), 397
Messner, A. J., 336
Mexicans, Exodus from the United
States, 39
San Diego, 293
Middle class, 409
Middle-rate plan for hospital care, 78
Midwives, school for, 296
Migrant problem, 356
Migrants, mustering out, 411
Migration of Negroes, 300
Milbank, A. G., Security, 151
Military training, 328
Compulsory, 121, 425
Milk, 359
Miller, C. A., 54
Millville, Mass., 424
Milwaukee, 330, 391, 422
Miners, 233
Minimum wage, 118, 160, 193
Minimum wage laws, 327
Minneapolis, Rent Policy, 201
Union City Mission and Farm, 294
Minnesota, job insurance plan, 58
Missions, 130
Missions and missionaries, 17
Mississippi, 122, 168, 391
Colleges, 83
Missouri, 122. 330
Child welfare, 162
Mob spirit in lynching, 413
Moley's Tribunes of the People, 41
Money-raising methods, 342
Montavon, W. F., 56
Montclair, N. J., 77
Monteagle, Tenn., 328
Montefiore Hospital, 28
Montreal, 361
Mooney case, 225
Two books on, 42
Morale, 13, 18, 237
Mort, P. R.. 74
Moscowitz, Belle Lindner, 75
Mother's cry (verse), 291
Mothers, Wage-earning, 326
Why they die, 350
Mothers' milk, 79
Motion pictures, Social hygiene film,
389
Teaching children to discriminate, 419
Moulton, H. G., 244
Mousetrapping, 368
Municipal finance, 355
Municipal landholding, 263
Munsell, A. E. O. (letter), 365
Murder, 295
Murphey, E. R., 292
Murphy, J. P., 239
Murray, M. G., Minnesota plans for job
insurance, 58
Music lessons, 316
Mustering out the migrants, 411
My city (verse), 15
Myers, J. A., 246
Myers, James (letter), 302
Myers" The Child and the Tuberculosis
Problem, 43
N
Nash's Spectatoritis, 90
Nashville, Negro boys, 89
Nassau County, N. Y., 392
Nathan's The Attitude of the Jewish
Student Towards His Religion, 428
National Conference of Social Work,
399
Attendance and success at Detroit,
250
Detroit program, 189
Plans to go on, 160
Proceedings, 127, 243
National Conference on Taxation, etc.,
8
NIRA, Workers' education under, 386
National Labor Board, 386
National Municipal League, 71
NRA, AF of L and, 374
Community chests and, 340
Housing under, 355
National Research Council, 336
Naturalization, 113
Nebraska, 391
Negro churches, 265
Negroes, Conference in Washington on
their economic status, 222
In times like these, 222
Migration, 300
Milestones in education, 192
Mis-education, 363
New Jersey study of, findings with
pictorial charts, 24-25
Pearl Buck and, 23
Survey of boys in Nashville, 89
Tuberculosis, 117
Neifeld's The Personal Finance
Business, 265
Nelson's Prison Days and Nights, 172
Neurotic age, 332
New Bloomfield, Pa., 226
New College Camp, 198
New Deal, AF of L and, 374
Friends serving, 431
New Deal in Federal Relief, two months
of, 284
New England, relief developments, 170
New Hampshire, 170
Local governments, study, 194
New Haven, Conn., 79
Two years' change in employment, 279
X-raying 6000 children, 31
X-ray case finding, 324
New Jersey, 422
Conference, 13
Emergency relief, 169
Hospital aid, 296
Rented homes, 57
Social workers, 14
Survey' of Negro life, findings with
pictorial charts, 24, 25
New Orleans, 330
New Year greetings, 27
New York (city). Barter in relief, 360
Bureau of Child Guidance, 34
Community chest, 381
Courts, 41
Deathrate and population, 355
East Side family health, 417
Emergency Work and Relief
Administration, 153
Emergency Work Bureau, 371
Families in tenements, 224
Family Court, 226
Lip-reading in schools, 162
Medical home relief, 66
Midwifery Clinic, 296
Regional Plan, 394
Slums and housing, 315
Welfare Council, statistics, 261
Work relief, 38
New York (state), 422
Medical care, 322
Prison reports, 194
Public-employment service, 229
Temporary Emergency Relief
Administration, 155
Unemployment insurance, 111
New York Children's Aid Society, 9!
(ill.), 99
New York County Medical Society, 196
New York School of Social Work, 432
Newark, N. J., From alms to welfare,
149
Recreation, 283
Newspaper industry, child labor in, 355
Nicholson's The Negro's Church, 265
Ninety-nine Park Avenue, 111
Noise, 117
North Carolina. 125, 169, 391
Case work, 417
Welfare, 29
North Carolina, University of, 75
Norton, P. L., A probation officer comes
up for airl, 215
Norton, W. J., Deflation where is thy
sting?, 184
Norton's Trade-Union Policies in the
Massachusetts Shoe Industry, 42
Nurses, 112
Kentucky, 421
Long hours for students. 259
Nursing, 196, 253. 254, 397, 428
Discussion by club-women, 313
VI
Index
Schools of, 30, 228
Training, 164
Tuition in schools of, 117
Nutrition, children, 381
Oakland, Cal., 120
Oberlin, 230
Office workers, 328
Obstetrics, 117
Occupational disease compensation, 229
Occupational therapy, 357
Occupational trends, 230
Office workers, school for, 82
Officers, new, 272, 304, 400, 432
Ogburn, W. F., 322
Ohio, relief, 263, 361
Ohio State University, 425
Oklahoma, work relief, 38
Old age, Boston extra-mural care for
men, 294
Pensions, 163
Relief, 416
Old clothing, West Newton, Mass., 162
Olmsted, S. H. (letter), 269
On the governors' doorsteps, 344
One hundred percent plus, 68
Oneida County, Wis., 383
Ontario, work relief, 233
Oregon State Library, 198
Organizing for leisure, 405
Osborne, T. M., 240
Osborne Association, 115
Overhead, 342, 368
Overstreet, Harry, 405
Overtime, full time with, 158
Owens, Mrs. L. E., 94
Palisades, 293
Palmer, Gretta, 44
Pahunzio, Constantine, 293
Parent-child relationships, 376
Parents, 89
Parole, 114, 410
Association and its Declaration of
Principles, 410
Parran, Thomas, Jr., 322
Partners in a new social order, 243
Paterson, N. J., silk workers, 59
Paton, J. M. (letter), 365
Paul, W. E., 294
Peace of mind and body, 332
Peckham, F. L., 56
Peekskill, N. Y., 79
Pellagra, 297, 389
Penn School, 420
Pennsylvania, 125, 232
Barter, 70
Bureau of Women and Children, 187
Child labor, 229
Department of Welfare, 356
Education relief program, 387
Hospitals, 79
Plan for a welfare plan, 416
Play centers, 295
Poor-relief system, 76
Relief Board, 188
State Employment Commission, 166
Perkins, Frances, 208
Interstate Authority for
unemployment insurance, 275
Madam Secretary, 110
Perry's The Work of the Little Theatres,
426
Personals, 47, 48, 94. 133, 175, 207,
239, 270, 303, 335, 367, 399, 431
Persons, W. F., 186, 248 292
Phelps, K. De W. (letter), 93
Phelps' Contemporary Social Problems,
91
Philadelphia, Affiliation. 208
Malnutrition, Jewish Charities, 196
Relief rents, 416
"Renovize" campaign, 262
Unemployment plan, 135
Unpaid rent study and other studies,
Work relief for professionals, 424
Workshop on wheels for children, 167
Philanthropy, private, 312
Philistines, social work and, 408
Phillips Academy, Andover, 328
Physicians, Clinics and, 221
Maternal mortality and, 415, 420
See also Doctors
Pierce's Citizen's Organizations and the
Civic Training of Youth, 364
Pink, L. H. (letter), 132
Pioneer Youth, 198
Pioneers, sons of the, 132
Pitkin's Life Begins at Forty, 234
Pittsburgh, 85, 331, 391
Graduate training, 167
Proposals for farm colonies and
garden farms, 28
Planning, Brooklyn, 114
Planning for action, 383
Police, relief workers as. 156
Political bosses, social work and, 408
Politics, Chicago, rotten, 17
College course in, 419
Poorhouses, 416
Potatoes, yellow but not sweet, 113
Potter, E. C.,, Mustering out the
migrants, 411
Poverty, 40
Pragmatia, 44
Pratt, F. B., 114
Pratt, G. K., 18
Pray, K. L. M., Philadelphia plan for the
treatment of unemployment, 135
Preparedness, 430
Pressey's Psychology and the New
Education, 427
Princeton Plan, 171
Prison labor, 356
Prisons, 172
Federal, 382
Illinois, 384
Politics and, 115
Release from, problem, 410
Schooling in Wisconsin, 35
Three reports, 194
Women in, 162
Women's, problems, 294
Pritchett, H. S., 166
Private agencies going public, 331
Private philanthropy, 312, 341
Probation, 128
Officer comes up for air!, 215
Prohibition, politics and, 301
Pruette's The Parent and the Happy
Child, 127
Psychiatry in court, 298
Psychoanalysis, 264
Psychology, 235
Books on, reviews, 88, 90, 332
Public administration, directory of, 90
Public agencies and public agents,
definitions, 285
Public bequests reduced, 161
Public employment services, 142, 298
New York State, 229
Public health, 41
Public health departments, aid for, 75
Public health nurses, relief workers and,
253
Public health nursing, 297, 389
Public health work, appropriations, 381
Public housing, 415
Public Housing Conference, 415
Public medical care, 322
Public officials, citizens' opinion of, 221
Public opinion, 409
Public Relations Office, 269
Public schools, Cost and results, 74
Reports on the situation, 419
Course of monthly expenditures in
seven cities, 55
During bank holidays, 199
Food choices, 423
Food order, 182
How the other half lives on, 379
In a rising market, 345
Lurie on the gist of the situation, 53
New Hampshire, 194
Pamphlet of laws on, 361
Public-private relationships, 199
RFC and other forces, 1 1
Recovery and, 322
Senate bill, 51, 70
State key to, 1
State legislation, 200
State-of-the-nation, 51
Trends, 330
Wagner-Lewis Act, 211
Welfare associations and, 115
Where relief includes medical care,
155
Workers' salaries, 39
Relief from relief, 403
Relief investigators, behavior, 218
Relief rents, 413
Relief Standards and Procedures, 194
Relief Workers Experiences, 277
Family problems, 376
Hidden resources, problem of, 406
Local patronage, 260
Problem of excitement and
demonstrations, 317
Public health nurses and, 253
Religion, mental hygiene and, 256
Rent, 37, 125, 224, 230
Minneapolis, 201
Pamphlet on, 416
Practices, 85
Relief rents, 413
Unpaid, study, 29
Water supply and, 421
Where the rent money goes, 315
Research, 148
Restaurants, codes, 414
Rettenmayer, J. P., 158
Rhode Island, 122, 170
Richberg, D. R., 56
Richmond, Va., 77, 227, 271
Nurseries, 29
Social workers, 112, 115
Ringe, Irma (letter), 366
Ritchie, Governor, 413
Riverside County, Cal., 101
Public welfare, models of organization, Robbins, Matilda (letter), 173
194
Public workers, training, 250
Public works, 140
Public Works Administration, 403
Subsidiary, 382
Puerto Rican clothing factories, 326
Puerto Rico, social work, 294
Pugsley prize winners, 335
Robinson, Beirer (letter), 205
Rochester, N. Y.
Eenefits, 165
Clinics, 353
Industry steadying jobs, 81
Man-a-block plan, 87
Rockefeller, John D., Jr., Palisades gift,
293
, ___
Purves-Stewart's A Physician's Tour in Rocky Mountain Fuel Co., 197
Soviet Russia, 362
Quakers, 301
R
Race relations, source book, 167
Racketeering, Chicago, 16
Workmen's Compensation insurance
and, 23
Radio, Children and, 167
Educational possibilities, 167
Radium poisoning, 393
Ragweed, 296
Railroads, wage rates, 23
Ramsey, M. C., Fiddles and food, 316
Raper's The Tragedy of Lynching, 233
Read, C. F., Religion and mental
hygiene, 256
Reading, Pa., self-help, 262
Real-estate clinic, 261
Reconstruction Finance Corp., 1, 11, 36
Recovery, Relief and, 322
Weak spots in the program, 322
Recreation, 233
Community-wide service, 283
Indianapolis, 226
Pennsylvania, 295
Seattle, 356
Volunteer service, 104
Red Cross, 357, 360
Wheat and cotton, 84
Reed, E. F., Community reorganization,
Reeder's Training Youth for the New
Social Order, 426
Re-employment Service. 292
Reform of the social order, 378
Refugees, relief for, 382
Regional Plan of New York, 394
Registration of social workers, 113
Rehabilitation, national program 82
Relief, 136
Are relief workers policemen?, 156
Buffalo, 321
Car owners and, 103
Centralizing funds, 85
Cities, various, 361
Clients with bank accounts, 347
Rogers, J. B. (letter), 46
Roller skating, 425
Rollins College, 121
Rolph, Governor, 413
Roosevelt, F. D., social work and, 338,
339, 340
Rosenberger Medal, 94
Ross, Mary
I think I'd better call the nurse, 253
Keeping doctor and patient together,
Ross' Machine Age in the Hills, 233
Rossell, B. S., The barometer of books,
Rubinoff, George, on conference
attendance, 172
Rubinow, I. M., 54
Rural industries, 118
Rural life, 398
Basic elements, 255
Rural relief, 125
Russell's Education and the Modern
World, 88
Russells' Lads' Clubs, 172
Russia
Health services, 362
Wheat, 40
Ryerson, E. L., 94
St. Helena Island, 300
St. Toseph, Mo., 413
St. Louis, Mo., 39, 124, 331
Migrant boys, 356
Negroes, 115
Venereal diseases, cost, 196
Work relief, 201
St. Paul, Minn.. 77, 86
Salaries, relief workers, 39
Sales tax, Illinois, 231
Salt Lake City, 86
Samarkand Ice Cream Co., 158
San Diego
Francis W. Parker School, 35
Mexicans, 293
Progress in depression, 28
San Francisco, 423
Ferries, 165
Relief survey, 390
Sisterhood House, 357
San Jose, Cal., 413
Savings, children's. 419
Sayings, opp. 1, 49, 97, 145, 171, 209,
241, 273, 305, 337, 369, 401
Schick and Rosenson's Child Care
Today, 126
Schiff, Mrs. Jacob H., Ill
Schiff Scout Reservation, 399
Schmalhausen's, Our Neurotic Age, 332
Schohaus', The Dark Places of
Education, 90
Scholars, haven for, 328
School lunches, 163
School savings^ 419
Schoolhouses, shoddy, 205
Schools
Chicago, 26
Crisis continuing, 387
Dark places, 90
Depression programs, 166
Guidance in city, 34
Hard times and, 82
Health and, 228, 324
Idle, 205
Propaganda in, 364
Public, cost, 74
Schweinitz, Karl de, 56
Scott, Anne (letter), 397
Design for nursing, 313
Scottsboro cases, 393
Scrip system, 87
bcuuder, K. J., How California anchors
drifting boys, 101
Sea Scouts, 295
Seaman's Church Institute, 228
Seattle, 59, 84, 391
Building study, 386
l-'ree-time school, 388
Recreation, 356
Relief administration, 261
Work relief, 38
Security, 151
Self-consciousness, 332, 333
Self-control, 31
Self-help, 289
Barter and, 329
New Bloomfield, Pa., 226
Northwest, 84
Organized relief and, 201
Reading, Pa., 262
Silk workers, 59
Senate relief bill, 51, 70
Service clubs, 409
Settlement laws, 295
Sex, teaching young people, 223
Sex and marriage, books on, 299
Sharp's Town and Countryside, 427
Shelby County, Ind., 117
Shelter allowances, 230
Shenango River, 416
Sherman and Henry's Hollow Folk, 202
Shock troops to the rescue, 9
Shoe workers, 42
Shorter work week, 80, 119
Shulman, H. M., 28
Sickness
Chronic, 353
Idleness and, 388
Uneven burdens of. 3
Sidel, J. E. (letter), 268
Simmons College, 35
Slums, 393
Clearance, 415
New York City, 315
Rebuilding, 382
Small-loans problem, 265
Smedes, H. R., These two (verse), 291
Smile without guile of Letchworth (ill.),
210
Smith, Elizabeth, 54
Smith, Elliott Dunlap (letter), 93
Smith, Peter W. (letter), 130
Smith's Games and Game Leadership, 90
Smithies' Case Studies of Normal
Adolescent Girls, 267
Social Creed, 64
Churches', 64, 65
Social hygiene movie, 389
Social insurance, 152
Social order, reform of, 378
Social pathology, 266
Social practice, 28, 76, 114, 162, 194,
226, 294, 356, 384. 416
Government publications, 357
Literature, 29. 194, 195, 226, 295
Notes, 29, 115
Pamphlets. 384
Reports of research, 114
Taxes and social services, 8
Social trends, 93
Churches and, 64
Four volumes of the Research
Committee, 266
Social work
As a profession, 342
Cartoons on, 72-73
Case work in a changing order and, 61
Germany, 226
Index
vn
Philistines and, 408
Givers' attitudes, 341
Problems ahead, 308
Public administration of activities in,
311
Retrenchment period, 308
Vested interest complex in, 309
Washington meeting, 338 (ill.), 339
Social Work Year Book, 1933, 203
Social workers
Expanding perspectives, 14
Hesitation and then .... 13
Hopes, 14
In a changing world, 147
Manners, 218
Pioneers again, 307
Pre-professional course, 34
Seasonal greetings for 1933, 27
Status, 248
Whither?, 238
Socialized individualism, 151
Soldiers, 202
Soup, lifting America out of (cartoon)
402
South, 232
Unemployment relief, 168
South Bend, Ind., health education, 359
South Carolina, 169
Case work, 417
Southern Summer School for. Women
Workers, 32
Springer, Gertrude
Chests in a recovery year, 339
Children must live their own lives, 376
Partners in a new social order, 243
Shock troops to the rescue, 9
Step-children of relief, 212
Swapping horses in a flood, 153
Thank you, Officer, we can manage.
317
What price the power of the food
order?, 182
When families won't behave, 277
When hidden resources turn up, 406
When your client has a car, 103
Spyglass (periodical), 163
Standards, when they break, 20
State as parent, 192
State government, 106
State medicine, 322
State relief administrations and non-
resident workers, 200
States
Cooperation in relief, 344
Key to relief, 1
Must do their share, 285
Relief legislation, 36
Stay-at-home camps, 384
Steel industry, under the code, 413
Step-children of relief, 212
Sterilization laws, 297
Stevenson, H. R.. Why mothers die, 350
Stewarts' Statistical Procedure of
Public Employment Offices, 298
Stock-purchase plans, 197
Storey, C. J., Volunteers for recreation
service, 104
Strikers, relief for, 329
Stuart, R. Y., 186
Student mortality, 167
Student Outlook, 121
Subsistence gardens, 231
Suicide statistics, 325
Summer institutes, 271
Summer schools
Pacific Coast, workers, 418
Progressive programs, 167
Sundblom, Haddon, 306
Superior, Wis., 263
Supply and demand, law of, 44
Survey, The, comments on, 367
Surveys, state and government— do they
pay?, 225
Suzzallo, Henry, 354
Swanson, A. W., 321
Swapping horses in a flood, 153
Sweden. lelief, 37
Swift, L. B., 52
Sydenstricker's Health and
Environment, 395
Syphilis, 31
New York, 228
Tacoma, 424
Taft's, The Dynamics of Therapy, 362
Talking it out, 18
Tax League, 26
Taxation
National Conference on, 8
Paying with turnips, 70
Social services, and, 8
State and federal conflicting systems,
106
Taylor, F. J., 153, 154
Taylor, Graham, The church keeps up
with social trends, 64
Teacher-training college, 198
Teachers, 415
Made work for, 166
Men and women, proportion, 260
Salaries, 419
Training for "new," 35
Work relief for, 323
Technology, unemployment and, 418
Telephone industry, technical
improvements and loss of work, 418
Tennessee, 76, 168
Texas, 125, 128, 169, 391
Textile code, 259
Thank you, Officer, we can manage, 317
Therapeutic relationship, 362
These two (verse), 291
Thompson and Whelpton's Population
Trends, 395
Thurston's, A Bibliography on Family
Relationships, 128
Tilton, Elizabeth (letter), 301
Timeliness, 414
Timoshenko's Agricultural Russia and
the Wheat Problem, 40
Tire industry, 418
Tobin, M. E. (letter), 269
Todd's, Industry and Society, 234
Toledo, 331, 422
Tostevin, L. W. (letter), 132
Township system, 231
Transient boys, 99
California, 101
Transients, 38
Federal responsibility, 411
Public cooperation in dealing with,
412
Tuberculosis, 31, 43, 246, 389
Connecticut, 359
Educational facilities in sanatoria, 352
Illinois State Fair, 358
National Association, 113
Projects, 117
Why girls die of, 78
Tulare, 120
Tulsa, 391
Twin Cities, unemployment, 384
Typewriter, 167
Tyson, H. G., 54, 56
u
Ufford, W. S., 400
Uncle Sam and medical relief, 351
Unemployed
Adjustment service for, 114
Adult education for, 330
Books and reading for, 198
Definition of, 361
Morale, 237
Rural young, 120
Schools for, 125
Self-help and organized relief, 201
Unemployment
Bibliography, 327
Cities, news from. 361. 422
Community action and, 36, 84, 122,
168, 199, 230, 261, 329, 360, 390,
422
Federal aid, 179
Mental hygiene of, 18
Philadelphia plan, summary, 135
State developments, 422
Statistics, 143
Technological, 418
Twin Cities, 384
Young people, 397
Unemployment insurance, 81, 152, 166,
192
Bills pending, 159
British system, 276
California, 32
Canada, 81
Interstate authority for, 275
Maryland bill, 165
Minnesota, 58
New standards, 281
New York State, 111
Proposals, 323
Unemployment Insurance and Relief in
Germany, 266
Unemployment relief, 211
Foreign countries, 37
Southern states, 168
Unemployment reserves, 140
Unit-cost plan, 121
United Hospital Fund of New York
City, 5
U. S. Employment Service, 292
University of Exile, 328
Unwin, Sir Raymond, 415
Vagrancy, 411
Vander Veer, Albert, 296
Vasko, Helen, 192
Venereal diseases, St. Louis, cost, 196
Venturing for idle boys and girls, 190
Veterans' hospital, recreational worker
at, 257
Vineyard Shore, 119
Virginia, work relief, 87
Vocational counselors, 327
Vocational education, 420
Vocational guidance, 328
Vocational-guidance apprentices, 35
Volunteer, a, among the veteran, 257
Volunteers
For recreation service, 104
Various, 417
W
Wage-earning mothers, 326
Wage holiday, 112
Wages
Cost of low wages, 197
Filene on reductions, 111
Guaranteed, 158
Women's, 119
Wanderers, 411
Warbasse, J. P., consumers of medical
services, 3
Ward, A. D., 56
Ward, H. F., 64
Warwick, Training School for boys, 385
Washington (state), 84, 122, 422
Washington, D. C.
FERA in action, 414
Friends who are serving the New
Deal, 431
Social work meeting, 338 (ill.), 339
Washington parade, 335
Waters, The B. E. F., 202
Watt, D. B., 82
Weaver College Summer School, 326
Webber, C. C., Self-help among silk
workers, 59
Weirton agreement, 386
Weishaar and Parrish's Men Without
Money, 428
Welcker, A. C. (letter), 144
Welfare associations, relief and, 115
Welfare cafeterias, 39
Wellesley College, 424
Wellesley Summer Institute, 121
West, W. M.
On conference attendance, 172
Relief, state-of-the-nations, the. 51
West Newton, Mass., old clothes that
fit, 162
West Virginia, 122
Westchester County Children's
Association, 190
Western Reserve University, 268
Wheat, 40
Red Cross, 84
Wheeler, M. P., 150
When families won't behave, 277
When hidden resources turn up, 406
Where the rent money goes, 315
Whipping children, 277
White, L. D., The citizen and his
public servant, 221
White's Crimes and Criminals, 298
WWte's Forty Years of Psychiatry, 264
Whittier State School for Boys, 292
Wiehl, D. G., 417
Wile, I. S. (letter), 93
Williams, H. D., 67
Williams, Whiting (letter), 93
Williams' Human Aspects o_f
Unemployment and Relief, 126
Williamstown Institute, 198
Wilmington, Del., 57
Wilson's Chinatown Quest, 89
Wilson's Forced Labor in the United
States, 267
Wilson's Sneckles of Mowbrey Street, 89
Winfield, B. L. (letter), 44
Winslow, E. T., 181
Winsor's, The Art of Behavior, 42
Wisconsin, 123, 364
Political education by radio, 83
Relief, 262
Relief money for education, 327
Schooling in prison, 35
Tuberculosis, 196
Wisconsin, University of, course in
politics, 419
Wittpenn, Caroline Stevens, 27
Women
Placements for educated, 83
Prisoners, 162
Wage-earners, 119
Wage-earners helping themselves, 166
Women workers
Breakdown in standards, 32
Hard-times budgets, 417
Use of leisure, 420
Wages and hours, 81
Women's prsons, 294
Wood, E. E., Housing in the 1930
Census, 57
Woodberry, L. G., My city (verse), IS
Woodson's, The Mis-education of the
Negro, 363
Work, tonic effect, 294
Work relief, 86, 87, 124, 289, 416
CWA and, 405
Educational, 423
Ontario, 233
Professionals, 424
Project, 28
Rules for, 288
St. Louis, 201
State policies, 123
Variations on, 38
Wag« rates, 329
Work week, shorter, 80
Workers' education, 80
Pacific Coast summer school, 418
Workmen's Compensation Act, abuses,
196
Workmen's Compensation Insurance,
New York State, 23
Workshop on wheels, 167
Wortman, Denys, cartoons, 72-73
Wright, George, cartoon, 9
YWCA, sketches, 68
Youth, depresson and. constructve and
destructive results, 67
f-,
Zimand, G. F., Will the codes abolish
child labor?, 290
Zimmerman family, 182
Zoltan, W. (letter), 93
Zoning, 234
Zook, G. F., 415, 419
January
Volume LXIX
No. i
The State Key to Relief
A Challenge to Forty Legislatures to Meet the Winter's Needs
By NEWTON D. BAKER
Chairman National Citizens' Committee for the Welfare and Relief Mobilization of 1932
N the three years during which unemployment has
unbalanced the budgets of American citizens and of
public and private relief agencies, expenditures for
relief have just about doubled each year. According to the
compilations of the United States Children's Bureau, ex-
penditures in 1930 almost doubled those of 1929, and those
of 1931 more than doubled those of 1930. Final figures for
1932 promise to be double those of 1931, or eight times
those of 1929. If this ratio continues, our 1933 expenditures
will be sixteen times those of four years ago. Whether or
not so great an increase will be necessary or possible no one
now can say. We do know however that a considerable
increase will be impera-
tive. Where increased
funds are to come from,
especially during the next
four months when the dis-
tress of this winter will
reach its peak, becomes
therefore a matter of im-
mediate and practical
concern.
The results of the com-
munity chest campaigns
[see page 21] and of the
emergency relief cam-
paigns in cities without
chests, indicate that no
general increase in volun-
tary gifts can be expected.
The help of neighbor to
neighbor, the uncounted
ways in which the poor
Z
Special allowanett
A
The amount of relief about doubles year by year during tie depression. The chart
shows the amount of relief given by 247 general, 5/ special-allowance, and 50
work-relief agencies from January 1929 to October 1932. Figures and chart by the
United States Children's Bureau
1
help the poor will continue, but for the large sums neces-
sary to carry the bulk of the increase in obligatory relief
we must, it seems, look elsewhere than to private givers.
Observing the financial plight of many of our large cities
where relief needs are heaviest, we must admit that no sub-
stantial increase can be anticipated from municipal funds.
Real-estate taxes are the chief source of municipal revenue.
Any increase in them at this time cannot and will not be
borne. That will merely increase tax forfeitures and the num-
ber of homeless poor. Municipal economies, however drastic,
will do no more than maintain the going municipal govern-
ment. They cannot be looked to for increased relief funds.
Funds made available
through the Reconstruc-
tion Finance Corporation
have carried a large share
of the relief load these
past five months, and will
continue to carry it dur-
ing the months ahead.
Whatever opinion one
may hold on the necessity
and desirability of chang-
ing the base and extend-
ing the reach of federal
aid there is, in the opinion
of interested Congres-
sional leaders, small like-
lihood of any alteration
in policy during the life
of the present Congress.
Increases in total relief
funds from this
AA
source
THE SURVEY
January 1933
must probably, therefore, be on the basis of what is now in
sight, allocated by the existing machinery and according to
the present law.
"We will see to it that people do not starve," say our
communities — and they mean it. But in a sort of panic
engendered by rising need, by shrinking local funds and by
the legal limitations upon R. F. C. policies, they turn to
measures which threaten to cut the life out of the social
services which have become a distinctive and necessary part
of our American life and they overlook almost entirely the
resource which seems to offer the most definite and immedi-
ate prospect of lubricating the whole situation. I refer to the
direct use of state funds for relief.
TO bring more R. F. C. money into the relief situa-
tion this winter, to get more adequate total relief funds
where they are needed, to ensure more effective relief ad-
ministration and to save the social services of the hard
pressed communities we must, I am convinced, have more
state fiscal participation in the relief program.
Many states have taken the position that by using their
credit and borrowing from the R. F. C. they have a stake
in the situation even though they have as yet made no use
of their own tax resources. There is something to be said for
this theory, but in practice, at the present critical moment,
it does not tend to limber up R. F. C. funds as a relief re-
source. There is abundant evidence in the five months
record of R. F. C. loans for relief that the more a state does
the more it gets. The three states, Illinois, Pennsylvania
and Ohio, that have received the largest sums from the
R. F. C. are the three among the thirty-six that have been
granted loans, that have dipped most deeply into their
own pockets. All the states have not the same taxing au-
thority but as was said at the November conference in
Chicago called by the American Public Welfare Associa-
tion, "There is probably no state that cannot assume some
share of the financial responsibility for unemployment
relief."
The R. F. C. in its instructions to governors applying for
funds for the period from January i to February 28, 1933
stated:
It is plainly the intent of the Emergency Relief and Construc-
tion Act of 1932 that funds shall be made available by the Re-
construction Finance Corporation not in lieu of but merely sup-
plemental to local and state funds and private contributions.
Many states have regular or special sessions of their legislature in
prospect by which state and local relief funds can be made avail-
able. Therefore, an outline of the legislative program to produce
this result is especially important, in order that the Reconstruc-
tion Finance Corporation may determine its course of action.
It thus becomes clear that the way for each state to get
the maximum of available R. F. C. funds into this winter's
relief is to formulate with all possible speed a policy for re-
lief in which its own funds will have a part. Without such a
policy no state should reasonably expect to finance its in-
creased relief load through the R. F. C.
The purpose of such a policy must obviously be to in-
crease the total available relief funds and to bring them to
the point of adequacy. Therefore while the reimbursing
principle has its uses it will not, in this fourth year of de-
pression, with depleted city and county resources, meet the
whole situation. New York, the first state to put its own
funds into relief, started out with a fairly rigid rule on
reimbursing which it now finds entirely too rigid. New York
state reimburses its counties and cities for 40 percent of
their relief expenditures, but this 40 percent goes back not
into the relief funds of the localities but into their general
funds which may be used for any purpose whatsoever. This
rule, during the first year of the state relief administration,
undoubtedly released larger local funds than would other-
wise have come to light, but evidence is accumulating that
with falling tax collections and gaping budgets it must be re-
laxed if state aid is to be in fact an addition to local funds.
Lawson Purdy, chairman of the New York City Emer-
gency Work and Relief Administration, through which state
allotted funds pass, recommended to Governor Roosevelt
that in order to increase total relief funds in the local com-
munities the 40 percent reimbursement by the state be
raised to 60 percent, that these reimbursements be segre-
gated in the local treasuries and be used exclusively for
relief and that 40 percent of the state fund be freed from the
reimbursing rule and expended at the discretion of the
State Temporary Emergency Relief Administration.
Opponents of federal participation in local community
relief are fearful that funds disbursed so far from their tax
source will be handled with less responsibility than if local
tax monies or contributions are directly involved. They
tell us from time to time of some local welfare official, ill-
equipped by experience to deal with a large situation and
unsupported by clear state policies of administration, who
is turned into a sort of Santa Claus by an allotment of
R. F. C. funds from his governor. But we also hear from
those states which have joined a good quota of their own
funds to those of the R. F. C. that by such addition more
uniformly effective administration has been secured to-
gether with more adequate relief.
THE magnitude and spread of the current relief prob-
lem has exposed the weakness of our system of un-
supervised local public-welfare administration with its
frequent inequalities of resources and needs. It has also
revealed the virtues of clearly enunciated and controlled
state policies equipped with fiscal teeth. I am convinced
that the admixture of state appropriation with R. F. C.
loans will not only increase the total available relief funds
of the communities but will ensure higher and more equable
relief standards and more effective handling of all the funds
in the common pool.
The preservation of local social services other than relief
may appear to be a somewhat remote product of state
participation. But to me it is evident that unless this win-
ter's imperative increase in unemployment relief can be
lifted from local resources by state activity and hence by
larger R. F. C. loans our whole distinctive American organ-
ization for human betterment will be crippled if not demol-
ished. I submit that so long as state resources for relief re-
main comparatively unimpaired it is indefensible to drain
the life-blood from our character-building, health and
preventive organizations whose service in and out of the
emergency no intelligent person can question.
And yet with relief needs mounting, with R. F. C. funds
drawn on less than they might be by appropriate state
action and with state funds in the balance the tendency is
to do an amputation on the total community service fund
with the pious hope that the patient will not die under the
knife. In my own city of Cleveland our community fund
fell nearly half a million short of its goal which represented
minimum budgeting for the essential services of the mem-
ber agencies. To deal with this shortage the fund has cut
percent from the budgets of all but relief agencies for
January 1933
THE SURVEY
3
a period of two months. This allows a little time to see what
will happen. If adequate R. F. C. and state funds take the
estimated increase in relief load from private funds, the cut
need be only temporary. If they do not, a whole range of
services will be seriously impaired at the time when the
community and its people need them most.
The chest in Washington, D. C., likewise fell short by
half a million. Instead of an immediate cut of agency
budgets the chest has added half a million to the estimates
of needed public-relief funds to be asked of Congress. If the
appropriation fails, the relief deficit will probably have to
be absorbed at the expense of other services.
It is not only private services that are endangered.
Some of our hard-won gains in public welfare are threat-
ened with the knife. From certain up-state New York
counties come reports that short-sighted local economists
have discovered that it is cheaper to put a mother's-aid case
on direct relief than to treat it through the approved meth-
ods of the established board of child welfare. The state
reimburses 40 percent toward direct relief; it reimburses
nothing on account of mothers' aid. By transferring the
case the county saves itself some money, but the total relief
fund is not increased and a principle is abrogated. As this is
written, the governor of New Jersey is proposing to trans-
fer the state's old-age relief cases to the Emergency Relief
Administration, thereby cutting into funds available for un-
employment relief and changing the pattern of a service which
was difficult to establish and which will be difficult to restore.
Within the next few months some forty state legisla-
tures will meet. The immediate fate of our whole relief and
welfare program seems to me to rest with those state bod-
ies. Under these circumstances the R. F. C. policy toward
state participation, is necessarily becoming more exacting.
Most of the states anticipating R. F. C. funds for relief will
be obliged to come to the Corporation for additional funds
while their legislatures are actually in session. The R. F. C.
in its instructions to governors has indicated that pressure
for state action will be exerted. Procrastination, log-rolling
and alibis will not stand. The winter's bitter necessities are
steadily rising and local community resources are falling.
We have available a considerable body of experience in
state-relief administration to indicate the direction which
state action should take if it is to utilize to the utmost
R. F. C. funds, to increase total relief funds, to strengthen
effective administration and to save our vital community
services from dismemberment. The key to the whole im-
mediate situation seems to rest with those forty state
legislatures. Prompt and vigorous action on their part will
break the vicious circle in which our whole relief and
welfare program is caught.
Consumers of Medical Services
By JAMES P. WARBASSE, M.D.
President the Cooperative League of America
HE time was when a single doctor could encompass end the doctor is poorly paid for his services. There are
pretty much all of the knowledge and art of medi- exceptions; this is the rule.
cine. That was in the days of the good family Still more deplorable is the fact that medical knowledge,
physician. Now nobody can know it all nor skillfully the accumulation of the ages, acquired out of the suffering
practice the whole of that art. On
the other hand, industries have
been intensified and united in the
interest of efficiency and economy.
But medicine is still carried on
much as was industry in the days
of the hand-loom.
The sick man who seeks medical
advice goes from one place to an-
other collecting the information
on his case until he has assembled
enough to tell him what the trouble
is or what may be done to make him
well. This method is so expensive
that only the rich can afford it.
Medicine has much to offer, but
the average patient can not buy
all of its advantages. He usually
dies without them. And the average
doctor has to earn a living and
cannot afford to give the average
patient all of the benefits of medical
art. As a result, the costs are so
great that people defer sending for
the doctor until disease is well
established, there is an unneces-
sarily high mortality, and in the
/S.9%
/J
7%
//.
7%
9.
9M
£.7%
If
Urder f/0 to tZO to (40 to\ti3 to t/CO to tSOOfc tJOOfo
f/o fzo i<fo t&o \tioo tsoo tfoo f/ooo
f/OOO
Percent of families wfcost Tofs/Annua/ CAs,
were in Specified Rjfjges
y"
Charts by Courteiy Harper & Brothers
The uneven burdens of illness
and deaths of our ancestors, is
treated as private property and
peddled by doctors competing for
business with one another like
tradesmen in the market places.
These deficiences are slowly rem-
edied. Centers for group action are
developing. This is seen in hospitals
and clinics. To make medicine
more accessible to all, the state is
more and more supplying the need.
Consumers' societies, medical syn-
dicates and guilds, insurance as-
sociations, corporations, trade
unions, fraternal organizations and
many other groups representing
patients and doctors have arisen
in the interest of each.
The new book by Evans Clark1
deals with this subject. This book
describes the defects of the com-
petitive method in medicine. Much
information on group practice is
collected. The costs of medical care
lHow to Bitdirt Health, by Evans Clark. Harpers.
Published under the auspices of The Twentieth Cen-
tury Fund, founded by Edward A. Filene. 328 pp.
Price ?4 postpaid of The Survey.
THE SURVEY
January 1933
i>yxxi /ncomf Group
•• Average C/iarge
and the incomes of physicians are
analyzed. Mr. Clark wisely says:
"So acute is the problem and so
grave the dissatisfaction with exist-
ing facilities that the compulsion
of the state may be invoked before
private and voluntary action has
had a chance to demonstrate its
own capacity."
While medicine is the most radi-
cal of the arts, the medical profession
has never applied to its own conduct
the scientific methods which it em-
ploys in solving biological problems.
The physicians, while applying sci-
entific methods to the diseased
human body, refuse to use those
same methods in solving the prob-
lems of a sick social body. They
insist on employing emotion in place
of science and on following the
methods of the business world
which have brought humanity into
a morass of distress.
We learn from this book that
the total plant investment in equip-
ment for medical service in this country amounts to nearly
six billion dollars, that about one third of the deaths are
preventable, that the majority of people have some
pathological condition, that the ratio of physicians to
population varies from i to 282 in the District of Columbia
to i to 1431 in South Carolina, that doctors in the United
States have an average net income of about $5000, that
the incomes of most doctors are less than $2500, that the
average expenditure per family for medical service and
materials is $108, and that doctors have difficulty in mak-
ing a living from the patients they treat and that patients
have difficulty in getting the treatment they need.
Mr. Clark shows that medicine, in the United States,
in terms of number of personnel and value of service and
capital investment, is only exceeded by five other in-
dustries. That means, with its 143,000 physicians and the
expenditure by the people of nearly four billion dollars for
medical service, medicine is an important business.
The plan of organization recommended is the guild
method, exemplified by groups of doctors such as the
Mayo Clinic, with the addition of periodic examinations
and a fixed annual fee. Control by the doctors is stipulated.
This is to be seen in process of development in all parts
of the United States. It is in line with the natural tendency
of economic combines and mass production and certainly
corrects many of the disadvantages of the prevalent com-
petitive system. Where doctors are thus united, the patient
is spared shopping about from one expert to another,
records and facilities are grouped at a focus, consultations
are facilitated, bookkeeping and costs are reduced, treat-
ment is closely related to diagnosis, and time is saved.
One of the most important results is that doctors are re-
moved from economic competition with one another; their
fiscal interests are pooled and each takes out of the profits
his stipulated share.
There are doctors who fail to realize that they live in a
changing world and would fight to maintain the expiring
system. They go so far as to assert that such group medicine
is detrimental to the best medical standards, subversive
?
o
§
Medical bills vs. family income
and revolutionary. They do not
see that it is they who are promoting
revolution; for what is called revo-
lution is but the decay of a dom-
inant system and the chaos associ-
ated with its collapse.
Mr. Clark favors the syndicalist
principle so often tried and so often
found wanting. Workers' control
has been attempted in the mediaeval
guilds in Europe, in the self-govern-
ing workshops, the workers profit-
sharing or cooperative producers'
industries in Great Britain, and in
the more recent attempts of the
syndicalists in Italy and France.
Workers' control, whether in com-
modity or service production, is
profit business. If the business
prospers there has always been the
disposition in the industrial guilds
to hire service which was not per-
mitted to share in the profits and
control. The same thing is observed
in the medical guilds. The business,
develops from classes, seeking their
own economic advantage from the community.
The only sort of industry that is conducted for service
and not for profit that is not carried on by the state, is
some form of non-political organization of the consumers.
This latter is found in the consumers' cooperative societies.
These organizations have developed medical service to a
high degree of perfection. Their successful medical in-
stitutions are to be seen in many countries. Their clinics,
sanatoriums, laboratories for research, and hospitals are
fine examples of medical practice and health protection.
In these institutions the ownership and control rests in the
patients and the prospective patients — the consumers —
who can be expanded into the whole of society. The physi-
cians are of a high class and are organized in workers'
guilds to protect their own interests and standards. These
health services are not isolated but are directly connected
with the more significant agencies of health — -the supply
of food, housing, recreation, education, insurance, and
pensions, and the general economic life. Consumers' co-
operation is not a theory but a steadily growing system.
More than 230,000 of these societies, with 70 million
members, in 42 countries are united in an International
Alliance. Their efficiency should not be ignored.
The plan offered by Mr. Clark can be taken by a com-
munity of people who wish health protection, and applied
by them to the organization of the doctors for the service
of the community. The people have to pay all the bills,
they are the employers, and they and not the employes
are best fitted to control.
The consumer has been forgotten long enough. It has
been private and privileged interests, doing things for and
to the consumer, that have brought the world to the pass
in which it now is found.
This book is rich in information. Its defense of the report
of the Committee on the Costs of Medical Care is admira-
ble. It will serve in helping toward an understanding of
the social medical problem. The ideals which it holds up
and its practical facts are needed at this time when re-
organization of the economics of medicine is imperative.
Cleveland's Clinic Plan
HROUGHOUT the country hospitals and clinics
are facing the questions charted below in an
appeal from the United Hospital Fund of New
York City: Must they turn away the sick poor, or lower
standards, or can some way be found to meet the widening
gap between income and costs? For the group of hospitals
in nine areas reporting to the Federal Children's Bureau
patients' payments in 1931 shrunk 8.6 percent from the
1930 figures; they constituted only 40 percent of institu-
tional income, leaving 60 percent to be borne by dwindling
public funds and endowments or by private givers. Pa-
tients' poverty is putting a heavy strain also on the incomes
of doctors in private practice, which dropped 20 percent in
1930 and further and faster in the first quarter of 1931
according to figures compiled by the Committee on the
Costs of Medical Care.
Facing immediate dilemmas raised by such facts as these
and also the long-range problems of constructive relation-
ships between physicians, social workers, patients and
clinics, Cleveland adopted a new plan for dispensary
admissions on July i, 1932, following six months' con-
ferences between Academy of Medicine, Welfare Council
and Hospital Council. The intention is that the social
agencies shall make use of the private physicians for
patients who in normal times would make acceptable
arrangements with a private doctor.
Under the plan social workers in
the agencies and the outpatient
departments of the hospitals agree
that all new patients applying for
clinic care will be referred back to
their private physicians if they have
had them. (No time limit is set; the
social worker uses her discretion.)
If the patient has not had a private
doctor but may be able now or
ultimately to pay something toward
private care, he is referred by the
social worker to a neighborhood
physician listed by the Academy as
willing to cooperate in the plan.
The social worker gives the patient
a slip to take to his family physician
or a physician on the list. The doctor may treat the patient
for the fee which he and the patient agree upon as fair; or
he may treat the patient without cost or on a basis of
deferred payment; or he may sign the slip and refer the
patient back to a dispensary if neither of these courses is
adopted. A Central Committee, composed of representa-
tives of the Academy, the Hospital Council, Welfare
Federation and Jewish Welfare Federation handles the
traffic and passes on individual problems submitted by
social worker, patient or physician as need arises.
Sufficient time has not yet elapsed to give conclusive
answers as to the results of the plan. In answer to letters of
enquiry recently sent out by the Welfare Federation, Dr.
Harold J. Knapp, commissioner of health, declares that the
Division of Health had found it "reasonably satisfactory."
C. S. Woods, superintendent of St. Luke's Hospital, writes,
"Our experience has convinced us that it preserves every
important prerogative which the dispensary possesses.
How shall the Hospitals balance
their budgets?
r
i . Turn away the sick foor?
2. Lower the stand-
ards of medical care?
*
3. Seek
contributions?
We are led to conclude that it is advantageous to the
patient, to the physician and to the public." P. J. Mc-
Millin, superintendent of City Hospital, finds that while
some patients hesitate to return to physicians to whom
they already owe money, in general the plan has worked
well, as does Margaret E. Hull, home-service secretary of
the American Red Cross, on the basis of limited experience.
Lucille K. Corbett, .secretary of districts for the Associated
Charities, writes that "the district secretaries are inclined
to feel that the plan is working out satisfactorily" though
they have had some difficulty in obtaining dental care and
medicines prescribed by private physicians, and there is
more inertia of the client to overcome in this process than
in the somewhat simpler procedure of direct reference to a
clinic.
Mrs. Charles W. Webb, director of the social-service
department at the University Hospitals, believes that the
plan has encouraged mutual understanding between doc-
tors and social workers, and helps to keep up "a normal
doctor-patient relationship with those patients who can
and should maintain it." Mrs. Webb and Dr. H. L. Rock-
wood, director of Mount Sinai Hospital, raise the query of
what is happening to the patients referred to private doc-
tors and not re-referred to the clinic: are they actually
getting care, or have they dropped out somewhere along
the line? A study of this sort,
following up 150 patients, is now
under way.
H. Van Y. Caldwell, executive
secretary of the Academy of Medi-
cine reports that sampling of the
forms sent to the Central Commit-
tee and contact with individual
workers indicates that about 24
percent of the patients sent to
private physicians by dispensaries
and other agencies are being re-
turned to dispensaries, leaving ap-
proximately 75 percent "who, we
hope, are being kept by the private
physician."
"The reception accorded the plan
by individual physicians varies,"
Mr. Caldwell writes, "but apparently in most cases the
physician is cooperating willingly. There have been no
serious complaints and no large number of complaints
either from patients, agencies or physicians. Several in-
dividual problems have arisen which have required in-
dividual decision. The new admissions to some of the
dispensaries have decreased considerably. This may be due
to one or all of three factors: adoption of the present
admissions plan, adoption of other methods at the dis-
pensaries to eliminate a percentage of admissions and
another unusual drop in the sickness rate in Cleveland.
Apparently the primary purpose of the plan is operating,
namely: to help decrease the burden or load on dispen-
saries and to bring back into the practice of the family
physician a large number of individuals who otherwise for
one reason or another would have become dispensary
patients." Medical societies of Akron and Canton, Ohio,
are seeking adoption of this plan in their communities.
United Hospital Fund of New York City
Living on a Surplus
Idle Labor Exchanged for Excess Crops by California Cooperatives
By J. STEWART BURGESS
Professor of Sociology, Pomona College, Claremont, California
.N a March morning in 1931 W. T. Birchfield, an old
Klondike gold-digger, veteran of the Spanish War,
was wandering around the environs of Los Angeles
looking for food for his family. A Japanese rancher per-
mitted him to fill his sack from the vegetables rotting on the
ground for lack of a market. With his load on his back the
old miner hurried home, to share his good luck with his
neighbors. Then and there was born the idea which in a few
months developed into a well-organized undertaking
through which the unemployed of Los Angeles County are
striving by cooperation and barter of labor for food to pull
themselves out of the demoralizing slough of inadequate
relief.
The Unemployed Cooperative Relief Association, child of
that first sackful of vegetables, had by mid-October 1932,
thirty-one branches in Los Angeles County supplying food
to some 120,000 people, with the number of affiliated groups
increasing daily. Seven other California counties had ef-
fected organizations equally lusty, with state conferences to
widen the base of cooperation. Late in the summer the
County Food Administrative Council, local division of
Governor Rolph's State Council, was cooperating with the
already active and vital local units. An appropriation from
the Board of Supervisors of Los Angeles County of $10,000
for gasoline solved many problems, for gasoline is, it ap-
pears, about the one indispensable which can't be bartered
for in one way or another.
It is not necessary here to follow in detail the course of
events by which this movement grew to its present propor-
tions. Throughout it was spontaneous, from the inside out,
finding its challenge in the anomaly that able-bodied men
should be hungry in a land of plenty. The first group, the
Birchfield's neighbors, began by sharing the food collected
in sacks. When W. T. Downing, owner of the Compton
Moving Company, offered the group the use of an empty
warehouse and an idle truck the movement took on form
and substance.
This same warehouse at Compton is still the headquar-
ters of Unit No. i of the Unemployed Cooperative Relief
Association. Just inside the door hangs the sign, "He that
does not work let him not eat." But the family that asks for
food is fed first, with the work to follow. Three days work,
of three or four hours each, is the measure of food for a
family for a week. If a man, after registering, fails to report
for three consecutive days his name is dropped from the
cooperative.
The day begins at dawn at Unit No. i. Four secretaries
are on the job registering new applicants, recording hours
and kinds of work reported by members and checking food
orders. Squads of workers with their foremen go out at
seven o'clock daily to the tasks assigned to them. Some of
these are contact men who scour the countryside for sur-
plus food and arrange the terms of barter by which this
surplus may be transferred to the cooperative storehouse.
Sometimes the work squads will do general clean-up on a
ranch, again they will harvest the best of the crop for the
rancher in return for the seconds or thirds.
Here is a sample of the intake of produce at Unit No. i on
a Saturday morning late in August.
1 crate beets 2 crates lettuce
2 tons cabbage 6 sacks onions
66 boxes celery 39 boxes peaches
4 lugs corn 5 crates radishes
12 boxes carrots i sack salt
3 sacks cucumbers 14 lugs tomatoes
70 boxes pears i^ tons rhubarb
15 sacks potatoes 11 boxes turnips
In this warehouse is an auto-repair shop, a shoe-repair
shop, a small printing shop for the necessary slips and
forms, and the inevitable woodpile where cast-off railroad
ties are sawed into firewood. Down the street, in another
building, women are making over clothing that has been
bartered in. In another they are canning vegetables and
fruit — Boy Scouts of the Burbank Unit brought in empty
jars by the wagon-load. In the community kitchen the
cooks prepare a midday meal for any members of the local
unit who wish it, anywhere from 150 to 200.
Behind the bins of cabbages, oranges, squash, carrots and
what-not, and the stack of Red Cross flour in the ware-
house a detail of twenty men is piling a truck with oranges
to be exchanged at Stockton for a load of potatoes. The use
of trucks, obtained by bartered labor, has made possible a
system of daily exchange between the units. Fish from San
Pedro, citrus fruit from Compton, tomatoes from Wilming-
ton increase the variety of food available at the centers of
distribution.
WHILE the chief method of securing supplies is by
bartering labor for produce large surpluses have been
obtained by donation. The Rivera Fruit Growers and
Packers Association donated 500 boxes of oranges to the
Compton unit. Knudson's Dairy supplies daily 800 pounds
of cottage cheese and 2100 gallons of milk. A twenty-three-
acre farm has been lent to this Unit and is under cultiva-
tion. The Brea Unit also has the use of a farm. The four
leading tire companies of Los Angeles, approached by the
Cooperative Association, agreed to donate a quantity of
tires. Negotiations are now on with other companies, nota-
bly a chain of men's clothing stores, for contributions of
unsold stock.
This whole enormous exchange operation runs practically
without cash. The total cash expenditure at Compton,
Unit No. i, for the month of September was $38. Local
officers receive no pay and they, like everyone else, are
pledged not to sell the food they receive. One officer who
broke this pledge is facing a term at San Quentin prison.
It is extraordinary how little cash is necessary when there
isn't any. Take for instance the matter of telephone calls
which would seem to be a legitimate item of expense in so
large a business. Not at all. In the first place the Associa-
tion didn't have any money; in the second it had the bright
idea of M. P. Rathborn of Pasadena, a war veteran, who
organized the amateur radio broadcasters of the county to
make known the surpluses and the needs of local centers.
January 1933
THE SURVEY
Not as efficient perhaps as the telephone, but it works.
The rapid multiplication of independent units growing
daily more inter-dependent naturally called for the organi-
zation of a central county council and for the definition of
the aims of the local units. The Los Angeles Council, made
up of three delegates from each unit with a forceful and
adroit president, C. M. Christoffersen, who in happier days
was a building contractor, now has an office in the Daily
News Building but holds its weekly meetings at different
centers. A meeting in mid-October in a vacant store with
the delegates sitting on empty boxes is typical of the virile
and effective democracy which prevails. The discussion,
lasting nearly four hours, was earnest and vigorous,
turbulent at times, but never out of the chairman's control.
The agenda included:
Reports of committees dealing with bread, groceries, milk, fish,
gasoline, oil and broadcasting.
Disputes regarding the failure of the Fish Committee to secure
adequate cooperation with the San Pedro unit in putting fish in
cold storage at proffered facilities at Wilmington. Issue of rights of
local units vs. central organization fought out. Referred to
executive committee.
Proposal to protect against the use of script by some cooperat-
ing groups. Heated discussion regarding the scope of activity of
the movement. Decision to drop the subject. Principle established
of each local representation voting as instructed by its unit.
Recall of vice-president charged with ineffectiveness petitioned
by seven units. Debate on procedure. Principle of fair trial before
judicial committee established. Matter referred to executive and
arbitration committees.
Announcement of dance and concert for unemployed in Los
Angeles and at Huntington Park. Unemployed musicians to
supply the music.
The purpose and philosophy of the whole movement is
clearly set forth in the preamble to the constitution of the
State Council:
This organization is formed for the purpose of cooperation of
the membership associations and to aid in their work. To observe
the laws of the nation, state, and/or community and render all aid
possible. To do unto others as you would have done unto you, pass
not judgment on anyone or anything without a fair and impartial
trial: to protect and assist in maintaining a living wage for all able
and willing to work: to protect and assist all existing business
establishments, in securing a reasonable return on their invest-
ment. To protect and assist in maintaining a reasonable standard
of value for our national medium of exchange. To maintain the
highest efficient production possible. Conservation of all food and
other products now or hereafter permitted to become waste. To
sacrifice all personal feelings for the good of the whole. To feed,
clothe, and/or otherwise care for the widows, orphans, cripples
and other unfortunate non-producers. To trade man-power hours
for the necessaries of life when and wherever practicable, by using
man-power hours as far as is possible in lieu of money until the
present depression and money shortage adjusts itself. To adhere to
a simple plan of operation as far as is possible, permitting a rapid
expansion or contraction as conditions require.
The setting and working of this cooperative adventure, a
product of the abnormal times, is reminiscent of the prin-
ciples and experiments of Robert Owen in the early part of
the last century during one of the first of the modern style
depressions. Owen proposed exchanges where food and
clothing would be bartered for labor, and self-supporting
cooperative agricultural communities. He deprecated class
warfare and urged the workers not to fight capital, but to
cooperate and to produce. His experiments failed but the
foundation of the cooperative movement was laid.
Owen's principles of cooperation and harmony were
challenged in 1833 by the syndicalist group which had an
entirely different approach to the questions at issue and
advocated the general strike and direct action in taking
over the control of industries by the workers. So too in
1932 the cooperative movement in Los Angeles County is
more or less challenged by a totally dissimilar association
known as the Unemployed Council of Los Angeles which
has a headquarters and several branches.
The history of this movement is, so far as general knowl-
edge goes, somewhat meager. The Lawndale Branch, led by
the Rev. John E. Hester, graduate of the Chicago Theologi-
cal Seminary, gained considerable prominence in Septem-
ber when it arranged a meeting at a local highschool where
representatives of public and private charities were to ap-
pear to hear the testimony and complaints of the unem-
ployed, this after the manner of the Chicago public hearings
of the unemployed (see They Speak Up in Chicago by Karl
Borders, The Survey, March i, 1932, page 663). Just be-
fore the meeting the local school board revoked the permit
to use the building on the ground that the Lawndale
Branch was associated with the Unemployed Council of
Los Angeles which it termed a communist organization. In
early October this Council figured in a lively street demon-
stration when the police broke up a hunger march on the
County Welfare Department. Through the intervention of
deputy sheriffs a few of the marchers reached their destina-
tion and presented not their petition but their demands.
THE nature of these demands, the will to leap over the
slow processes of change, is what lends this movement
its significance. They are based on the premise that "the
natural resources and the productive capacities of the
county certainly enable everyone to have plenty if it were
not for idle unemployed, idle factories, mills, mines, work-
shops and farms." The document presented to the Public
Welfare Department of the Board of Supervisors of Los
Angeles County, popularly known as the County Welfare
Department, stated first, "Our immediate demand is
adequate food relief," followed by criticism of the methods
of the department and such specific demands as "coffee
and shortening in every order where desired. Cash allow-
ance for fresh meat for all families." Free medical and
dental care for the families of all unemployed and partially
employed, adequate housing with no evictions and free gas,
light and water for those unable to pay, were specified.
Further, "We are interested in the solidarity of all workers,
native and foreign-born, white and colored, and demand
that there be no discrimination." And finally, " We demand
steady work for all unemployed workers at a minimum of
$4 per day in cash, five days a week, working not more than
eight hours a day. In case there are more than three de-
pendents in a family $3 a week to be paid for each addi-
tional dependent in the family."
The contrast between these two movements is evident.
The Unemployed Council bases its claim on the right of
everyone living in a land of plenty to have what he needs.
Its method is direct action though in this case the demand
for the resources of a satisfactory life was made upon
public charity officials. The actual structure of present
society is ignored; the inherent difficulties of the present
situation are not discussed. The Cooperative Relief Asso-
ciation, officially disclaiming any political motive or
affiliation, emphasizes cooperation among the workers,
harmony with existing economic groups and the bartering
of labor for the necessities of life. Its program studiously
8
THE SURVEY
January 1933
avoids starting anything that might compete with local
merchants or manufacturers and has no provision that
would lead us to expect it to continue when there is nothing
to "chisel" and no surplus crops to gather. Yet there are
elements in its method, organization and experience which
raise questions, especially in the light of the statement by
President William Green of the American Federation of
Labor that half of the ten million now unemployed may
never, because of technical changes, be able to find their
way back into the industries of the country. Is it not pos-
sible that this spontaneous movement offers suggestions for
the effective organization of relief in the years ahead?
Neither the cooperative nor the direct-action technique
is distinctly American. Cooperatives function successfully
in various European countries but have never gained much
headway or interest here. The direct-action method savors
also more of European than American tradition. The side-
by-side development of these two movements so totally
different in philosophy and operation offers an interesting
prospect for the student of social change.
Taxes and Social Services
By LOULA D. LASKER
"ITH the cost of local, state and federal govern-
ment in 1931 reaching $4, 172,000,000 compared
to $692,000,000 in 1913 — a rise of 502 percent
compared to national income of $37,500,000,000 and $34,-
000,000,000 in the two periods, it is evident that the science
of raising and spending public funds is a fruitful subject of
study and research. Hence the importance of the National
Conference on Taxation, Readjustment of Governmental
Expenditures and Problems of Public Credit sponsored
last month by New York University with the cooperation
of some dozen national organizations. And for social work-
ers, of particular importance, for a striking number of
speakers held that public social services — used in the
broadest sense — were the only field of production still ca-
pable of expansion under present conditions; the field, there-
fore, in which a "cure" for the depression must be
sought. As David Cushman Coyle, consulting engineer,
put it:
Some new category of industry needs to be developed ....
"Services" fill the bill. Health, recreation, education and art, the
reclamation of delinquents and the segregation of the unfit, the
beautification of city and country, the growth of research, ex-
ploration, experimentation — all these activities make up a vast
field for varied and untrained workers. The field is limited only
by the limitations of new power to think of new projects. The
answer to the problem of technological unemployment is a con-
tinuous and massive expansion of cultural and quasi-cultural
activities. The answer to the problem of destitution in an age of
plenty lies in the employment of most of the population in the
amenities of life. This conclusion is purely an engineering one.
Virgil Johnson, editor of Business Week, asked: "Must
we go through with the grim, sardonic and delusive pursuit
of higher private standards of life through lower public
standards of living? . . . Ultimately I hope there will be a
return of reason and sanity which will show us once more
the real significance of public spending for the stability
of our economic system." George Soule, an editor of The
New Republic, held that "People in general would benefit
more from goods and services provided them by govern-
ment than from the extra goods which might be produced
by private industry. Personally, if there is such a choice, I
should far rather have such things as plenty of public parks
and forests and the assurance of support in the event of
illness, unemployment or old age, than a hundred extra
gadgets." Said Harold S. Buttenheim, editor of The Amer-
ican City Magazine: "It may very well prove to be wise
social policy to take anjncreasingly larger share of the total
income for public works, constructive cultural and recrea-
tional services and other governmental purposes." And
Russell Ramsey, director of the Taxpayers Research
League, challenged the group in another way: "When we
consider, for example, whether we can afford to spend
$106,000,000 annually for the care of the insane and
feebleminded, we have also to consider whether we can
afford not to spend it."
In general the plea for wholesale horizontal cutting of
governmental expenditures came from the more or less
acknowledged conservatives — or might one say, the "die-
hards"? Few doubt today that the days of the die-hards
are numbered. But are social workers, in charge of the
public social services, ready to lead if the chance is given
them?
For five days conservative and liberal schools of thought
clashed over the relative merits also of income vs. sales tax,
over the preservation of wage levels vs. wholesale wage-
cuts, and other matters that must be taken into account in
formulating a rounded program of public finance.
TO attempt even briefly to summarize a half-hundred
papers in a single page is an impossible feat. Suffice it to
say there was more or less general agreement that taxes
should be levied in accordance with three principles,
namely: capacity to pay, in a manner so as not unduly to
restrict business, and finally that tax legislation should not
be attached as a rider to bills primarily for other purposes,
or vice versa. But in the application of the first two of these
principles, there was a wide divergence of opinion. At one
extreme was Robert McCormick, editor of The Chicago
Tribune, who called high taxation of business "larceny
under the mantle of moralistic public purpose," and at the
other Harold G. Aron, New York lawyer, who advocated
the drafting of capital through an enforced loan during the
emergency to pay the wages of a "national service" just as
capital was drafted during the war for a military service.
Perhaps no startling new contribution was made, yet
the conference had a decidedly constructive value in the
very fact that away from the bitterness and bias of a more
"wordly" atmosphere, when the public is in dire need of
education on these burning problems of public finance,
leading exponents of opposing schools were given an op-
portunity to put forth their different conceptions of a rem-
edy on a neutral platform. The papers and discussion by a
hundred experts will be published in a forthcoming volume
on public finance which should be of great value to students
of the subject, in legislature or academic halls or wherever
they may be.
Drawn by George Wright for The New York Times' Hundred Neediest Ca»el
Shock Troops to the Rescue
I;
Chicago Settlement Houses
Have Become Centers for a New
Kind of Life for Those Who
Must Live on "the Relief"
By GERTRUDE SPRINGER
SUPPOSE I gotta go." The big man grinned
crookedly and turned to the door that divided the
bright warmth of the settlement house from the
cold gloom of the Chicago street. "The landlord'll be
waitin' for me. Poor fella, he's got it tough too. I stall and
he stalls and we don't fool each other. But if the Relief
ain't sent the coal yet — since Tuesday we've been lookin'
for it."
" But this is Saturday and bitter cold," I protested. "You
mean to say that they promised coal last Tuesday and ..."
"But they can't do everything at once," he cut in. "This
relief business is so big there's bound to be slips. I guess
you don't understand the system." And he proceeded to
give me a clear and lucid outline of the organization of
relief in Chicago. "Of course it ain't perfect, but we've got
our way of checking up if it gets too bad. And to beef about
every last little slip don't help any. You gotta understand
the system."
Understanding the system plus "our own way of check-
ing up" are the lubricating elements which the Chicago
settlements are supplying to the city's vast complicated
machinery of relief. Of course interpretation and expression
are nothing new in settlement philosophy. What is different
in Chicago is the practical way this philosophy is being
directed to what Jane Addams calls "education in the cur-
rent event." And the current event in Chicago is unem-
ployment and relief.
Since the current event assumed wholesale dimensions
the settlements have been the Marthas of the situation,
going along behind the big machine, picking up the pieces,
mopping up the inevitable residue of individual misunder-
standings, filling in the gaps when the machine shifts gears,
explaining, adjusting and on occasion protesting. When
general rules work individual hardships the settlements
mitigate the hardships while hammering away for a modi-
fication of the rules. When confusion heaps up beyond the
understanding of simple folk the settlements help to find
ways to release overwrought emotion and to give the
inarticulate their day in court.
What the settlements are doing swings largely on their
relationship with the organized groups of unemployed.
There are in the city three such groups of considerable
proportions, says the Council of Social Agencies.
The Chicago Workers' Committee on Unemployment
was organized about a year ago under the wing of the
League for Industrial Democracy and in cooperation with
settlement people (see The Unemployed Speak Up in
Chicago, by Karl Borders, The Survey, March 15, 1932,
page 663.) This group favors change in the economic and
industrial system through nonpartisan political action as
opposed to violence. It seeks to voice an intelligent and
effective protest against existing conditions and to find a
remedy for the causes which create mass unemployment.
The trend among the members is socialistic, with the rank
and file primarily concerned -with current needs.
THE Workers League of America grew out of a left-wing
movement of the old proletarian party with its leaders
fundamentalists of the Marxian school. It claims to be
truly communistic though at odds with the principles and
methods of the Communist Party of America.
The Unemployed Councils, with a large number of
locals, is definitely communist in its leadership though
much of its membership is not. A major activity, in addi-
tion to communist propaganda, is engaging in mass demon-
strations against official bodies and relief stations.
There is little sympathy between the Unemployed
Councils and the other two organizations. Last fall when
the relief administration was all but paralyzed by shortage
of funds and was obliged to cut rations in half until federal
funds came through, it seemed as if a common ground of
protest had been found. By spontaneous action all three
groups of unemployed planned for a march through the
streets. It was to be a silent, bannerless protest, the united
front of the hungry and helpless. At the last moment,
against the protests of the others, the Unemployed Coun-
cils turned its section into a communist demonstration. The
common ground slipped away and though the march went
on, a somber, impressive spectacle, the possibility of
further demonstrations on a united front became remote.
It is with the Workers' Committee on Unemployment
that the settlements cooperate with the clearest under-
10
THE SURVEY
January 1933
standing and sympathy. This organization really began in
the settlements through the formation of a delegate body
from the men's groups already meeting in two or three of
the houses. Other settlements then organized groups of the
unemployed in their neighborhoods or offered a meeting-
place to groups already organized. A number of churches
followed suit and presently the movement spread all over
the city. Eighteen settlements are now centers for twenty-
four of the fifty-five locals of the Chicago Workers' Com-
mittee on Unemployment, affiliated by delegate repre-
sentation in a central council. Chicago Commons alone has
some two thousand Italian, Polish and Greek men with a
sprinkling of their women-folk registered in its organized
groups, "Although," says Lea D. Taylor, the head worker,
regretfully, "we are really equipped to work with less
than half that number."
IN THE beginning the men seemed numb and bewildered,
borne down by their individual troubles, articulate
only in their grievances. Grievance committees remedied
much of that. Locals in the relief districts now have a repre-
sentative committee to which anyone may bring his case.
If it is a good one the committee presents it to the relief
office and usually, such is the confidence established, gets
action on its recommendations. "These committees are a
terrible nuisance," said the supervisor of a district, "but
they certainly know their business and I can't imagine
where we would have been without them."
But grievances were not enough to go on. The men
wanted more. They wanted understanding of the com-
plexities of the American political and industrial order,
and as human beings they groped for some conviction that
they were more than helpless cogs in the machine. Recre-
ation was not answer enough. "Our Polish men were at
first opposed to any form of recreation," said Mollie Ray
Carroll of the University of Chicago Settlement. "They
were unwilling to accept music as a substitute for bread."
The experience of the settlement workers with men
counted strongly at this point in supplementing and fortify-
ing the leadership of the unemployed themselves in building
up programs with educational content and activities
related to the current event. The locals of the Workers'
Committee now broke up into small groups to discuss and
think through their own situation as working people, to
engage in action directed toward legislation and to plan
how to make their efforts effective. Speakers are useful
insofar as they promote discussion — otherwise not. A sub-
stantial basis of economics and political science is always
present though not necessarily by those names. The settle-
ment people know the usefulness of discussion in getting
men to think beyond their own troubles, they know the
relief that comes from talking things out, the individual
assurance that comes from group confidence, and they see
their part as giving all the impetus they can to a movement
that has its strength in its spontaneity. Recently the men
themselves have felt the need of more background and
with the help of the settlements and of the Council on
Adult Education have worked out plans for developing
their own leaders in thinking, in discussion and in expres-
sion— training courses if you like to call them that, though
the old terminology seems tame before the virility of what
is happening among these thousands of men who are
learning together, feeling their way toward a new expres-
sion of their individuality, and fortifying each other's
courage and morale.
When it comes to the relief situation — and no one gets
very far away from it in Chicago — the settlements find
themselves playing new themes in their old role of inter-
preter. The high-powered, swift-moving relief organiza-
tion, whipped together two years ago out of the experience
of the family-relief agencies, but necessarily modified by
restricted funds and the dearth of experienced workers,
calls for interpretation by those who appreciate its sin-
cerity and know the practical difficulties under which it
labors. And the people who pour through the great maw of
relief, whose lives are for the moment shaped by it, need
interpretation to the organization that they may retain
their stature as individual human beings. It was the settle-
ment people who gained access to the relief authorities for
the representatives of the Workers' Committee on Unem-
ployment, and who still stand by; and it was they who
pulled together the conference groups — nurses, social
workers, relief supervisors, unemployed and so on — which
are more or less attached to relief stations and which in
monthly meetings clear the atmosphere of misunder-
standings on all sides.
Picking up the pieces behind the Relief — it's a household
word in Chicago and needs no quotes — is as many sided as
human nature itself. What the settlements are doing is to'
sort out the pieces and when enough of the same stripe are
accumulated to press on the relief organization for a general
adjustment that will eliminate that particular unhappy by-
product. For instance the Relief last winter made no provi-
sion for carfares for school children. Many highschool boys
and girls had to choose between walking miles to school or
dropping out into street-corner idling. The settlements
stepped in, provided carfares and made such a strong case
that this winter the Relief budgeted carfares as necessary
expenses. At one time when funds were short and precarious
the Relief provided no medical supplies. If spectacles or
braces or false teeth were broken, or if there wasn't any
boracic for the baby's eyes, nothing could be done about it.
The settlements met the emergency for their troubled
neighbors and are now rejoicing that the Emergency Relief
Fund has been able to budget some $300,000 for dental care
and medical aid to families on relief. Lack of stoves has
worked hardship on people accustomed to gas and central
heating. For a long time the Relief made no provision for
stoves in which to use the fuel it supplied. Now, when ne-
cessity is evident, it allows a small sum for this purpose.
THE settlements claim no credit except as they afford a
taking-off place and provide opportunities for the par-
ticular kind of neighborly help which the people give each
other. That, they say, has come from the unemployed
themselves. For instance at Association House and a num-
ber of other settlements the Workers' Committee local keeps
a squad of ten men on duty all day, shock troops, to pop
into any emergency that may arise. If Mrs. Olinsky's relief
coal has by someone's error been dumped in the street and
she, with a lame back poor soul, has no way to get it up
four flights to her kitchen, the shock troops are there in two
shakes to do the job. If the baker in the next block tele-
phones that he has a hundred left-over loaves and does Mr.
Eells know anybody . . . presto, a couple of men get it
and deliver it to the homes where the relief ration is
stretched thin.
Rents are admittedly the weakness of the Chicago relief
system, a weakness of which the Emergency Relief Com-
mission is regretfully aware. A new policy which now lacks
January 1933
THE SURVEY
11
only funds may be in effect by the time these words are
read.
It is in the minor tragedies which result from the bad
rent situation that the shock troops find dramatic oppor-
tunities for service. The policy of the Relief, up to this
writing, is to pay a month's rent on eviction. That is, when
a family is actually on the street the Relief will provide a
minimum sum for the first month's rent in new quarters,
but the family must find the new quarters and must con-
vince the landlord that it is a desirable tenant — a job which
makes Ananiases of them all. Shrinking from the inevitable,
clinging to the belief that God or somebody will provide,
families find themselves on the street with no idea where to
turn for shelter or how to transport their poor huddled
possessions. In many of the settlements the Workers' Com-
mittee locals have listed all the vacant flats in the neighbor-
hood. At the first word of an eviction the shock troops are
under way with the list in their hands and sturdy backs for
the moving. They fix it with reluctant landlords too:
"Don't ask me how, lady. There's some things you just
have to do. The landlords are sure holding the bag. But
you gotta be hard-boiled these days."
In spite of the rent policy there have not been as many
evictions in Chicago as one might expect. The legal process
of eviction costs the landlord $25. Naturally he tries to
avoid adding this charge to his losses from long unpaid rent.
And naturally, human nature being what it is, some of the
fraternity resort to petty persecutions to get a tenant to
leave of his own, in a manner of speaking, accord. Tke ten-
ants just as naturally hang on to the bitter end. Thus it
becomes a sort of cat-and-mouse business between landlord
and tenant with the settlement people somewhere between,
explaining and reconciling, and with the shock troops lend-
ing active comfort to the mouse. Mrs. Rosso's landlord takes
down the door to her flat and carries it off. Come a couple of
carpenters from the local with a knocked-up packing case
and presently Mrs. Rosso has a door that answers every
practical purpose. Mrs. Kelly's little boy reports breath-
lessly that his mother's kitchen is flooded — a mysterious
hole in a water-pipe and the landlord won't do anything.
A plumber, doing his tour of duty on the emergency squad,
solders up the hole, obviously punched with a chisel. Mrs.
Cohen is being smoked out, "Come a'runnin'." Shock-
troopers climb up to the roof, remove a rough and ready
layer of bricks from Mrs. Cohen's chimney top, and life
goes on.
Self-help projects such as Seattle and Los Angeles
County, California, boast, have not made much headway
in Chicago. The members of the Workers' Committee are
pledged against "chiseling." Efforts last fall to secure sur-
plus garden produce were not very successful. Association
House still groans at the memory of some ten thousand
heads of cabbage that its local hauled in from a Wisconsin
farm to be distributed according to need. It took days for
the House to dig itself out of what it still calls "case-work
cabbages. " Of course the men at the settlements barber
each other and cobble each other's shoes and swap odd re-
pair jobs in each other's flats, and always give yeoman's
service to the house itself. At most of the houses there is a
regular exchange of articles in the food rations — the family
with only a garbage burner to cook on will trade its flour
for the rice or the dried beans of a family that still boasts
an oven.
Through the maelstrom into which the current event has
plunged the settlements the ordinary stream of their activ-
ities, swollen by numbers, flows steadily on. The English
classes and the mothers' clubs are bigger than ever, health
work and young people's activities are multiplied, music
and art hold their own. But even in these steady streams
the pressure of the current event is felt. The women of the
Jolly Mothers Club no longer compete for honors with tan-
talizing old-world dishes. Instead they concentrate on new
ways to serve up the relief rations. The health classes talk
less of nourishment these days than of fending against
undernourishment. The sewing classes find tests for their
ingenuity in making over the worn garments that are sent
in. A blouse salvaged from an old skirt is a greater triumph
than a chiffon party dress used to be. Even the children
have learned new grim games out of the realities of three
hard winters.
The nursery school door opened on a hubbub. Some sort
of game was going on to the accompaniment of make-
believe tears, groans and harsh orders and much violent
shifting around of toys. "It's Eviction," explained^ the work-
er ruefully. "They're playing Eviction. They don't play
keeping-house any more or even having-tonsils-out. Some-
times they play Relief, but Eviction is the favorite — it has
more action and they all know how to play it."
American Relief Caravan
By RUSSELL H. KURTZ
Field Representative, Charity Organization Department, Russell Sage Foundation
L ROM the Emergency Relief Division of the Recon-
struction Finance Corporation there issued last
month a letter and set of accounting forms that puts
teeth into the oft-repeated warning of the Corporation that
"it is plainly the intent of the Emergency Relief and Con-
struction Act of 1932 that funds shall be made available by
the Reconstruction Finance Corporation not in lieu of but
merely supplemental to local and state funds and private
contributions."
This letter in effect says to the governors of the states
that have received aid through the Corporation since the
Act was passed last July: "An accounting is now in order.
If you are expecting to come before the Corporation for
further help after January i, 1933 tell us now how the
money which you have received so far has been spent."
Nothing unusual in this. But then comes the paragraph
with the punch: "Many states have regular or special ses-
sions of their legislature in prospect by which state and
local relief funds can be made available. Therefore, an
outline of the legislative program to produce this result is
especially important in order that the Reconstruction
Finance Corporation may determine its course of action."
12
THE SURVEY
January 1933
Thus does the Corporation point up the philosophy
under which it has been making available to states the
Emergency Relief funds put at its disposal by Congress.
The amount appropriated, $300,000,000, "in accordance
with the wording of the Act, shall, until the expiration of
two years after the date of enactment of this Act, be avail-
able for payment to the governors of the several states and
territories for the purposes of this section, upon application
therefore by them in accordance with subsection (c), and
upon approval of such applications by the corporation."
It has not been administered by the R. F. C., however,
with the idea that it must cover a two-year or any definite
period but upon the basis of need which could not other-
wise be met as certified by the governors of the several
states.
Whether or not this philosophy of supplementation to
state and local effort is the proper one for the federal gov-
ernment to operate under in the relief of unemployment is a
question upon which there are sharp differences of opinion.
Edith Abbott has forcefully stated the case of the conscien-
tious objectors in a late number of The New Republic.
These and other aspects of national unemployment, more-
over, will be judicially examined by last winter's Social
Work Steering Committee, reconstituted under the spon-
sorship of the American Association of Social Workers as
the Committee on Federal Action on Unemployment.
Much will be said on both sides of this subject before
the winter is over. It may be pertinent, therefore, to
record one observer's impressions as to how the present
set-up functions, without attempting to compare it
with any of the other methods that have been or may be
proposed.
THE activity in the office of the Emergency Relief
Division of the Reconstruction Finance Corporation,
over which Fred C. Croxton presides as assistant to the
directors, is strongly reminiscent of that which is found in
the community fund offices at budget-approving time.
Hither come the governors' representatives with applica-
tions for funds with which the relief programs in their
communities may be continued. The data are set up under
three general headings: past expenditures and practice,
current needs and resources, future outlook and plans.
Supporting tabulations for each county or city for which
funds are asked accompany the application.
Occasionally requests are made for grants to cover six
months or a year in advance, but the policy of the Corpora-
tion has been to limit its approvals to shorter periods,
pending the completion of chest drives and the arrival of
states' legislative periods. Stressing the emergency and
supplementary nature of its aid, it has required such appli-
cations to undergo a revision. Frequently applications have
been made without careful analysis of the need and avail-
able local resources and here, too, a revamping has had to
be ordered. The analogy with chest procedure is heightened
by the degree of informality which pervades these budget-
revising activities. Round-table methods are used and
agreements reached step by step.
The Corporation has no arbitrary standards of relief to
which it asks the states to conform. Past performance in
the various localities is taken as the base upon which the
joint program is built. Should this performance appear to
approximate the need, the R. F. C. goes along with the
local group in continuing on this basis with the aid of
federal funds. Wide variations from past levels, on either
the up or down side, are questioned. And where the tradi-
tional relief levels seem inadequate by comparison with
similar situations elsewhere, the Corporation may be found
persuading the community to increase the amount asked
for.
IN the matter of local administration of relief funds, the
Corporation allows itself a freer expression as to required
standards. In almost all of the thirty-five states (as of
December i) which have received Reconstruction Finance
Corporation funds, state relief administrations have been
set up or designated upon the advice of the Corporation.
In some instances, these are the State Welfare Depart-
ments, in others specially designated state boards, and in
still others, emergency committees. And behind the state
relief administration stands a large and rapidly increasing
group of county relief committees, brought into being in
many states through Corporation suggestions.
From the first, the phrase "including the cost of local re-
lief administration" has qualified the Corporation definition
of relief. An impressive mass of evidence is appearing in all
parts of the country as to the alertness which state relief
administrations have shown in translating this policy into
action in certain of their backward communities. "This is
federal money you are spending," they have said to local
relief officials, "and it cannot be wasted or handed out
without proper investigation as to need. Provide yourselves
with adequate and competent staffs." Frequently they go
further and place the local units under the supervision of
field workers on the state staff— an almost revolutionary
step in some mid-western communities. Illustrations of this
sort of development are reported from time to time in the
Unemployment and Community Action department of this
journal.
Compilation of the data required in support of the appli-
cation for funds has been a profitable activity in most
counties. Many a community has received its first compos-
ite photograph of the local unemployment situation by
going through this painful exercise in self-examination. In
the larger centers, where social statistics are commonplace,
amazingly complete documents have been prepared, re-
plete with tables, charts and other illuminating addenda.
We often accuse ourselves of tolerating chaotic relief
conditions in this country, yet a pattern seems to be
emerging. It is a pattern of county units woven into a state
fabric of relief administration which promises to have more
than a fleeting existence.
Federal aid has been a stimulus to the weaving of this
fabric and has been providing an increasing portion of the
material from which it has been woven. Now, with legisla-
tures meeting in forty state capitals, a check-up is being
made to see that there is no let-down in local activity.
The Emergency Relief and Construction Act puts the obli-
gation upon the states to make sure that their resources
"including moneys then available and which can be made
available by the state, its political subdivisions, and private
contributions, are inadequate to meet its relief needs"
before certifying the necessity for federal funds. The em-
phasis is now being placed upon the words "which can be
made available."
And so the American Relief Caravan — composed of local,
state and national forces, functioning each in its allotted
turn and sphere — moves on. Congress, the social-work
fraternity, or even the R. F. C. itself may change its pace
if not its course. Whither is it headed?
Social Workers Hesitate and Then — ?
An Inventory of Their Fears, Perspectives, Principles, Hopes
By EDUARD C. LINDEMAN
Faculty of the New York School of Social Work
URING the late War I came to despise that little
word morale. Those who employed it seemed
always to infer that those who sustained a re-
strained mood, who failed to "boost" the War, were some-
how traitorous. But, it was nevertheless a useful word since
it reminded us again of the age-old fact that man's true
resources come from within, not from without, that the War
would ultimately be won or lost by a test of character, regard-
less of who won the battles. And, that issue is still unsettled.
We are now engaged in another struggle even more im-
portant than the War of 1914-18, a struggle, indeed, of
which that War was merely an interlude and a symptom.
We have come to the end of an historic epoch. The founda-
tions of our economic, political, social, intellectual and
moral institutions have begun to disintegrate. With respect
to economic life the disease is deep-seated and startling;
our institutions of production, distribution, and credit
refuse to perform their appropriate functions and conse-
quently millions of people throughout the Western world
must face insecurity and marginal starvation. But, what is
of even greater significance is the fact that we have lost faith
in ourselves, our intellectual equipment, and our experts.
We hesitate, and for good reason. The alternatives which
confront us are not simple, despite the easy logic of
extremists of both the "right" and the "left." One of three
pathways may be chosen: we may
(a) strive to reconstruct the competitive system, to return to
the days of expansion, speculation, and external (though un-
balanced) prosperity, or
(b) we may adjust downward to the level of a pain-economy,
marginal subsistence and uncreative mediocrity, or
(c) we may candidly set to work in laying the plans for a new
civilization based upon revised conceptions of economic processes
and social ends. If we make the first choice, the main attribute
required of us is a grim sort of stubbornness coupled with a will-
ingness to tolerate widespread suffering; if we travel the way of
the second alternative, we shall need merely a sufficient amount
of cowardice to be prepared to live in a dark age; and if we step
boldly in the third direction, we shall need steadiness, courage,
faith, and wisdom.
And, while we hesitate I continue to search the horizon
for such signs of hope as may become manifest in human
personality. The portents, I must admit, are not promising.
Our political and economic leadership is bankrupt, both
with respect to ideas and courage; everywhere in high cir-
cles one notes vacillation, timidity, ineptness and fear, and
worst of all, a stubborn unwillingness to confront the crisis
in realistic terms. As the fourth winter of suffering and de-
spair approaches we stand as impotent as at the start, no
nearer a plan and a program than we were when our leaders
spoke blithely of a "depression" which was to be dissipated
in the soft glow of a sunrise "just around the corner."
HOW is it, then, with social workers? What is happen-
ing to those technicians who function at that point
where economic dislocation reflects itself in human suffer-
ing? Those who must see the crisis, not as a statistical ab-
straction but as loss of self-respect, as sickness and as
potential starvation? Is their morale high or low? Have
they evolved a sense of direction ? Do they show signs of
steadiness, courage, faith and wisdom?
Questions such as the above were in my mind as I min-
gled with professional workers and their lay constituents
at the thirty-first annual conference of social work in New
Jersey. And, finally, it became my function to summarize
their deliberations, to note what had been said and left
unsaid, to detect the undertones and overtones of their dis-
cussions, and to condense these observations in a closing
synthesis. What I have written below is an epitome of that
summary.
First of all, a word about the New Jersey Conference:
it displays three characteristics which deserve emphasis,
namely
(a) its consistent policy of encouraging the participation of
laymen,
(b) its functional and collaborative relationship with various
state departments and public agencies involved in social welfare,
and
(c) its courage in actually allowing its members to confer.
Fourteen of the nineteen sessions of its recent conference
were conducted as discussion groups. In a conference of
this sort the observer is not limited to appraisal of individ-
ual pronouncements which may or may not be sanctioned
by the group as a whole; on the contrary, one is permitted
to come very near the actual thought-processes of the
conferees, to learn how they confront their problems,
and to discover the direction of their aspirations.
It seemed to me both convenient and meaningful to ar-
range the various currents of thought revealed throughout
this conference under four major categories, namely:
Fears, Perspectives, Principles and Hopes. Each of these I
shall discuss in merest outline, omitting the designation of
names of speakers and participants, and limiting myself to
pointed statements intended to sharpen issues as well as
convey gradients of meaning.
(i) The Fears of Social Workers
SOCIAL workers in their deliberations appear to express
fears of at least four varieties, and in each instance one
may trace their hesitation and their lack of clear-cut policy
to these underlying doubts and misgivings.
(a) They fear, first of all, that privately-managed social work
may soon be swallowed in the great maw of politics, government
and bureaucracy. They begin to see that in this crisis social wel-
fare has quickly become dependent upon government and its
numerous agencies. They are frightened by this sudden transition
because they have been taught to believe that the quality of pub-
lic service in American life is unusually low.
(b) They fear that the standards of social work which have
been so laboriously built up during the past fifty years will be
sacrificed under the pressure of furnishing material relief.
13
14
THE SURVEY
January 1933
(c) They fear that their own jobs may soon be in jeopardy
because of the incapacity or unwillingness of the people to pay for
professional social work.
(d) They entertain, finally, fears for the future of the economic
and social order itself; social workers are aware, perhaps more so
than most other professionals, of the cumulative nature of the dis-
ease which has precipitated "poverty in the midst of plenty."
Exceptions may legitimately be taken to each and all of
the above fears. Not all social workers stand affrighted
before the drift from private to public auspices and support,
and many believe that the elevation of the quality of
public service is a task which may be confronted with hope
rather than despair. But, in order to understand where so-
cial workers stand with respect to the crisis, these fears
need to be considered.
(2) Expanding Perspectives
IT is a curious fact that at the very moment when social
workers are preoccupied with the task of keeping people
alive, of maintaining minimum standards, they should also
be considering the spread of their work to wider horizons.
But, this seems, nevertheless, to be the case.
(a) New Jersey social workers have extended an invitation to
the medical profession to regard their function as being primarily
social in purpose. Fortunately, the late conference of the New
Jersey social workers occurred immediately after the publication
of the report of the Committee on the Cost of Medical Care.
Physicians, nurses and hospital workers were represented and
the discussions took on a fresh and vital tone. The medical profes-
sion was asked to socialize its function, to rid itself of the scandal
which permits adequate medical service only for those who are
sufficiently wealthy to afford to pay rising fees or for those who are
so far degraded as to be prepared to accept charity. Further,
they called attention to the problem of the chronically ill and
asked that these be considered as an integral part of the social
rather than the purely medical situation. They stressed the im-
portance of health as preventative, particularly with respect to
children.
(b) Mental hygiene, the discipline which has exercised a vital-
izing influence over social work for more than two decades, is also
being viewed in the light of new perspectives. Perhaps more
emphatic than any other trend is the growing insistence that
psychiatry, and especially so-called psychiatric social work, finds
its place within a social rather than an individual context. As our
meaning of current crisis sinks more deeply into consciousness all
of us come to realize that our major behavior difficulties arise
from social situations. No amount of "individual psychology,"
no matter how skilled the analysts, will explain why it happens
that at the very moment in world history when we are best
equipped for the transportation of goods and for communication —
at that moment, world trade all but ceases. Hence, following the
lead of Dr. Freud himself, as evidenced in his more recent works,
psychiatrists and social workers are striving for two new psycho-
logical perspectives: they want to see psychiatry in relation to
the social problem, and they want to utilize its technique in
connection with less pathological situations.
(c) Sociologists have stressed the importance of the rural social
problem ever since the publication of the report of President
Roosevelt's Country Life Commission but very little has been
done about it. Now that we live in the midst of an economic crisis
which affects rural as well as urban folk, we begin to see more
clearly than ever the gravity of those neglected rural social
problems. New Jersey social workers wish, not merely to include
rural dwellers in their future programs, but they are now inquir-
ing as to ways and means of developing techniques for rural
social work which will be as efficient as those evolved in cities.
These three perspectives have been selected from among
many others which were revealed by the discussions.
The second and third will be found in many other social-
work reports but I doubt whether there has ever been
anything as far reaching and significant in such discussions
as was implied in the above-mentioned deliberations con-
cerning the medical profession. Those who wish to keep
their ears close to the ground of present stirrings and immi-
nent events of vast importance will do well to listen intently
to coming examinations of the two great disciplines of
human welfare — health and social work.
(3) Some Principles Reaffirmed
WHENEVER conferences confront new situations and
enlarge their perspectives it also becomes the part of
logic to deal with general principles. New Jersey social
workers did not evade this aspect of their task, and al-
though they did not propose principles of a new order, they
did restate and reaffirm older ones of real importance.
These may be briefly stated as propositions or assumptions
such as
(a) That public and private social-work agencies can no longer
consider themselves as rivals but must henceforth devise means of
collaboration and coordination;
(b) That competition between social agencies is a betrayal of
community confidence;
(c) That the social problem is inclusive and must be regarded
technically no matter what form of society is to evolve in the
future;
(d) That social structures must be rendered sufficiently flexible
to allow for sudden changes in functioning;
(e) That social work must once again become "social" in the
sense that it is to deal with the organic social problem and is to
be judged according to social criteria.
As noted above, these principles are not new among social
workers of this generation but one begins to see that they
are now being considered with a new seriousness. If it were
possible to invoke these principles as thoroughgoing rules
of action, social work would take on a wholly new com-
plexion.
(4) The Hopes of Social Workers
WHAT might be expected of social workers as co-
operators in the task of new social planning? If one
might envisage a planning board at work devising an out-
line for a new social and economic scheme of things, what
promises would social workers hold out for the future?
How, for example, would their sources of hope differ from
those of other technologists, such as engineers, physicians,
et cetera? This is a query which has often perturbed me
during these fateful days of disintegration. Social workers
of New Jersey seemed also to be disturbed by the challenge
of hope and consequently one entire section of group dis-
cussions was devoted to examinations of the constructive
elements in contemporary civilization, viewed, of course,
from a social standpoint. Whatever faith they entertain for
the future seems to adhere to their belief in
(a) fbe Family: Their hope at this point derives from the feel-
ing that family life is now passing through a cleansing process;
that married persons are slowly discovering a humanistic basis
January 1933
THE SURVEY
IS
for inter-family affections, freed from the blight of absolute
authority and possessiveness; that machines need not minimize
family functions but may in reality tend toward exhalting those
which are essential; and, that affections of a lasting sort are not
the given qualities of the married relationship but are emergents
of participation and interaction;
(b) fbe Foreign-born Population: Social workers have come to
recognize that our foreign families have withstood the onslaught
and the threat of a pain-economy in a manner which elicits praise;
they think now of those naive days of "Americanization" propa-
ganda and their pride turns to humility; and now they turn to
these foreign groups in order to discover the sources of their per-
sistence, their hope and their courage.
(c) Local Neighborhoods and Communities: As suffering and
denial come closer and closer to all Americans there seems to arise
a new sense of local responsibility, a revival of neighborliness.
In many sections of the country new forms of neighborhood and
community organization are springing into being. And, at the
very period in our history when centralization of control and au-
thority has reached its maximum there appears this new and
freshening reassertion of the smaller social units — those units
from which our greatness once arose and to which we must always
return in periods of instability.
(d) Recreation as a Culture-builder: The state and its culture
are derived from two primary sources, namely: the products of
our necessary and compulsory labor, and the consequences of our
leisure-time. As economic production tends toward greater and
greater reliance upon machines it becomes obvious that in the
future industry wjll be judged chiefly upon the basis of its capac-
ity to induce good human experience. But, since it also becomes
obvious that this necessary preoccupation with productive
enterprises will require a diminishing proportion of the worker's
time, we begin to see that future culture will be measurable largely
in terms of its products of leisure.
(e) New Capacities Derived from Consumption: In spite of the
fact that the nature of the consuming function has been radically
altered through the ministrations of advertising and high-pressure
salesmanship, social workers still seem to see constructive pos-
sibilities in this direction; they seem to believe in a future group
of self-conscious consumers who may, through their spending
and purchasing functions, become active agents for social and
economic change.
(0 Religion: Notwithstanding the fact that the institutions of
religion seem to weaken steadily under a civilization dominated
by science, industry and technology, social workers seem still to
view religion itself as a resource of hope. Many of them, indeed,
appear to feel that religion as a means of cleansing our motives,
of enabling us to live for new incentives, and of correcting our
sense of values will play a role of increasing importance in future
readjustments.
(g) Laymen: Now that the folk of the world have begun to sus-
pect experts and specialists, and no longer expect them to solve
the world's problems by the simple procedure of reference, some-
thing of extreme importance is transpiring in the minds of both
laymen and professionals. So far as social work is concerned,
there is a new trend in the direction of lay participation based,
however, upon a much more rigorous conception of the distinc-
tions between the appropriate functions of the two. In these days
of stress and strain, when budgets are being slashed, when profes-
sional standards are being threatened, and when functions are
being eliminated, social workers understand as they never have
before what it means to have in every community a group of
loyal and comprehending lay collaborators.
(h) Public Education: Vast numbers of American citizens have
for the first time come to understand the nature of social work.
Many leaders have been pressed into emergency services of one
type or another and have suddenly come to a realization that the
rehabilitation of human beings involves something more than
material relief, good will and a soft heart. And social workers have
also begun to appreciate how feeble have been their past efforts
in the direction of public education. They are now in the mood to
take the public into their confidence, to come down from the
heights of their professional prestige and professional jargon, and
to speak more humbly with the folk. In short, they see in the
crisis itself an opportunity for new programs of social education.
T TNDERNEATH the hopes and the fears of these social
^J workers one observed an entirely new earnestness.
The members of this group seem to have realized that
America is no longer a young nation; that its frontier days
have passed, and that it is now confronted with its first
truly great crisis. They seemed to me to long for the
courage to confront the crisis calmly and objectively, to
step boldly toward change, to fit themselves and their
functions into the plan of a new society, to turn their
backs on our frenzied and fantastic past and to face front
for a fresh start. But, they also hesitated. Such courage is
not easily found. Long ago Ralph Waldo Emerson diag-
nosed their state of mind in words which still ring with
crispness and clarity:
Our torment is Unbelief, the Uncertainty as to what we ought
to do; the distrust of the value of what we do. ... A great per-
plexity hangs like a cloud on the brow of all cultivated persons, a
certain imbecility in the best spirits, which distinguishes the
period. ... It is not that men do not wish to act; they pine to
be employed, but are paralyzed by the uncertainty what they
should do.
But it was also Emerson who furnished the clue for our
deliverance. "The way to mend the bad world is to create
the right world," said he. And, how is this to be done, what
are to be the instruments of this creation? First of all,
"Knowledge . . . the encourager, knowledge that takes
fear out of the heart." And second, "Faith." "What a day
dawns when we have taken to heart the doctrine of faith."
"All the great ages have been ages of belief." And finally,
Emerson gives us the suggestion for practical courage,
courage which is not merely a willful thrust or blind de-
termination to see things through, but courage which
derives from staking our new goals and attempting new
methods. "The charm of the best courages," he writes,
"is that they are invention."
My City
By LAURA G. WOODBERRY
Director Social Service Index, Boston
At dawn my city seems to chill your eye.
For you she takes the form of foul grim shapes
That creep like shadows out of corners dark.
My eye rejects the image yours indites.
And so I meddle with your plaintive view.
I laud my city's girth when morning light
Muffles the dusty curb like shining wool.
Light that begets and does not lose thereby,
That fills her full of rival energies
Whence useful work is born, the help of men.
My city stands in need of flattery
And She should have it !
Gangsterized Industry
By GORDON L. HOSTETTER
Executive Director, Employers' Association of Chicago
ir-
LHICAGO is young as cities go. It is still the
repressible youth with all that youth implies. It is
the second city of the country, the rail center of the
world, the market basket of a continent, and located in the
only great valley of the world under intelligent cultivation.
Its possibilities of growth and service are illimitable. Yet
we are being strangled and hamstrung by a handful of
professional criminals and politicians until our commerce
is deserting us and our business men are throwing up their
hands in a gesture of despair. We all know the extent to
which we have been subjected to world ridicule. A word on
that is sufficient.
Four years ago the approximate cost of this racketeering
evil was $145,000,000 per year to the city of Chicago. Four
years ago we cried out for relief. Then racketeering was
comprised of three main elements — business men, labor
leaders and politicians. Then the hoodlum acted as the paid
hireling. Then both business men and labor leaders sought
to create, through racketeering, monopolies in their re-
spective fields. Bad as that was, today the situation is even
worse. The former "employers" are paying dearly for their
folly and what is more serious, they have created an octopus
intimidating and feeding on society.
Racketeering during these intervening years has become
gangsterized. Organized crime and its leaders are today in
control of the major portion of racketeering in Chicago.
Business men, in conspiracy with labor leaders, no longer
control their rackets. The forces of crime no longer take
orders. They command. The situation is reversed. The
racketeers control business. Only as one closes his eyes and
Charles Kuhn in The Indianapolis News
Speaking of our giant industries
envisions a picture of the robber barons of medieval times
can he find an analogy to this. And this is the twentieth
century and our government is, — theoretically at least — a
government of laws, founded upon the proposition of
equality before the law.
The invasion of legitimate business and legitimate union-
ism by organized crime is so extensive as to create a prob-
lem of the first magnitude. The invasion is extending itself
rather than retreating. Already it controls or influences
many lines of trade of basic importance to the city and it
goes without saying that all such trades which are paying
tribute to this criminal overlordship will eventually pay
even greater tribute. What this condition is costing the city
in dollars can only be guessed. I think a fair guess would be
$150,000,000 a year, considering direct and indirect costs.
And what of the moral, social and political implications
of it? Although rackets are not so numerous today as they
were four years ago, numerical decrease is simply due to a
merging of forces. There is a greater efficiency in organiza-
tion with no effective approach toward their suppression by
law-enforcement authorities. The falling off in violence as a
means of inaugurating and perpetuating rackets is, if any,
very slight. Bombs have fallen off 43/iooth of one bomb per
month as against the record of 1924 to 1928. Gang murders,
according to figures of the Chicago Crime Commission,
have decreased a little, there being an average of 5.437
looths gang murders per month from 1924 to 1928 and
4.o6/iooths gang murders per month from 1928 to 1932.
This improvement, if it may be so regarded, should be
credited to the coalition of gang forces and to federal
prosecution.
ON the other hand, President Markle of the Chicago
Automobile Trade Association recently reported that
in July thefts of automobiles in the city alone were 3266
while new car registrations in the entire county were 3823;
in August there were 2990 registrations and 3558 city
thefts; in September 2255 registrations and 3375 city
thefts. Total registrations for the county 9068 and city
thefts 10,199 — two million dollars worth of cars stolen
every month during that three-months period. Result : the
1931 theft insurance rate of $3 per $1000 including ac-
cessories on one popular car (a typical example), was
raised to $10.95 Per $J°oo in I93'2- But only 85 per cent of
the value of the car will be paid if it is not under lock and
key at night.
Again in 1920 robbery of messengers and interior holdup
of offices and stores generally, including jewellers and fur-
riers, could be insured against for $10 per thousand. In
1928 the rate had risen to $16.50 per thousand and it has
never been lowered. In the case of drug stores, service sta-
tions and the like the insurance rate has risen in the same
period from $20 to $66 per thousand. For the most part
insurance is not obtainable at all, I am told. The ratio of
loss to premium in these branches of insurance has jumped
from 45 per cent in 1931 to 77.9 per cent in 1932.
16
January 1933
THE SURVEY
17
How long can the commerce of any city withstand such
conditions? How long can a decent citizenship live under
such conditions ? We would better ask these questions while
the city is still in the vigor of its youth and its people still
cling to some of their illusions.
What is the remedy for all this ? Speculative thought and
practical contact with racketeering have brought me to a
few rather definite conclusions. First of all, I think we have
been attacking our crime problem backwards. We have
been treating effect rather than cause. A physician cannot
well cure a violent skin eruption until he has first purified
the blood stream. The blood stream in our crime problem is
our political situation. Just so long as crime is politically
protected, just that long will we have crime. We have seen
well-intentioned approaches made toward the abatement
or elimination of crime by a number of agencies during the
past few years. But organized crime has gone on entrench-
ing itself under our very noses. What does it profit us to
ferret out conspiracy and apprehend criminals of every
description if there is no will to prosecute? If we are up
against a weak or venal judiciary ? If the jackals of the legal
profession are in league with criminals against society? If
the very defense of our social structure are the strongholds
of the criminal ?
We have been content to delegate our civic responsibili-
ties to professional politicians who for their own gain have
made politics rotten and have by their treason to the people
given us our heritage of crime. The time has come to turn
our organizing genius toward effective political action. We
don't need further reports. We need action.
In 1910 "Bath Room" Bob Wilson, under indictment for
bribery, was renominated for the legislature in the Evanston
district by the votes of 937 citizens, while 24,036 registered
citizens did not vote. In the same year, J. M. Kittleman,
one of the most valuable men in the legislature, could have
been renominated by three votes, yet 20,950 citizens stayed
away from the polls! In 1916 John B. Northrup, whose
honesty and ability all Illinoisians respect, was defeated for
state's attorney of Cook County by 20,775 v°tes, 325,376
citizens failing to vote. In 1915, Judge Harry Olson was
defeated by William Hale Thompson for mayor of Chicago
by 2508 votes, while 307,842 registered voters did not go to
the polls. The inference of that failure to vote is quite plain.
Of course, we have gangsterized industry. What else can
we expect? And until we organize for intelligent and effec-
tive action toward purifying our political blood stream, we
will continue to have gangsterized industry as well as all
other forms of crime. Chicago may — or may not — be an
extreme case, but in the last analysis the causes and cure
for racketeering are the same for any city in the country.
The Churches in Their Blindness
By CHARLES STAFFORD BROWN
Minister First Congregational Church, Colorado Springs
more than a century American Christians have
been making amazing personal sacrifices in order
to support foreign missions. The high point of
their giving came between 1921 and 1925, when seventeen
major denominations contributed about $30,000,000 a year
to the cause. Since 1921 to 1925, however, gifts to foreign
missions have steadily declined in all denominations. In
part this has been due to declining incomes on the part
of the persons whose aggregated small gifts made up the
major part of the total gift to foreign missions. But also
and far more significantly, this decline in giving has been
due to a growing suspicion on the part of the givers that
foreign missions were not making much real impact upon
the Oriental peoples; that there was a horrifying amount
of division, overlapping and wasted effort in administra-
tion both here at home and on the foreign field. They came
to wonder if the typical holier-than-thou attitude of the
American Christian toward a Chinese or an Indian was a
very Christ-like attitude after all.
These suspicions crystallized in 1930 into a Laymen's
Inquiry, made up of outstanding persons from seven major
denominations. Their purpose was purely objective. They
wanted to evaluate foreign missions; to see how much ef-
fect and what sort of effect missions have had upon the life
of Oriental peoples; and to make such specific recommenda-
tions as might point to needed changes in both policies and
methods. The investigation was under the direction of the
Institute of Social and Religious Research of the Federal
Council of Churches. The Commission which undertook
the task of reducing the data to a report includes such
names as William E. Hocking of Harvard; Frederic C.
Woodward, vice-president of the University of Chicago;
Clarence A. Barbour, president of Brown University; and
twelve other educators, doctors, economists, business men
and engineers, all of national prominence. It is difficult to
imagine how any part of the inquiry could have been put
into more competent hands.
Now their report is ready.1 It is a large volume, 349
pages of small type. And it shows beyond question that the
suspicions that made the missionary donors give less and
less money to foreign missions from 1921 on, were well-
founded suspicions. A sincere, detailed, pointed, and in-
sistent demand for a complete overhauling of the entire
missionary enterprise, at home and abroad, leaps to meet
the eye in every line. The Commission has not dealt in
generalities. They offer both favorable and unfavorable
comment in detail. Their recommendations and findings are
presented in a straightforward one-two-three fashion that
makes one hope that this report gets the attention and the
successful application that it deserves.
The Commission recommends, unequivocally, the con-
tinuance of missions. But what missions! The business of
the missionary, from now on, is not to be the task of "ex-
pounding the Christianity and culture of the West" but
rather the task of "preserving what is valuable" (in the
native Chinese, Japanese, or Indian religion and culture)
and "seeking to minimize the danger of an abrupt break
with [native] tradition." The missionary enthusiast of a
century or less ago sang lustily about the heathen in his
blindness and felt himself to be one whose soul was lighted
with wisdom from on high. Try to imagine such a person
sending out a missionary whose task it would be to prevent
i RETHINKING MISSIONS: A Laymen's Inquiry After One Hundred Years.
Harper. 349 pp. Price, $2 postpaid of The Survey.
18
THE SURVEY
January 1933
native Chinese from making too abrupt a break away from
Buddhism or some other "heathen" religion! But that is
exactly what this report specifies. It also specifies far fewer
missionaries, but of much better quality; highly trained
specialists in medicine and education and nursing and agri-
culture and child guidance and recreation. It specifies that
in general even these high-grade missionaries shall stay
here at home until they are invited by some Chinese college
or hospital or church to come over and lend a hand. And
when they do go — on invitation — this report specifies that
their salaries should be paid not from America but from
the group that calls them to come. It specifies a time limit
within which subsidies to churches in China and India and
elsewhere shall be reduced year by year and finally stopped
entirely. It specifies a rapid handing over to Chinese and
Indians and Japanese of the churches and hospitals and
other missionary enterprises. It specifies that appointments
to faculties of Christian missionary colleges shall be in the
hands of nationals, and not in the hands of American
boards in New York. It specifies a drastic reduction in the
number of theological seminaries in mission fields and a cor-
responding raising of educational standards in the sem-
inaries that are left. It recommends a standard for mission
hospitals, colleges and other institutions, that will com-
mand the respect and confidence of nationals, and the
prompt closing of all mission institutions which cannot be
made to reach these standards. It specifies that the purpose
of the missionary is to be cultural, social, educational,
rather than evangelistic.
Just how much chance does this report have of being put
into practical effect? I think it stands a very good chance
indeed. Not because mission authorities will welcome the
proposed changes, the new standards — though many of
them will; but because mission gifts will continue to fall
off year after year until some such reorganization as this
shall come along to restore the faith of American Chris-
tians in the purpose and work of missions and missionaries.
The churches really have no choice in the matter. They
can go along as at present, clinging to sectarian set-ups,
demanding statistical results of missionaries, interpreting
religion in terms of theological orthodoxies • — and every
year they do this they will have to operate on shrinking
budgets until at last the whole thing collapses. Or — they
can reorganize, reinterpret, unite; they can present religion
as a living thing, making a paramount difference in real
issues — and find people once more willing to support it
with sacrifice.
Pearl Buck, who is a missionary to China and whose
novel The Good Earth is an amazing best-seller, said re-
cently: "I do not believe that Christianity has touched the
average man and woman in China at all. We have no as-
surance that if we withdrew from China today there would
be any more permanent record left of our presence there
these hundred and fifty years than there is left of the old
Nestorian church, a windblown, obliterated tablet upon a
desert land." So our present methods of giving our religion
to the Orient just do not work. They will work less and less
effectively, the longer we continue on our present basis. If
our American Christianity has anything of genuine value
in it, and we wish to share that value with the Orient, we
shall have to reorganize our mission movement somewhat
along the lines indicated in this report.
Let Them Talk It Out
GARGANTUAN TASK" like that of the war
doctors dealing with "shell-shocked" soldiers
confronts the social and relief workers, public
health nurses and others who daily must look into the
anxious faces of the unemployed. Their job is twofold in
the words of Dr. George K. Pratt, associate medical officer
of the National Committee for Mental Hygiene: first,
" the provision of shelter and the filling of empty stomachs,
but along with this material relief (indeed, in the very
methods by which this relief is administered) is the equally
vital task of recognizing signs of flagging morale and min-
istering in some measure to the security of these men and
women." In the cloud of frustration with which the start of
the new year is veiled at times for even the more fortunate,
the National Committee offers real and timely help in a
new pamphlet by Dr. Pratt, Morale: The Mental Hygiene
of Unemployment (price 25 cents, discounts on quantity
orders, of the National Committee, 450 Seventh Avenue,
New York City).
In chapters on How We Act in the Face of Adversity,
The Conditions Necessary for Good Mental Health, and
What The Depression is Doing to Family Life, Dr. Pratt
outlines in broad human strokes patterns of feeling and
action to which none of us is alien. Insecurity, he reminds
us, comes both from without and within. It awakens not
only the reverberations of the actual conditions which sur-
round a person at the moment but echoes from old battles,
long gone and now irrelevant. "The modern conception of
mental health may be summed up as the adjustment of
one's self to inner and outer strains in a manner that will
be reasonably satisfactory, both to the individual and to
the customs of the society in which he lives." Some people,
naturally more free than others from inner stresses, are
better able to withstand the outer ones, but experiences
"like mortal danger, war, grave illness and, just now, the
economic crashing of our times" may be so severe or pro-
longed that even the sturdy falter and at last surrender.
When this happens mental health suffers, perhaps only to
such a degree that the individual seems moody or irritable,
perhaps more seriously as is shown by black spells of de-
pression, extravagant behavior, the delusion that others
are bent on harming one's self, substitution of "sterile
daydreams" or even death for the harsh world of reality.
Mental health descends by a series of small gradations,
with no sharp dividing lines, from the minor lapses to which
everyone is prone to the depths of frank mental disease.
Fortunately statistics so far available do not seem to indicate
that serious mental disease has increased as a result of the suffer-
ing caused by our times. However suicide unmistakably has grown
more frequent and a great many lesser departures from average
mental health are being observed. It is especially these latter
unhealthy attitudes which so frequently pass unrecognized as
types of mental ill-health with which social workers are daily
forced to contend. . . .
When, having lost his job, John Jones or his wife comes to a
relief bureau seeking aid and when either of them is noted on the
record as acting surly, defiant, bitter, suspicious, cocky, depressed,
hopeless or in any of the dozens of other ways to which people
January 1933
THE SURVEY
19
resort when faced with fear and hardship, the social worker will
be wise to regard these attitudes as symptoms which indicate a
growing difficulty in making an emotional adjustment to the
situation.
But what can the social worker do when in the going
world she may be as helpless as the client to swerve the
forces which cause or precipitate the misery that she is
called upon to meet? A foreword declares explicitly that
the pamphlet offers no defense of "the retention of a social
and economic order which has so signally failed to meet
man's needs" though its specific purpose precludes discus-
sion of these underlying factors. It is published as a state-
ment of a point of view and what the author too modestly
terms "a few general principles" to serve people confronted
with the immediate and pressing problems of the emer-
gency.
In his discussion of the conditions essential for good men-
tal health Dr. Pratt cites the objectives of mental hygiene
as they have been defined in the remarkable book, The
Normal Mind, by William H. Burnham. Fundamental
among these is "the habit of giving attention to the present
situation." "To be able to do this day after day in the face
of diverting temptations and to keep absorbed in only one
thing at a time is, in a sense, a gauge of one's mental
health," Dr. Pratt declares.
The need for concentrating on sitting down and carefully work-
ing out plans to secure a job, for instance, is one excellent prepara-
tion for the immediate future. If, however, a man thrown out of
employment is finally convinced that his re-entry into industrial
life is probably and permanently unlikely (because he has passed
an arbitrary industrial age-limit or because automatic machinery
makes his services unnecessary, or for some other reason) then he
can still benefit from giving attention to the present by concen-
trating on working out some program for his readjustment to a
future in which regular employment at his familiar tasks for an
eight hour day may play no part. Here is where good social case
work can do much to help. Since predictions recently made by
industrial leaders and economists seem to indicate that for the
reasons just stated thousands of men and women can never again
hope with any certainty to be utilized in industry on a full-time
basis, even with a complete return to "prosperity," such an at-
tention to the present through individual program planning will
be particularly necessary and helpful for this group in preventing
a paralysis of activity as a result of brooding over the frustrations
of the past or the difficulties of the future.
The second principle is "the need for an active attitude in
the face of difficulties — in other words, the need for getting
busy and really doing something about one's problems."
It is true that often there is little or nothing that an unemployed
man can actively do about the securing of a job. In this respect he
may be thwarted on all sides. Nevertheless even though he cannot
avail himself of the help that conies from activity in locating a
job, he can remain active in other wholesome ways. [The pamphlet
lists instances of what these may be specifically.] Failure to re-
main active is being observed by hundreds of relief workers who
report from all sections of the country an alarming increase of
apathy and emotional dependency among the unemployed as well
as of financial dependency.
Basic in any effort at application is an understanding of
one's own emotional reactions and limitations, which should
be illuminated by Dr. Pratt's clear analysis in the first
chapters. Implicit in this analysis are the possibilities for
furthering mental health in concrete and important ways
through many of the activities now carried on by social
agencies or communities, though these may bear the offi-
cial names of recreation, adult education, community or-
ganization and the like. A section of the pamphlet de-
scribes instances of effective work now being done by
scores of communities along lines which may be made even
more important by a realization of all the values inherent
in them, and a bibliography gives further practical value
to the publication.
Both for the 1933 community and the social agency
struggling to meet increased need and trouble, there is
special weight in one of Dr. Pratt's suggestions: "When you
believe there may be a morale problem involved as well as
an acute relief problem, give the unemployed man or
woman a chance to talk it out."
Psychiatrists have learned that in numerous mental disorders,
even when little else can be done by the way of treatment, a
copious "talking out" by the patient often results in at least
temporary benefit. This process serves to drain off pent-up emo-
tional tension and gives a feeling of relief and relaxation. It makes
little difference whether the client keeps to one subject or whether
he rambles. The main point is, by means of a tactful word of en-
couragement injected now and then, to get him to keep on talking
as long as he wants to.
This suggestion may seem strange to some workers (and es-
pecially to volunteer social workers) who feel that they must "do
something" to or for a client, and who think, unless they can, that
there is no use in listening to a story of distress. Another group of
social workers have been taught that it is unethical to secure
information from a client which one cannot use. This attitude
probably was developed to offset the former social-work habit of
insisting on knowing everything about a client, even to the point
of making the investigation meaningless and routine.
But today it is regarded as good social-work practice to
conceive of the worker as having either or both (as the case may
require) of two functions: (i) To accept information directly
from a client in order to relieve the latter 3 emotional tension and (2)
to accept information in order to help in formulating further plans
for treatment. . . . For a social worker or relief investigator to
deliberately cultivate the habit of being a good listener without
too much responsive play of feeling at the story listened to may
prove to be half the battle in maintaining a client's morale and
mental health.
IN spite of mounting caseloads and overworked staff one
family welfare agency reported successful and extensive
use of this help to mental health by recruiting a selected
corps of volunteers who were trained for the job and
placed under skilled supervision. Nor does the need to re-
lease unhappy tensions apply to the program of the social
agency alone.
The wise community also will extend wide tolerance to citizens
gathered together in groups for the purpose of free speech and
public discussion. In times like these free speech on the part of
frustrated, disappointed, discouraged and resentful men and
women is more than ever a healthy safety-valve, and the repres-
sive attitudes which too many of our public officials have as-
sumed in those matters in the past, are psychologically dangerous
to the morale of the community as a whole.
In conclusion Dr. Pratt points out " Mental hygiene in
its attempts to develop and preserve mental health be-
comes the responsibility of the whole community. It is
something that cannot be isolated and apart. It is not
special, separate or unrelated to the rest of the community's
daily life. It impinges on every one of our public under-
takings. Its recognition moves all of our problems of un-
employment back to the neighborhood of their source."
When Standards Break
By BEULAH AMIDON
kHE heavy price that is paid by community
and workers when industrial standards break
and sweatshop conditions return is described in
a remarkable study of Baltimore's garment trades, recently
made by a group of economists and public-health experts,
called into a strike situation by Mayor Howard W. Jack-
son. The investigation was directed by Jacob H. Hollander,
professor of political economy at Johns Hopkins Uni-
versity, who had the assistance of members of his own
department, four faculty members of the School of Hygiene
and Public Health of Johns Hopkins, and the head of the
department of political economy at Goucher College. These
responsible investigators summarize their results:
Conditions found in small garment factories in 1932 coincide
with those described in a survey of the garment industry made in
1922. . . . Scarcely any of the twenty-one factories visited in
1932 were found to be absolutely unfit places for human beings to
work in. It appears however that no special attention is being
given to sanitary conditions and to the health of workers in gar-
ment factories.
The causes of the Baltimore strike, which is still in
progress and which led to the inquiry, were denned in
Professor Hollander's report to the mayor as:
the general unsatisfactory conditions prevailing in the industry,
particularly low wages, lack of security, unsanitary conditions
and the practice of cutting wages by dismissing employes and hir-
ing others at lower compensation.
Of the 125 firms in the market, all but two have settled
with the union, the Amalgamated Clothing Workers of
America. The workers in the two largest establishments —
L. Greif and Brothers, Inc., and J. Schoeneman, Inc. —
are still on strike. These two firms normally employ about
a third of the six thousand garment trades workers in the
Baltimore market. Professor Hollander points out that the
inquiry was greatly hampered by the fact that these impor-
tant employers
have deemed it proper to withhold any information, even to the
extent of refusing access to their plants, of evading interviews
with their principles and of recognizing in any form the propriety
of the investigation.
Using the available data, the investigators found that in
Baltimore wages have been cut until girls earn between
$5 and $8 a week, men between $10 and $20. Since in this
highly seasonal industry the employe as a rule works only
about thirty weeks a year, the report places the annual
income of three fourths of the men at "not more than $500
a year."
Faculty members of the School of Public Health who in-
spected a fair sampling of local factories report that "most
of the factories appeared rather dirty and disorderly and it
was seldom found that any regular janitor service was pro-
vided." They found that "toilet facilities in the garment
factories are invariably bad." Sinks with cold water, with-
out soap or towels, are the only washing facilities available.
No rest rooms are provided, and the visitors found no
factory with an efficient mechanical system of ventilation.
The inspections were made on cool fall days, and the report
comments: "It is believed that in many plants the humid-
ity and high room temperature would produce almost in-
tolerable conditions during the summer months." No safety
devices on the presses to prevent hand injuries were seen
in any factory.
In their testimony at the public hearing, to which Dr.
Hollander invited both employers and employes to discuss
the grievances behind the strike, workers told what it means
to toil under the conditions covered by the careful and dis-
passionate report of the experts. They spoke of the rats,
mice, roaches and other vermin infesting shops that are
" dirty and disorderly." They told of girls who faint when
summer heat is intensified by steam from the presses and
the lack of ventilation and who have to lie on the cement
floors of "filthy toilets" or in the hallway of a factory
lacking a rest-room or even a cloak-room. They described
the discomfort of doing their work without decent washing
facilities or adequate supplies of drinking water, of eating
lunch at their machines, of having no place to hang their
wraps or to place the food brought from home. They told,
too, how their meager wages are reduced by having to
teach beginners during their working time and of being
"fired" to be replaced by "learners" who could be paid
apprentice wages.
Shortly after the Hollander study was completed, J.
Knox Insley, state commissioner of labor and statistics,
investigated the garment strike. His findings, just made
public, underscore those of the university group and at
no point break down the testimony of the workers. Thus he
reports average wages ranging from $8.25 for a 4O-hour
week to $10.19 for a 5o.6-hour week. He found many in-
stances of hourly earnings which fell below fifteen cents,
and states that about one half the workers received less
than twenty cents an hour. He adds, "It is unlikely, in the
opinion of the commissioner, that any minimum wage
which could or might be established . . . would drop to
the level of the earnings of many of the workers whose
records have been investigated."
OF plant conditions, the labor commissioner states:
The fact remains . . . that a number of persons have attested
... to conditions in the two plants owned and operated by J.
Schoeneman, Inc., which, if present, would indicate decided care-
lessness and neglect on the part of those responsible; and while
additional testimony . . . has declared these statements highly
exaggerated, no evidence has been submitted which would com-
pletely nullify them; and the commissioner is of the opinion that
the charges must have some basis in fact.
Based on their findings, Professor Hollander and his
associates recommend inquiry into police conduct of the
strike, investigation by the health commissioner of the
health hazards obviously existing in many of the plants,
and a conference of employers and workers, called by the
mayor, looking to the settlement of the strike.
By appealing to experts to help clarify a complicated
situation, Baltimore's mayor has not only made available
to the community the facts behind a local industrial con-
flict, but he has brought forward a vivid and disquieting
picture of what happens when standards of wages and work-
ing conditions give way under the pressure of hard times.
20
166 Community Chest Campaigns to December 20, 1932
City
Akron, Ohio
Albany. N. Y.
Albert Lea, Minn.
Allentown, Pa.
Alliance, Ohio
Amarillo, Tex.
Ann Arbor, Mich.
Ashland, Ohio
Ashtabula. Ohio
Atlanta, Ga.
Auburn. N. Y.
Aurora, 111.
Barberton, Ohio
Battle Creek, Mich.
Bellingham, Wash.
Berwick. Pa.
Bloomfield, N. J.
Bloomington, 111.
Bound Brook, N. J.
Bridgeport, Conn.
Bristol. Conn.
Brockton, Mass.
Carlisle. Pa.
Charleston, S. C.
Charlotte, N. C. b
Chattanooga, Tenn.
Cleveland, Ohio
Columbus, Ohio
Corning, N. Y.
Decatur, 111.
Denver, Colo.
Des Moines, la.
Downington, Pa.
Duluth, Minn.
Eau Claire, Wise.
Elizabeth, N. J. b
Elmira. N. Y.
Elyria, Ohio
Fairmont. W. Va.
Faribault, Minn, b
Flint, Mich.
Fort Wayne, Ind.
Foxboro, Mass, b
Grand Haven, Mich.
Grand Rapids, Mich.
Great Falls, Mont.
Green Bay, Wise.
Greensboro, N. C.
Halifax, Can.
Hamilton. Can.
Harrisonburg, Va.
Hartford, Conn.
Holland. Mich.
Holyoke, Mass.
Honolulu, Hawaii
Houston, Tex.
Hudson, N. Y.
Indianapolis, Ind.
Ithaca, N. Y.
Jefferson City, Mo.
Johnstown, Pa.
Joplin. Mo.
Kalamazoo, Mich.
Kansas City, Kans.
Kansas City, Mo.
Kenosha. Wise.
Kent, Ohio
Kingsport, Tenn.
Knoxville, Tenn.
Lansing, Mich.
Laramie, Wyo.
Lawrence, Mass.
Lewiston, Idaho
Lewiston, Me. b
Lincoln, Nebr.
Little Rock, Ark.
Long Beach. Calif.
Lorain, Ohio
Lowell, Mass.
Lynchburg. Va.
Madison. Wise.
Marietta, Ohio
Marion, Ind.
Marion. Ohio
Marshfield, Ore. /
Mason City. la.
Medina. Ohio
Milwaukee, Wise.
Minneapolis, Minn.
Montreal. Can. (Prot.)
Montreal, Can. (Cath.)
Raised for
Raised for
Coal for
City
Raised for
Raised for
Coal for
1932
1933
1933
1932
1933
1933
$ 665,394
$ 540,374
$ 540.000
Moscow, Idaho /
$
1 6.000
$ 6,000
454,197
354,409
a c
461,338 c
Muskegon, Mich.
126,254
84,821
107,541
15,296
8,916
a
16,350
235.726
145,000
171,798
Newark, N. J.
1,324,695
1,104,435
1,395,859
57.000
35,700
35,597
Newark, Ohio 4
61,390
a
61,390
50,000
50,000
a
75,000
New Brunswick, N. J.
122,043
99,160
137,903
64,098
47,934
a
62.938
New Castle, Pa.
45,139 a
50.529
c
65.000
c
33.303
31,500
33,000
New Haven, Conn.
987,623
848,892
a
851,947
38,151
25.426
31,800
Niles, Ohio
16,000
12.OOO
15,000
558,200 c
84,861
445,088
66,052
a
a
498,575
75,750
North Attleboro. Mass.
North Tonawanda and
13.407
9.000
8.700
126,925
84,000
125,595
Tonawanda. N. Y.
65,026
45.000
50,000
Northampton, Mass.
25,961
26,796
a
46,000
40,011
33.298
37,132
Norwalk, Ohio
15,230
12,600
c
14,000
c
164,184
120,000
164,491
60.405
20,556 c
41,316
9,338
a
147,584
11.540
Oklahoma City, Okla.
Omaha, Nebr.
460.730
611,425
345,113
594.318
a
a
450,320
611,160
54,012 c
42,902
a
57,925
Ontario, Calif.
15,000 c
8,500
c
12,000
71,149
23,279
20,000
22.550
a
28.000
22,000
Oranges. The, N. J.
Oskaloosa, Iowa b
603,583
491.000
13.000
c
a
602,731
15,000
c
550,197
220,741
351,941
103,077
a
505.476
103,977
Ottumwa, Iowa
74,091 c
70.490
a
76,230
c
119.223
126,487
a
152,382
Park Ridge. 111.
9,476
4.500
12,000
Peoria, 111.
227,390
179,473
200,000
27,000
39,602 c
20,200
31.000
30,600
62.192
Pittsburgh, Pa. d
Pittsfield, Mass.
5,491.026 c
194,890
2.483,108
147,074
2,480,160
147,069
78,000
75.000
Plainfield, N. J.
166,420 c
136,515
a
c 163,838
c
239,745
5,692.935
200,500
3,750,000
c
250,000 c
4.250,000
Portland, Me.
Portland, Ore.
230,312 c
788,144 g
201.000
610,000
c
a
247,000
c 787,296
c
c
923.171 c
756,392
a c
897,147 c
Portsmouth, Ohio
84,524
68,500
82,000
53,660
50,739
54,500
Providence, R. I.
827,725
655,000
a
785,484
c
Pueblo, Colo.
131,528 j
97.585
c
117,727
127,740
87.000
a
131,152
1,153.137 c
400,562
784,511
290,758
a e
1,303,000 c
268.584
Racine, Wise.
Raleigh. N. C.
376,523 y
53,362
130,000
43,400
a
136,200
53,000
13.951
319,815
12,765
275,000
c
a
14,000 c
303.850
Ravenna, Ohio
Richmond. Ind.
11,272
83,515
12.885
73,126
11,950
70.230
Richmond. Va.
601.800
606,000
605.904
46,250
40,305
50.000
Roanoke, Va.
195,058 g
110,663
a
170,912
173,655
201,950
Roanoke County, Va. *
11,685
a
15,000
151,773
113.880
a
118,828
88.469
44,569
55,880
Saginaw, Mich.
215,739
160.000
a
243,000
St. Joseph, Mo.
162,519
103.00O
a
c 166,921
70.305 c
39,868
49,689
St. Marys, Pa.
18,499
16.239
14,000
9,361
9,000
St. Paul, Minn.
1,010,530
940.OOO
a
1,100,000
324,165 c
180,250
a
195,000
Salt Lake City, Utah
166,779
171,462
155,000
419.421
336,000
375,000
San Diego, Calif.
257,699
186,658
a
c 266,556
c
2,800
a
3,300
Sandusky, Ohio
48,000
32,000
38,800
San Jose, Calif.
156,448
139,352
c
150,092
14,700
400,557
64.000
62,687
75.552
9.700
255.000
54,000
31,066
56,300
a
c
a
12,500
425,875
50,000 c
35,000
90,000
Santa Monica, Calif.
Scranton, Pa.
Seattle, Wash.
Sharon, Pa.
Sioux City, la.
Sioux Falls, S. Dak.
53,400
752,639
812,958 g
113,622
109.475
50.848
41,608 j
645,563 c
677.000 g
65,100
147,869
40,909 a
48,136
660,870
676.331
104.100
130.857
45,000
c
Spokane, Wash.
253,614 c
208,313
a
223,343
63,054
55,000
65,000
Springfield, 111.
206,184
142,000
a
175,732
113,578
90,000
a
120,000
Springfield, Mass.
480,133 c
373,000
a
c 505.455
c
7.500 g
10,500
g
11.000 g
Springfield, Mo.
77.549
77,933
88,500
1,221,691
1,204,341
1,250.000
Springfield, Ohio
183.204
135.674
152,876
22.217
3.000
a
6.000
Stamford, Conn.
212,510
210,055
a
215,047
138,604
84.000
133,500
Syracuse, N. Y.
334,621 j
450,445
a
596.250
544,294
505.763
a
500,000
652,047 c
19,894
434,3X4
28,840
425,000
30,000
Toronto, Can.
Tulsa, Okla.
608,000 g
318,000
425,000
272,911
a
g 645.000
548,909
t
1,043,405 c
80,001 c
818.868
70.661
1,052,632
74,300
Uniontown, Pa. b
34,500
a
38,000
Vancouver, Can.
276,120
322,500
a
c 400,000
c
21,760
18,964
a
19,970
188.457
49,527
186,266
33.140
195,733
57.310
Warren, Ohio
Washington, D. C.
120,205
2,417,694
87,095
1.915,438
a
95.334
2,419,787
Washington, Pa.
54,583
35,000
60,000
137,587
109,344
122,525
Waterloo, Iowa
111,666
75,905
74,832
163.934
145.454
159.608
Watertown, N. Y.
121,506 c
90,000
a
99,672
1,522,528
1,321.000
a
1,662,800
Wausau, Wise.
70,167
55,110
52,291
170,885
95,706
93.000
Waynesboro, Pa.
26,328
27,002
26,850
13,500
10,384
13,615 c
West Chester. Pa.
48,022
41,700
a
47,000
22,207 c
20,077
c
18.000 c
White Plains. N. Y.
106,771
81,500
a
115,200
145,234
71.230
a c
150,300
Wichita Falls. Tex.
61,383
48,985
48.649
Wilkes Barre, Pa.
502,338 g j
549,448
540.000
198,000
122,000
183,000
Williamsport, Pa.
105,136
116,000
112.000
5,973
5,438
a
7.500
Worcester, Masa.
630,341
488.778
530,202
62.986 j
90,111
151,878
12,000
11,210
10,000
York, Pa.
206,549
134.991
158,330
30,491
a
63,300 c
183,469
176,740
162.649
132.938
c
158,363
215.667 c
Zanesville, Ohio
87,104
62,480
84.827
227,797 c
75,233
135.000 j
46,622
225,938 c
46,500
Totals for 166 chests
$39,641,152
$46,605,305
172,304
71,110
138,160
47,700
a
150,700
64,250
Percent of goal 85.1
Totals for 140 comparable
chests
$45,440,257
$35,334,304
$41,875,556
121,488
18,705 j
74,522
35.611
a
92,303
37,000
Percent of goals 84.4
Percent of 1932 77.8
59.543
47,318
46,942
» Incomplete.
12,181 j
21,011
39,950
b First campaign. Not includ>
?d in totals.
— —
5,000
4,500
c Emergency funds included.
61,679
57,500
57.500
d Not included in totals. Re;
idjustment of iter
as included i
n
campaign make tl
1C
9,856
8.160
8.000
two years non-comparable.
1,329.544
902.340
1,091.706
/ Not included in totals.
2,224,689 c
1.664,761
a
1,800,000
g Tax subsidy included.
757.482
735,000
a
776,000
j Campaign for partial year.
207,815 i
177.350
175,000
y Goal of $440,000 included $360.000 for relief.
21
THE COMMON WELFARE
Ups and Downs of Foundation Grants
THE composite picture of American philanthropic
foundations for the year 1931 has these outstanding
lines: the $54,604,603 given away was 20 percent less
than in 1930; some $38,000,000 of it was from income and
over $16,000,000 out of principal; the heaviest cuts were
in the fields of medicine and public health (43 percent)
and of education (19 percent), yet these two fields, which
have long been major interests of several of the largest
foundations, received almost two thirds of all foundation
grants ($17,000,000 and $13,500,000 respectively); the
largest increases were to the social sciences and social
welfare (45 percent each), the latter running to almost
$3,500,000 and being in large part a response to appeals
for the unemployed and the destitute.
The figures are taken from the 1932 edition, covering the
year 1931, of American Foundations and Their Fields,
published by the Twentieth Century Fund, of which
Edward A. Filene is president and Evans Clark director.
It is a compact combination of text, tables and charts that
might serve as model to many annual reporters with their
flair for unabridged models.
The table showing increases and decreases might furnish
a text for a sermon on giving. Taking only amounts of
$100,000 or more, the largest percentage of decrease, 69,
is under the classification of religion (from $1,205,957 to
$367,895); the largest increases, as stated above, in social
sciences and social welfare. Some whimsicalities appear in
the lower brackets. Cemetery maintenance, for instance,
went down 86 percent and animals, including wild ones,
gained 93 percent. Somebody gave $532 for aviation and
$100 for prohibition. While heroism, humanities and civil
liberties declined, there were gains for city planning and
housing, engineering, labor and birth control.
Doctors Still Disagree
A^GRY noises on the part of spokesmen for organized
medicine seem to have aroused a public impression
that the report of the Committee on the Costs of Medical
Care (see The Survey, December i, 1932) has ranged the
doctors against the laymen. The truth, fortunately, is quite
otherwise. When The Journal of the American Medical
Association branded the report's recommendations as
"incitement to revolution" or "utopian fantasies" it
included in its opprobrium seventeen physicians who
signed that report, among them as illustrious names as
the profession can offer, while the objectors who take the
minority stand include only eight doctors — two of them
officers of the Association.
Another important misconception seems to have arisen
at least among members of the medical profession in the
Journal's comments on the report released a few weeks ago
by the Commission on Medical Education. This latter
publication represents many years of careful and responsi-
ble study of the subject indicated by its title, and as a part
of that study includes observations on the place of the
physician in the economic order. Its stress is on the need
for better doctors. Far from opposing the suggestions of
the Committee on the Costs of Medical Care, as The
Journal implies, it agrees that there are defects in our
present system of delivering medical service to people who
need it, urges local experiment, with community responsi-
bility under certain circumstances, and declares that "it is
highly important that the medical and allied professions
be informed of the merits and advantages as well as the
defects of insurance plans, which contain certain elements
which ought to contribute to better medical services."
Organized medicine itself has taken a progressive look
in principles adopted by the California Medical Association
and laid before the local societies for approval and adoption
in concrete form. These principles declare for the adoption
of the insurance principle in medical care given through
county medical societies to individuals for specified fees
paid at periodic intervals. The patient would have the
right to select any physician in the entire membership of
the society, which would serve as a kind of medical partner-
ship, and hospital and nursing service may also be or-
ganized under the control of the societies cooperating with
approved existing institutions on the same insurance
principle, offering care at need for a stated periodic pay-
ment. As an antitode to the tantrums that seem to be
engendered at the headquarters office of the organized
medical profession one may urge the hopeful patient to
look West.
Where We Are on Insurance
" OOME sort of unemployment insurance is going
O through this winter," is a comment frequently heard
where two or three are gathered together to discuss what
can be done to ease the burden of the hard times. The
actual status of unemployment insurance as a legislative
possibility in this country is summarized in a group of
articles in the current issue of the American Labor Legisla-
tion Review, where the provisions of pending legislation
and the findings of commission reports are brought to-
gether in compact and readable form. Since the American
Association for Labor Legislation in 1930 drafted its
"American plan" for unemployment reserves (see The
Survey, February i, 1931, page 484) one state, Wisconsin,
has passed an unemployment compensation law, and eight
official investigating commissions have reported in favor of
such legislation. These commissions represent national,
state and municipal legislative bodies: the United States
Senate Committee on Unemployment Insurance, the Ohio,
California, Massachusetts, New York and Connecticut
state commissions, the Interstate Commission on Unem-
ployment Insurance and the Baltimore Municipal Com-
mission on Employment Stabilization. In most instances,
as in Ohio, the draft of a proposed measure is included in
the commission report (see The Survey, December i, 1932,
page 643). The Connecticut commission submits for further
study what they call a dismissal wage bill as a simpler
method of legislative relief for industrial unemployment.
In Pennsylvania, a Committee on Workers' Security
(with Reference to Unemployment Compensation or
Insurance) was appointed by Governor Pinchot early in
November. Charles L. Denby, Jr., of Philadelphia is chair-
22
January 1933
THE SURVEY
23
man of the committee which includes representatives of
employers, labor, the General Assembly and the public.
The committee has held four general meetings, at which it
asked interested employers, labor leaders and other in-
formed citizens to state their views on unemployment
insurance in relation to the Pennsylvania situation. State
legislative commissions are at work in Illinois and Louisiana.
Last year, with nine state legislatures meeting in
regular session, eighteen unemployment insurance bills
were introduced. This year, forty-three legislatures are
meeting, and the American Association for Labor Legisla-
tion estimates that at least twenty of them will consider
unemployment insurance. In some states, notably Ohio,
Massachusetts and New York, several bills will probably be
introduced, embodying various schemes for compulsory,
state-administered unemployment insurance.
In His Father's Footsteps
IN the days of decision when the National Government
was set up in England, young Malcolm MacDonald
threw his lot in with his father, the Labour prime minister,
who is today the head of a virtual Conservative govern-
ment. Before the Ottawa Agreements Bill passed the
House of Commons, it fell to the lot of the son as under-
secretary for the dominions to reply to the fortnight's
debate. His friends in this country — for he has made them
on various trips here — may be interested in these para-
graphs from the account of the debate by the parliamen-
tary correspondent of The London Daily Mail:
Two pictures I have vividly in my mind. The first is of this
spare young man, looking no more than a boy, preaching empire
unity to a packed and silent house of M.P.'s, nearly all of whom
were older than he.
The second is of this same young man sitting almost indif-
ferently on the government bench while ministers and ex-minis-
ters crowded round him pouring out their praise on a splendid
performance.
. . . Mr. Baldwin, Mr. Chamberlain, and Mr. Thomas, his
chief, who had sat down in order that the young man should have
this great chance, followed his every word. . . . When his speech
was over the House burst into a cheer that lasted a full minute.
. . . Then came the most gracious gesture of all. Sir Herbert
Samuel, who had been bitterly attacked by all and sundry through-
out the debate and not least by government ministers, came be-
hind Mr. MacDonald, patted his shoulder and smiled his con-
gratulations.
Pearl Buck Speaks to Negroes
AT a meeting arranged in Harlem by Opportunity, a
journal of Negro life, Pearl S. Buck, author of The
Good Earth and a missionary to China, said some
memorable things to a large audience of colored and white
friends of the magazine. She told them that she had known
in her own person what it meant to experience hatred and
oppression from members of another race. "I have escaped
death," she said, "only because people whose skins were of
another hue than mine but who knew the real me under my
alien color, risked their lives to keep me in safety. Many
times, witnessing the attitude of members of my own race
toward those of another color, I have been so ashamed that
I could have wished I were not white. You must forgive us,
not once but many times, and by forgiveness without bit-
terness you will gain strength. I had rather be he who for-
gives than he who is forgiven."
With a simple sincerity that carried to every heart in the
room, Mrs. Buck discussed, almost as might a visitor from
another planet, the essential stupidity of race feelings of
inferiority and superiority, calling upon the Negro race to
demonstrate its own superiority in its own characteristic
accomplishments.
Working for the Railroad
THE conflict of interest involved in setting "fair" wage
rates in modern industry was never more apparent
than in the complicated negotiations between railway
union executives and management, which ended late last
month with the extension of a 10 percent wage cut for nine
months, to October 31, 1933. The cut was accepted a year
ago by representatives of the million and a half workers
affected, though they branded it "a dole to capital." When
the reduced wages were agreed to, it was stated that the
cut would mean a saving to the roads of $210,000,000 for
the year (see The Survey, December 15, 1931, page 293).
The discharge of 1 10,000 men since then, the workers hold,
has cut the total payroll to such an extent that the expected
saving has shrunk to $i 50,000,000. Meanwhile, net earn-
ings have gone down and an enormous new load of in-
debtedness has been incurred, as spokesmen for the man-
agers stated, "to avoid a whole chain of receiverships."
Under the new agreement, the workers managed to preserve
the present wage status in spite of continued shrinkage in
railroad earnings. Negotiations affecting wages after the
expiration of the present truce may be started either by
the unions or by the management after June 15, but only
on a national basis. If such an issue is raised, it is to be
handled under the Railway Labor Act. Management holds
that under present conditions, the roads cannot consider
a return to a higher wage level. Spokesmen for the unions
insist that the workers are being called on to bear more
than their share of the cost of hard times. Neither side
brings forward, as the workers did a year ago, a program
for meeting affirmatively the situation the railroads face
today.
Racketeering and Injured Workers
IN a report to Governor Roosevelt, the Committee to
Review Medical and Hospital Problems in Connection
with Workmen's Compensation Insurance finds in New
York State "uncontroverted evidence of existing rackets."
Study of a cross-section of cases seems to the Committee
to show clearly that much of the medical testimony before
the referee or the Industrial Board "is determined by the
financial interest of the party which employs the physi-
cian." A case study of one group of commercial clinics
shows that injured workers are not getting proper treat-
ment; that doctors of the most meager qualifications have
been put in charge; that records are inadequate and nurses
and even a layman were permitted to treat patients; that
records were grossly inadequate, bills padded and claims
fraudulent, and costs skyrocketed to the disadvantage of
industry and the advantage only of "a group of lay and
medical racketeers." The compensation "battle" gives the
physician the incongruous dual roles of doctor-investigator
and doctor-lawyer, with the result that many physicians of
the higher type have withdrawn from compensation work.
Beyond the injustice to injured workers the Committee is
"firmly convinced that the present (Continued on page 26)
DISTRIBUTION
"I wish you wouldn't squeeze so," said the Dormouse,
"I can hardly breathe."
"I can't help It," said Alice very meekly. "I'm growing."
"You've no right to grow here," said the Dormouse.
"Don't talk nonsense," said Alice more boldly. "You know
you're growing too."
"Yes, but I grow at a reasonable pace," said the Dormouse,
"not in that ridiculous fashion."
Each figure represents 12,000 Negroes who
migrated to New Jersey from 1920 to 1930
(.•If th*n I per cent.
I to 5 p«r cent.
5 to 10 ptr cent.
10 to IS per cent.
IS to 20 per ctnt.
New Jersey's Twe
ANEW race is growing up in New Jersey. As E
R. Embree says of the Negro in America,
new in its biological and social make-up; it is
tinctive; it still represents liabilities to the stai
still suffers great hurts from the neighboring races
it also contributes its own gifts.
Every twentieth citizen of New Jersey is a N
which means the highest proportion of colored po
tion of any of the northern or western states. Bet
1920 and 1930 the rate of increase was twice as
as that of the white population. This phenorm
with all its social and economic implications, lee
New Jersey State Conference of Social Work, thr
its Interracial Committee and in cooperation wit!
State Department of Institutions and Agencie
undertake, two years ago, a survey of Negrc
throughout the state. A summary of the fim
and recommendations has now been published
pamphlet from which The Survey is privilege
reproduce pictorial charts with their accompar
pertinent bits from Alice in Wonderland, these
an engaging feature of a special edition of lir
circulation. The pamphlet may be secured fron
New Jersey State Conference, 21 Fulton St
Newark, N. J.
The survey, as the graphs indicate, was broad
deep. It analyzed population and explored econ
status, family life, health including morbidity
mortality, dependence, religion, recreation,
quency, crime and community attitudes.
SICKNESS AND DEATH
"They couldn't have done that, you know, they've been ill."
"So they were," said the Dormouse, "very ill."
7 of every 100 births
tttttittt
10 of every 100 unemployed workei
12 of every 100 infant deaths
8 of every 100 deaths
6 of every 100 employed
workers
9 of every 100 persons In tuberculosis sanatoria
26 of every
litizen — the Negro
e recommendations, which touch on twenty-four
, focus on greater equalization of opportunity for
ne fifth of New Jersey's citizenry and more par-
tion of the Negro in community life. They urge
opportunity for employment and promotion for
egro workers, improvement of housing including
slums, more and better facilities for hospitaliza-
specially for the tuberculous, more leisure-time
ies and more adequate foster and boarding-home
:or children. Education is stressed: "At least
y-five hundred more Negro children in school,"
"Reduction of illiteracy to 'normal' — at least
:ewer Negro illiterates." The report is emphatic
ing for "an increased awareness of and approach
own problems by the Negro community." The
o community must concern itself with the prob-
f its own dependents, must establish its own
ctive program for its delinquents and pre-delin-
s, must develop local groups to study and im-
local conditions. There must be "a decrease of
mination and a surcease of segregation," and
nclusion of the Negro population in all programs
ocial and civic improvement, receiving all the
and privileges of citizenship and assuming its
tare of responsibility."
e survey was financed by a special grant from
pelman Fund. The research was directed by
e A. Reid of the National Urban League, New
assisted by Thelma Skiff Fuller, and Emil Frankel
State Department of Institutions and Agencies.
17 of every 100 married women employed away
from home
EDUCATION
"We had the best of educations— in fact, we went to school
every day — "
"I've been to a day-school, too," said Alice, "you needn't
be so proud as all that."
"With extras?" asked the Mock Turtle a little anxiously.
"Yes," said Alice, "we learned French and music."
4 of every 100 children
attending school
ttmtt
7 of every 100 Illiterates
DELINQUENCY
"Consider your verdict," the King said to the Jury.
"Not yet, not yet!" the Rabbit hastily interrupted.
"There's a great deal to come before that!"
AM
24 of every 100 juvenile delinquents in
institutions
LI
JttMMMML
26 of every 100 adult delinquents In prison
4 of every 100 industrial workers
DEPENDENCY
9 of every 100 dependent
children
26
THE SURVEY
January 1933
(Continued from page 2j) system unfairly adds fictitious
and fraudulent expense to industry and to the insurance
carriers."
The Committee, which is composed of leading physicians,
representatives of the State Labor Department, the public
and others, under the chairmanship of Howard S. Cullman,
urges prompt and vigorous action through the appointment
of a commissioner under the Moreland Act to strengthen
the Workmen's Compensation Act for the benefit of in-
jured workers and industry itself. They urge that any
agency carrying on further investigation consider the
recommendations offered by the medical subcommittee,
including the appointment of a panel of qualified and
specially licensed physicians to treat compensation cases,
the right of the worker to choose his physician from this
panel, the appointment of a grievance committee to hear
complaints against physicians, the discontinuance of all
commercial and insurance clinics for treatment of injured
workers, and consideration of the advantages and dis-
advantages of an exclusive state fund to write workmen's
compensation insurance in New York.
Upholding the Schools
/^•"HARGING that Chicago's educational standard is
V_> "being lowered to that of peasantry," the Superin-
tendent of Schools Advisory Council, made up of five
hundred civic, business and professional leaders of the
community, at a meeting last month put forward a four-
fold depression program for the schools. Drafted to meet
a crisis in one city, the program clarifies the situation faced
by many American school systems.
As a more constructive economy scheme than budget-
slashing on a flat percentage basis, the Council urges,
first, that expenditures on plant, buildings, equipment and
business operation be minimized, keeping in mind that "the
educational functions of the school system are entitled to
paramount consideration"; second, that even with dimin-
ished revenues, every effort be made to provide "instruc-
tion of an appropriate type for youths who otherwise will
be cast upon the streets"; for older boys and girls, "who are
in peculiar danger at this time," opportunities for trade
and vocational training; finally, that the school plants be
made available outside school hours for "community
activities that will sustain the morale of the people."
Admitting that "all this may sound impractical and
Utopian in view of the hard fact of a diminished budget,"
the Council holds that this is the time for the community
to "examine fearlessly and with open minds the work of
the schools."
Chest Campaign Results
NO one with even a dash of realism in his system is
surprised that the community chests fell short of
their goals. (See page 21.) Competent observers had long
seen it on the cards. Reduced incomes in the upper brack-
ets, vanished jobs in the lower, took their toll of contribu-
tions. Increased public-relief funds, which absorbed some
of the emergency relief load but afforded an elegant alibi
to the alibi-minded, had an influence. That the gap between
objective and accomplishment was not wider is due, say
these same observers, to organization more effective than
ever and to the power of conviction that went into the
campaigns, not forgetting the reinforcement of local
effort by the national publicity of the Welfare and Relief
Mobilization. In many instances, particularly in large
cities, the inner circle of chest advisers was aware that the
goal was probably unattainable. But these men believed
that they owed it to the community and to the member
agencies to present a true budget of needs rather than one
which this person or that thought could or could not be
raised.
This winter finds the chests as a whole just about back
on their pre-depression footing. The Association of Com-
munity Chests and Councils, comparing the figures of this
last campaign with those of the falls of 1928 and 1929,
finds that in 120 cities, a fair sampling of big and little,
the amount raised in 1932 was only a fraction of one per-
cent less than the average of the two years of peak pros-
perity. The catch in that of course lies in the fact that
while community funds are at 1928-29 levels community
needs are those of 1932-33. And that is a different story.
The General Welfare Tax League
WITH Harold S. Buttenheim as president and an ad-
visory board including Charles A. Beard, John R.
Commons, Harold W. Dodds, Paul H. Douglas, Ralph C.
Flanders, Jacob H. Hollander, Lawson Purdy, Thomas H.
Reed, Frank H. Sommer, the General Welfare Tax League
has been organized and christened at a time of crying need.
Not only are the times out of joint and public finances at
sixes and sevens, but the world is full of other tax associa-
tions with selfish or special purposes to serve. Non-partisan
in character with no special ax to grind, guided by eminent
authorities, this newcomer in the field is adequately
equipped for the task it has set for itself. According to its
platform the League will seek by means of research and
organized effort, to translate the findings of economic
investigation into concrete legislation for the raising of
public revenues. It hopes to be, to some extent, a counter-
acting force to the strong and organized pressure of special-
interest groups which are constantly seeking to influence
tax legislation in their own behalf.
+ Children •
A SOBER anxiety pervades the annual review of Ameri-
ca's children recently broadcast in the twentieth
report of the chief of the U. S. Children's Bureau. There
are bright spots. Deaths of babies, according to provisional
figures for 1931, again declined by a percentage which is
slight when measured by the trend line from 1915-30 but
important in view of prevailing economic conditions.
Deathrates of mothers from puerperal septicemia were
lower in 1930 (the last year for which compilations are
available) than ever before recorded, undoubtedly due in
part to interest and effort on the part of the medical pro-
fession. Juvenile delinquency rates declined in both 1930
and 1931. In the latter year fewer boys were charged with
mischief, truancy and being ungovernable, though stealing,
the most common offense among boys and the one "that
would be expected to show the effect of economic condi-
tions" took an upward slant. There has been a substantial
decline in child labor since 1929, doubtless due in part to
business conditions since the figures vary widely from city
to city and state to state: in some places the depression has
brought new demands for child labor. Assistance under
mothers' aid laws reached twice as many children in June
1931 as were helped in that way a decade earlier.
January 1933
THE SURVEY
27
On the red side of the ledger Miss Abbott notes the
demoralization of thousands of boys who are on the road,
living in jungles, hopping freights, often hungry, sick,
injured, discouraged (see Boys on the Loose, The Survey,
September i, 1932). "The size of the problem requires
state and national cooperation." Studies in coal-mining
and lumbering areas in a dozen or more states show wide-
spread undernourishment of children. State and federal
assistance were found to be needed urgently also for im-
mediate relief and a plan for reemployment of miners in
areas where the Society of Friends has been carrying
emergency child-feeding programs. The consumption of
milk, the single most important food for children, is known
to have gone down in some communities.
In this brief, factual summary of the year's work, the
Children's Bureau emerges once more with a courage, use-
fulness and indefatigability exceeded by no other arm of
government.
Caroline Stevens Wittpenn
MORE than one thousand people went in Rolls Royces
and Model T Fords and on foot to the funeral of
Mrs. H. Otto Wittpenn, who died last month shortly after
her seventy-third birthday. She had been publicly ac-
claimed as "the best loved woman in New Jersey," one who
was known not only to the managers but to the clients of
the more than sixty social agencies through which she had
poured her unflagging energy and serene spirit. As a mem-
ber of the State Board of Control she had for many years
been an important factor in the development of the model
institutions and public social services for which her state is
known. A caller at her home might find her one day going
patiently over the case record of some bedraggled little girl
whose foot had slipped; on another day discussing with
technical knowledge the specifications for a medium-
security prison. She did some such task every day, and had
done so for more than fifty years. Mrs. Wittpenn was of the
Stevens family, which has been the center of social, civic
and educational life in Hoboken for generations. She had a
heritage of social service which she took up as a girl and
never laid down.
Hugh F. Fox
TWO neighboring states, New Jersey and Connecticut,
claimed Hugh F. Fox as citizen and he contributed to
their social and civic development in different epochs of his
life. But he was born in England and New York City was
his base for those national activities for which he was
widely known. It was as president of the New Jersey State
Board of Children's Guardians that he became interested
in child labor. He not only pioneered the reform there as
chairman of the state committee, but a quarter of a cen-
tury ago he carried the principles he had espoused to a
meeting in Atlanta of the National Conference of Charities
and Correction. As a business man he challenged his fellows
to fend against the evils which had scotched older indus-
trial districts and which were then in their incipiency in
the South. Social work, prison reform, the prevention of
tuberculosis, the community needs of Plainfield, the educa-
tional and civic needs of Greenwich, — he put himself into
all these and his death at 69 has removed an engaging,
likable, effective man of affairs who was rarely gifted in
turning his social enthusiasms into action. His business was
in hops, and on a notable occasion soon after the turn of
the century he spoke his mind freely on those demonstrable
evils in the retail trade which had made the brewers
vulnerable to the attacks of the mounting prohibition
movement. Instead of resenting his criticism they took it
to heart and asked him to help them put an alternative
program into operation. For twenty-five years he served as
secretary of the United States Brewers' Association. The
about-face, however, came too late and beer was banned
along with hard liquor in the general recoil against the
saloon. His death is an especial loss at this juncture as he
would have been a force for moderation and constructive
action in the period of change ahead.
1933
PSYCHOLOGISTS certainly and the Greeks probably
have a word for the tenor of the messages which brought
the seasonal greetings of social workers, bless 'em, to this
sanctum. Let 1932 bury its own wreckage — let 1933 bring
a new deal!
Neva R. Deardorff turns to Walt Whitman for her vision
of the new year:
I dream'd in a dream I saw a city invincible to the attacks of the
whole of the rest of the earth,
I dreamed that was the new city of Friends,
Nothing was greater there than the quality of robust love, it led
the rest,
It was seen every hour in the actions of the men of that city,
And in all their looks and words.
Dr. Ira S. Wile throws 1932 out the window and hopes
that we "will have all the joys of the New Year season
with untold exaltation of the spirit and increasing realiza-
tion of all that life means to those who retain their sense
of humor and balance." Same to you, Doctor. Louise M.
Clevenger, St. Paul, saltily condemns 1932 and all its works
and adds, "However I suppose when evolution becomes
obvious it is painful." William H. Matthews, whose job in
New York unemployment relief these past three years
would have killed a lesser man, puts himself gaily into a
high hat on a tall horse and megaphones two cheery jingles
of his own making. Paul S. Bliss, St. Louis, turns from
man-made insecurity to the steadfastness of trees and in a
little volume of his own verse, The Arch of Spring, gives
his friends glimpses of the vision that sustains him. Dr.
Clarence M. Hincks offers — and who could do it better? —
a mental-hygiene prescription for 1933 compounded, with
pharmaceutical proportions indicated, of Spirit of Coop-
eration, Essence of Fortitude, Tincture of Security, In-
fusion of Compelling Objectives, Elixir of Work and
Spiriti frumenti, all this to be taken "cum vitae gaudio."
And finally, if all other spirit-lifters had failed, there was
the message of Martha Bensley Bruere's scissor picture:
HAPPIER NEW YEAR AHOY!
GREETING FROM .
MARTHA AND ROBERT BRUERE
28
THE SURVEY
January 1933
SOCIAL
Footholds of Security
TF you are a thoughtful person you can't be very long on the
•*• job of dealing with homeless and destitute people without try-
ing to find some help for them beyond a night's lodging and a
meal of victuals. From Pittsburgh, with its overload of unemploy-
ment and distress, come two proposals for farm colonies of sorts
designed to give a new foothold to those who have lost all security.
A. W. Grotefrend, who sees homeless men passing through the
Central Application Bureau at the rate of two thousand a month,
and who has studied them individually and en masse, believes
that farm colonies near large centers of population will open up
new frontiers of employment for these men whose work habits
have become demoralized. He tried it out last summer with sixty
men on a small farm near Pittsburgh and found the result so
satisfactory that he now hopes to operate next summer a farm-
camp for some two thousand men.
The plan of the Pittsburgh Y.M.C.A., proposed to the Alle-
gheny County Emergency Association is for garden farms, small
tracts close to the city where families transplanted from con-
gested sections would be able to produce part of their subsistence
even in times of normal employment. The Y.M.C.A. cites in-
stances where the substance of the plan has been tried and urges
its development in an orderly fashion as a self-liquidating project
financed by long-term government loans.
Work in Case Work
AN experiment with a work-relief project for case-work
•**• purposes is going on at Montefiore Hospital in New York
for a selected group of some eighty clients of the Jewish Social
Service Association. The hospital supplies, chiefly in its carpen-
try, machine and paint shops, under the supervision of its own
foremen, training in new trades or further training in the client's
own trade when his training is deficient or outmoded. The clients,
both men and women, are chosen from the Association's under-
care relief cases. Wages are held to the budgetary needs of the
family by staggering the number of days' work assigned each
week.
The purpose of the experiment, or demonstration as it promises
to be, is to reestablish work habits and to develop self-confidence
in persons, able-bodied or with limited physical or mental handi-
caps, who cannot be placed by the emergency work-relief organi-
zations and whose future earning capacity seems jeopardized by
long continued unemployment.
w:
A Clothing Pool
rHILE most people agree that new clothing is a necessary
measure of relief the fact remains that most communities
lean heavily on used garments for supplying the needs of destitute
families. The experience of the Detroit Council of Social Agencies,
which organized last fall to pool all clothing resources, indicates
what system and teamwork can do in this line.
Twenty-two agencies, public and private, including the police
department, the federated churches and the attendance depart-
ment of the schools, joined forces to meet clothing needs through
a special committee of social-work executives. Ten district centers
were established, stocked with Red Cross cotton garments, with
shoes, stockings and men's and boys' clothing purchased by the
Department of Public Welfare and with used garments collected
continuously through hundreds of school, church, lodge and
neighborhood committees. These committees sort and inventory
the garments they gather and dispose of useless things before the
lot goes to the district committees which in turn equalize the sup-
plies among the centers. Distribution is on requisition from the
D.P.W., the Attendance Department and churches and agencies
approved by district committees.
This all sounds simpler than it actually is. As a matter of fact
there is meticulous, detailed organization for collection and a
good many cogs in the machinery of distribution. For instance,
supplies purchased with D.P.W. funds must go only to D.P.W.
cases; the supply of Red Cross cotton garments is still insufficient
though a million and a quarter yards of goods were allocated to
Detroit; accounting is something of a cross with different systems
for D.P.W. and Red Cross stock. But three months' experience
has ironed out many rough places and has demonstrated that the
system can maintain a steady, equalized supply of clothing, with-
out feast or famine. Ella Lee Cowgill, metropolitan secretary of
the Council of Social Agencies, 51 Warren Street West, Detroit,
has on hand a statement of the complete set-up which she will
send to interested agencies.
Not by Law Alone
THE capacity of law and of rigid legal processes to deter
youthful criminals is challenged in a recently published study
by the Sub-Committee on Causes of the New York State Crime
Commission. The monograph of 310 pages, written by Harry M.
Shulman, is entitled The Youthful Offender: A Statistical Study
of Crime Among the 16-20 Age Group in New York City. Copies,
$i, from Mr. Shulman, County Penitentiary, Welfare Island,
New York.
Adolescent youth is responsible for considerably more than its
share of crime, says the subcommittee, and while automobile
theft is now the most frequent offense the incidence of more seri-
ous crimes is large and growing. The report sharply criticizes the
existing procedures of criminal justice for this age group and
describes as "arbitrary and capricious" the sharp separation of
offenders at the age of sixteen between the children's and the
adults' courts. Judges have little regard for the prognosis indi-
cated by the social background of the offender and are prone to
sentence indiscriminately with their eyes on the offense and not on
the offender. The control of adolescent crime must come not from
more drastic laws but from more intelligent vocational, educa-
tional and recreational programs for boys and girls and from more
humanity in the judicial handling of juvenile offenders.
Progress in Depression
MOST communities are content these days if welfare activi-
ties hold their own. But San Diego, Calif., has had the
courage to look for progress by checking its present status against
a community survey made in 1929 by George B. Mangold of the
University of Southern California, and has made the cheering dis-
covery that hard times or no hard times sixteen of the recom-
mendations have been wholly or partially put into effect. The
original study was a joint project of the city, the county and the
Community Chest. "It left the community," says J. H. Rain-
water, chest secretary, "with a fact-finding attitude toward social
work." Which, as anyone will admit, is a pretty sound attitude to
build on.
In line with Professor Mangold's major recommendations San
Diego now has a Community Welfare Council which serves as a
coordinating and planning body, and a chapter of the American
Association of Social Workers which has definitely influenced
personnel standards. Following detailed studies by the Council
has come the realization of further recommendations such as the
establishment of visiting-nurse service, two new neighborhood
January 1933
THE SURVEY
29
centers and an old peoples' home, the provision of part-pay beds
in the county hospital and the general clarifying of the functions
of relief and child-care agencies.
Welfare on Its Own Feet
'T'HE campaign initiated last summer by the North Carolina
A State Board of Charities and Public Welfare to induce coun-
ties to employ full-time superintendents of public welfare has
borne fruit in, at last accounts, nine new appointments, bringing
the total of such officials in the state up to fifty-nine. In North
Carolina welfare administration has been tangled up with the
schools, the superintendent of the latter being ex-officio superin-
tendent of the former. Recent legislation however has made it
possible for the state to subsidize county-welfare work by paying
that part of the officer's salary and traveling expenses, usually
half, hitherto charged to education. This inducement, plus the
growing needs of the relief situation, has greatly accelerated the
movement to put welfare work on its own two feet.
Who Pays Unpaid Rents
y\S in most other cities — note the honorable exception of Mil-
-i*- waukee — the unemployed of Philadelphia have to keep a
roof over their heads as best they can. The relief organization
pays no rents. But unlike other cities Philadelphia, through its
Community Council, proposes to find out just what part unpaid
rent is playing in family economy during the depression and to
ascertain just what is the contribution of landlords to unemploy-
ment relief through the item of unpaid rent. The Council's De-
partment of Research, Ewan Clague director, has recently under-
taken a study which will, it is believed, bring to light certain basic
facts concerning the rent and home-owning situation including
among other things the number of months each family is in arrears
and the total amount of its unpaid rent or building-and-loan dues.
Thus far thirty thousand blanks have been filled out. From these
a large sample will be selected for special investigation. In addi-
tion a representative group of landlords and realtors will be sur-
veyed to determine the property and business loss which this
group has undergone through unpaid rents.
Another Philadelphia study, now under way, is of ten thousand
men and women on work relief in 1931. Why were these particular
people the ones to suffer from unemployment, or, being unem-
ployed, why did they have to appeal for help? How did they differ
from their fellows still "in work," or who, being out of work, were
able to manage for themselves? And what part did industry and
the community play in their misfortunes?
A third study, almost completed, is of 1576 applicants for
emergency loans during the winter of 1930-1931, when the Com-
mittee on Unemployment Relief set aside $50,000 for loans to
heads of families who in ability, character and work history ap-
peared to be good risks. The detailed form of the questionnaire
yielded comprehensive and unusual data on family economics.
Through the Social Service Exchange the course of families who
later were obliged to seek direct relief was followed. This study
will, it is believed, give definite indications of the practicability
of character loans as a method of relief in a period of widespread
unemployment.
But the Service Survives
ONE year ago there were three day nurseries in the Richmond,
Va., Community Fund. Today there is one. The depression
is in part responsible but the Nursery Council of the Council of
Social Agencies knows that case-work methods have done more
to reduce nursery activity than hard times. One nursery dropped
out early in the year. In November the Nursery Council suc-
ceeded in working out a plan whereby the two remaining ones
consolidated their boards, budgets and programs. Foster day-care
will be used when necessary and desirable and one central insti-
tution will be maintained. This institution is even now operating
at far less than its capacity.
This is the first of several combinations of agencies toward
Not All for Professionals
FACTS ABOUT JUVENILE DELINQUENCY. ITS PREVENTION
AND TREATMENT. Prepared and published by the V. S. Children's Bureau,
Washington, D. C. 45 pages. Ten cents.
A comprehensive, non-technical outline of what the citizen
should and the social worker must know about the newer
philosophy in this field.
CHILDREN ON THE STAGE. By Roy F. Woodbury and Charlotte Isabel
Claflin. 30 pages. A Report of the Juvenile Protective Department of the Chil-
dren's Aid and Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children, Erie County,
N. Y. Published by that organization, 70 West Chippewa Street, Buffalo.
A review of a national problem and of efforts at its control
under the laws of the state of New York.
FAMILY WELFARE AND RELIEF ACTIVITIES IN PITTSBURGH
AND ALLEGHENY COUNTY, 1920-1931. By Edith Miller Tufts. Pub-
lished as Research Monograph No. 1 by the Bureau of Social Research, Federa-
tion of Social Agencies, 711 Wabash Building, Pittsburgh.
DISCUSSION and statistics of trends and changes well into
the present period of expansion and of the use of large
public funds.
WHERE TO TURN. AN OUTLINE OF SOCIAL RESOURCES. Pre-
pared for the use of the Protestant Episcopal Church in the Province of Wash-
ington by the Slate Charities Association of Pennsylvania, 311 South Juniper
Street, Philadelphia. 44 pages, fifteen cents.
A valuable handbook of the major social resources, na-
tional, state and local, of Pennsylvania, Delaware, Mary-
land, Virginia, West Virginia and the District of Columbia.
A CENSUS OF SOCIAL WORK POSITIONS IN MASSACHUSETTS.
1932. A study conducted by the Boston Chapter of the American Association
of Social Workers under the direction of Maurice Taylor, 25 Blossom Street,
Boston. 31 pages. Twenty-five cents.
GROUND first covered in 1828 is restudied in 1932 yielding
much valuable professional data on turnover, trends and
comparisons in equipment between workers in public and
private agencies.
which the Community Fund and the Council of Social Agencies
are working.
And speaking of Richmond, that city, with its tobacco factories
comparatively undepressed by the depression, has bravely chosen
this time to build a Negro gymnasium, the first in the city if not in
the south. The money was raised in a special campaign last June
and construction has now been authorized.
WELFARE officers of the eighteen towns and four cities of West-
chester County, N. Y., have formed a committee to coordinate
and equalize relief procedures and standards in the various com-
munities.
THE American League to Abolish Capital Punishment, its budget
hard hit by depression, has decided to put its strength this year
into educational work during legislative sessions rather than to
initiate legislative campaigns as in past years.
IF Missouri legislators heed the mandate of the people old-age
pensions will go on the statute books this winter. By an over-
whelming majority the electorate approved a constitutional
amendment removing the bar to such legislation.
FELLOWSHIP HOUSE, 71 West 47 Street, New York, has available
a leaflet describing its last summer's experiment with a work-shop
camp for unemployed boys conducted on an abandoned farm on
Long Island. The camp supplied normal recreational and occu-
pational needs and built up morale. A substantial number of work
opportunities were uncovered in the neighborhood.
"DOES your institution offer to every child understanding and the
guarding of his personality as his most sacred right?" queries the
New York School of Social Work in announcing its February in-
stitute for staff members of children's institutions. The institute,
conducted through round table discussions, is limited to twenty.
The dates are February I to 28. For details address the school, 122
East 22 Street, New York.
30
THE SURVEY
January 1933
Good News for Nurses
APPROXIMATELY no hospital schools of nursing have
•**• closed their doors since January i, 1931, the A. N. A. Bulle-
tin reports, lightening by that much the pressure of newcomers on
a profession already overcrowded in the light of people's ability to
buy nursing. Many schools have raised entrance requirements:
the Grading Committee reports that 90 percent of all students in
accredited schools are highschool graduates in contrast to 73 per
cent three years ago. Some have cut the size of their classes, in-
tending to rely more on salaried graduates for service, less on stu-
dent nurses. At St. Luke's Hospital, Chicago, where the number
of student nurses has been reduced by more than half, graduates
have volunteered a month's service with maintenance only and no
salary, to help carry on at need until finances permit the hospital
to increase its paid graduate staff. It has been suggested that
schools of nursing not only discontinue giving allowances to stu-
dents but also charge tuition, to ensure getting really interested
students and keeping parents from "parking their daughters in
nursing schools for maintenance's sake." Dr. May Ayres Burgess,
director of the Grading Committee declares "If the money now
being spent by 88 percent of the schools on student allowances
could be used to increase the number of head nurses and assistant
head nurses . . . such expenditure would result in happier pa-
tients and a better product from the school of nursing."
Costs of Medical Care
THE much-discussed final report of the Committee on the
Costs of Medical Care (See Survey Graphic, Dec. i, 1932, p.
629) is to be had from the University of Chicago Press, price
$1.50. The concrete ways in which various groups and communi-
ties are carrying out the principles of one of its major recommen-
dations— group organization of doctors and patients for group
purchase of medical care — appear in a series of recently published
studies of the Committee: No. 17, Nursing Services and Insurance
for Medical Care in Brattleboro, Vermont; No. 18, The Medical
Service of the Homestake Mining Company; No. 19, University
Student Health Services; No. 20, A Community Medical Service
Organized Under Industrial Auspices in Roanoke Rapids, North
Carolina; No. 21, Organized Medical Service at Fort Benning,
Georgia. A volume by Roger I. Lee and Lewis Webster Jones,
The Fundamentals of Good Medical Care, outlines standards and
an estimate of service required to meet the medical needs of the
United States. The appalling conditions in some areas appear in a
study by C. St. C. Cloud, Surveys of the Medical Facilities in
Three Representative Southern Counties: per capita spendable
incomes in these counties in 1930 averaged from $99 to $189 a
year; medical facilities in two of the three counties were sorely
inadequate, and physicians' incomes ruinously low. The author
concluded: "Without financial subsidy from sources outside the
county or state to supplement local resources, it does not seem
even probable that all residents of the 'South' can be assured
adequate preventive and therapeutic care." A report by Maurice
Leven, The Incomes of Physicians, shows that in the boom year
1 929 half of the doctors in the United States received a net income
of 13800 or less, while 15 percent got less than $1500 and more
than 4 percent lost money. In 1930 physicians' incomes declined
17 percent. For prices and publication dates of these and other
publications of the Committee, write the University of Chicago
Press.
Deaths Among Jews and Non-Jews
A STUDY made recently by Dr. Charles Bolduan and Louis
Weiner of the New York City Department of Health ana-
lyzes causes of deaths among Jews and white non-Jews in the
metropolis in 1931. Deaths due to diabetes, cancer, diseases of the
nervous system and suicide were more frequent among Jews than
among others: among Jewish women diabetes was almost twice
as common as a cause of death as among non-Jewish women.
On the other hand the Jewish groups show distinct advantages
when it comes to tuberculosis, pneumonia and syphilis. Between
the ages of thirty and fifty the proportion of tuberculosis deaths
among Jewish males, for example, was approximately one third
that among non-Jewish white males. A summary of the study
published in the Weekly Bulletin of the New York City Depart-
ment of Health declares that "available statistical material does
not permit any conclusion as to the cause of these differences. It is
hoped that the information will lead to detailed studies to deter-
mine whether the differences are related to practices in diet and
hygiene among the Jews or whether some other adequate explana-
tion can be discovered."
Children in 1932
THE black and white reckoning of general deathrates con-
tinues highly favorable, with the Metropolitan Life Insur-
ance Company reporting the best October in its history, and a
lower rate for tuberculosis in that month than any ever before
recorded for any month for its millions of policyholders. There is
good prospect that a number of diseases, prominent among them
those affecting chiefly children and young people, will have been
found to have registered new minimal deathrates in 1932. On the
other hand, between the black and white of death and life there
are some indications that the grays of sub-standard health are
deeper in places. A report to Alice F. Liveright, Secretary of Wel-
fare for Pennsylvania, details the summer's findings of the health-
mobile which toured rural districts for the State Department of
Health. In 1931 the staff of the car rated 18 percent of the chil-
dren examined as "not in good condition" and referred 37 percent
to their family physicians. In 1932 30 percent of those examined
were not in good condition and 49 percent were referred to their
family doctors. Though the car did not tour the same counties in
the two years, the chief of the Preschool Division, Dr. Mary Riggs
Noble, believes that the county populations were sufficiently
similar so that comparisons may justly be made. The last compila-
tions of the New York City Department of Health, covering the
first three quarters of 1932, find the percentage of schoolchildren
classed as malnourished one third greater than that in 1927-29.
The rate increased continuously in 1930, 1931 and 1932. More
than a quarter of the children examined in Manhattan in 1932
were found malnourished. The Department believes, "There is no
doubt that the increase in the prevalence of malnutrition in school
children is the result of the severe economic depression."
Policies in Birth Control
A3TION urging abolition of legal restrictions on the giving of
contraceptive information "by physicians and other quali-
fied persons" was deferred by the Federal Council of Churches of
Christ at its recent meeting, with instructions to the executive
committee to report on this topic at the next meeting in 1934. In
Honolulu the Twelfth Territorial Conference of Social Work set
as one of its objectives for 1932-33 "Endorsement of the move-
ment to increase individual health, marital happiness, family
January 1933
THE SURVEY
31
stability, economic security, and for the Territory, greater econo-
mies and eugenic betterment, by giving information through the
private physician or the medical clinic as to the means of con-
trolling conception." A preliminary report of a study by Ray-
mond Pearl from the School of Hygiene and Public Health of
Johns Hopkins University and the Division of Research of the
Milbank Memorial Fund reports conclusions drawn from the
cases of two thousand patients in maternity wards of hospitals in
five cities. (Human Biology, Vol. 4, No. 3, p. 363.) About 35 per
cent of the white and 15 percent of the Negro women reported
use of methods to prevent conception. Among the white women
who used such methods the pregnancy rate per unit of time was
14.5 points lower than among those who did not use them; among
the Negro women, the pregnancy rate was higher for those who
used them than for those who had not. The report comments:
"There is some reason to think, though it is not yet demonstrated,
that women who practise contraception are innately more fertile
than women who do not, or than a random sample of women in
general."
New Haven X-rays 6000 Children
USING the new paper films, the New Haven (Conn.) Depart-
ments of Health and Education are carrying through a
special piece of work in tuberculosis prevention by X-raying 6000
children in the upper grades and highschools. The whole job is
expected to take not more than fourteen school days, since the
paper films come in rolls and the X-ray apparatus is so regulated
that pictures can be taken at the rate of three to four a minute.
The films are developed in rolls of 100 or more exposures, and
interpreted by reflected light by merely unwinding the long sheets
on an appropriate apparatus. In addition to the "almost remark-
able speed and smoothness" of this method, it is far more economi-
cal than the use of celluloid films. The company which has devised
the film and apparatus has undertaken to X-ray the 6000 children
and develop the films at a cost of 60 cents per child, which is paid
by the parents. In addition to the older children in the New
Haven public schools pupils in a number of private schools and in
highschools of adjoining towns were invited to take advantage of
the opportunity and many have availed themselves of it. The
Pertinent Publications
STRETCHING THE DOLLAR: SAFE FOOD ECONOMY. Household
Finance Corporation, Palmolive Building, Chicago, 111. On request.
Second in a series of practical, illustrated pamphlets on
wise use of the family's money. The first was Money
Management for Households.
GOOD FOOD FOR LITTLE MONEY, by Lucy H. Cillelt. American Child
Health Association, 450 Seventh Ate., New York City. Price 3 cents for one
to three copies, with lower rates on various Quantities, up to $3.50 per 1000
f.o.b. New York.
A simple, authoritative 2-page leaflet, giving general
principles and a week's food order for families of various
sizes.
PNEUMOCONIOSIS. A List of References. International Labor Office,
Series N, No. 15. Price 50 cents of the World Peace Foundation, 40 Mount
Vernon St., Boston, Mass.
Bibliography of works published up to December 1931 in
various languages on the harmful effects of silica and dusts
in general.
A STUDY OF SICKNESS COST AND PRIVATE MEDICAL PRAC-
TICE, by Donald B. Armstrong, M.D. Metropolitan Life insurance
Company, 1 Madison Ave., New York City.
Study of a year's experiences of 8677 families, who averaged
$125 a year for care of sickness for a family of five.
A SURVEY OF THE COMMUNICABLE DISEASE HOSPITAL
NEEDS OF THE BOROUGH OF THE BRONX, CITY OF NEW
YORK, by Anna C. Phillips.
Needs and recommendations brought out by a study for
the Visiting Committee of the State Charities Aid Asso-
ciation in cooperation with the New York City Depart-
ments of Health and Hospitals.
physical director of the Board of Education took charge of signing
up the pupils and collecting the money, while the director of the
bureau of tuberculosis in the Department of Health has taken the
responsibility of carrying the program through and will interpret
the films. Information of value will be turned over to the family
physician and the film then becomes the property of the family.
The Department believes that "this work will make it possible to
pick out the children who have had enough infection to have
produced a variable amount of disease which can be seen in the
picture and it will also make it possible to follow back into homes
and perhaps discover unrecognized sources of infection."
UNDER the title Man Controls Germs, Runs Amuck Himself, the
Illinois Health Messenger (Illinois State Department of Public
Health) offers a caustic comment: "Very striking evidence of
man's ability to control the invisible forms of life which cause
disease and his shortcoming in self-control is found in the contrast
between mortality from epidemic diseases and automobile acci-
dents. During the first eight months of 1932 automobile accidents
were charged with nearly one third more deaths in Illinois than
were all epidemic diseases combined, influenza and pneumonia
alone excepted."
WITHIN the field of germs, however, there still its plenty to be
done. The Detroit Department of Health recently analyzed five
years records which showed that 15 percent of all deaths of chil-
dren under fifteen years of age were due to the communicable
diseases of childhood or tuberculosis. Among children under four
tuberculosis in all its forms caused more deaths than measles,
scarlet fever, whooping cough and diphtheria combined.
THE December issue of the Journal of Social Hygiene is a special
issue on Syphilis as an Industrial Problem, with articles and
abstracts on incidence, prevention and control, losses and risks
due to syphilis, treatment of syphilis under medical benefits sys-
tems, and the like by authorities in the respective fields.
FIFTH Avenue Hospital, New York City, has opened what is be-
lieved to be the first clinic of its kind in this country— a "cross-
eyes" clinic for treatment without surgery, equipped to handle
children of all ages, including six-months-old infants.
"NOT every child who is a problem, nor every girl who is a sex
delinquent, is a mental defective," declares Florentine Hackbush
in the Monthly Bulletin of the Pennsylvania Department of Wel-
fare. Many children "examined when emotionally upset or in poor
physical condition make a low intelligence quotient and are then
considered feeble-minded," though after a period of adjustment
they may present a very different picture. During the past year
28 percent of the applications for admission to Laurelton State
Village for Mental Defectives were found to be unnecessary.
THE board of directors of the American Society for the Control of
Cancer have embarked on a new service as a consulting board on
problems in the cancer field. The board includes physicians, biolo-
gists, statisticians, financiers and others, who would be qualified
to pass on such problems as, for example, whether a proposed
form of cancer research would be likely to yield results. The board
has agreed to serve in this capacity for the National Institute of
Health. The Society has also announced its decision to conduct an
"ambitious" exhibit at the Chicago World's Fair this summer.
A sorry reflection of depression appears in a report by Dr. Hunt-
ington Williams, Director of Public Health in Baltimore, Md., of
an unusual group of cases of lead poisoning, chiefly among chil-
dren in whose homes discarded storage battery casings had been
used as fuel. After the lead plates had been removed for salvage,
junk dealers had been giving the casings to poor people to burn in
their stoves. Enough lead deposit remained in the casings to cause
lead poisoning from the smoke and fumes. The junk dealers have
agreed to stop giving the casings away.
32
THE SURVEY
January 1933
California for Insurance
/COMPULSORY unemployment insurance, administered by
V>| the state, with contributions from employers and employes
is one of the major recommendations to the California legislature
in the final report of the State Unemployment Commission. The
report which is now in the hands of the state printer, will be an
8oo-page volume. The legislative program it offers is summarized
in the last report of the State Department of Industrial Relations,
of which Will J. French, a member of the commission, is director.
As emergency measures, the commission recommends a fund of
$20,000,000, to be loaned to counties and municipalities for relief
purposes; a five-day week with a six-hour day on all public works
and a five-day week "in the conduct of all state business." The
commission urges an amendment to an existing statute which
would provide for advance planning and long-range budgeting of
public works "as a means of furnishing employment during
periods of business depression." It would set up a state economic
council, taking the place of the unemployment commission "and
thus provide for the continuous study and interpretation of all
problems relating to unemployment, production and consump-
tion."
An Oasis
WORKERS' education classes from which next year's
students for the Southern Summer School for Women
Workers in Industry will be chosen, are being started in their
home communities by members of the 1932 session. Local teachers
and members of Workers' Education Committees are cooperating
in forming the classes, and by correspondence and some field work
the summer school committee and staff help in this effort "to
create a workers' education movement." Twenty students at-
tended last summer's session at Fruitland Institute, near Hender-
sonville, North Carolina. The girls came from eight states and
fourteen cities and represented the cigar, garment, electrical,
cigarette and textile industries, domestic service and the ten-cent
stores. The five teachers gave classes in economics (the worker and
the depression), spoken and written English, dramatics and cur-
rent events and health education. Four periods each morning
were given to classes, the afternoons to recreation, reading and
the special projects that developed as the work went forward.
Louise Leonard McLaren, director of the school, reports that
practically all of the girls gained in weight and went back home in much
better health than they had been for a long time. . . . The school seemed
like an oasis in the desert to most of the students this summer after the
trying privations and problems of depression years.
To make possible a summer session in 1933, the committee is
raising the necessary $9000 which they believe "will come in small
amounts." A second important need is for books for an adequate
library, which can be used as a traveling library during the
winter. Up-to-date economic and sociological books and good
fiction are particularly needed. Mrs. McLaren writes:
For some years patrons of our circulating library have been students
who live in mill villages where there are no libraries or in small towns
where library facilities are limited. Now even a good Carnegie Library
like the one at Atlanta is practically closed to workers by fees.
A full report of last summer's school and outlines of the courses
offered may be secured from the winter office of The Southern
Summer School, Arnold, Maryland.
Women at Work
HOW heavily the depression bears on women workers is
shown in the annual report of Mary Anderson, chief of the
Women's Bureau of the U. S. Department of Labor. According to
this important summary of current trends, unemployment among
women workers is more widespread than among men, and in
many industries is increasing at a more rapid rate. A breakdown
of standards of hours and wages goes with this lack of work.
Long hours figure conspicuously in the report's summary of a
survey of women and girls working in one hundred needle trades
establishments in Connecticut, recently made by the Women's
Bureau. The investigators found shops where the work week ran
to 60 or 65 hours, and a few where the workers were kept on the
job seven days a week.
Charlotte E. Carr, director of the Inspection Bureau of the
Pennsylvania State Labor Department, commenting on the
effects of the depression on women workers in her state, calls
attention to the fact that the hours' law is being repeatedly
violated. Of the last one hundred prosecutions made by her
division, covering 231 violations, 96 percent were infringements of
the laws safeguarding women and children. Miss Carr comments:
It is tragically humorous at this time when the efforts of the nation
. . . are bent toward securing shorter hours and sharing of work among
the unemployed that fifty-eight out of a hundred violations in Pennsyl-
vania are offenses against the hours' law for women and children. Many
of these offenses took place in factories where the work on hand could
have been done by a larger staff without resorting to these violations.
The efforts of the federal and state governments to supply work relief on
public projects can easily be outweighed in effectiveness by employers who
are unwilling to recognize that the social need at present is for a reasonable
amount of work spread among as great a number of unemployed as
possible.
They Can Work
THAT boys and girls of subnormal intelligence may become
self-supporting, even though they cannot "do" regular
school subjects and that in ordinary times many of them hold
factory jobs is shown by a report published by the U. S. Chil-
dren's Bureau, summarizing a study made in seven cities. Em-
ployment records of 949 boys and girls who had been members of
special public-school classes for the subnormal formed the basis
of the study. The cities were Newark, New Jersey, Rochester,
New York, Detroit, Cincinnati, Los Angeles, San Francisco and
Oakland, California. At the time of the inquiry, prior to the
depression, the children had been out of school from three to
seven years, 71 percent of the boys, and 43 percent of the girls
were gainfully employed. Only 3 percent were in institutions for
delinquents or defectives. Most of the boys and girls covered by
the study were steady in their jobs, 74 percent of the boys and 69
percent of the unmarried girls having worked for one employer
for from one to three years. The occupations in which these
young people found work were mostly unskilled or semi-skilled,
requiring little industrial training. About three fifths of the group
were in manufacturing and mechanical industries, most of the
girls being factory operatives, most of the boys operatives and
laborers. Only a few boys had succeeded in learning a skilled
trade. Most of the girls who were not in factories were in personal
or domestic service.
The study did not show any relation between intelligence rat-
ings of the individuals and the steadiness with which they worked
or the number of times they had been discharged. It did show,
however, that those who had done well and been in the upper
grades in manual training and handwork in the special classes
January 1933
THE SURVEY
33
were more likely to be successful in their jobs. Both boys and girls
who had done good work in industrial subjects had had less un-
employment on the whole, had held their jobs longer and were
earning better wages than those who had done poor work in
school. The two chief needs revealed by the study, the report
indicates, are "the need of further development of special training
for mentally deficient children" and "the need for the develop-
ment of a system of placement and supervision for pupils from
special classes."
w:
The Six-Hour Day
ITH the American Federation of Labor demanding a six-
hour day as the only effective means at hand to cut down
unemployment, special interest attaches to the actual experience
with this plan of the Goodyear Tire and Rubber Company.
Writing in a recent issue of Industrial Relations, Paul Weeks
Litchfield, president of the company, reports on a two-year ex-
perience with the six-hour day in the plant, a five-day week in the
offices. On the shorter work-day, Mr. Litchfield states, efficiency
has increased about 8 percent, without any increase in the over-
icad costs of supervision and inspection. As Goodyear has put
he scheme into effect, it has meant wage reductions from 1930
evels for the entire force. At the same time, "in our Akron fac-
ories alone, we have been able to give employment to three
housand workers who otherwise would have been entirely
without incomes." The five-day week has made it possible, so far,
'to avoid layoffs which otherwise would have been inevitable,
md in our accounting department we added a considerable num-
>er of men and women. ' Mr. Litchfield holds that both workers
and employers in this country must face the probability of a
>ermanently shortened work-week, since technical improvements
and scientific management now mean that "the normal needs of
our present population can be taken care of as well in 36-hours
work a week ... as was possible in the 45-hour week of the re-
cent past."
Buffalo's Fourth Count
FOR the fourth consecutive year, Buffalo, New York, has made
a sample study of conditions of employment and unemploy-
ment in the local industrial area. The Buffalo Foundation co-
operated with the State Department of Labor in sponsoring the
investigation, which was directed by Professor Fred E. Croxton
of Columbia University. Data were obtained from 14", 909 nor-
mally employed men and women, of whom 31 percent were job-
less and unable to find work, 22 percent more were on part time.
Since 1929, the percentage of local unemployment in Buffalo has
climbed annually from 6.2 percent to 17.2 in 1930, 24.3 in 1931
and 32.6 today. In the same period, the proportion on part-time
has increased from 7.1 percent to 23.4. The report of the survey
states that unemployment has been of longer duration this year
than last. Of the jobless, four fifths had been out of work ten weeks
or more in 1931, nine tenths in 1932. A little over one third of
the men unemployed in 1932 had been out of work two years or
more.
A report giving the detailed findings of the four Buffalo studies
will shortly be published by the Department of Labor. Employ-
ment facts will be given both for individuals and by households,
with statements of the duration of unemployment and the rea-
sons for unemployment. The data will be classified by age, sex,
nativity and industry. The plan is to repeat the survey in succeed-
ing years, giving a continuing picture of the ups and downs of
employment in this typical industrial community.
Protecting Children Who Work
EFTLE progress was made in legislative control of child
labor in 1932, according to the annual report of the National
Child Labor Committee (331 Fourth Avenue, New York). No
significant measures were passed in the nine legislatures which
met in regular session. In several states in which special sessions
were called, there were attempts to break down child-labor and
school-attendance standards.
The only constructive legislation reported was in Louisiana
and in New Jersey. In the former state, cities were empowered to
establish compulsory continuation schools for working children,
a sixth-grade requirement was set up in New Orleans for children
between 14 and 16 years of age, leaving school for work, and a
vocational guidance counsellor and a safety engineer for children
going to work were provided. New Jersey tightened its statutes
regulating the employment of minors between 16 and 18 years of
age in dangerous occupations.
The committee lists many important child-labor bills which
were defeated, including ratification of the federal child labor
amendment in New Jersey, New York and Rhode Island.
Among other activities of the committee for the year, the report
covers: a follow-up study of children under eighteen years of age
who were victims of serious industrial accidents three or four years
ago in Tennessee, Illinois and Wisconsin, to determine whether
they had received adequate compensation, how the compensation
funds had been used, how the injury affected the later working
experience of the child; the continuance of a survey of the ex-
posure of minors to poisonous and dusty occupations; a coopera-
tive campaign carried on with the Macfadden Publishing Com-
pany through which hundreds of community groups are watching
magazine salesboy conditions and reporting abuses directly to
national distribution headquarters through the offices of the
Child Labor Committee.
THE whole question of a shorter work week and a reduced work-
ing day is canvassed in Shorter Work Periods in Industry, just
published by the National Industrial Conference Board (247
Park Avenue, New York. Price, ?i). The plan is considered from
the emergency point of view and also in long-range terms.
THE American Federation of Full Fashioned Hosiery Workers
comes forward with a new "white list" of silk stockings made
under conditions of wages, hours and working standards accepted
as "fair" by the union. The leaflet includes a brief statement of
the breakdown in standards in the industry that must make the
conscientious consumer eager not to patronize the employer who
stoops to such exploitation as is described. For copies of the list,
write the headquarters of the union, 2530 North Fourth Street,
Philadelphia.
How the Y.M.C.A. in various communities has helped un-
employed men and boys find a constructive use for their involun-
tary leisure is told in Free-Time Activities for Unemployed
Young Men (Occasional Studies No. 12. The Association Press,
347 Madison Ave., New York). The booklet should be of wide use
to groups and communities faced with the need for similar
programs.
Two proposals were adopted recently by the board of the Indus-
trial Relations Institute for its program of work. The first is for a
study conference of I.R.I, members on "the world's natural re-
sources and their use." The conference will be held in August 1933
in or near Vienna. The second is to collect from all countries writ-
ten documents centering about works' councils and containing
agreements between management and labor.
STATE labor laws affecting women in industry have been summa-
rized by the U. S. Women's Bureau in a new bulletin which con-
tains a number of useful charts. The material here brought together
emphasizes the lack of uniformity between the states in this form
of legislation.
THE Juvenile Protective Department of the Children's Aid in
Buffalo issues Children on the Stage, surveying the national situa-
tion in regard to children in the theater and summarizing the New
York legislation on the subject.
34
THE SURVEY
January 193i
EDXTG
Pre-Social Work
\T7HAT amounts to a pre-professional course for social
* » workers is being developed at D'Youville College, Buffalo,
New York, designed to prepare the student directly for post-
graduate professional training. This year the sociology faculty
has introduced a semester's work in medical-social problems as an
experimental feature of this course. The plan is adaptable to
study along other borderlines of the social-work field, and is
particularly interesting for the way in which it brings practical
viewpoints and experience to the classroom. A group of Buffalo's
leading physicians is collaborating in a series of lectures on such
subjects as public-health problems, nutrition standards, tuber-
cular and cardiac problems, preventive medicine, infant mortal-
ity, social hygiene and problems of psychiatry in social work. A
trained and experienced social worker will attend each lecture
and take part in an hour's discussion, following the lecture, on
community facilities for carrying out the physician's recommen-
dations, a survey of what other communities are doing along the
same line, and so on. A committee of five social agency executives
and the judge of the children's court served with the physicians
and the sociology faculty in planning the lecture-discussion
course.
Grown-up Study
ORIGINALLY drawn up for the use of the world citizenship
classes of the General Federation of Women's Clubs, The
Conflict Around Manchuria, a study outline prepared by the
American Council of the Institute of Pacific Relations, is being
revised for the general use of adult study groups (Institute of
Pacific Relations, 129 E. 52 Street, New York). The outline has
two unique distinctions: it demonstrates how a difficult problem
in American foreign relations may be brought before typical
adult groups in such a way as to make the subject appear as a
natural extension of the members' previous daily interests rather
than something entirely new and remote, and it is based, not on
textbook and periodical literature, but on an outstanding public
document. Its source book is the report of the official interna-
tional inquiry into the Manchurian situation — commonly known
as the Lytton Report — reprinted verbatim by the State Depart-
ment in a low-cost volume. The report, the council points out in
an introduction to the outline,
is a document of the greatest importance for the development of inter-
national relations. It so happens that this report is so clearly and inter-
estingly written as to form an ideal source of information for lay people,
who are not versed in the intricacies of diplomacy.
Indians at School
/CHANGE from boarding-school attendance to local day or
^-i public schools for Indian children was the significant feature
of the year in Indian education, according to the annual report of
the commissioner of Indian affairs. This policy was announced
three years ago. Since that time, with the improvement in food,
clothing, equipment and personnel in Indian boarding schools the
situation of former years has changed, and
instead of forcing Indian children into government boarding schools, wt
are now engaged in a serious effort to prevent these schools from being
badly overcrowded, and to see to it that . . . places in the boarding
schools are reserved for those for whom adequate facilities are nol
otherwise available.
Two boarding schools were closed last year and four more
changed to community day schools. One old boarding school
plant is now used as a central high and vocational school, to
which pupils of the seventh grade and above are transported by
bus. The total reduction in pupils in the boarding schools last
year was over two thousand. The increase in Indian children in
public schools, for which the Indian Service pays a tuition fee to
the local school, made necessary a deficiency appropriation in
1932. A number of applications for the current school year had
to be rejected because of lack of funds. The report points out:
The economy in the shift from boarding schools to day and public
schools is shown by the fact that more children can be educated for the
same sum formerly spent on boarding schools with equally good results
Guidance in City Schools
1LTOW the Bureau of Child Guidance, set up within the New
•*• -*• York City public-school system, has functioned in its first
year of work was summarized by Dr. Leon W. Goldrich, its
director, in an address at the annual luncheon of the United
Parents' Association. Dr. Goldrich reported that the organization
of the bureau has stimulated interest in mental hygiene through-
out the school system. Local colleges and teachers' associations
are giving a variety of courses in this field, attended by thousands
of the public-school teachers. About fifteen hundred more teachers
are attending courses given directly by the bureau. Child-
guidance committees have been organized in many schools. The
clinic, which began its work in May on an experimental basis, is
now caring for 182 children referred to it by schools in one Man-
hattan district, and giving consultation service on difficult cases
referred by district superintendents and principals in other
boroughs. Through its social division the bureau has secured the
"active cooperation of many leading social agencies . . . and
has established definite cooperative relationship with the Crime
Prevention Bureau of the Police Department." Dr. Goldrich
added that the magistrates' courts and the Court of General
Sessions ''have sought the cooperation of the bureau ... in
their program of dealing in a more scientific way with juvenile
offenders."
Children Who Are Different
PARENT-TEACHER groups, as well as social workers and
others who have to "deal constructively" with unusual chil-
dren— the gifted and the handicapped — will be interested in
Parents' Problems with Exceptional Children by Elise H.
Martens, just put out by the Office of Education (Superintendent
of Documents, Washington. Price, ten cents). The 72-page
bulletin defines and deals simply with three main groups of
"children who are different," giving questions for discussion and
reading lists for each topic treated. Recognizing that "no two
children are alike," Miss Martens classifies three types who must
be dealt with on the basis of their differences: the physically
handicapped child, suffering from a sensory defect, a crippled
body or an organic weakness; the mentally different child, ad-
vanced or retarded beyond the general level of his group; the
socially different, "who present serious behavior problems which
seem to set them apart from the rest of childhood for peculiar
consideration." The bulletin deals with the special needs of each
of these children in his home, his school and his community,
stressing the importance of understanding the child's own prob-
lem, for maintaining a wholesome attitude toward his "dif-
ferences," and for knowing and using the agencies that will help
him make the most of his assets and learn to handle his disabil-
January 1933
THE SURVEY
35
ities. The bulletin is interestingly written, illustrated with many
stories of real situations and how they were met by the coopera-
tion of parents, teachers, neighbors, community resources and
the children themselves.
New Teachers for New Schools
OFFERING specialized training for "new" school teachers,
the Cooperative School for Student Teachers (69 Bank
Street, New York) began its second year with a program broad-
ened by the successful first year's experience (see The Survey,
May 15, 1931, page 230). Last year the school had forty-five
students, of whom twenty-two were full-time "regular" students,
placed for the apprentice part of their course in the eight cooperat-
ing progressive schools. All who wanted positions at the end of
the year were placed, and the school, though not a placement
agency, had applications for three times as many teachers as it
could supply. The chief demand was for nursery-school directors.
This year there are not quite so many "regular" students as
last and many more part-time students. A special course has been
arranged for teachers on the job, who want to acquaint them-
selves with progressive school attitudes and techniques. Members
of the school staff are working part time in the cooperating
schools in which students practice, thus allowing the teaching
staff to know its students on a professional as well as a teacher-
student basis. "One of the results is that the seminar discussions
are never so divorced from the students' experience as to seem
theoretical." Four week-end conferences with directors of these
schools and of three related schools will be held during the year.
Traveling Apprentices
THE third group of vocational-guidance apprentices in the
three-year experiment financed by the Rockefeller Founda-
tion and directed by Mary H. S. Hayes of the Vocational Service
for Juniors, has started on its peripatetic course. During the
winter the five students will do intensive work in the personnel
department of the University of Minnesota, Wisconsin's Factory
Inspection Department, the Butler Hospital at Providence,
Rhode Island, the vocation bureaus of the Chicago and Cincinnati
public schools, and other centers selected by Dr. Hayes for their
training in various phases of a vocational counselor's work. The
trip was preceded by a two-weeks' institute in New York City
and will wind up with a similar series of group meetings, led by
authorities on education and welfare work. The five 1932-3
apprentices, selected from a large number of applicants for their
special fitness for this new profession, represent Minnesota Uni-
versity, Columbia College, Yale, Chicago University and Adelphi.
The traveling apprenticeship was the idea of Dr. Hayes, who felt
that college courses in vocational guidance are too theoretical
and that training on the job, in the places best equipped to give
i it, was what was needed.
Prison Lessons
"pMNDING that limited education figures in the history of the
- inmates of most of its penal institutions, Wisconsin's state
board of control is enlarging the opportunities for schooling in the
prisons. Resident directors of education have been appointed for
the state prison at Waupun and for the Green Bay reformatory.
The first duty of the director is to interview each man in the
institution to ascertain his education, ability and ambitions.
Based on this information, an individual program is laid out.
This program is entirely voluntary with the prisoner, but once
accepted it must be carried through. Both vocational and non-
vocational work is offered, including classes in reading, writing,
spelling and arithmetic, university correspondence-study courses,
library reading courses, with books supplied by the Free Library
Commission, and vocational training in connection with shops in
the institutions, and in forest, farm or quarry camps outside. In
some subjects the work of both class and shop can be coordinated
to provide a very practical training. Class work in music, for
example, may be supplemented by trade training in the repair
of musical instruments in the shop.
Most of the prisoners have had a public elementary school
education or less. The new program is intended chiefly for men of
this limited amount of schooling. For the more advanced,
correspondence-study courses of the University Extension
division provide individual help and stimulus.
Gains Out of Losses
HOW one progressive school is meeting the hard times by
reorganizing on a unit basis is reported from the Francis W.
Parker School of San Diego, California. Owing to the depression
the committee of guarantors which had made possible the devel-
opment of such a school without endowment, found itself unable
to function longer. The executive committee overhauled the
school's budget and financial records and concluded that any
group which could enroll twenty pupils could count on opening
this fall, provided five such groups could be filled, to bring the
plant overhead for each grade down to manageable proportions.
This meant a reduction in teachers' salaries and the use of the
school as a community center for dancing and music classes, but
it did not mean any loss to the school's rich experimental program.
This unit plan gave each parent a definite but not overwhelming
responsibility for helping maintain the school. With the parents
for each school unit working to bring that grade up to the re-
quired minimum enrollment the necessary total enrollment was
secured. The school is operating with the promise of completing
1932-3 without a deficit for the year and without another salary
cut. Further, and perhaps more important,
For the first time in twenty years of striving there seems to be a real
possibility that Francis Parker School can actually become a self-
sustaining community school without sacrificing the principles upon
which it was founded.
MOTION Pictures on Foreign Countries and on International Re-
lations, a pamphlet useful to teachers and forum leaders, is avail-
able free of charge from the Carnegie Endowment for Interna-
tional Peace, Division of Intercourse and Education, 405 West
117 Street, New York. Films listed are those that may be secured
at small cost.
How even little children may be helped to think of themselves as
members of the community with social benefits and responsibil-
ities is shown by the first-grade curriculum outlined in the last
issue of Teaching, the quarterly publication of the State Teachers
College of Emporia, Kansas (free on request).
MEMBERS of the 1932 class of Simmons College who have not
found employment are being permitted to enroll in any non-
technical classes offered by the college without paying tuition.
The usual charge will be made for laboratory materials. If resi-
dence in the dormitories is desired, half the regular rates are
charged.
ENGINEERING: A Career— A Culture is the title of a pamphlet
offered by the Engineering Foundation for the information of
young men trying to choose a vocation, and of their parents and
teachers (29 West 34 Street, New York. Price, 15 cents). Both the
technical and the cultural aspects of the five major divisions of
the profession are discussed.
Two "hard-times houses" have been organized at Antioch Col-
lege, Yellow Springs, Ohio, one housing seventeen girls, the other
twenty-seven men. The personnel of the two houses is drawn from
students who have high scholarship records, and who can attend
college only by cutting the usual costs. In these cooperative
dormitories, room rent is cut to one fifth the usual rate. The college
supplies furniture, light and fuel for the two large dwellings near
the campus being put to this new use. Maid and janitor jobs are
divided each week among the residents.
36
THE SURVEY
January 1933
"We Have Assured the R. F. C "
"*"TpHE Industrial Commission has assured the Reconstruction
A Finance Corporation that all funds loaned to Wisconsin
shall be used in the most careful and efficient manner," the Com-
mission states in its bulletin to the local communities. "This is
impossible if funds are distributed and administered by 1204
different county, city, village and town officials throughout the
state. Since it will be necessary to centralize unemployment relief
administration into as few local agencies as is practicable, com-
munities of less than approximately ten thousand population will
be asked to combine efforts. Federal funds will not be distributed
to smaller units than county governments, or cities of approxi-
mately ten thousand population or more, or combinations of
neighboring cities, towns and villages whose total population is
approximately ten thousand or more, unless special showing is
made that such centralization is impracticable."
And from Minnesota: "In order to secure any grants from the
Reconstruction Finance Corporation for immediate relief it will
be necessary to assure the Corporation that certain acceptable
standards and procedures in administering the funds locally will
be followed. For this reason it is to be understood that any funds
distributed to local subdivisions on grants from the Reconstruc-
tion Finance Corporation must be administered in accordance
with such standards and procedures as may be prescribed from
time to time by the State Board of Control, which Board has been
designated by the governor for this purpose. . . . Before funds
are released, it is required that the Board of County Commis-
sioners shall establish a County Emergency Relief Committee,
whose membership shall be subject to the approval of the State
Board of Control."
The above paragraphs are illustrative of the type of instruc-
tions that state relief administrations are issuing to the counties
which are scheduled to share in Reconstruction Finance Corpora-
tion funds. The Wisconsin plan of grouping small communities
into population units of ten thousand or more is unique and par-
ticularly well adapted -to the northern counties where villages are
small and scattered.
In Florida, sixty-seven county relief boards have been set up to
function under the general supervision of the State Advisory
Council on Unemployment Relief. Here the county chairmen are
appointed by the governor on recommendation of the State Board
of Public Welfare. Trained field workers represent the Advisory
Council in the setting up of standards for relief administration in
the various local units.
Kansas has a state-wide Federal Relief Committee of twelve,
with county committees in every county of the state. This state
has learned the value of organization from its two-year experience
with drought relief. All county committees have been instructed to
proceed with a coordination of local-relief effort, and have had
state guidance in the matter of forms and procedure.
In Louisiana, a state-relief administration has been established,
headed by veteran lay and professional people and extending its
channels into every parish in that commonwealth. The central
group has gone far in setting the policies for the local subdivisions,
extending the work-relief principle favored in that section into the
rural sections for the relief of agricultural distress.
Mississippi, which received its first federal aid late in October,
has set up a state and county administrative program which was
devised with the aid of the American Public Welfare Association
and which is temporarily being directed by Aubrey Williams,
secretary of the Wisconsin State Welfare Conference.
The governor of Nevada has named a State Emergency Relief
and Construction Committee of seven which is coordinating the
various local groups.
In Virginia the State Emergency Relief Committee consists of
the highway commissioner, the comptroller and the commissioner
of public welfare with the last named as chairman. "Large num-
bers of the unemployed have been put to work — all investigated,
given physical examinations and certified by the county and city
relief committees to be in need," according to the bulletin of the
State Department of Public Welfare. "Work-relief road projects
Unemployment and
Edited by
JOANNA C. COLCORD
and RUSSELL H. KURTZ
are being developed by the Highway Department to meet the
numbers and location of the unemployed." Assignments are
being limited to those certified by the local committees and to the
number of days and rate per hour indicated by the committees.
"The same principles are being observed, therefore, as if direct
cash relief were being given; relief is the primary consideration
although in the form of work." Direct relief will be a secondary
procedure under this program.
North Carolina has a newly-created state relief department with
a director in charge and a field staff of twelve engaged in county
organization and supervision. The State Welfare Department and
the university work in close cooperation.
In New Mexico, the State Bureau of Child Welfare has taken on
the relief supervision task, enlarging its force by the addition of
several field workers.
In West Virginia, the Unemployment Relief Administration,
working in close harmony with the State Department of Public
Welfare, is giving careful supervision to the relief work of the state
and is helping the various counties in the administration of funds.
The list is in no sense complete. But it illustrates the fact that
Reconstruction Finance Corporation funds have peculiar effec-
tiveness in getting things done in the organization field.
Recent State Relief Legislation
EST winter some seven states made legislative provision to
enable them to share with their cities and counties the ever-
increasing burden of unemployment relief. This winter, as they
face an even more critical situation, both states and local com-
munities are turning to the federal government for aid. Up to
December I, thirty-five states have secured relief loans from the
R. F. C., amounting to about $76 millions. Although in the
majority of these states, legislative action along relief lines will
not be taken until the regular January sessions, in other states
earlier action has been necessary and special sessions of the state
legislatures have been held.
On December I, the Delaware legislature appropriated two
million dollars for emergency relief, one million dollars to be
available immediately and the remainder on April i, 1933. Funds
are to be provided by an appropriation from the general fund and
by diversion of franchise taxes. The act also created a temporary
Emergency Relief Committee of eight members to administer
the funds.
At its fourth special, session, the Illinois General Assembly
enacted the following relief legislation:
(a) Effective October 17, 1932 legislation empowering county
boards to divert their share of unencumbered motor fuel tax for
relief purposes. This includes not only future monthly county
allotments up to July I, 1933 but also their share of these taxes
accumulated since July I, 1932. The law also calls for a monthly
distribution of funds instead of semi-annual.
(b) Since November 21, 1932 legislation has been enacted
authorizing county boards by two-thirds vote to issue bonds
without referendum in amounts not to exceed six times the motor
fuel tax allotted to these counties during the preceding year;
authorizing county boards at any time prior to July I, 1933 by
two-thirds vote to levy a sales tax of not to exceed one percent
of the retail selling price of tangible personal property sold at
retail — sales of motor fuel and farm products sold by the pro-
ducer are exempt from this taxation — and authorizing the County
January 1933
THE SURVEY
37
Community Action
This department is an emergency information
service to public officials and to members,
executives and supervisors of citizens' com-
mittees. News of interesting developments will
be gratefully received by the editors, Russell
Sage Foundation, 130 East 22 Street, New Tork
Board of Cook County by resolution to issue and sell bonds not in
excess of seventeen million dollars, and to levy property taxes for
the purpose of retiring these bonds in not to exceed seventeen
equal payments.
The Pennsylvania General Assembly at its special session held
during the summer of 1932 enacted legislation creating the State
Emergency Relief Board — five members — to be responsible for
the administration of both federal and state relief funds. The sum
of twelve million dollars, to be raised by imposing a one percent
tax upon sales of tangible personal property during the six months
beginning September i, 1932, was appropriated to the State Relief
Board. Other legislation passed at the same session authorized
local subdivisions with the approval of the Court of Common
Pleas to negotiate during 1932 temporary emergency loans for
unemployment relief not to exceed in the aggregate the total
amount of taxes for 1931 and prior years delinquent at the time
of the loan.
The West Virginia legislature at its special session in August
1932 passed bills authorizing municipalities and county courts to
transfer money to the general fund for unemployment relief.
When the Rent Comes Round
MOST cities frankly admit a policy in regard to payment of
rents that might be characterized as an " evasion-eviction"
policy. But there are some exceptions.
Milwaukee County, through its Department of Outdoor Relief,
spent $220,231 for rents in October, this being approximately 40
percent of its total relief expenditure for the month. About half of
its thirty thousand relief cases were included in the approved list.
The average rental payment for this month was fourteen dollars.
The prospects of a three-million-dollar rent bill in 1933 has
given relief officials some concern, but the Socialist-controlled
Board of County Commissioners has ruled that there must be no
cuts at the present time.
Cleveland's Associated Charities clarified its rent policy some-
what in October by deciding upon an offer of 25 percent of the
current month's rent when the family has exhausted credit for
rent and they and the visitor feel that they cannot remain on the
premises unless some payment is made. In more acute situations,
if necessary to avoid eviction, a higher amount up to 60 percent
may be paid for one month only. After this 25 percent may be
paid with definite regularity. Fifteen dollars is the maximum
rental payment that may be made.
Unemployment Relief Abroad
SWEDEN, with an otherwise well-developed system of social
insurance, has no compulsory unemployment insurance, and
relief to the unemployed preferably takes the form of work relief,
which is highly developed, either by the state, by the local com-
munes, or by both acting in cooperation. People who need relief
but cannot be given this form of employment, receive public
assistance in the form of home relief.
A report by the president of the National Unemployment Com-
mission appearing in The International Labour Review for July
1932 states that in March 1932 one hundred and ten thousand
persons in Sweden applied for relief and sixty-two thousand re-
ceived it. Of these, thirty thousand were placed on work relief
and thirty-two thousand received home relief, including five
thousand young persons who were being given vocational training
in lieu of the work required of adult workers.
About 70 percent receiving both types of relief were aided from
combined local and state funds. During the previous year it had
been necessary for the local communities to ask state assistance in
caring for only 50 percent of the cases.
Those placed on relief works are chosen by local officials ac-
cording to the urgency of their need. The same provisions prevail
in Sweden as in this country that the work must be of public
value, but not such as would be carried out normally in the near
future through the ordinary labor market. The construction of
roads, government railways, harbors and power stations, and the
regulation of watercourses for timber floating, land drainage
and forestry, are those usually selected for proposal to the
National Unemployment Commission, which must approve all
projects requiring national subsidy. A contract is then executed
which binds the Commission to the completion of the project
only so far as may be necessary for unemployment relief. If the
Commission withdraws its subsidy because relief becomes no
longer necessary in the region, then the governmental unit in-
itiating the project becomes responsible for completing it on a
public-works basis. This provision is held to be very important
as a check on nonvalid schemes. A high degree of technical super-
vision must be assured if the state accepts the project.
The wage-rate is always lower than current laborers' wages in
the locality but higher than home relief. It represents minimum
earnings, a piece-work system being in effect by which the more
efficient workmen can earn higher wages. Men employed at their
own skilled trades in connection with the projects are paid the
prevailing rate for this work. All workers are protected by sick-
ness and accident insurance while on relief work. Transportation
and in some instances the cost of providing shelter is met from
relief funds, but the workers supply their own food in cooperative
groups. The total cost per man per day is estimated to be about
$1.40, of which 75 percent goes in direct wages, special family
allowances, and social benefits such as insurance and sanitation.
In February-March 1931, projects wholly supported by the state
had cost $8,300,000 while those shared jointly by the state and the
individual communes had cost $1,300,000.
In the spring months of 1932 an extension of the reserve works
was planned, so as to facilitate a substantial reduction of direct
relief.
In Germany, in addition to an extensive program of unemploy-
ment insurance, "crisis relief" and municipal relief-and-work
programs, there has been a special development during the past
for the benefit of young people who after leaving school can find
no employment. The federal government has appropriated about
twelve million dollars to assist municipalities in developing
voluntary work corps of these young unemployed men and
women. Camps are established for the boys, who work on the
roads or in making agricultural improvements, while the girls,
fewer in number, are housed in nearby villages and prepare the
food for the groups. No wages are paid, but a little pocket-money
is given in addition to food, shelter and clothing. Two hundred
thousand young people from sixteen to twenty-five will be given
a chance at useful work for the nation. The trades unions, which
opposed the plan at first, are now said to be strongly in favor of it.
The "innere Siedelung," or suburban land settlement for the
unemployed, is being developed on municipally owned tracts on
the outskirts of some of the larger cities. Cottages are being built
by unemployed families for their own occupancy, the city fur-
nishing the materials and supporting the families on unemploy-
ment relief. A plot of land sufficient for intensive gardening goes
with each house, which the other members of the family are ex-
pected to cultivate after the employable members return to indus-
trial jobs. Eventually, the families will be permitted to purchase
their homes.
The situation in England has become seriously complicated dur-
ing the last decade by failure to discriminate, as Germany has so
clearly done, between unemployment-insurance benefits, bought
with payments by the workers, and the relief from public funds
which must care for him after his right to such benefit becomes
38
THE SURVEY
January 1933
exhausted. Steps are now being taken to disentangle unemploy-
ment benefit from relief by the application of a "means test,"
through the reorganized local public-welfare departments. This
requires an inquiry into the family income and resources of the
applicant, something which is taken for granted in this country
and in Germany, but to which recipients of prolonged unemploy-
ment benefits in England have become totally unaccustomed, and
against which they have recently organized vigorous protests.
A Royal Commission on Unemployment Insurance, one of a
long series of such commissions, presented in November a major-
ity report, which urges the confinement of unemployment benefits
to a contractual period which shall make the fund actuarially
sound and solvent, and provision for all the unemployed who
have exhausted their right to benefit, or are following uninsured
trades, through relief funds administered locally with a "means
test," under the supervision of the Ministry of Labour. There
would remain the recourse of regular poor-law relief for unemploy-
ables or those qualifying neither for insurance benefit nor unem-
ployment relief.
Variations on Work Relief
A NOVEL work relief schedule has been developed in Columbus,
•**• Ohio, where determination of unemployment relief policies
has centered largely in City Hall, and where work relief has been
consistently favored. The procedure is to assign for various peri-
ods of work men who have been investigated by the Family
Bureau, the private agency affiliated with the public department.
Wages are paid in cash at the rate of $3.40 per eight-hour day.
Two days constitute a standard shift. The number of shifts
assigned to each person per month depends upon the size of his
family and to some extent upon the state of the exchequer.
Early in November, a revision in the assignment procedure
resulted in the following schedule:
Number Weekly basis
in family relief need Frequency of assignment
1 #4.00 Ten working days between shifts
3 5.00 Eight working days between shifts
4 6.50 One shift per week
5 7 . 50 Extra shift each eight weeks
6 8.00 Ditto, plus adjustment, direct relief
7 8.50 Extra shift each three weeks
9.00 Eleven shifts each eight weeks
9 9.50 Ditto, plus adjustment
10 10.00 Twelve shifts each eight weeks
11 10.50 Ditto, plus adjustment
12 or more 1 1 .00 Thirteen shifts each eight weeks
The Department of Public Welfare in New Tork City, cooperat-
ing with the Welfare Council's Committee on the Homeless, has
begun sending four hundred homeless young men in groups of
two hundred, two weeks on and two weeks off, to work on roads
and forest trails in the Bear Mountain Interstate Park. The men
are carefully chosen from among the most helpable of the twenty-
to-thirty-five-year homeless group, and will include none whose
habits or physical condition are bad, or who have been law-
breakers. They are paid 50 cents an hour for a thirty-three-hour
week, the funds being furnished by the Temporary Emergency
Relief Administration of New York State. They are housed in a
building used in summer as a fresh-air camp for children, and will
pay about ten dollars a week for board, clothing and tobacco, and
have about twelve dollars to tide them over the two idle weeks.
Trained supervisors and recreation leaders are supplied and the
work laid out and supervised by the park authorities.
At the same time a plan has been put into effect for homeless
petty offenders committed by the courts for vagrancy. One hun-
dred and fifty to 200 are sent for an indeterminate period up
to six months to work in developing a large state farm con-
nected with the new Women's Reformatory at Greycourt, Orange
County. They will be housed in a new separate building which is
not yet needed for women offenders, receive no compensation, and
be under strict supervision of the City Department of Corrections.
Alleghany County, Pennsylvania (Pittsburgh), has been experi-
menting with "work-for-relief" which is a departure from its
former cash-wage work-relief plan. Families on direct relief are
asked to work it out on public projects, receiving about 20 percent
larger relief grants while so engaged. So far the project has been
experimental and confined to the county area outside of the City
of Pittsburgh. The Family Welfare Association, administrating
agency for the County Emergency Association, has been allowed
considerable leeway in enforcing the requirement, as it has
emphasized the desirability of keeping the program in harmony
with constructive social-service concepts rather than to allow it
to be set up on a "forced-labor" basis.
Oklahoma is typical of the states in the Midwest which find
work relief a normal way of coping with unemployment. There are
vast stretches of roads to be built and kept in repair, rivers to be
dredged and curbed with levees and similar projects which are
easily planned and widely distributed throughout these areas.
The idea of supporting able-bodied men in idleness is foreign to
community thinking, and work programs are commonplace,
especially since federal funds have been made available.
News dispatches from both Tulsa and Oklahoma City describe
the projects which are being developed throughout the state of
Oklahoma with the aid of federal emergency relief funds. Near
Oklahoma City, men are being paid 30 cents per hour for their
labor and are given four days' work at a time. Men with teams
receive 50 cents per hour. Their wages are paid from federal funds
although the cost of material and supervision is met by the
county. Thirty other counties have started similar programs
since the state received its loan of $817,968 from the R. F. C. in
November.
A committee of the Welfare Council of Seattle named in July to
study the plight of the unemployed nonfamily women in that city,
has rendered a report advising against the opening of any new
shelters and recommending a diversified program of work relief
as the alternative. This program would serve from five hundred to
six hundred women selected from the total of three times that
number who are receiving direct relief from the various social
agencies. The cost, estimated at $10,000 per month, would be met
from a county-work relief bond issue.
The committee proposes that three days work per week at cash
wages of $1.50 per day be provided to "only those able to perform
useful work, willing and able to maintain themselves on the wages
thus earned, and who would otherwise be dependent on agencies
giving direct relief." Proposed work resources would include the
tasks available through the Goodwill Industries and County
Workrooms; and various office jobs with nonprofit organizations
such as churches, hospitals, libraries and the social and relief
agencies themselves.
Braking the Transient Treadmill
As long as community policy in regard to transients is gov-
erned by local unwillingness to provide more than the most
temporary sort of care, the traditional and wasteful American
policy of "passing on" will continue. Wisconsin has made a start
toward breaking the vicious circle. Its Industrial Commission,
which administers state and federal relief, has proposed to ten
Wisconsin cities that they provide adequate care for transients
with the understanding that the full cost will be reimbursed from
the state's loan from the Reconstruction Finance Corporation.
Two cities have accepted this offer and favorable response is ex-
pected from most of the others.
In the Southwest, where the transient problem is most acute,
the relief agencies are reporting to the Reconstruction Finance
Corporation their need for funds not only for transient individ-
uals but for entire homeless families and are spending a part of
their federal grants for this type of service.
At the Conference on the Maintenance of Welfare Standards
called by the American Public Welfare Association in Chicago in
November a Committee on Transients recommended:
The problem of transients, both families and unattached men, women
and youths, is a problem of the local community, the state, and peculiarly,
by reason of its nature, of the nation. . . . The responsibility of the fed-
eral government includes the following:
January 1933
THE SURVEY
39
1. Primary responsibility for planning, development of standards, and
financing in accordance with general policies of unemployment relief.
2. Direct responsibility for financing, on a grant and not a loan basis,
when state or local responsibility cannot be allocated.
A report entitled Men in the Crucible issued by the Chicago
Clearing House for Men is authority for the statement that only
9^2 percent of the registrants at the Clearing House during the
first ten months of the present year have been nonresidents. In
the year ending September 30, 1932 a total of fifty thousand dif-
ferent resident and nonresident men have passed through the
Clearing House.
Back to the Homeland
A^J exodus of Mexicans from Michigan, Northern Illinois
and Minnesota is under way, hastened by the provision of
transportation from public-relief funds and pointed up by the
Mexican government's offer of colonization aid upon arrival.
Within the past year fifteen hundred Mexicans have been sent
back from Michigan and lesser numbers from the other states.
Trainloads of men, women and children, together with their bag-
gage and furniture are leaving for the Mexican border every few
weeks. On November 4, St. Paul sent one hundred on a special
train at the expense of the Bureau of Public Welfare. All were
relief cases. Chicago has sent several carloads of the travelers and
more are contemplated.
Most of these removals are being made as voluntary repatria-
tions. During the past decade thousands of Mexican laborers were
brought into these states to work in the sugar beet fields, many of
them drifting later to the industrial centers. Their destitution
has been pronounced since 1930 and it is said that they are eagerly
accepting the offer of transportation back to their native soil.
A recent bulletin of the Council of Social Agencies of Chicago
makes a distinction between this type of repatriation and the less
socially acceptable deportation procedure:
In these times of financial stress, it is sometimes possible for the foreign-
born to find a small means of livelihood or someone to care for them back
in their home lands, if transportation can be secured. In such cases the
Immigrant's Protective League, 824 South Halsted Street, is glad to
assist in having investigations made abroad, in order to determine whether
such means of livelihood really do exist, and whether it affords a sound
basis for a repatriation plan.
In times like these, when people become public charges through no
fault of their own, the social worker must consider with unusual care
questions relating to deportability. The hardships in deportation may far
outweigh what may appear at first as advantages.
Expulsion from the United States is a harsh proceeding. The social
agency does not adopt it as a policy for an individual without first weigh-
ing the depth of the client's "stake" in the United States. His or her
"natural home," in this country or in some other, must be taken into
account in any rehabilitation plan. If one member of a family becomes
deportable while other members are not subject to deportation, the sepa-
ration which could occur, in addition to its anguish for the family, might
leave to the agency permanent burdens of support, any plan into which
deportation enters, must therefore include the whole family group.
It has been estimated that from $75,000 to $100,000 will be ex-
pended in the state of Michigan this winter in the removal of
several thousand Mexicans under the repatriation plan.
Personnel
THE Cook County Bureau of Public Welfare (Chicago) has
established a personnel office operated along civil service
lines where applicants for employment either as case workers,
aides or in other positions are required to qualify for the positions
sought. The office is operated under the direction of a Personnel
Committee of the Advisory Board of the Bureau.
Applications are taken which are graded on the basis of refer-
ences, education and experience. Those who qualify are notified
to appear before the Personnel Committee for an oral examina-
tion and if successful are placed on the eligible list.
The Illinois Emergency Relief Commission after a careful
study of the salary rates of the relief agencies acting as its agents
recently established classifications of positions and maximum
monthly salary rates applicable to all employes whose salaries are
paid by funds allocated by the Commission. Case-work aides are
given a maximum monthly rating of $90; junior case workers
$115; and senior case workers $150. In the case of personnel
loaned from other agencies, any differential in salary will be made
up by the loaning agency.
Reference has been made in this column in previous months to
the unsettled situation in Philadelphia in regard to the payment of
the emergency relief workers' salaries. The governor was standing
firm against their payment from state or federal funds, insisting
that the city of Philadelphia should participate in its relief pro-
gram to that extent at least. City officials, on the other hand, were
pleading inability to find the necessary funds. The stalemate was
broken late in November when the governor directed the State
Board to meet the November payroll and to provide $67,250 for
payroll and other expenses for December and $17,500 for the
maintenance of the shelter for homeless men for that month.
At the same time, he warned all Pennsylvania communities that
they must go the limit in developing local resources in order that
the state's position before the Reconstruction Finance Corpora-
tion might not be jeopardized.
Separated Campaigns
NEW alignment of social agencies for fund-raising purposes
. has taken place in St. Louis, where thirty-four of the Com-
munity Fund's relief agencies were released from participation in
the Fund campaign last month in order to join with similar agen-
cies from the Catholic Charities and Federation of Jewish Char-
ities in a United Relief Campaign. The Community Fund will
conduct a campaign this month for the remaining nineteen
agencies in the Fund partnership.
The goal of the United Campaign was $3,850,000, of which
only half was raised. That of the Community Fund is $600,000.
Friends of the non-relief agencies are watching this division of
forces with bated breath, wondering how the public will respond
to the second appeal.
Welfare Cafeterias Out
PUBLIC feeding of families in "Welfare Cafeterias" has been
tried in Detroit and found wanting. The ten restaurants of the
Department of Public Welfare, set up last summer as an economy
move, are being abolished. At the peak they fed six thousand per-
sons, or less than 10 percent of the relief case load, at a cost of
13 cents per day each. Grocery orders supplied to other clients
during the same period cost about 14 cents per day per person.
"Viewed from a social standpoint the cafeteria system has little
to recommend it," said a committee of Department of Public
Welfare workers in reviewing its operation. "Its advantages seem
to be confined mainly to its effectiveness as a means of reducing
the case load." Thirty percent of the families transferred from
home relief to cafeteria feeding failed to show up for their meals
in the early stages of the experiment. This phenomenon misled
the department into a belief that a magic formula for achieving
voluntary withdrawal from relief had been found. The expansion
of the system followed rapidly.
But later developments were disappointing. A check-up showed
that half of those who had eliminated themselves were in dire
need and were suffering in silence. Others had accepted the system
at a great cost to their pride. Convinced that there was no real
saving in the plan and that its social effects were destructive, the
department has discontinued it.
A BIBLIOGRAPHY including both published and mimeographed
material issued during the past year on Unemployment Relief
in the United States and Canada is about to be issued as Library
Bulletin 116 by the Russell Sage Foundation. The material listed
under special headings such as Commissaries and Food Relief,
Self-Help Movements, Work Relief, Care of the Homeless and
Transients, etc., will be of particular interest at this time.
40
THE SURVEY
January 193:,
Away with Poverty
PROHIBITING POVERTY, by Preslonia Mann Martin. Rollins Press. Winter
Park, Fla. 131 ft. Price $.75 postpaid of The Survey.
THE value of Mrs. Martin's book is that it goes straight to
the heart of our contemporary social messiness. She would
"prohibit" poverty. She believes — and doubtless has every
reason to believe — that it can be done. Anyone less courageous
might have hesitated to make the particular proposal that she
offers, for, having made it, she will be dubbed Utopian and dis-
missed with a shrug of realistic shoulders. Many a time in the
past, however, the Utopian has turned out to be the most hard-
headed of realists and the realist but a sentimentalist covering his
beloved habit-systems with a mask of reason. Not everyone will
fo the full way with Mrs. Martin, but no one can read this little
ook without a mind-stretching that releases a more vigorous
sense of the possibilities inherent in the present situation.
Most significant of all is her clear demarcation of the limits of
the most crucial aspect of our present problem. That most crucial
aspect centers in man's relation to the indispensables of life —
food, shelter, clothing, protection against ill health, transporta-
tion, education. Our present barbarity, she holds, lies in the fact
that, although we are, as a society, fully capable of providing the
subsistence-necessities to all, we permit millions to remain on the
level of sheer destitution. She would turn the enginery of society
toward the solution of this primary problem, and she would do it
by the enlistment of the whole youthful man- and woman-power
in the production of the indispensables. Her plan, which in some
of its detail recalls William James's "moral equivalent for war,"
visualizes what might be called a limited collectivism: collec-
tivism in the realm of indispensables, individualism in the realm
of the dispensables or luxuries.
But it would be unfair in a few words to describe a proposal
closely reasoned and fascinating in its presentation. In these days
when we are, for the most part, presented with the choice between
the preservation entire of the principle of individual enterprise
and the casting of it out completely, a discussion which acknowl-
edges the value of the collective principle in certain regions of life
and of individual enterprise in others has the value of a kind of
Hegelian synthesis of opposites. It may be that the mutual ex-
clusiveness of our prevailing "either-or" is to be overcome by this
view of a "neither-and-both." We live in a day when the social-
economic lid is off. Many silly and pestiferous proposals are
issuing out of our Pandora's box of perplexities, but there are
issuing, also, proposals that turn our minds in wholesome new
directions. Mrs. Martin's book, I believe, belongs in the latter
category. H. A. OVERSTREET
College of the City of New York
Verum, Pulchrum, Bonum
WHAT WE LIVE BY, by Ernest Dimnet. Simon &• Schuster. 303 pp. Price $Z.50
postpaid of The Survey.
" TT THERE we live or how we live is of little consequence.
» » What is all important is to live." This is one of the con-
cluding sentences in this book, which every one who read and
profited by Abb6 Dimnet's The Art of Thinking will wish to read.
It is a sane and lovely essay on the art of living, greatest of arts
If any one should ask the author, "Is life worth living?" he woulc
answer, "Yes if it is good life," and in this book he tells us how tc
make life true, beautiful and good, and goes far to convince us
that with whatever untoward outward circumstance, we may
make our lives equal to that standard.
The book is in three parts and the third, headed Bonum, Beauty
in Life, is the most compelling, especially to us social workers.
As he says, "It purports to be a guide to our self-perfection but it
is in reality a manual of happy living." He believes there are
"three states of mind which with a little practice we can enter at
our will: i, Keen interest in truth even of a purely intellectual
character; 2, working for any of the nobler objects possible tc
mankind, that is to say, what this book calls collaborating with
God; 3, forgetting our own interest and devoting ourselves to the
welfare or happiness of others."
Abb6 Dimnet's spirit is deeply religious but his religion is not
one of repression nor reluctant sacrifice but of active joy. True he
seems to have a high appreciation of the mystics, if he is not one
himself, but who can be even a humanitarian agnostic in the
world of today, without harboring some traces of mysticism or
being lost in hopelessness?
The chapter on Love is the wisest disquisition on that much
discussed subject I have ever seen in print, and would seem tc
have come from a happily mated man rather than from a celibate,
The book is running over with adages which cry out for quota-
tion, but The Survey's limits for its reviewers forbid. I mosl
heartily commend it, especially the third part, to my fellow social
workers, most of all to those of them who are hungry for a satisfy-
ing faith which their intellect will allow them to accept.
ALEXANDER JOHNSON
The Outlook for Russian Wheat
AGRICULTURAL RUSSIA AND THE WHEAT PROBLEM, by Vladimir P.
Timoshenko. Food Research Institute (Stanford University, California). 571 pp
Price $4 postpaid of The Survey.
IN many ways Mr. Timoshenko's book should have a sobering
effect on those who are inclined to be carried away by the
extravagant claims of Soviet admirers regarding the immediate
future of agricultural production in the Soviet Union. In general
it may be said to be a scholarly, technical and comprehensive
view of the problems faced by Russian agriculture. It will be
somewhat of a surprise to many, for instance, to learn that as far
as European Russia is concerned, the Soviets must contend with
a considerable degree of agricultural overpopulation. Despite the
immense size of the U. S. S. R., some 8,245,000 square miles, the
amount of tillable land is relatively small — approximately 8 per-
cent of the total area. In the larger part of the country, the
winters are too long and too severe to permit the growth ol
crops; other large sections are too arid or too isolated. In the
principal grain-growing regions, the Ukraine, the North Caucasus
and the Volga regions, the density of population dependent upon
the soil is from two to six times as great as in comparable agricul-
tural portions of the United States, and the possibility of a
marked expansion in the sown area is held to be very small.
Only in remote sections of Siberia is there said to be any ap-
preciable amount of arable land wholly unused, while even there
the feasibility of mass colonization is severely questioned.
In view of the rapid growth in population, the author feels
that there is little chance of the Soviet Union developing an
export of wheat comparable to that of Czarist Russia, a conclu-
sion that seems amply justified. One's confidence in the accuracy
of his generally gloomy picture of agrarian prospects in Russia is
somewhat disturbed, however, by the very obvious fact that Mr.
Timoshenko does not approve of the Soviet r6gime. While there
are said to be excellent reasons why this study was carried on
entirely in this country without the benefit of first-hand investiga-
tion, it is inevitable that this should prove a serious handicap. Nc
consideration is given, for example, to the recently discovered
process of "yarovization" whereby the range of certain crops is
immeasurably widened and the prospects of productivity greatly
January 1933
THE SURVEY
41
enlarged, although this information was available in Russia long
before its formal announcement at the Sixth International Con-
gress of Genetics at Cornell University last August. Despite such
serious limitations, however, the book may definitely be recom-
mended to serious students of Russia's problems.
Foreign Policy Association MAXWELL S. STEWART
What Leisure for Everyman Means
LEISURE IN THE MODERN WORLD, by C. DelisU Burns. Century. 302 pp.
Price $2 JO postpaid of The Survey.
MR. BURNS defines at once the large increase in leisure to
which society is fated; the increased human energy left
after the day's work; the variety of modern opportunities for
leisure. Among the results he notes a much wider range of social
contacts for all; an interclass and international common content
of experience never before approached; a resultant social de-
mocracy; a fuller range of interests for all; more rapid assimilation
and change of ideas than ever before in history; new experiments,
customs and conventions based on equalitarian leisure; greater
opportunity for discovery and development of personal capacities;
a new basic attitude toward work and leisure, summed up in
"the new generation does not believe that its leisure is for the
sake of work." Still further, enlarged democratic unfatigued
.eisure has transferred to the "leisure of workers" those interests
and responsibilities which have heretofore been borne by the
'leisure class" — "movements," societal control, government, the
arts, "civilization."
All this must modify public policy. The state must constantly
decrease the hours of work — "We can afford abundant leisure for
all"; education must give more attention to preparation for
eisure — "If education, in school or after, leaves men and women
with no interest at all, with nothing they want to do apart from
what they must do, then it has failed to fit them for life"; there
must be community provision for leisure, and on no minimum
aasis either.'Tublic provision should be made for the enjoyment
y every member of a community of the whole of the 'good life'.
. . This implies a practice that aims at giving the charwoman
the opportunity to hear Beethoven, not in order that she may do
more work, but because she is a woman."
Mr. Burns has imagination and keen observation; he has writ-
ten a readable, arresting book on a subject even more important
tomorrow than today. "The place of leisure in the life of those
.vho work for a living is the problem of the modern world, which
s fundamental in discussing the future of civilization. . . .
Civilization may depend for its roots upon the way in which work
s done; but it depends for its finest flower upon the use of
eisure." ROY SMITH WALLACE
National Recreation Association
Conflict and Behavior
THE NATURE OF HUMAN CONFLICTS, or Emotion. Conflict and Will: an
Objective Study of Disorganization and Control of Human Behaviour, by A.R. Luria.
Translated from the Russian and edited by W. Horsley Gantt, Liveright. 428 pp.
Price $4 postpaid of The Survey.
THIS is an excellent exposition of the laboratory method in
the clinical field. The presentation of a more or less uniform
:echnic is supported by an adequate exposition of the methods
nth case studies. Luria demonstrates the factors entering into
:he conflict processes as well as the nature of conflicts bound up
n effects which disorganize behavior through their direct con-
icction with the motor field. The author's general viewpoint is
:hat the mechanism of conflict plays a chief role in the disorgani-
:ation of human behavior and he believes that delays in the
:xcitatory system of activity may easily lead to disturbances of
>ehavior.
The neurodynamics of neuroses are studied in terms of types
)f body organization, one .stable and one labile. Disorganiza-
:ion of voluntary behavior involves an inability to create
itimuli or to subordinate them. Direct attempts to control be-
lavior lead to negative results; mastery is achieved only by in-
iirect means.
The strength of the volume lies in its stress upon the totality
of personality, with the intellect viewed as a vital factor in the
development of what is ordinarily regarded as voluntary action.
Human behavior is regarded as a direct growth and not merely as
the result of an accumulation of experiences. Biological man is
modified by his cultural activity. The cultural functions are not
isolated in psychological processes but permeate the whole
activity and structure of behavior. The analysis of cultural
mechanisms becomes the key to understanding the simple neuro-
dynamical processes.
As a presentation of his mode of investigation, Luria offers a1
book of significance and value. He seeks to probe objectively the
mechanism underlying much of human unhappiness. The section
of the volume dealing with artificial conflicts shows quite defi-
nitely that the specific organization of a higher psychological
function is explainable only as one includes a study of the neuro-
dynamics of behavior.
American psychologists and even social workers can gain much
from this well-organized systematic discussion of the nature of
human conflicts. IRA S. WILE, M.D.
New Tork City
How to Organize Health
COMMUNITY HEALTH ORGANIZATION, edited by Ira V. Biscock. Common-
wealth Fund. 261 pp. Price $2 JO postpaid of The Survey.
THE attempt to develop quantitative, objective standards
and programs for municipal health service has now been
carried on by the American Public Health Association for more
than ten years and with somewhat remarkable success. This work
is not only a substantial contribution to the cause of public
health but also perhaps points the way in which other govern-
mental functions could with profit be analyzed. The present
volume is a revised, enlarged and extensively modified new
edition of Professor Hiscock's earlier book, published on behalf
of the Committee on Administrative Practice of the Association
in 1927. It outlines in detail the necessary community organiza-
tion for a city of 100,000 population, including public and private
agencies, and covering communicable disease control, control of
tuberculosis and venereal diseases, maternity and child hygiene,
school hygiene, milk and food control, sanitation, laboratory
service, public-health nursing, hospital and out-patient services
and popular health instruction. Under each of these topics there
is an outline, based on the exhaustive studies of the Committee,
of the detailed services which actually should be rendered and of
the personnel and budget required.
Professor Hiscock has given a clear and complete picture of the
essentials of community-health organization which should be
constantly on the desk of every worker in this field. Furthermore
he has infused his discussion of technical administrative problems
with a philosophical grasp of governmental problems and with an
awareness of underlying community needs which should commend
his work to other social workers as well as to those specifically
concerned with public health. C.-E. A. WINSLOW
School of Medicine, Tale University
When Justice Takes to Politics
TRIBUNES OF THE PEOPLE, by Raymond Moley. Yale University Press. 272 pp.
Price $2.50 postpaid of The Survey.
IN this volume the man who has become one of the inner
circle of President-elect Roosevelt's advisers and who is
professor of public law at Columbia University, tears the mask
off the magistrates' courts of New York City. To large numbers,
he points out, these courts are the custodians of justice, the
tribunes of the people; and yet their work is shoddy and their
atmosphere unwholesomely political. Professor Moley reviews
various surveys of these courts and efforts to raise their stand-
ards, but his volume deals largely with the results of the Seabury
investigation and therefore pictures the courts as they are today.
He makes the categorical statement that in the selection of
magistrates through the years the political machine has followed
42
THE SURVEY
January 1933
the policy of giving as poor a quality of appointments as public
opinion will permit. Scandals associated with bail, organization
of the courts, framing and other abuses uncovered in connection
with the Women's Court — these and other phases of the work of
the courts are analyzed. Roughly, half of what goes to support
the courts, he says, finds its way either to political work or to
waste and inefficiency. Before real improvement can come "the
authority that rules politics in New York City must bend low
before the altar of self-renunciation." And the candid observer
cannot "yet discern even the portents of such a miracle."
••Trenton, N. J. WINTHROP D. LANE
Victims of the Great God Style
TRADE-UNION POLICIES IN THE MASSACHUSETTS SHOE INDUSTRY,
1919-1929. by Thomas L. Norton. Columbia University Press. 377 tP- Price $5
postpaid of The Survey.
THE shoe-workers' unions in Massachusetts have had to
struggle for a decade with the problems of a shrinking market
for their labor and increasing pressure on wages in a highly com-
petitive industry. Dr. Norton tells the story of this struggle in
Brockton and Haverhill. Each of these cities watched its shoe
industry slowly decrease in size during the "twenties, while the
unions fought to maintain wage scales considerably above those
of nearby competing centers.
Although the Haverhill union differed radically from that in
Brockton, both organizations looked to arbitration within the
framework of the trade agreement as a necessary evil, to be
flouted on occasion but to be relied upon generally, since no other
method of adjusting piece-rates and working rules was possible
in an industry completely at the mercy of the great god Style.
The economic factors which ruled the situation are carefully
explained with abundant statistical data to illuminate the text.
The analysis of arbitration board decisions is done with as much
thoroughness as the decisions themselves allow: only those who
are in the cast of the play can know what occurs offstage, and the
spectator must take what he sees for granted. Arbitrators' de-
cisions usually contain the truth; if they fall short of containing
the whole truth, the picture which is drawn from them may be a
bit distorted, but the artist is not to blame.
The author proves that a carefully documented and highly
specialized study can be interesting reading. He has made an
excellent contribution to the growing body of literature that
deals with collective bargaining in American industry.
Duke University JOHN P. TROXELL
Ethics for Schoolboys
THE ART OF BEHAVIOR: a Study in Human Relations, by Frederick Winsor.
Houghlon Mifflin. 203 pp. Price $1.75 postpaid of The Survey.
TN this book the author offers for the use of all boys of high-
-"• school age a discussion of ethics which he has found intelligi-
ble and interesting to the boys of Middlesex School. It must,
therefore, be judged according to the measure of its probable
usefulness to boys of this age out of every social class. This re-
viewer has not found, as the author has, that sex is a subject
usually adequately treated in school as a matter of hygiene and
physiology. His own experience with schoolboys, on the con-
trary, leads him to feel that a lack of understanding of the ethical
problems inherent in sex is the cause of so much failure in later
life adjustments that no book purporting to handle the question
of ethics for the young may properly avoid sex matters.
The treatment of what one may call the "domestic" virtues is
admirable. The average boy will understand and be impressed
by the argument that truth-telling, with reservations which the
author points out, is necessary for the functioning of society; and
that unselfishness benefits its practitioner by making him immune
to many common fears and anxieties.
But the discussion of the ethics of our community life lacks
realism. The most important part of the picture seems left out if
we do not consider the origin of racketeering in the willingness
of many respectable people to make use of racketeers, or if we
worry about the low standard of civic ethics without asking
whether this did not arise from the standard of business ethics
which John T. Flynn and others have shown is equally low. And
the present state of Europe makes it seem ironic to say that "the
nations of the world are beginning to realize that even interna-
tional disputes ought to be settled according to the principles of
justice, not by brute force." I. M. BEARD
Bethel, Conn.
Dissipated Heritage
THE CHANGING CULTURE OF AN INDIAN TRIBE, by Margaret Mead.
Columbia University Press. 313 pp. Price $4.50 postpaid of The Survey.
ALTHOUGH this study was designed, in the main, to disclose
-^*- the changing status, interests and attitudes of women in a
Plains Indian tribe, practically every aspect of life on the reserva-
tion is discussed. The picture is appalling: what has happened in
this little corner of the Mississippi Valley is not that an overripe
culture has crumbled at the first impact of a more vigorous or
modern one; nor is it the incidental disorder which often attends
— in the experience of many of our immigrant groups, for example
— the adaptation of a social system to new conditions. But, owing
to the ever shifting artificial barriers which an uncertain govern-
ment policy of interference has placed in the way of such read-
justment, the cultural heritage has simply been dissipated; and
these Indians are now worse off than they were in the earlier
stages of contact.
The author does not formulate this thought; but one gathers
that the decay of our own culture which now dominates the scene
is the most serious factor in the situation; and that race pride,
though it slows up the process of adjustment, is, when combined
with trained intelligence, the most hopeful of the forces left.
American Council, Institute of Pacific Relations BRUNO LASKER
The Two New Mooney Books
THE MOONEY BILLINGS REPORT. Suppressed by the Wickersham Commission.
Gotham House. 243 pp. Price $1.50 postpaid of The Survey.
WHAT HAPPENED IN THE MOONEY CASE, by Ernest Jerome Hopkins.
Brewer, Warren, Putnam. 258 pp. Price $2.50 postpaid of The Survey.
THE suppressed Wickersham Report on Mooney, now pub-
lished, together with Hopkins' book, also just published,
really give further information to this well-known case. The
report, put out by private funds, gives us the type of information
that was undoubtedly before Governor Rolph at the time of
Mayor Walker's famous trip to California. The legal analysis is
both efficient, clear and convincing in accordance with the stand-
ards familiar to all lawyers. Though there is little doubt as to
where his sympathy lay, the book reveals a most searching probe
for the truth in each step in the handling of the case by the police,
and most clear proof
of their lack of re-
gard to the ordinary
standards set up at
the time of the
Magna Carta. The
question remains
whether this book
will be interesting
or enlightening read-
ing for the lay
reader. To me as a
lawyer this seems
open to question.
Hopkins' book
was written, I pre-
sume, with a knowl-
edge of the report
and shows a desire
to popularize foi
the lay public th<
type of analysis and
~-&f<t£'- mx~-e-'»'-ts ' the method of pres-
Rollin Kirby in the New York World-Telegram entation SO effeC-
there, ty thunder, I'll get tie truth at last! lively appearing ir
PU5LIC
LIBRARY
January 1933
THE SURVEY
43
the Commission's report. I may say for myself in regard to the
Hopkins book that even after reading the' report, I found it diffi-
cult to put down the most engaging as well as the agonizing
picture given in the book. Here, with the strict regard for the
; truth of details, there is a chance for picture sketches of the
actors, sufficient details to make them real people about whose
lives one is tremendously concerned.
To explain this idea further I would like to point out, for in-
stance, how Mooney and his wife are shown giving their ex-
periences in labor work, their manner of living, and their interests,
so as to make you wish to know their connection with the Pre-
paredness Parade and their possible relation to the bomb ex-
plosion. To me this information was very enlightening because,
like most people of my generation or younger, I was not old
enough at the time of the explosion to get a clear picture of the
ramifications.
To return to the Wickersham Report, the time analysis in this
book showing the relation of the alleged alibi of Mooney to the
situation was extraordinarily effective and this was brought out
more strikingly by showing the different testimony given by the
state's witnesses at different periods in the case. Also, Billings
comes out as a real person, a labor sympathizer and organizer, in
a way that I had never understood before. He seems a most
pathetic and at the same time interesting illustration of the
courage and progressiveness of the younger generation.
I recommend both volumes without qualification to readers of
The Survey as books in which there appears a very complete and
fair picture of one of the causes celdbres of our times.
New York City SUSAN BRANDEIS
Evil Shadow Over Childhood
THE CHILD AND THE TUBERCULOSIS PROBLEM, by J. Arthur Myers,
M.D. Charles C. Thomas, Pub. 230 ft- Price S3 postpaid of The Survey.
TUBERCULOSIS has its vulnerable spot. The tubercle bacil-
lus in killing its human host destroys itself. It can continue
its existence only by repeated migration to other persons. Our
best strategy, therefore, says Dr. Myers, is to prevent the in-
vasion of the uninfected person by the tubercle bacillus. Some
argue that a slight infection tends to immunize the individual
against serious disease. With such a truce, whereby the human
race agrees to put up with the perpetual parasitism of the tubercle
bacillus, he has no patience.
The childhood period is the pivotal point for the modern attack.
Infection takes place most frequently before the twenties are
reached. Moreover infection, if it has taken place and early dam-
age has been done, can easily be discovered in children with the
aid of modern instruments of precision such as the tuberculin
test and the x-ray. Myers has gathered the latest and best knowl-
edge about tuberculosis in children and has enriched it with his
own wide experience. With his gift for non-technical description
of scientific subjects, he traces the ramifications of the disease
through the social fabric, particularly the family. His relentless
pen, reenforced by ingenious diagrams, describes the wrecking
effects of the tubercle bacillus once it has crossed the threshold of
the household. But that same pen pictures the most hopeful way
out mankind has ever known. It inspires us to believe that "one
of the greatest evils shadowing all children may some day be
lifted."
In the last chapter, The Program for the Future, the author
summarizes the social forces necessary to lift the shadow. The
new program includes no revolutionary or startling ideas but
demands, in addition to the tried and accepted procedures, a
widespread testing of children in order to screen out those who
require special supervision and treatment before symptoms
appear.
The nurse, the social worker, the teacher, the health worker
need the background and the specific knowledge which is here
so well blended; particularly in these evil days when thousands
of children are being threatened because the allies of tuberculosis,
malnutrition, crowding, depression of spirit, are in the saddle.
National Tuberculosis Association H. E. KLEINSCHMIDT, M.D.
RUN OF THE SHELVES
A DESCRIPTIVE LIST OF THE NEW BOOKS
PLANS FOR CITY POLICE JAILS AND VILLAGE LOCKUPS, by
Hastings H. Hart. Russell Sage Foundations. 27 pp. Price (1.50 postpaid of
The Survey.
A POSTHUMOUS volume of plans and architects' drawings which,
if it could be brought home to the conscience of those responsible
for local lockups, might do away with one of the crying scandals of
the United States.
WOMEN'S WORK UNDER LABOUR LAW. A Survey of Protective Legislation.
International Labour Office. P. S. King &• Son, Ltd. Z64 pp. Price $1.50.
A STUDY of "the chief problems affecting women workers which
have given rise to protective legislation, and examples of the
solutions tried in various countries." The report points out that
"those legislative solutions, like all human endeavors, are merely
relative and temporary in their character. . . . Whereas certain
problems affecting the employment of women will always be with
us — for example, the fundamental problem of maternity — others
develop with the social conditions out of which they arise."
PSYCHIATRY AND MENTAL HEALTH, by John Rathbone Oliver, M.D. Scrib-
ner's. 310 pp. Price $2.75 postpaid of The Survey.
DR. OLIVER presents the Hale Lectures of 1932, given at Western
Theological Seminary. He, as a pastor, a psychiatrist and a medi-
cal historian, offers a simple, frank exposition of the problems in
which ministers may be of service to their parishioners. The book
aims to supplement theology in order that pastors may aid more
practically the victims of life's problems in finding a better ad-
justment. It is an interpretation of sick souls and their fears,
their struggles and their temptations. The viewpoint is primarily
and uniformly religious.
THE CURATIVE VALUE OF LIGHT, by Edgar Mayer, M.D. Appleton. 175 pp.
Price $1.50 postpaid of The Survey.
FROM sunlight through window-glass to the many varieties of
sunlamp, Dr. Mayer traces clearly and briefly what we know of
the curative value of light and what remains to be proved. For
some of the conditions he describes and by some of the methods
that he explains in simple terms light has proved a brilliant suc-
cess. On the other hand he believes that "the use of light in all
forms as a tonic agent has been greatly overdone" and that its
effectiveness in preventing and treating colds still awaits demon-
stration. This advice of the consultant in light radiation to the
American Medical Association Council is a straightforward guide
to the layman trying to find his way through fads to facts.
MANY MOONS AGO AND NOW, A Course on North American Indians for Jun-
iors, by Katharine E. Gladfeller. 157 pp.; CHILDREN OF THE GREAT SPIRIT.
A Course for Primary Children, by Frances Somers Riggs and Florence Crannell
Means, 153 pp.; NEW JOY, A Course on China for Juniors, by Carolyn T. Sewall
and Charlotte Chambers Jones, 154 pp.; OFF TO CHINA, A Course for Primary
Children, by Helen Firman Sweet and Mabel Garret! Wagner, 146 pp.; CHINESE
CHILDREN OF WOODCUTTERS' LANE, by PrisciUa Holton. 68 pp.; all
Friendship Press. Each volume $1 cloth, 75 cents paper bound.
EACH year the effort of the missionary movement to produce
textbooks for use in church schools that will awaken in American
children a sense of friendship for the children of other races and
nations achieves a little more success. This year, the above col-
lection of new study books — to which might be added others that
address themselves to senior groups — invites an interest in our
North American Indians and in China. One notes the emergence
of a liberalism in the appraisal of non-Christian faiths that was
not present in the earlier missionary literature but that became
inevitable as soon as it was desired to produce an appreciative
attitude toward foreign cultures. One also notes the increasing
skill with which every possible resource of project teaching is
drawn upon to help the least imaginative teacher in this work;
besides stories and songs she will here find games, cooking recipes,
directions for making costumes, and the like. The stories are not
all uniformly well told: in some of them there is still too much
sentimentality. The illustrations are all good — except in one of
the little books where they represent Chinese children obviously
younger than the story-writer had in mind.
44
THE SURVEY
January 193:.
CO MM UNICA TIONS
Evidently We Are Read
To THE EDITOR: It might interest you to know that I have re-
ceived dozens of requests from various parts of the country for
the pamphlet, What Shall We Discuss at Our Next Conference,
which you listed in your November 1932 issue of The Survey.
I wish to thank you at this time for mentioning this pamphlet in
your paper. BENJ. L. WINFIELD
Jewish Children's Home, Newark, N. J,
Pragmatia Ahoy
To THE EDITOR: I feel that the article, A Pragmatic Experiment
with Taxes, in the December Graphic number of The Survey,
justifies my persistency as a member of Survey Associates, Inc.
It was a long time coming, but when it arrived it was good.
I cannot quite agree with the sentence under The Gist of It,
"His [Harold S. Buttenheim's] articles and editorials are intensely
practical, but now and then he takes wing for a flight into the
blue, as in the delightful trip to Pragmatia." As one who is ac-
customed to dealing with causes and effects in attempts to solve
engineering and commercial problems, I am fully convinced that
this article is one of the most "intensely practical" articles Mr.
Buttenheim ever published. It would, in my opinion, be far more
proper to designate the vast majority of the so-called practical
discussions of social and economic activities as "flights into the
blue." Such, for instance, are the proposed plans of providing
employment by public works which are to be paid for by increas-
ing taxes upon thrift, industry, enterprise and on incomes derived
from the performance of the service functions.
There are two criticisms which I trust I may be permitted to
make. The first is that Mr. Buttenheim unfortunately uses the
term "land tax," which is utterly misleading. Had he said land-
value tax, it might have called for some explanation, but certainly
it would not have been misleading. Farmers are opposed to land
taxes, although the evidence is very clear that no class, save the
landless laborer, would be so greatly benefited by the substitution
of the land-value tax for all other kind of taxes. You doubtless
read Mary Heaton Vorse's article on farm conditions in the Corn
Belt in the current Harper's Magazine. This might properly have
been entitled, American Plan of Liquidating Our Corn Belt
Kulaks. Our method is just as effective as the Russian and tends
to have the same ultimate results. Our American socialist reform-
ers have enthusiastically praised the introduction of mass-produc-
tion methods on the communist farms. They apparently are en-
tirely ignorant of the fact that Tom Campbell made the most
disastrous failure in the annals of American wheat growing by his
mass-production methods in Montana. Although he had special
advantages in extraordinarily cheap land, some of it Indian land
under ridiculously low leases, his unit costs were always higher
than the unit costs on the well-managed individual farms in
Montana.
My second criticism is based on the implied criticism of " the
sacred tenets of the 'lazy fairies' — the mysterious 'law,' so-called,
of supply and demand." The law of supply and demand is exactly
as mysterious as the law of gravitation and it works just as truly
and inexorably as does the law of gravitation. In both cases the
phenomena resulting from the working of the law are entirely
dependent upon the environment. The law of gravitation, the
working of which makes it possible for a steel vessel to float, also
causes that vessel to sink when the sea-cocks are opened. Water,
acting in accordance with the law of gravitation, may grind our
corn or destroy our homes, depending entirely upon the environ-
ment in which the falling water acts. "Young men in a hurry,"
who are dissatisfied with the social and economic phenomena re-
sulting from the inexorable working of the law of supply and
demand, find fault with the law instead of using their minds t(
discover how our social and economic environment can be alterec
so that beneficent phenomena will be the natural result of th<
working of this natural economic law. Laissez-faire is not to bt
judged by the phenomena which have resulted from our failure t<
adopt its principles. The fact is that laissez-faire has never beer
tried and, obviously, it cannot be tried when freedom to produci
is denied through the monopolization of land values, including al
natural resources. Neither can it be tried when revenues for thi
support of government are obtained by robbing those who per
form the service functions by taxing their incomes or any prod
ucts produced by their labor, for obviously such taxes curtai
freedom of action and in many cases are absolutely prohibitive
I should be interested to learn whether your readers generall;
consider this article "a flight into the blue" or an "intense!;
practical" presentation of truth. WARREN S. BLAUVEL-
Hudson Valley Fuel Corp., Troy, N. Y.
To THE EDITOR: If the term "land tax," as Mr. Blauvelt believes
conveys a misleading idea to Survey readers, my use of it wa
indeed unfortunate. I wanted a well-balanced contrast to "sale
tax"; and for this purpose the two words, "land tax," seemec
more effective than the three words, "land value tax."
As a matter of fact, however, I wonder if The Survey's host o
intelligent readers do not, like Mr. Blauvelt, understand full;
that no rational advocate of a land tax would base such tax on thi
acreage instead of on the value of the property assessed. Other
wise, why not insist similarly on the term "sales value tax," les
it be assumed that the sale of a bushel of potatoes would bi
taxed as much as a bushel of diamonds? Or adopt the term "in
come ability tax," instead of " income tax," in order to make clea
that all incomes are not taxed on the same percentage basis?
Mr. Blauvelt in his second criticism uses a telling comparisoi
between the law of supply and demand and the law of gravita
tion. It seems to me, however, that an important distinction i
overlooked by those who believe that laissez-faire would work ti
perfection if we would only try it. Whereas gravitation is a wholl;
impersonal, inanimate force, the law of supply and demand de
pends for its workings on the widely varying appetites and as
pirations of human beings, and on their multitudinous ideas a
to how best to satisfy these appetites and aspirations. And thes
are not innate, inevitable ideas either; they are constantly bein|
influenced by education, religion, fashion, advertising and a hos
of other human forces. This being thus, I cannot be optimist!
enough to hope that we can ever so organize society that laissez
faire will have untrammeled sway — or that under such swa;
human beings would with inevitable wisdom pursue their ow;
welfare and the common good.
But, anyway, I value greatly Mr. Blauvelt's commendation
and criticisms, and wish I could believe that most of your reader
would be as willing as he is to advocate the adoption in Americ
of Pragmatia's system of taxation.
Editor The American City, New Tork City
HAROLD S. BUTTENHEII
Foster Day Care
To THE EDITOR: Gretta Palmer's statement, quoted in the S
They Say column in The Survey of December 15, 1932, reall;
merits a statement from our organization. There is a plan ii
operation which provides satisfactory day care not alone for poo
children, but for those of "white-collar fathers and silk-stockini
mothers." Foster day care was first advocated by Mrs. Bertholi
Strauss in 1926 and put into operation by The First Day Nurser;
five years ago this month. Since then, the movement has gainei
considerable impetus. This plan has been adopted outright b;
four day nurseries in this city and by one each in Elmira, Ne\
York, and Canton, Ohio. Columbus plans to use it for specia
cases. Toronto is deeply interested and hopeful of adopting it a
an extension of their established service when finances permit
Richmond, Virginia, started foster day care the first of las
October for a limited group and found the demand for tha
ervice far in excess of anything anticipated. The city health
[epartment of Baltimore sees in this plan definite possibilities for
he solution of municipal problems. However, we who are spon-
oring the work have not made the facts of our plan known to the
jfficial dispensers of news in social work — namely, the staff of
"he Survey.
May I present some of the advantages which we have found in
his type of day care for children as opposed to our former plan of
nstitutional day care?
(1) Foster day care is more economical financially (as well as
ocially) than the ordinary type of nursery service.
(2) A decrease in nursery turnover has made more consistent
tnd constructive work with the children and families possible.
Dur annual turnover in our last year of institutional work was
29 per cent as compared to a turnover of 42^2 per cent in 1931.
(3) The health of the nursery population has improved notice-
ibly because of (a) elimination of exposure of the group to in-
ection, (b) the more consistent supervision just mentioned and
c) greater opportunities for health education of the parents and
oster parents.
(4) The general morale of the families is much higher under the
lew regime, which not only admits but demands a better rounded
piece of case work than was formerly possible.
(5) We now make the plan for the family our first considera-
tion, since we are not obliged to think of an empty and costly
nstitution which "should be filled." Our funds go into direct
ervice rather than into equipment.
(6) Children under foster day care are being prepared for
normal life in their own communities.
(7) No religious nor color lines need be drawn. We are now
:aring for Jewish, Irish, Polish, German, Negro, Chinese and
'just American" families.
(8) A much greater area is served under the decentralized plan.
(9) The foster mother's hours can be adjusted to meet the
leeds of the mother who works irregularly.
(10) Children varying in ages from a few months to fourteen
rears may be cared for simultaneously and successfully.
(u) The children of the silk-stocking mothers may be cared
or at a reasonable cost to the parents (and no cost to the com-
nunity) in surroundings comparable to their own homes, where
hey receive thoughtful and individual training.
I do sincerely feel that foster day care has passed its trial stage
with flying colors and that it will result in an even greater modifi-
:ation of nursery policies than we have seen in the past five years.
.{ nurseries are responsible for the training and care of several
housands of children annually, should they not be definitely
:hallenged as to expenditures, modes of work, and results?
Executive Secretary, The First and Sunnyside Day Nursery,
Philadelphia LUNA E. KENNEY
Who Shall Go to Conferences?
To THE EDITOR: Because of the unusual financial conditions
jxisting at this time in our community, a number of procedures in
social work, which up to now have been taken for granted, have
:ome up for reevaluation and possible reorganization. Among
them, the problem of convention and conference attendance by
the constituent agencies of our Community Chest has been under
scrutiny for some time.
It has been felt by a number of our people that the haphazard
way in which our communities have been sending representatives
to attend conventions and conferences is a symptom of the lack of
Drganization existing in general in social-service work. To be more
precise, a suggestion has been made that instead of every agency
sending its own representatives, the Community Chest be given
the responsibility for sending representatives to these conven-
tions. Such representation would be made not merely on the basis
}f the financial ability of the individual agency, but be based
jpon the needs and qualifications of those who are sent. There is
good deal of opposition to this suggestion in the community
md I have been asked, in the (Continued on page 46)
'FELLOWSHIP for study during
the winter of 1933-34 will be
offered to a foreign student who
expects to make social work his
profession. March 9, 1933 is the
final date for filing applications.
Details will be mailed
upon request.
The T^ew Tor\ School of Social WorJ(
in East Twenty-Second Street
New York
THE PENNSYLVANIA SCHOOL OF
SOCIAL AND HEALTH WORK
Two-year program of graduate training for principal fields of Social
Work.
One-year program in Public Health Nursing for Graduate Nurses.
311 So. Juniper Street Philadelphia
HAVE YOU
Property to sell
Cottages to rent
Advertise in the Classified Section of SURVEY GRAPHIC
Rates: 30 cents a line, $4.20 per inch
For further information, write to ADVERTISING DEPARTMENT
SURVEY GRAPHIC
1 1 S EAST1 9TH ST. NEW YORK, N. Y.
Do you ever dream of a better world?
READ
PROHIBITING POVERTY
by Prestonia Mann Martin
"One of the most ingenious ideas I ever heard."
— Laivson Purdy, Secretary
N. Y. Charity Organization Society
"The chapter 'To Feminists' stirred me greatly.
Brilliant, — refreshingly keen."
— George Poster Peabady
Philanthropist and Banker
Price $1.00 Postpaid, U. S.
THE ROLLINS PRESS
115 West 16th Street, N. Y. City Winter Park, Florida
(In answering advertisements please mention THE SURVEY)
45
CLASSIFIED ADVERTISEMENTS
Kates: Display: 21 cents a line, 14 agate lines to the inch. Want advertisements
five cents per word or initial, including address or box number. Minimum charge,
first insertion, $1.00. Cash with orders. Discounts: 5% on three insertions; 10% on
six insertions. Address Advertising Department.
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SURVEY MIDMONTHLY
WORKER WANTED
WANTED — Social worker; small town; middle west;
at least one year of case work required; $100 including
car and expenses. Medical Bureau, 3800 Pittsfield
Building, Chicago.
Advertise Your
Wants in The Survey
SITUATIONS WANTED
WOMAN, experienced in field work, promotion,
publicity, lobbying, secretarial work, etc., seeks
position with live organization. 7067 SURVEY.
TRAINED, experienced social worker with steno-
graphic ability, desires position, preferably in children's
or immigrant work; speaks German and Hungarian.
A-l references. 7100 SURVEY.
SUPERINTENDENT OR HOUSEMANAGER in
club, institution or school by woman of wide expe-
rience, culture and understanding of youth. 7101
SURVEY.
MATURE American woman, graduate nurse, wishes
position as Superintendent in institution for children
or adults. Well experienced. Executive ability of high
order. Nearly eight years in present position. 7102
SURVEY.
APPLICANTS for positions are sincerely
urged by the Advertising Department to send
copies of letters of references rather than
originals, as there is great danger of originals
being lost or mislaid.
LITERARY SERVICE
RESEARCH: We aM»t in preparing
special articles, papers,
speeches, debates. Expert, scholarly serv-
ice. AUTHOR'S RESEARCH BUREAU, 516
Fifth Avenue, New York, N. Y.
ADMINISTRATOR'S GUIDE
ENGRAVING
THE HUGHES ENGRAVING CO., INC.
Photo Engraving Specialists, 140 Fifth Avenue,
New York City. Plates that print. Ask The Survey
about us. Platemakers for Survey Midmonthly
and Survey Graphic.
SUPPLYING INSTITUTIONAL TRADE
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Groceries
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ANNOUNCEMENT
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Survey Midmonthly, rates for Classified
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I sponsored jointly by the American Associal
tion of Social Workers and the Nationa
Organization for Public Health Nursing*
National. Non-profit making.
(Agency)
130 East 22nd St.
New York
GERTRUDE R. STEIN, Inc.
VOCATIONAL SERVICE AGENCY
18 EAST 41sT STREET, NEW YORK
Lexington 2-6677
We are interested in placing those who
have a professional attitude towards their
work. Executive secretaries, stenographers,
case workers, hospital social service workers,
settlement directors; research, immigration,
psychiatric, personnel workers and others.
PAMPHLETS
Rates: 7Sc per line for 4 insertions
YES, You CAN STILL GET THAT PHAMPHLET, The Sei
Side of Life, An Explanation for Young People
BY MARY WARE DENNETT, 35 CENTS A COPY. 3 FOI
$1.00. Order from the Author: 81 Singer Street.
Astoria, L. I., New York City.
PERIODICALS
The American Journal of Nursing shows the par
which trained nurses are taking in the bettermen
of the world. Put it in your library. $3.00 a year
450 Seventh Ave., New York, N. Y.
Mental Hygiene: quarterly: $3.00 a year; publishe
by the National Committee for Mental Hygiene
450 Seventh Ave., New York.
(Continued from page 45) capacity of chairman of a commit-
tee, to collect whatever material there is on this subject for the
purpose of presenting it back to our community for further
consideration.
Are there any communities in the United States which have
attempted any such procedure, and if so, how has it worked out?
Has anything been written on the subject that you might refer
me to where the pros and cons of this matter have been discussed,
or is there any other information that you can give me?
SIMON DONIGER
Executive Director Jewish Guidance Bureau, Newark, N. J.
From Mme. Breshkovsky
To THE EDITOR: Catherine Breshkovsky, "the Little Grand-
mother of the Russian Revolution," will soon enter her ninetieth
year. She has lately become blind. Unable to live in Russia be-
cause she is out of sympathy with the Bolsheviki, she founded two
boarding schools for peasant children in Russian Carpathia, now a
part of the Czechoslovak republic. She has supported them mainly
with American money. She sends me the following letter, with the
entreaty to circulate it as widely as possible:
"To my Beloved American Friends, and to all young students.
"To you I address my humble and almost desperate plea for
help. You know of my work. In twelve years hundreds of boys and
girls have passed through ray boarding schools, and many gradu-
ates have become teachers in primary schools. I got the money
not only from rich men, but from many school girls and school
boys. But this year, owing to the world-wide depression, the aid
from America has fallen off so much that, unless more help comes,
some of my best students will have to leave the university. The;
will be thrown on the streets, or have to go back to their poo
villages. This causes even more grief to me than to my unfortu
nate boys and girls.
"Soon I shall enter my ninetieth year. My dear friends, I beg,
I pray you to help me to die joyfully!
"Catherine Breshkovsky."
Her address is Catherine Breshkovsky, Drubezarna, P. Horny
Pocernice, U Prahy, Prague, Czechoslovakia. Money may be
safely sent to her in a cashier's check. It should be made payable
in American dollars. Or I will gladly forward any contributions.
3 Monadnock Street, Boston, Mass. ALICE STONE BLACKWELL
Education on Alcohol
To THE EDITOR: I have read with profound interest and apprecia-
tion Dr. Haven Emerson's review of the great book compiled by
him in cooperation with other eminent scientists, Medicine Looks
at Alcohol, in the November issue of Survey Graphic.
This up-to-date, scientific appraisal of alcohol should have a
deep impression. Medical men for a good while have known that
alcohol is a poison, but the rank and file of the people have not
been convinced of that fact. We are in our present dilemma about
prohibition among other things for the reason that the education
of the public regarding the fact that alcohol is a drug poison, a
narcotic poison, has been overlooked by the drys. This article and
this book should be the means and the occasion for a systematic
re-emphasis of the fact that the liquor traffic, legal or illegal, is a
traffic in poisonous beverages. That fact must be brought home
to the last citizen. JOSEPH B. ROGERS
Pastor La Salle Avenue Baptist Church, Chicago
(In answering advertisements please mention THE SURVEY)
46
January 1933
THE SURVEY
GOSSIP
of People
and Things
Home Service
YOU never can tell what kind of a tight place
The Survey will help you out of. At the
New Jersey Conference of Social Work last
month Walter Kidde, treasurer and at the
moment presiding officer, introduced Mollie
Condon, Survey representative, with a story
of this journal's really distinguished role in
saving his life. He wakened one fine night to
discover a masked burglar going through his
clothes. On a bedside table, on top of a pile of
Surveys — evidently Mr. Kidde's favorite bed-
time reading, — lay the intruder's revolver.
Moved by the same impulse, Mr. Kidde and
Mr. Burglar sprang for the revolver. But leave
it to The Survey! It obligingly slid off the table,
taking the gun with it and, if you please, ex-
ploding it. Mr. Kidde got his man.
Moral: The Survey is indispensable.
THE American League to Abolish Capital
Punishment, The Survey's downstairs neighbor,
has lost the services of its indefatigable director,
Vivian Pierce. Ruth von Roeschlaub, formerly
research assistant, is acting executive secretary.
MASSACHUSETTS has a new commissioner of
Correction, Francis B. Sayre, appointed by
Governor Ely to succeed Dr. A. Warren Stearns.
Mr. Sayre, in his late forties, is a professor at
the Harvard Law School. Mrs. Sayre is a
daughter of Woodrow Wilson.
As a practical economist we commend
James H. Hubert of the New York Urban
League who beats the three-cent postage rate
by cutting off the reservation blank for commit-
tee luncheons, dinners and what-not, adding
the words, " Will pay at the door," and pasting
it on a 6"ne-cent postcard.
A SHIFT in the nursing field service of the
American Red Cross takes Charlotte M. Heil-
man from New York state to Washington as
assistant national director of Public Health
Nursing and Home Hygiene, and takes Helen
Bean from Massachusetts to fill Mrs. Heilman's
shoes in New York. Helen Gould of the Ver-
mont and NewHampshire territory has dropped
New Hampshire and added Massachusetts and
Rhode Island to her territory, while Laura.
Knowlton of Maine has taken on New Hamp-
shire. Ruth Mettinger, who has been covering
Georgia and Florida, has added the two Caro-
linas to her bailiwick.
CHICAGO is losing one of its most esteemed
Salvation Army officers, Col. George H.
Davis, who goes to San Francisco as chief
secretary of the Western Territory. As head
af the Salvation Army Training College in
Chicago Colonel Davis has attended the com-
missioning of some two thousand young of-
ficers. He has recently acted as field secretary
for the Army's Central States Territory.
THE seventh congress of the International
Union for the Protection of Children will be
I held in Paris next summer July 5-9. Dr. D.
Lasage of the French Academy of Medicine as
:hairman of the French Committee, has ex-
tended through the U. S. Children's Bureau a
particularly cordial invitation to American
social workers to attend and participate. The
theme of the Congress will be Government and
Welfare, with the program organized into six
sections for the discussion of maternity, infancy,
children of preschool and school age, adoles-
cence, abnormal childhood and social service.
Each section has as its chairman a French
physician of distinguished professional rank.
HONORS accumulate for Dr. William Hallock
Park, director of the laboratories of the New
York City Health Department. He has been
chosen to receive the coveted Sedgwick medal
of the American Public Health Association, the
formal award to be made in the spring. Last
spring he was awarded the public welfare medal
of the National Academy of Sciences.
JULIA HOPKINS, for two years general secre-
tary of the Richmond Family Service Society,
has committed matrimony and as Mrs. Arthur
Sackett is making her home in New York.
To show what life on an Indian reservation
really is and isn't, the Harmon Foundation is
lending aid to the production of a series of ten
motion pictures in the making of which Edith
Dabb of the National Board of the Y. W. C. A.
is taking an active part. The pictures will show
Indian life without the embellishment of fic-
tional romance and adventure.
New Specialty
WHATEVER a teacher of imperialism may
teach, and we haven't the least idea,
Commonwealth College, Mena, Ark., seems a
funny place to teach it in. But here it is, in the
college's own bulletin: "Harold Coy is a teacher
of imperialism at Commonwealth College."
MARY CARLOINE CRAWFORD, long active in
social-work publicity and money-raising, died
recently at her home in Boston.
THE Board of incorporators of the American
Red Cross has filled seven vacancies caused by
death by electing the following life members:
Alfred E. Smith, New York; Mrs. Frederic W.
Upham, Chicago; Gen. James G. Harbord,
New York; Gurney E. Newlin, Los Angeles;
Senator James Couzens, Detroit; Governor
Albert C. Ritchie, Maryland; Rear Admiral
Gary D. Grayson, Washington.
FRIENDS of Lillian D. Wald of The House in
Henry Street, are rejoicing at the news of her
steady convalescence from a recent severe
illness.
FROM Prof. Francis H. Bird of the Univer-
sity of Cincinnati comes the not-so-good news
that the Cincinnati Permanent Committee for
the Stabilization of Employment has been
merged with a new organization, the Hamilton
County Relief Committee, which acts in an ad-
visory capacity to the county commissioners on
all matters concerned with relief. As far back as
1929 [see A Going Plan for Steady Jobs by
Ruth Brownlow, The Survey, December 15,
1929, page 330] The Survey cheered this com-
47
mittee for its undertakings. That its distinctive
long-range program for dealing with the con-
tinuing problem of unemployment in com-
munity terms should be lost in the emergency
relief programs seems just too bad.
EMPLOYES of Grasslands Hospital, West-
chester County, N. Y., have formed an organi-
zation for which they hope to recruit 100 per-
cent membership, to "promote the welfare and
well-being of both employes and patients and
to carry on a cultural and recreational program
for the employes in their hours off duty."
Dr. W. B. Morris is president and Miss T. B.
Hayes secretary. . . . Grasslands has a new
doctor in its tuberculosis department, Dr. Rob-
ert Franklin, formerly of Loomis Sanitarium.
His chief duties are with adult patients and
outside clinic work.
"Who Gives Quickly Gives
Twice"
AT the recent fiftieth anniversary meeting
of the New York Charity Organization So-
ciety Lawson Purdy told a story of the late Otto
T. Bannard, for many years vice-president of
the society, whose quick, whimsical wit was a
delight to his friends as his quick and frequent
generosity was to the many social agencies to
which he contributed. At a meeting of the
Century Association Henry deForest Baldwin,
its treasurer, made an earnest plea for money
for some purpose or other and wound up with,
"Bis dat qui cito dat." Most of the gentlemen
present looked a little bewildered, but like a
flash Mr. Bannard came back, "Yes, I have
always noticed it."
THE Brooklyn Federation of Churches has
lost its executive secretary, Rev. Wilbour E.
Saunders, whom it acquired less than a year
ago on the death of Rev. Frederick M. Gordon.
Mr. Saunders has been appointed secretary of
the Rochester Federation of Churches, suc-
ceeding Rev. Orlo J. Price.
WHEN Homer Folks makes a compliment it
is no faint one. "H. Ida Curry and George
A. Nelbach have changed the map of New
York State," said he at the dinner given in
honor of the twenty-five years Miss Curry
and Mr. Nelbach have been on the staff of the
New York State Charities Aid Association.
More than a hundred staff and alumni heard
John A. Kingsbury tell of his observations of
public-health work in Russia, saw Miss Curry
and Mr. Nelbach receive gifts, and united in
garlanding Ruth Taylor with congratulations
on her election as commissioner of public
welfare of Westchester County. Miss Taylor,
it will be recalled, began her career as one of
Miss Curry's girls.
KATHERINE DEWITT, one of the old-line
stalwarts of the nursing profession, who has
been identified with its growth and progress
since her graduation from the Illinois Training
School in 1891, has resigned from the staff of
the American journal of Nursing and after a
year of travel will retire to her home in Pough-
keepsie. She has been associated with the
Journal since 1907 and has figured in most of
the major events of nursing history.
THE Anna Garlin Spencer Memorial Com-
mittee is asking for the loan of letters, clippings
and other material relating to the life of the late
Mrs. Spencer, whose long career included lead-
ership in such movements as social hygiene,
48
suffrage, peace, the training of social workers,
liberal theology, religious education, race
equality, the international organization of
women, divorce and family solidarity and social
education. Dr. Benjamin R. Andrews, Teachers
College, Columbia University, New York, will
appreciate the loan of any material which will
contribute to a fuller knowledge of Mrs. Spen-
cer's career which extended from 1870 to 1931.
Nurses' Notebooks
A SUPERVISOR of the Henry Street Visiting
•ii. Nurse Service brightened a recent staff
meeting by the tale of a mother who explained
that she hadn't yet named her six-weeks-old
baby because "We wanted to name her
Dorothy but this paper from the Board of
Health, I guess you call it a birth certificate or
something, has a name on it that looks like
Female and we don't much care for that name."
Not to be outdone another nurse brought in
treasure trove in the form of a letter sent to ex-
plain the writer's absence from a meeting of a
Mothers' Club. "Dear Mis Nurs," it read, "Is
acuse me I canno go to meet forcause my hus-
band died before yesterday at nine oclock.
Maybe I go nex week bicaus everything is al-
rite now."
Then there was the woman at Mulberry
Health Center who told the nurse that a certain
rather agitated patient "does lots of funny mo-
tions with her nerves," and the other who re-
ported of her offspring "Would you believe it
nurse, before I could get that child home he
had an emulsion right on the street."
THE District of Columbia Social Hygiene
Society, looking about for a successor to Paul
L. Benjamin as its executive secretary, has
made the happy choice of Ray H. Everett, for
eleven years with the American Social Hygiene
Association as director of its division of public
information and editor of its journal.
OXFORD University has long shown its senti-
ence to what is yeasty and stirring in the in-
tellectual life of countries overseas. The trait
has had no more happy illustration than the
recent appointment of Prof. Felix Frankfurter
of the Harvard Law School to the George
Eastman visiting professorship. Professor
Frankfurter goes to Oxford in succession to
Dr. Wesley C. Mitchell of Columbia who has
pushed out horizons in economics with a kin-
dred insurgent spirit.
W. FRANK PERSONS, after a browse in other
but apparently not greener pastures, has re-
turned to his first love, social work, and has
joined the staff of the American Public Welfare
Association with headquarters in Chicago.
His first assignment was a quick study of the
New York State Temporary Emergency Relief
Administration.
GAY B. SHEPPARDSON, president of the
Georgia State Conference of Social Work,
has been promoted to the full title of executive
secretary of the State Department of Public
Welfare of which she has been acting head since
last March.
IT was at the Maine State Conference that
The Survey cast a small candle gleam. "You
will be interested to know," (and we certainly
were) writes Sara P. Anthoine, general secre-
tary of the Family Welfare Society of Portland,
"that the conference considered the statute
providing for the disfranchisement of citizens
THE SURVEY
because of so called pauper aid. The Survey's
illuminating editorial on the subject was quoted
in the discussion [see As Maine Went, The
Survey, October 15, 1932, page 498]. The mat-
ter was referred to the legislative committee
which will prepare an amendment to be intro-
duced in the legislature this winter."
THE Chicago Council of Social Agencies has
a new committee on statistics and research
which will advise the Council's Statistical Bu-
reau and consider problems involving research
which are referred to the Bureau. Samuel A.
Goldsmith is chairman. All of which has moved
Helen Cody Baker to burst into song appropri-
ately yclept, Statistics:
With swear or prayer we tear our hair
When bidden to compile them,
We moil and toil, burn midnight oil
And earnestly revile them.
We seldom send them in on time,
We almost never read them,
But when the Welfare Drive begins
My Glory! How we need them!
THE Survey proudly discovered itself as
No. 7 in a list of periodicals for the library of
a child-guidance clinic, arranged in order of
magnitude of importance by Dr. R. L. Jenkins
of the Juvenile Research Institute of Chicago
on the basis of citations in Child Development
Abstracts, the Bibliography on Mental Hy-
giene, and a canvass of votes of the staff of the
Institute. All the journals ahead of it were
technical or semi-technical publications in the
medical or mental-hygiene field. The vote of
the Institute's staff rated it even higher — No.
4 — preceded only by Mental Hygiene, the
American Journals of Orthopsychiatry and
Psychiatry and the Journal of Juvenile Re-
search.
Good to the Last Shirt
JOHN D. KENDERDINE'S clothes rated
headlines recently in a Rochester, N. Y.,
newspaper. The story goes that J. D. K., who
part-times these days between The Survey and
the Children's Theater, dropped in to see his
old friend Oscar W. Kuolt of the Rochester
Council of Social Agencies. Mr. Kuolt, it seems,
never stands on ceremony when it comes to
getting clothes for people who, he knows, need
them. Fixing J. D. K. with a firm eye he said,
"John, I need that overcoat." J. D. K. clutched
his overcoat around him and escaped. But a
fortnight later Mr. Kuolt got the overcoat by
mail from New York.
When J. D. K. was next in Rochester he again
dropped in on his friend. "John," said Mr.
Kuolt, "I need that suit you've got on." "Not
on your life," snapped J. D. K. But again came
a package from New York with the suit.
Just how many trips to Rochester J. D. K.'s
wardrobe will stand no one but he knows. But
at this moment he is roaming around The
Survey office with a full complement of clothes.
BART ANDRESS, who last spring initiated the
United Education Program of the National
Social Work Council, and has had a finger in a
good many important publicity pies, local and
national, has been appointed director of finance
and extension of the Brooklyn, N. Y., Bureau
of Charities.
THE distaff side of several New York hospital
staffs have undergone recent mutations. Isa-
belle Dennison, recently case-work supervisor
with the Brooklyn International Institute of
the Y. W. C. A.,' is now director of social service
January 1933
at the Brooklyn Hospital. Lila Napier for ten
years superintendent of nurses at the Lying-in
Hospital, now a unit of the New York Hos-
pital-Cornell University Medical Center, has
gone to a similar position at Bronx Hospital.
Katrine Collins, recently with the Welfare
Council and before that connected with Massa-
chusetts General Hospital, is now chief social
worker with the House of St. Giles the Cripple,
Brooklyn.
THE Boys' Clubs of America have chosen
Chicago for their next annual meeting some
time in June.
JOSHUA LIEBERMAN, founder of Pioneer
Youth and for some time a teacher in the
Walden School, has been appointed head-
worker at Madison House, New York. He
succeeds Bernard Ostrolenk who varied his
settlement duties with work for The New
York Times and who has now decided to
give journalism full preference.
MANY a man, weary and heavy laden, will
hear with personal sorrow of the death of Col.
Charles C. Welte who for thirty-three years has
been associated with the Salvation Army's
social-service work for men, for the past six as
head of the department in the Army's eastern
territory. His death is attributed to overwork,
persisted in against the advice of his physician.
TUCKED away in a little bulletin of the New
York School of Social Work is word of the re-
tirement from the full-time faculty of Kate
Holladay Claghorn and Henry W. Thurston,
with the School since 1912, and George W.
Kirchwey, there since 1917.
VERMONT has a new state Social Hygiene
Council with Dr. Charles F. Dalton, commis-
sioner of health, as its president and Harold
W. Slocum of the State Tuberculosis Associa-
tion as its secretary.
THE Chicago Chapter of the American Asso-
ciation of Social Workers steps up witlj a pun-
gent series of Whereases and Be It Resolveds
urging legislative action to permit the state of
Illinois to secure funds from the R.F.C. to
"replace crowded, unsanitary and unsuitable
provision for family life by adequate, sanitary
and decent living accommodations."
FROM the forehanded Howard R. Knight
comes the glad tidings that the Detroit meeting
of the National Conference of Social Work
next June will all be under the one spacious roof
of the Masonic Temple. The hotels are about
fifteen minutes' walk distant, but everything
except sleeping will happen at the Temple.
State Conferences Elect
New Jersey Conference of Social Work: PRESIDENT,
Jessie P. Condit, East Orange; VICE-PRESIDENTS, Mrs.
Otto H Wittpenn (since deceased). David Falea, Jr.;
TREASURER, Walter Kidde, Montclair; SECRETARY,
Maud Bryan Foote, Newark.
Nebraska Stale Conference: PRESIDENT, Louis W.
Home, Lincoln; TREASURER, Melanie Gaines, Lin-
coln; SECRETARY, Edith Dumont Smith, Omaha.
Iowa Slate Conference: PRESIDENT, Ina Tyler, Iowa
City; TREASURER, Mrs. Merton Skelly; SECRETARY,
Florence Porter, Des Moines.
Maine Conference of Social Welfare: PRESIDENT,
Norman McDonald, Agusuta; VICE-PRESIDENTS. Rev.
Ashley Day Smith, Bangor, Sara P. Anthoine, Port-
land; TREASURER, Elizabeth Leslie, Augusta; SECRE-
TARY. Edith I. Huston, Portland.
Illinois Conference on Social Welfare: PRESIDENT,
Rodney H. Brandon, Springfield; VICE-PRESIDENTS,
Jacob Kepera, Chicago; Judge Harry Rock. Ottawa;
Agnes Van Driel, Chicago; SECRETARY-TREASURER,
Olive H. Chandler; MEMHERS-AT-I.ARGE, EXECUTIVE
COMMITTEE, Mrs. John T. Mason, Wilfred S. Reynolds.
Vol. LXIX. No. 2
MONTHLY
February 1933
TRY religion. All else has failed. — Salvation Army poster.
I am one of the few people who really like teachers. — Lady Astor.
If other planets are inhabited ours is their lunatic asylum. — Pro/.
Broadus Mitchell, Johns Hopkins University.
CONTENTS Homo Sapiens — the big-brained devastator. — Dr. William K.
Gregory, American Museum of Natural History.
FRONTISPIECE. . . .IDLE HANDS . Cartoon by D. R. Fttzpatrick
jis i is ii7 . One person with a belief is a social power equal to ninety-nine who
THE RELIEF STATE OF THE NATION Walter M. West 51 hay£ JJ interests._7o^ Stuart M£
HOUSING IN THE 1930 CENSUS Edith Elmer Wood 57 ....
Nationality and former place of residence are not important when
MINNESOTA PLANS FOR JOB INSURANCE men are cold and hungry.— Heywood Broun, New Tork.
Ahin H. Hansen and Merrill G. Murray 58 A(. certain ^^ ^ under certain circumstanceS) it is a most sacred
SELF-HELP AMONG SILK WORKERS Charles C. Webber 59 duty of the sociologist to raise hell— Pro/. Edward A. Ross, University
of Wisconsin.
CASE WORK IN A CHANGING SOCIAL ORDER
Ha L Lurie 61 The depression has thrown a lot of jobless men on the road. They re
destroying the reputation of hoboism. — Jack McBride, Liberal Science
THE CHURCH KEEPS UP WITH SOCIAL TRENDS Institute (hobo college).
The worst figure I have ever seen of unemployment on the outside
MEDICAL CARE ON RELIEF FUNDS 66 does not compare with prison unemployment. — Sanford Bates, U. S.
Department of Justice.
YOUTH IN THE DEPRESSION 67
To countenance child labor at a time like this is to sanction extend-
ONE HUNDRED PERCENT PLUS Isabelle Den.son 68 ing (he depression into the ,ives of the next generation.-F™W
THE COMMON WELFARE 70 Perkins, New Tork State Industrial Commissioner.
CARTOONS Denys Wortman 72 The core of the whole issue in recovery is to get adequate purchasing
power in the hands of the masses. All other items are trivial and al-
most irrelevant.— Harry Elmer Barnes in New Tork World Telegram.
HKAT TH *?8
Unless we prevent the ruin of childhood we are preparing an after-
INDUSTRY 80 math to the crisis worse than the crisis itself. . . . It is a foolish nation
which in an emergency destroys its seed-corn. — Rev. Harry Emerson
EDUCATION 82 Fosjick> NevJ York.
UNEMPLOYMENT AND COMMUNITY ACTION. . 84 The fidds of £xperiment (in soda, work)> of research> of specia,
BOOKS 88 sectarian interest, will always remain as long as our present organiza-
tion of society continues. — Dudley D. Sicber, president, New Tork State
COMMUNICATIONS 92 Conference of Social Work.
When all is said and done the majority of the larger countries of
Europe have, under conditions much more adverse than ours, come
Files of The Survey will be found in public and college libraries. All c]oser to providing adequate relief than we have.— Prof. Leo Wolman,
issues are indexed in the Readers' Guide to Periodical Literature. Ask Columbia University.
The most important fact about relief expenditures is not the vast cost
involved but the continued lack of any intelligent direction and
thorough-going planning which has accompanied it. — Harry L. Lurie,
SURVEY ASSOCIATES, INC. a™JV 7 «" ^A«,«rf.
Publication Office, 10 Ferry Street, Concord, N. H. . If I were asked to name the greatest curse of the age I should not
General Office, 112 East 19 Street, New York name the lack of standards or of ideals. To me that curse is the psychi-
cal and emotional un-grown-up-ness of grown-up people. — Rabbi
THE SURVEY— Monthly— $3.00 a Year Stephen S. Wise, Free Synagogue, New Tork.
SURVEY GRAPHIC — Monthly — $3.00 a Year We are dealing with people who have never had relief before. The
first trips to the grocery office are tough, but if a man keeps beating a
Lucius R. EASTMAN, president; JULIAN W. MACK, JOSEPH P. CHAM- path there it's going to be very hard to get him out of the habit. —
BERLAIN, JOHN PALMER GAVIT, vice-presidents; ANN REED BRENNER, Ha"~y L- Hopkins, New Tork State Emergency Relief Administration.
secretary; ARTHUR KELLOGG, treasurer. In spite of the partiality and prejudice which beclouds practically
PAUL U KELLOGG editor every social issue it is probably true that there is a general tendency of
increasing social intelligence to withdraw its support from the claims
ARTHUR KELLOGG, managing editor; MARY Ross, BEULAH AMIDON, of social privilege and to give it to the disinherited. — Prof. Reinold
LEON WHIPPLE, JOHN PALMER GAVIT, LOULA D. LASKER, FLORENCE Niebubr, Union Theological Seminary, New Tork.
LOEB KELLOGG, GERTRUDE SPRINGER associate editors. D , , . . , . ,
Before the university can do much more than it is now doing the
EDWARD T. DEVINE, GRAHAM TAYLOR, JANE ADDAMS, JOSEPH K. elementary and the secondary schools must bestir themselves really to
HART, HAVEN EMERSON, M.D., ROBERT W. BRUERE, contributing editors. edu"te the Sreat mass ofthe population and to leave off their dabbling
in the muddy waters of the anti-philosophies and the pseudo-psycnol-
MOLLIE CONDON, circulation manager; MARY R. ANDERSON, advertising ogies in which too many of these schools, in this land at least, are
manager. immersed. — President Nicholas Murray Butler, Columbia University.
Fitzpatrick in the St. Louis Post-Dispatch
IDLE HANDS
February
Volume LXIX
No. 2
The Relief State-of-the-Nation
By WALTER M. WEST
Executive Secretary, American Association of Social Workers
A^UIET room in the Senate Office Building in
Washington was transformed last month into a
cyclorama of the state of the nation. Here against
a sketched-in background of economic collapse were ranged
the tragic human victims of national unpreparedness for
such disaster. Day by day the scene broadened as men
and women from near and far bore witness to the human
cost of three years of depression and to the inadequacy,
inequality and uncertainty of the present relief machinery.
For two weeks in January a subcommittee of the
Committee on Manufactures of the United States Senate
conducted hearings on Senate Bill No. 5125, introduced by
Senators Costigan and LaFollette, "A bill to provide for
cooperation by the federal government with the several
states in relieving the hardships and suffering caused by
unemployment and for other purposes." The bill provides
an appropriation of $500,000,000 for grants to the states for
relief purposes and sets up a
new federal emergency relief
board to supersede the Re-
construction Finance Cor-
poration in handling relief
funds.
Many of the social work-
ers and others who appeared
before the committee did
subscribe unreservedly
not
to all the provisions of the
bill nor anticipate its enact-
ment into law but they felt
that whatever its fate in the
present Congress its intro-
duction and the hearings on
it were of major importance
in putting before Congress
Nothing but hang-over illusions concerning American
prosperity and miracles in reserve appear to explain our
unaccountable tardiness. The unwillingness heretofore to
act and our disposition to proceed with penny-pinching
compromises suggest the inefficiency of paralyzed energies.
Meanwhile the tide of human misery is rising to danger-
ously higher levels. It no longer suffices to say that so-
called direct relief merely affords a temporary solution.
Even while we move to start industrial activities which
will provide the means for making our people once more
self-sustaining, our national government can not do less
than aid our fellow citizens in the critical emergency, which
at this time, after three exhausting years, exhibits no
moderating signs.
the picture of national necessity as it exists in January 1933;
and in preparing the way for such new relief policies as the
incoming administration may inaugurate. Thus the hear-
ings served to spread on the record indubitable testimony
that, far from being under control, the relief situation,
reaching into the lives of no one knows how many millions,
is still a confused patchwork of unequalized organization,
with too often a keener regard for systems, for legalistic
and financial methods and precedents, than for the care of
destitute and desperate people.
The full report of the hearings has been published for the
use of the Committee on Manufactures. A limited number
of copies are available for general distribution on applica-
tion either to Senator LaFollette or Senator Costigan,
Senate Office Building, Washington, D. C. Senator Robert
M. LaFollette of Wisconsin is chairman of the subcommit-
tee. The other members are Senators Edward P. Costigan
of Colorado, co-author of
Senate Bill No. 5125, H. D.
Hatfield of West Virginia,
Bronson Cutting of New
Mexico and Burton K.
Wheeler of Montana. All
showed clear understanding
of the elements with which
the hearings dealt.
While they did not follow
a rigid pattern, the hearings
were arranged with a certain
continuity which brought
out a general summary of
conditions presented by per-
sons affiliated with national
social agencies, such as the
Association of Public Wel-
Senator Costigan Says
Si
52
THE SURVEY
February 193i
fare Officials, the Family Welfare Association of America
and the American Association of Social Workers. This was
followed by a solid backlog of statistics from the U. S.
Children's Bureau, and the testimony of officers of the
Reconstruction Finance Corporation. Then came people
with special information and people close to local situations
in states and cities, and finally and more intimately, came
social workers who by poignant case stories turned the long
marching columns of figures into fathers and mothers,
boys and girls, their lives distorted and broken by forces
beyond their control. Under the questioning of the sena-
tors the sorry procession of transients passed briefly across
the committee's stage. Aid to transients is, however, the
subject of another bill introduced by Senator Cutting
(Senate Bill No. 5121), hearings on which are in progress
as this is written.
The American Association of Social Workers had known
informally since October that public hearings on the state
of the nation in regard to relief would probably be held in
Washington before the adjournment of Congress. It had
charged its Committee on Federal Action on Unemploy-
ment, with the responsibility of studying the relief situa-
tion, of assembling data, and of presenting those data
wherever they would be useful. This committee late in
December secured through Association chapters and
members information from sixty-nine jurisdictions — cities,
counties, states, private agencies and so on — on the
current situation, its effectiveness and its deficiencies.
This information was collated by Ralph G. Hurlin and
Helen Crosby and interpreted by Harry L. Lurie for pres-
entation to the committee. Mr. Lurie's summary will be
found in another column.
THE details of that national picture, drawn in by Jacob
Billikopf, Linton B. Swift, Frank Bane and others, and
substantiated by the statistics of the Children's Bureau,
showed a rising tide of human misery, unmeasured and
unplumbed, against which the going relief organizations
imposed a crude dike thrown up out of happen-so material
without specifications, unbuttressed against stresses and
strains. Mr. Billikopf, after quoting the best figures avail-
able, could only conclude:
. . . we do not know with certainty even now, as we are in the
midst of the fourth winter of the depression, either the total
number of persons in the United States who are the recipients of '
relief, or the total amount expended to help them. We know only
that both totals are rapidly rising and that no end is in sight.
The number of those who have survived through the help of
neighbors or kinsfolk, many of whom have been themselves hard
pressed, no one will ever know.
In the whole scene as it unrolled before the committee
was not only the past, present and future of relief and relief
resources, but a variety of contiguous problems — the
plight of the municipalities, the desperation of the coal-
mining districts, the breakdown of local taxation, the cur-
tailment of essential public services, the threat to the
schools, the lack of the cushion of unemployment insurance
such as exists in England and Germany, and more than once
and from more than one quarter the mutterings of unrest.
It is not possible in so brief a report of proceedings that
occupied thirteen days and fill a printed document of 536
pages to review any considerable part of the testimony.
But as I listened day after day it seemed to me that cer-
tain currents became clear in the general drift of inade-
quacy, inequality and uncertainty.
Senator LaFollette Says
The rather general policy of forcing a family to sacrifice
its tangible and intangible resources before it is eligible for
relief ... is to my mind one of the most harrowing psy-
chological aspects of the whole situation — that millions of
families have been forced, month by month, through a slow
process of attrition, to see their entire savings, their other
resources, and the standards of living of the family worn
away, until finally they are stripped of everything. In the
meantime they have had to humiliate themselves by beat-
ing the butcher, the baker, and the landlord. Finally after
they have gone through this harrowing psychological ex-
perience, they then become eligible to come to a public or
private agency and receive a woefully and disgracefully low
amount of food relief.
There was little demur anywhere to the conclusion tha>
unemployment relief in 1933 is a federal responsibility fai
beyond the function of private philanthropy or the capa-
city of local effort. Linton B. Swift, of the Family Welfare
Association of America, reviewing shifts in relief responsi-
bility, read into the record a short article, American Relie:
Caravan, by Russell R. Kurtz (from The Survey Mid-
monthly, January, 1933, page n) which "while it leave;
out many negative aspects presents a fair picture of some ol
the accomplishments which have actually taken place undei
the unemployment relief division of the Reconstruction
Finance Corporation."
Frank Bane, of the American Public Welfare Association
saw us now approaching the third stage in our efforts tc
handle relief:
. . . The first period might be denominated . . . private
philanthropy, a period ... in which we hoped that the depres-
sion would be short and that we could stimulate private philan-
thropy to contribute the necessary funds to tide us over a short
business recession.
We then moved into ... a local responsibility, the perioo
when we realized that private philanthropy would not be able tc
handle the load and . . . insisted that the relief of destitution
was . . . the primary responsibility of local government. .
In 1932 we moved over into the state period. New York State lee
off with a direct appropriation of $20,000,000 for unemployment
relief. Several states followed suit. ... In July of last year we
made provision ... to expand the state area that is, the federa
government provided that states could procure funds from the
federal government for unemployment relief — could secure funds
in the nature of a loan for which they paid interest.
SENATOR COSTIGAN. You refer now to the provisions of the
Emergency Relief and Construction Act?
MR. BANE. Yes, sir; to the Emergency Relief and Construction
Act and so we have witnessed, during the past year, approxi-
mately forty states enter directly into the field of unemployment
relief, as stated. Today the federal government has not con-i
tributed directly toward the handling of this problem of relief:
It has enabled the states —
SENATOR COSTIGAN. To borrow money?
MR. BANE. To borrow money. I think the next step in our
efforts to cope with this problem will be, and should be, direct
material contribution by the federal government. I believe thai
this is a national problem and being a national problem I believe
that the national government should contribute not only its
guidance and its assistance, which are very necessary, but also its
financial help.
I believe that the country has a right to look to the federal!
government — certainly at this stage of our calamity — for definite
•ebruary 1933
THE SURVEY
53
onstructive leadership in meeting this problem; not only the relief
:nd, but the employment end.
I believe that leadership will be developed if, as and when the
ederal government assumes definitely a certain proportion of the
esponsibility for the handling of the problem which will be as-
umed, in my opinion, when it takes over some of the costs. I
>elieve that a grant system will ... be conducive to the devel-
ipment of a more adequate, more uniform and more economical,
f you please, standard of administration which will, on the one
land, assure better care and better service to those in need, and
m the other, secure a larger return for the funds invested; and
inally, I believe a grant system will tend, through federal stimu-
ation, to develop more adequate state organizations . . . for
he handling of the problem which the states have now, and
jroblems which, irrespective of what business may do, are going
:o be with the states for years to come.
The incompleteness of the relief situation as it exists
:oday, the wide areas of distress about which we know
almost nothing except that they are without organization
and resources, came out from witnesses who will, I hope,
forgive the necessity of quoting them out of context.
THOMAS KENNEDY, secretary-treasurer of the United Mine Work-
ers of America, Hazleton, Pa.: The darkest places in the tragedy of
unemployment which hangs over America are to be found in the
coal mining regions.
VAN A. BITTNER, chief representative of the United Mine Work-
ers of America in Northern West Virginia: ... In these isolated
mining communities, there are no community chests. There is
not any local relief organization and therefore there is no organized
charity there to take up even the question of getting government
flour or clothing distributed by the Red Cross or work for the
men . . . through the Reconstruction Finance Corporation due
to the fact of the unorganized conditions of the community, and I
I say to you, Senator, God only knows how those people get along.
WILLIAM GREEN, president, American Federation of Labor:
... I know that in the coal-mining fields of the na-
The Gist of the Situation
A Summary by Harry L. Lurie, of the American Association of Social Workers
There has been a growing number of persons who have
reached the point of complete destitution and approximately
one fourth of the unemployed are receiving some relief.
An additional undetermined number of unemployed are in
distress and in actual want but are not receiving assistance
largely because of inadequate relief resources.
Relief is meager and limited largely to food rations and some
fuel. Rent, clothing, light, and medical care are being given
sparsely and inadequately. Relief generally is on an emergency
basis although the period of the emergency is lengthening and
there is little expectancy of improvement.
Decent standards of relief and desirable methods of admin-
istration have not been achieved or have been abandoned and
relief giving is reverting to primitive methods and lacks com-
petent organization and administration.
Work relief for wages is being gradually abandoned for the
cheaper and less desirable forms of direct relief in grocery
orders and commissary rations. Work is being given by the
unemployed as relief equivalent at a rate of return seriously
below standard wage rates and is possibly a factor in wage re-
ductions.
Voluntary funds have been limited and are now practically
nonexistent for unemployed relief. Approximately 90 percent
of unemployment relief is dependent upon governmental
funds.
The available voluntary funds must be used for other es-
sential relief and welfare services. Failure to reach fund-raising
goals threatens to curtail expenditures for necessary welfare
services.
Municipalities and counties are suffering from depleted in-
come, decreased taxes and tax delinquencies. Their credit
facilities are impaired and local public funds for relief are
diminishing. Because of lessened income drastic reductions are
being made by municipalities in recreational, health, and
educational services.
The possibilities of aid from state governments are limited.
New methods for obtaining revenue are being sought but out-
look is not hopeful. It is doubtful whether tax revenues or
bonded indebtedness can be increased to the extent required.
A large number of states have already sought and obtained
federal relief loans from the R. F. C.
The loans obtained from the R. F. C. have been essential to
prevent abandonment of relief efforts, and in some instances
have been helpful in bolstering up relief standards which might
otherwise have declined to lower levels. They have on the
whole not enabled the communities benefiting from these loans
to give adequate relief on a minimum basis of subsistence. At
best they have maintained emergency relief rations.
Uncertainty of funds from local, state, and federal sources
have reduced nearly all relief programs to emergency plans
operating on a month to month basis. These uncertainties
have been accompanied by a reduction in relief standards in
order not to exhaust all funds before additional revenues were
in sight.
Actual or supposed restrictions in the present federal relief
law have hindered applications on the part of states and de-
layed appropriations with serious consequences to relief pro-
grams in a number of communities.
Inadequate local organization for relief is highly prevalent;
satisfactory state machinery or state programs for unemploy-
ment relief exist in relatively few instances. This has been a
serious obstacle to the administration of the federal relief law
and more rapid progress can not be made unless new federal
and state legislation grants enlarged opportunities for estab-
lishing more adequate relief systems and more comprehensive
relief administration throughout the Nation.
The effect of the depression and of relief programs have not
been adequately studied. There is conflicting evidence on such
consequences as starvation, malnutrition and disease. There is
general agreement that standards of living have been sharply
reduced and that housing congestion and general distress
among the unemployed are prevalent.
There is a growing dissatisfaction and irritation on the part
of the unemployed with existing relief methods and inadequate
doles. There have been a number of violent manifestations re-
sulting in deaths, injuries and destruction of property. An
undercurrent of resentment, disaffection and threats is becom-
ing more prevalent, and it is believed that lack of program and
leadership among the unemployed has prevented more serious
outbreaks. A part of the general dissatisfaction has been di-
verted into mutual aid and self-help projects among the un-
employed. Fears are expressed that a mounting unrest may
begin to assume violent forms of expression more frequently if
constructive and adequate measures for relieving distress aris-
ing from unemployment do not materialize in the near future.
54
THE SURVEY
February 1933
tion, the human distress which prevails beggars description.
SENATOR COSTIGAN. It is particularly acute in those fields, is
it not?
MR. GREEN. . . . The word "terrible" does not describe it,
and of course they live in such isolated sections, remotely located
from the city centers, that they escape to a very large degree the
attention which distress of that kind would command in a city.
They live out in the mining camps, some of them miles away from
towns and cities, in the mountains and in the hills and in the val-
leys and in the plains and there they suffer from unemployment
and want at present which represents the accumulated distress
of three or more years.
CALVERT L. ESTILL, director of public welfare, Charleston, W.
Va.: We have four field workers each with a district comprising
ten or more counties. ... In the same way, the local organiza-
tions do not have sufficient help to survey and find all the persons
needing assistance. Up to the present time it has been necessary to
rely on the destitute to have enough initiative to make application
for aid. Some effort should be made to find those people who are
in need.
As the testimony rolled on there seemed apparent a
difference in the point of view between those who tend the
vast machine of relief, who see the human beings caught
in it through the paper telescope of reports and estimates
and columns of figures, and those who live day by day,
month by month, close to the people who are the raw ma-
terial of the machine and who are its product. The state-
ments of Atlee Pomerene, chairman of the R. F. C., who
still believes that we ought not "to do anything which is
going to destroy or minimize the charitable disposition of
the people generally," seemed to indicate care for systems,
and for legalistic sanctions. He saw no particular reason to
amend the present act for its more efficient operation "un-
less it is the desire of your committee to recommend a
complete change of policy."
Charles A. Miller, president of the R. F. C. gave firm
assurance that
No one should suffer to the point of actual starvation and we
are just as anxious about the situation as you are. ... It is
a conscientious necessity to handle these big funds on a business
basis and not a sentimental basis. If you want that done I think
it is in proper hands.
Fred C. Croxton of the R. F. C. has no illusions about re-
lief. "Relief can never be adequate. . . . Nothing except
wages will be adequate relief." The R. F. C., he says, has
gone quite beyond the objective that "no hungry person
shall go without food" and has gone
as far as the community thinks it ought to go. . . . With one
single exception [Chicago] we have never made a recommendation
RELIEF PER CAPITA POPULATION
JANUARY TO JUNE, 1932
NEW YORK STATE
« CITIES
NEW ENGLAND
10 CITIES
MIDDLE WEST
13 "CITIES
PENN.& OHIO
if CITIES
PACIFC COAST
S CITIES
SOUTH
It CITIES
'6.95
.79
Relief expenditures related to population vary widely in different sec-
tions of the country. Department of Statistics, Russell Sage Foundation.
which has reduced the standard of relief given in any community
where relief was on an organized basis. . . . We grant relief based
on the rate of wages which is prevalent in those localities, but in
every organized locality that I know of the rate has been increased
very decidedly over anything they have known.
Mr. Croxton's generalization was opposed by a cloud of
witnesses from whom came evidence that even in our best-
organized communities the relief standards for American
families heretofore self-supporting and independent are
below those which were customary and accepted for the
maladjusted or even the ne'er-do-well prior to the eco-
nomic breakdown.
HELEN GLENN TYSON, assistant deputy of welfare, State Depart-
ment of Welfare, Pennsylvania: From the point of view of a
Pennsylvanian, it would seem incredible that our people had ever
lived, in the mass, at the level at which they have been living in
the past year.
THE CHAIRMAN. He [Mr. Croxton] referred, of course, to the
relief standards.
MRS. TYSON. But in Pennsylvania we have given only food relief.
There have been numerous cases of uncared for illness all over
the state and there is a great lack of medical care in many centers.
Certainly, as a social worker of some twenty-five years' experi-
ence, I can say that we have never seen families so submerged as
they are at present — even a small number of families as compared
with the large number that are suffering today. . . .
In December . . . the family grant lay between $2 and $4 a
week — the usual family grant. When one remembers that in
many places that is not adapted to the size of the family, one can
see that relief almost reaches the vanishing point under that
standard. I think it is true, however, or fair to say, that families
are not in general refused this extremely minimum and inade-
quate dole.
In dozens of communities there have been protests against a
relief grant of $5 per month per family. One miner recently pointed
out to me that in his family of ten — requiring presumably 600
meals per month if they eat twice a day — that would allow less
than one half cent a meal.
ISAAC M. RUBINOW, Cincinnati, 0., member Ohio State Unem-
ployment Insurance Commission: We have had this situation for
three years and we may have it a much longer time. It will not dis-
appear in a day. What we are doing with the 1 0,000,000 unemployed
people in the country is to establish a new American standard of
life, and it is on the basis of $200 a year. It means the lowest pos-
sible kind, the cheapest possible kind of food, without any right
of choice as to what the food shall be, given by prescription so to
speak — which you have to eat whether you like it or not.
It is not any more a question of an emergency for a few people.
It is a new standard of living for 40 percent of the working popu-
lation, and I submit that the possibility of that standard affects
the other 60 percent as well, those who have not lost their jobs
as yet but feel that they too may eventually be in the same posi-
tion. And the American people must face the problem of a con-
siderable adjustment in the wage contracts for over 30,000,000
people who are working for salaries and wages in the light of
competition from those people who are brought to desperation
by years of experience with a $200 standard of living.
ELIZABETH SMITH, Stale Department of Public Welfare, West
Virginia: You see our case loads in the country have mounted
far beyond our estimate so actually we could not give $i 5 a month
[the basis of the R. F. C. loan] because we had these additional
families to take care of.
THE CHAIRMAN. In other words, because of the increased load
you have had to spread this inadequate $15 still thinner?
Miss SMITH. Yes sir; still further.
THE CHAIRMAN. What does that mean that the average family
receives?
February 1933
THE SURVEY
55
Miss SMITH. Well, in November we were spreading it and we
were able actually to get into the families, on a state average,
$9.21 a month, that is for everything — food, clothing and medical
expenses. We have had a complete picture.
THE CHAIRMAN. That must mean that practically all of it is
going for food.
Miss SMITH. That is what it means. We are doing our very best
to try to get all of our relief money going into the families for food.
THE CHAIRMAN. What sort of diet can the average family pro-
vide on $9 a month?
Miss SMITH. Very limited.
THE CHAIRMAN. What does it consist of, largely?
Miss SMITH. Well, pork, white ends.
THE CHAIRMAN. That is pork?
Miss SMITH. Yes sir, and beans.
THE CHAIRMAN. Any butter?
Miss SMITH. No.
THE CHAIRMAN. Any milk?
Miss SMITH. In some of the counties where we have had a most
acute situation ... we are attempting to get milk. We are try-
ing to get cod liver oil into our diets, but the whole question is
such that we try to encourage the families to place all their allow-
ance for food. You will have to admit that there are some things
that the family has to have other than food.
THE CHAIRMAN. What have you in mind, clothing and shoes?
Miss SMITH. Clothing and shoes . . . and there is the problem
of heat in a number of localities.
THE CHAIRMAN. Are you providing any fuel?
Miss SMITH. We are trying to provide that without using our
relief allowances, though we do have to buy it in extreme cases.
We feel that we might as well let a family starve to death as let
them freeze to death.
EDITH ABBOTT, dean of the School of Social Service Administra-
tion, University of Chicago, member advisory board Cook County
Bureau of Public Welfare: The long delay in the granting of
federal relief has resulted, not only in Chicago, but all over the
country, in a general lowering of the whole standard of living, and
particularly the standards of relief-giving. With larger and ever
larger numbers of families coming on the relief list, standards of
living have become lower and lower, and that is at a time when
the people asking help have been fine, independent, self-respecting
people of a type not often seen on the list of relief agencies.
With regard to the lowering of housing standards . . . there
is great overcrowding. Flat buildings that used to have six
families in them, three on each side, now have frequently two,
three and even four families in each flat, so that where you had
six families in the building you now have anywhere from twelve
to twenty-four.
I am told of a father, mother and nine children who are occupy-
ing three rooms; of a woman sleeping in the same bed with a
married couple, who are friends, and with the twelve-year-old
daughter sleeping on a cot in the same room.
I am told of a blind and deaf mother with a sick daughter and
husband using one bed, which is a three-quarter bed, in a small
room. . . .
I am told of a man and wife and three children living with other
relatives so that there are nineteen people all living in four rooms.
We have never had anything like this in the city of Chicago in
the twenty-five years in which I have known a great deal about
the work of the relief agencies.
The commissary system is another step in the low relief
standards. ... In ... normal times no good relief agency
believed in giving relief in kind. They believed in giving relief in
cash, treating the relief client as a .self-respecting individual who
could be trusted to spend his own money as told to spend it.
Now, when we have these families who are from a very superior,
self-respecting group, we have gone down to the kind of relief
work which we thought we had given_up twenty-five years ago,
relief in kind, almost exclusively. . . .
The families are never given any cash, not even for small things
like a postage stamp, like pins or needles and thread. ... I am
told that the children in school quarrel over a safety-pin. A safety-
pin is very precious now. They need pins to pin themselves to-
gether because their clothes are vastly more ragged than has ever
been known in this city before. . . . This matter of devoting your
relief funds entirely to orders and giving the people no right even
to exercise the smallest initiative . . . demoralizes men, women
and children, all of them. This is for some of them the fourth
breadline winter, and many of them are breaking under the
conditions that we have compelled them to live under.
THOUSAND
DOLLARS
10,000
5,000
1,000
500
1929
1930
1931
1932
The course of monthly relief expenditures in seven large American cities,
January 1929 to November 1932. From a current relief study of the
Department of Statistics, Russell Sage Foundation. Data for 11)32 from
United States Children's Bureau.
56
THE SURVEY
February 193.
THE CHAIRMAN. Breaking in what respect — physically or emo-
tionally or nervously?
Miss ABBOTT. I should say not physically as much as in general
morale.
In sharply limned case-stories the hapless victims of
breakdown of long continued semi-starvation and of the
apparently rather general policy of forcing families to come
to the last bitter end of their resources before relief is
granted, passed in and out of the senatorial committee
room. Anna D. Ward, general secretary of the Family
Welfare Association of Baltimore, told of a man who had
worked in one factory for thirty years making $10 a week.
Now after two years of unemployment, his savings ex-
hausted by the long illness of his wife, "he is threatening
suicide and the outlook for him is pretty bad." And the
man of sixty with six attractive children who had been in
business for himself with two branch offices. Now, living
on relief in two rooms over a store, "he is almost like an
animal trying to hide from people who are hunting him'."
Helen Hall of the University Settlement, Philadelphia,
read into the record Ewan Clague's poignant description
of what happened in Philadelphia when relief stopped last
summer (see WThen Relief Stops, What Do They Eat ? by
Ewan Clague, The Survey, November 15, 1932, page 583)
and added to it many of her first-hand observations of
what is happening to her neighbors under the long strain
of inadequacy and insecurity. She told, too, of her observa-
tions in England last summer where she saw "what a
minimum of security did for the people there, how their
standards of living had been upheld through years of de-
pression, even in the coal fields." In contrast, she depicted
conditions in families she had visited in the West Virginia
coal fields where, when there was no milk for babies or
anything for anybody but Red Cross flour, they "just man-
aged on gravy soup. 'What is gravy soup?' I asked, and
she said 'Well, you puts flour in a pan and browns it and
stirs water into it'."
THE fear, indeed the certainty, of the effect of all this
inadequacy and insecurity on great masses of people
hung heavy over the whole scene.
MRS. TYSON: In a town of aooo where 1500 are on relief . . .
the Catholic priest said that the men have been half starved for so
long that they have no spirit left. When the question was raised
as to how the men put in their time, the burgess replied, "They
spend it wondering when the steel mill will open." There' is no
prospect of the mill being opened.
WILLIAM GREEN: They are not the same men; they are not the
same women ; they are not the same workers, after three years of
this terribly distressing experience. There is a loss of self-respect,
of the pride and strength, and courage and faith that are char-
acteristic of our people when things are normal. That has been
lowered and I suppose there is no measuring-rod by which we can
measure the terrible loss that the country has suffered as a result
of lowered morale, the destruction of self-respect and the loss of
faith and courage.
CALVERT L. ESTILL: I think that the longer we carry on on this
same inadequate basis, or on the present inadequate basis, just so
much longer are you sapping the strength of those receiving
relief. You might keep a family for some time, a few months
perhaps, on $15 a month, but it can not go on year after year.
. . . Malnutrition, particularly among children of school age and
preschool age, is widespread. Unless relief is allowed on an
adequate basis, this condition will continue to the point where
the public will pay a thousand times over for crippled bodies and
•warped minds.
KARL DESCHWEINITZ, Community Council, Philadelphia: Wha
we are doing in this country is to add another curse to this unem
ployment evil ... by trying to prescribe for a family what i
shall have, and taking from people the right to make their owi
decisions about their expenditures. In other words, we are causin;
families to deteriorate in two directions, in theirincome and in the!
outgo. I believe that if we are going to preserve the self-respec
and independence and capacity of families that are poor and it
trouble in the United States today, we must give them the privi
lege of managing their own affairs. We must supply them wit!
some cash, so that they can make their own decisions, at least t<
a certain extent, in regard to their household expenditures.
DONALD R. RICHBERG, general counsel, Railway Labor Execu
lives Association, Chicago: To limit federal relief to emergency aic
for the destitute is to carry on a policy of gradually pauperizing
the nation. The persistent reduction of the living standards o
more than one fourth of our population to mere subsistance
is creating an army of submerged workers who, by competitive
labor, will drag the entire body of manual workers down to lowei
and lower levels.
Unfortunately it is not possible here even to summarize
the mass of informed expert opinion and experience which
came forward to urge a system of direct federal relief which
would insure continuity and permit planning, which woulc
concentrate the full time, thought and intelligence of a
special board on relief and nothing else, which could step
across local boundaries and cut the red tape of local weak-
nesses and lack of organization, which would have the
authority and the will to set up and enforce standards for
the preservation of the health and morale of the people no
less than for their preservation from starvation, which
would exercise leadership in making the relief of unemploy-
ment distress a positive and aggressive national movement
commanding the cooperation of all units of government.
THERE was not of course full agreement that Senate Bill
No. 5125 was designed to accomplish all this. There were
proponents for grants-in-aid to states as against appropria-
tions on the basis of population or by direct grants; there
were those who objected to the size of the proposed appro-
priation as totally inadequate. William F. Montavon,
representing the National Catholic Welfare Conference,
had no quarrel with the principle of federal assistance but
believed that the centralization of authority in any par-
ticular federal bureau was unnecessary, expensive and "a
first possible step toward the extension of another federal
bureau that may, in turn, create undue federal control in
welfare work."
A few witnesses opposed the bill in toto. Herbert Ben-
jamin, representing the National Committee of Unem-
ployed Councils, seemed to feel that this was only another
"of the various relief measures and the various schemes that
are employed in an effort to defeat the struggles of the un-
employed for adequate relief." Frank L. Peckham, vice-
president of the Sentinels of the Republic, presented the
opposition of "an organization committed to the theory of
local self-government as against centralization in govern-
ment." Mary G. Kilbreath, of the Woman Patriot Cor-
poration, Washington, D. C., which it will be recalled,
sought to exclude Dr. Einstein from the United States,
opposed further federal activity chiefly on the ground, it
appeared, that
the demands for help are bound to rise as the inevitable demorali-
zation from public hand-outs progresses. ... As the witnesses
before your committee were nearly all social workers profession-
ally engaged in relief work and as so little nonprofessional testimony
February 1933
THE SURVEY
57
is being offered, I ask to have incorporated in the record three
editorials from The Chicago Tribune . . . entitled Improvident
Relief, Ruinous Relief and Why Federal Spending is Extravagant.
This hearing, it seemed to me, revealed the social worker
as in a more protesting mood than the layman. No one
mind can grasp the added up suffering, the defeat, the
hopelessness of a million families. Social workers are aware
of the million, but they know intimately the one — the
elderly business man hiding away his humiliation, the
pallid baby fed on "gravy soup," the ragged child quarrel-
ing over the safety-pin to hold his wretched clothes together.
And knowing distress as people, they become interpreters
more eloquent than all the statisticians and economists put
together. Miss Abbott's simple and moving little stories
of what is happening to Chicago school children opened the
way to three more days of first-hand testimony by case-
workers, testimony that brought the whole recital of mass
facts into terms of intimate understanding and sympathy.
Observing this I wondered if we were not, in the numbing
pressure of the day's work, missing our chance. We know
that the unemployed are people, not columns of figures, we
know what cruelties are being perpetrated through clumsy
hit-or-miss stultifying methods of relief. And since the
Washington hearings I am confident that we will be lis-
tened to if we will stand forth and bear witness. And by
bearing witness boldly and courageously we will, I believe,
save ourselves from the slough of dispirited acquiescence
which threatens to engulf us.
Housing in the 1930 Census
By EDITH ELMER WOOD
Author of Recent Trends in American Housing and other books on housing
IN these days when large-scale building of low-cost
homes seems to an increasing number of thoughtful
persons the most hopeful method of giving employ-
ment, breaking the depression, and ultimately restoring
prosperity, any collection of pertinent facts ready to hand
for local plan-makers will have extraordinary value. It
happens that the 1930 census is unprecedentedly rich in
statistics about dwellings and families.
In addition to the old classification into owned and
rented homes, we are given, for the first time, the value of
the former and the rent paid for the latter. Although the
census figures tell us nothing directly as to the quality of
homes, they permit inferences to be drawn from value and
rental. Cost and quality may not always go together, but
in the long run and in a given locality, the correlation is
pretty close. Great caution must be used in comparisons
between different geographic sections or between communi-,
ties of different size. Thirty dollars a month may procure a
pleasant, modern detached house in one place and a dingy
obsolete flat in another. A $3500 house in parts of the
South, a 15000 one in California, and a $7500 one in the
New York region may all be roughly equivalent. But the
local committee, preparing its survey, will be largely con-
cerned with local figures, which local people will have no
difficulty in interpreting.
RENTED NON-FARM HOMES IN NEW JERSEY AND IN CERTAIN
TOWNS OF THE STATE (FROM CENSUS FIGURES)
Percent renting at specified amounts per month
Rentals
New
Jersey
Newark
Jersey
City
Pater son
Elizabeth
Trenton
Camden
Under $20 ....
12.5
7-
7-i
13.8
II. $
15.2
16.3
$2O to $29. .. .
22.3
22.
21.8
3*-1
25.1
34-7
33-2
$30 to $49
37-8
41.2
40.4
39-3
37-3
35-5
42.4
$50 and over. .
*5-3
28.
28.
14.9
25-
13-
6.6
Not reported . .
'•9
1-7
2-5
.8
.8
'•4
1.4
The resemblances between these columns seem much
more striking than the differences. We shall not be far
wrong if we tentatively label the under $20 group obsolete
and ripe for demolition, and the $20-10-^29 group obso-
lescent and a proper subject for modernization. The com-
paratively small percentage of rentals under $20 in Newark
and Jersey City probably does not mean that they have pro-
portionately fewer slum houses than the smaller towns, but
only that their rents are higher. At the other end of the
scale, the small number of rentals of $50 and over in Cam-
den undoubtedly points to a lower proportion of well-to-do
than in the North Jersey communities, although Camden's
higher percentage of home-ownership, always more fre-
quent among the prosperous, tends to lessen the contrast.
A~> we study these figures, the terms of our problem shape
themselves. If we tear down the under $20 dwellings,
how can we rehouse their tenants without subsidy? Unless
indeed we build new quarters renting between $20 and $30
for the next higher income group and slide the slum people
into what they vacate, which is easier said than done.
Suppose we are serving on a committee to study Wil-
mington, Delaware, as a field for large-scale low-cost hous-
ing. We shall find that 17.4 percent of its 13,609 rented
homes rent for less than $20, 28.7 percent for $20 to $29,
36.2 percent from $30 to $49 and 21.1 percent for $50 and
over. Somewhere between 2000 and 2500 old dwellings
probably need demolition. A somewhat larger number of
new ones renting between $20 and $29 would be pretty
sure of tenants, though not the ones displaced. If we want
to know where to look for bad houses, we can turn to a
table which gives the figures by wards. Here we must calcu-
late our own percentages, and the rental grouping is differ-
ent. Rentals under $15 are shown, then $15 to $29. Chances
are strong that the Second Ward is the worst in the city.
Nearly a third of its 671 rented homes rent under $15, more
than half between $15 and $29. It has the lowest percentage
of native whites in the city, the highest of foreign-born and
next to the highest of Negroes. Its percentage of ownership
is low, though not the lowest. It is not suggested, of course,
that plans for clearance and building should be based on
census data alone, but they form an exceedingly valuable
supplement to the first-hand acquaintance of city depart-
ments, social workers and realtors.
As already indicated, rental figures by no means exhaust
the census offerings. There are the values of owned houses.
There is the distribution of one-family, two-family and
58
THE SURVEY
February 1933
three-or-more-family dwellings. There is the racial dis-
tribution of families, and their distribution by number of
members, and by number of children under ten. These
points are closely related to number and size of rooms needed
in new dwellings, and to location and size of playgrounds.
Recreation needs connect up with age distribution. Even
the number of radios has significance. Home-makers with
gainful occupations suggest the need for day nurseries.
Prevalence of lodgers is important. So is the number of
gainful workers per family. These figures are going to put
to rest a number of widespread misconceptions. Do you
remember when we used to be told that three out of four
American families have more than one member gainfully
employed ? Well, here is Delaware with 6.7 percent of its
families having no gainful worker and 61.1 percent with
only one. In Pennsylvania, 60.6 percent of families have
one worker, and 5.8 percent have none. In New Jersey, the
figures are 58.5 and 5.2, in New York State 59.6 and 5.7.
The effective use of census figures in preparing a compre-
hensive slum clearance and building plan is well shown in
the report of the sub-committee on Housing of the Com-
mittee on City Plan of the Cleveland Chamber of Com-
merce, featured in the January 14 issue of Millar's Housing
Letter. An elaborate table is reproduced comparing seven
major blighted districts of Cleveland with each other,
with the city and with the city in addition to four adjacent
suburbs.
Comparison is made as to population, race, sex and age
distribution, area, gross and net, population density per
acre, number of families, size of families, owned and rented
homes, monthly rental, value of owned homes, type of
dwelling (one-, two- or multi-family), radio, literacy, gain-
ful workers and unemployment. With the exception of area
figures, presumably derived from city maps and the more
recent unemployment figures, every bit of this information
is of census origin.
Minnesota Plans for Job Insurance
By ALVIN H. HANSEN AND MERRILL G. MURRAY
Employment Stabilization Research Institute, University of Minnesota
PLAN for unemployment reserves differing widely
from any other plan so far proposed in the United
States is being considered by the state legislature
of Minnesota, following a report recently made to Governor
Floyd B. Olson by the authors of this article. The scheme
disregards "normal" seasonal unemployment and is
aimed directly at unusually long seasonal slumps, techno-
logical changes and particularly at business depressions.
Under Minnesota's plan, a jobless man or woman may
draw benefits for a maximum of forty weeks in a twelve
months' period, as compared with the ten weeks provided
in most insurance measures. Those who are qualified, are
entitled to an additional twelve weeks' benefit period in
the second year. The long benefit period is made possible
by the waiting time required by the plan. Instead of the
one or two weeks usually specified, a worker insured under
the Minnesota bill must be jobless for at least eight weeks
before beginning to draw benefits. The measure provides
longer waiting periods in industries regularly having long
seasonal slumps, such as the construction trades. Such
industries may increase the waiting time up to sixteen
weeks to offset wholly or in part their usual seasonal un-
employment.
The principle underlying this provision is the principle
on which sickness insurance is based. Individual resources
can be counted on to tide over a brief illness. The emergency
that the applicant for sickness insurance usually has in
mind is the major illness which may incapacitate him for
months. To provide adequate benefits without prohibitive
cost, sickness-insurance policies usually specify a waiting
period of from sixty to ninety days. The Minnesota plan
applies the same principle to the hazard of unemployment.
The report to the governor includes an estimate of how
the plan would have worked had it been in operation from
January i, 1926 through 1932. Since Minnesota is largely
an agricultural state it was estimated that not more than
three hundred thousand persons at the peak of employ-
ment in 1928 would have been covered by the plan. On the
basis of comprehensive employment statistics built up by
the Employment Stabilization Research Institute it was
calculated that 52 million dollars would have been paid
out in benefits in 1930-32, with a balance in the fund of
20 million dollars for 1933.
The plan has an interesting and rather unusual back-
ground. In his campaign for reelection last fall, Minnesota's
Farmer-Labor governor made unemployment insurance
one of the main planks in his platform. Shortly after the
election, he asked the help of Dean Russell A. Stevenson of
the state university's School of Business Administration,
who is also director of the Employment Stabilization
Research Institute, in drawing up an unemployment-in-
surance plan. After a preliminary conference with Governor
Olson, the dean asked the writers to draw up a plan adapted
to local employment conditions, and a bill embodying it.
Making use of one writer's first-hand study of unemploy-
ment insurance abroad and the other's experience in the suc-
cessful campaign for an unemployment reserves bill in
Wisconsin, we drafted the Minnesota plan. We were as-
sisted in our task by Bryce Stewart of Industrial Relations
Counsellors who has analyzed British, German, Swiss,
Belgian and American unemployment insurance experience
and. by Prof. Henry Rottschaefer of the School of Law.
Practical considerations shaped the main structure of
the scheme we finally submitted to Governor Olson.1 In
working out a plan for unemployment insurance we were
constantly reminded of the fact that contributions must
not be burdensome to local industry because of interstate
competition in manufactured products. We were therefore
faced with a choice between a short waiting period with a
brief benefit period, the end of which would be reached be-
fore the consequences of unemployment became acute or
a longer waiting period with more extended benefits. The
second alternative was chosen, in order to safeguard un-
employment reserves for the drain of serious and prolonged
unemployment. This, we feel, means a real measure of se-
curity for the worker against the greatest hazard of Amer-
ican industrial life.
A waiting period of eight weeks may seem excessive to
•A New Plan for Unemployment Reserves, based upon Minnesota Employment
Data, by Alvin H. Hansen and Merrill G. Murray, University of Minnesota Press,
price $1 postpaid of The Survey.
February 1933
THE SURVEY
59
many readers. But in this country it seems to be possible to
provide against short periods of unemployment through
individual savings.
This conclusion is supported by a recent follow-up study
of the first two hundred of the two thousand unemployed
examined during the past two years by the occupational
analysis clinic of the institute (see The Survey, Nov. 15,
1932, p. 597). Of the 200 who were reinterviewed, 129 had
not applied for relief, although 42 of them had been unem-
ployed from one to two years, 54 from two to three years
and 25 for more than three years. Six individuals had re-
turned to school. Of the remaining 65, nine were on the
relief rolls before the present depression began, and 56 had
applied for relief for the first time during the depression.
Of the latter group, only 1 2 had applied for relief during the
first year of unemployment, 28 during their second year, 10
during their third year and six after being jobless for more
than three years.
Individual case studies showed that many had built up
savings which they had drawn upon, while others had been
carried by other wage-earners in the family. A year or more
of unemployment had of course resulted in exhausted sav-
ings, unpaid bills, heavy borrowing on homes or insurance,
aid Jfrom relatives, and finally resort to organized relief.
It is for such a "long pull" of unemployment due to busi-
ness depressions or to technical change that this plan is
designed.
The Minnesota bill sets forth a plan for reserves rather
than for insurance, benefits being guaranteed only to the
extent of the funds which -have been built up for the purpose.
The usual exemptions of farm laborers, domestic servants,
employes of common carriers engaged in interstate com-
merce, salaried government employes and part-time and
casual workers are made. Employers of less than six em-
ployes (in the case of construction firms, of less than three
employes) would not be covered.
Joint contributions by employers and employes would
be required, based partly on practical and partly on theo-
retical grounds. Contribution of 2 percent from the em-
ployer and 2 percent from the worker seemed necessary to
insure reserves adequate to the purpose of the plan. The
reserve fund would be placed in the custody of the state
treasurer, with separate credits or reserves for the several
industries. Individual companies able to show sufficient
financial stability and a good employment record would be
permitted to built up their own credits or reserves in the
fund.
Workers must have been employed forty -weeks in the
preceding two years to qualify for benefits. Benefits would be
paid at the rate of 40 percent of normal wages and in the
proportion of one week of benefits to every four weeks of
contributions during the preceding four years. This works
out to a maximum of forty weeks of benefits in one year
with an additional twelve weeks in the second year. This
total may however be lowered to thirty weeks of benefits in
the first year, twelve in the second, in any industry in which
the more generous provision proves too great a strain on
that industry's reserves. Employes shifting from one in-
dustry to another would draw benefits from their last em-
ployer's reserve in proportion to contributions paid into it.
If an employe exhausted his right to benefits before finding
a new job he would fall back upon his next last employer's
reserve, under the rule of one week's payment for each four
weeks of contributions. He would continue in this way, in
inverse order of employments.
While the reserve funds would be in the custody of the
state treasurer the act would be administered by the
Industrial Commission with the aid of a special advisory
council. Unemployment boards for the various industries
and companies having reserves would also be set up, as
well as local claim boards for settling disputed claims to
benefits. The cost of administration would be borne by the
fund, but such costs could not exceed 7 percent of the total
contributions. .The proposed act is dated to go into effect
July I, 1933 with contributions beginning July I, 1934, the
liability for benefits commencing a year later.
The governor has made at least one important modifica-
tion in the bill recommended to him. While he accepts the
principle of provision for long-term unemployment with a
long waiting period, he advocates reserve funds built up
from contributions by the employer alone. Governor Olson
outlined the plan in his opening message to the legislature
and stated that he would introduce the bill early in the
present session.
Self -Help Among Silk Workers
By CHARLES C. WEBBER
Industrial Secretary of the Fellowship of Reconciliation
'P and down dingy tenement stairs, in and out of
little houses bravely clean, we made our round.
Within four blocks we interviewed 101 adult
workers, seventy of them unemployed and twenty-three
:with their families entirely dependent for existence upon
the city's dole groceries to the value of about ten cents a day
• per person. It was a sample, we knew, of the city of Pater-
son, silk capital of New Jersey, where six thousand unem-
ployed families live under the terror that city aid, pitifully
inadequate, will be reduced or stopped altogether. Yet we
knew that in Seattle [see The Survey, March 15, 1932] and
elsewhere unemployed men, no more courageous and re-
sourceful than these workers in the silk mills, had through
their own organized efforts secured better conditions for
: themselves and their families.
In Seattle the Unemployed Citizens League was spon-
sored by the Conference for Progressive Labor Action. In
Paterson, it was proposed by representatives of the Con-
ference and of the Fellowship of Reconciliation and nur-
tured .in its beginning by a committee of eight citizens long
concerned with the security and wage standards of the
workers.
The question of where we should begin to organize was
answered by the executive secretary of one of the trade
unions two-thirds of whose members were unemployed.
We went therefore to the Totowa section, where many of
these members lived. A centrally located hall was secured
for a mass meeting and a vacant store building for head-
quarters as soon as an organization came into existence.
Postals announced the meeting to unemployed trade-union
60
THE SURVEY
February 1933
members, and handbills were passed from door to door.
The large crowd that assembled followed keenly the
story of the organization and accomplishments of the
Seattle League. Did Paterson's unemployed want to try the
plan? They certainly did. Who should be eligible for mem-
bership? Every unemployed person irrespective of race,
sex, creed, color, citizenship, union or political affiliation.
What should be the next step ? An executive committee to
meet the next morning and to act.
Headquarters at that first committee meeting was
sketchily furnished with empty boxes and abundantly
filled with enthusiasm and energy. The preliminaries of
choosing temporary officers were quickly over and the way
cleared for concrete proposals for action.
Plant gardens? No, too late in the season. Canvass the
well-to-do districts for repair jobs? Good. A committee was
appointed to ferret out such jobs and to list the qualifica-
tions of the unemployed for assignment to them.
Ask the farmers for surplus fruit and vegetables in return
for picking and odd jobs? Fine. The chairman and secretary
agreed to tour the nearby country and put the proposition
up to the farmers.
"Out near Franklin Lake is a private tract of forest land.
Shall we ask the owner for permission to cut dead trees for
firewood?" A letter was dispatched that very day.
What about real jobs? The county fund for road work
was about exhausted. Why not press the County Board of
Freeholders to apply for federal loans for self-liquidating
projects? Sure. The whole committee agreed to attend the
next meeting of the board.
Then, leaving a secretary to record the memberships of
those who were hovering around the doorstep, the com-
mittee sallied forth on its various assignments.
HOW many jobs were located? One.
The farmers were cool to the proposal to barter work
for produce but suggested that the committee visit daily the
central market in the city where truck farmers would turn
over the produce unsold at the end of the morning. Some-
one contributed an unemployed truck and from that day on
the League's headquarters was piled high all summer with
barrels, baskets and crates of fruits and vegetables for dis-
tribution among the members in the order of their need as
determined by an investigating committee. The food was
first shared by thirty-one families. By the end of a month
the number had increased to 287. Later when another local
was formed nearly four hundred families participated in the
distribution.
Within a week of the first meeting of the League its
members were busy cutting dead trees into firewood and
hauling it, in county-owned trucks, into the city where it
was divided between the woodchoppers and those in the
League whose gas had been cut off and who were dependent
on wood for cooking.
Meantime other committees, encouraged by the success
of the first efforts, visited local bakers and dairymen to
secure, regularly, stale bread and skimmed milk which
would otherwise have been wasted. Before many weeks the
activity of the League had become so significant that the
city relief authorities rescinded, for League members en-
gaged in gathering supplies, their rule that every able-
bodied family man must work for the city five days a
month in return for his grocery order. Work for the League
was thus rated as important as work in the parks.
But when all was said and done, all that had been ac-
complished was to secure inadequate and uncertain sup-
plies of bread, fruit, vegetables and firewood. Was that the
best we could do? What about jobs? The executive com-
mittee put the question to the Board of Freeholders and
pressed for information as to its plans, if any, for self-
liquidating public improvements financed by federal
funds. The Board, cordial in its congratulations on the
energy of the League, "could not imagine" how such pub-
lic improvements could be started in Passaic County and
"passed the buck" to the mayor of Paterson. That gentle-
man, urged to give us reassurance on the continuance of
relief, had but one reply, "God only knows." He, too, had
no imagination about a loan from the Reconstruction
Finance Corporation.
There was still the governor. The constitution of New
Jersey prohibits the borrowing of more than $100,000 with-
out a vote at a general election except in time of war. A
special session of the legislature would therefore be neces-
sary if the issue of borrowing from the Reconstruction
Finance Corporation for relief and for job-making projects
was to go to the voters on November 8. It was a petition to
call such a session that the League's officers presented to
Governor Moore. He was wholly courteous and very
definite. No session would be called.
Whatever the policies and politics involved, it was clear
to us all that no jobs could be expected this winter on
projects financed by the federal government. With no jobs
and not enough work in League activities to keep every one
busy, the members had plenty of time on their hands. It
was not entirely wasted. Illustrated lectures were given
and discussions held on such relevant topics as The
Stabilization of Industry, The Significance of National
Planning, Unemployment Insurance, Trade Unionism's
Proposed Solution of the Unemployment Problem, How to
Secure an Adequate Purchasing Power for the Great Mass
of the Workers, The Unjust Distribution of Wealth and
Should We Have Increased Income and Inheritance Taxes?
For a little release from the strain of keeping body and soul
together the League organized its own talent for weekly
entertainments with lively programs of music, magic,
tap and folk dancing and chorus singing. The various!
political parties were ready and willing to send speakers to
tell us how to solve unemployment. The League heard
them all, Democrats, Republicans, Socialists and Com-
munists, and then subjected each speaker to a brisk
barrage of questions.
At the present moment the League is in a low of dis-
couragement. No jobs are in sight. Surplus farm produce
is no longer available in any quantity, nor are bread and
skimmed milk. Ragged nerves have led to disagreements
which have caused some of the members to drop out.
Various schemes for making money have been tried not all
of which have been successful. And money is needed for
gasoline and oil to operate the cars that take men to the;
woodland and bring supplies from the market and the
bakeries. If the League can secure funds or credit to put itsl
members to work in the production of food, clothing and
shelter for their own needs it may, I believe, surviv
flourish and be of inestimable value in sustaining the n
of sorely tried people. Without such a program this \
the members, to whom the summer's activity brou
spark of hope, seem doomed to sink back, though pei hapsj
not in silence and not without protest, into the drear
demoralizing struggle to live on the dole of inadequat-- and
uncertain grocery orders.
Case Work in a Changing Social Order
By HARRY L. LURIE
ITHIN our own generation social workers
have not until now been called upon to adapt
their theories and practices to swift and
radical changes in social conditions. But the continuing
depression with its shocks and dislocations and the
growing numbers of the economically disinherited have
brought us face to face with inevitable modifications in
the various forms of social service with which we are
familiar. We are witnessing in social work a tremendous
increase of responsibility, a growing uncertainty con-
cerning the adequacy of social programs and their
permanent value in meeting social needs and a mounting
dissatisfaction with some of the basic concepts and
methods which we believed had become thoroughly
established.
The most obvious factor of change in our present
situation is the existence of large scale economic malad-
justment affecting the welfare of a majority of the
population. This is accompanied by an extraordinary
decrease in our national income which brings in its trail
reduced funds for public welfare, a dwindling of surplus
income available for private philanthropy and a lowered
standard of living for the mass of individuals.
The social problems of industry are highly complicated
and refractory. Failure to solve them is chiefly respon-
sible for the continued mass of economically maladjusted
individuals for whom social agencies exist. This failure
and the remedial and palliative nature of social case
work we are now recognizing, although no one can be
overly optimistic that the recognition of these problems
has as yet accelerated their solution.
The problems with which social agencies were con-
cerned before the depression are likely to be magnified in
the ensuing years. We face a large increase in the standing
army of the unem-
ployed augmented from
time to time by further
technological changes,
an increased difficulty
in absorbing into gainful
occupations the less ef-
fective and the partially
handicapped members
of our working popula-
tion, the vanishing of
opportunities for satis-
factory vocational ad-
justment of the young,
the possibility of low
wage standards in many
occupations, and a fur-
ther shrinkage of the
potential working life
of the average individ-
ual with a more rapid
displacement of the
middle-aged.
The growing acceptance of the fact that basic economic
factors are involved in many of the social problems of the
dependent family and the individual constitutes the
important change in our outlook. To what extent the
present organization of social work is taking these basic
factors into account becomes therefore of the first
importance. We have assumed in many of our discus-
sions that in case work we deal with the entire personality
in relation to the whole social setting. But we are begin-
ning to realize now that we have overstressed personal
factors and influences and have disregarded or under-
emphasized the impersonal factors and impersonal
relationships of the individual to the social and economic
order. This is true no less in relief administration and
•family case work than in psychiatric service and mental
hygiene. All along the line we have assumed the existence
of freedom of opportunity for adjustment of the in-
dividual and have blinked the gross obstacles to adjust-
ment which exist in the social order.
Wl
TT7~H ETHER or not case workers agree with Mr.
rr Lurie's prognosis of their professional future they
will recognize his competence for such a discussion. He was
for five years executive director of the Jewish Social Service
Bureau of Chicago and during the same period taught
case work at the School of Social Service Administration
at the University of Chicago. Last year he taught the same
subject at the New York School of Social Work. He is
chairman of the Pathfinding Committee on Governmental
Relief of the Family Welfare Association of America and
member of the Committee on Unemployment and Federal
Aid of the American Association of Social Workers.
Since 1930 he has been executive director of the Bureau of
Jewish Social Research, New York. The substance of this
article was presented by Mr. Lurie in an address before
the recent New York State Conference of Social Work
61
given much less attention than was
desirable to the organized economic basis for
individual and family life. We possess little direct
understanding of how desirable standards of living may
be obtained for the community as a whole. We have not
gauged satisfactorily the adequacy of our institutions to
buttress family security during periods of stress or the
occasions of hazards such as unemployment, illness, old
age and disabilities. Similarly in our dealings with
problems of behavior and psychological maladjustments
we have stressed in our analysis the sequence of causal
factors and of emotional experiences and have under-
emphasized the importance to individual behavior of
social standards and conventions. For example in dealing
with delinquents we
have concentrated our
analysis largely on the
personal factors of mal-
adjustment, biological,
sexual and tempera-
mental, and have given
little attention to such
demoralizing factors in
social life as the venal-
ity of business and of
politics, and the prev-
alence of unethical
practices sanctioned or
connived at by prevail-
ing public opinion. In
dealing with problems
of the neurotic we have
stressed personal and
emotional factors; the
strains imposed by
the existence in the
community of moral
62
THE SURVEY
February 193
standards and conventions which impose overwhelming
difficulties on the individual have been overlooked. In
treatment as in analysis our efforts have been concen-
trated unduly within the possibilities of the clinic and of
relationships between the client and the professional
worker.
Accompanying our program for improving social
welfare through individual case adjustments we have
developed an over-intensive service for those individuals
or families that presented either particularly difficult
personal problems or the need for long-term relief. This
was perhaps a logical though largely ineffective substi-
tute for adequate social provisions. In some instances
case-work service assumed that because of the need for
continued relief the responsibility of the agency was not
properly discharged unless relief was accompanied by a
host of other services such as medical treatment, educa-
tion in domestic science, budget management and the
care of children. Social workers began to assume more
responsibility for directing the affairs of the individual
and his family than would ever have been entrusted to
them if the clients had not suffered from shortage of
income.
THERE is a growing reaction toward this enlarged
responsibility for details of family life. We are more
concerned than we used to be with the dangers of emo-
tional as well as financial dependence. This swing towards
leaving secondary problems to the client himself has its
drawbacks as long as the community fails to provide the
resources of information and service which individuals
require and which they cannot obtain easily under
present circumstances. If we recognize that we cannot or
should not handle such services on a case-by-case basis
it is essential that we see to it that the sources from
which they may be obtained are properly organized
and readily available.
What I am trying to point out is that many of the
activities and methods of case work have been necessary
because of the lack of more comprehensive provisions for
family security. This is not a new idea in social work but
in a sense we are rediscovering it during this period of
depression. Several decades ago social work was deeply
concerned with the improvement of general social
conditions. Then came a period of concentrating on
psychological adjustment. Now we have completed the
circle and are back to our starting point. True, we are
returning with some new knowledge, but even leaders
in the mental-hygiene movement now talk less about
mental conflicts and pathological family relationships
than they do about recreation facilities, financial
security and employment opportunities.
This trend in our thinking has been accelerated by the
gross economic problems resulting from the depression.
No longer can we overlook the fact that much of the
maladjustment and distress with which case work deals
is rooted in inadequate or faulty economic and social
organization. It becomes impossible to continue to
concentrate our interests exclusively in the field of
personal relationships and personal adjustments.
Since the new direction in which social work must go
if it is to continue as a dynamic factor in social improve-
ment is so clearly evident, we may well begin to question
what values remain in case work and how it can continue
to be of service to the general program of social work.
Perhaps it will help this evaluation to think of case work
not as a single procedure but as a general term covering
various forms of professional service. I should like for the
moment to separate the general term case work intc
three types of service: first, a method for dealing with the
administration of some relief fund or community
resource; second, a special method required for in-
dividualizing treatment in the administration of various
social provisions; and, third, a service not primarily
related to the administration of welfare provisions but
dealing with the individual on the basis of his lack of
satisfactory adjustment.
It is obvious that these divisions are not mutually
exclusive but represent variations in process. It would be
harmful to the development of social work to think that
these services call for radically different techniques or
varying grades of professional personnel. But for prac-
tical purposes of administration it is important to keep
in mind the relative requirements of different phases of
social service. Above all we must relinquish all ideas of
case work as a field of social work and think of it exclu-
sively as a process in social-work programs.
The requirements of case-work service vary from the
performance of administrative details primarily clerical
in their nature to services requiring the most subtle
degrees of skill and insight. Whether little or much
case-work service is required in the administration of any
general social provision is dependent largely upon the
basis upon which it is established. For example take the
provision for old-age relief. Theoretically an old-age relief
bill could be so drawn that it would approximate a
pension system similar to the various forms of compensa-
tion for veterans or the European insurance plans.
Determination of eligibility thereby becomes a relatively
simple matter requiring only such routine procedures as
proof of age, residence, citizenship, identity and so on,
the determination of which does not require the skill of
social workers. On the other hand if eligibility is deter-
mined by resources and needs and presumes an absence
of other possibilities for adjustment, a process of case
study is required. Similarly if the intention of the old-age
provision is not merely to furnish a measured amount
of income but is concerned with other phases of in-
dividual welfare, case treatment is required which
probably calls for the skill of social workers. Such inten-
tion is understood in the administration of aid to
dependent mothers which has for its objective not only
the supplying of income but also of services to assist the
family in its general adjustment.
BUT even in the administration of provisions such as
those for dependent mothers we are beginning to
recognize that while the introduction of case treatment
may be highly desirable for a part of the group served,
it is not essential for the entire group. The use of case
work therefore in the administration of these general
provisions which are broadly drawn becomes a task of
selection; a distinct departure from the assumption that
all recipients of aid require supervision and intensive
service.
The type of case work which is not directly concerned
with administration of relief is illustrated in the field of
probation. The determination of whether an individual
convicted of an offense may safely be supervised in the
community requires careful social study if it is to be
February 1933
THE SURVEY
63
more than mere leniency in dealing with' first offenders.
Of the group under probation there are some who may
require only official contacts which amount to supervi-
sion of conduct. There are others who must receive
attention amounting sometimes to an intensive effort to
redirect the individual along lines of occupation, health,
family and personal adjustment. As in other fields of
social work we are recognizing here that individual
case-work efforts are frustrated as much by a disorgan-
ized community life which tolerates economic greed,
political dishonesty and undesirable personal conduct as
by ingrained habits and fixed attitudes.
'The conclusion to be drawn from this agreement is
that the future of social work lies more in the organiza-
tion of social forces than in the methods of case work.
The program of the social agency needs to be redefined
with a clearer recognition of the obstacles which hinder
service and with more attention to organizing effective
social remedies. Case work, however skilled and however
valuable for other forms of maladjustment, is usually a
poor substitute for inadequate income and is not a
genuine solution for the problems of poverty. Some
reorganization in social work is now necessary because
we have previously erred in this direction. Because some
instances of poverty were closely related to factors of
personal maladjustment and yielded to individualized
treatment, we assumed that such treatment was gener-
ally applicable and constituted a program for dealing
with poverty in general. This assumption unfortunately
coincided with the wishes of those reactionary elements
in our society which resent changes in the basic arrange-
ments of our social and economic system.
WE MUST not however be so unwise as to proceed to
the other extreme and assume that all forms of
individual distress are the results of social factors and
indicate lacks in our social organization. Even if such an
assumption were valid we could scarcely expect an
immediate social reorganization which would eliminate
the problems of individual maladjustment. It is in-
creasingly the task of the social worker to distinguish
clearly between those problems which demand con-
structive changes in our social provisions and those which
by their nature will not yield readily to the organizations
and devices which we can set up. Some form of organized
relief will probably always be required no matter how far
we progress with new social provisions, such as unem-
ployment insurance. In the administration of relief, case
work is definitely required not only because of the
variable factors of individual situations but primarily
because of the assumption, thoroughly ingrained in the
public mind, that the need for relief is an evidence of
individual rather than of social maladjustment. Relief
measures which discard this assumption will require less
intensive case work and will instead emphasize economy
and efficiency of administration.
No matter how some of us may feel about the empha-
ses introduced into case work by extreme psychological
theories, we need to recognize that these theories have
made definite contributions to practice. There are many
individual problems for which a personal relationship is
required and there is value in what the case worker can
offer to the client upon this basis. What these psy-
chological theories may have lacked and what they are
rapidly obtaining at the present time is a balance
concerning the extent to which the factor of social
maladjustment is involved in the general case loads of
social agencies. An intensive personal relationship be-
tween a client and a case worker is unquestionably useful
in many situations frequent in an unstable society such
as ours with rapid changes in culture. But this relation-
ship is probably not required in a large proportion of
work which is primarily social rather than personal in its
nature. A therapeutic relationship no more than the
case-work method in its entirety should be considered
as an adequate substitute for social or economic oppor-
tunities. There are many personal problems which can
be solved by adequate opportunity. In any event case
work which relates to individualized methods of educa-
tion and adjustment is likely to emphasize increasingly
the voluntary acceptance of its service by the client.
Less and less will such services be an expression of
supervision and regulation.
THE lack of an adequate social basis for case work is
particularly apparent at the present time. It is
responsible for many unsatisfactory relationships be-
tween social workers and clients suffering from the
problems of unemployment. It is all too obvious as mass
poverty develops that the agencies that can offer only,
or at least primarily, case work are inadequate instru-
ments for the times. Unable to help the client to a con-
structive solution of his real difficulty, unemployment,
case workers are driven to take refuge in well-meaning
attitudes which are little more than an acknowledgment
of defeat and then to rationalize that defeat by pointing
out the therapeutic values to the client of those inter-
views of frustration in which he pours out resentment
against the social order or laments the harshness of the
circumstances responsible for his failures. We say, "A
client often derives new spirit from an opportunity to
discuss past work-history and responds eagerly to prac-
tical suggestions for securing references, reapplying to
former employers, visiting employment agencies and
so on. There is often little possibility of his securing
immediate work but at least his attention is once more
focused on work rather than passive dependency." And
thus we think we save our faces.
This is something that social workers can not regard
with complacency. It is a hopeless, palliative attitude
suitable only for dealing with chronic invalids or with
those tragic handicaps for which nature provides no
cure. The community has no right to force social workers
to assume such a role in relation to problems which
require vigorous programs and for which the client is
justified in demanding a solution. We observe, we
sympathize and we send the client away, or we think we
do, with a renewal of false and futile courage. If we do not
rebel against such a basis for our efforts, then professional
social work as a dynamic factor in social improvement is
indeed doomed. Case workers must contemplate with
dismay a future which would permit no better use of
their ability and their skill within the social organization.
I do not want to give the impression that I believe
that the solution of the problems of social-work organiza-
tion depends wholly upon changed viewpoints and more
definite understanding of our own place in the picture.
We need to stand forth boldly and courageously lest
valuable contributions we have made in the past and
can make in the future be lost in the pressure to set up
64
THE SURVEY
February 1933
systems of mass relief. The general dislocation in our
economic life may easily bring about a reversion to a
primitive type of social work. It is already evident that we
have been largely unsuccessful in interpreting case work to
the community and that the public remains unenlightened
or unimpressed by many of the values which we find in our
programs. With the situation as it is today there is a natural
tendency to see the major responsibility of the community
in terms of food and shelter. As funds run low, false econ-
omies are being substituted for minimum standards and
the self-respect of the individual is being sacrificed. As
relief-giving reverts to alms-giving, standards of service in
both public and private social work are seriously threat-
ened. While this may be inescapable during the present
period we should be aware of its implications and of the
difficulties ahead if social work is to be restored to its former
level.
The future of case work lies, it seems to me, in a more
effective integration of its method with programs of social
work. We should define the social problems for which we
have used the case-work method in terms of the lack or the
ineffectiveness of existing social and economic provisions
for security of income, occupational adjustments, family
relationships and the relation of the individual to the
group. From such an analysis we should be able to discern
the required changes in our organizations and should begin
to determine priorities. We need not be prophets to know
that our full force must be directed toward the attainment
of economic security, minimum-wage standards, com-
munity planning and the better organization of public
health and recreational facilities as well as toward special
educational and clinical facilities for helping to meet the
common problems of sexual adjustment, personal hygiene
and domestic economy. As better economic and social
provisions are established we shall find new uses for the
case-work method in administration and many oppor-
tunities for that personal relationship between case
worker and client which stimulates the process of individual
education and growth.
Our immediate obligation to the changing times is to
begin to formulate those forms of organized social service
which may profitably use the case-work method and to
relinquish the idea that case work in itself is the key to the
solution of major social problems. Although such a change
may involve considerable reorganization of our thinking it
offers to the professional worker the possibility of increased
usefulness in an enlarged field. The case worker must be-
come more of a social worker intent upon the solution of
social problems and less of a technician skilled in methods
of adapting individuals to the status quo. If social work is
to progress its practitioners must expand the field of their
concern. Our success in so doing is neither certain nor
assured. We shall need courage and optimism and some
but not too much caution.
The Church Keeps Up With Social Trends
By GRAHAM TAYLOR
Warden Chicago Commons
IT is a far cry from the latest revision of the social
ideals of nearly all the Protestant Churches of
America back to the early 90*3 when their social
consciousness and federated action were dimly dawning.
Then Harry F. Ward, after serving on Chicago's social
settlement frontiers, was working against many odds in his
parish neighboring the Stock Yards. There he was dream-
ing of committing the Methodist Church and ministry, to
which he belonged, to declare some definite standards of
industrial conditions and relations for which they and all
other Christian fellowships should stand. He was one of a
few younger men in the West to join fewer older ministers
and seminary professors in the East, whose lone voices for
a decade had been crying in the wilderness for social justice
with little evidence of being heeded.
The heed given Ward by the clergymen in his immediate
denominational fellowship was expressed in almost ostraciz-
ing criticism for intruding secularities upon the spiritual
aims of the church and its ministry. Nevertheless a hearing
was won for these further claims, until in May 1908 the
General Conference of the Methodist Episcopal Church
adopted a brief list of rights and wrongs for or against
which the churches should stand. And Harry F. Ward
became secretary of the Methodist Federation of Social
Service initiated thereby.
In December of that year, after many failures to federate,
Protestant churches founded their Federal Council. At this
initial meeting their delegates, representing thirty-one
denominations claiming seventeen million adherents,
adopted, with some minor changes, the Methodist declara-
tion and the Federal Council appointed its Commission
on the Church and Social Service, which soon shared the
services of Ward as its associate secretary. His distinctive
leadership and authorship while in these positions led to
still more distinguished service as professor of social ethics
in Union Theological Seminary, New York City.
With surprising promptness and unanimity the denomi-
nations constituting the Federal Council accepted its
program for industrial action, appointing social-service
commissions, as did local and federated churches, to declare
their attitude and guide their action. Although popularly
called the Social Creed, this declaration of principles was
accepted not as any fixed standard or final goal but as an
incentive to observe existing conditions and act as occasion
required. This attitude was attested by the changes made
in the declarations revised at every quadrennial council
meeting since held. Indeed this latest revision, made at
the close of 1932, is prefaced by a warning against the
danger of mental and moral inertia risked by adhering to
any static statement concerning changing conditions,
rather than reiterating programs stimulating private
judgment and group action.
More significant however is the use of technical terms in
these seventeen articles, reflecting the Committee's fa-
miliarity with current discussions of changing economic
and social conditions. For the first time in these church
declarations appear such terms as profit-motive, as af-
fecting Christian principles in the acquisition and use of
wealth; prices of farm products and rural poverty; credit
and monetary mediums of exchange; tariffs, taxations and
international trade; long distance planning to avert cyclic
trade depressions.
February 1933
THE SURVEY
65
The Social Creed of the Churches
Revised After Twenty Years and Adopted by the Federal Council
The churches should stand for:
1. Practical application of the Christian principle of so-
cial well-being to the acquisition and use of wealth;
subordination of speculation and the profit motive to the
creative and cooperative spirit.
2. Social planning and control of the credit and monetary
systems and the economic processes for the common good.
3. The right of all to the opportunity for self-mainte-
nance; a wider and fairer distribution of wealth; a living
wage, as a minimum, and above this a just share for the
worker in the product of industry and agriculture.
4. Safeguarding of all workers, urban and rural, against
harmful conditions of labor and occupational injury and
disease.
5. Social insurance against sickness, accident, want in
old age and unemployment.
6. Reduction of hours of labor as the general produc-
tivity of industry increases; release from employment at
least one day in seven, with a shorter working week in
prospect.
7. Such special regulation of the conditions of work of
women as shall safeguard their welfare and that of the
family and the community.
8. The right of employes and employers alike to organize
for collective bargaining and social action; protection of
both in the exercise of this right; the obligation of both to
work for the public good; encouragement of cooperatives
and other organizations among farmers and other groups.
9. Abolition of child labor; adequate provision for the
protection, education, spiritual nurture and wholesome
recreation of every child.
10. Protection of the family by the single standard of
purity; educational preparation for marriage, home-making
and parenthood.
1 1 . Economic justice for the farmer in legislation, financ-
ing of agriculture, transportation and the price of farm
products as compared with the cost of machinery and other
commodities which he must buy.
1 2. Extension of the primary cultural opportunities and
social services now enjoyed by urban populations to the
farm family.
13. Protection of the individual and society from the
social, economic and moral waste of any traffic in intoxi-
cants and habit-forming drugs.
14. Application of the Christian principle of redemption
to the treatment of offenders; reform of penal and correc-
tional methods and institutions, and of criminal court
procedure.
15. Justice, opportunity and equal rights for all; mutual
goodwill and cooperation among racial, economic and re-
ligious groups.
1 6. Repudiation of war, drastic reduction of armaments,
participation in international agencies for the peaceable
settlement of all controversies; the building of a cooperative
world order.
17. Recognition and maintenance of the rights and re-
sponsibilities of free speech, free assembly, and a free press;
the encouragement of free communication of mind with
mind as essential to the discovery of truth.
This latest revision of Social Ideals, more than any
previous statement of them, gives evidence of having been
initiated, evolved and adopted with the intent to keep pace
with changing times in applying the prophetic and Chris-
tian standards and vision to contemporary personal
experience and collective life. It is significant that this
revision committee of the churches was appointed in the
same year, 1928-29, in which President Hoover appointed
the Commission on Social Trends "to discover where
social stresses are occurring and major efforts should be
undertaken to deal with them constructively."
With essentially the same objective, the committee often
representative and well-qualified men and women under
the chairmanship of Edward T. Divine, proceeded to
formulate their critical and reconstructive program for the
churches in the following order. They worked a year by
themselves, seeking criticisms and suggestions from any
counselors. During the next two years they submitted
tentative conclusions based upon their findings to the
Social Service Commission, which referred them to the
denominational constituents of the Federal Council. Then
the finally revised statement was committed to the
quadrennial session of the Council held in Indianapolis last
December. After discussing and slightly amending the
report and its seventeen summarizing articles, this dele-
gated body unanimously adopted both, celebrating their
unity of spirit by singing Dr. John Mason North's stirring
hymn: "Where cross the crowded ways of life." The
significance of this action can be fully realized only in
view of whence it came and how it was attained.
N(
TO such unanimity on controversial issues had hitherto
I been reached by the delegatesof so many church bodies,
divergently differing in creed and polity, a large majority
of whom were conservatively committed. This surprising
accord was largely due to the explanatory statement with
which the seventeen articles were submitted. It won: by
expressing concern for the individual as well as for the
group and the community; 'by emphasizing the bearing of
economic and social conditions upon the spiritual life; by
omitting all reference to revolutionary movements or the
fear of them; and by appealing for the Christian spirit as
supreme above all political and social parties and policies.
But the delegates may have been more united in affirm-
ing these ideals, as was the committee which formulated
them, by the pressure of conditions which fail to furnish a
basic standard of living for the masses of the people ade-
quate to assure security and freedom for the development
of spiritual values. The extent to which this pressure thus
influenced all concerned is partly registered in the varia-
tions and additions which differentiate these latest ideals
from those which preceded them. Of the seventeen articles
grouping the present ideals, nine deal predominantly with
economic conditions and eight with social tendencies, while
of the sixteen articles adopted in 1912, ten were specifically
economic and six more generally referred to the social
status and rights claimed by social justice. But these
proportions are less significant because the two classifica-
tions are regarded as more interdependent than distinct
and both are claimed inevitably to involve religious values.
Additions include gambling and speculative extremes;
protection of individuals and society from the wastes of
traffic in intoxicants and habit-forming drugs, yet without
reference to prohibition; reform of penal and correctional
court procedure and institutions; protection of the family
66
THE SURVEY
February 1933
by the single standard of purity and by educational prepa-
ration for marriage and parentage, but remanding birth
control for further study, including reexamination of
maternal health, spacing of children and limiting the size
of families. Interracial, international and inter-religious
relations are stressed more than ever, calling for the
repudiation of war, reduction of armaments, participation
in international agencies for peaceable settlement of con-
troversies, but with no specific references to the Court of
International Justice or the League of Nations. The build-
ing of a cooperative world is urged without allusion to
socialism or any other ways and means of doing so. To all
these ends, free speech, free assembly, a free press and
encouragement of free communication of mind with mind
are held to be essential.
These tasks are well conceded to be "beyond us in their
unprecedented demands upon the intellectual and moral
capacities both of leaders and the whole people." But the
collective mind of the nation is expected to be equal to
these exactions "if aroused and sustained by a nation-wide
spiritual awakening to an unselfish courage and dedication
in seeking the common good," greater than are now manifest
in American life. Only through this religious social passion
within the churches cooperating with each other and with
all allied groups can this new age of faith be ushered into
being.
No more significant reaction to this declaration is likely
to follow than has already been expressed editorially by
The Commonweal, the able Catholic weekly, in which the
seventeen articles are fully quoted as appealing for the
sympathetic attention and approval of Catholics, and as
preparing the way for a conference between representatives
of all Christian and Jewish bodies, looking toward their
close cooperation throughout the world in even a minimum
program of definite action "at all costs of self-sacrifice and
energy."
Medical Care on Relief Funds
GRANT of $75,000 from the New York State
Emergency Relief Administration has made it
possible for the Home and Work Relief Adminis-
tration of New York City to put into effect the plan for
medical home relief worked out a year ago but used only
sparingly in the interim because of the lack of funds, and to
embark on three work-relief projects in the medical field.
The plan for home care of patients on the relief rolls was
devised by a subcommittee of the coordinating Committee
on Unemployment of the Welfare Council, which acts as
the commissioner of public welfare's advisory committee
on home relief. This committee was representative of the
Home Relief Bureau, the New York City Departments of
Health and Hospitals, the five county medical societies
and the public-health nursing associations of the five
boroughs, the Academy of Medicine and the Welfare Coun-
cil. Dr. Charles Gordon Heyd, then president of the New
York County Medical Society, was chairman. The aim of
the service is to provide medical and nursing care and
necessary drugs and supplies for patients acutely ill at
home who are receiving relief from the Home or Work
Relief Bureaus. If the illness is such that hospital care is
required and can be arranged, hospitalization is more eco-
nomical and hence the preferred course.
The district supervisor for home relief decides when care
at home is needed, and asks the newly recreated Medical
and Nursing Service to issue requisitions for physicians'
and nurses' services and drugs. Requisition for medical
care covers a period of two weeks during which all neces-
sary care is given by the family's own physician or by a
physician from a districted list of cooperating doctors com-
piled by the county medical societies, who are called in
rotation.
The physician is paid at the rate of $2 a visit. Nursing
care, requisitioned in the same manner, is given by the
visiting nurse association in the borough, and the fee
allotted is $i a visit. When a physician is called for a case,
he is informed of the neighborhood pharmacy which has
agreed to cooperate in the project. Necessary drugs and
supplies are requisitioned from such a pharmacy at rates
covering the cost to the druggist and an agreed allowance
for his service. At the request of the commissioner of wel-
fare, the project has been organized under the personal
supervision of Dr. Shirley W. Wynne, commissioner of
health, and the Medical and Nursing Bureau is housed in
the building of the Department of Health.
At present the Bureau is arranging for the care of about
160 patients a day who are without the means of obtaining
care at home, yet not in need of care in the already crowded
hospitals. Following the development of the plan a year
ago, some use was made of the arrangements for nursing
service, which was contributed by the nursing associations
ONE MORE
OBSTACLE
ON AN
UPHILL ROAD
Bulletin, The Jefferson County, Alabama, Board of Health
February 1933
THE SURVEY
67
since the Home Relief Administration lacked funds to pay
the agreed fee, and in most exceptional circumstances medi-
cal service and drugs also were supplied. The present au-
thorization of the T. E. R. A. for £37,500 to be used for
medical home relief and medical supplies makes possible
more extensive trial and it is hoped that the experiment
will be continued by further funds.
The other half of the grant of the T. E. R. A. has been
the means of evolving three projects using 30 doctors, 175
nurses and a staff of clerical workers who had applied to
the Home Bureau for work relief for themselves. They are'
paid at the work-relief rate of $5 a day for four days a week.
Ten doctors and one hundred nurses have been assigned to
the Department of Health to supplement the regular staffs
in baby-health stations, tuberculosis and maternity services
and others of its regular activities to which the emergency
has brought increased demands. Another corps of doctors
and nurses are engaged in a special project in case-finding
and follow-up of tuberculosis among Relief Bureau families
in two districts which are one of the city's "sore spots"
for this disease, areas in East Harlem and Central Harlem
including many Porto Rican, Negro and Italian residents
among whom the tuberculosis rate has been notoriously
high. Use of the new paper roll films for x-rays (see The
Survey, January 15, p. 31, New Haven X-rays 6000 Chil-
dren) taken at the Henry Meinhard Memorial Health
Center and the old Harlem Y. W. C. A. has made it possible
to carry on the work speedily and extensively, with the
discovery of many tuberculous patients previously un-
known to the Department. Follow-up of patients arranges
for treatment in clinics and sanatoria, and is of utmost im-
portance because of the overcrowded conditions under
which these indigent families are living.
THE third project is an investigation of one hundred
chronic patients in certain of the city hospitals, with a
view to seeing if arrangements could not be made for their
care at home to release hospital beds needed for acute illness
and discontinue expensive hospital care when nursing and
occasional medical supervision at home might be all that
the patient needed. Study of these patients, however, is
showing that many are homeless and practically none have
homes with a room or even a bed where they could be
suitably cared for through an allowance to the family for
their support and the visit of a nurse several times a week
for supervision. Their need and the plight of the hospitals in
the present emergency underlines a lack long felt in New
York City and other communities for a place for the care of
chronic patients who do not require the intensive care of
the usual hospital.
Another grant of $ 15,000 by the State Temporary Relief
Administration has started a work-relief project in dental
care under the direction of the Dental Division of the
New York City Department of Health. Forty dentists and
ten dental hygienists who had applied for work relief are
employed at regular work-relief wages in the dental clinics
of the Department and at the Heckscher Foundation Den-
tal Clinic, the use of which has been contributed by August
Heckscher. Clinic sessions are held in the evening as well
as in the daytime for the care of persons referred by Home
Relief and urgent and needy patients referred by the De-
partment of Public Welfare and other social agencies. The
Dentistry Division of the Department of Hospitals and
the New York University are assisting in treating major
surgical and root therapy cases.
Youth in the Depression
IF you are under sixteen in New York state in this year
of grace, the depression it seems is not too hard on
you; but if you are over sixteen it is doing something
to you that is on the whole pretty demoralizing. Not in
statistics or regimented facts but in the close-up impres-
sions of qualified observers. Herbert D. Williams, director of
social service in the psychiatric clinic of the Children's Vil-
lage, Dobbs Ferry, New York, sought the answer to the
question, What Is the Depression Doing to Youth? To
social workers up and down the state, probation officers,
institution executives, visiting teachers, priests and com-
moners, in whose good sense and competent judgment he
had confidence, he put his question. Synthesizing the re-
plies he was able to construct a composite picture which he
and those who heard his discussion of it at the New York
State Conference of Social Work believe to be a fair one.
Assembling the pluses and minuses revealed by his
inquiry Dr. Williams quickly discovered that the good, if
any, of the depression falls chiefly to the lot of younger
children while the destructive factors press most heavily on
those over sixteen. He finds a consensus of opinion to sup-
port the conclusion that in the third year of depression
there is:
Probably a decrease in reported delinquencies of those under
sixteen years of age.
No increase in commitments to dependent institutions.
Decrease in incidence of communicable disease and death rate.
Fewer maladjustments due to divprces and broken homes.
Decrease in number of truants.
These constructive addenda to hard times are attributed
by Dr. Williams' reporters to the fact that parents, home
more than they used to be, are giving more attention and
supervision to their children; that families are drawn closer
together by adversity, that social service is entering many
families by the relief door and that in families above the
relief line saner habits of living and of eating are showing
results.
The destructive results of the depression, showing them-
selves most clearly in boys and girls over sixteen, constitute
a formidable list:
Marked increase in crimes committed by boys between sixteen
and nineteen, many of whom have no previous record.
Prison population at its peak.
Boys migrating to relieve family financial pressure.
Lack of security for youth over sixteen.
Increased personality difficulties.
Mental stress of youths unable to get work.
Educational disappointment.
Increase in number of children out of school because of poverty.
Increase in family conflicts, tenseness and anxiety.
Dispensing with vocational guidance and placement, with its
probable future injurious effects.
Jobless highschool graduates acquiring attitudes of listless
apathy, guilt and failure.
Old standards and axioms questioned and discarded; unrest
without understanding; no life philosophy.
Decreased recreational facilities with a consequent increase in
street-corner and pool-room groups.
Increased difficulty of probation for those between sixteen and
nineteen.
One Hundred Percent Plus
By 1SABELLE DENISON
International Institute of the Young Women's Christian Association
I
iHANKS, I won't sit down. I only want to ask if
you could tell me where to pawn a fur coat.
Jewelry is easy; but furs — in this weather. No-
body wants to look at fur, or at least not to pay for it. And
my coat is good, the lining only a little worn. You see I — I
am taking to the road, and I have no place to store it. Well
— a furnished room — you know, they won't be bothered.
Especially that cheap sort of place. I couldn't be sure. And
where I'm going — as a matter of fact it's a cot back of the
furnace. Apartment house where I used to live. The jani-
tor's family was good to me, said I could come back any
time. I had a real job then, sold books, studied at night.
Finally got secretarial work. Wanted to do something after
my husband died. He only lived eight months, after we
were married in 1918. Yes, he was American. Quite.
Of course, I get outdoors as much as I can — brought up
to it, though I was born within sound of Bow Bells. That's
been the trouble with this temporary relief job. Not that I
didn't jump at it — it meant room rent and a bit over for
food. I don't mind short rations. But not a penny over to
take a tram to a beach for a bathe, not a penny for any-
thing, and no hope ahead, no getting anywhere. Did you
ever notice how sometimes a fresh breath of air, hardly a
breeze, wanders in, with a country smell to it? How can it
last, across a great, hot city? It makes me frantic for more.
Oh, I know you're right. Maintenance now is as good as
getting ahead when things are bright. But after so many
months just existing, it does get under your skin. Existing
isn't enough, is it? I'm getting paid today — we're being
signed off, and I'm buying some low-heeled shoes. There'll
be other women on the road, don't you think? I fancy it
will be safe enough — there might be a job here and there
— dish-washing, anything. At least it will prove that
there's a sporting chance left, that this — this horror isn't
all of life. I'm thirty-seven, ought to be putting a bit by.
All our men were killed in the war. My sisters work. I
couldn't go back and live on them. I'm like Kipling's cat
that walked alone. I feel that I'm letting my husband down,
somehow, to ask favors. Not because I'm English born, but
because he was like that too, independent. We had such
plans. He had no people, and we wanted to settle in some-
where and have a family. Probably you don't know that
feeling, of not belonging anywhere. We both had it, d'you
see, for different reasons. There's a line of a story that
keeps coming back to me, " I was nowhere and it was real."
It's the most terrible line I ever read.
I don't know why I'm telling you this. Queer, isn't it, one
goes for years without a word and then — I beg your par-
don. I shouldn't have stood so long. It's always apt to give
one a faint feeling, isn't it? I used to have it at the dress-
maker's. Which reminds me — about that fur coat. No, I
don't know of any job in Boston, but the janitor might
know of something, and I know a man in Wollaston. I used
to be his secretary. He was in steel, a real person. Every-
thing gone now and he has to live with his daughter. He
knows people. He wanted me to marry him. I couldn't, but
I know he loves me. Perhaps I might have done, in time.
Now it's impossible. Curious, don't you think, how one ex-
pects never to change, yet each thing is different, and so
you are different, and that makes change, doesn't it? I
must sound maudlin. Thanks ever so for not trying to keep
me from going. It may be that I am deciding it with my
feelings instead of my mind, but if I can't do something
I'll go off the deep end. And then the country would have
to take care of me! I'd rather take a gambler's chance. In-
deed I'll let you know. I think I'll not need to send a mes-
sage collect, but it's a bit of something under one's feet to
know one can. Almost like belonging, what?
II
YOU understand, Madame, it was a manage de con-
venance. My father, who was born in Greece, had
money but no family. With my mother, an Armenian, it
was the reverse. Yet we have had a happy home life, though
how little else! I have never heard my parents speak a dark
word between them. There are four children. I, the oldest,
born on my father's properties near Antioch, in Syria. My
grandmother lived in Istamboul, and I went to school
there. We were all there together when we heard that the
Turks were coming, that it was to be another Smyrna dis-
aster. To protect me, my father took us — without pass-
ports — to Corfu, that beautiful island! There my mother
interested herself in the Red Cross. I even helped her,
young as I was, and so we met the kind American who ar-
ranged my study here. And now that I am college graduate,
with seven languages, there seems no use for me. Every-
where I offer myself, I answer advertisements — but you
know the rest. One man told me that he was going to
Europe and needed a secretary. Three hundred and fifty
dollars a month and travelling expenses. I told him I would
not do, I was not that kind of secretary. So I think return
to Antioch is best, indeed it is necessary, since I am no
longer student, but at the Turkish consulate they tell me
no, I had no passport of departure, and the French consul
says no, I did not sign the paper in 1926 necessary for
French citizenship to those living in Syria under French
mandate. Nor did my father, being at that moment in
Greece. How could we, je vous demande^ not being there,
not knowing?
And I ask myself, madame, what am I ? Without a coun-
try, like that wretched man about whom you have a story.
Yet with a strange feeling that grows in me — all countries
now are mine, in all I am at home, for each I feel their
sufferings and their grandeur.
It is about such matters only that I can now write my
mother, always my comrade, Habeebit Albie.
At present I share a basement room with my college
friend. She is American, she has a job. Many young men
come. Mon Dieu, what young men. One night it is Prince-
ton, another Annapolis, and again Wall Street, who asks
me to dine. At first they enchant me. They have seen so
much, know so much, we can talk, real conversation. And
then, after three — or two — or perhaps one evening, they
say, I like you, you are lovely, will you live with me? They
are astounded that I decline. They say, but everyone does
68
February 1933
THE SURVEY
69
it! Is that true, do you think? I love your country, I enjoy
here so much that women do not have at home, but in that
I am not American. And my room-mate, she is so kind, yet
these young men come and stay until two o'clock or three
sometimes, when they have had much to drink, and the
noise, it is like deveji, camel-drivers, as we say in Turkish.
And there is not sleep enough, and next day no wish left
to look for work. Voila, I cannot stay and I cannot go.
What does one do, Madame, when one can neither stay
nor go
III
I HAVE returned, Senora, can you bear it? It is because I
wear a hair shirt, and in summer this is not possible. I
did not tell you the truth. That is, I told you facts. Not all
the facts, not properly put together. It is in the way that
facts adjoin each other that truth is created, yes?
About my family, that was exact. My mother was
Basque. Her brother was the best pelota player in Bilbao.
It is as though I have seen it, from her descriptions. She had
a simplicity, my mother, but with what strengths? She was
married almost as soon as she came to what here you call
Latin America, but we know as Hispanic. My father's
family was different, more worldly. One of his grandfathers
was pretender to the throne of Aragon, his wife had a
French title. Perhaps I tell you these small things to wait as
long as possible before saying the dreadful ones, also that
you may see how it happened.
My father and grandfather served their government for
many years. It was when my father was head of a commis-
sion to this country that we came, and I was left with my
madrina, godmother, whose husband worked at the con-
sulate. So I went to school here and learned English. I was
glad to do this, for at home we were brought up so strictly
that my mother sometimes cried for us. If we looked at
anyone on the street, penance was required. Why should
not one look at human beings with interest and friendli-
ness? Because I did this I have copied Thomas a Kempis
three times in Latin, and many chapters of Don Quixote.
So here I could be more natural.
But when our government changed and my madrina and
her family went home, I went with them. My sister Andrea,
a year younger than I, seemed younger than that because
of these — what do you call them? — restrictions. Eager
for life, so pretty, so little to do! My mother had died, and
after that my father was even more careful. There was a
young man from North America in exports — Andrea
managed to meet him sometimes and she thought she was
in love. When I came home she told me. I knew I could
never convince her that we knew too little of this man,
least of all whether she could be happy with him. If she had
known men all her life, she might have been better able to
judge. She was going to run away. At least I persuaded her
to ask our father. Worse than the expected happened. She
was sent to our uncle's in the country, a lonely plantation.
She suffered, because of me. I helped her to escape. That is
a long story, not important now. My father will never for-
give me for this. He inflicted penalties. Life was not bear-
able. I feared for Andrea, in New York, knowing no Eng-
lish, knowing this man so little, even though married. Her
letters told too little. I sold a necklace of my mother's, of
old Spanish coins — other things. I came, with what diffi-
culties. I found her alone in a room, expecting a child. That
man's first wife had come and showed the marriage certifi-
cate. There had been no divorce. He was afraid, and is
gone. And my sister, Hernandez y Echevarria, will be
mother but not wife.
When I told you the other day that I had done a great
wrong, had defied my father, you spoke a quotation of
poetry to me, do you remember? That is what brought me
back. I have said it over to myself like a chant. It goes well
with walking.
"The wisdom that within us grows
Is absolution for our sins."
He could put wisdom and beauty together, that Irish-
man. Already I have learned. I did not tell you that it was
I who ruined my sister's life. But I see that if this great
trouble is to be resolved, all the facts must be put together,
poco dpoco — that is the beginning of my expiation, Senora.
IV
1HAVE an appointment in the Bronx at one o'clock, and
it's twelve now. You don't care how long people stay
when you don't know anybody else is waiting, do you? My
name is Emmeline Parker, straight American. Not many of
those women that were here ahead of me looked as though
they could say as much. It beats me how foreigners get all
the attention. What are all these societies for, I'd like to
know, if not to help those who are born here ? There's some-
thing mighty queer about it if you ask me. Where does all
the money go, I. always ask, and does anybody answer
me? They do not. There's going to be a lot to answer for
some day, and when that time comes the ones that deserve
help are going to get it.
You know how a soldier can go through a battle and
never get a scratch, and another one right beside him gets a
dozen? That's me. I get them all. It's always been that
way. My husband was a scamp. Left me with three chil-
dren. I've always been a religious woman or I couldn't have
borne it. And my children such a disappointment. Would
you believe I could have a daughter who wouldn't write to
me for nearly two years? Sent me her picture, but not a line.
Ashamed to, I guess. It's a pretty sure sign that a girl's
gone wrong if she won't write to her mother, I always
think. And my sons are married to devils. I mean just that.
Made by the devil and not by God. They don't want me in
their houses. So my sons each pay ten dollars a week and
that's what I have to live on. A woman at my time of life,
mother of three children, living in a furnished room ! That's
gratitude for you. And what rooms! It would happen to
me, wouldn't it, that every single place I've been in has
turned out to be run by gangsters or bootleggers, or else
they intercept my mail. I could get them for that, and I've
told them so. They want to find out what my income is, so
they open the envelope and pretend it's a mistake. Of
course I'd have to have a lawyer, and that costs money.
I asked a policeman once to speak to the woman who
owned the house. Mrs. Parker, he said, you don't want to
get mixed up in a thing like this, a woman like you. It's be-
neath you. You'd better move. Well, I moved to a place
where the landlady said I could use the kitchen, and would
you believe it, her own mother has such a terrible disposi-
tion that she hates to have me around! I don't see why I
should have to endure that, when I'm paying for it, do
you? And I'm sure the young man in the room below me is
immoral, such hours!
Now what I want you to do is to get a nice quiet room —
and I must have it today — for a Christian woman who is a
one-hundred-percent-plus American.
THE COMMON WELFARE
Columbia Tackles the Machine Age
ESS than a week before Columbia University officially
washed its hands of Technocracy, President Butler
announced that under the auspices of the university, sev-
enteen experts in economics, finance and sociology will
make a study of the depression, particularly of technical
advance and the effect of the price system on production
and distribution. The new commission's field will appar-
ently differ very little in subject matter from that of the
technocrats. As is true of the more sensational group, the
task of the commission, Dr. Butler announced, "will not
so much involve the collection of new data as it will reflec-
tion upon and interpretation of the vast amount of in-
formation already available to scholars." The commission
is also asked to formulate policies for dealing with the
present dislocations of the Machine Age. Specifically, Dr.
Butler stated, the group will give its attention to: an anal-
ysis of the part played by the price system in the direction
of production; analysis of the fluctuating relationships of
income, investment and consumption within the present
price system; examination of price controls to maintain the
stability of internal price and of international exchange
parities; examination of the adequacy of our present
monetary system under modern industrial conditions.
Seven members of the commission are drawn from the
Columbia faculty, four from other universities and six have
no present academic connection. The membership includes
Robert Mclver, Wesley C. Mitchell, A. A. Berle, Jr., and
Leo Wolman of Columbia, James H. Rogers of Yale, Al vin H.
Hansen of the University of Minnesota, Jacob Viner of the
University of Chicago, Benjamin M. Anderson of the Chase
National Bank, Walter Lippmann of The New York Herald-
Tribune, H. S. Person of the Taylor Society and George
Soule of The New Republic. The make-up of the commission
promises a study of scholarly competence and high vision,
and a program of action which will command a wide hearing.
The Senate Relief Bill
THOSE prophets who foresaw the Costigan-LaFollette
bill, for all its public hearings (see page 51), slumbering
out the lame-duck session in committee plainly did not
know their Costigan and LaFollette. On the heels of the
hearings, after a quick conference by Senators LaFollette
and Cutting with President-elect Roosevelt, the Senate
Committee on Manufactures reported out a revised federal
aid bill in which are combined essential features of Senate
Bill No. 5125, the Costigan-LaFollette measure, and
Senate Bill No. 5121, the Cutting bill for the relief of
transients. Senator LaFollette proposes to push this bill
on the floor of the Senate and believes that it will come to
a favorable vote before the end of the session.
The new bill sets up a federal relief board of three, ap-
pointed by the President, to allocate a fund of $500,000,000
which is drawn from the Reconstruction Finance Corpora-
tion and not provided by a bond issue as the earlier bill
specified. The R. F. C. acts only as fiscal agent of the
board. All connection with the Children's Bureau is elimi-
nated, the board choosing its own executive. As in the
earlier bill, 40 percent of the fund would go to the states
on the basis of population with payments not exceeding
two thirds of the state's own relief expenditures, public and
private. The remaining 60 percent, less $15,000,000 for
transient aid and $350,000 for administration, would be
allotted on the basis of need. All funds would be admin-
istered by the states under their own rules and regulations,
but the bill requires that plans for administration accom-
pany all applications for funds.
Paying Taxes with Turnips
BARTER will gain new stature in Pennsylvania if bills
now before the General Assembly should be enacted
into laws. One bill authorizes poor districts, counties and
municipalities to purchase grain and vegetables from farm-
ers at local wholesale prices, to credit the purchase prices
against taxes due and to use "such vegetables and grain for
the purpose of supplying food to the residents without
means of support."
In the face of grim realities this seems to have its points.
At Millerstown for instance — if there is a Millerstown in
Pennsylvania — is Poor Officer Smith. He has authority to
collect taxes, properly levied, for the relief of the poor, but
it's been a long time since he was able to collect anything to
speak of. Meantime the poor of his district, for whose
maintenance he is legally responsible, are desperate for
bare subsistence. Now down the road lives Farmer Brown.
His bins are full of grain, his cellar full of winter vegetables
for which there is no market. But he has no money and he is
pretty tired of hearing about his unpaid taxes. Under this
bill Farmer Brown could survey his stores to see how much
wheat, turnips and cabbages he could spare, figure them up
to the amount of his tax bill and deliver the load to Poor
Officer Smith receiving from him a credit memorandum
which the collector of taxes would be required to accept at
its face value. Meantime Poor Officer Smith trades the grain
for flour and by whatever his system — not a commissary,
Mr. Smith, not a commissary — distributes it along with the
turnips and cabbages to the families under his care. Farmer
Brown's taxes have been paid, Poor Officer Smith has met
his obligation and the destitute have something to eat — and
not a nickel has changed hands.
The second bill, which also brings the tax collector into
the circle of barter, permits poor districts, counties and
municipalities to credit against taxes due from a landlord
the unpaid rent due him from unemployed families receiv-
ing public aid. Here we should have Poor Officer Smith un-
able to collect taxes enough to ensure a roof over the desti-
tute Robinson family, Landlord Legree who can't pay his
taxes because the Robinsons can't pay their rent and finally
the Robinson's desperate with fear of being put on the
street. But under this bill Landlord Legree would present
his unpaid rent bills to the proper authority and receive in
return a credit applicable to his tax bill. He would be saved
a threatened lien against his property, Poor Officer Smith
would be able to balance his books and the Robinsons
would keep their habitation.
The author of this bill, Assemblyman Andrews, takes
occasion in its final section to enunciate a principle:
This act shall not be construed as exempting property from
taxation but as creating a system whereby the liability for shelter
70
February 1933
THE SURVEY
71
for poor persons imposed on public bodies charged with the care
of the poor may be properly assumed and not be wholly imposed
upon the owners of property occupied by those receiving public
aid.
Our Light Bill
OOMETIMES a group called together to solve a problem
O makes its contribution by defining the factors involved.
This was the case of the Institute of Public Engineering,
called together last month by the Power Authority of New
York and the public service commissions of the District of
Columbia, New York and Pennsylvania to discuss the cost
of electrical distribution. No accurate figures are available
on the distribution phase of the light and power industry
which, it is estimated, accounts for at least half of the na-
tion's annual two billion dollar power bill. The institute
was the first step in the Power Authority's effort to deter-
mine, under a mandate from the legislature, the exact costs
of generating, transmitting and distributing power from
the St. Lawrence River project. The undertaking gains
additional importance through the recent decision of the
U. S. Supreme Court in the Martinsville case. Here the
court upheld a ruling of the Indiana Public Service Com-
mission fixing rates for the town of Martinsville on the
basis of distribution costs, as distinct from costs of genera-
tion and transmission.
The institute proved to be a symposium on the diffi-
culties in the way of a workable formula for figuring dis-
tribution costs. The variables involved, it was pointed out,
range from the type of soil in which poles must be set and
the number and kind of trees in the community, determin-
ing the height of poles required, to engineering problems of
plant design and an economist's interpretation of the
general problem of cost allocation. It is to be hoped that,
having brought together the theoretical and practical
difficulties in the way of determining distribution costs and
setting a "fair" standard, the experts will offer some trial
yardsticks and schemes for using them. For it is in this
"unknown land" of power costs, as Morris Llewellyn Cook
has labelled it, that we must apparently seek the reason
for the high tariff levied on us as "small consumers" by
the power companies, limiting our use of electric lights
and appliances for our homes and farms.
Cheaper and Better Government
GOVERNMENTAL expenditures cannot be subjected
to precisely the same rules as those applied to private
enterprise. Indiscriminate reduction of expenditures is
never constructive economy and may turn out to be no
economy at all. In days gone by these statements by
Prof. A. R. Hatton would have been considered axiomatic,
but the hue and cry today for government economy
regardless of effects connotes another story. To cut down
government expenditures without needlessly impairing
government service is one of the great present needs. In an
effort to find ways to meet this need the president of the
National Municipal League a year ago appointed a com-
mittee on constructive economy in state and local govern-
ments under Professor Hatton's chairmanship. A summary
of their findings was recently given over the radio by the
chairman, who said:
This question [of constructive economy] may best be answered
by examining briefly certain governmental and political condi-
tions in the United States which must in large measure be changed
before any material reduction in the unnecessary cost of govern-
ment can be secured and maintained.
Those conditions "which must in large measure be changed"
he enumerated as too many governments, overlapping
governments, poorly organized governments, an unsound
tax system, poor budgeting and absence of long-time
planning movements; inadequate accounting and pur-
chasing procedure; lack of comparable standards of govern-
mental efficiency; partisan interference in administration,
particularly by local administrators.
A big order indeed, but obviously only by an all-around
consideration of the problem such as is here suggested will
progress be made. More detailed information regarding
this report may be obtained from the National Municipal
League, 309 East 34 Street, New York City. As Professor
Hatton points out "if present distress should force the wide-
spread consideration of the problem of setting up govern-
ments capable of administering public affairs with economy
and efficiency, a by-product of future gain might well be
recorded that would offset the terrific losses of the de-
pression."
Boys on the Loose
SARDONIC implications and plenty of food for thought
are contained in the statement of officials of the Inter-
state Commerce Commission that so many boys are "riding
the rods" with a resultant rise in deaths and injuries, that
certain railroad men have appealed to the old hoboes to
look out for the youngsters. In 1932 deaths of trespassers
on the railroads, that is of persons not employes or pas-
sengers, numbered 1938, a rise of 5.5 percent over 1931,
while injuries rose to 3034, nearly 17 percent. Helpless
to control the unwanted traffic the railroad men hope
to lessen casualties by spreading the skills of trained
and seasoned trespassers to the young practitioners of
the art.
This hard-boiled surrender of "boys on the loose" (see
The Survey, September i, 1932) to the ministrations of
professional hoboes is one side of the picture. The other is
the rising sensationalism and over-sentimentalism against
which Owen R. Lovejoy cautions in an article in Current
History. Mr. Lovejoy, secretary of the New York Children's
Aid Society, whose wide experience qualifies him as a
competent witness, is deeply sympathetic with youth
turned out into a world that has failed to keep its fair
promises. But he insists that the whole matter shall be
treated in the light of known facts. "The problem is con-
fessedly difficult, but it is not mysterious."
On the basis of data collected throughout the country he
protests sensational tales of hordes of vagrant children,
"little boys and girls, scantily clad, thin-legged, hungry
. . . wandering in droves through town and country."
This, he says, just isn't true. Our "homeless children" are
not children in the common definition but are boys from
sixteen to twenty-one, many of them "vigorous, strong,
husky young fellows, the age of runaway volunteers in
time of war or of army and navy recruits in time of peace."
No one really knows their number, for they constantly
double on their tracks so that the same individual may be
counted five or ten times. "But no matter what the exact
number, a social problem exists."
Sensational and sentimental representations of the prob-
lem will, Mr. Lovejoy believes, divert public support and
sympathy away from intelligent (Continued on page 74)
"And I'm tellin' you, Mrs. Tomkins, when he heard about the job he was like
a boy before Christmas — couldn't sleep and was up at 4 A.M. to be on time"
'You sorta took the place
Denys Wortman's genius for expressing wit
sands in terms of a few flesh -and -blood pec
cartoon series appears in the New York Wo
When he received one of the annual awan
citation pointed out with gratitude how oft
'Mrs. Durkin's hanging out two pairs of Mr. Durkin's overalls;
he must be working again"
"Gee, it's swell In a hospital. Would you believe it-
I slept in a bed all by myself"
but now you too are gone"
pathos the experience of hundreds of thou-
tn a valuable interpreter of social work. His
and is syndicated throughout the country,
ial Work Publicity Council last spring, the
jpon social agencies for subject and models
"That night it struck me so strange how hard he was trying to laugh and joke
and I says, 'Bill, you been laid off, ain't you?'— and sure enough
"My husband has been acting up again Miss, and
I want you to come over and give him a good scare
"Naw, I ain't goin' to camp this year. The lady said they
couldn't send anybody who wasn't sick"
74
THE SURVEY
February 1933
(Continued from page 77) methods of coping with it and
into panicky palliatives which fail to strike at its roots.
$20,000,000 for $300,000
IN the upper stretches of New York City a good-sized
townful of people are living who doubtless would not be
there if something special had not happened in their
neighborhood. That neighborhood is East Harlem, a dis-
trict where low incomes were the rule long before they be-
came so universal an affliction, where foreign languages and
strangeness to city customs complicate the task of keeping
families well. What happened was the East Harlem Health
Center, initiated by the American Red Cross in 1921, and
now reporting on ten years of neighborhood health service
carried on by the New York City Department of Health
and twenty-one cooperating voluntary health agencies.
Two thousand people are living in East Harlem today who
would have died if the East Harlem deathrate had simply
kept pace in its improvement with that of Manhattan as a
whole. At the meeting at which the ten-year report was
presented, Homer Folks, chairman of the executive com-
mittee, pointed out that these two thousand lives represent
a cash saving of $20,000,000 on the basis of the standard
statistical computations — ' ' not a bad return on your money,
for the whole East Harlem Health Center undertaking, as
an organization, has only expended some $300,000 in the
entire ten years." Not the least of its values has been a
demonstration to the whole city of the economy and effec-
tiveness of intensive neighborhood health service in which
the official and voluntary health agencies worked hand in
hand under one roof. Three years ago a plan was approved
for utilizing this method for organizing public-health work
throughout the city, and the first of a series of new health
centers has been established in Central Harlem, another of
the city's "sore spots." Budgetary setbacks have sus-
pended continuance of the program for the immediate
present, but official and voluntary health leaders are deter-
mined that this is only a brief halt in following the trail that
the East Harlem Health Center has blazed so successfully.
That Maternal Mortality Rate
HIGH deathrates among American mothers at child-
birth have long been considered a national reproach,
though there is some reason to believe that the extent of
our unfortunate national supremacy in this respect is due in
part to different systems of record-keeping. Whether or not
the United States actually does lead the civilized nations of
the world in these rates, is a more or less academic question
when there is no doubt at all that a considerable number of
these deaths are wholly unnecessary. At a recent meeting
celebrating the fifteenth anniversary of the Maternity
Center Association Dr. George W7. Kosmak pointed out
that almost half of the deaths in this country associated
with childbearing have been found to be preventable,
and asked the inevitable question, "Why don't we prevent
them?" During the past fifteen years there has been
"hardly a discernible lessening." The "blame" and the
responsibility rest, he believes, not with any one group, but
upon husband and wife, physician, nurse and midwife, the
medical educator and the public. That these deaths can be
prevented has been emphasized repeatedly in the contrast
between the favorable records of women under supervision
and care by such organizations as the Maternity Center
Association and those in similar circumstances in the
general community.
Light on the whole topic is promised from a cooperative
study of the " primary, avoidable " factor in maternal deaths
which is being carried on by the New York State Health
Department and the New York State Medical Society,
with aid from the county societies, covering an investigation
of all maternal deaths in the state during a year. Efforts
such as these are turning to constructive account a topic
which too often has been used merely as an emotional repri-
mand or a controversy. After all it matters more to find out
what can be done most effectively to prevent deaths that we
know to be preventable than to be sure that we are or are not
the country with the highest maternity mortality rate of all.
Public School Money
OUT-OF-DATE methods of financing public schools
are cutting down the "essential schooling" of nine
and a half million children in this country according to the
national survey of school finances, recently completed
under the auspices of the U. S. Office of Education. The
survey was directed by Prof. Paul R. Mort of Teachers
College, Columbia University, and was made by a group
of experts in education, economics and public finance. The
findings of the survey, as summarized in a preliminary
report, cover the inequalities in educational opportunity
in different sections because of the unequal resources; the
fact that, for this reason, even at the "peak of prosperity"
there were communities "in which educational opportu-
nities were of the most meager type"; the need thus indi-
cated to shift the burden of school support from local
communities to the entire state, with less dependence on the
clumsy and overworked property tax, and economy
through consolidating small, inefficient school districts.
While arguing for equalization of the tax burden, the survey
report warns that broader programs of education must not
deprive local communities of the right to go beyond the
minimum established for the state.
At the same time that this report is put forward there
comes from many communities an uneasy questioning of
public-school performance. It is pointed out that in the
last forty years the bill for public education has increased
from about $5 to nearly $100 per child. Most of this in-
crease has occurred since 1914, when the cost was 821.34.
Last year we paid for our public schools the thumping sum
of $3,388,000,000, or nearly a fourth of our total public
expenditure. Even the most optimistic, these critics point
out, cannot claim that what we have spent for public
education has given us an enlightened citizenry. They ask
that, in addition to devising means for maintaining the
present educational budget, the public school authorities
take part in a thorough-going appraisal of our whole scheme
of public schooling and that this appraisal shall cover not
only school maintenance and procedure but the aims of
the system and its results.
Save Chapel Hill!
BAD news from North Carolina — the hard times threaten
not only the efficiency of the great university at Chapel
Hill but its very existence as a first-class institution. Since
1929 the appropriations to the university have dropped
year by year from $894,000 to $504,000. By heroic econo-
mies, including a sharply pared salary schedule, the institu-
1933
THE SURVEY
75
ion has managed to maintain its high service to state and
:ountry. Now, however, the Budget Bureau proposes a
lash to $5390,000. This can only mean undermining the
aniversity program and a loss in growth and development
hat will be felt for a generation.
The University of North Carolina, chartered during
kVashington's first year as president, is the oldest of our
tate universities. Out of a narrow classical tradition,
hrough the ordeal of Civil War and Reconstruction, the
aniversity has, in the past twenty-five years, taken its
alace as one of our great institutions of higher learning. It
las been the center of the intellectual revival of the re-
gion; from it has gone out the motive force for much of the
ocial and educational progress of the "new South." It has
erved not only North Carolina but the country as a whole
hrough its research and fearless reports in controversial
ocial and economic fields, through its development of folk
drama, its fostering of folk literature and music, its contri-
mtions to the solving of agricultural, racial and public-
lealth problems.
Even before the reduced appropriations of the last four
years North Carolina taxpayers paid less per capita for
heir university than do citizens of practically any other
state. President Frank P. Graham warns that the new pro-
posal, which represents a cut of 56 percent from the 1929
figure, would be "a crushing blow" to the university.
Many of us, remote in fact from North Carolina, have
come to count on Chapel Hill as a force for enlightenment
and courage. We join in the hope that the North Carolina
Legislature, which has made the whole development possi-
ble, will face squarely the economic waste and social tragedy
of tearing down a great university even in these times, and
find means to conserve what has been built so well.
Belle Lindner Moscowitz
BORN in a crowded quarter of New York City, the
daughter of a watchmaker, Belle Lindner Moscowitz
left college at eighteen to enter social work. She never wholly
left it, but for many years of her tireless and fruitful life she
was the most intimate personal and political adviser of
Governor Alfred E. Smith. A modest and rather shy
woman, her funeral last month was attended by the leaders
in the governments of New York State and City and by
three thousand citizens of all ranks, and her obituary was
printed on the first page of the metropolitan newspapers.
Always a realist, Mrs. Moscowitz was one of the first
social workers to sense that Alfred E. Smith, a young Tam-
many man growing into leadership in the legislature, held
essentially the same social ideals that they did. She tied her
wagon to his rising star and very soon she became his most
trusted adviser on all the forward-looking social and labor
measures which marked his repeated terms as governor.
From Teachers' College Mrs. Moscowitz went to act as
director of entertainments and exhibits at the Educational
Alliance on the Lower East Side at the time when the
Alliance was making heroic efforts to adjust tens of thou-
sands of immigrants to America. From there she went to the
United Hebrew Charities to become in turn connected with
the Council of Jewish Women, the Traveler's Aid Society,
the Association to Promote Better Housing for Girls, the
Committee of Fourteen, the Mayor's Committee on Na-
tional Defense, the secretary of Governor Smith's Recon-
struction Committee and many other similar bodies. She
adjusted more than ten thousand labor disputes in the dress
and waist trades. She was credited with a large share in
the enactment of the new factory code.
For a time Mrs. Moscowitz was a member of The Survey
staff, contributing in particular in the field of protection of
girls and young women, at their work and at play. In that
capacity she showed a remarkable combination of shrewd
hard-headedness with a warm sympathy for flighty youth.
Coming to maturity among the first generation of women
citizens, she set high goals, as Rabbi Wise put it at her
funeral, " in her desire to serve greatly and not the desire to
lead."
First-Aid for Health Services
A FIRST-AID station for perplexed health adminis-
trators has been announced by the American Public
Health Association in the appointment of an emergency
committee on stabilization of health appropriations includ-
ing representatives of national groups in official and volun-
tary health fields and social welfare, under the chairman-
ship of Dr. Louis I. Dublin. The committee will serve as a
clearing-house for information as to the situation which
public-health departments and other health agencies face
during the financial stringency, and as an advisory body on
ways of preserving essential health services and the present
favorable level of health following these activities in recent
years. Among the important questions confronting the
legislatures of forty-odd states this winter is that of keeping
in effective action a social "industry" which always has
occupied a modest place in community budgets but never
has failed, in bad years as in good, to return dividends in
the form of better health and longer life. The new com-
mittee stands by to help continue our enviable record of
new "lows" in disease and death.
The committee points out in a recent statement that
while economy is desirable at all times and essential at the
present time, indiscriminate budget-slashing is dangerous.
When cuts are necessary in health budgets, their applica-
tion to the functions and personnel of a health department
should be left to the health officer: "reductions in payroll
maintenance, office, field and laboratory work cannot be
made arbitrarily by lay appropriating bodies or by lay
officers of government without grave risk of epidemic dis-
ease and danger of neglect of the lives of mothers and
children particularly." Moreover even in ordinary times,
health departments have lagged farther behind than any
other indispensable function of government in applying
scientific facts to the preservation of life and safety because
of inadequate appropriations. In "ordinary prosperity"
we spent only about $i per capita — a little more than one-
thousandth of one percent of our national income — for the
protection of health through health agencies, about half of
this through the official health departments, half through
voluntary agencies supported by contributions. It should
be made clear by every health officer, the committee de-
clares, that annual health department appropriations of
less than $i per capita are inadequate to apply our present
knowledge of preventive medicine to people in any commu-
nity of the United states, rural or urban; that appropria-
tions of less than fifty cents per capita are insufficient to
provide even minimum protection against communicable
diseases and preventable diseases of maternity, infancy
and childhood. Correspondence with the committee may be
addressed to Dr. Louis I. Dublin, chairman, in care of the
Metropolitan Life Insurance Company, New York City.
76
TH E SURVEY
February 193.
New Blood in Boys' Work
OUT of small beginnings last year in New York in the assign-
ment of unemployed men, paid by the Emergency Work
Bureau, to boys' work agencies has come a whole new
vigorous current in the activities of those agencies. Two
hundred and fifty men, hand-picked by the best personnel meth-
ods from the thousands of the white-collared registered for work-
relief, have been trained in an intensive course devised by R. K.
Atkinson of the Boys Clubs of America, and are now at work in
some seventy organizations which are thus enabled to enlarge
their programs and to increase the number of boys participating in
their various activities.
The men, practically all of them with dependents, work twenty
hours a week and are paid $12.50. They were selected on a
schedule of qualifications worked out by a committee on training
of the Boys' Work Section of the Welfare Council. The training
course of nine half-day sessions was compulsory. After an hour of
singing, itself a lesson in group leadership, the men divided into a
dozen or so sections for special instruction in such subjects as
dramatics, club leadership, handcrafts, and game-room and
athletic direction. While the sections were led chiefly by profes-
sional workers so much capacity showed itself among the men
that in some instances leadership was turned over to them.
The whole project, apart from what it is doing for the morale of
the men, has enabled the boys' work agencies to go full steam
ahead at a time when they are greatly needed and when, with
shrinking funds, curtailments in their services seemed inevitable.
Connecticut Takes Steps
ECE every other state that begins to dig into a specific welfare
problem Connecticut, which two years ago appointed a com-
mission to investigate the subject of old-age relief, has learned a
lot about itself. The commission, headed by Charles E. Hart, Jr.,
as chairman with Royal Meeker in charge of the survey and inves-
tigation, found out many things, not all palatable, about
almshouses, their costs and standards, and not a little about the
general welfare situation. It has now presented its report to the
legislature with two proposed bills embodying its recommenda-
tions, high spots of which are:
1. A state-town system of outdoor relief for persons seventy years of
age and over and state-town district welfare homes to supersede existing
town poor-farms and poor-houses.
2. A division of old-age assistance in the State Department of Public
Welfare to administer the district homes and outdoor relief.
3. Ten years' residence in the state required; non-citizens excluded;
the amount of relief to any one person not to exceed $7 a week.
The cost of operating the new division and of providing the
state's share of relief for the 53,192 persons probably eligible
is put at $1,055,000 for the first year. The cost of benefits
would be divided equally between the state and the towns.
As a final recommendation the commission urges the creation
of a welfare commission to study the state's whole existing pro-
gram, to plan for its better coordination and operation
and to study the effectiveness of insurance or contributory
pension plans especially in old-age relief, the report of such :
commission to be made to the legislature in 1935.
Above the Soup Line
Tj^VERYBODY knows that mass treatment in a congregati
•*— ' shelter is often a deadly and devastating experience fo
certain men who in times like this must none the less be subjectec
to it. To mitigate the hardships of some of the boys and younge
men, highly skilled workers or with clerical or professional back
ground, all of them non-family men out of work, the Chicag<
Clearing House for Men, Robert W. Beasley director, has organ
ized a special service division where case-work principles anc
methods are employed under the skilled supervision of Edwin J
Cooley. By arrangement with the Y. M. C. A. this division i:
providing selective housing and extra-shelter maintenance fo
some 360 carefully chosen men. Clerical work-relief projects havi
been developed so that they may earn $4 each week for one six
hour day of work. Three quarters of them have chosen t<
live at one or another of the Y. M. C. A.'s which for $3.60 a weel
provides a $3.50 meal ticket, a room shared with one other mat
and full membership privileges.
As an instance of the calibre of the men he is working with Mr
Cooley cites the experience of the Public Library which witl
some misgiving agreed at first to use six men. At the end of si;
weeks it had 122 men at work at clerical tasks and special dutie:
requiring accuracy and intelligence. "This," says Mr. Coolej
with some warmth, "should interest those citizens who inclint
to the belief that shelter men are casuals undeserving of consider
ation above the level of the soup line."
They Get Together in Kansas
A NICE concert of thought and action in public and private
social-work organization is reflected in the new Handbool
of Kansas Social Resources compiled by leaders in all phases o:
welfare activity, edited by a committee of the Kansas Confer
ence of Social Work, and issued by the governor. The project wa;
first conceived as a joint publication of the proceedings of tht
Conference and of the State Council for Public Welfare, now tht
Kansas Council for Health, Education and Welfare. But thf
scope was soon widened to include special material gathered anc
organized by committees of the Council and institutional survey;
under the auspices of the Public Welfare Commission wit!
various agencies and universities cooperating. The result is a
general stock-taking of welfare resources and problems and the
strength and weakness of organization, with discussion of " the
lines on which progressive and intelligent action should proceec
in an effort to cope successfully with health, educational and wel-
fare problems." The editorial committee included Mabel A. El-
liott, Dr. Carroll D. Clark and Ruth D. Kolling.
The Tennessee White House Conference in November repre-
sented a similiar cooperative effort to gather and analyze facts as
a basis for a program. Under the chairmanship of S. L. Smith,
southern representative of the Rosenwald Fund, committees
including in all some fifteen hundred people were organized in
ninety-four counties to bring in data. " Counties that have a
health unit present a program; those that have not present a
plea," concluded the conference. Popular demand assures another
meeting this year. Mrs. Arch Trawick, of the State Department
of Health, is organizing secretary.
I
At the Root of the Trouble
F the Public Charities Association wins its fight before the
Pennsylvania legislature some at least of the anomalies and
confusions of the state's antiquated poor-relief system will be
cleared up before the winter is over. The weaknesses of that sys-
tem, which have added enormously to the difficulties of
emergency relief administration, are clearly shown in A Primer
of Public Poor Relief in Pennsylvania by Leslie M. Foy, published
•bruary 1933
THE SURVEY
77
r the Association. The Association has now organized two
•ccial committees in its Poor Relief Division to bring
gorously before the public and the legislature, first, the whole
alter of reorganization of public relief administration through-
it the state, and, second, a program for a permanent administra-
jn in the city-county of Philadelphia, now involved in six
parate poor districts operating quite apart from each other and
am the city Department of Public Welfare.
The sixty-seven counties of Pennsylvania administer relief
ider five varying systems in more than four hundred poor
stricts manned by some eight hundred elected officials. Each
strict runs in practically a water-tight compartment, levying
s own taxes, with no state agency vested with authority to stand-
dize methods or equalize relief. "Our hope now," says George
. Bedinger, executive director of the Public Charities Associa-
on, "is to secure the abolition of the 368 borough and township
Dor districts. They are a relic of the Elizabethan era."
Money in 1932
FOUNDATION reports for 1932 show unmistakable symp-
• toms of the depression, not only in shrunken incomes but in
edifications of policies and practices in making grants. The
arnegie Corporation, required by its charter to maintain its
rincipal funds intact, notes that while "normally all grants are
ade with an eye to future possibilities rather than to present
eeds . . . this order has necessarily been reversed and a sub-
antial share of the money available was frankly devoted to
ding over a critical situation." Acting on this policy the Cor-
oration made a grant of $375,000 to the New York Emergency
nemployment Relief Committee "from funds which under
ormal conditions would have gone to the liquidation of charges
gainst future income."
The Milbank Fund, in view of the critical situation in New
ork, dipped into its capital for the $300,000 it contributed to
le same committee.
The Commonwealth Fund, which holds that, "in times like
lese the philanthropic foundation finds perhaps its greatest
sefulness as the custodian of future values which it must
o its best to preserve," made its contribution to the situation by
elping to maintain the established family welfare societies,
jpropriating $5000 to each of eight agencies in Manhattan and
rooklyn and $2000 to each of three agencies in Queens and
ichmond.
As an index of giving during 1932 the John Price Jones Cor-
wation, fund-raising consultants in New York, has made a
ompilation of publicly announced gifts and bequests in New
ork, Chicago, Philadelphia, Baltimore, Washington and Boston.
'irect gifts amounted to a total of $76,044,807 and bequests to
99,964,107. The total, $176,008,914, compares with a total of
344,355,000 in 1931 of which $128,757,732 was in direct gifts and
215,577,268 in bequests. In bequests education topped the list
causes both years but in direct gifts organized relief was far
n the lead.
When Taxpayers Are Nervous
IVEN a new mayor, a multiplying relief load and a public
not too "sold" on modern social practice and almost any
ommunity these days can be forgiven an attack of nerves.
4ontclair, New Jersey, reorganized its Bureau of Public Welfare
n the autumn of 1930, just in time to catch the full after-clap of
le depression. Its relief cases then numbered 363. In September
932, when the cases numbered 3112 and the taxpayer was grow-
ng interrogatory, Mayor Oscar L. Carlson turned to the State
Department of Institutions and Agencies to discover just where
tfontclair stood in relation to the rest of the state. Was its de-
sendency rate higher than that of other communities, were its
elief costs excessive, its system sound, its staff competent
— and what about overhead?
The Department had surveyed the Bureau in 1930 so its study
ad something to go on while it took into account such new fac-
tors as old age and unemployment relief and recent child-welfare
legislation. The resulting report, even in its physical arrangement,
seems admirably calculated to bring understanding to a confused
public. It first answers six clear-cut questions which give the
whole set-up for relief a clean bill of health and which refer to
sections of the report where data supporting the replies are pre-
sented and analyzed. Its recommendations are in four crisp
sentences:
1. A committee of interested citizens to advise with the director in the
determination of policies and to interpret the work to the taxpayer.
2. An additional trained experienced case worker on the staff.
3. Opportunities for volunteer and paid workers for supplemental
training on the job.
4. A recreation program strengthened through voluntary cooperation
of individuals and agencies without increased cost to taxpapers.
The survey was planned and executed by Dr. Ellen C. Potter
and Emil Frankel, divisional directors of the state department,
assisted by Spencer Smith, Louise R. Swain, Laura Howell and
Marian Lockwood. It will result, it is believed, in the general
strengthening of confidence in the public agency and in fortifying
official courage to maintain its standards.
A NEW building, the last word in modern construction and equip-
ment, dedicated exclusively to the use of boys, has been opened as
an annex to the Bedford Branch of the Brooklyn Y. M. C. A.
TUSKEGEE Institute reports that eight lynchings occurred in
1932, five less than in 1931 and thirteen less than in 1930. Seven
of the persons lynched were in the hands of the law when mobs
seized them. Six of the eight were Negroes.
SCHOOL relief, supported by teacher contributions, is going on in
New York despite a cut in school salaries ranging from 6 to 33
percent. Some sixty-two thousand children, short rationed at
home, are fed daily and supplied with clothing when it is needed.
THE American Foundation for the Blind is experimenting with the
production of talking books, that is books recorded for the phono-
graph, and with inexpensive machines for "playing" them. One
of the problems involved is to determine the right quality of speak-
ing voice to make the records.
THE American Public Welfare Association, 850 East 58 Street,
Chicago, has available in multigraphed form, copies of an address
by Simon E. Leland, professor of public law at the University of
Chicago, which discusses the tax structure and status, local, state
and national, in relation to the financing of unemployment relief.
The address was given at the conference on welfare standards
held in Chicago in November. (See The Survey, December 15,
2> Page 68°-)
THE United Charities of St. Paul, 104 Wilder Building, A. A.
Heckman, general secretary, drew from two hundred of its un-
employed clients by means of unsigned questionnaires, a mass
of material showing the client's own estimate of his situation and
his reaction to relief and to the methods of the organization.
The questionnaire with a dozen or so of the letters received in
reply are contained in the pamphlet, We Speak for Ourselves,
which constitutes the unusual and poignant annual report of the
organization.
THE Richmond, Va., Council of Social Agencies has been experi-
menting since mid-January with a so-called city-wide relief
mobilization which includes; a joint application bureau for all
transient and family cases, the office open daily from 8 A.M. to
midnight; the establishment of an exchange for labor and mate-
rials, and the recruiting and training of volunteers. Some 350
volunteers have already gone through a two weeks' institute
conducted by Arthur A. Guild of the Community Fund assisted
by Aileen Shane and June Purcell Guild of the School of Social
Work.
78
THE SURVEY
February 193.
Cancer Publicity Worked
MASSACHUSETTS, which has carried on an organized
program of educational publicity in cancer for the past
six years, has analyzed comparative results for clinics where pub-
licity has been good and for those where it is believed to have
been poor or mediocre. The clinics with good publicity show an
attendance more than two and one half times as great in propor-
tion to population served as those with poor publicity. Publicity
is directed not toward clinic attendance but to taking a patient
who believes he has suspicious symptoms to the office of his
doctor. For every patient who went to the clinic as the result of
publicity, twenty-two went to a doctor; when clinic attendance
grew, visits to doctors increased also and the ratio of one to
twenty-two remained constant. The number of patients served
by private physicians was greater in cities where there were cancer
clinics (and therefore publicity) than in cities without clinics.
Dr. George H. Bigelow, state commissioner of health, reports
that "The Massachusetts program has demonstrated the value
of publicity." Continuous publicity throughout the year by means
of newspapers, lectures, radio and pamphlets is believed to have
been more effective than spasmodic, though intensive, efforts.
Why Girls Die of Tuberculosis
THE reason why more girls than boys die of tuberculosis is—-
because they are girls. Such is the upshot of a study by Edna
E. Nicholson for the National Tuberculosis Association. The re-
port considered the life histories of all the girls between 15 and
24 who died of tuberculosis in New York City in 1929. The com-
posite picture emerging from these 678 tragedies is that of a girl
living with her family in a comfortable six-room house or apart-
ment. Family income was about $50 a week. This "typical" girl
left school at sixteen and worked in an office a half-hour's traveling
distance from her home. Insofar as her family knew she never
had been in close contact with an active case of tuberculosis. She
was a quiet "home girl," not a gadabout; she did not drink,
smoke, diet or keep late hours. She wore the usual type of cloth-
ing, including light underwear and hose and a heavy coat which
her family considered adequate. She had not married and there
was no history of pregnancy. Symptoms of tuberculosis were
observed about three years after she left school; she consulted a
doctor within a month and died within the year after six months
in a hospital or sanatorium. Miss Nicholson finds no evidence
that employment, irregular habits, insufficient food or clothing,
weak familial stock or the influx of girls from rural areas to the
city are vital factors in the high rate of tuberculosis in young
women. Tuberculosis struck the educated and uneducated about
equally, with a slight deviation toward the better educated group.
In 49 percent of the cases studied the home was broken and the
girl may have suffered added strain from helping fill the mother's
place or supplement income; this factor "cannot be disregarded."
The report concludes, however, that "the primary cause of
increased tuberculosis mortality among young women lies in
biological rather than environmental factors." Hope lies in
earlier recognition of symptoms, furthered by periodic examina-
tions in the schools and afterward, and prompt and adequat
care. "Although the deathrates will probably always remaii
higher for young women than for other population groups, mucl
can be accomplished in saving these young lives."
A Hospital's Income Increases
IN contrast to the general experience of hospitals and physi
cians in 1931-2, the Baker Memorial Pavilion of the Massa
chusetts General Hospital (Boston) enjoyed a marked increase ii
occupancy and patients' payments in its second year of operatioi
under a middle-rate plan for patients of moderate means. Th
essential of the plan is the inclusion of all costs, including doctors
fees, in an inclusive moderate rate discussed with the patien
in advance and payable in instalments if need be. Only patient
of moderate means are accepted; their incomes range from les
than $1000 to a sprinkling with more than $5000 who have ;
number of dependents, unusually costly illness or both. Doctors
fees, collected by the hospital, are set according to a scale worke<
out by the medical staff, with a maximum of $150 for all service
in any one illness. In this second year, payments to the hospita
met more than 81 percent of operating costs, including deprecia
tion allowances; the service will be self-supporting when, as it i
better known, average occupancy increases still further. Th*
plan has been received favorably by staff physicians and othe
physicians in the community. These and other facts on financia
and professional experience and an analysis of patients cared fo
are published in a new pamphlet, How Do Physicians am
Patients Like the Middle-Rate Plan for Hospital Care? by C
Rufus Rorem, Clyde D. Frost, M.D., and Elizabeth Richard
Day, available on request of the Julius Rosenwald Fund (490:
Ellis Ave., Chicago) which is cooperating in the project clurinj
the experimental period.
For Self-Supporting Women
ANEW health service has been started by the Douglas Smitl
Fund in Chicago for self-supporting women of low income:
who are without routine medical and dental care. The service i:
open to women between 16 and 35 years of age and provides ;\
complete health examination, including medical and dental ex
amination and an interview with the medical social worker. Foi'
this there is a fee of 50 cents which may be waived if the patien'
is unable to pay. Arrangements for needed treatment are madi
at clinics and dispensaries and the Fund helps to pay the cost i:
the patient cannot meet it. Dental examinations are given onlj
as part of the health examination and patients are not acceptec
for dental care alone. If the patient has no dentist of her own
arrangements for necessary work are made with private dentist:
cooperating with the Fund. Persons who already have had med
ical diagnoses and are known to be in need of specific treatment are
not eligible for the service, but should be referred directly to one
of the existing clinics. Patients are referred through socia
agencies by appointment during evening hours and Saturda)
afternoons.
A United Health Front
HOW a health council works to pool resources, strengther
common interest and effort, promote research and aid ir
program-making is the subject of a pamphlet Health Councils
by Howard Whipple Green, secretary of the Cleveland Healtl
Council, recently published by the Committee on the Costs o:
Medical Care as No. 12 in its series of Miscellaneous Contribu
tions. At least a dozen cities have developed organizations of thi:
type during the past fifteen years and others are in process o:
formation. In another recent publication, Surveys cf Organizec
Medical Service, the Committee on the Costs of Medical Can
brings together abstracts of five studies (Nos. 17-21) dealing wit!
medical organizations in as many communities under industrial
university, army and community auspices. From these and
'ebruary 1933
THE SURVEY
79
arlier surveys in the same field Harry H. Moore, director of
tudy, concludes: "With disinterested leadership, medical facil-
ies can be efficiently organized to achieve economies in the
reduction of medical care without sacrifice of the quality of
:rvice. The returns to practitioners can be increased or stabilized
bove the level of the average net income of private practitioners,
ledical care can be provided to the eligible population in larger
olume than is obtained by comparable groups of families who
ay for medical care on a fee-for-service basis. The burden of the
osts of illness can be distributed over a large number of people.
Inder a system of small periodic payments by all the partici-
ants in a group, more money can be made available for the care
nd prevention of illness than is spent for this purpose under pri-
ate practice." Copies of these pamphlets are available on request
f the Committee on the Costs of Medical Care, 910 Seventeenth
t., N.W., Washington, D. C.
W\
Threefold Nutrition
HAT might be called a project in threefold nutrition has
been found effective this year by the Directory for
lothers' Milk in Boston. In order to insure the quality of milk
ollected from nursing mothers and supplied to sick and premature
abies in hospitals and private homes, the Directory has found
: necessary in many cases to supplement the mother's own food,
specially by fruit and milk, thus making sure of adequacy of
iet for herself, her own baby, and the baby to whom the pur-
hased milk is given. The Directory was started in 1910 as a
enter from which women with babies were sent out as wet nurses
ito homes where a baby needed breast milk. In 1927 the Di-
sctory for Wet Nurses became the Directory for Mothers'
lilk, and since that time the practice has been to have graduate
urses collect breast milk daily from healthy women in their own
omes and bring it to a central laboratory for distribution. The
lilk is purchased from the mothers at the rate of 7 cents an
unce. On the average the women earn about $25 a month
hough in some cases a woman has earned $100. A mother may
ot sell milk to the Directory unless her supply exceeds the need
f her own baby; both she and the baby receive a thorough
'hysical examination and the home and family are kept under
areful supervision through the daily visit of the nurse to get the
lilk. Once collected, the milk is pasteurized, tested and rebottled
t the laboratory of the Directory at Boston Lying-in Hospital,
hen sold to hospitals at the cost price of 15 cents an ounce and
> families whose babies need it at rates ranging from 30 cents to
ent an ounce according to their means. In many cases where
Pertinent Publications
PUBLICATIONS ON LOW COST DIET. Social Work Publicity Council.
130 E. 22 St., New York City. Price 6 cents.
Bibliography of authoritative material which may be ob-
tained easily and cheaply. Part I, for administrators and
workers; Part II, for. the worker and housewife.
FAMILY FOOD BUDGETS FOR THE USE OF RELIEF AGENCIES.
Children's Bureau, U. S. Department of Labor and Bureau of Home Eco-
nomics, U. S. Department of Agriculture. Free to social agencies and relief
workers on request from these bureaus.
"In effect a work sheet for relief agents to assist them in
making up weekly market orders for needy families."
EPIDEMIC INFLUENZA. A revised circular on request from the New York
State Department of Health, Albany, N. Y.
VISION TESTING FOR THE YOUNG CHILD, by Mary Emma Smith,
R.N., and C. Edith Kerby. Publication No. 106, The National Society for the
Prevention of Blindness, 450 Seventh Avc., New York. Price 10 cents.
Progress, methods and results in the use of eye tests for
pre-school children.
CARE OF YOUR GLASSES. New York Stale Commission for the Blind,
SO Centre St., New York City. On request.
Recent publications of the Commission include this
leaflet and a poster, 24 x 36 in., featuring vision tests as a
first aid to education, also available on request.
nothing could be paid it is given free. The money earned by the
mothers through the sale of their milk has proved in many cases
a most necessary supplement to the family income, especially
during the depression, and when necessary extra food or clothing
is given to the mother to enable her to continue a service which is
sometimes the means of keeping the family from applying for
relief. Similar organizations for the purchase and distribution of
mothers' milk have been established in Detroit, New York, Los
Angeles, Hartford and Pittsburgh.
THE New Haven, Connecticut, Departments of Health and Edu-
cation have evolved a new health card to be filed for each school-
child. The card goes on through the grades with the child, noting
physical defects found, efforts to right them, and the like, so that
at any moment school physicians, teachers and nurses have a
picture of his health progress all along the line.
THE Maryland Society for Mental Hygiene attributes to the de-
pression the fact that a rising percentage of clinic patients during
1932 were adults. "The average adult now seen at the clinic is a
superior individual as compared to the former type. Many of
these people are men, often they are the heads of families, and
they have, in the past, been used to meeting the ordinary needs
of their families and their obligations to society."
IN Peekskill, N. Y., Christmas decorations were transmuted into
some twenty-two thousand quarts of milk to be distributed
through the local milk fund by a decision of the Merchants'
Association to give for this purpose the money ordinarily spent
on greens and colored lights in the business section. A similar
decision by the Tarrytown (N. Y.) Broadway and Main Street
Merchants' Association provided money for a milk fund for the
Tarrytown Hospital pediatric clinic and the visiting nurse service.
IN a report to the National Committee for Mental Hygiene Dr.
Douglas A. Thorn calls attention to a 30 percent increase in 1931
in first admissions to government hospitals. Half of these new
patients were suffering from both nervous and mental disorders.
There has been no comparable increase in admissions to state and
other hospitals for mental disease from the civilian population.
Dr. Thorn suggests that illness in itself may be a defense in
adversity and that a large group of victims of severe economic
conditions "have found in the generous legislation of the United
Statqs Government a staff upon which to lean in times of trouble."
IF Californians grouse about their taxes like the rest of us and are
likely to blame social services for high costs, they will be inter-
ested to learn the State Health Department's computation that
public health expenditures from state taxes amount to about 8
cents a person a year, which is one third of i percent of per
capita state expenditures. From the director of the New Mexico
State Health Department, Dr. Rosslyn Earp, comes the sug-
gestion of a new and true slogan: "A good health department is
the best home insurance."
BEGINNING with 1933 each of the 161 state-aided hospitals in
Pennsylvania will be required to meet minimum standards set up
by the Department of Welfare before payment can be made on
its appropriation. The standards specify minimum requirements
in plant and equipment, administration and service and were
authorized by the administrative code after almost a year of
study by a committee representing the Hospital Association of
Pennsylvania and the State Departments of Health, Labor and
Industry, Justice, Public Instruction and Welfare. Since many
hospitals already far exceed the standards, the primary effect
will be to put pressure on the less progressive institutions.
80
THE SURVEY
February 193.
Standards for Working Children
V\/'HAT is happening to child workers in industry under de-
' pression conditions was canvassed by representatives of
thirty child welfare organizations and federal and state labor
officials in a recent conference called by the U. S. Children's
Bureau at the request of the American Federation of Labor.
The gathering considered the vocational unsuitability of jobs
now open to children, their exploitation in sweatshops where long
hours, unsanitary conditions and miserable wages prevail, the
economic unsoundness of permitting boys and girls to work when
the labor market is flooded with unemployed adults and the cur-
tailment of school budgets. The conference recommended the
organization of state conferences to help in establishing and de-
fending standards of child labor, and a continuing committee was
set up to carry out the recommendations of the conference.
The conference agreed that a program for state child-labor
legislation should include: a basic i6-year minimum age for all
gainful e/nployment, with certain exceptions of carefully selected
occupations for the 14- and 1 5-year-old group outside school
hours; maximum working hours for minors under 18 shorter
than the prevailing standard for adults and in no case to exceed
eight a day; mandatory minimum-wage legislation for minors
under 18; age minimum higher than 16 for hazardous occupations;
provision for payment of double compensation to minors under 18
injured while employed in violation of the child labor law.
To make these standards effective, adequate provision for ad-
ministration was urged, including the establishment of bureaus of
women and children in state labor departments, strengthening
such bureaus where they are already established and registration
of business firms with the state labor departments to facilitate
inspection.
The Shorter Work Week
\ SHORTENED work week, advocated by economists, techno-
**• crats and organized labor as a step away from depression,
looms large as a legislative possibility. At the preparatory con-
ference at Geneva, the entire employers group, except the Itali-
ans, is opposing the forty-hour-week convention, put forward as
a "remedy" for unemployment. The workers' group insists that
hours must be reduced without any reduction in wages. The
British and German governments reject this proposal, though the
Germans defend the forty-hour convention, which the British
government opposes. The conference, which will continue its
work for some weeks, is attended by thirty-four nations. It is
" tripartite" in organization with a delegate from the government,
the employers and the workers of each country. The United
States and Soviet Russia declined to participate.
At this writing, hearings on the Black bill, establishing a thirty-
hour-work week, are being held by a Senate Judiciary subcommit-
tee. Employers and representatives of organized labor have urged
that the bill be amended to include provisions for a minimum-
wage scale and to protect workers against further wage cuts.
A spokesman for the major engineering societies, endorsed the
Black bill, but urged that legislation go further. He suggested an
industrial commission, similar to the Interstate Commerce Com-
mission, to operate in the field of employment, having power t
regulate hours and working conditions in industries according t
the labor supply and the demand for the product of the industrie:
Canners and Their Code
!_/" XCESSI VELY long hours and low wages prevail in the Ne\
-*— ' York State canning industry largely because of the failur
of employers to live up to the new code adopted by the state labc
department a year ago, after its terms had been worked on
jointly by the department and the canners. This is the gist of th
report just issued by the Consumers' League of New York, base
on a twelve weeks' field study of the industry.
Wages of twelve and a half cents an hour were paid to abou
three fourths of the women in the forty-three plants from whic
wage data were secured. The lowest wage found was eight cent
an hour in one plant and the highest was twenty-two cents a
hour, also found in only one plant.
The field study was made and the report written by Elinore IV
Herrick, executive secretary of the organization, who visile
fifty-four plants. In general, she reports, "employers frankly ac
mitted using overtime, even illegally, preferring to pay a fine
convicted rather than go to the trouble of employing extra help.
In one plant where women had worked long after ten p.m., mat
ing a good many more than twelve-hours work for the day, th
employer stated that "fewer workers are employed this year z
we find it cheaper to use overtime occasionally."
The plants which conformed at least in part to the code foun
it possible to do so through systematic recruiting of labor to insui
an adequate working force, with provision for an extra crew t
handle peak loads; production schedules to utilize workers an
equipment effectively within a ten-hour day; definite arrangt
ments for regularity in deliveries of raw material. Mrs. Herric
comments, "The fact that even seven employers found it possibl
to carry out the code — in part if not altogether — shows the
with greater effort and goodwill it can be successfully operated."
In the Labor Schools
BROOKWOOD LABOR COLLEGE reports that it began tli
winter term of its twelfth year with thirty workers as sti
dents. Miners from Illinois, West Virginia and Pennsylvani;
textile workers from New England and the South, Detroit aut
mechanics, and Negroes from the Pullman Porters' organizatio
are studying labor history and tactics, economics, public speakin
and journalism. A financial campaign sponsored by John Dewe;
Jane Addams, E. C. Lindeman, Bishop Francis McConnell an
others made possible the continuation of the school after the fa
term.
From Commonwealth College at Mena, Arkansas, comes new
of how that lively workers' education project has weathered
storm of another sort. There two students took the lead in tryin
to force the school to abandon its non-factional position and t
adopt the program of the Communist Party. These two prop;
gandists succeeded in tying up the work of the college for sever:
days with a student strike which developed exciting episodes o
the usually quiet campus. The strikers broke locks on colleg
buildings, picketed the classroom, the library, the workshop an
other buildings, blocked the public mail highway, put the colleg
truck out of commission. The Baltimore Evening Sun commente
editorially,
We have concluded that even a class-conscious student body compose
wholly of serious thinkers must sometimes kick over the traces. At Mer
no doubt a student strike . . . has many of the characteristsof a footbt
rally or a raid on a movie palace at some of our more conventional unive
sines.
The two ring leaders were suspended, though it was necessat
to call in legal assistance to persuade them to leave the campu;-
Thirty of their followers, almost half the student body, went wit
them.
Lucien Koch, director of the school, states,
The experience will undoubtedly be more difficult for the public to undei
stand than for those who know the workings of our community, normal
'bruary 1933
THE SURVEY
81
lelightful place but occasionally suffering from its concentrated but not
oroughly integrated varieties of radicalism. We feel very sorry that the
lowers of the Communist Party on the campus have not been content
th their opportunity freely to propagandize for their economic and
litical beliefs which this school with its prevailing "left" philosophy was
willing to grant them.
Jnemployment Insurance in Canada
DOMINION-PROVINCIAL conference to consider unem-
ployment insurance has been called by Premier Bennett in
anada, and will be in session before this issue comes from the
•ess. Premier Bennett, who included unemployment insurance
his campaign platform, organized the conference after impres-
ve unemployment demonstrations in a number of Canada's
dustrial centers. The conference will consider the advisability of
tting up a scheme of contributory unemployment insurance for
le dominion. Leaders of the Canadian Trades and Labor Con-
ess have come out for a plan in which employers, employes and
IB state contribute to a reserve fund. Organizations of the
nemployed oppose vigorously this three-way system, holding
lat the expense of unemployment insurance should be borne by
dustry and the state, without contributions from the workers.
Steadying Jobs
LTOW a public employment office has helped regularize employ-
l ment in a highly seasonal local industry is told in a recent
•port by Mabel E. Crafts, head of the women's industrial divi-
on of the Rochester, N. Y. Public Employment Center. Under
liss Crafts' direction the center has for a year and a half carried
n a field-work campaign to develop the clearing-house idea'in
ic industry in question. This industry has six large factories in
le Rochester area, each employing more than five-hundred
orkers in a normally busy season, fifteen smaller factories and
mr plants making units used in the business. At least half the
>rce in each plant is made up of women. Before the public em-
.oyment service stepped in, the industry had recruited its labor
irough want ads, and had always suffered a dearth of skilled
orkers in peak periods. By agreement with the service, plant
jperintendents and foremen now call the center when they need
<tra help. A policy of openly borrowing workers from plant to
lant has been adopted, with the center as a clearing house. The
inter got the cooperation of one of the trade schools to train
orkers in new operations and to retrain workers who have been
ut of the industry for some time.
A new industry using the same type of skilled operators re-
;ntly located in Rochester. It was informed by the employment
;nter of the seasonal complications of the older industry, and has
rranged its production schedule to miss the peaks of the other
lants. In this way employment periods for a large group of
•orkers will be spread out, and neither industry will be crippled
>r lack of skilled workers at its busy season.
First Aid to Industrial Research
LTOLDING that "wise social engineering" calls for continuing
*• study of industrial problems, a number of graduate students
•f Harvard and Columbia have organized themselves as the
ndustrial Research Group, "to sketch the general significance of
arious neglected social problems and to define the elements in
tiese problems to which original research may be usefully di-
ected." The group has prepared three series of bulletins indicat-
ig the source materials available in the fields treated and the
rocedure which an adequate investigation of the subject de-
lands. The group also offers to answer questions on bibliography
r other phases of research in its area, and, where possible, to
ring worth-while studies to the attention of interested social
gencies, students in similar fields or publishers. The 1932 bulle-
ins cover company towns, decaying unions, labor in business,
- 'ublic ownership, guide to research in industrial problems. These
" ulletins are available at six cents each from the secretary, Lucy
Kramer, 412 Schermerhorn Annex, Columbia University, New
York City. The 1930 and 1931 series are no longer available for
distribution, but copies will be loaned to those planning research
in the fields they cover: democracy and leadership in labor unions,
labor and its press, labor and the police, poor man's justice, prison
industries, the profit motive, the young worker in industry, con-
sumer's power, the intellectual and the labor movement, agricul-
tural prosperity and labor unionism, managers in the profit
system, the labor injunction.
Dismissal Wages in Depression
T?XPERIENCE of eighty companies with dismissal-wage
•f--' plans during the depression is outlined in a bulletin recently
published by the Industrial Relations Section, Princeton Univer-
sity, based on field visits to the plants in the summer of 1932. The
eighty concerns normally employ more than 1,400,000 workers.
The present bulletin is a supplement to Dismissal Compensation,
a general survey of company plans put out by the section in 1 93 1 .
Some of the plans considered were devised to meet one type of
problem caused by the closing of a plant, old age of the worker, or
cyclical depression; many were adopted as "standard procedure
and cover a variety of contingencies." The report adds, however,
"it must be admitted that the present depression has been a po-
tent factor in the introduction of new plans." Compared with
other industrial relations programs, the report shows, dismissal-
wage plans have not been seriously curtailed by the depression.
This is probably because they are quite new, and because they
meet an acute need. The plans are sharply divided between those
providing a lump-sum payment, and those which spread the
benefits over a considerable period through periodic payments.
Only two of the companies studied have set up special funds to
meet dismissal-wage payments. In the others, the cost of the
plans is charged directly or indirectly to the department or other
operating unit. The report includes tables showing the detailed
provisions of the plans included in the study.
WHETHER or not unemployment is a suitable hazard for actua-
rially sound insurance was discussed by Professor H. L. Rietz,
University of Iowa, before the recent meeting of the American
Association for the Advancement of Science. Pointing out that
schemes for unemployment insurance involving government
participation would have to be undertaken "in the dark" at the
present time Prof. Rietz urged that experimental plans be en-
couraged and urged to keep records on which calculation of rates
of unemployment may be based.
THE breakdown in standards of wages and hours of women work-
ers under the pressure of hard times is pictured in a pamphlet
giving excerpts from the discussion at a recent conference called
by the National Consumers' League (156 Fifth Avenue, New
York). The report includes details of the present situation in
many industrial communities, and the remedies brought forward
by the conference.
AN Analysis of Three Unemployment Surveys in Minneapolis,
St. Paul and Duluth, recently published by the University of
Minnesota Employment Stabilization Research Institute, covers
duration of unemployment, length of time employed in last posi-
tion, reasons for unemployment and personal data for more than
ten thousand jobless workers in these three industrial cities.
GARRETT, Indiana, has issued a booklet for taxpayers reporting
on the public operation of local water and light plants. 'Earnings
from these utilities last year made possible a 2g-cent reduction in
the tax rate. The indications are that by 1936 the utilities will
have freed the city of debt and made taxes unnecessary. In less
than six years, the city has completely rebuilt its water and power
systems. Garrett is a " railroad town." Practically all the city
officials who originally launched the municipal ownership move-
ment as well as those who are now in office are railway workers
and members of the standard railway labor organizations.
82
THE SURVEY
February 19:,
EB17CAT
Country Schools in Hard Times
SERIOUS as is the effect of the depression on city schools and
on the children who attend them, the plight of the rural
school child is even more desperate, according to the summary,
How Rural Schools Have Been Hit, by Walter H. Gaumnitz, in the
last issue of School Life. In some states, notably the New England
group, California and Arizona, no serious educational cuts have
been made, though strict economy is being practiced. But many
states report four types of losses affecting the quality and amount
of education available to country children. In some communities
the schools are closed for lack of funds. Thus in twenty-five
Alabama counties all rural schools closed during November,
throwing five thousand teachers out of employment and affecting
more than two hundred thousand children. In some places, the
school term has been shortened. Four out of five counties in
Arkansas have closed some of their schools, and school terms have
been shortened by amounts varying from ten days to two months.
Deterioration of school buildings and equipment is general in
southern and middlewestern rural areas where schools have been
hardest hit. Using Arkansas and Alabama as his examples, Mr.
Gaumnitz reports that in the former state 46 percent of the rural
schools are operating with "abnormal lack of equipment and
supplies," and that more than a quarter of the country schools in
both states are postponing greatly needed repairs.
In addition to cuts in teachers' salaries due to shortened terms,
many hard-hit counties have also reduced salary rates. The aver-
age salary cut for all Alabama counties reporting to the U. S.
Office of Education was 12.1 percent for elementary teachers, 17.9
for highschools. Some schools reported paying as little as $60 a
month on a six-months basis, making the teacher's annual income
$360. Mr. Gaumnitz points out that, "even with the return of
good times," it will take years for the rural schools to return to
pre-depression conditions, "and these conditions were poor
enough at best in many a rural community."
Using Leisure for Learning
FROM January 1930 to November 1932, more than thirty-
five thousand unemployed adults were given opportunity to
improve their vocational skill or to acquire new skill in the New
York City continuation schools. The program was suspended by
the Board of Education, as part of its economy campaign, but in
the middle of December the State Department of Education, in
conjunction with the Temporary Emergency Relief Administra-
tion took over the work, with an appropriation of $30,000.
The scheme, a new departure in a public school system, has at-
tracted the attention of organizations interested in adult educa-
tion and in the relief of unemployment. The principal aims of the
project are: to sustain the morale of the unemployed; to improve
their equipment; to prevent loss of skill during the jobless period.
Vocational counseling, physical examination and health educa-
tion and some help in family problems are also offered.
A detailed account of the program, as carried out in the Brook-
lyn Boys Continuation School is given in a report prepared by the
Civic Committee for Adult Literacy (96 Street Branch, New YOB
Public Library, New York City). Among the unemployed
applied at this school for instruction seventy-nine occupatior
were represented, thirty-nine of them highly skilled.
The period of unemployment averaged 11.4 months for
married men in the group, 9.6 months for the single men. Aboi
12 percent had been jobless for two years or more. The Brookly
experiment last year included a six-weeks summer term as well ;
the regular winter classes.
School for Office Workers
\ SUMMER school for office workers, giving girls with cleric
•f*- jobs the chance for a vacation combining study and pla
such as industrial women may have at Bryn Mawr, Wisconsin (
Barnard is announced by the Affiliated Schools for Workers (
East 35 Street, New York). The first session will be held on
Oberlin campus in the summer of 1933 and will probably be foi
weeks long. Students will be recruited through national organiz;
tions such as the National Federation for Business and Profe:
sional Women, and the Business Girls' Department of tl
Y.W.C.A. Oberlin will offer its equipment at cost. The studen-
will pay for board and room. A budget covering teaching an
administrative costs is being raised. The study program, large!
drawn from the fields of economics, history and English, will b
developed in such a way as to emphasize the relationship of th
problems of this group of workers to the wider problems of a
workers.
Salvage
NEED to extend the retraining opportunities open to disable
persons, rather than the achievements of the present pr<
gram are emphasized in the section on rehabilitation in the annu:
report of the Federal Board for Vocational Education. The repoi
shows that the cost of reeducating a disabled civilian average
under $300, considerably less than the cost of maintaining such •
person, unequipped to earn his own living, for one year as a publi
charge. The national rehabilitation program, which has just cot
eluded its twelfth year, has now been established in all but foij
states (see The Survey, March 15, 1931, page 670). The numberc
persons taking such training increased from about 2500 in 1922 t
nearly 28,000 in 1932. Expenditure of state and federal funds fc
this purpose rose in the same period from less than $200,000 t
more than $2,100,000. The report points out that there are it
present some four hundred thousand crippled children in th:
country, and that experience shows that " the process of establish
ing these crippled children vocationally should begin immediate!
upon the inception of the disability." The present program doe
not extend to this group, nor does it -include a larger number c
persons disabled by tuberculosis and by cardiac diseases. Fou
major studies in its field are being carried forward by the vocs
tional rehabilitation division. These include: methods by whic
rehabilitated persons obtain employment, covering the job histor
of five thousand individuals; study of all persons undertakin
rehabilitation programs in 1932 who were unsuccessful, and th
reasons for their failure; trends and practices in commerch
rehabilitation training; the small business enterprise as a metho
of rehabilitation.
Bridges of Understanding
DESCRIBED as "an experiment in international living," th
plans for a second summer that combines camping, trav<
and, incidentally, language study and practice for groups <
American young people are taking shape under the leadership c
Donald B. Watt of Syracuse University, who directed a simila
project last summer. Groups of highschool boys and girls and c
college students who speak French or German are to sail about th
end of June for about two and a half months, largely spent wit
European young people of the same ages. The German-speakin
ebruary 1933
THE SURVEY
83
ighschool group will probably be coeducational, and its program
icludes a week's wanderung in the Fuerstenwalde, and a
lonth in a school camp in the mountains of Austria. The program
>r German-speaking college men includes a two weeks' falt-
)0t (folding canoe) trip on the Danube, a month in a work-
amp and a two weeks' hike in Austria. Workcamps, which have
rown out of Germany's depression, are made up of farmers,
iborers and students who live together and work eight hours a
ay, without compensation, on some needed improvement for the
ublic good. They have brought together the most interesting
ibor-student types in Germany. The French-speaking groups,
oth highschool and college, will have camp experience, bicycle
rips, and a week or more of French family life. In his preliminary
nnouncement, Professor Watt points out that:
le purpose of the undertaking is not primarily for study either of the
mguage or of international relations, but to learn by experience in living
ith young people of another culture something about that culture under
jnditions which are as pleasant and healthful as possible. The promoters
the experiment . . . are primarily interested that American young
eople should make friends in Europe.
For the coming summer, each group will be limited in size to
Durteen members and a leader. No one under sixteen years of age
/ill be accepted.
Illiterates in the U.S.A.
I ENUINE progress in cutting down illiteracy in all sections of
the country is noted by the National Advisory Committee
n Illiteracy in its final report. The committee, appointed by
resident Hoover three years ago, with Secretary Wilbur as chair-
lan, ended its work December 31 for lack of funds (see The Sur-
ey, February 15, 1930, page 565). Its program will be taken over
y the National Illiteracy Crusade, of which Cora Wilson Stewart
director. The committee feels that it has helped make the na-
on "illiteracy conscious," which was described as its chief aim.
orty-four state branches were organized to cooperate with the
ommittee. The 1930 census showed a reduction of 648,152 in the
umber of illiterates in the previous decade, during which the
eneral population increased by more than 17 millions. Examples
" what has been accomplished by intensive effort are cited from
xmisiana where over ninety thousand illiterates were placed
nder instruction, and Georgia, where one hundred and eighteen
lousand have received similar help. The committee's final report
tressed
ic need for rousing every community to its utmost effort, every State
Apartment of Education to assume its responsibility, and all state legis-
tures to appropriate funds for the removal of illiteracy.
The committee's report puts at 4,283,753 the number of persons
n the United States who can neither read nor write. Many of the
ducational efforts on behalf of adult illiterates, including night
chools in both city and rural communities, are in danger of being
eliminated" from current school budgets as "educational frills."
Fathers as Parents
DEASONS why fathers play so inconspicuous a part in parent-
*- *• teacher groups and what can be done about it were recently
'.tudied by a committee representing the 160 parent associations
iffiliated in the United Parents Association of New York City.
The problem, as defined by the study group, was made up of
he obvious facts that while women compose "parents" organizations,
Jarents are of both sexes; fathers need to understand their children; . . .
he provision on a large scale for extension of improved education requires
.•specially the force of man-manipulated civics and politics; . . . men are
leveloping unwholesome defense attitudes . . . about this new fangled
-hild study and progressive education.
Questionnaires and letters of inquiry were sent to twenty se-
; :ected women presidents of parents organizations, to seventy-five
nale officers of such groups, to ten progressive schools and to
.wenty-five social and educational leaders who have been success-
hful in organizing men. The material brought together under-
scored the present failure of the associations to enlist or to hold
the active interest of fathers of school children. The committee's
recommendations include: that each member organization hold at
least part of its meetings in the evening; that there be continued
emphasis on the participation of both parents in all announce-
ments, conferences, printed matter and so on; that as far as possi-
ble men be included in committee memberships and chairman-
ships; that a special committee on participation of fathers in
parents associations be established in the association.
The detailed report of the study contains many interesting facts
and suggestions. Mimeographed copies are available from the
organization, 152 West 42 Street, New York City.
Wisconsin's Free Air
POLITICAL education by radio, non-partisan and uncensored,
covering 90 percent of the state's area was the large-scale
experiment tried in Wisconsin in the presidential campaign.
Through the two state-owned stations, one at the University of
Wisconsin the other at the Wisconsin Department of Agriculture
and Markets, the views of all political parties were broadcast
regularly for two periods, one of thirty minutes, one of an hour,
five days a week during the pre-election period. At a conference of
party representatives in July, the division of time, delegation of
speakers and certain conditions corresponding to a code of ethics
were agreed upon. Wherever possible, candidates spoke, since it
was a primary purpose to permit citizens to hear at first-hand the
men for whom they were asked to vote. The time was divided
among the Democratic, Prohibition, Conservative Republican,
Progressive Republican, Socialist, Communist and Socialist-
Labor parties. There was no charge to party organizations or to
candidates for these radio hours.
Commenting on the values of the experiment, L. W. Bridgman
of the University Extension Division points out:
High-pressure tactics and mass-psychology tricks used by the old-time
politician to sway his audience will not work over the air. Listeners are
scattered, at most in very small groups in their homes under conditions
conducive to thinking and reasoning. Every talk is likely to be critically
and sanely appraised. . . . Political meetings generally draw only those
people whose views are in accord with those of the speakers. People
usually read only the newspapers of their own political beliefs. . . .
Radio has brought to Wisconsin listeners, through publicly owned stations,
each party viewpoint on Wisconsin's interest in the elections and has
contributed to a more enlightened citizenry.
PRESENT trends in supply, demand and outlook in sixteen selected
occupations for educated women, and a summary of placements in
college appointment bureaus during the depression are covered in
a recent bulletin published by the Southern Women's Educa-
tional Alliance, Grace-American Bldg., Richmond, Va. The sur-
vey is based on reports " by technicians of national status in each
field," at a recent conference held by the alliance.
THE four Mississippi colleges dropped from membership in the
Association of Colleges and Secondary Schools on charges of
lowered standards, due to political interference with their
faculties, have been reinstated, according to an Associated Press
report (see The Survey, November 15, 1930, page 223). The
State College for Women was unconditionally restored to member-
ship, the university was taken back conditionally, and the
Agricultural and Mechanical College and the State Teachers
College were readmitted on probation, "pending further improve-
ment in educational work."
THE average child, apt to be overlooked in our concern with " the
gifted" and "the subnormal" was the subject of a two-day
conference of the Child Study Association of America in October.
In response to a widespread demand, much of the conference
material is published in the January issue of Child Study, includ-
ing a balanced consideration of "standards" of growth and
development, and what they really mean.
84
THE SURVEY
February 193
Proposed Federal Relief Amendment
A BILL has been introduced by Senators Costigan and La-
•**- Follette the principal features of which are the appropriation
of an additional five hundred million dollars for federal relief; the
creation of a new Federal Emergency Relief Board to supersede
the Reconstruction Finance Corporation in handling the funds,
and the abolishment of the present loan features, making federal
funds available to the states as grants-in-aid.
Frank Bane, director of the American Public Welfare Associa-
tion, testifying on January 3 at the hearing on this bill, said:
Up to date, the federal government has not contributed directly toward
the handling of this problem of relief. It has only enabled the states to
borrow money.
I think the next step in our efforts to cope with this problem will be,
and should be, direct material contribution by the federal government.
I believe that it is a national problem, and being a national problem I
believe that the national government should contribute not only its
guidance and assistance, which are very necessary, but also financial help
in the handling of the problem. The states are going to have for years to
come a hang-over job from this depression which is going to tax the re-
sources and ingenuity of state governments.
Federal grants instead of loans would enable us to spread throughout
this country a more adequate and more uniform system of relief than
is possible under our present plan.
Another bill, introduced by Senator Cutting, would broaden the
present powers of the R. F. C. to enable it to grant up to fifteen
million dollars to enable states having an excessive number of
non-resident dependents to administer subsistence, work relief
and vocational training projects for such persons without having
to draw upon the state's own resources.
Red Cross Wheat and Cotton
' I ''HE distribution of government-owned wheat and cotton by
J- the American Red Cross has played an important part in
meeting the relief needs of many millions of people during this
past year. Robert E. Bondy gives a full account of these activities
in the January issue of the Red Cross Courier.
The distribution of Farm Board wheat was begun in March
1932 when Congress made forty million bushels available to the
American Red Cross. This was exhausted in September, but an
additional forty-five million bushels had been voted in July.
The first act of Congress provided for the use of wheat for
stock feed in the 1931 crop-failure areas. Three hundred and
thirty-one counties in sixteen states were certified by the United
States Department of Agriculture as falling within this area.
Between March 7 and the end of May, when new pasturage made
further distribution unnecessary, 222,816 tons of stock feed were
distributed in these counties.
Flour distribution also began in March 1932 but extended to
the entire country and continues to this time.
By arrangement with the millers, who cooperate with the Red
Cross, the cost of milling, bagging and transportation is paid in
wheat. Thus, the flour is delivered free at its destination, but,
the local Red Cross chapter or other distributor bears further
charges such as hauling and storage.
One barrel of flour is found to meet the needs of the average
family for flour products for ninety days. Application is therefore
made by the chapters in behalf of all local relief organizations for
flour for a ninety-day period for those families in need. Up to
December 10, 1932 a total of 6,653,958 barrels of flour had been
requisitioned and 4,488,477 families had been aided in this way.
At the present rate of consumption it is estimated that the
wheat available will make possible the continuation of this dis-
tribution until about June i, 1933. In some city communities this
item has represented as high as 18 per cent of a family budget.
On July 5, 1932 Congress granted the American Red Cross five
hundred thousand bales of cotton to provide clothing for the
needy and distressed.
The problem of handling the cotton was more complex. Two
restrictions had been placed by Congress upon its use. It could not
Unemployment anc
Edited b
JOANNA C. COLCOR]
and RUSSEI.L H. KURT
be sold, but was to be exchanged either for cotton cloth or fc
ready-made cotton garments.
The Red Cross set up a Central Cotton Distribution Office i
Washington where orders were placed with manufacturers an
shipments were made to local chapters. Cotton materials, such z
ginghams, shirtings, muslins and cotton prints were distribute
to Red Cross chapters and other relief organizations to be mad
up either by volunteers or in work-relief workrooms.
Probably 150,000 volunteers are active in the production c
garments from this "Red Cross cloth." The necessary finding
such as thread, buttons, lace, etc., have been provided by chapte
funds or collected by Junior Red Cross school children.
Closely following the distribution of cloth came the distributio
of underwear, hosiery, overalls, etc., the selection of garments t
be distributed being based on questionnaire replies from chapter
as to garments most needed which could be made of cotton.
Up to December 9, 1932, 50,882,988 yards of cotton cloth an
i,597)°69 dozen garments had been secured in exchange for rai
cotton. Chapter reports showed that 4,238,865 families nee
clothing.
All except 33,000 of the 500,000 bales of cotton have been usec
but a bill is now before Congress authorizing a grant of an addi
tional 350,000 bales of government-owned cotton to the Re
Cross.
Self-Help in the Northwest
ETE developments in Seattle include the organization of
new group of the organized unemployed, called the Ecc
nomic Security League, under the leadership of the moderate
who originally organized the Unemployed Citizens' League
Their purpose is to revive the earlier program of self-help an>
thus reduce the burdens on the taxpayer; and to oppose the re
turn of the relief function by the new county commissioners t
the U.C.L., which is now under extreme radical leadership
There thus comes into being a right wing and a left wing amon;
the organized unemployed themselves in Seattle.
A report to the State Legislature of Washington, made by
committee of faculty of the State University, estimates that wel
over a million persons in the state are members of the leagues o
unemployed citizens, which have been organized into count;
units as the United Producers of Washington.
Among the difficulties which have been encountered by sel
help groups the committee lists the. following:
1. Lack of effective organization: Officers have been chosei
unwisely and changed frequently in democratic organizations
These changes are confusing to those who deal with these groups
Insincere leaders may exploit groups for political power or othe
advantage since members in meetings are easily swayed. Ex
tremely capable executives may not appear to advantage in opei
meetings. Alignments within groups are developed, especially b;
differences in meetings.
The Committee feels that details of policy and practice shoult
not be debated in meetings of the whole group and that group
should allow authority to officers and safeguard against suddet
change. If state and county officials are appreciative, discerning
and tactful, they can help to encourage good leadership.
2. No adequate means of exchange and insufficient funds tt
carry on production.
ebruary 1933
THE SURVEY
85
ommunity Action
This department is an emergency information
service to public officials and to members,
executives and supervisors of citizens' com-
mittees. News of interesting developments will
be gratefully received by the editors, Russell
Sage Foundation, /jo East 22 Street, New York
To meet this difficulty it is recommended: (a) that public
uildings, unused property and competent direction be placed
c the service of groups of citizens who desire to discuss economic
•oblems and to organize to meet changing conditions, and (b)
lat the system of relief be permitted to supply unemployed
tizens with raw materials and tools, with which they can make
roducts needed by the state, in return for which they can obtain
irther needed supplies. Gasoline for transportation could be paid
>r out of public funds if its uses were carefully checked.
3. A cynical public attitude toward such efforts — -indifference,
ith in emergency relief, fear of radicalism and so forth. Leaders
: the unemployed should cultivate the intelligent interest of
roups of all kinds and help the newspapers correctly to interpret
ieir activities.
4. Other difficulties are that labor which is bartered and which
abundant may be exploited and that bartering of labor for farm
roducts is a seasonal activity.
The Committee feels that small grants of capital (or credit)
lould be allowed to responsible groups of workers to carry on
reduction in such lines as seem necessary to meet their own
eeds or those of the community.
Rent Practices
AT the Chicago Conference on Relief Standards last November
*• the discussion on rents brought out the following items:
In Philadelphia a study of the situation of landlords is being
ndertaken by the Community Council. Evictions are being
revented by mass action of the unemployed.
In Erie County, Pa., the Poor Board has placed fourteen family
roups in an abandoned poorhouse over the protests of the state
alief administration.
Fall River, Mass., is housing families on relief in untenanted
ouses which have been taken over by the city for tax delin-
uencies. They are also experimenting with rent payments on a
laintenance basis.
Springfield is the only large city in Massachusetts which still
•ays rents as part of its public relief bill. In general, the smaller
ities do more rent-paying than the large.
Advice from the A. P. W. A.
THE American Public Welfare Association (850 East 58
Street, Chicago), has no established formula applicable to
very state seeking advice on the development of state-wide
memployment relief administration, but its counsel usually takes
he following form:
i. Designate or create a state agency for the administration of
elief, utilizing the State Welfare Department if at all practicable.
i. Charge this agency with the duty of assembling state-wide
lata on unemployment, relief needs and relief expenditures and
vith directing and supervising the state relief program.
3. Designate or create county units for welfare and relief ad-
ninistration.
4. Insist upon qualified, competent personnel in state and local
idministration.
5. Avoid subsidizing private agencies with public funds, but
emphasize coordination of public and private effort.
6. Authorize the state welfare administration to allocate to
local units on the basis of their carefully determined needs such
state and federal funds as may be available.
7. Make such allocations contingent upon the observance of
minimum standards of relief and service as worked out by the
State Welfare Administration.
8. Recognize the value of both work relief and direct relief as
complementary parts of an adequate program.
9. Accept for state, as such, a proper share of the responsibility
for providing necessary funds for relief.
10. Develop and administer relief program in such a manner as
to preserve decent living standards for the unemployed.
State Organization in Kansas
IF the Kansas Legislature acts favorably on a report just sub-
mitted to it by a legislative committee appointed two years
ago to study the welfare system of the state and its subdivisions,
considerable changes will ensue.
The present set-up for expenditure of federal funds consists of
a state-wide Federal Relief Committee of twelve operating
directly under the governor. County Federal Relief Committees
are appointed by the State Committee " to aid the regularly es-
tablished relief agencies of the counties and cities," and any
funds made available for the County Federal Relief Committee
"shall be expended only for day labor and only on such work-
relief projects as have been approved by the Kansas Federal
Relief Committee."
The Commission's report proposes a State Board of Welfare
with an executive commissioner, and county departments of
public welfare in which all the welfare and relief services may be
centralized at the option of the county commissioners.
As proposed, the State Board would be empowered to receive
and administer all funds of the federal government, borrowed,
granted or otherwise given into its possession for relief work in
the State of Kansas. Inasmuch as the proposed county depart-
ments would have authority to administer relief to the poor it is
likely that the legislation, if passed, would result in a direct flow
of federal funds through public channels to the needy.
Centralizing Relief Funds
IT is estimated that a minimum of twelve million dollars will
be needed in Pittsburgh and Allegheny County to meet next
year's relief and welfare needs.
The Welfare Fund has successfully completed a drive for two
and a half million dollars of which $300,000 is earmarked for
relief expenditures through the Allegheny County Emergency
Association. The balance of the Fund is intended for the private
relief and character-building agencies, in a total $600,000 less
than the current year's budgets. Last year the Welfare Fund and
the Emergency Association jointly raised six million dollars which
was divided equally between them.
It is anticipated that the remaining $9,500,000 of next year's
estimated need will come from various public sources. The total
of public funds now in sight for 1933 is $5,175,000. This includes
$975,000 of state tax funds available after the first of the year
and $4,200,000 of unused city bonds, $2,000,000 of which are
designated for work relief. Only two other sources of public funds
are seen to be open for 1933; one, bonds to be issued by the
County Poor Board, the legality of which is under dispute; the
other, the prospect of additional appropriations from the Re-
construction Finance Corporation.
Relief expenditures this fall have been at the rate of a million
dollars a month. The total relief bill for 1932 was, it is estimated,
about nine million dollars.
The Allegheny County Emergency Association, formed early
in 1931 to handle the unemployment relief load, has functioned
continuously, acting as the fiscal agent for the various groups,
public and private, that have made relief funds available. It, in
turn, works through the established private agencies in the dis-
bursement of these relief funds. The city, county and state have
86
THE SURVEY
February 193
been called upon successively to replenish its frequently depleted
treasury and more recently the Reconstruction Finance Corpora-
tion has made funds available through the State Relief Board.
Work relief for cash wages has been favored in the past although
this program has been at a low ebb since summer due to the
necessity for stretching the money farther to cover the con-
stantly growing relief list.
The Family Welfare Association, largest single private family
agency, has increased its staff to 437 and its branches to eighteen
in its effort to serve the entire county with the relief resources
developed by the Emergency Association and Welfare Fund.
The County Directors of the Poor, on the other hand, are giving
less relief than a year ago, through their own staff. While the
trend in this community has been decidedly toward the use of
public funds to foot the relief bill, the preference for private
administration of those funds to the families remains unchanged.
Joint City-County Planning
\ COORDINATING commission representing the city and
•*"*- county governments and the private relief agencies has
been set up in Salt Lake City with the secretary of the Chamber of
Commerce as its executive. Among its activities are malnutrition
clinics for all school-age and preschool children. A shelter for
homeless men housing 120 is being operated by the men them-
selves, the county allocating ten dollars per month per man.
The men are divided into four groups, each of which works one
week on county work-relief projects, one week on "kitchen
police" duty, and for the remainder of the month is expected to
pick up any odd jobs that may be available. A subcommittee of
the commission has general supervision. The results are said to be
satisfactory to date.
Resident families receive food relief from the county through
orders on local grocers; and from the private relief agencies
through a warehouse or commissary. The Commission is studying
both methods to decide which is better in the local situation.
California State Labor Camps
A REPORT by S. Rexford Black under the above title may be
•**• secured from the California State Unemployment Com-
mission, State Building, San Francisco. It gives a detailed ac-
count of the camps for homeless men, mostly nonresidents of the
state, which were maintained from December 1931 to April 1932.
Altogether twenty-eight forestry camps and two highway camps
were operated.
The average time on the field work was four hours per day. The
men in forestry camps built 504 miles of firebreaks and roads in
addition to other miscellaneous fire-hazard reduction work. The
men in the highway camps excavated 86,740 cubic yards of ma-
terial in addition to other miscellaneous highway construction
activities.
The highway camps were financed from State Highway Con-
struction Funds. Forestry camps were financed by an allotment of
$110,000 from the State Emergency Fund. A total of 244,531
man-days' relief was furnished in the camps. A total of 200,399
man-days' relief in the forestry camps cost the state $109,982.87,
amounting to 54.9 cents per man per day. While 44,132 man-
days' relief in the highway camps cost the state $99,678.71,
amounting to $2.26 per man per day.
The men in camp were, for the most part, of the highest type in
the ranks of the unemployed. They were recruited through
various charitable relief agencies in the cities. Only volunteers
were accepted in the camps, but after reaching camp, each man
was required to work, or leave. Total camp capacity was 3352
men. Northern California camps accommodated 1759; the south-
ern California camps 1593. The communities from which men
were recruited paid the cost of transportation. The men were
examined, and only the physically fit were sent to the camps.
After making use of all available state equipment, other
equipment needs were filled by borrowing from the United States
Forest Service, the Army and Navy, national parks, counties,
and private agencies. Small hand tools were purchased from tl
funds allotted.
Plain but wholesome food was furnished in all camps, and r
limit was placed upon the amount any man should eat. Foo
served was comparable with that furnished in construction an
logging camps in the state. All state and federal employes i
charge of camps ate in the same dining room, at the same table
and were served the same food as was given to the unemploye
men. Tobacco and matches were issued three or four times p<
week to each man. Each man was allotted three or more blanket
a mattress, and cot, or built-in bunk. Clothing issued consiste
of work shirts, overalls, cotton and woolen underwear, sock
shoes and leather-faced gloves. Some other clothing such as arm
overcoats, hats and used garments were contributed.
The men in southern California were housed largely in ter
camps, while the men in northern California were housed i
various available buildings, built, rented, or borrowed by th
state. Sickness was cared for by a first-aid man in each cam]
serious cases being returned to the communities which had ser
them, or in emergencies placed in state or county hospitals.
The number of transient jobless entering the state decrease
rapidly after word of California's labor camp project sprea
East. The communities sending men to camp expressed apprecu
tion of the relief afforded in removal of itinerant unemploye
from their relief agencies. Communities near which the camp
were located were well pleased by the behavior of the men and b
the work accomplished.
The camps are again in operation this winter, with a populs
tion early in December of about seven thousand. A recer
R. F. C. loan of $281,372 helps finance them until March.
Novel System of Food Orders
FOR more than a year, Saint Paul has been operating under
novel combination of standard food rations and open order
in the distribution of relief from its public welfare department
The chairman of the Board of Public Welfare writes that after
thorough study of the commissary plan, it was decided not
establish one:
We found, however, that astounding savings could be made by way c
standardized rations. This plan was tried, first as an experiment, wit
considerable opposition. We now find that we are satisfying our cliem
better than ever before, giving them more and better food and at a re
duced cost. We are also giving much more in the way of variety, as ou
standard, or basic, rations are changed monthly.
We are running this month two standard rations: Standard Order Nc
i for large families, and Standard Order No. 2 for small families, copies c
which may be secured from the Board. Standard Order No. I has a retai
value in leading downtown stores of $10.23. When purchased in 10,00
lots, we receive a price of $7.04, delivered to any part of the city or county
This effects a saving of over $30,000 a month on this item alone. Wit
every standard ration, we give a supplementary order on the client's ow
grocer for the purchase of a limited number of items such as milk, buttei
eggs, vegetables, certain prescribed meats, etc. A family of five receive
each month a Standard Order No. i, or substitute, and a supplementar;
order for $4.50; a family of six receives a standard order and $6 supple
mentary order, and so on. In addition to this,each family receives one or tw
sacks of Red Cross flour.
The cost to the Board of Public Welfare for feeding a family of five,
$11.54 per month; about $.077 per day per person, or a little better thai
$.025 per meal.
Work Relief for Homeless Men
MORE than half of the fifteen thousand to sixteen thousan
unattached men that Chicago has been caring for in it:
sixteen shelters have been given enough work relief to allow therr
to leave the shelters and find lodgings elsewhere. As a result
three of the largest shelters have been closed.
The work-relief program consists of one day's work per week at
a cash wage of four dollars per day, paid by the Shelter Commit-
tee. The jobs are provided by the City Bureau of Streets and an
confined to clean-up work other than on streets and alleys.
tbruary 1933
THE SURVEY
87
Selection of men has been on a basis of work habits and ability
be self-maintaining under this program. While the cost is
veral times that of mass handling within the shelters, it is felt
at the social gain is considerable.
Another recent development has been the clarification of status
unattached men who seem to have assured domiciles, because
friendly relationship with their landlords, distant relatives,
d others, with whom they have lived for a period of two years or
iger. To the Unemployment Relief Service of the county go
e cases of able-bodied men of this type between the ages of
•enty-one and sixty.
The Y. M. C. A. of Orange, New Jersey, has established a
nter camp for young unemployed business and professional
:n on its property used in summer as a boy's camp. Under the
dership of an engineer, about fifty nonfamily men will be
used at the camp during the winter. Winter clothing and food,
be supplemented by such game as they can capture, will be
pplied by the Y. M. C. A. The men will cut their own firewood,
ey are constructing from dismantled machinery a small power
mt to furnish current for lighting and to pump water, and a
t-water system with shower baths. During the winter, they
II harvest the ice needed at the camp in the summer, and by
services make a return to the organization for their main-
lance. Once a week there will be opportunity to go to town in
; search for real jobs.
Work Relief in Virginia
M an earlier issue, comment was made on the stand taken by
the governor of Virginia, that federal relief funds could be
ed only for work on the highways.
At the request of the League of Virginia Municipalities, the
nerican Municipal Association prepared a report to be sub-
tted to the governor, listing in detail the regulations governing
>rk relief in the several states using federal funds for this pur-
se, and giving a detailed analysis of the practice in Florida,
inois, Kansas, Minnesota, West Virginia, Mississippi, Wiscon-
i and Idaho. It showed that in no other state was work relief
itricted to work on the roads. This document may be secured
the Association at Drexel Avenue and 58 Street, Chicago,
ic report was "influential in liberalizing the conditions with
;ard to the expenditure of federal relief funds by Virginia cities,
lich can now spend them on various types of projects."
Man-a-Block Plan Modified
PLAN was initiated in 1930-31 in Rochester, New York, by
- which householders were organized in units to employ an
employed man at odd jobs. A volunteer "block captain"
pervised the work in each unit, collected the increments of
.ges from each householder, and paid the workman. Much
voted volunteer service went into the project, which was pop-
ir and successful during the first and second winters. It gave
iployment, however, to only about eight hundred men, and
juired the contributed time of nearly as many volunteers to
ep it operating.
This winter, the Civic Committee on Unemployment, in
Dperation with the Public Employment Center, is sponsoring a
w plan, the idea being to let a selected group of men go into
siness for themselves. Each will be allotted a certain territory,
ually a block, as his own area. There will be no registration for
: project; the men are to be selected by the case workers of the
:ial agencies, on the basis of their own first-hand knowledge of
: man himself and his situation. The man will call on the house-
Iders in his territory, presenting a letter of introduction signed
the chairman of the Civic Committee. The letter states that
: man is able and willing to work, it has a space for the man's
nature, and at the bottom of the letter there is a list of sug-
stions of work to be done. The man will ask of each house-
Ider a guarantee of one hour's work a week at 45 cents an
ur, which is held a fair rate for such work in the community,
ic aim is for each man to get thirty hours' work a week ($13.50)
which will take him off the relief rolls. The Civic Committee,
which will furnish supervision and handle any complaints, has
organized a publicity campaign to explain the idea to the com-
munity and to get support for it. The hope is that it will take
care of 250-500 men over the worst of the winter.
Developments in Chicago
ON January i, Cook County's relief treasury began to receive
funds from a new quarter. On that date, $6,770,000 from
the County's recently authorized bond issue of seventeen million
dollars was made available. The cash came, however, not from
Chicago bond purchasers but from the R.F.C. which had ac-
cepted the bonds as collateral on a Section E loan.
This shift from state back to county funds has caused the
county commissioners to take a renewed interest in the operation
of the Bureau of Public Welfare. It has long been recognized that
the Bureau's staff of social workers and investigators has not
been large enough to do adequate visitation and follow-up work
and it is now proposed that assistants be added from the white-
collar clients on a work-relief basis, similar to the New York City
practice.
To insure stabilization of relief policy through these shifts in
the source of funds, a joint committee of the County Board and
the State Relief Commission has been formed. It is estimated that
the county's seventeen million dollars will not last beyond March,
at which time either state or R.F.C. funds may have to be tapped
again. Cook County prognosticators are setting the 1933 relief
needs at eighty million dollars.
; Scrip System" Ends
THE widely advertised scrip system of Grand Rapids, Michi-
gan, came to an end the first week in January, following the
recommendations of the Citizens' Committee of 100. All out-
standing scrip had to be redeemed before January 14. Hereafter,
men on work relief will be paid in cash, while those receiving
home relief will receive food orders on recommendation of the
social agencies, not as payment for work done. The central com-
missary is to be replaced by five food depots conveniently lo-
cated. The plan is that this system will be gradually replaced by
a series of agreements with local food dealers.
A new director of public welfare has been appointed, an
energetic and socially-minded business man familiar with the
local situation who is staffing his department with competent
social workers.
In view of a serious shortage in the funds from the campaign
of the Community Chest in Grand Rapids, drastic changes are
under way in the field covered by the private agencies. The pres-
ence of a cooperatively inclined public department is a feature of
great promise.
Reports from the Smaller Cities
THE President's Organization for Unemployment Relief in
Santa Barbara, California, has issued an excellent illustrated
report on its past year's work, giving an account of all aspects of a
small-city relief program. Of particular interest are the detailed
accounts of the work-relief program and the establishment of
several county forestry camps for single resident men.
The Mayor's Employment and Relief Committee of Wilming-
ton, Delaware, has just published a comprehensive and profusely
illustrated report in sixteen chapters, covering its own activities
for the past two years, together with an account of the general
relief program of the other agencies in the city during the same
period.
A complete account of the relief program followed in the town
of Hopewell, Virginia (ten thousand population) is contained
in Bulletin No. I of the League of Virginia Municipalities,
Richmond, Va.
All of these reports may be secured from the organization is-
suing them.
88
THE SURVEY
February 193
Judge Cabot
THE CHILDREN'S JUDGE: Frederick Pickering Cabot, by M. A. DeWolfe Howe.
Houghton, Mifflin. 161 pp. Price $1.75 postpaid of The Survey.
IN the first three and fifth chapters of this little book, the reader
is permitted to grow up in intimate association with Judge
Cabot and to share with him the wide range of his community
services to private schools, settlements, camps, Harvard College
and the Boston Symphony Orchestra. In the fourth chapter, he is
seen in action as judge of the Juvenile Court. In preparation for
this work he lives through all the stages of mischievous and group
or gang boyhood, and through many forest and sea adventures of
young manhood. He knew how life looks to boys and as a con-
fidential fiduciary lawyer he saw many forms of puzzling adult
behavior and emotion.
From 1916 to 1932 he was judge of the Boston Juvenile Court.
Of this work, Dr. Hans Weiss, now of Geneva, Switzerland, who
was probation officer under Judge Cabot from 1923 to 1930 speaks
in forty-six intimate pages of which only a hint can be here given.
Dr. Weiss helps the reader to realize the infinite pains Judge
Cabot took to understand each child, to get the child's confidence
and then to seek for the answer to this question, "What is there
that is sound and wholesome in (that) this child that I can make
of greater vigor and growth?"
What a seventeen-year-old boy who had had experience in
several courts said of judge Cabot is worth pondering: "Some of
the guys are afraid of Judge Cabot because they can't get by, but
most of the guys like him because he sure treats you square. He is
strict with you but you always know where you are at."
Judge Cabot was progressively aware of how little a Juvenile
Court judge can do without community cooperation. One of his
phrases was, "The paucity of alternative medicines at the com-
mand of the community doctor."
A stimulating message to all adults is found in his report as
chairman of the sectional Committee on Delinquency for the
White House Conference of 1930: "It is only in the example of
sincere living that the child finds the dynamic impulse for the
development of his own life standards."
As an intimate personal and professional companion, Juvenile
Court judges and probation officers will find The Children's
Judge to be human but challenging to complacency of every sort.
New Tork School of Social Work HENRY W. THURSTON
Bertrand Russell, Realist
EDUCATION AND THE MODERN WORLD, by Bertrand Russell W. W.
Norton. Z40 pp. Price $2.50 postpaid of The Survey.
THAT Bertrand Russell has gifts as a writer, readers of his
earlier works will not deny. The Anglican bishop may snort
and the liberal may applaud while the serious thinker may deplore
Mr. Russell's irresistible desire to pull chairs out from under old
ladies, but the style remains engaging and provocative. In his
new book, Education and the Modern World, Bertrand Russell is
much less the "enfant terrible" and the Utopian, much more the
realist. Let it be said to his eternal credit that for one who has
been as dogmatic a free-thinker as any man, Mr. Russell has
learned from experience and observation what ordinary morta
know but what theorists so often miss: he has learned that licen
is not perfect freedom and that some discipline and coercion a
necessary in the education of small children. The state also m«
have its faults: the persecution of the Soviet herd may not diff
very much from the persecution of the English public school
its destructive effect upon the gifted individual. Rememberii
Proposed Roads to Freedom, this is indeed a concession.
The education of the individual versus the citizen in the mode
world is the theme of this book. Accordingly, he discusses the pa
played by heredity, religion, sex, patriotism, class-feeling, prop
ganda and economics in this process. There are many ideas ai
one's after-dinner conversation may be improved by reading t
book. Here is the conclusion: "If a man's life is to be satisfactor
it requires two kinds of harmony: an internal harmony of i
telligence, emotion, and will, and an external harmony with t
will of others. . . . Internal harmony is prevented by the re
gious and moral teaching given in infancy and youth, whi<
usually continue to govern the emotions but not the intelligen
in later life. . . . Such conflicts could be provided if the youi
were taught doctrines which adult intelligence can accept. . ,
The matter of external harmony is more difficult and not capal
of a complete solution. Competition and cooperation are bo
natural human activities. . . . The dangerous form of d
harmony in the modern world is the organized form betwe
nations and between classes." BEATRICE BISHOP BER
New Tork City
A Shelf on Psychology
AMERICAN SOCIAL PSYCHOLOGY, Its Origin, Development, and Eurojx
Background, by Fay Berber Karpf with a foreword by Ellsworth Farts. McCn
Hill. Pages 461. Price $3.50 postpaid of The Survey.
THIS book is to be highly recommended for those who desi
to understand the development of social psychology
America and appreciate the advantage of an historical perspe
tive. Beginning with the nineteenth century philosophical bac
ground, social-psychological thought is traced through Germar
France and England. Beginning with the work of Lester Wa
and William James, social-psychological thought and theory z
traced in American writings to the emergence of the differential
systems and attempts at treatment as propounded by Ellwoc
Bogardus, Allport and others. In scholarly treatment, intellige
criticism and sound insight, the author makes evident the wea
nesses of social psychology which call for more research a:
investigation. Social workers will find much of value in this h
torical guide through the maze of traditions, problems and s]
terns which today are challenging each other and seeking to fi
some unity in what is known as social psychology.
PSYCHIATRY IN EDUCATION, by V. V. Anderson. M.D. in collaboration «
Willie Maude Kennedy. Harper. 430 pp. Price $4 postpaid of The Survey.
THE possibilities of the title are clearly indicated but are r
realized and mainly because most of the book is devoted
the exposition of the author's brief experience with a limited nu
ber of children in a school dealing with selected children in need
psychiatric guidance. The broad horizons of education are veil
by self-satisfaction with personal methods. The viewpoint is >
sentially clinical and therapeutic in origin and nature even thou
thoroughly educational and developmental in technic. The idea
making school adaptations to meet the needs of the individi
child is by no means new; indeed, a considerable amount of t
material, with the exception of a few well selected useful c.-
problems has appeared elsewhere or has been presented by otl
authors with a scientific point of view and method who regard (
whole child and the integration of his personality as the center
education.
APPROACHES TO PERSONALITY. Some Contemporary Conceptions Usec
Psychology and Psychiatry, by Gardner Murphy and Friedrich Jensen, M.D. i
a supplement by John Levy, M.D. Coward-McCann. 411 pp. Price $3.75 postpai
The Survey.
\ GERMAN psychiatrist and an American psychologist co
•**- bine their viewpoints and experience to indicate the bearir
of various psychological schools upon the study of personal!
bruary 1933
THE SURVEY
89
th recognize the dynamics of human thought and appreciate
at the data concerning personality are constantly fluctuating,
d that points of view are variously shifting in terms of revealed
>eriences and controlled investigation. The authors present
apathetically a comparative study of various psychiatric and
rchological schools for the purpose of stimulating thought after
wing the horizons of hypotheses which are limiting modern
ncepts of personality. Hence there are chapters dealing with
talt, behaviorism, the psychologies of Freud, Jung, Adler.
in Levy describes the Child Guidance Approach to the Study
'ersonality. The volume concludes with a discussion of Eclec-
sm and Genetic Method that stresses the need for a synthetic
egration of the varying methods and conceptions into one use-
system.
BITS. THEIR MAKING AND UNMAKING, by Knight Dunlap. Liveright. 322
p. Price $3 postpaid of The Survey.
pHE habit of living and the living in social habits constitute a
significant part of human adjustment. Making and breaking
)its is a matter of daily concern, not merely one that relates to
nuary first resolutions. Dunlap presents a resume of the theo-
ic inter-relations between the process of learning and un-learn-
. He applies his ideas, many of which are dogmatic though not
nerally accepted, for the reorganization of undesirable habits in
e interest of personal social adjustment. As might be expected
m a professor of experimental psychology, the viewpoint is
ademic; but the data are not always experimentally adequate
d hence there is not full warrant for this effort at popularization.
tw York City IRA S. WILE, M.D.
The Big Brothers in Fiction
ECKLES OF MOWBREY STREET, by Grove Wilson. Published by the Big
rather Movement. Inc. 94 pp. Price $2 postpaid of The Survey.
"*HIS little story told in an intimate and sympathetic style
. gives the history from the age of five up through adolescence
a child of the New York tenements and alleys. His unfortunate
mestic environment with a brutal mother and a cruel, drunken
pfather is not improved by the neighborhood atmosphere, and
steady decline to the level of banditry is prevented only by the
nely friendship of one Langdale who confesses at the crucial
ment that he has had the same kind of childhood experience
d grown out of it to successful manhood and to the embodiment
the Big Brother Movement.
The situations described are reminiscent of the days when
arles Loring Brace wrote The Dangerous Classes of New York
d through The Children's Aid Society cooperated with Jacob
s, Teddy Roosevelt and others in attempts to clean up the
w York slums. It is difficult to believe that conditions as dra-
atic are typical today although doubtless individual instances
rsist.
The story is told with art and an understanding of child psy-
ology. It should prove useful to the organization in its efforts to
mbat the influence of the thugs and racketeers.
OWEN R. LOVEJOY
cretary tbe Children's Aid Society, New Tork
Study of Negro Boys
SURVEY OF THE NEGRO BOY IN NASHVILLE, TENNESSEE.
Edited by W. D. Weatherford. Association Press. 157 pp. Price (2 postpaid
f The Survey.
"'HIS survey made by the staff of the Y.M.C.A. Graduate
School, in Nashville, Tennessee, and edited by the president
that institution, comprises eight separate but closely related
.dies under the following heads: physical and medical status, eco-
mic conditions, education, home and family life, delinquency,
sure and recreation, racial attitudes, and religious activities. The
oups studied, who were reached through the public schools, varied
number from 340 to 679 in the first seven studies, which were
infined to the high schools, junior and senior, and to 3445 in the
ligious study, which was inclusive of all grades. The thoroughness
the survey is illustrated by the fact that the physical and medical
inquiry alone required answers to nearly two hundred questions in
addition to a searching, scientific physical examination at the handi
of specialists.
The editor, Dr. Weatherford, explains in the introduction that
the study was undertaken "in order that the social agencies of Nash-
ville might know fully the needs of the Negro boys," and in the
hope that other cities might thus be encouraged to undertake similar
studies and assist in making them effective. "In particular," he
says, "we have hoped that it would stimulate many Y.M.C.A.'s
to undertake constructive work for and with these boys." Every in-
dividual who cares for boys will find the book vitally interesting,
while to agencies concerned with their welfare it will prove in-
valuable. R. B. ELEAZER
Commission on Interracial Cooperation, Atlanta
Lo Mo of Chinatown
CHINATOWN QUEST; The Life-Adventures of Donaldina Cameron, by
Carol Green Wilson. Stanford University Press. 263 pp. Price (3 postpaid
of The Survey.
THIRTY-SIX years ago when San Francisco's Chinatown was
rich background for many a romantic tale of warring tongs,
opium dens, brothels, twisting hallways, sliding panels, secret
skylights and hidden chambers, Donaldina Cameron left her father's
California ranch to take up the quest set forth in this tale of
realism. Following Margaret Culbertson as superintendent of the
Home maintained by the Presbyterian Occidental Board, Miss
Cameron led the crusade against traffic in Chinese slave-girls.
"From a woman, and she a pretty, fair-spoken Scotch maiden
[Mrs. Wilson here quotes Will Irwin] "this slave trade took its
hardest blow." Most Chinese entering the United States in the
lawless years after the Gold Rush had come without wife or family
and they were following an ancient polygamous custom (since out-
lawed by China herself) when they purchased domestic slaves at
from one to five hundred dollars each. Other girls were sold to
the brothels, many lured across the Pacific by promises of marriage
or employment. When the raids conducted by Miss Cameron and
the Chinatown police squad were successful, the courts — under a
law based on the Thirteenth Amendment — committed the girls to
her care in the Home, whence her Chinese titles, Lo Mo, the
Mother, to her girls, Fahn Quai, White Devil, to their owners.
Detailed accounts of some of these raids read like chapters from
Chinatown fiction. Subsequent chapters give heartening accounts
of the wholesome life in the Home, the camping trips, weddings,
careers of Lo Mo's daughters. ANNE ROLLER ISSLER
Nafa, California
Reeducating Parents
OUR CHILDREN, A Handbook for Parents, edited by Dorothy Canfteld and Sidonie
Malsner Gruenberg. Viking Press. 34S pp. Price $2.75 postpaid of The Survey.
THE instinctive revulsion caused by the title of this handbook
in one whose interest in children amounts almost to an
obsession, indicates how difficult a task the editors have under-
taken. They must live down much blundering and bathos by
others who have tried to reeducate parents. Fortunately at the
very outset, The Old Timer Speaks to reassure, in the person of
Dorothy Canfield. Her wise and pithy and humorous interpreta-
tion of the enterprise of calling in twenty-seven experts to write
about Our Children gives the title a new and wholesome con-
notation. Indeed the perspective given the whole movement of
parent-education is perhaps the most important contribution the
book has to offer.
Mrs. Gruenberg defines the questions to be treated as those
centered in the child's grcrwth and development; questions
centered in the home, in the school, and in the outside world. This
outline is filled in by twenty-seven distinguished contributors
with the result that the "handbook" becomes a pretty hefty
handful. It is inevitable that in so large a group some should veer
toward fine-spun abstractions and others to the rather patronizing
and gossipy case-records of numerous Mary Ellens or Joey Bs,
horrible little creatures who remind one of the friends of "Slovenly
90
THE SURVEY
February 193.
Peter." As a group, the articles on Child Growth and Develop-
ment seem the most conspicuous addition not only to the ma-
terial of child study but to the spirit in which it should be offered
to parents. The doctors and biochemists who contribute to this
section regard the growth of the child with none of the parent's
emotional intensity or the psychologist's mysticism. The sections
on The Child in the Home, At School, and in The Outside World,
seem more uneven and to offer more conflicts in opinion. Laws to
Be Broken supplies the balance which a parent steering among
these conflicting authorities sorely needs.
In summarizing the book, Cecile Pilpel reminds us that
"Knowledge about health and nutrition, laws of learning, the
psychology of behavior and all the rest is but a tool to an end and
not an end in itself." That end is nothing less than "the eternal
verities" which she challenges parents to seek and discover,—
and so confirms the breadth of vision with which the whole work
has been conceived. ADELAIDE NICHOLS
West-port, Connecticut
Routing Out Schoolmasterishness
THE DARK PLACES OF EDUCATION, by WiUi Schohaus. Holt. 351 pp. Price
$2.75 postpaid of The Survey.
THE peculiarly refreshing quality of this book is due essen-
tially to its unprofessional approach to school problems.
Dr. Schohaus has dared to ask the very persons for whose benefit
schools are maintained, what they think of their experience there.
He has even turned their minds deliberately to the dark places in
that experience by asking them: "From what did you suffer most
in school?" This was the substance of a questionnaire which as
editor of a Swiss educational journal he sent out to his readers
explaining that he was focussing the inquiry on sorrows rather
than joys of schooldays because "our thoughts are always mo-
bilized through discomforts" and because for the time being the
bright places can be left to take care of themselves. Tempests
arose in the professional teapot. Four hundred teachers indig-
nantly cancelled their subscriptions to his paper but replies to the
questionnaire poured in by the hundreds and this book is the
result. Dr. Schohaus has selected seventy-eight of the most typi-
cal reports, including many from teachers themselves, and as a
preface to this unique material he has written a penetrating and
beautiful comment on the points raised.
Particularly interesting is his discussion of the revolution
needed to make mutual help, rather than the seeking of personal
success, the cornerstone of school life. There is a real challenge
too in his proposal to attack the "professional disease of school-
masterishness" by drafting sensible persons with educational
talent from other walks of life to recruit the staff of our elemen-
tary schools. His surmise that these lay teachers would com-
pensate their lack of professional methods by a stronger sense of
real values, is quite in line with the experience of some of our
own experimental schools which are already breaking a road in
that direction. LEILA V. STOTT
City and Country School, New York
"What Shall We Play Next?"
GAMES AND GAME LEADERSHIP, by Charles F. Smith. Dodd, Mead. 658 pp.
Price $2.50 postpaid of The Survey.
PROFESSOR SMITH has produced a book of over seven hun-
-*• dred games and activities designed for the student, the teacher
of games and sports, and for the parent who wants a reference
volume for use with his own children. Some people are not born
leaders even with children and the pages on leadership which pref-
ace many of the chapters are a new contribution to this type of
game book. Here is a book which not only tells how to play the
game but also gives in many of the explanations, sidelights on the
conduct and teaching of the game, culled by the author from a
long experience. Although apparently addressed to teachers, it is
in no sense a textbook and will be just as useful to any father or
mother who wishes to answer the perpetual question, "What shall
we play next?"
An effort has been made to retain old names for games whicl
makes them easy to find in the index and also holds to a growin)
tradition in American games. Some new games are included am
modern conditions are recognized, as in the chapter on automobil
recreations.
If the book were not so well done and the price so reasonable fo
nearly seven hundred pages of excellent material, one migh
question whether the chapters on woodcrafts, scouting and cam
cooking are a necessary part of such a compendium. There are
number of amusing illustrations, a valuable chapter index c
games and also an alphabetical index. Games and Game Leader
ship can be heartily recommended for use in the classroom or i;
the family circle. CHARLES J. STORE
Department of Recreation, Russell Sage Foundation
First Directory of Its Kind
A DIRECTORY OF ORGANIZATIONS IN THE FIELD OF PUBLIC AI
MINISTRATION, edited by R. M. Paige. Public Administration Clearing Hoxs
Chicago, III. 203 pp., paper.
ESTABLISHED less than two years ago to facilitate the e>
change of knowledge and experience among public admini:
trators, the Public Administration Clearing House's recentl
published directory is a concrete evidence of the work that tha
organization is actually accomplishing. This, the first directory c
its kind, edited by R. M. Paige under the direction of Loui
Brownlow, contains the names and descriptive information c
1744 voluntary organizations, whether composed of public off
cers, lay citizens or mixed groups, "working in the general field c
public administration or in fields that impinge upon and affec
public administration": 466 national, 15 regional, 1131 state an
82 Canadian organizations. Organizations whose principal intei
est is with political or legislative activities of government or the*
whose activities are confined to one city or particular locality ai
excluded. Administrators and students of government will we
come this long-needed volume, and will find especially valuab!
the short summaries of activities accompanying the roster of n:
tional organizations. L. D. I
A Psychologist Speaks to Laymen
MAN AS PSYCHOLOGY SEES HIM, by Edward S. Robinson. Macmillan. 376 p
Price $2.50 postpaid of The Survey.
STATEMENTS of contemporary psychological knowledge ftj
the general reader have been attempted by many in recer I
years. But I can say without qualification that I know of no bett(
one than Professor Robinson's. It is eclectic; it states fairly an
sympathetically the contributions of the different schools <l
thought. It points out the limits of present understanding. ]
takes a consistently integrated view of human nature and bi i
comes neither too physiological nor too chopped up in the pictui
of traits and characteristics analyzed. It has a sense of proportioi j
of humor and of broad human sophistication. The author, :l
seems to me proper in a psychologist before laymen, is somethir f
of a philosopher as well as a scientist. And he is not so obsesse i
with the value of the subject that he attributes too much to i I
present stature. His very perspective helps to give persuasion an
illumination to the entire volume. ORDWAV TEAJ
New York City
Getting Into the Game
SPECTATORITIS— RE-CREATION NOT WRECK-CREATION, by Jay
Nash. Sears. 284 pp. Price $2.50 postpaid of The Survey,
THIS book might well be entitled A Professor Looks at Life, :
art, democracy, education, survival, freedom, the moralities. .
is surprising how intimately activity as contrasted with "spectato
ids" is shown to be a fundamental factor. Professor Nash relati
play — that is, activity motivated by interest — to the three maj<
time factors in life: vocation, to necessary periods of recuperatk
which he calls "re-creation," and to avocation, creative activit
culminating in the arts. Values, personal satisfactions vary dH
rectly with the infusion of the play element into each of the:|
ranges of life.
tbruary 1933
THE SURVEY
91
I Activity is of course not always what we grossly call physical,
ough physical activity itself in its effect on organic development
id neuro-muscular patterns gives the basis for sound thinking
hd emotional development. Activity alone, as contrasted with
pectatoritis" — which seeks constantly only new "ticklings" of
[e senses, new excitements, and which tends inevitably to bore-
[>m and disintegration — can give the basis for real interest, for
lal quality, for integration of personality, for growth, for sur-
[val, and even for genuine and discriminating appreciation on
r e part of spectators and auditors.
I Survival itself, both for the individual and for society, depends
pon activity, for without activity there is no growth and without
owth is death. The implications for society in its formal educa-
pnal procedure and in social sanctions are emphasized. Our
hools must offer not the old, traditional "subjects" but vital
tivities that challenge interests, permit achievement after diffi-
ilty and effort, and thus compel growth.
The book is eclectic, wide-ranging, popular, even hasty, but it is
imulating and challenging. ROY SMITH WALLACE
ational Recreation Association
Home-Ownership
DME OWNERSHIP, INCOME AND TYPES OF DWELLING, pp. 230;
HOUSING OBJECTIVES AND PROGRAMS, pp. 345, edited by John M. Cries
• 'and James Ford. President's Conference on Home Building and Home Ownership,
I Washington, D. C. $1.15 each postpaid of The Survey.
T7ITH the publication of these two volumes, the entire series
' * of eleven constituting the final reports of the President's
i onference on Home Building and Home Ownership are now
'ailable. The first named includes the report of the committees
lu home-ownership and leasing, relationship of income and the
>me, and types of dwellings under the chairmanship respectively
Ernest T. Trigg, Niles Carpenter and John Ihlder. The final
)lume covers the reports of the six correlating committees on
chnological developments, legislative and administrative stand-
ds and objectives, education and service, organization programs,
cal and national, and research. These committees were headed
/ such well-known authorities as George K. Burgess (deceased),
srnard J. Newman, Laurence Veiller, Albert Shaw, .Harlean
imes and James Ford. The findings of the conference having
:en frequently discussed in these pages, no detailed review will
: made of these reports, but it should be mentioned that the need
t r a permanent housing research foundation — that is, a national
stitute for housing — was emphasized in the various correlating
mmittee reports, a need emphatically expressed at the confer-
ee itself a year ago, included in their published reports today,
it as yet with little indication of the probability of achievement.
LOULA D. LASK.ER
Social Problems
IXTEMPORARY SOCIAL PROBLEMS, by Harold A. Phelps. Prentice-Hall
'. ft. 7S3. Price $3.50 postpaid of The Survey.
'PHE sane approach to a study of social problems is to learn
I- what a social problem is and when and where it is found.
hen one finds the answers to these queries he discovers that
cial problems are pretty much inter-related. Dr. Phelps, who is
nsiderable of a realist in his theoretical approach to the subject,
;s done much more than take account of the matted nature of
cial problems. He has gone into the processes and conditions by
lich these problems arise, and so faces the matter of social treat-
ent on not too academic grounds. Phelps does classify social
oblems. He offers a three-fold classification. One group of prob-
TIS is essentially economic in origin, another physical and
ental in origin and the third group is traceable to cultural fail-
es. The third group, not altogether divorced from the first two,
dudes problems of old age, homeless, divorce, crime, desertion,
dowhood, and so on. The first two groups are also mutually re-
ted, including in the economic group poverty, unemployment,
come, etc., and in the second groups the problems of mental or
lysical disease and social hygiene.
This is one of the sanest and ablest books in the field.
•tb Low Junior College NELS ANDERSON
RUN OF THE SHELVES
A DESCRIPTIVE LIST OF THE NEW BOOKS
GROWTH AND DEVELOPMENT OF THE CHILD. Part I. GENERAL CON.
SIDERATIONS. Report of the Committee on Growth and Development of the White
House Conference on Child Health and Protection, Kenneth D. Blackfan, M.D., chair-
man. Century. 380 pp. Price $3 postpaid of The Survey.
PERSONALITY, MANY IN ONE. An Essay in Individual Psychology, by James
Winfred Bridges. Stratford Company. 206 pp. Price $2 postpaid of The Survey.
A SIMPLE discussion of the psychology of personality with full
recognition of its various aspects which become organized and
developed in response to the interaction of what is within man to
all that is outside of himself.
SIX THEORIES OF MIND, by Charles W. Morris, Ph.D. University of
Chicago Press. 330 pp. Price $4 postpaid of The Survey.
A PHILOSOPHER carefully considers six theories of the mind.
They are evaluated and compared in generous and unbiased dis-
cussion. The author reveals his own belief in a functional and
pragmatic theory of mental activity.
HOW TO DEVELOP YOUR PERSONALITY, by Sadie Myers Shellow.
Harper Brothers. 295 pp. Price }3 postpaid of The Survey.
A PSYCHOLOGIST who has worked with and for persons and per-
sonality presents a simple volume designed as a textbook and guide
for the development of the personality of the reader. Its plan,
method and appeal are popular without the sacrifice of sanity and
scientific background.
FARM AND VILLAGE HOUSING. Edited by John M. Cries and James Ford.
President's Conference on Home Building and Home Ownership. 293 pp. Price $1.15
postpaid of The Survey.
THIS first volume in the field of rural housing in America, a valu-
able contribution, is the final report of the committee on Farm and
Village Housing of the President's Conference on Home Building
and Home Ownership, and the ninth in the contemplated series of
eleven available in published form.
MENTAL DEFICIENCY DUE TO BIRTH INJURIES, by Edgar A. Doll, Win-
throp M. Phelps, M.D., Ruth Taylor Melcher. Macmillan. 275 pp. Price S4.50
postpaid of The Survey.
A PIONEER book presenting more or less tentative conclusions
based upon a careful study of twelve children with mental defi-
ciency arising from birth injuries. A considerable proportion of
the volume deals with mental tests and measurements, mental
estimates and mental growth. The most practical phases are
concerned with physical therapy, with special clinical reference
to the particular children who served as the basis of the investi-
gation.
CUMULATED READERS' GUIDE TO PERIODICAL LITERATURE. H. W.
Wilson Co., New York.
THE eighth cumulated volume of this invaluable library guide
contains a complete index for the past three and one half years to
the contents of The Survey along with one hundred other maga-
zines. Readers' Guide is issued monthly, and cumulated fre-
quently during the year with an annual bound volume followed by
its larger cumulations, such as this one. To anyone in reach of a
library it is the prompt and accurate answer to "where and when
did I read that?" Survey book reviews are included in the Book
Review Digest published by the same company.
BEHIND THE DOOR OF DELUSION, by "Inmate Ward *." Macmillan. 325 pp.
Price $2 postpaid of The Survey.
A NEWSPAPER man, a dipsomaniac, committed to a state hospital,
describes realistically and sympathetically what goes on in the
minds of the inmates who are locked in, either for their own
protection or that of society. He presents the attitudes of the
attendants and the physicians and reveals the thoughts, the
hopes, the fears and philosophies of those who do not know when
the key will turn to release them to a changed life. He shadows
the mental hazards when routines are removed and a welcoming
but doubting world views the personality as if questioning the
completeness of the return to normality.
92
THE SURVEY
February 75
CO MM UNICA TIONS
Gold for the Unemployed
To THE EDITOR: Your note mentioned The Banks of the Sacra-
mento River as a source of from ?i to $3 a day in gold for tourists,
novices, high-school boys, and others in large numbers [The Sur-
vey Midmonthly, December 15, 1932, page 697]. Of course other
streams have similar possibilities. There are 100,000 unemployed
in the hills between Dakota-Colorado and the Pacific getting out
$i to $1 a day that never could come out under corporation plans.
As you say, "gold in quantities too small for commercial recovery
exists." Truly this does give a living to many, also it puts the
money direct into mining camp stores and local business.
But that is only the " novice" end and a small part of the gold-
production industry. The more experienced, equipped with me-
chanical pans, etc., make from $i I to $100 a day. The big helps to
employment and business are the financial developments with
industrial managements. These mines are building depression-
proof incomes for their backers, are employing many men,
creating business, buying machinery and supplies. A check-up
on several hardware stores in the mining regions shows that their
average gross business runs about $3000 a month more in 1 932 and
1931. Old mines are being reopened with modern, efficient equip-
ment, and neglected gold deposits are being developed and
equipped for backers. That is all new money and no one is poorer,
no matter how much the miners produce. Twelve states in the
West are increasing their gold production.
East of Denver and the Dakotas, business is merely bouncing
rubber dollars. You can't mine gold back there, nor can every one
come out here to take up work of that kind. They wouldn't know
how, if they did come.
Yet here is Nevada with 1 10,000 square miles, barely scratched
except in a few 'old silver camps, with new mines being discovered
or being explored almost every day. New gold production is com-
ing from every county, although copper, silver, lead and zinc
prices are so low that their production is greatly reduced. The by-
product gold that came with other metals is not coming, but new
gold mines are making up for the losses in by-product gold.
Idaho is coming to the front with placer and hydraulic produc-
tion very rapidly, and as we of the West get out of our depression
by getting new gold in circulation much of it will flow back east-
ward to permit of that part of the country becoming improved.
Many eastern people are now enjoying gold-mine incomes, and
more and more are continually getting in line for dividends. It
isn't the man with a gold-mine income that takes his telephone off
the wall.
Lincoln's reason for granting the Union Pacific Railroad a
franchise was, "The time will come when the United States will
need the output of the western gold mines." His last message said,
"Tell the miners of the West that I shall do all I can to promote
their interest, because on their production depends the prosperity
of the nation."
And so it is proving, from the great developments. The penny-
ante gold-washing in the stream is maintaining a large number of
novices, but it's the bigger operations that are building depression-
proof incomes for stockholders. LETSON BALLET
Director-chairman Governor's Emergency Committee on Employment
fonopah, Nevada
To THE EDITOR: In your December issue you have a short article
headed Banks of Sacramento in which you make the statement
that from one to three dollars can be washed out by the inde-
pendent prospector.
May I call to your attention that such a statement is grossly
exaggerated and most unfair to such of your readers who may be
lured by same to try their luck to earn such munificence in these
days of hardships.
It is true that there is an occasional old prospector, who m
ages by intensive effort and with great skill and knowledge
average one dollar a day; but the great percentage of even th
handy with the pan and knowing the symptoms of gold hav
very hard struggle to average 25 cents a day. But the greenh
who reads the article and is tempted thereby to come to th
goldlined shores and embankments of our rivers and creeks, fa
only utmost disaster and extreme hardships. He is certainly bet
off to continue to receive the charities of his home town.
It is true that the gold-mining industry of these hills ha
decided revival, owing to lower wages and more modern metho
but it is of the deep mining kind, requiring large capital
development and equipment. I coined the following saying: '"
Gold of these hills was the foundation of California's wealth, s
will be its comeback."
If you had witnessed the hardships — even in our most worn
ful climate — of the majority — in fact the bulk — of these gre
horn prospectors, who have been tempted by such articles to co
here, you would never forgive yourself that you permitted th
lines to appear in your magazine. R. C. MARTE
Nevada City, California
[I do not know anything about what is going on out in Neva
but I did make some first-hand observations at Dutch Flat in
Low Sierras where I was the guest of Bill Adams (sailor storie
The Atlantic Monthly, etc. He's a grand old salt.) The prospect-
there were earning a little more than their keep and had b
comfortable cabins and there seemed to be no evidence of ha:
ship. I dare say the success of the project was exaggerated in
newspaper statement but we are careful to give it on the stren
of the Associated Press dispatch only. — J. C. C.]
By Their Books Ye Shall Know The.
To THE EDITOR: A board member recently visited our apartm
and instantly inspected the small bookcase which stands near
the daybed and, therefore, is in most constant use. We co
hardly wait for the board member to leave in order to see if i
books had put our best foot forward. Interesting to say, we fov
all four feet well to the front.
The top shelf contained in order (this is authentic!):
TOP SHELF
Notebook from the New York School (a suitable basis
understanding the following — )
The Caliph of Bagdad — Life of O. Henry.
The Jade Necklace.
The Cheerful Cherub (because of its beautiful leather bindi
secure, even though next to — )
Oscar Wilde — His Life and Confessions, Frank Harris.
Boners (no comment).
Creative Youth — Fruits of the New Education, Mearns.
Introduction to the Study of Society.
Social Work Year Book — 1929 (tallest volume on the she
The Shaw-Terry Letters — A Romantic Correspondence.
John Brown's Body (ending the shelf on a high note).
SECOND SHELF
Piloting Modern Youth.
Mexican Maze (is there connection between maze and mod
youth?).
Report of Emergency Appropriation for State Health Dep;
ments in Rural Sanitation, etc. Hearing before U. S. Senate.
Children's Agency of Boston Annual Reports.
Shadows on the Rock (serenity at last!).
Education for a Changing Civilization.
Decameron of Boccaccio (a red paper edition; question;
influence for the next — ).
fruary 1933
THE SURVEY
93
The Dependent Child — Thurston.
nterviews — Studies in Practice of Social Work.
The Annals of Political and Social Sciences, September, 1932 —
Aibition a National Experiment.
The Leisure of a People — Report of a Recreation Survey of
iianapolis (perhaps our latest national experiment).
The Americanization of Edward Bok \ , , ,
ru r> i • rv t (g°°d companions).
The Reader s Digest
Social Service Review— Published by the University of Chicago
e regret the distance from the New York School).
The Desk Standard Dictionary (vital in its field as the Social
ork Year Book in its).
THIRD SHELF (the lowest level!)
3hild Welfare in Kentucky 1919 (the last study made).
Personal Diary (intermittently covering fourteen years; not yet
peared in the True Story Magazine),
rood Housekeeping.
ile of Clippings on the Dependent Child.
Red Book.
The New Yorker.
Barents Magazine.
Recreation Magazine.
Saturday Evening Post.
Woman's Home Companion.
'• The Omnibus of Crime (lest we grow too maudlin).
\ box of steel puzzles 1 (subl;mat;on of criminal instincts).
• A book of tricks J x
Dn top five bowls of sickly plants are slowly drying up despite
e richness of the soil below. A small elephant modeled in blue
.stecene cowers to one side. The setting for this tale is a rough
okcase, unevenly stained — the handwork of the unemployed.
The most frantic and embarrassed search has not revealed our
Tvey or New Republic. B. W.
Social Trends
THE EDITOR: The report of the Committee on Recent Social
•ends is an historic document and one which is likely to affect
ofoundly the thinking of those who are seeking to orient them-
^ves in these bewildering days. More particularly social workers
10 look beyond the immediate day's work and who feel some
sponsibility for helping to obtain a better order of things will
id much that is informative and suggestive in the report. That
why I congratulate Survey Graphic heartily on its January
imber which gives us very edible portions of the report and
mulates the appetite for all of it. It is a fine job and we are all
lebted to you for having done it. WILLIAM HODSON
Wfcutive Director, Welfare Council of New York City
3 THE EDITOR: Yesterday gave me a chance to dig into your
cent Survey Graphic giving the high spots of the Recent Social
•ends. As a result, I want to forward at once my congratulations
Ji the service you and all of your force, perform for all the rest of
. In these days when so many of us suffer from a sense of fu-
ity in the slight extent to which any individual can help solve
e present huge and complicated problems, you and your asso-
ites certainly have a right to take yourselves mighty seriously.
essings on you! WHITING WILLIAMS
'eveland, Ohio
D THE EDITOR: I think you and your associates have done an
:itstanding piece of journalism in the January Graphic which
mmarizes the work of the Committee on Social Trends. To
ive gotten this out so promptly and to have provided some-
ing that is so brief, so concrete and so comprehensive, in han-
ing such an extraordinary mass of material, is a real achievement,
came to it after wading through the arid sands of the official
mmary, and it was truly "the shadow of a great rock in a weary
land." I wish it could somehow be gotten out in booklet form for
use in the libraries and colleges and schools as a supplement to the
big books, but I realize that it would be difficult, probably, to
distribute. Anyway, I am enclosing an order for three copies so
that we can have some for our department library.
ELLIOTT DUNLAP SMITH
Department of Social Sciences, Tale University
To THE EDITOR: If I may be permitted to pass comment I just
want to say that Mary Ross did a "swell job" in driving her auto
through the report of the Sociological Commission. You might well
use the word auto and call the report your own. Congratulations
on a tremendously difficult thing, which is organized and ex-
pressed in the capsule which, perhaps a little large, has still
sufficient gelatin on it to enable one to swallow it without diffi-
culty. IRA S. WILE, M.D.
New York City
The First Cross-Eyes Clinic
To THE SURVEY: In your January 1933 Midmonthly issue, health
column, page 31, the following item appeared: "Fifth Avenue
Hospital, New York City, has opened what is believed to be the
first clinic of its kind in this country — a 'cross-eyes' clinic for
treatment without surgery, equipped to handle children of all
ages, including six-months-old infants."
For the sake of the truth I wish to inform you that the first
clinic to treat cross-eyes (squint, strabismus) without surgery was
organized by Northern Illinois College of Optometry, 4043
Drexel Boulevard, Chicago, 111., three years ago and now, under
the name of Northern Illinois Eye Clinic, it is treating about 120
people of all ages daily, for every kind of eye ailments, including
the treatment of strabismus without surgery, the treatment of
amblyopia (functional blindness of the retina), etc. This same
clinic is giving free glasses to the needy and so far glasses dis-
pensed in this manner amount to more than two thousand pairs.
The clinic is operated by undergraduates and is supervised by the
staff of Northern Illinois College of Optometry. W. ZOLTAN
Optometrist, Chicago, III.
Interpreters Needed
To THE EDITOR: I wish to tell you how much I enjoyed the article
Social Workers Hesitate — Then? by Eduard C. Lindeman in the
January Midmonthly Survey. When we social workers go to a
conference we frequently receive in a short time so many ideas
that when we come away we feel stimulated but jumbled. I feel
that any New Jersey social worker who attended the state confer-
ence and then read this article would get four times as much out
of the conference as she would without the article.
Pennsylvania is having its state conference I understand about
February 22. Can't you send us a prophet like Mr. Lindeman to
sum up and clarify our thinking? KATHARINE DE W. PHELPS
Secretary, Bedford County Children's Aid Society, Bedford, Pa.
We Thank You
To THE EDITOR: For sometime I have wanted to express my
opinion on your department entitled Unemployment and Com-
munity Action. This department is one of the most definite and
constructive pieces of publicity which has come out since the
beginning of the depression. We have been looking constantly for
just such brief reviews in various communities and now we have it
in The Survey.
Permit me also to congratulate you on the make-up of the recent
Graphic. This in addition to being a very constructive magazine
is full of valuable information. The Survey has continued to im-
prove where we thought there was little room for improvement.
FRED K. HOEHLER
Director of Public Welfare, Cincinnati, Ohio.
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with electricity and water. 7110 SURVEY.
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May 16-21, 1932
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18 EAST 41sT STREET, NEW YORI
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We are Interested in placing those who havi
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Mental Hygiene: quarterly: $3.00 a year; publisl
by the National Committee for Mental Hygie
450 Seventh Ave., New York.
APPLICANTS for positions are sincerely
urged by the Advertising Department to send
copies of letters of references rather than
originals, as there is great danger of originals
being lost or mislaid.
GOSSIP
of People
and Things
For Public Service
/CHICAGO social workers are rejoicing in the
^— ' award of the Rosenberger Medal of the
University of Chicago to Edward L. Ryerson,
Jr., for the past two years the mainstay of the
Chicago relief situation. The medal is given in
recognition of achievement through research,
in authorship, for discovery or for unusual
public service. It has previously been awarded
to Dr. F. C. Banting for the discovery of
insulin, to Prof. James H. Breasted for research
in archeology and to Salmon O. Levinson for
instituting and promoting the movement for
the outlawry of war. The committee presented
Mr. Ryerson to President Hutchings with this
citation:
" This year the committee on the Rosenberger
Medal has chosen as its fourth recipient Ed-
ward Larned Ryerson, Jr., a member of the
board of trustees of this University. Mr. Ryer-
son has been identified with matters of public
welfare in the city of Chicago for many years.
Since 1927 he has been president of the Council
of Social Agencies. He has served as chairman
of the budget committee of the Governor's
Commission on Relief and Unemployment and
as chairman of the Illinois Emergency Relief
Commission. Throughout this period of service
he has worked untiringly and unselfishly. The
success of his efforts is to be measured not only
by the magnitude of the amounts obtained and
disbursed but by his clear understanding of the
social implications of the relief problem and his
endeavors to maintain the integrity of the
family as a social unit."
AND speaking of honors, the Cosmopolitan
International of St. Paul has voted its Distin-
guished Service Medal for 1932 to Mrs. Leo E.
Owens, chairman of the Christmas Bureau,
member of the board of the United Charities
and of the Children's Committee of the Catho-
lic Charities. Mrs. Owens, the first woman to
receive the medal, was cited for her outstanding
service as a volunteer in the organization and
operation of the Christmas Bureau. (See The
Survey, December 15, 1932, page 688.)
GIRL SCOUTS are planning an extension
scout troops into every nook and corner
Manhattan Island to be carried out throu
neighborhood sponsorship groups. Marguer
Tuohey has recently been appointed direct
of the Manhattan Council.
THE National Council of Women is planni
an International Congress of Women July
to 22, at The Century of Progress, Chicago,
discuss Our Common Cause — Civilizatic
"The primary emphasis of the discussion
says Lorine Pruette, who is helping to organ!
it, "will be upon security, security of emplc
ment, security of currency, security agair
war, disease, etc., with the secondary empha:
on opportunity for a maximum living after tl
security for a minimum existence has be
assured. There will be general sessions in t
morning and round tables in the afternoon wi
in the end, we hope, a rather concrete progra
to send back to the women's clubs and orgar
zations of the country."
CYNTHIA PETTEE SWEET, R.N., recently
district supervising nurse for the New Yo
State Department of Health, has been a
pointed executive secretary of the Dutche
County, N. Y., Health Association, succeedii
Mary Thornton Davis. . . . The Schuyl
County Tuberculosis and Health Associatio
: answering advertisements please mention THE SURVEY)
94
bruary 1933
'ly organized, has named Marian Laird as
Ith-teaching supervisor for its project in
ntry schools.
'INAL steps in a twelve-year effort for the
manent establishment and endowment of
Institute of Sociology, Le Play House, in
idon, have now been taken and its incor-
ation as a company, limited by guarantee,
Dmplished. Plans for the Institute's future,
uding its periodical, The Sociological Re-
v, and the development of its research
gram, will now go forward. Le Play House
es from 1910 when through the generosity
AT. and Mrs. Victor Branford it was bought,
ipped and placed in trust for the Sociologi-
Society, which with certain allied bodies
:r became the Institute. Mrs. Branford died
926 and Mr. Branford in 1930. Their plans
endowment have been accomplished by
ir bequests to the Institute.
.IRS. CLIFFORD A. ATKINSON, who for five
rs has been with the American Red Cross in
shington as assistant director of volunteer
cial services, has resigned. Her home is in
rset, Vt., which, from one who has visited
t lovely village, is a pretty good place to
home.
They Don't Speak Our
Language
|UT of Chicago, by way of the news-letter
of the Council of Social Agencies, come
> stories which Helen Cody Baker happily
itions, Terminology and Communication.
; first has to do with a vague lady who
idered into the Red Cross clothing store
lly looking for a job, but willing to volunteer
iew until she found one. She had visited the
ited Charities and the Unemployment Relief
•re she understood they did work on cases.
m a good sewer and I know I could do case-
•k." "What kind of cases did you think they
ant?" someone wanted to know. "What
d?" echoed the volunteer. "Why, pillow
as, of course."
"he other story, says the news-letter, was
ught in by a man who had just addressed a
man's club on a social welfare bill about to
before the legislature. He spoke eloquently
I thirty minutes and sat down well satisfied
h the impression he had made. Then up rose
president, smiling sweetly, "Ladies, I am
e it has done us a great deal of good to
en to Mr. So-and-So. I am sure we all ap-
'Ve of this bill. It certainly must be paid."
To cope with "an unprecedented flood" of
uests for information, advice and field
yice, the National Organization for Public
lalth Nursing has made a temporary addition
t the staff through the appointment of Elmira
hrs Wickendon. Mrs. Wickendon starts
Serai laps ahead of usual new staff members
:e through two earlier periods of service
I h the organization she has become well
• [uainted with its work and with public-health
t'sing throughout the country.
THE people around this sanctum are usually
t re interested in the twelve best Surveys than
i the twelve best anything else. But they did
t:e time out to concoct their own list of the
t;lve outstanding American women leaders in
t last hundred years for the poll conducted by
THE SURVEY
the National Council of Women. The returns
showed this office about 50 percent out of
agreement with the Great Common People,
whose ballots determined the twelve women
whose portraits will be hung at the Council's
headquarters at the Century of Progress in
Chicago. The chosen list included: Mary Baker
Eddy, Jane Addams, Harriet Beecher Stowe,
Julia Ward Howe, Frances E. Willard, Susan
B. Anthony, Carrie Chapman Catt, Clara
Barton, Helen Keller, Amelia Earhart, Mary
Lyon and Mary E. Woolley. But this staff
stubbornly refuses to accept any list of out-
standing women leaders that does not include
the names of Lillian D. Wald, Florence Kelley,
Julia C. Lathrop, Dorothea Dix and Grace
Abbott.
CONRAD P. PRINTZLEIN, a former assistant
United States attorney, has been appointed
federal probation officer in the United States
District Court in Brooklyn. He succeeds the
late August Ferrand who organized the pro-
bation work in this court.
THE American Association of Social Workers,
always keen over any gains in the field of civil
service, is rejoicing in the appointment of Linda
Wharton, one of its members and an alumna of
the New York C.O.S., as social service examiner
in the New York State Department of Civil
Service.
DR. GEORGE M. KLINE, Massachusetts
commissioner of mental diseases, a psychia-
trist of national reputation, died suddenly
after listening to the radio announcement of the
death of his friend Calvin Coolidge. Dr. James
V. May has been appointed to the commission
to succeed him.
Real Money
THE National Conference of Social Work
now has a nice fat prize to hang up for
those brave souls who prepare papers for its
divisional programs. Chester D. Pugsley of
Peekskill, N. Y., who has offered similar
awards to various other groups such as the
National Press Club, has given the Conference
$250 as a prize for the best paper at the Detroit
meeting, the nature of "best" to be determined
by the editorial committee. Stanley P. Davies,
of New York, is chairman of a special com-
mittee which is formulating the terms of the
award.
PUBLICITY folk, who knew her best, will be
sorry to hear of the death of Mildred Graham
which occurred recently in Asheville, N. C.
Miss Graham was one of the group who first
took up social-work publicity in a serious way
and was always active and interested in the
Social Work Publicity Council.
THE National Urban League is sending T.
Arnold Hill, the director of its department of
industrial relations, on a tour of the South and
Southwest to study the Negro's participation
in relief and to investigate charges of dis-
crimination.
FROM June Purcell Guild, The Survey's best
news scout in Richmond, Va., comes word of
the sudden death of Luella Townley for nine
years professor at the Richmond School of
Social Work. Mrs. Guild reports too the elec-
tion of Sarah Hartman of the Children's
95
Memorial Clinic as chairman of the local
chapter of the American Association of Social
Workers. ... In the interest of economy and
greater efficiency plans are being completed for
the housing of the Richmond Urban League in
the Negro Community Center and for a corre-
lation of the activities of the two organizations
under a joint supervisory committee.
A NEW member of the New Mexico legis-
lature is a former member of The Survey staff
— Nancy Lane, daughter of the Secretary of
the Interior in the Wilson administration.
Australia Looks Us Over
SOCIAL work training schools in this country
^ have been under the bright-eyed scrutiny,
for the past three months,of Aileen Fitzpatrick,
director of the Board of Social Study and
Training of Sydney, which is by way of being
the first school of social work in Australia.
Miss Fitzpatrick has been here as the guest of
the Carnegie Corporation. The Sydney school,
now in its fourth year, was started after the
depression and is therefore, says its director,
depression proof. While it has the active inter-
est of university people it is an independent
institution with its own board. It is of graduate
status, requiring two years for its general
diploma with an additional year for special
diplomas in such subjects as child guidance,
industrial welfare, hospital social service and
so on. Entrance requires not only the usual
academic qualifications but a test of personal
fitness for social work administered by the
Institute of Industrial Psychology. The year
the school opened it had sixty applicants but it
was so exacting in its choice that only seven
were accepted. It now has twenty students.
Miss Fitzpatrick says that the fundamental
difference between our country and hers as it
shows itself in social work is that, "In America
you think of the government as 'it'. In Australia
the government is 'us.' "
AUGUSTA FEIN BERDANSKY, after nine years
with the New York Board of Jewish Guardians,
is now director of the Edenwald School for
Girls, an educational and vocational project
for backward girls under the wing of the
Hebrew Orphan Asylum.
THE National Child Labor Committee asks
its friends to note its new address, 419 Fourth
Avenue, New York.
ON January 15 the Irene Kaufmann Settle-
ment of Pittsburgh honored Anna B. Held-
man, R.N., who has had thirty years of
service as visiting nurse and director of health
activities with the settlement. Miss Heldman
did pioneer work in establishing visiting nursing
and a children's clinic in the Hill district —
collaborating with the Pittsburgh Survey in its
studies of typhoid epidemics, and breaking
ground for the entire field of public-health
work in Pittsburgh.
WITH the curtailment of the educational
service of Cleanliness Institute — another
casualty of depression — the National Tuber-
culosis Association and the Association's state
and local branches have fallen heir to the
distribution of the Institute's school readers,
booklets, posters and other publications. After
February twenty-fifth health officials, public-
health nurses, teachers and others who wish
96
these publications should consult their state
tuberculosis association. Roscoe C. Edlund,
general director of Cleanliness Institute, an-
nounces that under the new program it will not
be possible to continue the extensive corre-
spondence, field service and other detailed as-
sistance formerly given through the educational
service but that he will be glad to serve insofar
as possible in carrying on Institute contacts.
Correspondence should be addressed to Mr.
Edlund or to Cleanliness Institute at 45 East
17 St., New York City.
P.S.'s Ruth Lerrigo, ranging the great open
spaces in the interest of The Survey: " I am still
vaguely in touch with what is happening in
Our Great Pagan City of New York, though
somewhat cramped by such as the Chicago
newsdealer who, when I asked for The New
York Times gave me a dirty look and said, 'We
don't keep none o' them foreign newspapers.'"
THE Jewish Committee on Scouting, which
for four years, under the chairmanship of Dr.
Cyrus Adler of Philadelphia, has been pro-
moting scouting in Jewish communal organiza-
tions, has been merged with the National
Council of the Boy Scouts of America where it
will maintain advisory functions. The move
was made as a step in the better coordination
of all forces engaged in the promotion of scout-
ing among American youth. Philip W. Russ,
who was executive director of the Jewish com-
mittee, is now assistant director of relation-
ships of the Boy Scouts of America.
THE times being what they are the National
Committee for Mental Hygiene has been ob-
liged to suspend publication of its monthly
bulletin, some of the functions of which will be
carried on, until a better day dawns, by the
committee's quarterly journal, Mental Hy-
giene.
NEW YORK University started on February 7
an extension course in A Survey of Eye Condi-
tions in cooperation with the New York State
Department of Social Welfare. Specialists in
the various fields will consider the anatomy and
pathology of the eye, the science of lighting,
industrial hygiene of the eye and so on. Pre-
requisite, fifteen units of work in an accredited
secondary school or its equivalent; fee, $20;
registration, Room 238, East Building, 18-24
Washington Place, New York City; classes are
held at the Medical College, 338 East 26 St.
IMITATION may be the sincerest flattery, but
more mercenary motives obviously lay behind
the recent attempt to counterfeit the 1907
Christmas Seal stamp. Because of its rarity it
has become a valuable collectors' item. Other
seals are of value, notably those of 1910, 1911
and 1913, but a keen search so far has not de-
tected bogus representations of them. Pro-
spective purchasers of 1907 Christmas Seals
are urged to communicate with the National
Tuberculosis Association, 450 Seventh Ave.,
New York City.
MABEL E. MACOMEER, a pioneer in play-
ground work and long an agitator for the
extension of public playgrounds, died recently
at her home in Brooklyn. For the past three
years she had been in the probation department
of the New York Family Court.
FROM E. R. Cass, general secretary of the
American Prison Association, comes the wel-
come news flash that President Hoover has
THE SURVEY
followed precedent and accepted the Associa-
tion's recommendation for the appointment of
Sanford Bates, director of the United States
Bureau of Prisons, as representative of this
country on the International Prison Commis-
sion to succeed the late Caroline Stevens
Wittpenn. This commission was established in
1872 through the initiative of Dr. Enoch C.
Wines, then general secretary of the American
Prison Association.
Everybody Sings
*TpHIS department, which is strong for family
•*• life, insists on the addition of Kiddiesingers
to the Mothersingers and Fathersingers who
are being lined up by the National Congress of
Parents and, Teachers for its convention in
Seattle in May. The National Mothersingers
Chorus is already a going concern it appears,
since Mayme E. Irons, national chairman of
music, offers it a list of songs "not only for
convenience at Seattle, but for the purpose of
standardizing the work of singing." The
Mothersingers seem to be pretty heavy on
lullabies, but courage of one kind or another
rings out in the snappy numbers offered to the
Fathersingers. The mixed chorus list offers a
nice mixture of what the jazzites describe as
"hot" and "sweet." But we still vote for
Kiddiesingers.
MANY people in many places were shocked
and saddened by the death of Jessie Woodrow
Sayre which occurred last month in Cambridge,
Mass. The daughter of Woodrow Wilson, the
glamorous White House bride in 1913 of Fran-
cis B. Sayre, attorney, now Massachusetts
commissioner of correction, she was a very
real person on her own account. Settlements
and the Y.W.C.A. always had her interest, but
of recent years her activities were more closely
associated with the League of Nations, the
League of Women Voters and politics in general.
THE American Orthopsychiatric Association
will hold its tenth annual meeting at the Hotel
Pennsylvania, New York City, Feb. 23-25.
THE Washington office of the White House
Conference closed on January i. The three
latest volumes of the Conference bring the
total of its publications to thirty-three of which
eight are pamphlets. Inquiries concerning pub-
lications and orders should go directly to the
Century Company, 353 Fourth avenue, New
York. The Conference counts as one of its
major achievements the organization of thirty
state conferences to follow up its findings.
THE trustees of the American Museum of
Natural History, New York, have chosen F.
Trubee Davison to succeed Henry Fairfield
Osborn as president of the institution. Pro-
fessor Osborn's imminent retirement was an-
nounced some two years ago. Mr. Davison, son
of the late Henry P. Davison, is at the moment
assistant secretary of war for aeronautics.
On his retirement from that post on March 4
he will, he has announced, give his entire time
to the museum.
HAROLD SILVER, who has succeeded Rose M.
Lipson as executive director of the Jewish
Social Service Bureau in Detroit, comes from
Cincinnati where for five years he has been the
superintendent of case work for the United
Jewish Social Agencies. He has been identified
with social work ever since his graduation in
1922 from the University of Chicago, inci-
dentally with Phi Beta Kappa honors.
February 19
AFTER more than a year as organizer i
director of the New Jersey State Relief j
ministration Chester I. Barnard will go \K
early in March, to his regular duties as presid
of the New Jersey Bell Telephone Company
which he was lent to the state. New Jersey
some $20,000,000 in hand for its relief nc
this year and, barring unforeseen contingent
will not, Mr. Barnard believes, be obliged
borrow from the R.F.C.
THE Jewish Family Welfare Association
Minneapolis has a new executive secrets
Charles I. Cooper who succeeds Anna F. SI
sky. Mr. Cooper was for a number of years u
the Jewish family society in Pittsburgh i
before that was head worker of the Jew
Educational Alliance in Cleveland.
SUZANNE CRAWFORD, lately associate dii
tor of Greenwich House, New York, is the I
executive secretary of the New York C
Committee on Mental Hygiene, affiliated «
the State Charities Aid Association. !
succeeds Grace O'Neill.
Doings in California
A'JGUST VOLLMER, the chief of po
who made social history in Berkel
celebrated his resignation by embarking o:
trip around the world. On his return he i
resume his relations with the University
California. His successor, J. A. Greening, is
is said, off the same piece of cloth as CI
Vollmer, that being indicated by his rec
election as president of the Berkeley Counci
Social Agencies.
Various shifts in the field nursing and so.
service staff of the San Francisco Departm
of Public Health have occurred as a resuli
the resignation of Eleanor Stockton, directo
those bureaus, to head up the new James
Phelan Foundation which is concerned »'
home nursing. Ernestine Schwab is the ij
acting director of field nursing, with Marci
Leonard, recently supervisor of social sen
at the San Francisco Hospital, as assists
Mary K. Clary, formerly of the county weltl
department, succeeds Miss Leonard at I
hospital.
N. Florence Cummings, long director i
social service at the Lane and Stanford Ki
pitals, has resigned and is enjoying a period
travel and leisure. Leila Trewick has succeed
her at the hospitals.
The San Francisco Y.W.C.A. reports I
newcomers, Helena Barnes who journei
from Boston to the desk of the executive of i
Mission Center Branch, and Annie Clo Wall
from San Antonio who is the new executivo
the International Institute. Rose Chewu
secretary of the new Chinese Y.W.
Drastic budget cuts are responsible for I
resignation of Nell Alexander of the Los Ang :
Social Service Exchange, and also responsi
for the probability that no successor will*
appointed.
Eva Hance has been named acting execu t
secretary of the Los Angeles Council of Sclj
Agencies, succeeding Katherine L. Van Wl
who resigned to pursue a life of unaccustoid
leisure.
Some two years ago J. C. Astredo decijl
that twenty-five years as chief juvenile pre»
tion officer of San Francisco was enough Id
accordingly resigned. He has now returnee w
the fold as assistant probation officer of «
United States District Court in San Francis.
I. I. XIX. No. }
MONTHLY
March
CONTENTS
lONTlSPIECE One of Uncle Sam's Runaway Boys
•TCLE SAM'S RUNAWAY BOYS Owen Lovejoy 99
)\V CALIFORNIA ANCHORS DRIFTING BOYS
K. J. Scudder 101
HEN A CLIENT HAS A CAR Gertrude Springer 103
)LUNTEERS FOR RECREATION SERVICE
Charles J. Storey 104
IE INVASION OF GREEN TAX PASTURES
Simeon E. Leland 106
ANTED: A NATIONAL CENTER ON MEDICAL COSTS
AND CARE Richards M. Bradley 108
)MMON WELFARE. . no
pCIAL PRACTICE ...................................... 1 14
1 16
DUSTRY ............................................... n 8
DUCATION ............................................. 120
^'EMPLOYMENT AND COMMUNITY ACTION. . 121
X)KS.
126
MMUNICATIONS 130
133
PLAN FOR THE TREATMENT OF UNEMPLOYMENT
Kenneth L. M. Pray 135
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Publication Office, 10 Ferry Street, Concord, N. H.
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THE SURVEY— Monthly— $3.00 a Year
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Lucius R. EASTMAN, president; JULIAN W. MACK, JOSEPH P. CHAM-
:RLAIN, JOHN PALMER GAVIT, vice-presidents; ANN REED BRENNER,
retary; ARTHUR KELLOGG, treasurer.
PAUL U. KELLOGG, editor.
ARTHUR KELLOGG, managing editor; MARY Ross, BEULAH AMIDON,
JON WHIPPLE, JOHN PALMER GAVIT, LOULA D. LASKER, FLORENCE
3EB KELLOGG, GERTRUDE SPRINGER, associate editors.
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Onager.
SO THEY SAY
The time is ripe for intervention by God. — Pope Pius IX.
This is only the ox-cart stage of the Machine Age. — Henry Ford.
The evil men do in the ballot-box lives after them. — William Allen
White, Kansas.
A decent standard of relief cannot be attained through food alone.
— Dr. Louis Levy, Memphis.
I have no sympathy with Communism, but I am not afraid of it.
— Governor Gifford Pinchot, Pennsylvania.
Too many revolutionists live by the simple process of taking in
each other's manuscripts. — Heywood Broun, New Tork.
The despised dole would be a Godsend to most of America's
unemployed. — Charles Dukes, British fraternal delegate to convention
of American Federation of Labor.
Some people who have plenty of leisure are worrying about how
others will use theirs when it comes to them. — Frances Perkins, state
industrial commissioner, New Tork.
There is more hope of permanent accomplishment in the juvenile
courts than in all the other courts put together. — Dr. Manfred S.
Guttmacher, psychiatrist, Baltimore.
It is not the machine that is the cause of our present tragic con-
dition. It is the hardened arteries of our organized religious, politi-
cal and financial systems. — Owen D. Young.
Man is no different by and large, from the day when he cracked
down on a sabre-toothed tiger with a tomahawk. Now, instead of
tiger-teeth, he wants money. — Clarence Darrow, Chicago.
People do not make revolution eagerly any more than they do
war. ... A revolution takes place only when there is no other way
out. — Leon Trotsky in History of the Russian Revolution.
It ought to be possible to take a given characteristic of the behav-
ing personality and state how the adventures of food in cells reflect
themselves in the chemistry of souls. — Dr. Louis Berman in Food and
Character.
Children should not be forbidden to swear — not because it is desir-
able that they should swear, but because it is desirable that they
should think that it does not matter whether they do or not. —
Bertrand Russell.
Why the prominent unemployed never are selected by the com-
mittee-makers is an economic mystery. Those are the boys that
have time and — what the committee-boys seldom have — experience.
— F. P. A. in New Tork Herald-Tribune.
The modern American college is too often a failure because it does
not impart to the student anything that will stick to the ribs of his
memory and retain real significance ten years after graduation. —
Prof. William P. Montague, Columbia University.
Unless an honest attempt has been made to redeem a man during
his confinement a prison has no more right to exist than a hospital
that turns out patients no better than when they were admitted
with no attempt to cure them. — Warden Leach, Newcastle County
Workhouse, Delaware.
Charity would be easier to take if it were handled in the manner of
Kentucky moonshiners. Lay your money on a stump, walk away
and return in a short time. Your money is gone, your whiskey is there
and there are no witnesses to the transaction. — Client of United
Charities, St. Paul, Minn.
I am inclined to believe that the problem of mental disease and
defect is the most important single problem in the entire field of
community health, a problem roughly equivalent in magnitude to all
the rest of that field taken together. — Dr. C.-E. A. Winslow in
Journal of the Royal Sanitary Institute.
Wide World Photo for the Children's Aid Society of New York
One of 3000 young fellows who turned to the Children's Aid Society last year. Few of them are literally homeless
MERCY COLLEG
LIBRARY
DETROIT
March
Volume LXIX
No. 3
Uncle Sam's Runaway Boys
Is the Army the Place for Young Transients of Whom Only 5 Percent Are Homeless?
By OWEN R. LOVEJOY
Secretary New Tork Children's Aid Society
dramatization of the " army of transient boys "
is a beautiful example of the spontaneous response
of the American people to economic needs when
>nce those needs have become sufficiently urgent. It is also
in excellent example of our national preference for cures in-
,tead of prevention. All over our country public officials are
ittempting to meet these boys with kindly but firm control
vhile private philanthropy is working overtime to feed,
lothe and lodge them, to study their needs, mitigate their
uffering, turn the aimless tide into safe channels, and
vherever possible to return them home.
But thus far scarcely any public attention has been given
-in fact, pitifully little has been done — to deal with the
iroblem at its source. The recruiting of the army goes on
laily — but unobserved. Frantic efforts are made to dam
he stream but no at-
ention is paid to the
prings from which it
.rises.
These boys are popu-
irly called " homeless."
"hey are not "home-
rs." It is doubtful if
percent are without
omes. The transient
>oys in your city have
ome from homes in
ther cities just as the
ransient boys in other
ities have come in part
•om homes in your
ity. The major ques-
ion is not, "What shall
^OMEtwenty thousand boys go yearly through ,
O of the New Tork Children's Aid Society, mos.
the doors
most of them
for health service or convalescent care or merely for the
privilege of its playgrounds. Usually seven or eight hun-
dred of them are homeless in New Tork. But last year more
than three thousand stranded lads were registered and
helped back to their homes or to jobs in the city or on farms.
Mr. Lovejoy's program for transient youth is therefore
based on current experience. The immediate fate of the
specific bills he discusses will be determined before his
article is read, but in any case the problem will not be
solved at once and its treatment will remain a live issue.
99
we do with boys who have left their homes?" but "What
can we do to keep boys from leaving home?"
There is nothing mysterious about this. If every city
would develop a comprehensive program of service to
children and youth the problem would soon solve itself.
Adequate home relief, a vital educational system and a
generous program of recreation would so wed these youth — •
even in this time of depression — to their home cities that
the stream of transiency would soon dry up. Under present
conditions, barring the small percentage who leave home
just from wanderlust and the other small percentage who
are abnormal — the congenital defectives, the lazy, the dis-
honest, the depraved (all of whom constitute a negligible
proportion,) the lack of the service mentioned accounts for
this desertion of home and the aimlessness of the open road.
The severing of local
bonds is progressive.
The boy who witnesses
increasing poverty and
hunger in his home
leaves either for emo-
tional release or in the
hope of finding aid to
send back. If he seeks
refuge in school and
finds nothing there to
respond to any con-
scious need, he breaks
away from school and
out into the commu-
nity. If nothing is of-
fered to fill his leisure
hours and the com-
100
THE SURVEY
March 193
munity has nothing for him to do, he leaves the town and
without any definite formality is already enlisted in the
army of transients.
But while social workers may nurse their idealism and
their hope for a sane solution, it is necessary to preserve a
realistic attitude and deal with the immediate problem.
This army of transient youth is here and society must face
the problem of curing a malady we have been too unwise to
prevent.
Confessedly, the problem has attained alarming propor-
tions. The popular estimate that there are three hundred
thousand youthful wanderers — a figure which may be far
below the actual number, but which is probably too high-
has electrified the country to writing and reading multiplied
pages about them. They have become the answer to the
photographer's prayer and scarcely a magazine appears
today without pictures of young fellows jumping freight
trains, huddled in box-cars, cooking Mulligan stew in the
jungle, thumbing passing automobiles and hitch-hiking
across the country. Whatever the number, none of the
measures thus far advocated is too generous.
A*4 amendment offered by Senator Cutting of New
Mexico to both the Costigan-La Follette and the
Wagner bills for relief of unemployment provides an ap-
propriation of 15 million dollars to be used in service to
transients. At the time of writing, the Wagner bill has just
passed the Senate and is before the House. The 15 million
dollars is to be applied to the various states and such
part as would be used to serve boy transients would be
none too much. It would doubtless prove a far more eco-
nomical expenditure of our national wealth than would the
alternative obligation for physical and moral rehabilita-
tion if these boys continue to be exposed to health hazards
and to the myriad temptations incident to a life of va-
grancy. This latter account will have to be liquidated
through hospitals, juvenile courts, reformatories, jails and
penitentiaries if we are shortsighted enough to default on
the pending obligation. According to the provisions of this
bill each state will be empowered to work out its own pro-
gram of service to transients for which various specific
plans have already been suggested.
But another bill aimed to deal with transient boys has
also passed the Senate, which has voted to add 22 million
dollars to the army appropriation bill for citizens' military
training camps in order to give relief, according to its
sponsor, Senator Couzens, to eighty-eight thousand so-
called vagrant boys. It provides that the service "shall
be available only for camps of at least twelve months'
duration in which applicants are accepted only if over
fifteen years and under twenty-one years of age and if
unemployed at the time of application and for six months
prior thereto."
It seems incredible that the country could seriously con-
sider a proposal of this nature, but these are days in which
the incredible becomes probable. Even if the measure
could actually serve eighty-eight thousand of the present
total of transient boys it could not give these boys what
we believe they most need. The training would be under
strict military discipline and would be admirable as prepa-
ration for military service, but it is our understanding
that at present our nation is far more interestecf til promot-
ing the arts of peace and preparing its youth for efficient
civic and industrial service.
Prominent military men have already expressed them-
selves as opposed to the measure, which seeks to give thes
American boys mass treatment, makes no provision fc
finding employment when they are released, forbids thei
discharge within a year unless they find employment, ha
no machinery for follow-up, to discover what becomes c
them if discharged nor makes provision for their return
their employment is transitory. Apparently boys, once ac
mitted to the camp, would be kept in custody unless the
could furnish evidence that outside employment has bee
secured. But suppose they should not like the life or train
ing offered in the camp and should decide to leave; woa
it not be the obvious duty of the guards to detain them an
if they refused to stop when escaping what then would b
the next duty of the guards?
This whole scheme ought to be killed. And it will be
enough members share the enlightened view of Congress
man Ross Collins, Chairman of the House Conferenc
Committee. But not for the reason now being advanced b
citizens who would drive these boys into the navy insteac
This is an intriguing suggestion fortified by an analogy t
the methods of recruiting the English navy. One proponen
of the idea says, "The boys on these ships are under stric
and wholesome discipline but they are not compelled t
join the navy. However, the training is such that very fei
boys fail to enlist." It is suggested that discarded battk
ships and other ancient vessels could be transformed int
training ships and that all our seaports offer material of thi
kind for use. It is said that this plan could be made th
backbone of the navy and those showing "proper mentc
and other abilities " could be sent to Annapolis to be traine
as officers. Any who had equivalent abilities but seemed t
prefer land to water could be sent to West Point to b
trained as army officers.
If either of these plans should prove successful in relatio
to eighty-eight thousand boys, its very success would b
its condemnation because it would offer the most dramati
invitation to thousands of other boys, now just on th
point of breaking away from home, to leave in the hop
that after six months of wandering they might join th
camps for free food, lodging and entertainment. If it i
true that we now have three hundred thousand transien
boys, this camp plan might be expected to increase thei
number to a million before the end of the year.
A GENERAL program of treatment possible under th
-L\. Cutting amendment is that of developing a series c
small camps for groups of not more than 750 each, ac
vocated by General Pelham D. Glassford of Washington
Many believe that in groups of this size under proper edu
cational and recreational supervision with programs o
work varied according to the locality and general condi
tions, a wholesome and constructive life could be secured a
a substitute for wandering. A recent visit to Bear Moun
tain Park in New York State, where two or three hundrei
"white collar" unemployed men are working, suggests th
possibility of working out the same general program fo
boys, varied only to provide less labor, more recreation am
closer personal supervision. It is not unlikely that this ide
will find widespread support, although it should not be for
gotten that, here again, any highly dramatic program, i
made unusually attractive, is likely to increase the numbe
of transient boys.
Another general suggestion grows out of the experienc
of a number of communities and perhaps finds its mos
concrete expression in the experience of the New Yori
larch 1933
THE SURVEY
101
hildren's Aid Society, which is the principal agency in the
metropolitan district for serving transient boys. Of the
six thousand boys, of sixteen to twenty-one years, regis-
tered at the Central Registration Bureau in 1932, three
Thousand were served by this Society. The Society main-
rains a Boys' Lodging House with a capacity of 250 where
_he boys are registered, and all possible information
jsecured about them. They are bathed, clothed, lodged,
Doarded and given, as far as possible, the benefits of a
lomelike atmosphere. Efforts are made to induce them to
•eturn home when, on investigation, that appears the best
jolicy. Otherwise efforts are made to find them jobs in the
:ity or if they are inclined to rural life they are sent for
:raining to one of two large farms where they are given
nstruction in dairying, poultry culture, horticulture and
reneral farming, in the fundamentals of forestry and in
mch industrial pursuits as automobile mechanics, painting,
"arpentry and the like. Meantime, agents of the Society are
:anvassing the state to find farm homes, filling stations,
service stations or other places of employment where they
::an be placed as soon as they are ready.
Growing out of this experience the following possibilities
lure indicated on a national scale:
(i) Hundreds of farms are financially on the rocks. Many are
n the hands of banks which have been compelled to foreclose and
vhich are eager to liquidate. If the occupants of these farms could
>e offered a small group of boys with a competent overseer who
vould help rehabilitate the farm with no expense to the farmer
)eyond their "keep" it is believed that many hundreds of such
>penings could be found and the real value of farms that are now
n distress be greatly enhanced.
(2) There are millions of acres of barren land in the country
where magnificent forests formerly yielded fabulous wealth.
These areas are now of negligible value even as grazing lands and
the marginal farmer who attempts to eke out a living simply
dooms himself and his family to slow starvation. At almost no
expense beyond the cost of food, clothes and lodging large groups
of transient boys could be employed in reforesting these areas, and
as the young stock grew the more capable could be uniformed and
employed as junior forest rangers to protect against forest fires
which annually destroy millions of American wealth. In fifty
years the country would possess forest wealth probably more than
sufficient to wipe out the national debt.
(3) Every American boy loves camp life. There are probably at
least a hundred boys' camps in New York State with an average
capacity of a hundred. A similar wealth of developed camp
sites exists in other states. It is estimated by experienced archi-
tects that at moderate expense most of these could be remodeled
for all-year use. With a well-coordinated program of work, study
and recreation these might be turned over to the use of transient
boys, thus making them the best substitute for the home,
school and community from the defects of which the boy has
fled.
With the appropriation of fifteen million dollars con-
templated in the federal bill for emergency relief to tran-
sients it is believed that a network of service could be
developed throughout the country that would at once put
a stop to the aimless wandering of boys, would furnish them
healthful and educational environment and would tend to
build in them elements of good citizenship, without the
highly dramatic elements that would still further draw
youth away from home and defeat its avowed purpose by
adding to the volume of the group to be served.
How California Anchors Drifting Boys
By K. J. SCUDDER
Probation Officer, Los Angeles, California
mother died when he was twelve. After three
years battling with a stepfather who didn't want
him, he took to the road and headed West.
Dick was too big for his age and couldn't make the grade
n school. When Dad lost his job and things were all wrong
t home Dick figured that if he took to the road there
rould be one less mouth to feed. He also headed West.
Harry, who wasn't very bright, spent his early years
.edging Chicago cops. Came retribution, Juvenile Court
nd escape from the reform school — and he too headed
Vest.
All of them, hundreds, — yes, thousands of Toms, Dicks
nd Harrys land in Los Angeles, after months of ganging
ip and idle wandering in that borderland of delinquency
/here getting-by is glorified.
While it is true that Los Angeles County has invited the
ation to visit her she has a right to qualify the invitation,
'he is interested in good citizens, not in wandering young
iff-raff who shy from work and defy anyone to do anything
bout it. They arrive destitute and without friends and
ven the well-intentioned ones, after months on the road,
re apt soon to find themselves in trouble. When this
appens the Juvenile Court has the choice of committing
he offender to a state institution or of sending him home.
Naturally the latter course is preferable. Whenever possible
parents or relatives are induced to supply transportation,
but this failing, as it usually does, the county pays the bill.
This system worked fairly well in the old days, but latterly
we have found the same boys returning three, four and
five times.
When in 1931 the influx reached alarming proportions,
the Los Angeles Probation Department made a sample
study of 212 boys between twelve and twenty-one, taken
into custody for vagrancy and other offenses. It found that
half of the boys were between fifteen and eighteen years
with the older group rarely receiving any help from home.
Most of them represented a school problem. Half were from
southern and mid-western states. Fewer than half had been
picked up as runaways; offenses of the others covered a
wide range. More than half, usually in the over-fifteen
group, had a record of serious trouble, including many
crimes of violence. What, then, could we do about it ?
The experience of our neighbor, Riverside County, in
dealing with its own home-grown problem boys held possi-
bilities. For three years Riverside County has experimented
successfully with a juvenile industrial training camp in the
San Jacinto mountains (see The Pine Tree Cure for Delin-
quency by Stella M. Atwood, The Survey, November 15,
1932, page 603). The proposal for a forestry camp for
juvenile wanderers brought one reaction from court
102
THE SURVEY
March 19-
officials and social workers and another from the juvenile
wanderers themselves. Judge Samuel Blake had long
dreamed of a camp for court wards. In it we all saw the
hope of sound social adjustment in a program comparable
to the life of a forest ranger with regular hours of outdoor
work and sleep, wholesome food, strenuous athletic compe-
tition and wise use of leisure.
The boys saw it as a new device to enslave them. Sud-
denly home developed attractions. "Send to dad for money.
I ain't gonna work in any camp. I wanta go home." The
night after the plan was mentioned at Juvenile Hall, the
detention home, five boys climbed over the fence and have
not been seen since. All of which led us to believe that the
idea was a good one.
Forestry Camp No. 10 was opened in February 1932. It
is located in San Dimas Canyon, about thirty miles from
Los Angeles. The population never exceeds thirty. About
a hundred and fifty boys a year can be handled. It is
administered by the County Forestry Department which
furnishes equipment, supplies and certain personnel. The
county welfare and probation departments turn over to the
Forestry Department the funds which under the old plan
would have been used to ship the boys home. A foreman,
an assistant and a cook handle the routine of the camp. Two
carefully selected assistant probation officers, designated
counselors, are on full-time duty in charge of all ac-
tivities,— work assignments, custody, discipline and super-
vision day and night.
Boys between sixteen and eighteen are sent to the camp
through the Juvenile Court which suspends commitment
to the Preston School of Industry and substitutes the camp
as a privilege of good behavior. The length of stay depends
upon the distance from home. Each boy receives, in addi-
tion to maintenance, a credit of fifty cents a day toward
the cost of his trip back to his home. If he lives in New
Jersey it takes him longer than if he lives in Texas. That's
his hard luck. The average stay in camp is three months.
THE camp routine includes eight hours of good hard work
a day, lusty meals, regular hours of sleep and a vigor-
ous program of sports for which the boys are divided into two
highly competitive teams. The newcomer arrives while
the work-crews are out on the job and has a chance to look
over the place, get his outfit and talk things over with the
counselor and the boy officer of the day. When the gang
comes in he observes that every boy has a bath and clean
underclothes before supper. He participates somewhat
awkwardly in the ceremony of lowering the colors and
gapes at the rush to the bulletin board where the chief
counselor posts the merit marks for the day. Then follow
the arguments over the rating. This one protests a poor
mark, but is informed that his bed was badly made;
another protestant is reminded of his failure to curb the
habit of "shooting off his mouth." Anything below an
average of two for the week cuts the unfortunate out of the
Saturday movie as a guest of the Fox theater in Pomona.
After supper, with officers and boys eating the same fare,
comes an hour and a half of baseball, followed by a session
in the boxing ring where the newcomer must put on the
gloves, learn to protect himself and take it on the chin
without trying to gouge out the other fellow's eyes. About
eight the boys gather in the dormitory and the singing
begins. The singing is simply terrible but it looses many
a boyish emotion and who cares how bad it is? Then for
half an hour or so some of the boys play cards, some
checkers, others read or listen to the radio. Back in tl
corner the coach is showing half a dozen hardy young sou,
how to build a human pyramid. He turns with a smile an
says, "You just can't tire them out." At half-past eigli
things quiet down. At nine the lights go out.
The work on which the boys are now engaged is th1
building of a fourteen-mile motor-way into the mountain
where forest fires would create havoc. This new road wi|j
permit the use of fire fighting apparatus and will greatlii
reduce the fire hazard in a valuable and important wate:
shed area. It is a definitely useful public project.
These are all runaway boys. More than half have corrj
mitted crimes of violence, yet there is not a lock on a door il
Forestry Camp No. 10 nor a heavy screen on a windovp
There are no guns in camp, no corporal punishment of ant
kind. Boys come and go at will. Only two miles away is thi
famous Los Angeles Foothill Boulevard over which thoil
sands of motor cars pass daily. Yet there are no morj
runaway attempts than from many road gangs where thj
guards are heavily armed and the men locked into a stetl
cage at night. We have had only two runaway attempts i I
the last three months and a half.
OF course it is not all velvet in the camp. A few of th
boys are hard. They have never worked and they d
not intend to. A boy throws down his pick and stages a,
old fashioned temper tantrum with as large an audience a
possible for his defiance. The counselor gives him plenty c
time to quiet down before he puts the question, "Are yoi
sure you do not want to go to work?" More fireworks till ;
ranger steps quickly into the picture and handcuffs snap
There is no compromise when things reach that stage
"That darn fool'll be on his way to Preston tomorrow,'
murmur the boys as, the excitement over, they go back t
work. No need for "rough stuff" — if they won't work wi
merely take them out of the camp. Less and less do wi
have to do it.
Runaways are almost invariably caught by the rangers o
picked up by motor police and brought back to camp — n<
longer heroes. They are at once taken to Los Angeles t<
appear in the Juvenile Court. The action of the judge i:
swift and sure. They have abused the privilege of Forestr
Camp No. 10. The former stay of execution of the commit
ment to the Preston School of Industry is revoked and bj
night they are on their way for eighteen months. About twc
out of every twenty-five boys fail to respond to the treat-
ment at the camp. They wish to remain "tough guys,'
seeking the easy way out of everything and seizing th«
first opportunity to run away. But what if they do rur.
away ? We are more concerned with building up the twenty-
three who don't, and we see no justice in subjecting them tc
repressive methods for the sake of two who cannot adjust,
We are not interested in punishment. Ours is a job of socialj
adjustment with open air, hard work, harder play and
decent treatment as our tools.
More than one hundred boys have been through the
camp, all problem boys from the open road. Many of them
had been sent home more than once, and had turned up,
again in trouble, in Los Angeles. So far not one of the camp
boys has returned. Perhaps they will come again, but the
months roll by and they are not here. Are they afraid to
come because of work? Perhaps — some of them. But from
many letters we know that there are more who, through
their stay in the camp, found the road to a better way of'
life and that California will see them no more.
When Your Client Has a Car
By GERTRUDE SPRINGER
OW I don't want to make any trouble, Miss
Bailey, but you remember I called you yester-
day to send me an unemployed man to clean
p the yard. Well, he's here, and I think the welfare
ught to know that he came in bis own car. It's out in front
f the house this minute. Isn't that terrible? You can't
rust anybody, can you? I thought you'd be glad to know."
Miss Bailey wasn't glad to know. She hadn't been glad
he other four times that poor old car had been reported to
er. She knew the car well, knew the miracle of mechanics
hat kept it together, the shrewd bartering that kept it in
as and oil. She knew too that it wouldn't sell for five
ollars but that, running, it had in a month added twice
ve dollars to the resources of a big family reduced for
ubsistence to a meager food order. She knew the quarters
: earned taking a load of neighborhood children to school
n rainy mornings, or a load of lucky men to their work; she
new the odd jobs it had had a part in picking up, the car-
ires it had saved in hustling from a few hours work here to
few hours there. And she was perfectly certain that it
adn't cost the public a nickel. Yet it was apparent that the
ve people to whom she had sent this man for odd jobs
'ere shocked by the fact of his car, and attached a quality
f guilt to its possession by one of the unemployed. And she
adn't the least idea what to do about it.
There is perhaps no point in the whole business of relief
;bout which the public is so sensitive as in the matter of
ir-ownership. The question comes up even in the most
ar-conscious communities. Stories of abuses multiply at
inner and bridge tables and sooner or later magnify into
ewspaper headlines. More than once they have occa-
:oned formal investigations of relief agencies and sweeping
reforms."
Said the executive of a small-city family society, now
andling the whole relief program with public funds:
It's probably the plaguingest thing we have to deal with. We
:t more kicks about it than on any other single score. If the pub-
: would think more about the kind of food orders we have to
out and less about a few rickety old cars we'd get on faster.
e haven't any policy and we don't want one. If we got one it
ould, if I know my public opinion, force the impounding of
:ense plates as the price of relief. And that wholesale rule is
hat we are trying to avoid. It would work great individual hard-
:iip, destroy that modicum of self-respect that car-ownership
(ill seems to carry, and, if our investigations are as good as we
link they are, would wipe out an earning power which, though
nail and uncertain, is all the earning power many families have
ft. Of course we don't encourage joy-riding. We make no allow-
ice for gas and oil and believe me it would take a high-class
lancier to squeeze a nickel's worth of either out of the provision
e make. If the client, by his own ingenuity and initiative can
;ep his car going — and some of their ways of doing it are worthy
a bigger enterprise — and if we are satisfied that he uses his car
i turn an honest fifty cents, that it is an asset in his total situa-
:on, — then, strength to his elbow, say I. But don't quote me. The
ihole business is full of grief.
no policy seems to be the one best calculated to hold the
question to case-by-case consideration where social workers
believe it belongs. In Pennsylvania the practice varies
county by county in accordance, it seems evident, with the
experience and background of the County Relief Board and
its staff. Some boards, steeped in the old traditions of poor
relief, have made an iron-clad rule that license plates must
be turned in when the first food order is issued. Others,
more enlightened, make exceptions for men who can prove
that they have a little work that is dependent on the use of
the car.
In New Jersey the temper of the state relief administra-
tion is to give the car-owner the benefit of the doubt, but in
some communities, particularly those backward in social-
work organization, local opinion has forced rules which
amount to "Take your choice, car or food."
IN New York City, where home-relief investigators are
themselves work-relief cases with a weekly wage of $20,
the question is constant. In one outlying precinct in the
Borough of Queens twenty-two of the forty-five home-relief
investigators use their own cars on the job, thereby cover-
ing twice as much ground in the sparsely settled district as
if they had to go on foot. But there is no kink in the law
which permits them any allowance for operating their own
cars literally in the service of the state, nor was there any
way to get around the $10 license fee which the state re-
quired in January. Here again only miracles of personal
ingenuity and initiative have kept the cars going. More-
over public opinion on this point is just as edgy in New
York as in more intimate communities with many of the
complaints coming from the home-relief clients themselves.
With public opinion as sensitive as it is, this policy of
T TOW some of the new problems in relief
J. J. work, rarely encountered by the case
worker of a few years ago, are being treated;
how new workers without extensive training
are being prepared to meet situations and
make the quick decisions demanded when case-
loads are unwieldly and supervision limited,
will be the subject of a series of articles for
which T'be Survey has drawn on the day-by-
day experience of workers directly on the job.
When the Client Has a Car is the first of
these articles. Others to follow include: Are Re-
lief Workers Policemen? ; What Price Power;
and How We Behave in Other People's
Houses — and Why.
103
104
THE SURVEY
March 19;
In Denver, where in the halcyon days a car for every
house was very nearly true, the social agencies at first in-
sisted that a car and relief could not mix. But as more and
more car-owners were forced onto the relief lists the rule
had to be modified. It was resented and evaded by clients
and led to bad relationships all around. The practice now is
to raise little question about the car as long as the agency is
satisfied of the owner's good faith in using it in productive
ways such as searching for work, bringing fuel from the-
country or hauling supplies from the cheap city markets.
In Cincinnati the relief authorities generally discourage
the ownership and use of cars, but they have on occasion
helped to maintain cars and trucks that figured in the
family budget. When there is no particular reason for a
family to have a car except that it has it, the license plates
may be asked for. On the whole the matter is left to the
judgment of the individual case worker.
Toledo is one of the few places that has a clearly defined
policy, authoritatively supported, toward car-ownership by
clients. But it was not achieved by accident or merely by
taking thought. All last year the Social Service Federation
and the city welfare department were subjected to acrid
criticism because of families on relief who called for their
grocery orders in cars. The public was not troubled by
grocery orders carted in baby-buggies, toy wagons or
wheelbarrows, but it was offended by the spectacle of an
order being stowed into a decrepit Ford. The matter
finally came up in the City Council and a committee was
appointed to investigate. Inquiry revealed that of the
twelve thousand families on relief about 10 percent were
operating cars. This was too much for one affronted coun-
cilman who promptly introduced an ordinance prohibiting
any family on relief from operating a car.
Up to that time the relief agencies had followed a fairly
liberal case-by-case policy discouraging the unnecessary
use of cars but not making it a bar to needed relief. Out of
this experience Wendell F. Johnson, director of the Social
Service Federation, prepared a reasoned analysis of the
whole situation, weighing all the considerations involve
and outlining the advantages of an elastic policy as again
a rigid rule. His proposals, approved by Dr. Elwood i
Rowsey, director of public welfare, were presented to tl
City Council which immediately tabled the prohibitoi
ordinance and gave its blessing to the new policy.
This policy calls for a case-history of every car owned 1
a family on relief or applying for relief which reveals ho
much of an asset the car is and to what uses it is being pu
If it is an asset of considerable value the visitor discuss
with the client the advisability of converting it into cash
help meet the family's needs. Final decision on the sa
rests with the client. If the car is to be retained a defini
agreement is made that it is not to be used while the fami
is on relief, but in cases recommended by the visitor ar
approved by her supervisor, where it is shown that the c
"is used as a means of income or is needed for other nece
sary purposes," exceptions are made. "Clients who opera
their cars against the decision that its use is unnecessai
may be required to turn in their license plates as a cone
tion of continued relief."
In the face of public opinion on car-ownership by reli
families there have been few, even among social workei
who have had the hardihood to defend it as a source
pleasure in a singularly pleasureless period, though tho
cars in their more gallant days were the center and circur
ference of family recreation. Here again Wendell F. Joh
son says a word that seems worth saying:
The use of a car for recreation by a family which through
fault of its own has had to drink the very dregs of poverty, whit
has been deprived of the right to choose the kind of food it sh;
eat, the kind of clothes it shall wear, the kind of fuel it shall bur
can be defended, it seems to me, as a means of sustaining mora
in the family and in the community as a whole. It may well
that this one small deprivation would constitute the breakii
point for a family. When people have endured so much for so loi
the withholding of even a Sunday ride in the country may ho
the balance between courage and despair.
Volunteers for Recreation Service
By CHARLES J. STOREY
IHALL we replace municipal recreation workers,
dropped because of budget reductions, with volun-
teers? What does the influx of volunteers into the
battered recreational set-ups mean? At first glance, the
coming forward of thousands of interested citizens to stop
the breach in the ranks of paid playground directors,
swimming instructors, community center workers, and the
like appears to be an endorsement of the worth of these
services to the community. In many cities of the country
where municipal playground budgets have been cut, vol-
unteers, sometimes even play-leaders who have been
dropped from the reduced payrolls, are carrying the work
on. The proportion of volunteers to the paid staffs appears
to be from a few persons almost up to staffing the entire
organization.
There are traditions for the use of volunteers in recrea-
tional work which run back to the beginnings of public
recreation, when privately organized playgrounds and
community centers utilized almost 100 percent volunte<
personnel. Gradually the importance of providing pub]
recreation facilities for old and young has been recognizt
until now 831 cities have municipal provision for pa
professional personnel operating recreational and pis
facilities.
The question of volunteers in municipal recreation h;
been brought vividly before New Yorkers by the actic
of the Board of Estimate and Apportionment in elimina
ing the entire budget for After-School Athletic Center
amounting to $150,000, and suggesting that they 1
operated by volunteers from the teaching staff. Fro
January i some 466 centers, open from 3 to 5 P.M.,
been wholly starred by volunteers, largely by experiena
teachers who have been serving in the past as paid i;
structors on the playgrounds. Enough money has bee
secured by reallotment within the school budget to opera
about a quarter of the centers, and the question of wheth>
mh 1933
THE SURVEY
105
conduct the rest of them on a continuous volunteer basis
;till unsettled.
^t the moment the use of volunteers in municipal recrea-
n systems has an entirely different aspect than ever
"ore. They were usually employed to extend the work in
a;oing system. Today the use of volunteers is almost en-
:ly a method of replacement of paid workers dropped
•;iuse of budget reductions. The entire situation is
jferent and the question is whether such wholesale re-
i!t|.cement even in a crisis such as at present is justified,
' ji what is the most reasonable and practical attitude to
HJ taken in the matter.
' f Municipal recreation services are on trial. The disap-
'Jrtioned budget reductions for recreation facilities
,-npared to other municipal services in cities show a
•akness. We who are in the work believe that these
iiure-time opportunities are very important city services,
lit it is apparent that the public does not believe it; or
;i least many public officials do not. From the standpoint
olong term functioning on a satisfactory basis, it is obvi-
33 that these facilities, which have grown in size and
iiportance in the last fifteen years, cannot be efficiently
grated by volunteers. Should we not face the fact that it
:iil be several years before budgets will be back to any-
tng like normal? Can we afford to accept drastic cuts on
t1: plea that volunteers will fill the gaps? At a recent meet-
f the City Recreation Committee of the New York
\:lfare Council this question was discussed, with two
omions expressed: one, for filling the gaps by the volun-
r services of teachers and others rather than see centers
csed, and two, the closing of centers from which workers
live been taken because of budget cuts with the expecta-
.j-n that public support for the restoration of these serv-
,ijis can be more quickly secured by drastic action. Trained
inmer workers on playgrounds have been entirely elim-
».ted from the park departments on the plea that emer-
ncy workers paid by relief funds would take their places
iKt summer. This is not exactly the case of supplementing
(1 workers with volunteers but it is supplanting ex-
•ienced professional workers by persons who may or may
* have aptitudes or training for the job.
this fourth winter of unemployment, relief committees
in several cities are recognizing more than ever before
: need and value of activities for the enforced leisure of
and young. Separate funds have been raised solely for
: purpose of providing recreational and educational
fx>rtunities for the spare time of the unemployed. Last
nter in New York City a Morale Committee was organ-
id as a part of the Emergency Relief Committee. This
> succeeded in opening over twenty men's clubs in
: sting settlements and recreation centers at hours suitable
> unemployed young men. The largest enterprise for the
employed is Cheer Lodge, operated by the Salvation
!tny in a building donated by the Children's Aid Society,
»ere an average of one thousand jobless men a day have
s to rest and recreation from 10 A.M. to 5 P.M. No food
ved but facilities for reading, games, handball are pro-
v ed. The radio and phonograph provide entertainment
ai occasional concerts with home and outside talent are
i. This year an Adjustment Service for unemployed,
(ich will include advice and help to individuals in recrea-
• in, is being organized under a grant from private sources
'• ii with the cooperation of relief committees.
1 These examples can be multiplied by reports from other
cities but it is sufficient to point out that even in the tre-
mendous job of providing food, clothing and shelter for
thousands of unemployed, recreation and the profitable use
of leisure is being carefully considered by the relief agencies.
Here we have the analogous situation of relief agencies
stimulating and operating recreational services for the
unemployed, and at the same time municipal recreational
systems being greatly curtailed; the recruiting of volunteers
and the utilization of emergency workers, paid by relief
funds to take the places of paid workers dropped because
of the elimination of municipal support.
Should municipal recreation facilities be virtually rele-
gated to private enterprise in the form of volunteers and
new centers be created through pressure on relief organiza-
tions in the name of "morale" work? It does seem to need
some evaluation of the philosophy of recreation and of
city recreational systems in the light of the needs of both
employed and unemployed men and women and disor-
ganized households. Interested citizens may volunteer to
take the place of the professional paid staff who have been
discharged because of lack of funds but does not this
exhibit a fundamental weakness in public consideration of
the educational, health and moral value of our recreational
systems ? Must they be among the first municipal functions
to feel the effect of budget reductions ?
Taking an extended view of the situation in which we
find ourselves, can volunteers be utilized in a wholesale
manner and be held in line "for the duration of the war"?
The very stability which recreation among other social
services demands from municipal organization is threat-
ened.
TO answer the questions asked above is not easy. Cer-
tainly if volunteers must be used, they should have at
least some training in the job they are to do. New York is
now training its emergency workers paid by relief funds. A
group of over 250 men assigned to boys' work had a sy-hour
course extending over a number of days in the theory and
practice of recreation in December under the auspices of
the Emergency Work Bureau and the Boys' Work Section
of the Welfare Council. In January a similar course was
given for women emergency workers assigned to girls' work
in public and private agencies. Other cities which have
called citizens to volunteer have given training, as in
Evansville, Indiana, where a six weeks' course was or-
ganized. Practically the entire recreation program in that
city was conducted by these volunteers.
What proportion even partly trained workers should
bear to the total professional staff and the amount of super-
vision which they should have is an unsettled question and
generally left to the uncontrolled exigency of the situation.
To consent to disproportionate reductions, compared to
other city budgets, or elimination of this work, is to admit
that recreation services are a minor part of the city's duty
toward its citizens at this time. The greatest proof that this
is not so, is, as stated above, the increasing tendency of
relief committees for the unemployed to encourage leisure-
time programs and the organization of new opportunities
for recreation. The volunteer should be used for the needed
extension of already functioning recreational systems and
not for replacement of professional workers on a wholesale
scale. Never was there a time when the importance of the
constructive use of leisure could be brought home to the
general public with more force and human understanding
than at present.
The Invasion of Green Tax Pasture!
By SIMEON E. LELAND
Member of the Illinois State Tax Commission; Professor of
Economics the University of Chicago
i HE encroachment of the Federal government upon
the sacred green pastures of the States in the de-
_ velopment of its tax system served as the keynote
to bring together delegates from thirty-four states to the
first Interstate Legislative Assembly, held in Washington,
D. C., in February. This conference was held under the
auspices of the American Legislators' Association, a non-
partisan organization whose aim is the improvement of
state legislation and of state government generally. It has
been in existence for eight years, publishes State Govern-
ment, a monthly magazine which enables intelligent legis-
lators to keep pace with important trends and current prob-
lems in government, and maintains a clearing house for
state legislative reference bureaus. It now is the recognized
agency for properly dealing with interstate legislative mat-
ters and along with the Governors' Conference should
stimulate improvements in state government.
Its first assignment was mechanized by the creation of a
permanent commission of legislators (of not less than ten
nor more than fifteen) "to examine into and report on what
may be done to relieve the present conflicting and over-
lapping systems of taxation." Although the organization
and operation of the legislators' association with its con-
ferences, staff and literature is a signal achievement and
one which doubtless deserves more space in celebration
than is here given, the writer desires to devote the remain-
ing available space to a consideration of the ideology of the
conference.
The program reached its height at the session at which
Clyde L. King, chairman of the Public Service Commission
of Pennsylvania, sketched the evolution of the "tax jun-
gle." William B. Belknap, president of the Legislators'
Association, glorified the forty-eight States as "logical and
right," asserted that the central government "can not
meet the needs of our population" and called on the dele-
gates to organize — to begin the day of conference and agree-
ments among the States.
The stage had been set by descriptions of the fiscal in-
vasions of the Federal government into the revenue pre-
serves of the States through its use of income, corporation,
estate, gasoline and sales taxes. Only the tobacco-raising
states mentioned the encroachment of the States through
the comparatively new cigarette and tobacco taxes on the
revenue preserves of the national government. The double
taxation of estates and inheritances served as the "horrible
example" of the consequences of uncoordinated, uninte-
grated, and unseparated tax jurisdiction. The progress of
the reciprocity movement and the solution through the
decisions of the United States Supreme Court were referred
to, as was the failure of Congress to extend the 80 percent
credit for State levies to the 1932 emergency rates of the
Federal estate tax. Nor was the resemblance of present
taxes to capital levies overlooked. The burden of general
property taxes on homes and farms was repeatedly empha-
Shoemaker in the Chicago Daily Ne1
The Horse Laugh
sized, although the Federal government has long abstair
from the use of this form of taxation. But the compla
against the national government stood on other counts.
The diagnosis complete, the assembly turned to the pj
scription of remedies. Tax Commissioner Henry F. Long
Massachusetts discussed the possibilities of divorcing tj
sources of national and state revenue, with no alimony!
be paid by Uncle Sam. Certain sources of revenue w<|
seen to fall logically to the use of states; others could b«|
be used by the national government. Dependence upl
state laws for the devolution of property gave the states!
claim to inheritance taxes. But the national character
fortunes, the more effective execution of the Federal esta
tax and the greater possibilities for revenue (or social
tion of wealth) were not advanced for the Federal cause
On the other hand, Commissioner Long thought th
interstate competition was so important that success!
sales taxation could only be undertaken by the Feder
government. This form of taxation was also seen as ft
filling the requirements of a universal tax, but if the shiftii
and incidence of other taxes are considered, universal!
may be more common than is generally realized. Neverth
less, the sales tax with its hidden additions to purcha
prices (assuming that such taxes are uniformly shifti
to consumers, an assumption of extremely doubtful vali
ity during depressions) fails to provide the prime requir
ment for a universal tax — it is neither certain in amoui
nor is it paid directly by the taxpayer to his governmer
hence he may not know he is being taxed. And, to the e
tent that the sales tax may not be shifted to the consume
106
arch 1933
THE SURVEY
107
a tax may not in fact be universal. Indirect taxes, there-
•e, should not be chosen for the universality of their bur-
n. If obligations of government are to be spread among
citizens, that lesson can best be taught by a direct tax,
r an income tax with a universal filing fee.
Dne suggestion made by Commissioner Long deserves
-eful consideration by the States and their legislative
jociation — the possibilities of reciprocal fiscal action by
ntiguous states. New York, Massachusetts and Penn-
.vania started along this road years ago in an attempt to
ve inheritance-tax problems. New Hampshire and Mas-
:husetts cooperate in the administration of their income
ices in order to minimize evasion. Ohio and Pennsylvania
ch have armed (?) highway patrols to prevent the boot-
;ging of gasoline made profitable by gas tax differentials,
of which could, of course, be avoided by the Federal
xation of gasoline, losses to the States being prevented by
e sharing of revenues, as another speaker suggested.
.TOWHERE, however, is the lack of cooperation be-
N tween State governments more noticeable than in the
Id of taxation. Not only do the States erect their tax
Astems with little or no reference to the fiscal systems of
lie nation or of other States, but they make no attempt to
Joperate in the effective execution of the laws they now
'Jve. Information as to tax liability is seldom exchanged,
JK liens or debts are seldom enforced by foreign states on
*feing debtors, the records in one State are seldom avail-
1 lie to another and though the tax laws may not be uni-
rm or the jurisdiction non-competitive, much could be
' jcomplished by interstate comity in administration.
~tA method for balancing the Federal budget was also sug-
sted by Mr. Long: the national government could levy a
•ect property tax or make an assessment on the States,
was indicated that this would make the States conscious
Federal finance. Didn't Mr. Long really mean that this
mid render them unconscious? New York, for example,
th its $ioo,ooo,ooo-plus deficit? Or California with its
ficit of $50,000,000?
As an alternative to the plan of separating the sources of
ate and Federal revenues, Prof. Robert Murray Haig, of
Jumbia University, suggested the possibility of Federal
[lection of certain taxes with the allocation of a share of
e proceeds to the States. Imagine the difficulties of a
eaker asked " to explore the possibilities of the plan of
rreasing the role of the Federal government as a tax
ministrator" in an assembly of delegates representing
s sovereign States. It was quite clear that many of them
i not want to be placed under the control of the national
vernment or to become dependent upon Federally-
ministered taxes for substantial portions of State reve-
es. A delegate from North Carolina, for example, seemed
resent the payment by the taxpayers of his State of so
ge a portion of the internal revenue duties, forgetting
tmpletely that North Carolina industries only act as
(llection agencies for taxes from users the country over.
Apparently the case for Federal collection and division
ide little impression on many delegates — there was no
ne allowed for discussing the various proposals — as some
the delegates forthwith wanted to pass a resolution ask-
5 for a separation of revenue sources. Nevertheless the
fcalysis presented by Professor Haig was one of the high
phts of the conference. Regardless of the sentiment in the
' rst interstate assembly" it is probably the direction in
nich fiscal trends are rapidly moving.
State and local lines have been breaking down for every
purpose save politics. Trade and commerce no longer re-
spect them; citizens and capital move from State to State
if they are driven to it by hostile tax policies (or other
reasons); "State tax administrators complain that the
interstate commerce clause of the Federal Constitution, as
interpreted by the courts, results in evasion and discrimi-
nation. The administrators complain that the process of
splitting up the tax base of a national business among the
States sometimes results in evasion and the taxpayers
complain that it sometimes results in double taxation."
The wastes, inconveniences and inequities of dual adminis-
tration of the same taxes were not overlooked. All of which,
properly concludes Professor Haig, "could be promptly
eliminated by federal administration of the taxes in ques-
tion." The tax competition among the States would be
restrained, too, by extending the use of the credit device.
Such administration, it was said, "promises to yield highest
returns at least cost."
Objections to federal administration and sharing of
revenues were pointed out: (i) depriving States of the satis-
faction of collecting their own revenues; (2) providing in-
flexible revenues; (3) finding no satisfactory basis of
distribution for the revenues collected. Nevertheless this
plan appears to the writer to be the most hopeful solution of
the problem of State and Federal fiscal relations — that is, if
state government as now conceived must be preserved.
But arguments over "the divvy" will be hot.
Haig's program would include the federal administration
of most sales and consumption taxes, as well as of death
taxes and taxes on personal and corporate incomes. The
next speaker, Senator Franklin S. Edmonds, of Pennsyl-
vania, more specifically suggested a four cent tax on gas-
oline, administered by the Federal government, of which
three cents would be returned to the States, and a Federal
tobacco tax of six cents of which the States would receive
one cent. Income and estate taxes, Senator Edmonds
would keep "as is" except for an extension of the credit idea
to allow deductions from Federal taxes of State taxes
actually paid.
A TTORNEY EDMONDS' solution took account of the
-iX welfare of important clients: producers of gasoline
and tobacco products. Taxes on their goods, he opined, had
become so high that decreased consumption of products
was even affecting adversely the income-yield of taxes:
The gasoline consumption in the United States for the first
six months of 1932 as compared with the first six months of 1931
indicated that in the States where the rate was two cents there
was 6.7 percent increase. Where the rate was three cents, there
was a decrease of 1.3 percent, and the decrease continued with a
higher rate of tax until, in the State that had a seven cents tax,
the decrease was 13.3 percent.
These statistics resemble those produced by Secretary Mel-
lon not long ago when he proved that, ignoring the course of
business, decreased income-tax rates increased the aggre-
gate income-tax receipts. It took a depression to convince
most people of the error of the Mellon follies and the sta-
tistical foundation on which they were based. The data
produced by Senator Edmonds appear to possess the same
defect — no allowance was made for the economic circum-
stances of the people affected by the highest gasoline taxes.
These rates are found in the South, in areas where the ef-
fects of the depression have been severely felt — in Florida,
108
THE SURVEY
March lit
Arkansas, Tennessee, Arizona and Alabama. It would be
strange if gasoline consumption had not fallen irrespective
of the tax.
As to tobacco taxes, says the former Senator, "it is inter-
esting to note that in the United States the annual per
capita consumption of cigarettes in 1930 averaged 975,
whereas five States which in that year levied a tax solely on
cigarettes, collected on 431 cigarettes per capita." It might
have been added that in these five states — North Dakota,
South Dakota, Kansas, Utah and Iowa — consumption was
already lower than for the United States as a whole. And
it might be mentioned that no reliable consumption data
are available as to tobacco products and that the method
by which the above estimates were secured — apparently by
dividing State tax receipts by the legal State rate — ignored
the facts of evasion and inefficient administration (where
present), all of which would vitally affect conclusions as to
effects of taxation on consumption. Until demand-curves
for tobacco products are scientifically constructed the crude
statistics now current scarcely afford the basis for generali-
zations as to the effects of taxation on consumption, and
through consumption on revenues.
Senator Edmonds also pointed out that if the States
were given one cent of the six cents now collected by the
Federal government from the manufacture or sale of ciga-
rettes, on condition that no similar state taxes be imposed,
"on the basis of the fiscal year ending June 30, 1932, there
would be $66,429,770 returned to the States, and in praJ
cally every State imposing a tax on cigarettes, except po I
bly Ohio, South Carolina, Tennessee and Texas, th
would be a larger distribution than under a separate St
tax, without any expense of collection." In other wor
abolish the State cigarette taxes, share one-sixth of •
Federal tax and the States will all — with a few exception;
get more revenue! This because the loss to the Fede
treasury does not count, and because the larger states
New York, Illinois, Pennsylvania and Massachusetts,
example, which do not now have cigarette taxes, woi
"smoke up" to increase the payments to some of the Sta
now levying tobacco taxes of their own. Nevertheless
Federally-administered tobacco tax with division of yi<
to the States is certainly superior to the present system
Finally, attention should be called to a phase of the t
problem mentioned by Dr. King, namely, the capricic
character of our monetary system, which "is now in efF<
a confiscatory system in itself. Any system of currer
that gives us too much currency in times of high specu
tion when we do not need it and does not give us enough
perform the ordinary processes of industry at a time wh
we urgently need it is too stupid a plan to justify contir
ance." Before this condition double taxation appears as
mere bogy. In the words of Poor Richard, we are tax
more by our follies than by our tax collectors. Meanwh
the sacred cows continue their grazing.
Wanted: A National Center on Medical
Costs and Care
By RICHARDS M. BRADLEY
Trustee of the Thomas Thompson Trust and a Pioneer in this Field
'UCH has been said and written about the
differences of opinion brought out by the recent
majority and minority reports of the Com-
mittee on the Costs of Medical Care. This is entirely
natural, but it leaves out of consideration the many im-
portant facts brought out by the work of this Committee
with regard to which there was no disagreement.
Under existing circumstances, the only kind of a com-
mittee that could have brought in an unanimous opinion
would have been a packed committee. This Committee,
however, was evidently not created with the intention
of producing a cut and dried preconceived agreement. It
was made up honestly with the intention of getting con-
sideration for all sides of the problem, and was com-
posed of people who entertain entirely incompatible
views on certain phases of our social system, including
our problem of medical care. The report, therefore,
contains majority and minority conclusions that were
influenced by all shades of opinion, from that which favors
handling as much as possible of the job of medical care by
collective state medicine, to that which would rather like
to see the individual doctor left alone to work out his
problems largely by himself, as he has done for centuries.
Under such circumstances, the Committee was a mixture
of irreconcilable elements that in former days might have
led to warfare. We have, however, made advances in
that respect, at least in medicine. The members quietly
went to work and ascertained facts on which they could
agree, deriving therefrom some conclusions on which they
could agree and some on which they could not. They then It
it to the public and to the future to make use of their wot
The results will undoubtedly be handled in the Americ;
manner. Modern American life consists of practical b
illogical compromises between demands for collective actii
compelled by modern conditions, and demands that sprii
from the ordinary American's instinctive preference I
maintaining, wherever possible, personal independen
and individual initiative. Our present medical dilemma is
case in point. The majority of us are not logical and pro
ably never will be in carrying either the collective or tl
individualistic idea too far. In industry we have establish
and maintained the postoffice, a highly socialistic gover
ment enterprise. It does not follow, however, that we inter
to socialize all other industries. We still have a few farme
who would prefer not to enter collectives.
In medicine we have handled the long disabilities
insanity by state asylums, and have done much for tube
culosis with state money, but the country doctor still gal
his rounds maintaining responsible personal family praj
tice. Most of us still believe that, at its best, this is the be|
thing that American medicine has produced and we see r|
reason to think that its preservation is incompatible wit1
an efficient and modern medical system. We do not fej
alarmed at the imminence of consolidated medicine und<|
government control.
When the waters have ceased to be troubled by conteSj
over certain points where extreme collectivists and strorl
individualists are at odds, much that is of value in the wor|
, arch 1933
THE SURVEY
109
this Committee will be found available for our use.
nong other things, the enormous waste of some seven
ndred millions expended largely on useless and harmful
v<ugs, used in self-medication, has been clearly brought
: t. This points to cooperative action by all interested in
;itimate medicine. We need to give a sounder education
the whole people on health matters, so that they may
t continue to be the ready victims of quacks and
strums, and may know more of the basic facts relating
the maintenance of their health and the cure of their
;. This is one of the things on which we can all get
gether.
There is agreement as to the need of preventive medicine
d public-health work. Likewise, the proper coordination
various kinds of nursing and household service in caring
• sickness in the home, and for the home in sickness, has
• the first time received adequate attention by a national
dy. There is no obstacle in the way of dissenting opinion
prevent making the training and organization of our
rsing force more efficient for the people and more just
the nurses.
There are other things where there is substantial agree-
:nt on most of the essential features. The uneven dis-
bution of the major costs of sickness was adequately
:>wn, and the necessity of curing this by some form of
urance was acknowledged by all parties, however much
;y may differ in other respects. The only difference of
inion on this part of the problem lay in deciding who
inuld do this insurance. Collective extremists, on one
lie, objected to having anything done unless the state
iiss it by compulsory insurance. The individualist end
inted none but doctors to control. The middle class
imted to see the matter tested out by trials in disin-
tested hands.
i Modern medicine, while saving lives that formerly
uld have been lost, produces extreme costs in excep-
nal cases; costs which ruin one family and leave many
hers unscathed. Unquestionably, our system of medical
fe needs the financial backbone of an adequate insurance
item to enable the people to meet these costs. It must
fve this if its job is to be done. This kind of insurance is in
ictical use in Latin America and in some twenty Euro-
nn countries. We need it, and we shall undoubtedly
ablish it here in manner suited to the character and
":umstances of our people; and it is vitally important
it it should be done by methods that will recognize and
ieguard the respective interests of patient, doctor and
spital. It must not be allowed to fall into the hands of
!;cial interests nor be exploited by mere money-makers.
report, in this and other things, has not attempted
:. any impossible reconcilement but it will put both col-
ftivists and individualists on their mettle to vindicate
• : virtues of their respective views. They can do this
>y by showing in practice how the methods advocated
worked out with the best information available, with proper
regard to the interests of all parties concerned, and with
full consciousness that much of the work of adapting new
methods to changing American conditions must be ex-
perimental.
The burden of maintaining and advancing our existing
hospital and organized nursing service is each year becom-
ing heavier, and this work will have to be financed by
sounder and more effective methods. We can no longer
rely on taxes or contributions. We can and must enable the
people by insurance to pay for their own service and to pay
more with less hardship, and we can thus give them what
they require.
WITHIN the last few weeks there has been an awaken-
ing in many parts of the country to the need of in-
surance for hospitalized illness, and many such enterprises
are on foot. There is evident danger of standardizing a
form of insurance that will cover only hospital charges.
These charges constitute less than half the usual expenses
of major operations which make up the bulk of serious
hospital illnesses. Such a system might relieve hospital
budgets, but would use up all available insurance money
without saving the ordinary family from financial disaster,
and without providing compensation for the surgeon. It is,
therefore, most important for both patient and doctor that
the medical and lay elements should cooperate in estab-
lishing a form of insurance that will cover surgeons' as well
as hospital charges.
We must not throw away what has been gained. We need
a center of advice and consultation and of information as
to results of trial.
We need also similar help from our universities, which
must wake up and give to the problem of medical economics
the better attention that it deserves through the combined
contributions of their departments of economics, of busi-
ness, of medicine and of public health.
In many quarters there exists an especial need for in-
formation and guidance in the coordination of medical
effort; for in the past it has been impossible for a body of
doctors seeking such information to find any source of
advice as to how to make the best use of an existing medical
force. This is a condition that should not be tolerated.
Medical men need not be sensitive at criticisms of their
lack of coordination. They are far from being unique in
falling short of what is possible by failure to coordinate
their work more effectively. The whole business world, at
the present moment, is a welter of confusion and distress
from the same cause. In many another industry can it be
shown that better coordination can produce better results,
and yet we are not yet ready to call in a Stalin or a Mus-
solini.
The times call for collective action and for coordination
of effort, and we are progressing in our own way. All over
the country men are coordinating their efforts for medical
service and reaping advantages thereby for both themselves
and for the public. With better information we shall
continue to make better progress, and we shall benefit
from a wholesome dissatisfaction with our own failures.
Moreover, plenty of healthy disagreements between earnest
and able people as to the best ways of doing things, if
accompanied with intelligent comparison of results, will
be the best guarantee against that smug satisfaction with
inadequate accomplishment which has produced altogether
too much costly philanthropic stagnation in the past.
THE COMMON WELFARE
Madam Secretary Perkins
IN reporting the appointment of Frances Perkins as
secretary of labor, it is noteworthy that the press has
stressed her special fitness for the job rather than the fact
that she is the "first woman cabinet member." This is,
after all, of a piece with Frances Perkins' whole career. In
tackling knotty industrial problems as factory inspector,
member of the New York State Industrial Commission,
head of the State Labor Department she has been, as her
kinswoman, Charlotte Perkins Gilman once saltily re-
marked, "more human than female."
Against the background of postgraduate study in
economics and sociology and residence at Hull-House and
Greenwich House, Miss Perkins early turned her energy to
social solutions of industry's problems. The tragedy of the
Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire, which she happened to
witness, gave emotional drive to her belief "that it is pos-
sible so to modify our social and economic institutions as to
make possible good lives for those in our great machine-like
community who cannot govern and control their own
situations."
To her cabinet post, for the last decade or more a
political plum handed over to ' organized labor, Miss
Perkins brings education, training, experience and a living
social philosophy that specially fit her for this job, with
today's responsibilities and rare chances for public service.
What manner of person is she ? We of The Survey, who
center great hope and faith in the new secretary of labor,
can do no better than quote from the issue four years ago,
in which we were privileged to carry, in part, the memo-
rable extemporaneous address she gave at a luncheon in her
honor as the new head of New York's State Labor Depart-
ment (see The Survey, March 15, 1929, page 774):
"And now what can I promise? Only a few simple things:
"I promise to use the brains I have to meet problems with
intelligence and courage. . . .
"I promise to all of you who have a right to know, the
whole truth and nothing but the truth so far as I can speak
it.
"If I have been wrong, you may tell me so, for I really
have no pride in judgment. I know that all judgment is
relative. It may be right today and wrong tomorrow. The
only thing that can make it truly right is the desire to have
it constantly moving in the right direction: in the matter
of my job, judgment must be in this direction. That in-
dustry shall in this country gradually become a positive
rather than a negative social force; something we may be
proud of, something which may be an educative experience
to all of us, rather than a negative, even a fearful experience
bearing down with bitterness upon its victims. . . .
"I will not ask you to share my responsibility. That I
know is mine and mine alone. I must decide and I must
stand by my decisions. I must be made or I must fall by
their wisdom and intelligence. I do ask you to lift up your
hearts that I be made both wise and watchful, so that only
good shall come. And when I am left alone in the last
analysis to make my decisions on important matters, I shall
not be alone there, either, for 'I shall lift up mine eyes unto
the hills whence cometh my strength and my salva-
tion.'"
Heart Disease on the Front Page
"VTARDS of statistics could not have done as much to
-I realization of the ravages of heart disease as did
sudden deaths of Calvin Coolidge and Senator Walsh. H<
disease has become our greatest single cause of death, 1
ing one American in five. Yet even at a time w
these events have shocked the country, we can see sc
hope in the outlook for the future. Though the grea
measure of destruction by heart disease is among pec
past the prime of life, it is still an important cause of de
among persons under forty-five and even among childi
But while general deathrates from heart disease have b
rising, those for people under forty-five show distinct
provements in the extensive records of the Metropoli
Life Insurance Company. In some lower age groups
drop between 1911 and 1928 was as much as 40 percc
The gain is to be attributed to control of diseases such
diphtheria and scarlet fever; earlier diagnosis and be;
care of rheumatism in childhood; more regard for gem
health. Improvement naturally comes first at the lo'
ages, but in the last two years for which records are av
able, Wisconsin, for example, finds a slight decrease evei
the cardiac deathrates of people over forty-five. Already
are saving lives — in contrast to the experience of ear
times — at the period when life is most precious; beyc
saving lives, we are preventing years of invalidism. It n
be hoped that with time improvement will extend in
later decades of life, because people will not have suffe
in youth the damage that brings death suddenly m;
years after. It is at least suggestive that Wisconsin's ho
ful record comes from a state which has been a pioneei
treating heart disease as a public-health problem and
worked actively to prevent, diagnose and care for it.
Is It to Be Doctors vs. Hospitals:
ABOUT the time this issue of The Midmonthly Sur
goes into the mails, a hearing is scheduled to consi
the Crawford-Coughlin bill, now before the New Y
State Legislature. That bill would amend the law
providing that no hospital "supported wholly or partly
public expense shall hereafter charge any fee for medii
dental or pharmaceutical services while operating a cli
to which the public is invited." The bill is opposed by
United Hospital Fund of New York and other organ!
tions representing the hospitals. Though.it does not rej
sent the private opinions of many progressive physicia
it has the backing of the organized medical profession
represented by the state medical society and local med:
organizations. If any group of physicians has made a pui
protest against it, it has not come to our attention.
Such a measure would make it impossible for any ho!
tal which receives tax support for the care of patients v
are public charges to ask in any of its clinics the nomi
fees usually required of a patient who can pay somethi
At the present time, when the income of the private hoi
tals has been greatly decreased and the demands for I
and part-pay service increased, "the only result," in
words of L. M. Arrowsmith, superintendent of a Brook
hospital and president of the hospital council of t
110
•rch 1933
THE SURVEY
111
ough, "would be that many, probably most hospitals
aid have to close their clinics entirely," throwing an im-
.sible burden on public institutions. Dr. Alec Thomson,
actor of medical activities of the Kings County Medical
:iety, is quoted as saying that the doctors are glad to
e for the poor without pay, but feel that the hospitals
•uld do so also. "The clinics are for the poor. Why should
y pay?" The answer is, of course, that nominal fees, or-
arily twenty-five or fifty cents for admission, and some-
ies ten or twenty-five cents for subsequent visits, make
jossible for many institutions to carry on service that
erwise would not exist at all; service which clinic pa-
its could get in no other self-respecting way at a price
hin their means. Repeated studies, including those
de by medical groups, have shown that "abuse" of free
1 part-pay service by people who could pay usual
vate rates is so rare as to be negligible. In these times the
:tors, like everyone else, are themselves hard-pressed by
Iting incomes and rising obligations. Very likely they see
ny former patients enter clinic doors. But could there be
olution for them in caring for patients at a dime or a
irter a visit? Do their progressive leaders realize that
> line-up of the organized medical profession against the
pital clinics — when for so many patients there is no self-
jecting alternative to the clinic — may take on the
.racter of the dog in the manger?
Mrs. Jacob H. Schiff
VTfH the Pennsylvania Terminal at Thirty-third
V Street on the west and the Grand Central as the older
eway at Forty-second Street, the cluster of skyscrapers
New York's midtown region was all but inevitable.
re, coming in through all the transportation systems,
pie converge to be shot up vertically from a ground area
t could not possibly serve them. The tall, steel-framed
ictures are what the visitor sees; crowned now on the
th by the Empire State Building and on the north by
new structures of the Rockefeller Center in the Fifties,
s conspicuous but playing their distinctive part in this
of the city, has been the establishment during the last
ade of new social and civic centers fairly under the
es of these towers. For one, the Town Hall on Forty-
•d Street, achievement of Robert E. Ely; and for an-
er, Ninety-nine Park Avenue, the headquarters of the
iry Street Visiting Nurse Service, built up under the
iership of Lillian D. Wald. "Ninety-nine" was the gift,
nemory of her husband, of Mrs. Jacob H. Schiff, who
i last month at the age of seventy-eight. Two old resi-
ces were transformed. From the nursing offices up-
rs is woven a web of ministration reaching to all parts
the city. The main floor was turned into a wide and
cious room, with ample fireplace and rafter ceiling. This,
ler Miss Wald's aegis, has been the scene of many gath-
igs out of which have come impulse and action in a score
fields. More than once Survey Associates have met
re; and the participation of Mr. and Mrs. Schiff in our
perative undertaking dates back to before we were
rtered, twenty years ago. Like her husband, Mrs. Schiff
ught quick sympathy and generous backing to a wide
ge of philanthropic and educational activities, both
'ish and non-sectarian. Their active and personal inter-
in the nursing service and its founder went back to the
liest beginnings on Henry Street, when immigration was
•ding New York's East Side. And significantly enough,
in another epoch, Ninety-nine Park Avenue will stand as a
living memorial to both, close beside the new, great whorl in
the human stream of the metropolis. Over the fireplace in
this modern House-by-the-Side-of-All-the-Roads is this
inscription:
This building is given in memory of Jacob Henry Schiff by
Theresa, his wife, and is dedicated to the cause of public-health
nursing, which he long fostered, for love of progressive education,
civic righteousness and merciful ministration.
To Cut or Not to Cut
SEEN the more clearly for being dramatized on a rela-
tively small stage, the issues of the wage controversy
current throughout business and industry are sharply de-
fined by the recent wage and salary cuts made by the Filene
store in Boston. Edward A. Filene, president of William
Filene's Sons, has been since the beginning of the depres-
sion the champion of high wages as the most effective
remedy for hard times. " Wage reductions are now intensify-
ing the depression even more than unemployment is doing,"
he states. But although Mr. Filene is the largest individual
stockholder in William Filene's Sons, control of policies
passed several years ago to the Federated Department
Stores. Mr. Filene thus states the issues at stake:
One group, with no less sincerity than the other, believes that
business can best be stabilized and general prosperity restored
by wage reductions during periods of depression. The other group,
still seemingly in a decided minority, looks upon wage reductions
as reductions in the buying power of the masses and the greatest
of all causes therefore of business depression.
Based on his lifelong study of business, this employer
holds that effective economies can be made only through
reducing the wastes of production "and the still greater
wastes of distribution." He adds,
Of course I do not expect to remain in a minority, for it seems
to me that every other plan for business revival has been tried and
failed and that it cannot be long now before business generally
will look upon wage reductions as prolonging and intensifying
business depression.
New York Holds Back
HOPE that out of the" hard times will come at least a
measure of protection for wage-earners in future un-
employment emergencies was dimmed by the recent report
of the New York Legislative Committee on Unemploy-
ment which, instead of bringing in its promised insurance
program, submitted a report strongly opposing enactment
of any such legislation at this session. The committee,
headed by Assemblyman William L. Marcy, Republican,
held that the whole question of unemployment reserves
should be left in abeyance until "the index of employment
has turned upward." Though the committee report failed
to indicate any difference of opinion in its membership,
Mrs. Rebekah Kohut, representing the public, filed a
minority report sharply diverging from the majority view.
Mrs. Kohut, for three decades an untiring champion of
progressive legislation, advocated immediate passage of a
measure to go into effect "when our official statistics of
employment indicate the beginning of business revival."
A year ago, the Marcy committee stated that unem-
ployment "can better be met by the so-called compul-
sory insurance plan than it is now handled by the barren
actualities of poor-relief assistance backed by compulsory
112
THE SURVEY
March 1
contributions through taxation." Late in December it
promised a program topped by " a bill for the establishment
of a state-wide system of compulsory unemployment in-
surance." Expressing fear that the committee's present
stand means that all pending unemployment insurance
legislation will die in committee, economists, labor leaders
and others questioned in press interviews following the
publication of the Marcy report, the reasons for the com-
mittee's "sudden somersault." Thus Howard Cullman,
chairman of the New York Conference for Unemployment
Insurance Legislation and a member of the Port of New
York Authority asked:
What sinister influence has led this committee to serve as a
smoke screen for delay rather than as a stimulus to constructive
action? How long will our citizens endure governmental com-
mittees which remain insensitive to the tragic suffering of the un-
employed and hypersensitive to the demands of certain special
interests?
Ma Huang
AS March winds send sneezers scuttling to doctors and
•tX drugstores, there may be some minor consolation in
knowing that an ingredient of many of the sprays used to
alleviate their distress would not have been on the shelves a
few years ago. In 1926 a Chinese student came to the Uni-
versity of Wisconsin carrying in his suitcase a small pack-
age of a drug that he had isolated from a plant called Ma
Huang. The plant had been known in China for some five
thousand years, but little was known specifically of its
healing powers and still less of their practical application.
In 1885 the drug ephedrine was isolated from it, but the
work was not carried far enough to be of great value.
K. K. Chen re-isolated it in 1923 in Peking and continued
his research in Wisconsin as a graduate student in phar-
macy, constantly studying its clinical development and
practical use. If a nasal spray suddenly makes it possible
for you to breathe again, very likely it contains some deriv-
ative of Ma Huang, which in a few years has leapt from the
humble position of an unregarded plant to become the
servant of doctors and snufflers throughout the world.
Fewer Auto Fatalities
MOTOR-VEHICLE fatalities fell between 13.5 and 14
percent in 1932 under the previous year, the first re-
duction since the early days of the century when the auto-
mobile began to take its growing toll of human lives. With
less than two thousand deaths from this cause in 1910, the
number steadily increased until two decades later it had
passed the thirty thousand mark. In 1931 it had risen to
33,500; but now comes along 1932 with a drop to approxi-
mately thirty thousand. Still an appalling but at the same
time an encouraging figure.
Up to December i , 1932 fourteen states with a population
of thirty millions reported a decline of 12.8 percent, with
city reports showing a decline of 12.2, and a deathrate per
one hundred thousand from this cause of 21.4 and 15.9
respectively. It is significant that the New England, Mid-
dle-Atlantic, South-Atlantic and Pacific States did not
show as large a percentage drop in deaths as the country at
large. As for cities, Pittsburgh claimed first honors with a
reduction of 26 percent, followed by Baltimore with 22.
Oak Park, Illinois, with no deaths was the largest city with
a perfect record in the country.
No doubt the organized safety movement, public and
private, deserves much credit for this sudden and excit
fall. The cumulative results of safety campaigns are reap
a harvest. But there is another aspect of the situation t
must be taken into account. According to reliable figi
there was a decrease of more than 8 percent registratioi
motor vehicles and 7 percent in gasoline consumption
1932 under the previous year. With the return of more c
to the road which may be expected with better times,
fatality curve may rise again. The safety movement m
continue its efforts to spread the gospel among an
creasingly large part of the population.
The Nurses Carry On
FROM the American Nurses' Association comes w«
that Janet Geister, director at headquarters, has
signed as of March 15. For the present the director's dut
will be carried on by Alma H. Scott, associate direct
We can offer the outgoing director and her successor
greater felicitation than the hope that the Association A
continue the position it now holds as one of the most al
and progressive among national professional organizatio
clear-eyed in examining its professional potentialities, a
courageous in seeking ways to serve not merely the int
ests of nursing but those of the public who stand to gain
the higher standards of nursing and wider professional ai
toward which Miss Geister and its other leaders he
worked so consistently.
When You Call Us That— Smile
BECAUSE the leader of a street demonstration in Ri(
mond publicly called the director of the Social Serv
Bureau a vulture and was promptly arrested for his par
the Virginia city has a freedom of speech case on its har
with social workers wondering if the accused will plead I
truth as a defense on the theory that all social workers i
more or less scavengers. The arrest was made under
ancient anti-dueling statute.
Relief at the rate of $2 a week for a family of five di
not make much stir in Richmond. A handful of protest]
Negroes, led by white communists, descend periodically
the City Social Service Bureau or the mayor's office, wh
their leaders are promptly arrested on charges of disorde
conduct or vagrancy, and as promptly dismissed. But
them to call a social worker a vulture — that just isn't dc
in Richmond. So the case is pending and free speech is
stake.
Wage Holiday
A TWO-WEEKS wage holiday was declared last moi
-iX by the Baltimore and Ohio railroad for its shop for
and at the same time 20 percent of the clerical force v
laid off "indefinitely." Following B. and O. practice <
employes, well before the unwelcome holiday began, ha<
chance to go over facts and figures bearing on the situati
(see The Survey, March i, 1931, page 601). "We were r
in the dark," one of them writes us, "and what the roadc
does not seem a purely arbitrary move." On the other hai
"it would be expecting entirely too much of human being
to say that the employes willingly agreed to the wage h(
day. For clearly the shopmen were asked to contribute t
weeks' wages and the clerical workers to give up their jc
to provide a dole for capital.
Well into the depression, unemployment and brok
time were fended off under the socially-minded mana|
'arch 1933
THE SURVEY
113
ent of the B. and O. But with continued hard times and
eady decline in traffic, with no means to write down capi-
1 structure except the awkward medium of receivership,
anagement felt it necessary to tax the workers to pay the
terest on the bonds. He is expressing the conviction of
s large group of American wage-earners when our cor-
spondent concludes: "In short, our experience on the
altimore and Ohio, where very heroic efforts have been
i ade to mitigate the evils of depression, indicate that a
:w deal in industry is absolutely necessary if we are to be
tved such demoralizing results as are being encountered
)day in all industries where efforts have been made to
ipe with the problem of unemployment."
Twenty-five Years of It
'CELEBRATING the completion of twenty-five contin-
' uous years as a member of the staff of the National
uberculosis Association, Philip P. Jacobs looks back on
revolutionary changes in health work during this time,
cientific knowledge has become deeper and more accurate,
nd the methods of applying it far more effective, but what
lost impresses Mr. Jacobs is the shift in presenting
:ientific facts to the public.
Our posters were frankly called " don't " posters. Literature was
rutally ugly; and our exhibits were a gruesome melange of lungs
i jars, fifteen-foot graphs and charts, and comic strips of mon-
trous size portraying the horrible results of spitting. Today the
ositive and cheerful side of health is stressed and the best modern
dvertising practices and techniques are followed in placing before
public our message that tuberculosis is preventable and cur-
Die and is not inherited.
These twenty-five years have seen a more than twenty-
}ld development of dispensaries throughout the country;
development of a profession of public health nursing
•om a handful of nurses, engaged chiefly in tuberculosis, to
corps of 19,000 whom Mr. Jacobs accounts "one of the
lost important branches of the entire public-health move-
lent." There is no more spectacular social gain during this
,me than the downward course of tuberculosis itself. Mr.
acob's gratification at having shared in these years' events
; matched by our gratification that twenty-five years ago
young graduate of a divinity school decided to cast in his
)t in the new social movement which has been furthered by
is effective service.
Naturalization and Hard Times
[ TNEMPLOYMENT and its sequellae have brought
home to the foreign-born the realization that natural-
nation is essential to adjustment to American life. At the
nnual meeting of the National Council on Naturalization
nd Citizenship held recently in New York, with a joint
ession with the New York Committee on Naturalization,
he problems of the five and a half million aliens in the
Jnited States were brought into sharp focus. The alien has,
t was pointed out, never recovered from the suspicion
inder which he rested during the World War. In these days
unemployment, resentment against him has grown to
narked discrimination. The alien realizes these things and
Iso realizes that naturalization is necessary if he is to
>rofit by the new developments of the changing times, such
.s old-age pensions. He is however fearful and confused
.nd the present long and complicated naturalization proc-
ss often gives opportunity for his exploitation.
Not to make it easy for undesirable persons to become
citizens, but to remove conflicting interpretations of the
law and confusing practices in its administration, must, the
social workers and educators agree, be the first step in
the assimilation into American life of these "Americans by
choice."
Registered Social Worker
WHILE Americans have fiddled around on the edges
of registration for social workers, measuring the depth
of the water, taking its temperature and debating who
might sink and who swim, the French have taken the
plunge. Without any great hullabaloo, official France has
put its approval on social work by a decree instituting a
state diploma which gives its holder the formal designation
of State Registered Social Worker in France. The diploma
is issued by the minister of public health on the certificate
of adequate training in an approved school of social work
of at least two years standing and after examination before
a board which shall include representatives of the schools
and of social services, delegates from certain ministries and
" at least one or more social workers in active employment."
The decree outlines the basis on which schools of social
work will be accredited by the minister of public health
and provides for a General Council of Schools of Social
Work of thirty members which will advise on the status of
schools and on the make-up of the examining board.
An Unsweet Yellow Potato
WHAT Arthur M. Hyde, secretary of agriculture, calls
one way out of the blindman's buff played by
producers and consumers is suggested in his story of a
potato. Some time ago plant explorers for the Department
found in South America a'potato which was yellow but not
sweet, which tasted in fact pretty much like an ordinary
Irish potato. They wondered if the yellow color meant that
it contained vitamin A— if so, here was a welcome aid
toward the adequate cheap diet. Would such a potato grow
in North America? Was it liable to disease? Would people
buy it? So into consultation came the Bureaus of Home
Economics, Plant Industry, Chemistry and Soils. The plant
breeders tried seedlings under various conditions; the
chemists analyzed them; the home economists cooked them.
The breeders crossed the newcomer with American varie-
ties to create a potato equal to the latter in yield and
marketability, but still possessing the precious vitamin.
For two summers Maine lands have yielded better than
five hundred bushels an acre of one of the new varieties. A
sample shipment has- come down to the laboratories ac-
companied by a detailed case history; after chemical
analysis, it will receive the final cooking and judging test.
Research such as this, Mr. Hyde points out, might mean
that ultimately "neither blind production nor blind con-
sumption need dominate our markets." It stresses the in-
creasingly important job of the Bureau of Home Economics,
the consumers' branch of the federal government, which
seeks to show people how to buy economically and to
select for a given purpose, thus working indirectly to in-
fluence production of what people can best use. Wise uses
and new uses of what is available are as important to the
one as the other. In its continuing research and educational
programs, as in its emergency service during the depres-
sion, the small but doughty Bureau of Home Economics
has proved the value that accrues when, in Mr. Hyde s
words, "the specialist comes out of his corner."
114
THE SURVEY
March 19:
A Way Around the Rent
"\X7HEN seven of its families were evicted and seven more had
' so many relatives move in that their little houses were
fairly bursting, the Kensington Day Nursery, in an industrial
section of Philadelphia, turned for help as it had in other emergen-
cies to the business men of the community. This time it was the
real-estate men who came into the breach with the offer of houses
rent free for a year if necessary to the seven families unable to pay
any rent at all and, to the other seven, of larger houses for the
same rent they were paying for the small overcrowded ones. The
only proviso was that the houses, pretty much run-down, should
be put in repair.
The call for a meeting of day-nursery fathers to discuss the
proposition brought out carpenters, paper-hangers, plumbers, in
fact all the skilled workmen necessary for the job. They swung
into it with enthusiasm, assembled the required materials, all
donated, and in short order put the fourteen houses into apple-pie
condition to the satisfaction of the landlords and the immense
relief of the families.
The Man and the Job
TNDER the auspices of the American Association of Adult
^ Education and the leadership of John Erskine, president of
the Juillard School of Music and erstwhile Columbia professor,
New York is to have an experiment in adjustment service for the
unemployed which will, it is believed, assume national signifi-
cance. The primary purpose of the undertaking is to strengthen
morale by helping the unemployed man to find himself and ulti-
mately the job for which he is best fitted. The program includes
occupational tests, personal counseling, immediate training and
educational opportunities and a variety of forms of recreation
"designed to build up his mental and physical health and to
develop recreation abilities and habits which will be helpful to
him in employing his leisure time creatively." But the real aim of
the new Adjustment Service, says Mr. Erskine, "is to assist the
unemployed individual in acquiring a better insight into his own
vocational and personal problems. . . ."
The Service is financed for a year by a grant of $100,000 from
the Carnegie Corporation through the Emergency Unemploy-
ment Relief Committee. Its whole program will be closely co-
ordinated with those of other agencies. It has imposing advisory
and technical committees and a staff including, with Mr. Erskine,
Jerome Bentley of the Y. M. C. A., M. R. Trabue of the Minne-
sota Employment Stabilization Research Institute, Lewis A.
Wilson of the New York State Education Department, Edward
D. Cray and Darcy Wilson.
Why Men Make Good on Parole
ALTHOUGH of small scope the recent study of young men on
*» parole from the New Jersey State Reformatory at Annan-
dale has yielded some interesting if tentative conclusions. The
study, dealing with 432 persons paroled in a depression year of
meager employment opportunities, was made by the Divisions of
Parole and of Research of the Department of Institutions ai
Agencies. Applying rather strict tests to the conceptions of sv
cess and failure the study showed 54 percent of the youths as su
cessful on parole, 25 percent as partially successful and 21 perce
as failing. There was ample evidence that a longer stay in the i
stitution did not necessarily lead to greater success on pare
"Thus lending support to the contention," says Winthrop ]
Lane, director of the Division of Parole, "that institutional re:
dence reaches a state of diminishing returns, and that this sta
may occur earlier than many people suppose. In the present stu
ies the positive values of institutional residence are not appare
beyond thirteen months in the institution."
A strong correlation was shown between success on parole ar
regularity of employment, good wages, constructive use of leisu
and regularity in church attendance. A higher degree of succe
was noted among parolees with dependents than those with non
There seemed little connection between living in a wholeson
neighborhood and success on parole, in fact failures were almo
as numerous in good neighborhoods as in bad. On the other har
the percentage of success was high among those having whol
some family relationships.
First Steps in Planning
A LITTLE group of responsible men has risen up in Brookly
•*•*• N. Y., and decided to take definite action toward the coord
nation of the borough's social welfare and public-health work an
toward social planning on a borough-wide basis to keep abreast (
the needs of the rapidly increasing and changing populatioi
Called together by Frederic B. Pratt, president of Pratt Instituti
a hundred men, leaders in civic, welfare and health work and ref
resentative of the major religious faiths, listened to a presentatio
of the factors and trends in the local situation by Douglas I
Falconer, director of the Brooklyn Bureau of Charities, and dis
cussed the responsibility for leadership and guidance out of th
confusion.
From the discussion came the decision to undertake detailei
study looking toward the development of a coordinated com
Reports of Research
BEHAVIOR PROBLEMS. The Pennsylvania Committee on Penal Affairs
of the Public Charities Association, 311 South Juniper Street. Philadelphia.
A study, directed by Leon Stern, of the behavior problems
of school children in Allentown, Pa., and in the Juvenile
Court of Lehigh County, Pa.
APPLICATION OF THE GROUP METHOD TO CLASSIFICATION.
By J. L. Moreno, M.D. National Committee on Prisons and Prison Labor.
250 West 57 Street, New York City.
A preliminary report, prepared in collaboration with E.
Stagg Whitin, of a study of methods of assignment of
prisoners to groups to the end of securing a socialized
community within the prison.
AMERICAN CHARITIES AND THE CHILD OF THE IMMIGRANT.
By Francis E. Lane. The Catholic University of America, Washington,
D. C.
A study of typical child-caring institutions, Catholic and
Protestant, in New York and Massachusetts between 1 845
and 1880 when the modern philosophy of child welfare was
just beginning to emerge and the state was taking first
steps in responsibility.
THE PROBLEM OF OLD AGE DEPENDENCY. Metropolitan Life
Insurance Company, New York City.
Monograph No. 13 in the series on social insurance on
which the company has been engaged for a number of years.
The study included both foreign and American experience
and concludes with questions which any program must
answer before it can be satisfactory.
1933
THE SURVEY
115
,nunity plan. This study will be entrusted to a committee which
irill analyze the existing social-work organization particularly in
: elation to the problems created by the recent influx of new popu-
lation, and will report its findings to the citizen assembly which
reated it. " It is apparent," says Mr. Pratt, " that this group has
: 10 preconceived plan of any kind which it wishes to impose on the
! ommunity. It only wishes to determine what steps should be
uken and by what group to achieve the coordinated community
nlan that we so manifestly need."
What to Eat — and How
.] \ GROCERY order or any other form of food-relief is, they
••£*• think in Atlanta, only half the battle. The other half, for
'vhich the relief administration is equally responsible, is to see
hat that grocery order is turned into nourishing palatable meals,
specially for children. The Atlanta relief organization experi-
nented last summer in instructing housewives in the use of relief
,'oods with such satisfactory results that thirty-eight nutrition
i-lasses for mothers of families are now running full blast with a
veil-sustained attendance of about seventeen hundred weekly.
Jlasses are held in public schools, community houses, day nurser-
es and other centers at hours that meet the convenience of the
vomen themselves. Teachers are paid by the school authorities
vho rate the project as adult education. The course includes
wenty lessons which utilize in practical demonstrations the food-
tuffs contained in the grocery orders. Social features developed
hn the class meetings are a cheerful by-product. Evidence of the
ffectiveness of the instruction, says Kendall Weisiger, director of
emergency relief, is indicated in the periodic analyses of the items
elected within the range offered by the grocery orders. These
how a marked increase in such things as tomatoes, canned
nilk, cheese, salmon and leafy vegetables.
Prisons and Politics
IN the general mad rush to curtail governmental expenditures
The Osborne Association, new name of the recently merged
National Society of Penal Information and the Welfare League
\ssociation, both founded by the late Thomas Mott Osborne,
ees a definite threat to hard won improvements in prison condi-
ions. "At the very time," says William B. Cox, secretary of the
Association, "when those responsible for the conduct of penal
nstitutions have become convinced of the practical value of con-
tructive rehabilitation measures, legislators and the public at
arge are showing a strong tendency to revert to a purely custodial
evel." Prison labor is already affected, it is said, by radical moves
o reduce its competition with free labor. There is real danger that
me of the most effective agencies for the rehabilitation of prison-
:rs, work, will be drastically curtailed.
There are many places over the country, says Mr. Cox, where
:he light of intelligence in penal affairs is breaking through, but:
The fact must be squarely faced that no permanent improvement in
>ur methods of handling anti-social individuals can be expected so long
is the management of penal institutions is subjected to direct political
nfluence. The continued domination of politics in the affairs of prisons
ind reformatories is still the greatest obstacle to the ultimate solution of
in important social problem.
None Too Soon
rHE changing patterns of public-relief administration hold
such important implications for the future as well as in the
jresent that two national agencies, the American Public Welfare
\ssociation and the Family Welfare Association of America, have
:aken as their major activity for the next year the effort to direct
:hose patterns into effective social forms. Through special grants
'rom the Carnegie Corporation both associations have enlarged
:heir staffs for special field service to assist communities and
•esponsible authorities, state and local, in effective organization
ind administration of relief. The A. P. W. A., while concerned
with all aspects of public-welfare administration, is centering its
efforts on state legislation and the set-up of state welfare agencies,
while the F. W. A. A. is directing itself to local situations and
their relationship to state systems. The latter association is also
resuming its program of special studies, reports and information
service interrupted last spring. The F. W. A. A. now has five re-
gional field secretaries and has added to its staff, as special field
representatives, Alvin Guyler of New York, Thomas Devine of
Florida and Stockton Raymond of Ohio. The field staff of the
A. P. W. A. includes Burdett Lewis of New York, Calvin Estill of
West Virginia, W. Frank Persons of Washington, D. C., and
Aubrey Williams of Wisconsin.
St. Louis' Tenth Citizen
TO find any gain at all for any group in 1932 is an achievement
in optimism, yet John T. Clark, executive secretary of the
St. Louis Urban League, is of the opinion that in the important
matter of race relations, St. Louis' tenth citizen, the Negro, made
progress. He finds newspapers, churches and civic groups more
sympathetic and considerate, with increased interest in Negro life
and thinking. On the minus side for the year is the terrific unem-
ployment situation with 80 percent of all working Negroes af-
fected. Equally serious is the relief problem, "There are many
blocks in which some residents in every house receive some form
of charity." Education and recreation have suffered and Negro
business is paralyzed "with the plight of the ambitious and in-
tellectual classes as bad as that of the masses." Health is fairly
good though pulmonary diseases have increased. Negro popula-
tion has dropped slightly since 1930 with immigration entirely
stopped and a considerable movement from the city to the out-
lying districts and to the far South.
REPORTS to the Boys Clubs of America, Inc. from 164 organiza-
tions over the country whose work is exclusively with boys show
that boy membership increased last year by 7 percent while bud-
gets shrank by more than 12 percent.
EXTRA dividends ranging from $300 to $1000 have dropped like
manna into the budgets of forty New York child-helping organi-
zations as the first distribution of the income from the trust funds
of the Federation of Protestant Welfare Agencies.
THE Family Welfare Association of America has decided to omit
this year the annual Institute of Family Social Work which was
established by Mary E. Richmond in 1910 and which the Associa-
tion has conducted since 1925. The possibility of a two weeks'
summer conference for a limited group is being weighed.
THE Duke Endowment is experimenting with a rating schedule
for the child-caring institutions in North and South Carolina to
which it makes grants. Rating, with one thousand points as a
possible total, is on social work, housing, food, clothing, education,
health, moral and religious training and financial management.
BOYS' work agencies in New York are so gratified with the results
of the use of hand-picked unemployed men in their activities
(see The Survey, February 15, page 76), that the girls' work
agencies are following suit. Some 200 young women on the pay-
roll of the Emergency Work Bureau who are now undergoing
training at the hands of Mary Austin of the Welfare Council will
be assigned to settlements and clubs with programs for girls.
SOCIAL workers in Richmond, Va., are gradually digging them-
selves out from under the mountain of used clothing, some
twenty-five tons, collected in a one-day drive by the American
Red Cross and the Boy Scouts. Some of the garments are being
sent to nearby rural sections there to be bartered for surplus farm
produce to feed hungry city folk. A curious result of the drive,
says June Purcell Guild, was a jump in the business of certain
clothing stores. Evidently the ladies of Richmond joyously
cleared out their closets and started fresh.
116
THE SURVEY
March 193;
May Day Ahoy!
NOT many moments to be lost in laying plans for May Day
as a time again to call to mind the need of safer lives and
better health for mothers and children. For the constructive use
of Mothers' Day as a means of lessening maternal mortality and
promoting maternal health, the Maternity Center Association
(578 Madison Ave., New York City) continues its service of aid
and counsel. The American Child Health Association, which has
served as the lighthouse for Child Health Day, announces that
one of its prime objectives has been attained in the fact that the
Conference of State and Provincial Health Authorities of North
America has taken over full responsibility for the observance of
the day — which means that the leaders of May Day activities
will be the state health officers. The Association, needless to
state, continues its interest, and will do all in its power to aid
within the limits of a diminished staff in this field, made necessary
by limitation of available funds. To this end it has issued a new
pamphlet, May Day — Child Health Day in 1932, with sugges-
tions for this year's program. (Price 10 cents a copy from the
Association, 450 Seventh Ave., New York City; quantity rates on
request.)
"Diabetic Islands of Safety"
spring just around not so many more corners — and at
its heels the question of summer camps — there is perti-
nence in the values that the staff of the New England Deaconess
Hospital have discovered in using summer camps for the care of
diabetic children. Last year ninety-two children profited by a
stay in what Dr. Elliott P. Joslin calls "diabetic islands of safety."
The Committee of the Clara Barton Birthplace, backed by the
Women's National Missionary Association and the Massachu-
setts Young People's Christian Union, turned over the Clara
Barton Summer Camp for the use of diabetic little girls, chosen
without regard for creed or race. Other children were cared for in
a diabetic camp in Ogunquit, Maine, and elsewhere. At the
Clara Barton camp the New England Deaconess Hospital pro-
vided supervision by medical staff, nurses and dietitians skilled
in the care of diabetes, a laboratory and a part-time technician
and insulin. Two graduate nurses volunteered as councillors,
aided by two older diabetic patients.
In a recent address Dr. Joslin said "Not until this year with a
large number of children did we fully realize the advantages
which can accrue to a diabetic child from a few weeks' stay at a
camp. First of all, he has a change from home, a change in diet,
a change from restraints. Restraints at camp are not objection-
able because they apply to all and seem reasonable. While at the
camp the children see that there are others like themselves and
they gain confidence and courage. They live far more closely to
the model diabetic life than when in the hospital. The expense of
the diabetic camp can be kept at a low level. There is one essential
— an expert diabetic head nurse. A laboratory is a tremendous
asset and can be organized on a modern scale at a small out-
lay. . . . Finally, a diabetic camp can be made a diabetic island
of safety for the whole community, because the county medical
society can be invited to meet there and clinics and instructiv
demonstrations arranged for its members."
It is planned to continue the Massachusetts work this year o:
an increasing scale.
Health Education in Akron
1P\URING several recent years the Akron, Ohio, department:
•1— ' of health and education and the National Dairy Counci
have been cooperating in plans for teaching health in the grade:
as an integral part of the school program which also would b(
carried into the homes. Last year the program was widened tc
include a program for highschools built around a freshman courst
in nutrition with emphasis on the school lunch, and this year it
includes also a course for parent-teacher meetings to promote
home cooperation and interest. In all the projects records an
being kept in such a way as to make it possible to measure tangi.
ble results and evaluate material and methods used. A progress
report on results in the highschool show that a far higher per-
centage of students select "A" lunches in the cafeteria than was
the case in another highschool, taken as a control, where nc
health teaching was given. (An " A " lunch includes as a minimurr
a serving of fruit or vegetable, two substantial foods and a cup oij
milk.) The freshmen, who were enrolled in the nutrition course,!
chose better lunches than the students as a whole. It was signifi-i
cant also that while the cafeteria's total receipts fell in the winter:
of 1930-31 and still further in 1931-32, due to the unfavorable
economic conditions, the amount of milk purchased rose during!
the months in 1931 when a brief health education course was
offered, and continued the rise in 1931-32, when the regular course
was given. In the winter of 1932, when the total purchases at the
cafeteria were considerably less than in two preceding winters,
much more milk was ordered than in the earlier periods. For in-
Pertinent Publications
A DECADE OF DISTRICT HEALTH CENTER PIONEERING: Ten-
Year Report of the East Harlem Health Center. Prepared under the direction
of Kenneth D. Widdemer, executive officer. Price $1 of the Center, 343 East
116 St. •
DETAILED account of an outstanding piece of neighborhood
health work (see the Midmonthly Survey, February 1933,
p. 74) : aims, methods and results.
EDUCATION FOR HEALTHFUL LIVING IN THE PUBLIC SCHOOLS
OF BELLEVUE-YORKVILLE, 1927-1931. By Nina B. Lamkin. Price
55 cents postpaid of the Bellevue- Yorkville Health Demonstration. 325 East
38 St., New York City.
A COOPERATIVE effort in a practical program of health
education " as an all-day influence," with an evaluation of
results. Appendices outline lesson plans for hand-washing,
use of the drinking fountain and nutritious luncheons
worked out by grade teachers.
PREVENTION OF CHROME POISONING: Industrial Hygiene Series
No. 5- A , Division of Industrial Hygiene, New York Stale Department of
Labor, 80 Centre St., New York City.
LEAFLET on symptoms and control of hazards of chromic
acid.
MORALE: The Mental HjlcJrCaSi Unemployment, by George K. Pratt,
M. D. Price 25 cents the sif. '° aunts on quantities, of the National
Committee for Mental Hygt>rk and Math Ave., New York City.
THE pamphlet of the seasoTi In this field. See The Mid-
monthly Survey, January 1933, p. 18.
BEHIND THE FRONT LINES: Social Hygiene. Price 10 cents of the
American Social Hygiene Association, 450 Seventh Avenue, New York City.
A BULLETIN of source material for the publicity desk, pre-
pared by the United Educational Program of the National
Social Work Council. For a list of other current social-
hygiene publications, including several old favorites in new
dress, and social-hygiene films at new low prices, consult
the Association.
March 1933
THE SURVEY
117
ormation on the courses for the grades, highschool, and parent-
eacher meetings and detailed reports on results consult the
National Dairy Council, 221 N. LaSalle St., Chicago, Illinois,
"he price of the complete set of lessons is 50 cents a set for each
>f the three levels, or $1.25 for the complete set for the elemen-
ary grades. The report on the highschool study is free.
Tuition in Schools of Nursing
[N Europe, according to a report in the Bulletin of the
League of Red Cross Societies (Vol. XIV, No. i, p. 10) it is
>ecoming a common custom for schools of nursing to charge tui-
ion to nurses in training instead of providing them with subsist-
nce, training and even small money allowances, as was formerly
he practice abroad and is the general practice in this country,
n Hungary fees are based on those paid by teachers in training,
n France there is a charge for maintenance as well as tuition; in
'oland in some schools students pay tuition and provide their
wn board and lodging. In all of these countries and in Bulgaria,
Czechoslovakia and Italy, where similar systems are in use, full
r partial scholarships are available for qualified candidates who
annot pay for their own training. In some instances the holder
f a scholarship agrees to serve for a specified period after training
mder the Ministry of Health or Red Cross, or to accept a post
ecommended by a school committee. The requirement of tuition
ppears, according to the report "to have certain advantages
vhich cannot be overlooked, especially in countries which are
rying to raise their standard of nursing and to place their schools
if nursing on the same sound educational and economic basis as
ther professional schools in the country."
When Patients Have No Money
FROM Indiana comes word that the Shelby County Medical
Society has made arrangements for a free clinic for people in
he county unable to pay. Only ambulatory patients will be
reated. Prescriptions will be filled by druggists at cost, to be paid
iy the township. In Michigan the city of Battle Creek is paying
1000 a month to the Battle Creek Academy of Medicine and
dentistry to provide all medical care required by needy residents,
"he only exceptions are contagious diseases, which have always
>een treated by the health department, and the cost of exceptional
Irugs and appliances. The Academy will provide its one investi-
•ating nurse, whose salary is to be paid out of the monthly $1000.
t is estimated that under this plan each physician who gives serv-
ce would receive about one third the usual fee. No arrangement
or hospitalization has yet been reported.
Protect Every Contact
A PRIL starts the sixth educational campaign of the National
'"*• Tuberculosis Association for early diagnosis and care. This
ear's program is built about the slogan Examine and Protect
Lvery Contact and as usual physicians, health officers, public-
icalth nurses, social workers, and community leaders will help
pread the idea. For the list of available leaflets, cuts, prepared
tews stories and other material, consult your local or state tuber-
ulosis association or in case of doubt the National Tuberculosis
Association, 450 Seventh Ave., New York.
Among projects recently announced by the National Tuber-
:ulosis Association is a five-year plan to reduce tuberculosis mor-
ality among Negroes, which is three times as high as among
vhites. The work has been made possible by a special gift and is
o be carried out in cooperation with a committee appointed by
he National Medical Association of Negro physicians. The first
tep has been a six months' study of economic, social and psycho-
ogical characteristics of Negroes in thirteen states and twelve
lorthern cities. The southern group, comprising some eight mil-
ion persons, are preponderantly country-dwellers with pitifully
ow cash incomes who live in communities themselves too poor to
inance sanatoria and other measures for tuberculosis control.
The problem is to discover how best to use the limited funds
ivailable and the program will be based on knowledge gained
from important local experiments, such as one in Lee County,
Alabama, where tuberculous patients are cared for at home,
segregated in a portable screened cottage or screened porch. For
the 1,500,000 Negroes in northern cities where Negro deathrates
from tuberculosis are higher than in the South
but where the community can afford to make
provision for the disease the chief problem is
to persuade the group to take advantage of the
preventive measures which already exist. The
preliminary survey showed excellent tubercu-
losis programs for Negroes in a number of
cities: clinic and nursing service in Phila-
delphia, for example, prompt and adequate
sanatorium treatment in Detroit, and studies
in Pittsburgh to formulate a permanent program. An excellent pro-
gram in tuberculosis control was found in Knoxville, Tennessee.
CAMPAIGN SYMBOI
THE February Ohio Health News (Ohio State Department of
Health) leads off its column The Line O'Light with the observa-
tion that "Washington's natal anniversary, recurrent this month,
is remindful that the Father of His Country died as the result of a
common cold."
FROM the Quarterly Bulletin of the Frontier Nursing Service in
Kentucky — "Baby delivered last week and the $5 fee was paid
with three pounds of beef (local), two bushels of Irish potatoes
specially picked out, one and one-half day's work on our furnace
pipes and water system."
WITH 1933 the United Hospital Fund of New York has started a
new information service by recording and publishing every month
an exact statement of the facilities available to the public in ninety
private hospitals in the city and the situation by boroughs. "This
radical departure ... is as important in the hospital field as
current indices of car loadings and bank clearings are in business."
AMONG the activities of the Albany County (N. Y.) Mental Hy-
giene Society is a program on noise abatement, carried out in
cooperation with the Albany County Medical Society and Albany
Council of Social Agencies. " We look forward to the passing of
constructive ordinances in the near future, controlling dangerous
and noisy celebrations which threaten mental health."
DESPITE general good health and a low tuberculosis deathrate,
Pennsylvania reports an increased number of reported cases of
tuberculosis for the first eleven months of 1932. The increase is
believed greater than can be attributed to improved reporting.
" It is reasonable to expect a rise in the tuberculosis deathrate of
the next few years," the bulletin of the State Health Department
declares.
THE plan used for the past six years by the Presbyterian Hospital
in Chicago whereby a patient can pay a stated sum for the cost of
confinement in advance instalments "has been the means of
keeping our obstetrical department reasonably full during the
depression," Asa Bacon, superintendent of the hospital, reports
in reply to a letter of inquiry. A rate of $50 covers all costs for ten
days' care for patients unable to afford a private physician.
Payments are entered in a "Baby book" which provides for
records of baby's first weight, tooth, word, step, etc.
NEED has supplanted vanity, the New York City Health Depart-
ment believes, for thousands of men and women who never before
had recourse to hair dye but now are trying to preserve or regain
youthful shades of black and brown. Hence a special drive on the
supervision of beauty parlors and a warning that hair dye should
not be used for the first time until a test for predisposition has
been made by trying out a little of it on a sensitive patch of skin at
least twenty-four hours before an attempt is made to apply it to
hair. If the skin shows irritation, avoid the dye.
118
THE SURVEY
March 193.'
Industry Goes to the Farm
HOW small industrial projects in a rural area where agricul-
ture is mainly a matter of "subsistence farming" provide a
cash crop for the farmer and his family is told in Rural Industries
in Knott County, Kentucky, by Wayne C. Nason, a preliminary
report of a study made by several bureaus of the U. S. Depart-
ment of Agriculture and various Kentucky agencies (Superin-
tendent of Documents, Washington, D. C.). The report points out
the need for a supplementary income to raise the standard of
living in this and similar areas, and also the influences making for
decentralization of factories, including modern power transmis-
sion, new types of machinery and improved transportation facili-
ties. The study disclosed eight general rural industries contribut-
ing to the livelihood of farm families: saw-milling, grist-milling,
coal-mining, blacksmithing, stone-quarrying, weaving, basketry
and furniture-making. The last three, carried on in the homes, are
commonly known as "fireside industries." At the time of the
study, there were 138 local enterprises in the county, turning out
156 different products, with the raw materials for three fourths of
them furnished by the operator's or a neighbor's farm. Of the
products, 131 were marketed in the county. The total value of the
output for the year (1930) was $191,280. The study indicates few
possibilities for coal-mining and grist-milling, hope for developing
saw-milling and quarrying given more roads and "better times"
locally, opportunity to develop blacksmithing by equipping and
training men to do auto and machine repair work. The fireside in-
dustries probably cannot compete with machine-made goods, but
given better business standards and marketing facilities they
could probably develop a satisfactory market of their own.
Minimum Wage
RAFTED by a committee of which Josephine Goldmark was
chairman and Benjamin V. Cohen, New York attorney,
Felix Frankfurter, Harvard Law School, and Mary Dewson,
National Consumers' League, the other members, a minimum-
wage bill that includes many of the recommendations of the
recent conference on labor standards has already been in-
troduced in the state legislatures of Pennsylvania, New Hamp-
shire and New York. In Pennsylvania and New York, the meas-
ure has the backing of the recently formed Labor Standards
Committees in those states.
The bill provides that, on petition of fifty or more residents, the
industrial commissioner shall investigate whether the wages paid
women and minors in any given occupation are oppressive or un-
reasonable, as defined by the bill. The machinery provided for the
investigation and for setting a minimum wage for the occupation
if a need for it appears is a wage board, made up of three employ-
ers, three representatives of labor and three of the public. The
wage order is to be "directory" for nine months, the commissioner
having authority to publish the name of any employer who vio-
lates it. If, after the order has been in effect nine months, the com-
missioner finds that "the persistent non-observance of such order
by one or more employers is a threat to the maintenance of fair
minimum wage standards in any occupation" the commissioner
may make the order mandatory. Discrimination by the employer
against an employe for cooperation with the provisions of th
act, failure of the employer to keep the wage records requirer
under the act or to furnish them on request and violation of
mandatory order is made a misdemeanor, punishable by fine
imprisonment or both. Each week in which the order is violate!
or the records neglected, and each employe involved in the viola
tion constitutes a separate offense. Copies of the bill may be ob
tained from Mary Dewson, chairman of the Labor Standard
Committee, 156 Fifth Avenue, New York.
Replaced by Machines
SOME economists hold that the worker's fear of The Machine i
unnecessary, that "in the long run" mechanization of indus
try does not displace workers. A good many facts in support of th
worker's side of the argument are furnished by one of the few de
tailed studies available of what actually happens to individus
wage-earners whose skill is made obsolete by technical change
The Effects on Women of Changing Conditions in the Cigar an.
Cigarette Industries, by Caroline Manning and Harriet A. Byrn
(Bulletin of the Women's Bureau No. 100. Superintendent c
Documents, Washington, D. C.). The study shows that the in
dustries themselves are forging ahead. The value of the output in
creased by almost 70 percent between 1920 and 1930. In the sam
decade, wages paid decreased 23 percent.
The report points out that proportionately more men thai
women were displaced. "When given an opportunity to mak
cigars by machine men were less willing than women to accep
less skilled and lower paid jobs." Interviews with 1150 women
formerly employed in the industry who had lost their jobs t
machines, showed that many of them had been irregularly o
totally unemployed, that those who did find jobs reported re
duced earnings, and that the older women had been particularl;
hard hit. Of the workers dismissed because of mechanization o
the cigar factories, only a fourth had worked less than five year
in the trade.
Safeguards for Children
O ETTER protection for child workers against industrial acci
-'-' dent and disease is urged in the report of an advisory com
mittee of experts, appointed last year by the Children's Bureau 01
New and Useful
ESSENTIALS OF A PROGRAM OF UNEMPLOYMENT RESERVES.
National Industrial Conference Board, Inc. Z47 Park Avenue, New York.
Not a "model" plan but an outline of basic principles of a
"sound and practicable program of unemployment re-
serves," to be carried out by individual employers.
OPERATION OF UNEMPLOYMENT BENEFIT PLANS AND IN-
SURANCE SYSTEMS, 1931 and 1932, Supplement to Bureau of Labor
Statistics Bulletin No. 544. Superintendent of Documents, Washington.
Price, 10 cents.
What has happened to benefit plans in this country and to
foreign insurance schemes under the pressure of hard times.
OUR CHANGING OCCUPATIONS, a Statistical Survey, comparing the
United States, Pennsylvania and Pittsburgh, by John D. Beatty and
Herbert L. Crau. Pittsburgh Personnel Association. Price, 50 cents.
A study of the change in number of employes in manufac-
turing and mechanical industries, transportation and com-
munication, trade, public service, professional service and
domestic and personal service, based on the last three
Census reports.
THE DECLINE OF NORTHWESTERN FLOUR MILLING, by Victor
G. Pickett and Roland S. Vaile. University of Minnesota Press, Minneapolis.
Price, 75 cents.
Illustrating a considerable shift in a major industry, this
study was undertaken to determine: the extent of the shift,
the causes, the consequences, social and personal.
larch 1933
THE SURVEY
119
ie recommendation of the White House Conference to study the
mployment of minors in hazardous occupations. The report, just
lade public through the bureau, specifically recommends that
linors under eighteen years of age be excluded from twenty-eight
eneral occupations involving mechanical hazards, from thirty-
Mr occupations where specified machines are used, and from a
umber of occupations involving exposure to certain injurious
abstances. In general, the committee endorses the recommenda-
ons of the conference that state labor boards be empowered to
etermine what are dangerous and injurious occupations and pro-
ibit the employment of children in them; that minors be given
ill protection through adequate child-labor law administration
ased on the establishment of adequate inspection forces; and
aat employers be required to pay double compensation to chil-
: ren injured while illegally employed. The committee empha-
: zes the need for proper safeguarding of machines and apparatus
. ised in educational, charitable and correctional institutions, public
; nd private. Research is continuing along several lines, including
azards involved in messenger service and in the operation of
- ower-driven farm equipment.
Girls Look at Their Jobs
HEN the Vineyard Shore School for Women Workers in
Industry, West-Park-on-Hudson, N. Y., announced last
lonth that it had funds enough in sight to open for a short term,
lirty unemployed factory girls declared a four months' morato-
, um on job-hunting. The school, started four years ago to provide
jntinuation courses for eager "alumnae" of the workers' summer
:hools, gives no vocational work (see The Survey, February 15,
530, page 589). Its program is devoted to study and discussion of
jrrent economic issues which have direct bearing on the stu-
ents' own experiences in industry. Twenty of the girls now at
ineyard Shore are having their living expenses covered by $io-a-
eek grants from Mrs. Belmont's committee on emergency un-
Tiployment relief. Full scholarship, covering tuition as well as
ving, costs $100 a month. Last spring, on their own initiative,
ie girls started a handcraft workshop as an experiment in making
ie school partially self-supporting. This the new group is carry-
ig on. Half this year's student body is made up of alumnae of
Corkers' summer schools. The group includes milliners, dress-
lakers, furriers, candy packers, waitresses, telephone operators,
•xtile operators, lampshade and novelty workers, tobacco work-
- -s and a silk textile weaver. Their study is aimed to train them as
telligent leaders in the movement for better labor legislation
id improved standards in industry.
Eight States Confer
^ IGHT states and the U. S. Department of Labor were repre-
— ' sented at the second conference of eastern states on uniform
bor laws recently held in Boston at the invitation of Governor
oseph B. Ely of Massachusetts. The conference conclusions
rvered an immediate program of stabilization and standardiza-
on; recommendation of a mandatory minimum wage law for
omen and minors; "effectively administered public employment
:rvices as an essential and orderly mechanism for the normal
lacement of labor and particularly for the reemployment of labor
i the depression lifts;" plan for a conference of representatives of
.bor departments of this group of states to be held annually
rior to the convening of the legislature. The legislative program
iggested for immediate enactment included eight points: a
orking week of not more than forty-eight hours; a working day
f not more than eight hours; a working week of not more than
x days; limitation of night work; application of factory stand-
rds to industrial home work; exclusion of minors under sixteen
om industry during school hours and under fourteen outside of
:hool hours, with compulsory school attendance standards
' Tiended to meet these requirements; employment certificates
>r all minors under eighteen; increased compensation for minors
ijured while illegally employed. The conference voted to bring
s recommendations before the governors and the legislatures of
the states invited to participate in the conference. Delegates from
Connecticut, Maryland, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New
York, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island and Massachusetts took part
in the conference. Delaware, Maine, Vermont, Ohio and West
Virginia were not represented.
The Shorter Week at Geneva
A FORWARD step in bringing together the interests of em-
•**• ployers and workers on the shorter work week controversy
resulted from the tripartite preparatory conference of the Inter-
national Labor Office recently held in Geneva (see The Survey,
February 15, page 80). From a first clear opposition of views
there emerged at the end of the conference the principle of an
agreement. The workers have always taken the stand: "reduction
of hours but no cut in wages." Employers have countered, "no
reduction without a proportionate cut in hourly rates." Between
these extremes, the conference succeeded in finding an objective
desired by both sides, "the maintenance of the standard of life of
the wage-earners," as they phrased it in the final resolution. In
the discussion, it was brought out that the principle is economic-
ally sound in view of the well-known fact that in a period of de-
pression prices move down faster than salaries and wages, so
that those who have jobs and positions are really advancing their
standards. Social justice is guarded for those lowest in the scale
when it is insisted that wage rates shall move in harmony with
maintaining, not lowering real wages. The resolutions of the
shorter work week conference will go before the annual session of
the conference in June, and may emerge as the consolidated pro-
gram of employers and workers at the International Economic
Conference in London in the fall.
The Y. W. Enlists
OM individuals and groups of the 350,000 young women in
business and industry who are members of the Young Wom-
en's Christian Association, the national organization has received
vivid reports of the effect of hard times on women wage-earners.
Thus in one eastern factory, the girls are charged five cents a
week for drinking water. Two girls in a clothing factory were paid
ninety-three cents each for their week's work. Their job is to put
pockets in trousers, and for each two hundred pockets they are
paid 23 cents. Girls in a chain of dry cleaning establishments re-
port that they are paid as pressers five cents a dress, and daily
earnings, when work is available, average fifty cents a day. Girls
who report at another factory are told to "wait around" in case
they are needed. One girl's pay for a week of this working and
waiting amounted to $1.98. The average return is three to four
cents an hour. The National Board of the Y.W.C.A. has pledged
itself to assist in the campaign in forty-four states for a minimum
wage and for restricted hours of labor for women.
THE standard bill, prepared by the American Association for
Labor Legislation providing for one day of rest in seven has again
been introduced in the New Jersey state legislature.
How illegally employed minors stand under workmen's com-
pensation laws in this country is summarized in Publication No.
214 of the U. S. Children's "Bureau, a report prepared by Ellen
Nathalie Matthews (Superintendent Documents, Washington.
Price, 15 cents). The report includes special sections on the Wis-
consin and Indiana laws, and the recommendations of the White
House Conference.
A LECTURE on child labor illustrated by forty lantern slides has
been prepared by the National Child Labor Committee, 419
Fourth Avenue, New York. The material is suitable for church
groups, women's clubs, highschool and college students. It will be
loaned for a fee of two dollars and return postage. Anyone apply-
ing for the lecture and slides is asked to give the exact date of the
meeting on which they are to be used, and the address to which
they are to be sent.
120
THE SURVEY
March 193\
For Jobless Country Youth
USING the insight gained in a year's intensive study of the
needs of unemployed young people in rural areas, the
Southern Women's Educational Alliance is this month launching
a new program designed to help communities, parents and boys
and girls meet this growing problem through organized study and
recreation. The Alliance holds that, with some safeguards, the
young people themselves are the best leaders for programs de-
signed especially to serve three groups: those who have returned
from the cities because of lack of employment; "city-minded rural
young people who have left school and who would, in normal
times, have gone to the city"; young people whose college or
professional education has been interrupted by the depression.
The Alliance hopes that developing leadership among the young
people will avoid the risk of overtaxing rural school heads and
other rural specialists " at a time when their burdens are already
greatly increased."
The Alliance offers, as an emergency service, six forms of co-
operation with special programs for unemployed rural young
people: to serve as a clearing-house of information regarding
experiments along this line which are already under way or in
prospect; to coordinate information regarding non-financial aids
to counties or rural communities developing such programs; a
mimeographed bulletin of information and suggestion; contin-
uing study and evaluation of experiments in the field; counsel
and criticism of plans under way or contemplated; correspond-
ence courses for volunteer leaders of rural programs. "As regards
finances, the Alliance will, as nearly as possible, divert its modest
budget to this emergency undertaking." A detailed statement
of the plan will be supplied by the office of the Alliance, Grace-
American Building, Richmond, Virginia.
Community Service
/COLLEGES are serving as " Good Samaritans" in their respec-
^^ tive communities these days, according to the report on an
inquiry recently made by the U. S. Office of Education, which
sent a questionnaire on special service being rendered to more
than fifteen hundred colleges and universities. More than a third
of the colleges replying reported special courses for the unem-
ployed, both alumni and others. Thus the Montana School of
Mines, the College of Puget Sound and the University of Wash-
ington have given special training in prospecting for unemployed
miners and others. The University of Washington gives special
training for leadership in community drama, group dancing,
public discussion and so on. Boston University offers special
courses for the "white-collar" group. Many colleges are cutting
tuition or accepting tuition payments in corn, hogs, poultry,
sheep, and so on; others report extra funds available for student
loans, and for scholarships and fellowships. Some colleges have
been operating their own work-relief projects. Thus Baylor Col-
lege for Women, Belton, Texas, is providing more than $30,000
worth of student work. Western Illinois State Teachers College
allotted $800 to an unemployment committee of the faculty t
employ needy students at thirty cents an hour. Massachusett
Institute of Technology has been providing jobs at $15 a week t
its graduates. In a few instances, notably at the College of thy
Ozarks, Intermountain Union College and Houghton Collegi
construction programs have been advanced to provide studer <
jobs and take advantage of low building rates. In many commi i
nities colleges have been responsible for free musical program. '
debates, group singing, lectures and discussion groups, club:
recreation centers and similar projects designed to make creativ i
use of the involuntary leisure of the unemployed.
Tulare Goes to School
TNSTEAD of slowly dying out, as many pessimists predictec
•*• interest in the Tulare, California, Adult Week-End Sckx
has increased year by year, and the sixth annual session, held fc
four weekends in January and two in February, was better ai
tended than ever before (see The Survey, June i, 1930, page 231
Each session, held on a Saturday evening from 5:45 till 10 o'clod
included •an address on a subject of general interest, a communit
supper, an entertainment period of music or dramatics, and
lecture-discussion period for special-interest groups: nation;
problems, early California history, travel and literature, parent,
education. The last half-hour was a "social hour" which ofte
continued the discussion of the special-interest groups well pas
the official closing time. The weekend school is a cooperativ
undertaking, held at the union highschool and sponsored by
number of civic and educational groups.
The Busv Libraries
j
STATISTICS were made to come alive at the trustees sectio
of the midwinter meeting of the American Library Associe
tion, when Ralph D. Shanesy of the board of directors of th
Evanston, Illinois, public library illustrated his paper wit
picturegraphs similar to those devised by Otto Neurath of Vienm
Holding that "the average man is not interested in figures," Mi
Shanesy proceeded to make his figures interesting, and with hi
lively charts told an impressive story of what one community i
asking of its library during the depression.
In many communities, according to the last news-letter of th
A. L. A., the libraries are trying to meet the mounting call fo
service on a reduced budget. Oakland, California, is one of th
present bright spots in the American library world. There th
city council has increased the library's appropriation for th
coming year $8000 over the 1931-32 budget, making a total
appropriation of $258,000. The increase was granted in spite of;.
cut of more than $15,000,000 in the assessed valuation of the cit;.
and a reduction of four cents in the tax-rate. Last year there wa'
an increase of 13 percent in the number of Oakland borrowers a
compared with the previous year, raising the per capita circula
tion to 6.79 books. "Hard times" are largely responsible for th>
Two Charts Contrasting:
1. Average number of books borrowed
from library by each Evanstonian
during 12 months at 10-year inter-
vals (right)
2. Number oj volumes loaned by library
in contrast to population of city at
ro-year intervals
191!
|H 24,978 Evanston Population
1 1 7,421 Books Borrowed
37,234 Evanston Population
4.7 Boob
251,925 Books Borrowed
63,338 Evanston Population
698,519 Books Borrowed
American Library AssociationVBulleti
\larch 1933
THE SURVEY
121
ncrease in reading, according to John B. Kaiser, the Oakland
' brarian.
Student Victory
WRITING an important chapter in legal guarantees of
freedom of conscience in this country and in the fight
igainst compulsory military training in schools and colleges,
fudge Joseph N. Ulman of the Superior Court of Baltimore held
hat the University of Maryland should reinstate and exempt
rom drill a Methodist freshman suspended for refusal of military
raining on conscientious grounds. Ennis H. Coale, son of a
Maryland farmer, a member of a rural Methodist church, had
ieen denied exemption first by the college authorities and then
n- the Board of Regents and was suspended until he would at-
tend R. O. T. C.drill (see The Survey, December 15, 1932, page
$93). Supported by his family and his pastor, young Coale
appealed to the courts. In a four-day hearing, the University
'attempted to prove that the training was not military but
"citizenship"; that Methodists were not entitled to the treatment
granted members of the Society of Friends; that the boy had been
guilty of "insubordination" in refusing to go to military classes;
and that the compulsory feature of drill was a legitimate college
'requirement, imposing no undue restraint upon any student. On
all points the court ruled against the college authorities. The
University has announced that it will appeal the case.
A New Budget
HOW one college is budgeting its resources to meet the hard
times is told in an announcement from Rollins College,
Winter Park, Florida, giving details of its "unit-cost plan." This
long-established institution is taking over the plan of basing
college fees on actual costs on which the frankly experimental
Bennington College began its work last fall. Rollins, by dividing
the annual operating expenses by its normal enrolment (500)
.arrives at a "unit cost" for the next college year of $1350 per
student. This covers board, room and tuition, and is $400 in ad-
vance of the present charge. The income of the present endow-
ment— approximately $60,000 a year — is left free for loans or
scholarships "for reducing tuition to those worthy and desirable
students who can affirmatively prove that they cannot pay the
full rates." Underlying the new plan is the belief that well-to-do
students should pay for their college education, and "the en-
dowment and gifts hitherto distributed equally throughout the
student body should go to those who are unable to pay the full
cost of their education."
Rollins College authorities view the new scheme as a logical
third departure from established college practice. Seven years
ago the college abandoned the lecture-recitation method of
teaching for the conference plan, and three years ago, the " new
I curriculum" substituted "accomplishment" for "time-spent" as
. a basis for student rating (see The Survey, June I, 1931, page
U7)-
Adults Educating Themselves
OUR Economic Future — Its Direction and Control will be
the general theme of the first session of the Wellesley Sum-
i mer Institute for Social Progress. The plan is for a coeducational
two weeks' summer session to be held each year on the Wellesley
College campus to consider some phase of the question: what are
the fundamentals of a good social order and how can they be real-
ized? About a hundred and thirty men and women from widely
different vocational fields, will, it is hoped, come together to hear
lectures by experts, take part in round tables and group discussion,
and try to acquire social intelligence as "the only tool with which
. they can work to make over habits, customs and institutions to
| conform to the needs of a new day." The Institute is separate
from Wellesley College and from the Alumnae Association, and
will be governed and operated by a board made up of repre-
sentative educators, men of affairs and Wellesley graduates. A
national advisory committee is now being formed. There are no
scholastic prerequisites nor age limits for the Institute. Those
wishing to attend should write for further information to Dr.
Alfred D. Sheffield, Wellesley Summer Institute, 31 Madison
Street, Cambridge, Mass. Out of the list of qualified applicants,
a central admissions committee will invite one hundred and
thirty, "so chosen as to keep a balanced representation from all
the occupational groups." The Institute program will include
time for recreation and for independent study. A fee of twenty-
five dollars a week will cover the cost of room, board and tuition.
WHILE a detailed program for the eighth annual meeting of the
American Association for Adult Education is not yet available,
a preliminary announcement states that the "panel" sessions, a
method of group discussion first tried a year ago, will be contin-
ued. At least one session of the conference, which will be held in
Amherst, Massachusetts, May 22-24, will be devoted to unem-
ployment and adult education, with a report on the progress
of the newly organized adjustment service for the unemployed of
New York City. The first report on the work of the National
Occupational Conference, the new clearing house of information
in the field of occupational education and adjustment, will also
be given.
THE Cooperating School Pamphlets, edited by four progressive
school teachers (The John Day Company, 386 Fourth Avenue,
New York) are offered with a double purpose: to meet the need
of schools developing play programs based on the child's environ-
ment, and to stimulate additional groups of teachers to experi-
ment with similar classroom materials. Three of the booklets
(price 20 cents each) contain stories for children under seven:
Streets, Boats and Bridges, Trains. A fourth (price 50 cents)
describes the Art of Block Building. A set of pictures, packed
separately, is available for each pamphlet. "The book in the
hands of the teacher and the pictures in the hands of the children
make a complete unit."
THE Child and His Community will be the central theme of the
thirty-seventh annual convention of the National Congress of
Parents and Teachers, to be held in Seattle, May 21-27.
HOLDING that "it is more important to sell our magazine and
convince by its contents than to shout ' revolution ' and have no
one listen," Revolt, the monthly magazine of the Intercollegiate
Student Council of the League for Industrial Democracy has be-
come The Student Outlook. This lively paper, largely student-
written, is dedicated to " the fight against war, capitalism, race
prejudice, intellectual sham."
STORIES of children in the soft-coal area, written by Alice Paddle-
ford and published by Pioneer Youth of America, 69 Bank Street,
New York (price 10 cents), make vivid for more fortunate chil-
dren of junior highschool age the grim facts and some of the
social implications of a desperate industrial situation. The Paint
Creek Flood, and Poked Out, the story of an eviction, are now
ready, and two more will be available this month. It is to be
hoped that this vigorous, first-hand material may be put in well-
printed and illustrated pamphlets, instead of in its present
mimeographed form.
Doo and Man, a report of the work being done by The Seeing
Eye, Morristown, N. J., to educate dogs as guides for the blind
and to educate blind adults to use them, is a stirring story .of an
experiment promising great usefulness to a large group of the
handicapped. The work, based on methods developed and proved
abroad, includes selection and education of suitable instructors,
selection and education of suitable dogs, selection and education
of those blind persons best suited physically and temperamentally
to use dog guides.
122
THE SURVEY
March 193.]
Late News of State Organizations
THE Alabama Relief Administration, Thad Holt, director,
organized early in January, has adopted the policy of using
the already established state departments for supervision of local
relief activities, augmenting their staffs where necessary. Com-
munity organization for relief in the state is being directly super-
vised by the State Child Welfare Department. Up to January
19, relief organizations had been set up in over a third of the
sixty-seven counties. There are no state funds available, locally
raised funds being supplemented by Reconstruction Finance
Corporation grants.
In Arkansas, according to newspaper accounts, the State
Emergency Relief Commission, in cooperation with the agricul-
tural extension service of the state, is launching an extensive pro-
gram of subsistence farming, including community gardens and
the settlement of families on the land. The goal aimed at is to
supply foodstuffs for the 600,000 persons now estimated as de-
pendent upon relief. Particulars can be learned from W. A.
Rooksbery, chairman of the Commission, at the State Capitol,
Little Rock.
The California State Unemployment Commission has just
issued its voluminous report, one of the major recommendations
of which is that the state establish a fund of $20,000,000 from
which counties and municipalities could borrow for relief purposes
during the next two years. The loans would bear interest and be
repaid in equal annual installments over a ten-year period. A
Temporary Relief Board with wide powers is recommended.
California has received two R. F. C. relief loans; one of $281,372
to maintain camps for non-residents, the other of $1,974,083 for
general relief. The State Department of Social Welfare, Mrs.
Reba C. Splivalo, director, is administering the latter fund.
In Mississippi, the temporary relief director, Aubrey Williams,
who was loaned by the American Public Welfare Association, has
been replaced by George Power. Emphasis is being placed on the
securing of competent trained workers as fast as possible to ad-
minister relief in local areas. Work-relief is preferred to home-
relief; and the work opportunities include mosquito control,
building rural school playgrounds, laying sewers, building dikes,
razing old and dangerous buildings, and improving public build-
ings and their grounds.
In February, the State Legislature of Missouri was wrestling
with the problem of overcoming the limitations which the state
constitution puts upon its participation in relief financing, as a
result of the December warning of the R. F. C. that such action
is a prerequisite to further federal aid. It is estimated that $15,-
000,000 will be needed for relief in 1933 in the state as a whole,
and the current effort on the part of the legislature is to find means
of meeting one third of that need through state action. The state
constitution forbids the appropriation of more than $250,000 for
relief purposes. It is proposed to test the constitutionality of this
provision; and meanwhile a bill has been introduced appropriat-
ing this amount, which has the support of the State Administra-
tion and both parties in the Legislature.
The State Highway Department is working on plans to divert a
minimum of $1,000,000, and a maximum of $2,500,000 from its
general road-building program which has been largely devoted to
constructing paved highways, to the building of farm-to-market
roads in the more rural counties on a work-relief basis. The plan is
to hire the men for this work on recommendation of the local
emergency relief committees, and to give them work in accord-
ance with need. A committee of relief administrators, under the
chairmanship of C. Whit Pfeiffer, secretary of the Kansas City
Charities Fund, is working actively in support of these measures.
It has also voted unqualified approval of the present methods of
administering R. F. C. funds in the state.
The state director of unemployment relief, Walter Burr, is an
appointee of the governor and operates on the latter's executive
budget. He is assisted by an advisory committee of three and a
small staff. It is his duty to pass upon requests for federal assist-
ance as they come in from the various localities of the state.
Unemployment
*• *
Edited b]
JOANNA C. COLCORE
and RUSSELL H. KURT2
There have been fifty such localities aided since last September
In addition to St. Louis and Kansas City, the lead and zinc coun-
ties in the southern part of the state and the coal counties in the
north have needed the most help.
The state relief administration is directing its efforts towarc
building up sound standards of relief-giving in the communities
for which it is instrumental in securing federal funds. Local com-
mittees are being created in those communities where no well-
organized relief agencies exist and proper methods of investiga-
tion and accounting are being taught and insisted upon.
In Rhode Island, the incoming Democratic Governor Green has
declared a relief emergency to exist, in order to facilitate the pas-
sage of bills to appropriate $3,oco,cco for direct grants to munici-
palities for relief. It is proposed to divert gasoline taxes and
impose a I percent tax upon gross earnings of public service cor-
porations to cover the appropriation. The former feature of the
bill is being bitterly fought by the State Highway Department
and the automobile associations.
A second administration bill would relieve the municipalities
of the debts they incurred last year by borrowing from the $2,500,-
ooo reserve fund set up by the state, provided they appropriate
from tax funds an amount equal to their pro rata share of the pro-
posed $3,000,000 appropriation. Administration would be in the
hands of the State Unemployment Relief Commission, Henry T.
Samson, director, the powers of which would be greatly extended
in the new act over those it enjoyed last year, when it was occu-
pied with granting only loans.
ANEW State Emergency Relief Administration was set up in
Washington in January, following the passage of a bill spon-
sored by the administration and the new governor. The measure
was based upon recommendations made by a committee of faculty
members of the University of Washington, and follows closely the!
act establishing the New York relief administration. A separate
appropriation bill is to be introduced giving the new body state
funds for disbursement; in the meantime, it will take over at once
the administration of relief funds secured through the R. F. C.
The Commission is composed of five unsalaried members ap-
pointed by the Governor. The chairman is Frank S. Baker, and
one of the members is Frank P. Foisie, whose experience first with
the Red Cross during the War, and later in adjusting waterfront
employment conditions in Seattle should be peculiarly valuable to
the Committee. Charles F. Ernst, who, as director of the Local
District Relief Association in Seattle, acted as liaison officer be-
tween the Mayor's Commission and the Unemployed Citizens'
League, has been appointed director of the new state relief ad-
ministration.
County welfare boards are set up as part of the emergency
system, to consist of five to seven persons, two of whom are to be
local governmental officials and the remainder appointees of the
state commission. Each county board is empowered to employ a
welfare commissioner who, in turn, may select the personnel for
such staff as is necessary. The act also authorizes counties and
cities to raise local relief funds by the issuance of five year notes
or bonds as they may be financially able to do so.
This legislation is effective to May I, 1935 which the law desig-
nates as the "emergency period."
A state Unemployment Relief Administration, Major Francis
Turner, director, working through the Department of Public
Welfare olWest Virginia, has directed the relief program of that
'arch 1933
THE SURVEY
123
ommunity Action
fbis department is an emergency information
service to public officials and to members,
executives and supervisors of citizens' com-
mittees. News of interesting developments will
be gratefully received by the editors, Russell
Sage Foundation, fjo East 22 Street, New Tork
ate since September 1932. Local welfare committees have been
.tablished in each county or city receiving funds, from the ad-
inistration. In the last four months of 1932, the administration
indled $2,170,174 of R. F. C. funds, and in January it re-
;ived another grant of $2,577,387 for the first two months of 1933.
As reported elsewhere, the emphasis in this state has been
laced upon work-relief compensated partly in kind and partly in
ish. The average relief allotment, whether direct or work-relief,
$15 per month for the rural areas and $18 for the cities. This has
een supplemented in some instances by such local resources as
•ere available. About 90,000 families were receiving aid through
ic Unemployment Relief Administration in January. It is esti-
lated that half a million persons are destitute and dependent
pon federal funds in this state.
Wisconsin financed its state relief program during 1932 from
mergency taxes on incomes and on chain stores. Approximately
5,427,000 was appropriated from these sources, while local units
ontributed $10,111,000. In addition, R. F. C. grants were re-
eived, amounting to $4,962,000 for 1932, and $3,342,500 for
anuary-February, 1933. Total expenditures were thus about
20,500,000.
The State Industrial Commission has been the administering
gency. Outright grants were first made to political subdivisions
>ased on population (one dollar per inhabitant) and subsequent
•rants made in proportion to 1931 relief expenditures. A discre-
ionary fund of $250,000 was applied to especially needy counties.
Work-relief projects were approved for reimbursement only
vhen workers had been drawn from the poor-relief lists. In setting
ip standards for relief administration, the Commission adopted
wo important principles:
The taxpayer has a right to know that his money is being expended
fficiently and that the use of his money is not tending to create a per-
lanent class of paupers. The person who, through no fault of his own, is
,ow unemployed and must ask for public assistance has a right to be
reated as a self-respecting citizen. The kind of relief given him and the
/ay it is given must be such as will maintain his health and his morale.
For these reasons the Commission has insisted that qualified persons
vith social-work training be put in charge of relief agencies. The cost of
.dequate and trained personnel in every relief agency is small when the
:mount of funds at their disposal is considered. On the average, less than
I! percent of the amount of money spent for relief goes for administration.
The report of the Industrial Commission issued in February
estimates that $25,800,000 will be needed for relief in 1933, of
which only one third can be expected from local tax funds. All
aills authorizing relief appropriations for 1933 however are being
withheld in the legislature, until it is learned what action will be
taken by the new federal administration.
A new bill now before the Legislature makes the state responsi-
ble for the total relief expended on behalf of all persons who do
not have a settlement in any county of Wisconsin, and confers
authority on the state board to set up rules and regulations for
the care of such persons or their return to their homes, if a legal
settlement can be discovered.
State Policies on Work Relief
IN Mississippi, the state commission has coined the phrase
i "work to compensate for relief" as descriptive of the policy
of having relief recipients work out the relief which they have re-
ceived as direct aid. Seventy-five percent of the relief given since
the commission started using federal funds in October has been so
compensated for by work on a variety of public and civic projects.
South Carolina's State Relief Council has ruled that 75 percent
of the funds allotted to each county must be used for work-relief.
In South Dakota, practically every county is receiving some
assistance from federal funds. Able-bodied applicants are cared
for largely by work-relief assignments to road construction or
dam-building jobs.
'Tennessee is using its grants from the Reconstruction Finance
Corporation to employ men on the state and county highways.
Up to January 15, $843,536 was appropriated for such work in
fifty-five of the ninety-five counties of the state and it is reported
that 42,000 men were being employed with these funds. Since
that date an additional $865,478 has been appropriated and work-
relief in five more counties is to be included in the state program.
In Virginia, the State Highway Department has converted its
entire program into one for work-relief. In addition to providing
funds for material and supervision for the program of work-relief
carried out with R. F. C. funds, the Highway Department is it-
self providing work-relief in a large number of cases.
Work-relief has been the rule in West Virginia where the state
relief administration has established a policy of paying 80 percent
of the work-relief wage in kind and 20 percent in cash. Work-relief
accounts for 86 percent of the total relief expenditures this winter.
Social Work for Engineers
AN experiment conducted during the summer months by the
•**• Family Society of Philadelphia in conjunction with the
Technical Service Committee of the Engineers Club resulted
in the Club's employing its own case worker. In undertaking to
give financial assistance to unemployed engineers, the Engineers
Club felt that ft could distribute this help with more fairness by
having a trained case worker rather than a club member inter-
view the applicants for assistance. During July, August and Sep-
tember, a case worker from the Family Society gave a day a week
to this interviewing. In the beginning an average of 200 men were
interviewed each day, but later the number decreased so that a
half-day a week was sufficient for appointments. The three
months' experiment so convinced the Technical Service Commit-
tee of the value of a trained person for this aspect of its work,
that in October it decided to employ a case worker of its own.
A similar successful demonstration was made by the same society
with the Benevolence Committee of the County Medical Society,
which gives help to doctors, or their widows and children, who are
in financial difficulties.
Changes in Illinois
/CHICAGO'S plan of using the large private relief organiza-
^^ tions as secondary agencies of the State Relief Commission
in the distribution of public-relief funds was materially modified
on February I when, in conformity with the principle of public
expenditure of public funds, the United Charities, Jewish Chari-
ties and Salvation Army reverted to their former status as ad-
ministrators of privately raised funds only and ceased participat-
ing in county, state and federal relief allocations.
Since the Emergency Welfare Fund has failed to achieve its
$7,500,000 goal by about a third, the three agencies referred to
are confining their activities to a selective case load in which prob-
lems other than unemployment predominate. Charged with the
increased unemployment relief responsibility is the Cook County
Bureau of Public Welfare, which is now the only agency disburs-
ing public funds except the Catholic Charities, which continues
to operate under the old arrangement.
The Fourth Interim Report of the Illinois Emergency Relief
Commission, issued in January, shows relief allocations to Cook
County for the period February 6 to December 31, 1932, to have
been $38,711,343. Shelter relief (care of the homeless) required
$1,212,908 of this amount, the rest going to family relief. The
downstate counties of Illinois received allocations totaling
$4,913,540 for the same period.
124
THE SURVEY
March
The Commission estimates that $92,000,000 will be required
for relief purposes in Illinois in 1933. Of this amount the R. F. C.
has made available $13,255,250, bringing the total grants received
by this state to $38,493,478 or within $6,500,000 of the maximum
which any state can receive. The legislature is being urged to
enact a 2 percent sales tax law to prevent collapse of the program
in the spring.
Use of Involuntary Leisure
THE Division of Recreation of Toledo opened in December a
recreation center, in an abandoned building loaned by the
University of Toledo. Repairs were made by men on work-relief
with contributed materials. The program being conducted at
present is one attractive to young and old alike. A few of the
many activities include: for children, games, handcraft, wood-
craft and model airplane buildings; for adults, gymnasium classes
for men and women, games such as cards, puzzles, billiards,
training classes in citizenship, lectures, social activities, group
singing, study groups and educational classes. The Toledo Public
Library has installed a branch library in the building'conducted
in connection with a supervised reading room. The added per-
sonnel necessary has been loaned or has volunteered. Attendance
runs about 1400 persons a week. Experience to date shows that
the center is more extensively used by adults than by the younger
age groups.
Plans in Two Missouri Cities
THE relief bill for St. Louis and St. Louis County amounted to
$3>766,ooo in 1932. With over 35,000 families and homeless
individuals receiving relief in January 1933, it was estimated that
over a million dollars would be needed for the first two months of
the year. The estimate of relief needs for the whole year 1933 has
been set at $8,335,000.
Over half of this amount may be derived from the sale of bonds
voted by the people last November. These bonds rest upon real
estate, but are to be retired by tolls placed upon the use of the
city's Free Bridge across the Mississippi River. One and one half
million of this bond issue is earmarked for work-relief on city
projects, to start in the spring. There has been no large-scale
work-relief in St. Louis since the termination of the project
carried on in the winter of 1930-31.
A little less than a third of the total needed in 1933 ($2,571,000)
will be provided by the United Relief Campaign Incorporated
which raised this amount in December in a drive for $3,850,000.
Eighty-two direct and indirect relief agencies from the Com-
munity Fund, Jewish Federation and Catholic Charities partici-
pated in this campaign which took the place of the usual separate
fall campaigns of these federations. The group-work agencies were
to be provided for through subsequent solicitations.
The remainder of the amount needed ($ 1 , 1 64,000) is to besought
from local, state and federal tax funds. The R. F. C. granted
$896,554 of this amount in January for the two months January
and February.
The St. Louis Plan of coordinating the work of the existing
private relief agencies under the direction of a Citizens Committee
on Relief and Employment and financing their expenditures for
unemployment relief from both private and public funds has con-
tinued unmodified in its major aspects since the fall of 1930.
There is no public relief department in this city. In 1932 the city
appropriated $800,000 to the Citizens Committee on Relief and
Employment, the R. F. C. loaned $628,930 and the balance was
raised by private solicitation.
Kansas City, like St. Louis, has no public relief department and
leaves to its private agencies the task of administering unemploy-
ment relief. But unlike St. Louis, there has been no assistance
from local taxes to lighten this burden. All the relief granted in
Kansas City has been raised privately under the direction of the
Kansas City Charities Fund (the local Chest) except for such
help as has been secured from the R. F. C.
The expenditures of the family and homeless agencies in
amounted to $1,236,204 of which one agency, the Provide
Association, spent $943,834. In December its relief case load w
7714. Five agencies for the care of the homeless assisted 56
individuals in that month. Kansas City is a center for migrate
labor and has developed a comprehensive program for dealii
with this problem.
This community has not put on any campaigns for emergeni
funds apart from the regular annual solicitation, nor has it set i
any special coordinating machinery. The staff of the main agenc
the Provident Association, has been expanded as the load has i
creased, and case loads are kept in the neighborhood of 01
hundred per worker. Last fall the Association embarked upon tl
puchase of foodstuffs in quantity and the operation of a warehou
and food depots for the distribution of these staples. Retail gr
ceries are still used for the purchase of greenstuffs and certain pe
ishables. There has been an avoidance of rationing by fixed assor
ments, each food order being made out to fit the individual net
of the recipient.
Kansas City is spending about $3,000,000 per year on a tet
year bond-financed public improvement program voted in 193
This, however, cannot be called a work-relief program since the
is no investigation of need of the applicants and no cooperatic
with the social agencies. The R. F. C. granted $332,890 to Kans;
City for the last four months of 1932, of which $269,868 w:
utilized. It also allowed $160,000 for January and February 193
Detroit Resuming "Wage-Relief'
rT~<HE Detroit Department of Public Welfare, with 39,000 fam
-I lies under care of whom 24,000 are considered particular]
eligible for work, is resuming with Reconstruction Finance Co
poration funds the wage relief program abandoned a year ago whe
funds ran low. The new line-up contains the following features:
AH work to be performed on municipal projects.
The rate of pay to be thirty cents per hour.
The work assignment to be for that number of hours which will provid
the equivalent of the minimum food budget of the family.
Other needs to be met by direct relief.
Wages to be paid by check, on the job.
Assignments once made to be continuous except as the Department
visitors make new plans with the families as their circumstances chang
from time to time.
Clerical and professional occupations to be included among the wage
work projects.
The usual investigational and service routine is maintained, an.
it is the hope of the Department and of the city officials that th
program will develop along constructive lines, both as to materi:
achievement and as to maintenance of the self-respect of thos
engaged upon it.
Work-Relief for Profit-Makers
THE first plan for work-relief in Chicago contemplated th
use of relief labor on projects of public-utility concerns, bu
this plan was never developed on account of the obvious danger
involved. So far as known, Hartford'is the only city which has ex
perimented with this scheme. A citizens' committee has for th
past year or more been carrying on an effective and varied work
relief program, with funds raised by popular subscription in con
junction with the Chest campaign. A public-utility compan;
offered this committee a gift of $30,000, on the understandin
that it be spent to pay the wages of men selected and supervisee
by the committee, to work on the company's property. Guar
antees were given that the work proposed would not be under
taken otherwise, and that no regularly employed workmen wouh
suffer loss; also that all materials would be provided.
While these safeguards are important, the question to M
weighed by any work-relief bureau which receives a similar offe
still remains: Will the profit-making concern be able to secure th>
performance of valuable work at a lower wage-cost than by doinj
'arch 1933
THE SURVEY
125
j work itself? In this case, the plan would constitute an under-
ning of local employment standards, even though no employes
rre actually laid off.
New Proposals Regarding Rent
pHE Board of Finance appointed by the State of Massacbu-
L setts to take over the fiscal affairs of the bankrupt city of
;// River, has proposed to the landlords of the city a novel plan
meeting the carrying costs of tenement property occupied by
5 city's relief recipients. It is based on a careful study of the
arges for taxes, insurance and municipal water-rate on 1600
demerit homes, an average rate per room per week being arrived
The city authorities have offered to issue tickets for this
nount and to give each family, with its weekly food allowance, a
r mber of tickets corresponding to the number of rooms occupied.
riese are to be handed to the landlord in partial satisfaction of
lit bills. At the end of the year, he is to present the accumulated
ikets to the city treasurer, who will apply them to his charges
I- tax and water-rate. Any balance remaining over will be handed
in in cash, to apply to his insurance costs.
[in making the offer, the city pointed out that factories in Fall
Iver are doing well if they meet operating costs without earning
i.erest on capital investment; and that owners of house property
ider these conditions must expect to forego profit as well. It is
I advantage to owners of houses to have them occupied by
Hants who will act as caretakers, and the proposed plan offers
I equitable scheme of further relieving the landlord of being
stually out of pocket by renting to families on relief.
Schools for Jobless
pHIRTY-FIVE states are inviting unemployed to come to
I school. Out in Montana and Nevada they are learning how
use the gold-pan. Indiana has been teaching welding, to meet
ie employer's special need. Pennsylvania is teaching twenty
bjects, ranging from truck-driving to garment-making. Many
ites offer classes to those who want to return to the farm;
any others teach special trades, particularly the metal trades.
J. C. Wright, director, Federal Board for Vocational Education,
•nt a circular letter of inquiry to the state directors asking what
ey are doing in emergency programs. He was astonished to dis-
ver that only thirteen states have made no start as yet.
The most elaborate program, probably, is New York City's
th 10,000 enrolment at one hundred centers under 255 teach-
s — the teachers themselves desperately in need of work. They
e paid $15 a week for twenty- two hours of work. Courses cover
wide range from art, fine and applied, to agriculture for hun-
•eds who declare they are going to desert the town; from com-
ercial classes through home-making to immigrant education,
'rom The Business Week, February 8, 1933.)
T"^
Relief in Rural Counties
HE commissioner of public welfare in North Carolina, writ-
ing to county directors of public welfare, says:
.Having able-bodied men work for what they get will do more to prevent
.uperism in the state than anything else, and this is the salvation of the
lief program. There is grave danger, however, of placing too great
iphasis on the work projects and overlooking the fact that this is es-
'ntially a relief measure.
The work projects should go forward, but conditioned upon two things:
ailable funds and the number of needy unemployed in the county that
n be put to work on these projects. Any other procedure is contrary to
e general policy of the relief program.
i And there is the transient family or individual, citizens of the United
ates, but many of them unable to establish legal settlement in any one
ite, and therefore subject to the "passing on" policy.
An individual study may reveal that there are transients who should
not be returned to their own homes, but should be absorbed in the life of
the community, logical residence being made the determining factor.
There are others who should be returned and provided for in their home
communities.
Federal funds should be available to all needy citizens of the United
States regardless of whether legal settlement can be established in any one
state.
The problem must be met in the first instance by the local community
where the transients are found, the local community functioning, how-
ever, in relation to state and national planning. Local provision should
include adequate temporary care and case-work service; continuous care
on a selective and voluntary basis.
The following brief picture comes from a relief director in a
fexas town of less than three thousand inhabitants.
We receive $2500 per month from the R. F. C., and have $1000 which we
received in December, which has not been expended. We will disburse
this over the entire county where needed. I will make a tour with the
chairman this week and visit all schools and meet with their committees,
and ascertain their needs. The county department of education is sponsor-
ing a contest of the different schools in beautification of the premises.
I will observe the present condition of the buildings and grounds and
make pictures of same for comparison when judging. In the short time I
have will read the rules of the contest and show them the general layout of
the project. The work for this project will be executed by those who re-
ceive aid of our committee. The writer will later award the prizes to the
school receiving the most points. . . . We are carrying out a work pro-
gram in municipal improvement. Among other things, we will build one
park, making a total of four. ... We will also regravel some worn-out
streets. In that manner we can aid the teamsters and truckmen who are
unemployed.
During the past year, while regional advisor for sixteen counties, I was
successful in securing the cooperation of the highway department, in
allowing the maintenance department to place the gravel base for an
asphalt highway in two counties. The department employed farmers with
wagons and teams to haul the material and spread it on the highway.
Everyone who wished to work with teams, registered with the county
judge. About forty-five teams were drawn each time and the crews were
changed on the first and fifteenth of the month. In this manner all the
farmers in the counties received at least two weeks' work. . . . The
project in each county furnished work for 100 men for five months. The
cost to the department was very little if any more, than by contract. I
am in correspondence with the chairman of the highway commission now,
in an effort to get the " topping" of the above highways carried out by our
local labor which will ease the burdens of the R. F. C. committee. We have
tried community gardening during the past two years and have found it
very beneficial to the unemployed. We paid them for their work in plant-
ing and cultivating and furnished them vegetables in season. The surplus
was canned for winter use.
Fresh Difficulties in Pennsylvania
THE Governor of Pennsylvania in his opening message to the
Legislature called upon it to appropriate $20,000,000 for
relief. This proposal met with opposition from members of the
Legislature headed by Speaker Talbot, who introduced the two
state relief bills which passed in 1931 and 1932; but who now takes
the position, according to newspaper accounts, that "local com-
munities ought to assume the responsibility of providing for_those
in distress." It will be recalled that the prolonged resistance of the
Pennsylvania Legislature to making state funds available was the
cause of the reluctance of the R. F. C. to making Federal loans to
this state for relief purposes during the summer and early fall of
1932. Later accounts, however, state that a bill appropriating
^25,000,000 for the ensuing biennium was introduced on Feb-
ruary 8 with the support of both political parties.
On January 12, following a conference between the Governor
and John H. Leavell, originator of the "Leavell Plan" of Tulsa,
Oklahoma, for feeding the unemployed on six cents a day, the
Pennsylvania State Relief Commission issued orders to all county
relief boards to establish commissaries for the unemployed. There
was instant opposition to the program, particularly from the re-
lief committees in Philadelphia and Pittsburgh, as well as from
labor organizations in the state.
126
THE SURVEY
March 1.
Business Ethics
ETHICS AND MODERN BUSINESS, by Henry S. Dennison. Houghtm Miffiin.
68 pp. Price $1 postpaid of The Survey.
THIS is a little book, of which the first eight pages deal with
ethical theory, the next twelve with codes of business be-
havior, and the last forty-seven with an analysis of some of the
important problems arising in the relationships of a business or-
ganization: (a) to its stockholders, (b) to its employes, (c) to its
consumers, (d) to its competitors. These last forty-seven pages
are in the reviewer's opinion the most important part of the book.
But earlier there is an interesting passage on pure ethical theory
in which the author says, "The first and great commandment
should be, 'Don't fool yourself,' or, rather, . . . 'Unfool your-
self systematically, persistently, mercilessly.'" On the positive
side he says, "It is the good of the race which we have chosen as
our basis of ethics."
"Business," says Mr. Dennison, "was born in the ethical
slums and of lowly parents." "From the earliest to comparatively
modern times the people through whose hands international trade
has passed have been partly merchants and partly robbers."
Business codes represent an attempt to make business more
ethical without any very strenuous exertions.
Among the ethical problems of a business organization in rela-
tion to its stockholders, Mr. Dennison condemns the ancient
practices of "selling to oneself," giving jobs to friends and
relatives of influential stockholders, and using inside or advance
information for one's own pecuniary benefit.
In the relations of employer and employe, the writer deals with
the latter 's dominant desire for social status, and with the result-
ing necessity of preserving the worker's self-respect, with the
problem of the restriction of output which, he says, is dependent
on a fear of periodic unemployment. Thus he leads up to the im-
portance of unemployment insurance.
About the relation of a corporation to its consumers and es-
pecially to dealers and suppliers, Mr. Dennison notes that "There
is no denying the power of the large buyer over the smaller man-
ufacturer, or of the strong manufacturer over the small dealer,
powers which, in many instances, are powers of life and death."
The abuses of "reciprocal buying" are also well dealt with.
The book ends with twenty pages on the ethics of competition,
which the author sees to include both the valuable element of
rivalry and the danger of arousing personal hatred and of cultivat-
ing fear. The essentials of fair competition, he says, are (a) a clear
set of rules for the contest, adopted (b) for an understood purpose
and in an understandable spirit, (c) enforceable by a referee, (d)
so used that "we play against the skill of opponents rather than
against the person of opponents"; (e) men who play for the suc-
cessful exercise of skill rather than for the reward which may come
to them.
Mr. Dennison admits that "no one who knows the business of
today can pretend that it has anything remotely resembling a
corporate unity of purpose" or that "the stimulus to serve man-
kind seriously modifies the struggle for gain in more than one-
tenth of one percent of the cases." Yet he believes that we are
making progress towards fair competition as summarized above.
He hopes that a change in education may cultivate the strength of
the desire to do over the desire to have. He believes that the ,
fessional spirit as we know it in lawyers, doctors, and teacl
will come to control business ethics. This tradition "employs
pert intelligence, publishes freely the results of research and
perience, lives up to an unwritten code and is actuated by
motive of service to mankind." RICHARD C. CABOT, M
Cambridge, Mass.
Child Care Up to Date
CHILD CARE TODAY, by Bela Schick, M.D., and William Rosenson, M.D. Ci
berg. 320 pp. Price $2.50 postpaid of The Survey.
THIS book, written by accepted authorities, merits attent
by virtue of its authorship and because of its excellent
rangement of subject matter. It offers, within one cover, a fai
comprehensive outline of the best known methods for the physi
care of the baby and young child with many constructive sugg
tions regarding behavior problems. It may therefore seem 1
carping criticism to mention a few of the debatable statemer
The authors, in several places, recommend weak tea as a supp
mentary or substitute diet in instances of lack of sufficient bre
milk or in cases of vomiting. The danger of tea as an article in
diet of a baby may be overestimated but it is difficult to und
stand its value or the desirability of its use. In the directions
sun baths, it is advised that the baby of four weeks of age shoi
have his face exposed to the direct sunlight. I feel sure that t
omission of words of caution regarding the effect of such exposi
on the baby's eyes must be an oversight.
The authors' predilection for the "Nem" as a standard of fc
values is understandable as is their selection of Von Pirque
"Pelidisi" as the best method for determining the status Oi
child's nutrition. I have a personal preference for the "Nem"
place of the "Calorie" and should be glad to have it introduc
more widely among our dieticians and our mothers. But the val
of the "Pelidisi" when applied to children in this country has be
questioned by American authorities.
There is much to commend, specifically, in this book. The
sistence on separate cubicles for babies in obstetric nurseri
particularly for the newborn, the introduction in these troub]
times of a note of warning to parents about the vital need of t
child's sense of security in his home life, and the frank mention
commercial articles and foods of approved value for children,
all refreshing signs of the best of modern tendencies. Notwit
standing its many predecessors and contemporaries, this book is
welcome addition to our literature on the care of babies ai
children. S. JOSEPHINE BAKER, M.D., DR.P.l
New Tork City
The Men Behind the Statistics
HUMAN ASPECTS OF UNEMPLOYMENT AND RELIEF, by James M. H
Hams. Univcrsityof North Carolina Press. 235 pp. Price$l postpaid of The Surrey.
THE "apathy" of the idle reported by relief workers in
parts of the country, — an indifference of despair, fostered 1
weakness and malnutrition and rendered permanent by hopeles
ness — is remarked especially by Mr. Williams in his close stuc
of the "human aspects" of the depression, based on exhausti'
study in cooperation with innumerable private and public rel
and welfare agencies, and on his own long experience as a reli
worker. Mr. Williams calls it "acquiescence," and he regards
rightly as one of the most dangerous and painful symptoms
the illness which affects our body politic. Instead of rebellio:
the mass of the unemployed are exhibiting a wholesale pauperiz:
tion, far worse for them as human-beings, and in the end f;
worse for the nation of which they are part.
Mr. Williams's book is not merely a study and a presentatioi
it is also a warning and an accusation. Though it is base
primarily on conditions in cities of New York State, it contair.
numerous examples from other states and except for a few passage
in the second part, it is applicable to the work of relief and welfai
agents everywhere in the United States. The recommendations .i
makes have not been fully carried out anywhere, and in mans
places hardly at all.
larch 1933
THE SURVEY
127
It is Part I of the book which carries out the promise of the
tie. Basing his premise on Plato's remark in The Republic:
Any city, however small, is in fact divided into two, one the
ty of the poor, the other of the rich," the author draws the
irtain away from the city of the poor and displays to the
vellers in the city of the rich what unemployment really means.
0 the man who has had to buy a cheaper car, to let one of the
rvants go, to wear his overcoat an extra year, and who says
implacently, "The depression is a good thing; we were going too
st," he shows (to quote chapter headings), Homes Destroyed,
ealth Impaired, Nerves Shaken, Morale Tottering; and he
)ints his moral by case history after case history, by facts
id figures.
In Part II he turns to what is being done to relieve the situation,
e compares the benefits of public and private relief, impar-
ally; he considers the work of churches and religious associations
id of the public schools. He has severe things to say of penny-
nching economy, of so-called relief that insists on actual
;stitution instead of acting to prevent it. He urges cogently the
aving of relief entirely in the hands of trained social workers
stead of the haphazard and demoralizing turning of it over to
:tty politicians and "pork-choppers" or to inexperienced senti-
entalists. Finally he makes a series of definite recommendations
1 "what should be done:"
There should be a federal system of employment bureaus or labor
changes through which workmen could be moved from cities where a
rplus exists to cities where labor is needed. The states should establish
stems of unemployment insurance. But above all work must be pro-
ded. Unemployment insurance should provide work-relief and direct
lief only where work-relief cannot be provided. There is needed a nation-
de program of public works. . . . Long term planning is a matter not
ily for the federal government but for states and cities. . . . Whatever
her human rights there may be, every adult has a right to a childhood
which the foundations of physical and mental health and social-
indedness have been surely laid.
Now that this book has been written, it becomes indispensable
i every social and relief worker. Even those not prepared to go
far economically or politically as Mr. Williams must find his
irvey and analysis a prerequisite for any real understanding of
>e unemployment situation and its alleviation — perhaps its
'entual cure. MAYNARD SHIPLEY
tnsa/ito, California
Whole Picture of a Home
IE PARENT AND THE HAPPY CHILD, by Lorine Pruette. Holt. 2SS pp. Price
S2 postpaid of The Survey.
rHERE is a sprightliness, humor and humanity in this book
which should assure it a wide reading. It deals with problems
hich concern us all, perhaps more persistently than any other
•oblems, — those of personal living and family relationships. It is
ore than a book about child training. The first half centers in-
Test frankly on the child's home, upon his parents and their
.•oblems in relation to earning a living, their families, their
iends, to each other and to the problem of their own individual
.itisfactions. One might almost say that if this first section is
iken to heart the second becomes superfluous. For it is the emo-
onal atmosphere in which the child lives which in the last
lalysis contributes most to the building of sound personality.
The second part, The Psychology of Child Development, is
imewhat less satisfactory, perhaps because the author has tried
> encompass too much in a brief space. Miss Pruette leaves us
igh and dry occasionally, just when we appear to be approaching
ic crux of our problem. Over-simplification results in super-
ciality and although she occasionally hints at the uses of spe-
alists in child guidance, the inference is too readily made that
ic happy child and the adjusted human follow as the night the
ay from a simple formulaof common-sense. Her treatment of the
roblem of fears and night terrors, for example, confines itself to a
iscussion of their origins in the deliberate terrorizing of children
y adults or by definite "conditioning" without sufficient recogni-
on of the depth and complexity of this whole subject. In her
treatment of such matters as bladder and bowel training, excep-
tion must be taken to such statements as "The mother may begin
to train the child in proper elimination habits when he is six weeks
old or even earlier" a doctrine open to serious doubts from psy-
chiatric sources. This whole subject is treated inadequately by
Miss Pruette. The chapter on sex is fairly good as far as it goes.
In her treatment of the problem of discipline, she performs a
definite service by pointing out that reasonable control of children
by adults was invented as much for the psychological comfort of
the child as for the convenience of adults and that children are
actually happier, "freer" and more emotionally secure when the
responsibilities and decisions which they are called upon to make
are graded to their capacities. ANNA W. M. WOLF
Child Study Association of America
The Spirit of Social Workers
PROCEEDINGS OF THE NATIONAL CONFERENCE OF SOCIAL WORK—
1932. University of Chicago Press. 694 pp. Price $3 postpaid of The Survey.
E vitality and realism of the Philadelphia meeting of the
National Conference is carried over into the pages of this
familiar stout brown volume, constituting a record not only of
the status of social work in 1932 but of the spirit of social workers.
Included are sixty- three papers, prayerfully selected and judi-
ciously abridged by the editorial committee, which reach into
every section of the field and explore the strengths and weak-
nesses of social forces in a world at odds with itself. For the
gracious appearance of the volume, especially its clear legible
type, every reader will be grateful. G. S.
Why Ignorant Citizens?
EDUCATING FOR CITIZENSHIP, by George A. Coe. Charles Scribner's. 205 pp.
Price $2 postpaid of The Survey.
THE times have focused public attention upon government,
its services and its functions. The publication of Mr. Coe's
book is therefore opportune. What has been the matter with edu-
cation in the United States that it has not produced a politically
educated citizenry?
Mr. Coe analyzes the forces influencing the education of chil-
dren in the schools and shows that "education for life in the state
is ... the experience of children and youth in the gradual as-
sumption of the responsibilities of sovereignty. . . . Vastly in-
creased participation of ordinary men and women in the exercise
of political functions is, of course, implied."
Present school policy, Mr. Coe points out, tends to promote the
spread of political cynicism by teaching political idealism instead
of actualities. Children should be initiated into unsolved political
problems as rapidly as their mental development is able to ap-
preciate them. In the United States our political philosophy is
based upon the conception of the people as sovereign, therefore
theirs is both the right and the responsibility to educate them-
selves. The teaching of unquestioning acceptance of political
doctrines implies a ruling class or power distinct from the people
and is therefore a violation of the democratic spirit. In amplifying
upon this thesis, the author considers the various forces outside
the classroom which influence, and often interfere with, the teach-
er's ability to develop intelligent discussion by students: propa-
ganda by business corporations, civic education by the War
Department, partisan propaganda of one kind and another "in the
supposed interest of ideals." The power of state legislatures and
those in authority in the educational system and such "powers be-
hind the throne" as parental ambition and the employers of labor
are also considered in relation to the teacher's freedom to teach.
In the newer social studies which widen the horizon of children
is seen the way to a better state. The school is recognized more
and more as an "organ of world society" because citizenship in the
twentieth century is concerned with the interaction between
human beings, and that action is not limited by geographical
boundaries. "Education, as distinct on the one hand from ruling,
and on the other hand from propaganda, has as its sphere the
humanity that is in pupils and in all men, and as its objective the
128
THE SURVEY
March 193.
bringing of this humanity to goals that the human in every man
can approve when he sees clearly what is there."
Mr. Coe's appreciation of the broader implications of his sub-
ject is apparent throughout. There are points at which some read-
ers may regret that he has limited his discussion almost entirely
to the function of formal educational institutions in preparing
children for citizenship. The share of unofficial educational or-
ganizations and groups of which the child may be a member is an
important factor as are, indirectly, organizations concerned with
adult education which influence those responsible for the educa-
tion of the child. KATHERINE A. FREDERIC
National League of Women Voters
Essays on Probation
PROBATION AND CRIMINAL JUSTICE, edited by Sheldon Glueck. Macmillan.
344 pp. Price $3 postpaid of The Survey.
EXTRA-MURAL treatment of offenders is encroaching upon
intra-mural. Undoubtedly that is a heavy sentence, but what
it means is that institutions play a relatively less important part
in the handling of law-breakers, whereas supervision, under nor-
mal living conditions in the community, plays a relatively larger
part. More and more offenders are being placed on probation and
more and more of those who leave prison are being kept for a time
under one kind of surveillance or another on parole. The cell and
the barred exit are being regarded as suitable for more limited
types of offenders, and the technique of social case work, applied
by probation and parole officers, is being regarded as useful in a
larger and larger number of cases.
This is a collection of essays on probation published in honor
of the man who has probably become more famous in the pro-
bation field than any other man, Herbert C. Parsons. As head
and shaper of the Massachusetts probation system he has gained
international recognition. The promise and theory of probation;
legal problems associated with probation; the trial judge's
dilemma in applying probation; administration of a probation
office; case- work technique in probation; development of proba-
tion in the United States and England, France, Germany and
Belgium — these constitute the main contents of the book. One of
the most illuminating discussions is contributed by Judge N.
Ulman of Baltimore, whose chapter might be called What a Judge
Thinks About When Considering Probation. Other contributors
are Bernard J. Pagan, formerly chief probation officer, Children's
Court, New York City; the editor, Professor Glueck himself;
Ralph H. Ferris, director of the Domestic Relations Division,
Recorder's Court, Detroit, Mich.; Edwin J. Cooley, formerly
chief probation officer, Court of General Sessions, New York
City; Thorsten Sellin, professor of sociology, University of
Pennsylvania; and Sanford Bates, director, Federal Bureau of
Prisons.
The volume will be read with profit by those associated with
the work of probation and those who wish to understand the
methods and purposes of probation. WINTHROP D. LANE
Trenton, New Jersey
The Far-Flung Family
A BIBLIOGRAPHY ON FAMILY RELATIONSHIPS, by Flora M. Thurston.
National Council of Parent Education. 273 pp. Price $2 postpaid of The Survey.
IN the discussion of papers at one of the first sessions of the
Section on the Family in the American Sociological Society
(1924), the following list of fields actually or potentially contribu-
tive to a comprehensive study and understanding of family
relationships was offered: Origins: animal behaviorists, archaeolo-
gists, ethnologists; Developments: historians, ethnologists; Func-
tions: biologists, economists and domestic scientists, educators,
psychologists and psychiatrists, ethnologists and sociologists;
Maintenance: eugenists, physicians, economists and domestic
scientists, sociologists, statisticians, ethicists, lawyers, politists,
social workers, police, architects, sanitarians, employers, educa-
tors, recreators, ministers, mental hygienists, arts and letters;
Future: historians, economists, statisticians, psychiatrists, eugen-
ists, sociologists, educators, ethicists, religionists, aestheticists
A guide comparison of these with the fields represented in th
present bibliography shows the following omissions: arcbitecturt
aestbeticists, police, and employers.
"Part III F: Family Problems Involving Social Guidanc
(i. Problems; 2. Agencies)" is supposed to cover the fields c
social work which touch or deal with families. For the three-yea
period the selection is acceptable, but the inclusion elsewhere c
older titles makes one surprised at the omission here of standar
work by Richmond, Rich, Colcord, Lee, Devine and others. Th
magazine, The Family, is nowhere separately listed thoug
freely drawn upon for articles.
The materials have been selected and annotated to presen
" the best of the material (1928-1932) for the use of students an
professional leaders." For the purpose announced, the biblio^
raphy will serve usefully for some time though the constan
stream of new materials soon outdates the best bibliographies i
the social studies. Of making bibliographies there is no enc
Where specialists are invited to collaborate, the temptation i
always to include more titles; and temptation has been define
as that to which one always yields.
The " Background Bibliography" reads more like a curriculun
for a general liberal education. The detailed classification i
empirical but usable. For class use, the reviewer would prefe
to have seen the best of all older titles included. Beginning will
such a list, similar but smaller volumes at three- to five-yea
intervals would preserve and increase the value of the initia
volume. THOMAS D. ELIO
Northwestern University
Educational Planning
EDUCATION AND THE SOCIAL CRISIS, by William Heard Kilpatrick. Limigh
Inc. 90 pp. Price $1.25 postpaid of The Survey.
IN these lectures Professor Kilpatrick sets forth systematicall;
how education may contribute to the reconstruction of ou
society from the bottom up. Taking for its point of departure th
American tradition of constitutional democracy, that task re
quires a group process involving shared concern, a proper use o
expert knowledge, and inter-stimulation through conference
Two difficulties to be overcome are the tradition of rivalry and in
experience in group thinking. Hence, before we can have a demo
cratically controlled national planning, we need a new educationa
planning that satisfies the following demands: a widely shara
diagnosis of the situation; conscious study of the concrete prob
lems of social rebuilding under the guidance of educators wh
possess expert knowledge, social outlook, and an attitude of co
operation; far greater organization for adult education, but als
reforms of our school system with the object of reaching into th
thick of life.
There remains the conflict between the objective of open
mindedness and the need of this new education for teachers wit
social convictions. The solution — so amply exemplified by th
author himself in his generous aid to social organizations in nee
of his dialectic skill — he sees in a conviction on the part of th
educator that his contribution is not to be measured by the de
gree in which he manages to indoctrinate others with his own be
liefs, but rather by the degree in which he succeeds in stimulatinj
others to think effectively through their problems.
BRUNO LASKEI
American Council, Institute of Pacific Relations
Texas Papers Please Copy
HOUSE OF REFUGE, by Grace S. Leake. Payson. 298 pp. Price $2.50 postpaid c
The Survey.
THIS is the story of Judy Peters, who lived and worked or
various farms in Texas; went to a town to work in a "5 anc<
10," met a young man who promised to marry her; kept on work
ing as long as her condition permitted; then applied to thi
Associated Charities for a place to go. There she met a hard
unsympathetic, detestable social worker who placed her in aii
•.March 1933
THE SURVEY
129
nstitution for unmarried mothers called the Home of Hope, a
'Dlace in charge of a cruel pious matron whose girls were over-
Worked and underfed, without recreation or education, magazines
jr books. Judy wanted to keep her baby; she had not been told
when it was taken sick, sent to a hospital, died and was buried.
That drove her frantic and when her time was up she took to
irostitution.
Where did the author get her ideas of social workers and insti-
tutions for delinquent girls? Surely not from Texas, although that
was where she lived, attended the Rice Institute in Houston and
the State University in Austin, and where her heroine lived. If
she had visited any of the conferences of social work in Texas
she would have come in contact with a very different type of so-
cial worker. And it seems strange she was not familiar with two
public institutions for delinquent girls in Texas which have set
a standard in methods and training for the entire country. The
State School at Gainesville, under Dr. Carrie Weaver Smith,
and the Harris County School at Houston, under Ethel Claxton,
are among the best in the country, with good medical care, a full
program of education, recreation and after-care. Dr. Smith is a
student and follower of Dr. Healy of Boston.
The writer of this review has a vivid picture of the school at
Houston on the occasion of the graduating exercises for the girls
who had completed the work in the eighth grade. The front porch
was the stage, rilled with excited, happy, pretty girls, well dressed;
the audience of families and friends sat on the lawn. After the
exercises there was a real party, with refreshments, the girls
mingling with their families and friends. It might have been the
graduation exercises of any well-managed boarding-school. Yet
every one of those girls had been committed by a court for some
delinquency. And from this school many promising girls have been
sent to normal schools and college during the past seventeen years.
Ever since the present superintendent has been in charge, this
has been made possible by funds raised by her.
The book is not convincing. It can have no interest for social
workers because it is so overdrawn. It is a caricature.
• New Tork City MARTHA P. FALCONER
Conservation in 1932
AMERICAN CIVIC ANNUAL, edited by Harlean James. American Civic
Association, Inc. 276 pp. Price $3 postpaid of The Survey.
IN THE American Civic Annual for 1932, the American Civic
Association again presents a summary of much that is going on
all over the country in the way of intelligent guardianship of our
'physical resources. Following the precedent established four years
ago with volume I, the story is told by almost half a hundred civic-
' minded men and women actually engaged in this many-sided
'undertaking. And again Miss James, the executive secretary, has
done a splendid piece of work. Though obviously the entire field
1 could not be covered within three hundred pages, a wide range of
subjects has been treated, including a summary of the status and
progress of our national and state park systems, of the planning of
1 the Federal City; sections on regional, state and city planning; and
three interesting articles on housing. Grouped under the geographi-
' cal units corresponding to the legislative and administrative divisions
1 which must handle the problems presented, the articles are ar-
ranged in a most convenient manner.
Worthy of special mention is that part of Dr. Albert Shaw's
introduction entitled — What Everyone Should Know About Parks
— the substance of a primer also being distributed as a separate
bulletin. Containing authoritative information on the national and
municipal park system (beginning with the history of their estab-
lishment), it should offer valuable ammunition to civic clubs and
educational institutions in their effort to educate their "constit-
uents" on the importance of recreation in these days of wholesale
unemployment and increased leisure. The entire volume in fact is
especially timely this year as concrete evidence of how much has
been accomplished in the directed growth of the United States
during the past twelve months, the depression notwithstanding.
L. L.
RUN OF THE SHELVES
A DESCRIPTIVE LIST OF THE NEW BOOKS
THESE THINGS SHALL BE. 32 tP- taper. 10 cents. Fellowship of Reconciliation .
383 Bible House, New York City.
A SHORT collection of hymns, readings and prayers gathered to-
gether by the Fellowship of Reconciliation for use in meetings
where it is desired to express aspiration for a 'Christian social
order.
MORAL MAN AND IMMORAL SOCIETY, by Reinkold Niebuhr. Scribners. 2S4
pp. Price, $2 postpaid of The Survey.
MAN may be, and sometimes is, moral and religious and wise;
but society can never be any of these. The best to be hoped for is
a sort of desperate muddling through. Niebuhr's realism has led
him to abandon the Liberal position, and to endorse the use of
force in society. Good case material on the modern skeptical
attitude.
PRINCIPLES OF MENTAL DEVELOPMENT. 6y Raymond Holder Wheeler and
Francis Theodore Perkins. Crowell. 513 pp. Price $3.75 postpaid of The Survey.
A TEXTBOOK on educational psychology inspired by the Gestalt
theories, formulates principles in psychology that interpret human
behavior as organismic. Personality is viewed as a unitary ex-
pression of man's complete development and organization, in
harmony, however, with the laws of configuration. With a well-
organized text, amply supplemented by specific bibliographies, it
is useful because it offers a new viewpoint in the development of
problems and discussions.
MUNICIPAL PRACTICES IN EUROPEAN CITIES, by Donald C. and Alice B.
Stone. International City Managers Association, Chicago, III. 1S8 pp.
THIS mimeographed report is exactly what its name implies, and
though the general subject is one for technicians, it is written in
such an informal way that anyone interested in municipal govern-
ment will find it readable and illuminating. Mr. and Mrs. Stone
visited the continent as well as England but at least half of their
report is concerned with the latter country. While not without
defect, they characterize English municipal government as ex-
cellent. Their investigation led them to the conclusion that
municipal service in England has called to its ranks an unusually
qualified type of official, perhaps, as they say, because there the
real administrative officers are never elected but are appointed by
committees of the council, and because of the recognition by the
governing authorities and public generally that the public per-
sonnel is permanent so long as efficient service is performed. Con-
taining an amazing amount of factual material, made all the more
valuable by the authors' implied and definite evaluation of Euro-
pean practices compared to those followed in the United States,
this volume offers much food for thought for those of us who live
on this side of the Atlantic.
DIE JUGENDHILFE (»« German}, by Emma Steiger. Rotapfel-Verlag, Zurich and
Leipzig. 247 pp.
AMERICAN child-welfare workers who have been stimulated by
the admirable literature, posters, and stamps that have come
from the Pro Juventute foundation in Zurich during the last
fifteen years or so will be glad to have this detailed description of
the whole range of provisions made for child welfare in Switzer-
land. Miss Steiger systematically reviews the major organizations
and their principles, with separate chapters for infant welfare,
the protection, guidance and recreational provisions for school
children, the placement, care and guidance of juvenile workers,
both at work and in their leisure time; with further chapters on
the economic, health and educational problems of children and
their treatment; and on the special problems of foreign-born and
migrant children, and those handicapped by geographical isola-
tion or parental unemployment. Of particular interest in this
survey is the realism with which each problem category is related
to the total situation, including not only in many cases a complex
of problems but also the general economic conditions and the
social attitudes of a culturally heterogeneous population. B. L.
130
THE SURVEY
March 1933
CO MM UNICA TIONS
Barter
To THE EDITOR: This office is constantly receiving inquiries con-
cerning barter in its various forms. We have on hand no adequate
information to Send to enquirers, most of whom are municipal
directors of emergency relief. Have you any literature on the
subject which we could obtain? PETER W. SMITH
County Relief Director, Newark, N. J.
[For advice on various aspects of the barter movement we
suggest consultation with:
The Emergency Exchange Association, 52 Vanderbilt Avenue,
New York. This is a sponsoring organization of economists,
engineers, business and professional men which has tested its
theories step-by-step in the promotion of exchanges throughout
New York state. Actual functioning of exchanges in New York
City has been slow due to local complications. The Association
favors the set-up of exchanges adapted to local conditions under
the leadership and management of the unemployed themselves,
with a simple form of scrip, carefully controlled, and a minimum
of overhead organization. While it believes that a national or-
ganization of exchanges may be desirable it holds in general for
the development of the movement from the bottom up. At the
moment it is in effect serving as a national clearing-house of
information on the whole subject.
President Arthur Morgan, Antioch College, Yellow Springs,
Ohio, who is also president of the large and active Midwest
Exchange, Inc., "a distribution service for manufacturers and
producers." Out of his experience with the Midwest Exchange
and his knowledge of other similar projects President Morgan
proposes a national and regional organization of exchanges as
necessary to prevent exploitation of the movement, to control the
use of scrip, to oppose hostile legislation and to extend the barter
system in the best interest of the barterers. He proposes eight
principles or methods of organization and invites correspondence
from other exchanges.
Prof. J. Douglas Brown, Industrial Relations Section, Prince-
ton University, Princeton, N. J., who has associated with him a
group of distinguished educators and economists. They believe
that a national system of barter exchanges within the framework
of our present economic structure would provide immediate
alleviation of distress from unemployment and greatly facilitate
the restoration of general business activity. Much of their reason-
ing is predicated on the theories advanced in the recent book,
The Abolition of Unemployment, by Frank W. Graham (Prince-
ton University Press, $2). They urge state activity in facilitating
the organization of exchanges and propose that the President of
the United States (i) appoint a committee to investigate ex-
changes and advise on their organization and operation, (2) re-
quest the Reconstruction Finance Corporation to consider the
use of its funds for advances to properly established exchanges,
and (3) call a conference of business executives to consider co-
operation with exchanges.
For a comprehensive review of the whole development of self-
help and barter the Russell Sage Foundation, 130 East 22 Street,
New York, has available copies of People Without Money, by
Joanna C. Colcord, reprinted from The New Outlook of December
1932.
For detailed accounts of two forms of barter organization see
Organized Swap and Dicker, by Elizabeth Nutting (Dayton's
experiment), in The Survey, December 15, 1932, page 682, and
Living on a Surplus by J. Stewart Burgess (Unemployed Coop-
erative Relief Association, Los Angeles County, Calif.), The
Survey, January 15, 1933, page 6.
For discussion of the use of scrip-money see Scrip- Wise and
Pound- Foolish, by Julius Amberg (Grand Rapids' experience),
The Survey, November 15, 1932, page 595, and Making Money,
by Jacob Baker, The Survey Graphic, February 1933, page 106.
— THE EDITORS.]
'The Churches in Their Blindness'
To THE EDITOR: The very caption of the article, The Churches in
Their Blindness, in your January Midmonthly issue is an unfair
judgment on the churches. The Laymen's Report was unfair to
the missionaries, as there never was an abler body of men and
women better suited to their work than the missionaries of our
evangelical churches. Of course, as here at home, some of them
are not adapted to the higher positions. But have the churches
been blind? They have done the best they could with the resources
at their command to carry out the directions of Jesus Christ tp
whom they owe their allegiance.
They have not considered their Lord as on the same plane with
Buddha, Confucius or Mohammed. While Confucius handed
down some excellent teaching there was no spiritual motivation
back of it. Both Buddhism and Hinduism have obscenity and
licentiousness connected with their worship, Mohammedanism
looks forward to a sensual heaven. None of these religions prom-
ises a delightful personal immortality. E. Stanley Jones — and no
one knows more than he about conditions in the Orient — says
the point that the Laymen's Commission (by the way, this Com-
mission has no connection with the Federal Council of Churches)
makes about cooperating with the old faiths in the reconstruc-
tion of these lands simply has no point in China. These faiths
are out of it. Climb to the top of China's sacred mountain,
Taishan, and you will find the Buddhist and Taoist priests smok-
ing opium or gambling. The future lies with Communism or
Christianity.
It should be remembered that many of the missions have been
working for years to bring about self-support and native control
in churches and considering the poverty of the people and in-
different training they have succeeded remarkably well. The re-
port "specifies that the purpose of the missionary is to be cultural
[do these people mean our culture?] social, educational, rather
than evangelistic." Missions minister to the physical and intel-
lectual needs of the people for their chief duty is to help the people
mentally and spiritually, especially to give them the gospel of
Christ who is the only way of salvation and life eternal. Are the
churches blind? Look at the thousands of one-time savages,
cannibals, head-hunters, outcasts that have become men and
women of beautiful Christian character. Consider how the
abominable native medicines and practices are being supplanted
by Christian hospitals and philanthropic institutions!
Perhaps the churches do not pass on the light of Christ as
they should but they are not entirely blind. If Protestants should
cease to evangelize surely Catholics would not follow their
example. However, few if any denominations will adopt this re-
port in its entirety. To do it would be suicidal. Evangelical Chris-
tians could not contribute to missions with Christ left out.
Freeport, Illinois (Rev.) G. B. HOPKINS
To THE EDITOR: Since the publication of the Laymen's Foreign
Missions Report, Rethinking Missions, Christian opinion and re-
action has generally fallen into one or the other of two camps. In
the first camp are those, like myself, who think of Jesus as a su-
preme example of perfectly human excellence. If He was divine,
His divinity was of the same sort as the divinity of any other
human-being: Buddha or Confucius or Bill Jones or the criminal
who is to be hanged tomorrow morning. Most of us, of course,
would assert that there were excellencies of character and truth
evident in Him which have not been evident to us in any other
human-being. But we think of Him as human, not superhuman;
and because this is so, we picture His cause and program in terms
of human goals. The sum of these goals we call by an old phrase,
"the kingdom of God," which means, to most of us, this good
brown earth freed of its major social ills and transformed to a true
human brotherhood, conscious of its mutual responsibility and
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institution. Will do anything which will contribute
towards his support. Experience. Roger Whitney,
132 Main St., Norwalk, Conn.
REGISTERED NURSE — engaged in social service
and welfare work desires change, also Public Health
training and experience. References. 7118 SURVEY.
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seeking harmony with God — in however many thousands of fash-
ions we may picture Him.
Such a world vision has prompted us to support every sort of
visible effort toward human welfare. We find it impossible to
think of anything good as being contrary to the mind of Christ.
Even though that particular "good" may be labelled Buddhist or
Taoist or heathen, the very fact of its being humanly praise-
worthy is enough to justify it in our sight; for we cannot imagine
how truth or goodness can be of more than one sort. The Lay-
men's Report is definitely in line with this type of thought.
Therefore we hail it with rejoicing. It appears to us to be quite in
line with the will of Christ.
But the second camp of Christians has not so learned Christ.
He is not, for them, as Mr. Hopkins says, on the same plane with
Buddha, Confucius, or Mohammed. He is a god. He is, in fact, the
One God. This is historical, authentic, orthodox Christianity. It
is by nature conservative. It is the faith once delivered to the
saints. Those who go out as its missionaries must go out to make
converts; in the very nature of the case they must oppose all
other religions and the unorganized cult of no-religion. Their
whole effort is directed toward making a completely new creature
out of the former heathen. That heathen's background could not
possibly have anything good in it. He must be a new creature;
with a new name, a new set of standards, and a new denomina-
tional label.
Of course, I am making this statement extreme — the mis-
sionaries themselves have not gone as far in this direction as the
churches in their blindness would have had them go. Neverthe-
less, this second group of Christians — who are the custodians of
historic Christian opinion — resent the conciliatory and compro-
mising tenor of the Report. It stinks in their nostrils for the very
reason that they see Jesus as utterly unique from all the rest of
mankind. Holding that conviction, they can see no excuse at all
for missions except as agencies of conversion. They may support
missions which "minister to the physical and intellectual needs of
people"; but if they do so, it is because "their chief duty ... is
to give them the gospel of Christ who is the only way of salvation
and life eternal." The hospitals and schools and so on are not sup-
ported because it is a good thing to make people wise and healthy,
but because if you heal a man's body he may be persuaded to lis-
ten while you preach him a sermon.
The difference between Mr. Hopkins and myself is thus seen to
be simply the difference that exists between those Christians who
are sure that Jesus is God, and those Christians (?) who are sure
that however divine He may have been, He certainly was human.
Maybe this latter group isn't really Christian. Some of us are not
very proud of the label, anyhow; and the loss of it will work us
little sorrow. Our labels will have exactly nothing whatever to do
with the survival of truth or the emergence of the kingdom of
God.
As to my article — an utterly trivial matter — I have nothing to
say, beyond a wish that Mr. Hopkins may secure a copy of the
Report and study it. If he has not yet done that, he has no right to
express his opinions about the Report. If he has studied it, with
some care, I still think that he may have misunderstood its spirit
and vision. E. Stanley Jones' testimony about the Report can be
balanced by Pearl Buck's testimony. Perhaps Mrs. Buck is better
qualified to speak of China, and the impact of Christianity upon
China, than is Mr. Jones. I don't know. But I am still sure of my
original contention (which is the exact opposite of Mr. Hopkins'
contention): that unless missions are changed to something like
the fashion of this Report, they will grow weaker and weaker until
they collapse. They may collapse anyhow. I don't know. But the
festering doubt at the heart of Christian missionary-giving is a
doubt of the virtue and value of a sectarian, exclusive, other-
worldly missionary program. Because the churches have not
merely endured but have actually fostered this sort of thing here
at home, I believe they deserve to be called blind. And the work
(In answering advertisements please mention THE SURVEY )
131
132
THE SURVEY
March 19\
on the foreign mission field is — or has been — nothing more than
an extension of the same program.
Of course the missionaries have been honest and sincere! So
have the denominational leaders here at home. But honesty and
sincerity have been the backbone of every inhuman and oppres-
sive religious activity since the Inquisition.
Colorado Springs, Colorado CHARLES STAFFORD BROWN
Discussion Groups
To THE EDITOR: Dr. Harry Overstreet has given two lectures here
which greatly interested me. Both were given and concluded with
a half-hour questioning by the audience. He suggested among
other things, that small groups be organized for discussion of
timely topics and as I happened to be organizing the unemployed
from the relief lists locally so that one might get work on the new
post-office that has just started and is apt to be done by outside
labor, the thought occurred to me, why not develop the idea and
get idle men and women thinking along some other line than their
immediate troubles. Sort of get them outside of themselves with
local groups of eight to ten discussing topics that do not bear di-
rectly on their troubles but could really help. Could you suggest
such a program? We the unemployed are getting too narrow
though honestly wishing to know what we can do to help. It
seems to me that the only way to help ourselves is to help others.
That is the idea back of my suggested forums. I would greatly ap-
preciate any suggestion that you and your readers could make.
851 Washington Boulevard, Oak Park, III. L. W. TOSTEVIN
Chain-Gang
To THE EDITOR: I quote from your circular letter of January 19,
1933: "Georgia Justice on Trial. When the governor of New
Jersey refused the request of the governor of Georgia for the
extradition of a man who had escaped from a chain-gang, he
may have dealt a body blow at an archaic form of punishment."
From a fairly near point of view, I should say that what the
governor dealt was a ray of light; a bright ray from the spotlight
under which the person under discussion is enjoying himself. On
my way to or from Savannah I see a "chain-gang" almost daily
but I haven't seen a chain on any of its members for a long while.
To my observation the custom of manual labor — out-of-doors —
prevailing in the South for both white and black prisoners is
healthful and human for the most part. O. W. BURROUGHS,
(ex-Pennsylvanian)
Superintendent Betbesda Home for Boys, Savannah, Ga.
Sons of the Pioneers
To THE EDITOR: I am very much interested and impressed with
your letter and the Survey Graphic. But when I tell you that I
am literally in forced retirement on a county poor farm you will
readily understand why I cannot subscribe at any price. I have
been picking up magazines from my friends who are through with
them and amongst those I have had some of the Graphic. I find
it to be one of the most interesting and valuable that I get ahold
of.
I have for the last two years made a special study of develop-
ments in the Soviet Union and deem that the most important
study of all. The whole capitalist world is now at a loss, not
knowing what to do, and realize something must be done to save
the world from going into chaos and anarchy. Here is a country
that is trying something different, and no matter how much we
dislike the ideas or methods it behooves us to study their failures
and successes. It is just now setting up a stage where we can
observe and learn what to do. We cannot judge by what they
have been doing. They started with chaos, confusion, poverty,
superstition and ignorance and are now nearly up to us in indus-
trial production and education of the common people.
We know that Russia has used some harsh measures and is
using them, but what is happening here? As I sit here and look
over the broad expanse of prairie where people settled on til
virgin soil, proceeded to build their homes and have continued •
work late and early, and today not one fourth of those homes ; tl
owned by those who live there and work the farms, and evil
those who are supposed to own their farm are in debt to the lint
and the U. S. government is the only source to which they can I
to get aid, and the only way they can help is to mortgage the ptlj
pie, because U. S. bonds are the one security that people win
money will buy.
There are very few farmers in this part that have even thil
cattle free. They had to mortgage them to the government I
order to get feed for them, and then another lien on their gral
for seed. Neither the feed or seed loans are being paid. The thitl
will soon break down and our only hope is to keep things frol
turning into civil war and bloodshed.
I want to read the Graphic but expect I can get it from rr
friends who have read it. But if there is anybody that feels lil
giving to a good cause I can assure you that no one will mal
better use of your journal than I will. I do not intend to stay heil
in silence. I expect to assimilate as much information as I can ar
arrange into simple language so that the common people on tl
streets and on the farms can understand what it is all abou
A. B. (
School to Age Sixteen
To THE EDITOR: Thirty thousand new jobs were given to childre
last year in New York State alone — a number equal to tl
combined population of Bronxville, Larchmont, Mamaronec
and Scarsdale!
This is a statement to give one pause — why should thes
children be working while a very large number of their parent
and older brothers and sisters are undoubtedly unemployed? Th
answer is simple: it is the cheapness of child labor. The results ar
starvation wages, idle adults and the cruel burdening of the chi
with the responsibility for family support.
The New York Child Labor Committee is using all its influ
ence at just this moment to keep these children in school unt
they are sixteen and send the older people back to work. It i
backing and rousing public support for Senate Bill No. 62 nov
before the Legislature which will establish a sixteen-year school
leaving age. Won't you help in securing this legislation, so ur
gently needed both from an economic and social point of view
Treasurer New York Child Labor Committee Louis H. PIN
How Back to the Land Feels
To THE EDITOR: After eight years on a farm a mile off the stat(
road, with three or four vehicles passing a day, no sound but wine
or the woodcutter's saw to break the blessed stillness, no commit
tee meetings, no talks to women's clubs, no subway crowds, sue!
as I had in my twelve years of public health and relief work in
New York and other cities, The Survey comes to me like the
fire signal to an old horse who has pulled the engine. And it
brings me something that other equally earnest and progressive
journals do not, which is the story of the good things which are
being done. It would be almost copying the tables of contents tc
tell you which articles I like, but Jane Addams' in the last num-
ber, and all of John Palmer Gavit's and Beulah Amidon's and
Mrs. Wembridge's have given me much pleasure and inspiration.
The January Graphic was "grand."
Like all farms ours is not paying costs, milk selling for about
the cost of the cowfeed, with nothing left from the milk check to
pay taxes or interest or family expenses. Taxpayers' meetings are
being held here and in neighboring counties, and probably half of
the farmers have not been able to pay taxes or interest on mort-
gages. Foreclosures still go on, though there is some let-up,
probably waiting to see what the new administration will do
for "farm relief." In some cases a local auctioneer and cattle
dealer has had private sales instead of sheriff's sales, I believe
to prevent the sort of demonstration which has occurred in
other parts of this and other states. (Continued on page 144}
larch 1933
THE SURVEY
GOSSIP
of People
and Things
Professor to You
T'S Professor deSchweinitz now if you please
since the University of Pennsylvania has
tiled Karl deSchweinitz to its chair of child-
elping under the William T. Carter Founda-
on. The appointment fills a vacancy created
:ra.st September by the death of Dr. James
truthers Heberling who had held the post
nee it was created in 1924. The purpose of the
arter Foundation is " the study of the prin-
ples governing and necessary to the welfare of
ie child and the proper education in those
rinciples of those who, as parents, teachers and
therwise, are charged with or who undertake
,e upbringing of children." With the consent
the Carter family the purpose of the Founda-
on is now to be broadened to include the
lole field of social work.
It is good news that Mr. deSchweinitz, — beg
ardon, Professor deSchweinitz, is not to re-
linquish his activities as director of the Phila-
Iphia Community Council and as a member
the Philadelphia County Relief Board. He
11 be active both in teaching and in social
ork which is plainly all to the good for both
des. Beginning next fall he will offer at the
; 'University a course on The Development of the
!l!1ndividual which will aim to give understand-
K'lg of how the needs and the desires of the
alidividual, as modified by his personal rela-
onships, affect his growth and social ad-
istment.
As candidate for the doubtful distinction of
leanest man, the Reformatory and Refuge
Inion of London offers the one who mailed
ack an appeal from another agency in the
:lf-addressed envelop which the Union had
ticlosed in its appeal — and mailed it postage
ue.
ABOUT the last thing professional women give
p in these days of cuts and scrimping, says
larie I'Hommedieu, chief of the retirement
md of the National Board of the Y. W. C. A.,
; their stake in security. Of the two thousand
•omen who are participating in the fund, only
wo, she says, defaulted in their 1932 pay-
icnts.
THE Westchester County, N. Y., Park Com-
lission has completed plans for a memorial
the late V. Everit Macy for many years its
hairman. The memorial will take the form
f a bronze tablet, appropriately inscribed,
rected on a boulder in the V. Everit Macy
'ark in Ardsley. John D. Rockefeller, Jr., is
hairman of the memorial committee.
MINA Van Winkle, who as chief of the Wom-
n's Bureau in the Washington, D. C., Police
)epartment made history for a whole new
evelopment in social work, died recently after
long illness which caused her retirement about
year ago. Graduated from the New York
chool of Social Work in 1905 she was for sev-
ral years identified with various organizations
i New Jersey. With the war she was called to
Vashington to deal with the social problems
rowing out of the influx of women war- workers,
rom this beginning she developed the bureau
^hich withstood not only the assaults of dis-
gruntled politicians but even a Congressional
investigation. She was a leader in organizing
training courses for policewomen and was a
past-president of the International Association
of Policewomen.
THE American Public Health Association
announces that at its sixty-second annual
meeting in Indianapolis October 9-12 it will
honor at a special session Dr. John R. Kis-
singer, the only living participant in the
famous yellow fever experiment with mosqui-
toes. It was in Indianapolis in 1900, at the
twenty-ninth annual meeting of the A. P. H. A.,
that Dr. Walter Reed in a paper, The Etiology
of Yellow Fever — a Preliminary Note, indi-
cated that the mosquito might be the villain
of yellow fever. It was, as events proved, an
epochal pronouncement, yet it was received, it
is said, with only mild interest.
You Can't Please Everybody
TN her engagingly written little annual report
*• of the Family Welfare Society of Cambridge,
Mass., Elizabeth Morrison winds up her story
of the rent troubles of her clients with one that
shows the troubles of the agency. Three Italian
families, clients of the Society, about to be
evicted from their homes, had the bright idea
of moving into a house empty since the bank
had foreclosed the mortgage. In a voluble
body they visited the bank and made a propo-
sition to rent. The bank wouldn't rent but it
would sell — for a down payment of $75. The
Italians by some legerdemain borrowed the $75
and moved in, six adults and twenty-three
children. Miss Morrison approved the move and
still does, but not so an anonymous letter-
writer who assails the Society bitterly for
helping "landlords and property owners."
THE New York A. I. C. P. reports the pro-
test of an over-appealed-to contributor who
wrote stormily, "Don't you know I'm a school-
teacher and don't you realize that we're giving
shoes and lunches to needy children as well as
giving gas to needy families?" Which is one
way, cogitates Elsie Kearns, to reduce the
volume of unemployment.
HARRY Woodburn Chase, for the past three
years president of the University of Illinois,
has been elected chancellor of New York
University to succeed Dr. Elmer Ellsworth
Brown who will retire on July I. President
Chase was for eleven years head of the Uni-
versity of North Carolina.
A fine full-fledged compliment came the way
of The Survey when the New Jersey Conference
of Social Work picked up two of the features of
the January Midmonthly and reprinted them
as an issue of its own bulletin for circulation
among the Conference membership . The two
features were Eduard C. Lindeman's Social
Workers Hesitate and Then?, an inventory of
the fears, perspectives, principles and hopes
that showed themselves in the discussion at
the New Jersey State Conference, and Ira deA.
Reid's New Jersey's Twentieth Citizen, a
picture study, in the Neurath manner, of the
situation of the state's Negro population.
133
AFTER working five years on its invention
and construction, Erie Fiske Young, professor
of sociology at the University of Southern
California, Los Angeles, has built a new spot-
map machine designed as an aid in accurately
and rapidly developing maps in connection
with ecological studies. The new machine is
used in conjunction with a master file and will,
Professor Young believes, operate in the mak-
ing of numerous types of sectional, city or
community maps of sociological value. A
technical description of the machine and its
functions may be secured from Professor
Young.
Incog
A TIRED social worker, seeking surcease
•^*- in Bermuda, was dismayed to see one of
her best professional friends walk into her
hotel. "I won't talk shop, I won't talk shop,"
she wailed in greeting. "And I never even saw
you before," came back the newcomer, also
weary and white around the gills. And for a
whole week they didn't speak to each other.
DR. H. Jackson Davis, epidemiologist of
the New York State Department of Health,
has been attached to the Temporary Emer-
gency Relief Administration as director of
medical care to assist local public-welfare
officers in meeting problems connected with
adequate home medical care for the unem-
ployed.
ARTHUR Dunham, who was loaned for three
months by the Public Charities Association of
Pennsylvania to organize the field service of
the Pennsylvania State Emergency Relief
Board, is back on his regular job as secretary
of the Association's Child Welfare Division
and Committee on Welfare Legislation. F.
Richard Stilwell, for several years assistant
director of the Bureau of Assistance of the
State Department of Public Welfare succeeded
Mr. Dunham as field director of the Emergency
Board.
AN eminent figure in American psychiatry
passed with the death of Dr. Edward N.
Brush, former editor of The American Journal
of Psychiatry and past-president of the Amer-
ican Psychiatric Association.
New Ways in Detroit
HpHE program committee for the Detroit
••• meeting of the National Conference of
Social Work has broken away from the familiar
pattern by putting the annual presidential
address, hitherto the opening feature of con-
ference week, back to the last evening session.
Frank J. Bruno, this year's president, has taken
for his subject Social Values to be Conserved
in a Planned Society. Subjects of the other
general meetings — no speakers named as yet —
are: National Responsibility for Human Wel-
fare, Legal and Ethical Adjustments to a So-
cially Planned Society, Economic Factors in a
Planned Society, The International Mind, and,
for the closing luncheon, Sixty Years of the
National Conference of Social Work.
The National Conference, like a good share
of the rest of the world, closed its last fiscal
year in the red, not seriously, but uncomfort-
ably. About half of the deficit is due to the
fact that the Conference has absorbed some
$1300 of the pledge to the International Con-
134
ference of Social Work which the American
committee, in spite of valiant efforts, was un-
able to raise.
Match This One
npHE Emergency Work Bureau of New York
-•• offers as its most picturesque case, and in-
vites comparisons, that of Mrs. Castillo, (and
we don't know whether that is her real name or
not), unemployed lion-tamer. Mrs. Castillo,
widow of an Englishman, daughter of a full-
blooded Pueblo Indian and a Spanish Jewess,
is all gold earrings and flashing black eyes.
Always connected with a circus she had raised
and trained her own troupe of twelve lions,
"And oh, how I loved my lions." Unfortunately
an earthquake in Nicaragua let loose a flood
and drowned her pets. Unable to replace them
Mrs. Castillo drifted to New York, where she
found a decidedly bear market for lion-tamers.
Don't ask us what kind of a job the Bureau
found for her. We wish we knew but we don't.
Just as this was written The New Yorker did
match it, almost, with another E. W. B. case.
A shy young bride, runs The New Yorker story,
doing her bit for the Emergency Work Bureau,
was sent out to interview a nice old lady who
was seeking a little emergency work. The nice
old lady was austere and dignified and the
young investigator felt rather bold and brash
as she asked her the usual questions. She came
in due course to the one about previous em-
ployment. Where had the nice old lady been
employed before? The caller had her pretty
definitely pegged as a retired governess.
"Why," said the old lady with sudden en-
thusiasm, "I was an acrobat with Barnum &
Bailey. I'll show you a trick."
She thereupon upped with one leg and
wound it around her neck. Left the investi-
gator breathless, and with a neat problem in
emergency employment.
NEW York social workers took a night off
recently and pranced and danced and play-
acted in a show, Don't Make Me Laugh, put on
for the purpose of pulling the Social Work Pub-
licity Council out of the red, a purpose happily
achieved. The Chicago publicity folk will put
on their Frollies, now an annual affair on April
Fool's Day. " Yo, Ho! Come to the Fair" is an-
nounced as the theme song.
MARY Raymond of Atlanta, for the past
year executive secretary of the Children's
Service Society of Georgia, is now executive
secretary of the Society for Organized Service
in Macon.
ROSE Bigler, identified for some twenty-five
years with Illinois state hospitals, has been
appointed director of the Illinois Training
School for Psychiatric Nursing, at the Chicago
State Hospital. She succeeds May Kennedy
who resigned to accept an appointment in New
York.
THE Brooklyn Bureau of Charities has
picked Mary Dranga Campbell, recently
executive director of the Missouri Commission
for the Blind, to head its newly organized
department for the handicapped in which are
combined its activities for the blind and the
crippled and its Craft Shop. Mrs. Campbell, a
graduate of Leland Stanford and of the old
Chicago School of Civics and Philanthropy,
has had all sorts of experience and has held
various important positions connected with
THE SURVEY
work for the blind . Mary E. Ryder succeeds
her with the Missouri Commission.
THIS one is from Rose Goldman, psychiatric
social worker and visiting teacher in the
New York public schools. She says it cheered
her up for a week. She went to Mrs. Sanopolos'
tenement home to hunt up Frank, "problem"
seventh-grader on the sick list. "The teacher's
come," called Mrs S. over her shoulder as she
let Miss Goldman into the kitchen-laundry-
parlor plus just a touch of bedroom. But Frank
had heard Miss Goldman's voice. "That's no
teacher Ma," he called back. "That's the lady
that makes bad boys good. She done it to
Micky and now she's workin' on me."
Not for Jep
THEY may not be up on the techniques of
relief work down in the Tennessee moun-
tains but they know their own folks, and as a
result Red Cross flour is getting around not so
badly. From Robert E. Bondy of the Red
Cross Disaster Relief comes the story of a local
character assigned to the flour distribution
who carried his information and most of his
records in his hat. To him came his old neigh-
bor Jep, confidently prepared to carry home a
bag of flour.
"Wai now, Jep," ruminated the erstwhile
Red Grosser, "how 'bout it? You got any
hawgs?"
"Yep."
"Got any hosses?"
"Yep."
"Got any corn?"
"Yep."
"Now looky here, Jep, this here-flour hain't fer
fellers like you. Hit's fur them that hain't got
nothin' an" never expects to have nothin', an'
you hain't one of them."
"Do I git my flour or don't I git it?"
"Git it? No— Hell, no!"
And he didn't.
ANOTHER good one has slipped over into
public-welfare work, this time Virginia Mc-
Mechen, formerly field representative of the
National Travelers Aid Societies. She has just
been appointed director of the newly created
Department of Welfare and Direct Relief in
Salt Lake City charged with the monumental
task of "coordinating all direct relief activities
of all departments and agencies under R. F. C.
funds and of supervising the County Welfare
Department and the Central Registration
Bureau."
IF service stripes were worn by social work-
ers Homer Folks would have sleeves like a
zebra. His latest anniversary, properly marked
by a luncheon tendered by his staff and board,
was of forty years' service as secretary of the
New York State Charities Aid Association.
NEW Yorkers who want to know what (little)
is being done in the way of providing better
housing for that vast slice of the city's popula-
tion inadequately housed are having their
chance through a course in housing now under
way at the New School of Social Research, 66
West 12 Street, under the direction of Abra-
ham Goldfeld of the Lavenburg Foundation.
The purpose of the course is to study housing
in its social rather than technical aspects with
consideration of blighted areas and their
residents and their relation to the population
as a whole, and of income, rent levels and so
on. Included in the course are visits to the
old-type tenements of the lower East Side and
March 7P3J
to such forward looking housing projects a
the Amalgamated Housing Development i
the Bronx (cooperative), the Brooklyn Garde:
Apartments (limited dividend), the Dunba
Apartments (Negro), Radburn (the town fo
the modern age) and the Lavenburg Home
(philanthropic).
THE Cosmopolitan Club of Washington
D. C., has bestowed its annual medal for "th
most outstanding, unselfish civic service to th.
community" on Mary Virginia Merrick
president and founder of the Christ Chili
Society. The specific service which brought th
award was the erection of a modern settlemen
house and children's center at 608 Massachu
setts Avenue, N. E., which was completed am
dedicated last year. Miss Merrick, a wheel
chair invalid since the age of fourteen, ha
built up a national organization of the Chris
Child Society with branches in thirty-thre
cities. The new settlement house is located in ;
section of the city with meager health am
recreational facilities. Already more than ;
thousand children are enrolled.
This is the second year the Cosmopolitai
Club has singled out a welfare worker for it
honors. Its 1931 medal went to E. C. Graham
president of the Community Chest and chair
man of the District of Columbia Committee 01
Employment.
The Last Smile
WHEN the man bites the dog everybod;
knows what it is. But when a lady fall
into a barrel of sauerkraut in California wha
is it? Answer: An industrial relation. Thi
California State Department of Industria
Relations brightens the statistics of its repor
to the Governor's Council with "accident:
that catch the imagination and provoke !
smile." Ye-es, but whose smile? Certainly no
on the face of the lady engulfed in sauerkraut
and surely not on the face of the gentlemat
who, in line of duty, was nipped in the nose bj
a boa constrictor. And our guess is that every,
body smiled when two Hollywood light!
mussed up each other's faces — and claimee
industrial compensation.
MORE honors for Dr. William H. Park of th(
New York City Health Department! This time
it's his appointment as the first Hermann M
Biggs professor of preventive medicine at th<
New York University and Belle vue Hospita
Medical College. This professorship was es-
tablished by a memorial fund begun soon aftei
Dr. Biggs' death in 1923, and recently com-
pleted to a total of $200,000 by bequests anc
gifts from the Biggs family and from the Mil-
bank Memorial Fund. Dr. Park's appointment
is particularly appropriate since he was asso-
ciated with Dr. Biggs for almost forty yean
and shared his philosophy no less than hiil
labors for preventive medicine and publk
health.
JUST after we had gossiped about Aileer
Fitzpatrick and the first Australian school o:
social work in Sydney came word of a confer
ence in Melbourne between social workers anc
University authorities to break ground for i
two-year academic course with practical train
ing supplied by state and voluntary agencies
Plans will, it is hoped, develop so rapidly thai
a comprehensive course can be offered next
year. For this news The Survey is indebted tc
The Other Half, the lively little occasiona
publication of the Charity Organization So
ciety of Melbourne.
Philadelphians Propose
A Plan for the Treatment of Unemployment
Summarized by
KENNETH L. M. PRAY
Director Pennsylvania School of Social and Health Work
NEMPLOYMENT is the consequence of obscure
economic disorders. Its prevention depends upon
slow and difficult changes in the whole economic
irocess, and these must be courageously undertaken if we
re to have a stable social order in the future. But no one
an foretell the time when America will muster the collec-
ive power to assure continuous, remunerative employment
or all its people, and meantime we shall have unemploy-
ment— a certain amount of chronic, casual and seasonal
memployment; possibly increasing technological un-
employment; doubtless recurring periods of severe depres-
.ion, or cyclical unemployment.
With our vivid realization of the distress and loss which
his entails, comes an obligation to remove its most serious
•onsequences, even though we cannot at once eliminate all
ts causes. A comprehensive program for the treatment of
memployment when it appears will also contribute to its
>revention, both because of its indirect effect in stabilizing
tconomic activity, and because of the incentives it may
tfford for direct preventive measures.
Fundamental Concepts
SUCH a program for the treatment of unemployment
will rest upon cer-
ain general principles:
Unemployment in the
nodern world is a man-
'festation of collective
mistakes, not of indi-
idual inadequacy. A
legligible number of
THE PHILADELPHIA PLAN
/IS a service to communities everywhere T'he Survey
_y_Z singles out this report as the most integrated and
significant piece of group thinking on the situation con-
hose&at present out of fronting the industrial cities of America in this fourth
vork are in any sense year of the depression. Last October the Board of Directors
of the Community Council of Philadelphia authorized the
appointment by President Robert Dechert of a committee to
discuss and formulate such a program. It was composed of
persons responsible for various aspects of unemployment-
relief administration and of specialists in unemployment
insurance^ public works, statistics and allied subjects.
The Committee met on one or more evenings a week up to
January 26, at University House, calling in consultation
specialists in the various aspects of the treatment of un-
employment. 'The Board of Directors of the Community
Council believes that the report should be made available
for further consideration and discussion by a wider public
but does not wish to express its approval or disapproval
of the recommendations contained in it.
>ersonally responsible
or their misfortune,
ionesty, diligence, am-
)ition, sobriety, thrift
—while still admirable,
ire no longer a certain
>rotection against idle-
icss and want. That
)rotection waits upon
he better collective
:ontrol of our social and
:conomic relationships
md the more perfect
lischarge of our com-
non responsibilities.
The needs of those
vho are suffering from
bese social mistakes are
human needs, not merely animal needs. The value to the
community of the human beings who compose it cannot be
measured in pounds or ergs or calories. It resides in them
as persons, whose feelings and beliefs, judgments and
choices, are vital elements in any sound community life.
We cannot be solely concerned with the negative task of
keeping people alive. We must maintain those positive but
intangible values which alone give real meaning and worth
to physical existence.
No civilized community can survive, or ought to, which
consigns a considerable part of its people to starvation of soul
or of body — either swiftly, by withholding all help, or slowly,
by imposing a totally inadequate standard of living. So long
as the total fund of wealth suffices, means must be found to
provide suitable help when needed. Our problem is to
discover what amount is indispensably required to relieve
distress, and then to determine how the necessary funds
can be provided most certainly, most equitably, and with
the most satisfactory effect upon normal economic life.
There is obviously no wisdom in unrestrained largess,
either public or private; there is need for scrupulous econ-
omy and care at every point. But the actual minimum need
of the unemployed and their families must be fully met.
'fbe prime responsi-
bility for the relief of
unemployment should
rest upon government,
the agent of the whole
community, rather than
upon private individuals
or groups. In crises like
the present, when vast
numbers are afflicted,
only the collective
power of government
can uniformly and uni-
versally protect essen-
tial human values and
distribute the cost
equitably among the
whole people. The in-
herent values of in-
dividual initiative and
voluntary service must
be preserved, of course,
and wide opportunity
must be offered for
their continued opera-
tion and growth. From
them is derived that
concept of social
135
136
THE SURVEY
March 193:
responsibility which, by an extension of imaginative
insight, leads the individual to wish to act as effectively
through government to meet the needs of all fellow-citizens
in need, as he desires to serve those few he sees and knows.
Philadelphia is not an isolated, self-contained social or
economic entity. Its problem of unemployment is not local,
either in origin, kind or extent. Its relief program, there-
fore, must be a part of, and dependent upon, a larger pro-
gram of state-wide and nation-wide planning and action.
A sound special program for the treatment of unemploy-
ment depends for its full effectiveness upon the maintenance
intact of certain regular community services, such as those of
public health, public education, public recreation, public
welfare, housing control, and the protection of reasonable
standards of wages and working conditions. It is just at such
times as the present — when the security of the home, and
the satisfactions of regular creative labor are most threat-
ened or altogether lost, and when the power of self-main-
tenance and self-protection is most weakened— that
community provision for these vital needs is most impera-
tively required. To shorten library and museum hours, to
close recreation centers, to dismiss public-health nurses, to
cut off adult-education opportunities, to lengthen hours of
labor and remove protections against accident and exploi-
tation in industry, all in the name of economy, is in the
long run the height of community extravagance. The
reclamation of slum areas, through far-sighted investment
and cooperation of private citizens and public authorities,
under suitable legislation, yet to be enacted in Pennsyl-
vania, taking advantage of lowered costs and providing
constructive employment, is one of the more spectacular
ways in which a socially minded community will protect
individual welfare and the public interest in times like
these. The prevention of unwholesome crowding of existing
dwellings and the vigilant enforcement of existing laws
protecting safety and sanitation are less dramatic but
equally important public services.
Finally, all public services, whether permanent or tem-
porary, affecting the safety and well-being of every citizen,
must be manned on the basis of fitness, and must be protected
against political interference. Always important, this be-
comes positively essential with the inevitable expansion of
government's social and economic activities.
A Special Program
A SPECIAL program of treatment of unemployment has
JL\. two great aims: First, to restore to idle hands and
brains the chance to work, and so to renew, as quickly as
possible, for the individual and the community, normal
social and economic life; Second, to establish, so far as
possible, some measure of security and continuity of income
for those unavoidably deprived of the chance to work.
The main provisions of such a program fall into five
main groups:
First, the collection and dissemination of dependable
facts as to the extent, the kinds and the location of em-
ployment and unemployment, so that the initiation and
administration of necessary measures may be promptly
adapted to actual conditions and needs.
Second, the provision of suitable means for bringing
together job-hunters and available jobs, so that, among
other gains, the period of unemployment for each in-
dividual may be as short as possible.
Third, the provision of a long-time program of necessary
public-works construction, local, state and national, th
timing of actual expenditures to be adjusted inversely t
general economic activity, so that permanently usefu
governmental action may take up some of the slack i;
demand for labor and may thus somewhat retard th
cumulative effect of unemployment.
Fourth, the provision of reserve funds, accumulated ii
times of prosperity to be distributed in times of adversity
to those thrown out of work through no fault of their own
in order not only that the individual may be spared th
worst consequences of his misfortune, but also that he ma-
retain for a time at least a part of his purchasing power h
the general market.
Fifth, the provision of adequate means for meeting th'
primary necessities of those who fall outside the protectioi
of these measures and who cannot provide for their owi
needs.
These are, of course, not distinct and separable forms o
action. All are essentially interdependent, yet there is ;
certain logical priority among them under present cir
cumstances. The relief of immediate suffering is the firs
and most imperative obligation of this moment. Tha
cannot wait upon any other measure.
I. Relief
A Basic Objectives and Criteria. Certain practica
• criteria must be met in any satisfactory relie
system.
1. Relief must be available on terms of equality to all ir
equal need, below a definite level of self-maintenance.
2. It must be prompt and timely, not delayed unti
personal and social disintegration have progressed to th<
danger point.
3. It must be adequate to meet, along with whatevei
other resources are available, the elemental needs of humar
beings for the preservation of health and decency.
The Philadelphia Committee
KENNETH L. M. PRAY, director Pennsylvania School of
Social and Health Work
ELIZABETH McCoRD, member staff, Community Council
JACOB BILUKOPF, executive director, The Federation of
Jewish Charities
EWAN CLAGUE, director of research, Community Council
JOHN W. EDELMAN, director of research, American Federa-
tion of Full Fashioned Hosiery Workers
ALEXANDER FLEISHER, managing director, Philadelphia
Child Health Society
HELEN HALL, headworker, University House
DOROTHY C. KAHN, executive director, Jewish Welfare
Society
BETSEY LIBBEY, general secretary, Family Society
WILLIAM N. LOUCKS, assistant professor of economics,
Wharton School of Finance and Commerce, University
of Pennsylvania
KARL DE SCHWEINITZ, executive secretary, Community |
Council
EMMETT H. WELCH, research associate, Industrial Rela-
tions Department, University of Pennsylvania
JOSEPH H. WILLITS, dean of the Wharton School of Finance
and Commerce, University of Pennsylvania
MRS. GEORGE BACON WOOD, member executive committee,
Y. W. C. A., and member of the Philadelphia County
Relief Board.
arch 1933
THE SURVEY
137
4. It must be continuous and certain, and so organized
to adapt itself readily, in form and amount, to the
anging circumstances of the individual beneficiary and
the community.
5. It must be administered in such a way as to enlist the
operation, protect the self-respect and sustain the per-
nal rights and powers of its recipients, while preserving
e social unity and economic stability of the community.
Practical Standards. What would a sound relief
, program require, in its practical details?
1. Eligibility: It would clearly define and candidly
nounce (a) the specific conditions under which any
dividual or family becomes eligible for community help;
) the specific schedule of relief allowances available under
rying conditions; (c) the procedures by which eligibility
d need will be determined by the community's agents,
would thus seek to make its service available to all who
aly need relief according to these objective standards,
:luding those who may be too proud or sensitive to seek
in time to save themselves from irreparable injury; at
le same time it would save unnecessary trouble, expense
id disappointment for those who now seek aid in vain
:cause, despite their limited means and hard struggles,
ey still do not fall below that level which the community
:ems a minimum standard of living in this emergency.
2. Relief Allowances for Families: Relief allowances
>uld be sufficient to permit families to provide for them-
Ives their minimum requirements not only of food, but
so of shelter, heat, light, clothing and housekeeping sup-
ies, recognizing all of these as real necessities of life.
nese minimum requirements inevitably would be less
ian any standard of living worthy of the name American,
nee they omit all consideration of such essentials as
.:alth service, recreation, household furnishings, insurance,
irfare, church and organization dues, or reading matter,
nly extreme ingenuity, self-sacrifice and self-help can
ake this strict limitation of budget to bare essentials
jssible for any considerable length of time. Anything less
tan this is a compromise with the exigencies of the situa-
>n that may seriously impair the morale and the health
the individual.
Relief in any particular instance would be granted in
ich an amount as to bring the total family resources up
> this minimum level. In order, however, that a somewhat
:gher standard of living than this low minimum may be
icouraged rather than absolutely prevented, and that
idustry and ambition may not be penalized or wasted, a
art of any family earnings would be retained by the family,
i addition to the full proper measure of relief.
On the same principle, thrift would be recognized as a
smmunity and individual asset, and the total collapse of
:onomic independence would be averted where some ves-
ge of it remains, by awarding relief on the basis of cur-
:nt need and income, not withholding it because of a
imily's possession of limited assets, such as partial or
amplete home-ownership, which cannot be converted into
;ady cash in an emergency without great loss, if at all.
imilarly, where a family holds insurance in a limited
mount, calculated to meet the contingency of death and
urial, the relief allowance would not be reduced on account
f the present cash value of such insurance. Not only is this
:serve valuable as a protection of the community against
*ie same contingent expense; it is often, also, the family's
ist material symbol of economic self-maintenance, and as
such is worth far more to the community in the long run
than its present cash value. It is at such points as this that
our defense of the spiritual forces of our stricken neighbors
can be powerfully maintained, without adding sub-
stantially to the community's total burden.
3. Relief for Homeless and Detached Individuals: Some
thousands of unemployed men and women are not living
in family groups, but alone, in single rooms, or with no
permanent abode at all. Obviously, they, too, are entitled
to adequate help. For those who have homes, or for whom
suitable lodgings can be found, with friends and relatives
or otherwise, individual relief at home, on the same
minimum standard as that allowed to those in family
groups, is clearly called for by prudence and justice.
Of the others, many are ill or enfeebled by age, with
little prospect of reemployment or satisfactory readjust-
ment in the community. For such as these, temporary and
spasmodic care, on a disaster level, is not only cruel but
ineffective. They should have permanent help in suitable
institutions, or better still, through old-age pensions or
regular relief allowances in boarding homes or with friends
or relatives.
For a considerable number of the more employable
group, though fewer than commonly believed, temporary
shelter and relief in special institutions must be provided,
until, as economic conditions change from season to season
and from year to year, they can find their way back in-
dependently into more or less stable occupation in the
community. For these, too, something more than bare
protection against starvation and death from exposure is
called for. To the extent that they find, in their contact
with this community service, some understanding of their
needs and wants, some appreciation and tolerance of their
feelings, and to the extent that their daily life, even in these
most barren and limited surroundings, includes some op-
portunity for useful occupation and for self-selected
activity on any decent level to which they may aspire, —
just so far have we strengthened the inner sources of their
future adjustment to an orderly, constructive community
membership.
4. Form of Relief: Relief in Pennsylvania has taken four
forms. The largest part, at present, is being paid in food
orders, redeemable at retail stores in the neighborhood of
the recipient's home, supplemented in cases of extreme
need by the provision of fuel, shoes and clothing. Another
relatively small part is being paid in return for work, pro-
vided by public authorities or private groups, at least a
part of this payment being often made in cash. A further
and increasing part of relief is being provided through
commissaries, sometimes called community food markets,
at which all food orders are redeemed. Finally, a portion of
unemployment relief is being distributed in cash, chiefly
through private agencies but also by some public poor relief
authorities. All these forms of unemployment relief have
certain advantages, and all involve certain dangers and
difficulties.
Work-relief 'is a desirable part of a sound program. There
is undoubted value in work, especially for those to whom
enforced idleness means, as it often must, the dulling or
entire loss of valuable skills and work habits, the increasing
feeling of personal futility and failure, the diminishing
sense of personal responsibility for self and family. Work-
relief also may create important material values for the
community.
Two obstacles have stood in the path of made work as a
138
THE SURVEY
March
mode of relief. The first is the simple mathematical fact
that so long as we propose only to keep people alive, this
can be done more easily and with less cost through direct
relief than by the difficult organization of a work program.
The establishment of relief at the level of adequacy which
seems wise and feasible would practically eliminate this
obstacle. Three days of work per week, paid at the going
rate of wages, would probably cost little more than out-
right adequate relief.
The second obstacle is the problem of finding enough
work tasks for those now unemployed, without seriously
impairing the economic security of those still employed in
the open market. There would be little gain in employing
the idle, if thereby we threw others into idleness. Further-
more, these tasks must be diversified, to accommodate the
various abilities and interests of the workers. They must be
accessible, through wide distribution, yet they must be in
as large units as possible, for effective and inexpensive
supervision. They must have a proportionately high labor
content, so that funds may not be too largely spent for
materials. They must be little affected by inclement
weather, out of regard both for poorly clad workers and
for the permanence of the work itself. In small commu-
nities many of these requirements can be fairly readily met.
In a great city like Philadelphia, viewed as a whole, they
are practically unattainable, except, possibly, through a
huge public-works program, planned carefully in advance
and cautiously adjusted to the whole economic situation.
This is, for the present, out of the question.
Practically, therefore, work-relief here and now must be
regarded as a supplementary measure, not a main reliance,
and chiefly applicable to those whose skills do not unduly
compete with the skills of workers now engaged in in-
dustry, and for whom tasks not primarily involving me-
chanical labor may be discovered or devised.
Food Orders provide a bare subsistence, but obviously
they do not meet all the other essential needs, the burden
of which must therefore be borne in other ways by indi-
viduals and groups, to whom the community as a whole
thus unjustly transfers a part of its own responsibility.
Landlords, corner merchants, doctors, sorely pressed
neighbors, through credit and other aid, carry a load far
beyond their proper share of the community's total relief
provision. At the same time, the community is thus
tolerating and encouraging the deliberate avoidance by
its beneficiaries of obligations which they recognize as just
and proper. Even within the narrow limits of a bare sub-
sistence budget, the flexible use of funds by recipients to
meet actual total needs would have enormous moral value,
and probably some material advantage as well.
The Food Market, or Commissary, has two possible ad-
vantages over the food-order system. It provides for
minimum food needs at less financial cost, and it insures
the provision of a better balanced and more nutritious diet
than would often be purchased by beneficiaries under the
food-order plan. Its economy of operation is at least partly
counterbalanced, however, by the necessarily high cost of
organization and administration, and by the further fact
that such public exhibitions of relief-giving tend to stimu-
late demands not wholly justified by reasonable standards
of eligibility and need, while deterring more sensitive and
needy citizens from seeking help before it is too late to
repair without great cost the broken framework of their
lives. Its value in the protection of physical health de-
pends upon the actual consumption in the home of the
entire carefully balanced ration dispensed at the market,
end by no means certain to be achieved.
Its disadvantages are many and important. It is nee
sarily somewhat inflexible, insensitive to vital differen
of need among individuals and between race and natic
ality groups; it is relatively heedless of those likes a
dislikes, habits and attitudes, which cannot be whc
disregarded even in choosing a diet for healthfulness.
subjects innocent citizens to cruel public humiliation, to i
necessary travel and trouble. It thrusts our public auth<
ities into business on a huge scale, and without due rege
for the possible effect of this revolutionary step upon t
whole fabric of retail trade, already severely threaten
by the depression and burdened by credit and serv
which neighborhood merchants have extended to une:
ployed citizens while the community slowly and reluctant
mobilized its assistance.
The decisive consideration, however, is that the ends
health and economy, if gained, are purchased at co;
beyond their worth. We should not violate in this grc
fashion the personal freedom and dignity of those who ha
committed no offense and who are defenseless through
personal fault; we should not properly or safely impose
dictation upon them, in the name of economy or healt
which we are unwilling or unable to impose upon ourselv<
Cash Relief to families and individuals with whom re
sonably continuous contact can be maintained seems t
most satisfactory and constructive form of unemployme
relief. It is the only form which sustains the integrity oft
recipient and capitalizes for the long-time benefit of t
community his sense of responsibility and his capacity
make a little go a long way. So long as we are concern-
only with keeping people alive, regardless of what life m;
mean to them in the absence of the least right of se
determination, and regardless of the social feelings ai
attitudes which such absence invites, this consideratii
may seem unimportant. But so soon as the communi
undertakes to carry the whole proper burden and to me
the minimum true need of its unemployed citizens, its he
should be granted in such a way as to permit the flexib
and responsible use of it by the beneficiaries.
There will be occasional indiscretions and wastes, it
true, in the use of cash relief. There are such losses
through collusion and ignorance. But the gains in the spir
of cooperation, in candid acceptance and discharge of £
responsibilities, on a planned and self-respecting, thouj
partial, basis, will amply compensate for occasion
mistakes.
Barter, as a means of affording work outlets on a sel
respecting, morale-building basis, for some of those un'en
ployed, and as a lever to lift somewhat the present ii
tolerably low level of physical and spiritual existence, ma
prove in this crisis a highly important instrument,
cannot be regarded in any sense as a substitute for con
munity relief in other forms. It is valuable as a means
bringing idle hands into touch with idle capital and m;
chinery, especially within those areas where exchange
goods and services can fairly easily develop out of the a<
tive efforts of the unemployed themselves. The difficultie
confronting such an effort on a large scale in a great metn
politan city are enormous, but their possible values warrar
serious experiments, under the leadership and with tl
help of responsible groups in the community, including sue
agencies as the Chamber of Commerce and the Federatio
of Labor. It is important that these efforts be totally d
rch 1933
THE SURVEY
139
ced from relief administration and conducted only with
plus funds not required for direct relief. If so organized,
ter experiments may prove a fruitful field for cultiva-
i and assistance by city, state or national governments,
ecially, perhaps, the Reconstruction Finance Corpora-
i.
'. Administration of Relief: In the present crisis, govern-
nt has accepted, under pressure of necessity, the chief
Donsibility for providing and administering relief. This
ict wholly new. Until recently the local government has
n chiefly concerned with the task of caring for those in
d. Even before the present emergency, however, the
te had actively intervened, with financial aid and espe-
ily with supervision, having taken practically complete
ponsibility for the mentally ill and defective, a large
re in the support of widowed mothers and of the sick,
i increasing protection of dependent children and other
ups. Still more recently the federal government, through
incial subsidies, research and education, has shown in-
asing concern for the adequate treatment of many social
>blems, such as the rehabilitation of workmen injured in
.ustry and the protection of mothers and infants. In the
.• csent crisis, it was inevitable as well as logical that the
iqer units of government should steadily expand their
iictions, as the resources of local units declined. Today,
rj thirds of all current funds expended for unemployment
tuef in Philadelphia are drawn from the federal treasury.
i The need for sound organization for effective cooperation
trween all three branches of government is obvious.
J, The Locality should be effectively organized for the direct
.Tiinistration of relief. The first requisite is a suitable
rial-work personnel, adequate in numbers and compe-
t.cy, preferably trained intensively for at least a short
Hod in advance of appointment, and continuously there-
.er, especially through highly competent supervision,
s jplemented by staff conference and discussion.
The State, from which should emanate general policies,
:>uld establish and enforce reasonable minimum stand-
ds and procedures, in the interest of economy, efficiency
;i sound social service, and should equalize burdens and
lources among the local communities, on the basis of
i sonable objective criteria of need.
>Tbe Federal Government, in addition to the continuous
jrestigation and study of conditions throughout the
mtry, for the purpose of equalizing through its own funds
;: burden of relief borne by the different states, in propor-
n to available resources, and for the further purpose of
ablishing and maintaining sound standards in the
(ministration of such funds, should accept the special
iction of providing adequate care and treatment of the
Teasing army of transient and homeless individuals and
nilies set adrift by present economic dislocations. Some
•manent provision for the proper handling of this prob-
n, preferably by direct federal action, or by special grants
ithe states, should be one of the gains made in the present
icrgency.
Certain clear principles govern the organization andoper-
on of all three branches of service alike. In each, an
dependent board should have administrative authority in
is field, probably associated with that department or
;reau primarily concerned with other social-welfare stud-
• and activities, but autonomous within its own province.
I should be composed of citizens especially qualified by
e^erience, representative of informed, progressive opinion
a this field, and not otherwise employed in the public
service. The boards, local, state and national, must, of
course, be utterly divorced from politics or from partisan
influence. Each should delegate responsible executive
leadership to a general director, thoroughly qualified by
training and experience in social work, who should be as-
sisted by an adequate staff of office and field assistants,
chosen wholly for professional qualifications, and absolutely
protected against political interference or removal.
Unemployment relief is but one aspect of the age-old
problem of helping individuals and families in need, his-
torically known as poor relief, whose long tradition has not
yet yielded fully to the demands of a changing social order
and philosophy. Until this change comes to pass, unem-
ployment relief should remain separate from general poor
relief, under its own special administrative organization,
at present known in -Pennsylvania as the State Emergency
Relief Board, and in Philadelphia as the Philadelphia
County Relief Board.
It is to be hoped, however, that out of our experience in
this crisis may come an increased determination to build in
every county a permanent organization, perhaps a county
department of welfare, which shall carry on in the whole
field of public relief and welfare the tradition of competent,
disinterested and nonpartisan service which bids fair to
grow out of this unemployment-relief administration.
CTbe Place of Private Agencies. Where, in this pic-
• ture of comprehensive public service, is the place
reserved for those private philanthropists and agencies
who have so long held the front lines while our public re-
serves were slowly being mobilized?
If they are freed from the impossible burden of carrying
the community's whole relief responsibility, they can per-
form their own logical functions with clearer vision and
intensified power. First, they will explore the causes and
discover new methods of treatment of needs and problems
that, complicate all forms of economic disability. The inten-
sive application of individualized study and treatment to
these personal needs, requiring a flexibility not readily
developed in a public agency, limited by uniform rules of
eligibility and procedure, offers a wide field for the in-
definite future. Second, experimentation and pathfinding
in the handling of less specialized problems, and the test-
ing of methods applicable to the general services of a public
agency, will lay the foundation of further steady progress.
Third, in the field of relief itself, they will give supple-
mentary help among families in which economic security on
a minimum level is not sufficient to sustain adequate social
adjustment, — families, for instance, in which their whole
culture and status in their group requires specific expendi-
tures not generally deemed essential; families in which
health factors require special attention, or where special
educational opportunity may release gifts of real conse-
quence to the individual and the community. Finally, there
will be that watchful and helpful cooperation with public
authorities which stimulates both private thinking and
public planning in the social field.
D Sources of Funds: This program of relief obviously
• depends upon the provision of increased funds.
From what sources can they be derived? There is but one
source, at present, from which the great bulk of relief funds
can be provided, namely the federal government. The
continuation of federal appropriations, on a larger scale
than ever, is indispensable and inevitable. Furthermore,
140
THE SURVEY
March L
they should be definite grants, not loans, and should be dis-
tributed on the basis of objective criteria of need among all
the states.
Among the decisive reasons for imposing the greater
part of the burden upon the federal government are these
two: Its borrowing power is still entirely adequate to meet
the need, while most local governments and many states,
including our own, have reached or nearly approached the
limit of their borrowing capacity under constitutional
restrictions or otherwise. The federal government also
has the advantage of an established graduated income-tax
system, which distributes the burden of carrying and pay-
ing this debt where it can be most readily borne, without
imposing undue restrictions upon business recovery. Real
and personal property, the main sources of local govern-
mental revenues, are uncertain, often unfair, and at
present totally inadequate bases of taxation. General sales
taxes, which tend to restrict purchases just when expansion
of business is most needed, and which bear with undue
severity upon the relatively impecunious taxpayer, are not
soundly adapted to the present purpose.
The state should carry a substantial part of the burden,
and will doubtless be compelled to do so, if it is to receive
its share of federal funds. Substantial increases in the
higher brackets of the inheritance tax, sound economies in
general administration, and the continuance of emergency
taxation, including the sales tax if necessary, coupled with
the possible use of some surplus funds earmarked by present
law for special purposes, may meet the state's minimum
obligation, as the basis of federal appropriations. This sum
required may reach well beyond $80,000,000 for the coming
biennium. For the future, however, Pennsylvania should
place itself promptly, by constitutional amendment, in a
position to impose a graduated income tax, so that it may be
ready to take up the permanent burden when the national
government lays it down after the emergency.
The local community should accept a fair share of the
burden, if for no other reason than to insure a full sense of
responsibility for careful and economical administration
and a lively appreciation of the practical problems involved.
It is unfortunate that Philadelphia's financial plight at this
moment apparently precludes the discharge of this proper
obligation in full.
The decisive consideration at the moment, however, is
the imperative need for additional funds. Any productive
tax, imposed by any taxing authority, is better than none.
The use of government credit for this purpose, whether by
nation, state or locality, in any amount indispensably
required, is justified, if tax revenues do not suffice. Carefully
planned experiments in the use of self-liquidating scrip,
as a temporary substitute for cash funds in the payment of
at least some portions of relief, deserve careful considera-
tion, if all other sources prove inadequate.
II. Public Works
OFTEN confused with relief, especially work-relief, but
essentially distinct from it and requiring its own
careful organization and administration, is the program of
expanded public works in a period of economic depression.
Aside from its importance as a device for stabilizing and
maintaining normal business, it has a definite value as a
means of providing employment for a part of those thrown
out of work by the decline of private undertakings.
It has been carefully estimated, on the basis of extensive
studies of actual necessary expenditures by local, state
federal governments over extended periods, that by
advance planning of normal construction needs and by
thoughtful timing of activities and required expenditu
so that the volume of public construction may v
inversely with the volume of private construction,
proximately 10 percent of those who are unemployed
city like Philadelphia could have been furnished emp!
ment in such projects.
Three conditions are prerequisites for the succes
operation of such a plan, none of which have existed in
present emergency. First, there must be really long-ra
planning. Public-works projects cannot be improvisec
a crisis, without great waste and delay fatal to their
fectiveness for the purpose under discussion. Not a
should the main items of such a program be determinec
advance, but the actual engineering and business det
should be advanced just as far as possible to the pc
where, when the need arises, operations can begin. To t
end public-works construction and preparation, in e
unit of government, should be centralized under the dii
supervision of a single adequately equipped authority.
Second, there must be advance provision of means
financing projects when undertaken. The most satisfact
method of making this provision is by the reservatior
borrowing power. If, in times of prosperity, the indebt
ness of governmental units shall be reduced, through
imposition of adequate taxes, which will not at si
times unduly burden the taxpayer or retard business,
government will be able to borrow on favorable terms
times of emergency, to pay the cost of necessary and se
iceable public works.
Third, authority to determine the timing of the execut
of the items of the long-range program must be c
centrated in the hands of a competent, non-politi
executive agency. Under our system of legislative repres
tation, the temptation to expend available funds
benefits to local constituencies, that can be attributed
the energy and influence of political representatives,
almost irresistible. Under this "log-rolling" or "po
barrel" system, long-range planning is hampered; use
distribution of public works according to need, either fr
the long-range or the emergency point of view, is
possible; timing of projects to meet the swing of econor
activities is effectually prevented, and only by chance c
the financial reserves for a flexible program of construct
be assured. It is absolutely essential to this whole progra
therefore, that the legislative body, in city, state and
tion, shall delegate to a responsible executive board
ultimate power to determine the timing of these projec
while reserving to itself the decision as to the extent a
content of the program as a whole.
III. Unemployment Reserves
BUT all forms of relief so far referred to are at b
relatively poor substitutes for continuity of incon
based on service, which is the essential condition of e<
nomic and social security for the individual and of sta
economic activity for the community. These conditic
can be much more nearly realized through unemployrm
reserves than by any other means. It is now too late
us to reap the benefit of such reserves in the pres«
emergency, but we should begin now to make provisi
for the future.
\rch 1933
THE SURVEY
141
Ve have passed beyond the time when it is necessary to
ue at length in behalf of this reasonable protection of
human factor in industry, as we customarily protect
nt, machinery and invested capital against the de-
ciation consequent upon enforced idleness,
ignificant experiments have been made by a number of
ividuals and corporations in America, not only indica-
; of a wider sense of the social responsibility of industry
also immensely instructive in clarifying all the prob-
s involved. The continuance and expansion of these
eriments in voluntary unemployment reserves will
tribute further to public knowledge and interest, and
add directly to the security and well-being of increased
nbers of persons engaged in industry.
lut it is obvious that these isolated and partial voluntary
rts, at the present or prospective rate of progress,
not adequately meet the problem. Not only do they
er only scattered fragments of the field of industrial
loyment, while the whole area should be equally
tected; they are themselves somewhat limited and
eatened by competition in the open market with con-
ns that do not withdraw any part of the working capital
profits for this social use.
Vhat is needed, to make the unemployment-reserve
nciple effective, is its adoption and operation over the
al economic area within which it can be feasibly ad-
nistered. This can best be achieved by compulsory
ablishment of unemployment reserves, under govern-
•nt sanction and administration, with basic requirements
jaranteeing certain minimums of protection and service,
ft with sufficient flexibility to be adaptable to the special
editions of different industries and sections.
It would probably be wise, if it were practically possible,
(exercise the power of the federal government to this end,
ice economic competition is in the national arena, and
:ly action over that wide area can wholly equalize the
nditions of that competition. But it is generally conceded
at the federal government under existing constitutional
•strictions, cannot take the full responsibility. For the
esent, at least, we must look to the states, under their
oad police power, for initiative.
While the difficulties of determining the details of an
uitable plan are enormous, they are not insuperable, if
: bear in mind certain fundamental considerations:
These purely industrial reserves should only be expected
mitigate the shock of unemployment for a limited pe-
)d, beyond which the burden necessarily becomes a
cial one, to be borne by the community as a whole,
rough separate relief funds derived chiefly from taxation
d administered on principles we have already outlined.
A plan for reserves must be so devised as to give in-
istrial management inducement to prevent unemploy-
:ent, but must not unduly penalize industries entrapped
circumstances beyond individual control tending to
•oduce abnormally wide fluctuations. 3. The worker must
: provided with every incentive to seek reemployment and
'i reestablish permanent earning capacity. Reasonable
obility of labor without loss of benefit must therefore be
emitted. 4. Security, impartiality and efficiency in
iministration must be guaranteed from the beginning,
y wise exercise of state authority, but growth and change,
i the light of experience, must also be anticipated, and
:iitable administrative flexibility provided in advance.
. Room must be left for voluntary experimentation by
nployers, but subject to certain standards adequately
protected by governmental inspection and supervision.
Pooled state-wide reserves, administered by the state,
are generally favored by students of the problem, in
preference to separate reserves of particular industries or
groups of industries. Such pooling of reserves increases the
security of the protection by spreading the burden; it
permits greater mobility of labor from section to section
and from trade to trade; it reduces administrative costs.
However, we clearly recognize the ready adaptability of
the individual plant reserves to American conditions. As
between those two methods there is no necessity for a
dogmatic attitude. Either should be encouraged in states
where there is a chance of immediate success.
If the system of pooled reserves is adopted, however,
there must be some method of merit rating, in order that
efficient, social-minded management, resulting in stabiliza-
tion of employment, may be encouraged and rewarded, and
the contrary may be discouraged and penalized. It is
probable that in Pennsylvania some provision must be
made for certain separate classifications in special in-
dustries, in order that the special hazards and handicaps
they face in competition may not be intensified, and that
the excessive burdens of unemployment which these con-
ditions impose upon the state may be equitably borne.
While it may be logically contended that in the long run
industry and the consumer should carry the whole burden,
there are sound practical reasons for asking employes to
make a contribution to the fund, at least at its beginning.
On this basis the fund will accumulate more rapidly than
it would do under any conceivably feasible contributions
by employers alone. These larger funds will permit in-
creased amounts and longer duration of benefits available.
Above all, perhaps, the contributory plan will insure,
through the cultivation of an attitude of partnership and
joint responsibility, a fair and careful administration,
under the watchful eye of both parties. Contributions by
employer and employe, respectively, of about 2 percent
and i percent of the payroll, it is estimated, would es-
tablish a fund adequate to bear the anticipated burden
falling upon it.
The essential conditions of eligibility and extent of
benefit in any state must be subject to more thorough
studies of the special conditions in that state, such as the
State Committee on Workers' Security will doubtless
report. Certain elements can, however, be predicted in
general terms. A reasonable length of service in a given
employment will be a requisite for participation in the
benefits. Certain groups of workers, at least at the be-
ginning, will probably have to be excluded entirely, owing
to the difficulty and expense of administration, such as
domestic servants, casual laborers and probably agricul-
tural workers. A reasonable waiting period, of two or three
weeks of total unemployment or four to six weeks of partial
unemployment, between stoppage of work and payment of
benefit, can be justifiably established, both for administra-
tive reasons and as a reasonable inducement for personal
effort promptly to obtain reemployment. Obviously,
voluntary withdrawal from employment, either by in-
dividual or collective action, cannot be compensated by
payments from these reserves, but others unemployed
must not be compelled to accept proffered work in a plant
where industrial conflict has caused voluntary withdrawal.
Benefits should be roughly proportionate to length of
service and to average weekly earnings, the weekly benefit
being equal to a half to two thirds of the weekly wage,
142
THE SURVEY
March 1
over a period ranging from three to six months according
to length of previous employment, up to a reasonable
maximum. There must be adequate public machinery for
determining eligibility and to insure fair and impartial
protection of all interests in doubtful cases.
While the conditions of eligibility, coverage and extent of
benefit must depend upon the rate of accumulation of the
fund, if it is to remain solvent, in determining the rate of
contribution consideration should be given to the obvious
fact that the wider and more extensive the protection, the
more fully will the values of the reserve principle be real-
ized, in its promotion of the welfare of both individual and
community.
The custody and administration of the fund should be in
the hands of an independent state commission, closely
related to the public-employment service, with its widely
distributed facilities for registration of the unemployed
and for the discovery of potential opportunities for work.
It should also be in close contact with the employment
statistical service and with other authorities in contact
with employers and workers. It should therefore pre-
sumably be associated with, but not an autonomous part
of, the Department of Labor and Industry of the State.
We suggest that the present legislature establish the
general framework of principles and organization along
these lines, creating the permanent state commission, to
lay the foundation of administration machinery, but
deferring the operation of the plan itself until 1935, allow-
ing the administrative commission the intervening time to
gather the data upon which the detail of the program can
be definitely confirmed at the next legislative session.
Though the state must take this initial and main re-
sponsibility, the federal government has a highly important
function to discharge at once. By the extension of the
present income-tax exemptions allowed for corporate
contributions to unemployment reserve funds, it can
effectually remove whatever unfavorable handicap is borne
in national competition by employers in states that have
accepted this social program. A further important role
awaits the federal government in its active leadership and
participation in an integrated federal-state employment
exchange service.
Unemployment is only one of the potentially insurable
hazards to which workers in modern life are exposed, and
whose possible consequences involve large social costs.
Insofar as we can systematically provide reserves against
contingent costs of all these hazards — such as illness, the
disabilities of old age, the costs and perils of maternity,
perhaps, ultimately, of widowhood — just so far have we
strengthened the total security of the individual and there-
fore the welfare of the community.
The satisfactory introduction and operation of unem-
ployment or any other social insurance, depends in con-
siderable measure upon the development alongside of it of
adequate provision for equally certain relief of those who
are not eligible for this protection from industrial reserves,
or whose claim to its benefit has expired. Industrial re-
serves and relief must be so related to each other as to
permit the prompt and easy movement of individuals,
according to their changing circumstances, from the pro-
tection of one to the care of the other, without delay or
loss. And beyond both, through the promotion of coopera-
tion with private social agencies, supplemental relief should
be readily available to those who need it. Without these
protections against the pressure of excessive relief needs
upon the limited resources of the reserve funds, the vi
of the insurance principle and its preservation under spe
strain, may easily be sacrificed.
IV. Public Employment Exchange
PUBLIC employment agencies play their part in
treatment of unemployment at very important poii
They are centers of information as to the supply ;
demand of labor, both in the local community and e
where, and can therefore reduce the duration of une
ployment for the individual and eliminate useless ;
costly travel in search of work. They are a ready mean;
registration of the unemployed, which, with the introd
tion of unemployment insurance, can be almost comple
They constitute the logical basic mechanism for effect
administration of unemployment insurance, by afford
the means of offering the alternative of appropriate wo
before the individual becomes entitled to insurance be
fits. Through expert knowledge of adaptable skills a
study of occupational trends, they can assist in the repla
ment and guide the retraining of workers displaced
technological changes, or by removal, decline or death
particular industries, and also help in promoting effect
vocational guidance and training in the public schoc
They can cooperate with public works and work-re
agencies in the selection and referral of workers competf
to serve in particular projects. Finally, they may be
powerful force in sustaining the morale of the individi
unemployed person, by affording one appropriate s]
where he, as an individual person, has a perfect right
be, and where he can verify or correct his own limited
distorted impression of the situation which engulfs hi
Obviously, employment agencies cannot manufacti
jobs where none exist, nor can they render their m«
valuable services in an emergency unless they are prepar
by successful operation in normal times to have the cc
fidence of employer and worker, to have accumulated da
and experience concerning employment problems a
trends, and to acquire the organization and the spec
skills for dealing with both employer and worker on
individual, understanding basis, with sound vocatior
guidance going hand in hand with placement. The u
building of a nation-wide system of adequately equipp
employment offices is one of the imperative needs of t
immediate future in America. To that end it is importa
that concerted efforts be renewed to found such a systei
under state direction, with federal cooperation and suppc
directed to coordination, standardization, regional servi
uniform statistical reports, along with suggestive
perimentation.
While such a complete public employment exchan
system is the ideal toward which we must strive, priva
commercial agencies will long survive. We must, therefo
protect that service against the possible corruption a
waste which have sometimes marked its operations,
strengthening the license laws, giving the state adequa
authority to set standards and to refuse and revoke
censes, increasing the bond required as assurance of faith
performance of function.
Nonprofit-making employment bureaus, conducted u:
der the responsible auspices of business and profession
associations, can serve a useful end in specialized fielc
where training, research and experimentation need to
emphasized. It should be an important part of the task
rch 1933
THE SURVEY
143
public agency to assist in the development of useful
tual relationships among these agencies and to in-
rate their services with the more general ones of the
}lic agency.
statement of the problem of vocational guidance and
cement as a factor in the treatment of unemployment
aid be complete without emphatic reference to the needj
al in times of economic stress, for the continued exercise
i advancement of special skills which may otherwise
ste utterly away through disuse. The loss of earning
jver is by no means negligible. Fully as important is the
ritual wound it may leave, in the frustration of cherished
crests and hopes. Centers of voluntary occupation,
ining and retraining, for the cultivation of vocational
i avocational skills, with adequate provision for personal
inseling and for individual help in finding a market for
:cial abilities, are a valuable link in the chain of services
t should be open to the unemployed in time of depres-
n as in normal times.
V. Unemployment Statistics
' is clear that all these activities, if they are to be timed
and adjusted to current needs, depend upon the sys-
natic collection and dissemination of dependable facts
out unemployment. It is plain that the statistics must
(i) current, that is, gathered quickly enough and at
rt enough intervals to reflect rapidly changing condi-
ns. They must be (2) accurate. They must be (3) com-
bensive, that is, covering the largest possible portion
the total employment area, both geographical and oc-
iational. They must be (4) continuous and cumulative,
nng a sound basis of comparison from time to time and
m place to place, in order that emerging trends may be
mptly identified. They must be (5) promptly available,
order that appropriate action may follow directly upon
erved needs.
'hiladelphia is peculiarly fortunate in the quality of the
tistical service devoted to this problem. Through the
deral Reserve Bank we have dependable monthly and
mulative figures covering employment facts on a thor-
ighly representative basis in substantially four fifths of
i the different occupational fields in this state. Through
e Industrial Research Department; of the Wharton
•hool of Commerce of the University of Pennsylvania,
; have the results of careful periodic surveys of actual
lemployment in a large number of typical Philadelphia
stricts, from which fairly reliable conclusions can be
•awn as to the total volume and character of unemploy-
ent in the city. Together, these surveys of employment
id unemployment afford a reasonably satisfactory index
' the whole situation, though there remains a certain
argin of unavoidable error.
Until some form of unemployment insurance requires
ic registration of all the unemployed, we must continue
• rely upon the voluntary cooperation of reporting firms,
ipplemented and checked by periodic censuses and sur-
;ys to prevent the accumulation of error. The present
:ed is for the extension of such services over a steadily
idening area.
Since, under any plan of long-time treatment of unem-
:loyment, the federal government must carry certain
nancial and administrative responsibilities, dependent
Ipon definite knowledge of conditions throughout the
:>untry, it is essential that it shall establish a clearing
center for employment data on a nation-wide scale. The
Bureau of Labor Statistics, in the federal Department of
Labor, has recently been empowered by Congress to
gather comprehensive statistics, though it has not received
an appropriation adequate for this purpose. It is imperative
that such an appropriation be granted at the earliest pos-
sible moment, and that under trained and skilled leader-
ship, with adequate competent staff, the Bureau seek to
meet the full needs of the situation. In that event, it is to
be expected that the services and results of satisfactory
private and public agencies, wherever they exist, will be
fully utilized and not duplicated, but that the Bureau
itself shall have the initiative to fill in the gaps where no
adequate service is now available.
In the absence of such complete data, even for our own
state as a whole, on which correct estimates of unemploy-
ment, for the purpose of allocating relief funds, can be
based, it is highly desirable if not essential to undertake at
once a complete census of unemployment in Pennsylvania
urban areas. Such a census at this time could be used as an
unemployment work-relief project. There are large numbers
of capable, well-trained clerical and professional workers
out of work and in dire need, to whom such a project
offers, along with its material compensation, the important
value of constructive public service in which their own
skills are appreciated and used. This is one point at which
so-called "made work" can be introduced without serious
difficulty or excessive cost, without any potential inter-
ference with normal economic processes, and with enor-
mous practical advantage to the community.
The one necessary condition for the success of such a
project is, of course, its total divorce from politics. The
selection of a director for the entire state, equipped by
special experience in the conduct of such surveys and
empowered to appoint regional assistants, would insure
impartial and scientific central administration. The
director and his assistants would then appoint and briefly
train some three thousand local supervisors and enumera-
tors, from among competent unemployed citizens. This
force could complete the whole census, we are reliably
informed, for a total expenditure of not over $125,000.
Such an investment, to insure equitable distribution of
these vast funds, is a measure of true economy.
A Seven-Point Program
THIS, then, is the skeleton outline of a community
program for the long-view treatment of unemploy-
ment.
The program is by no means Utopian in spirit or content.
There is real hope and promise of its realization, in es-
sentials, in the not distant future.
But we are living in the tragic moment of a crisis. We
cannot wait for the orderly consummation of a perfectly
balanced program, while 'men, women and children suffer
agonies of privation and fear all about us. What can be
done now?
We urge:
First, the enactment of the pending Costigan-LaFollette
amendment to the Reconstruction Finance Corporation
Act, carrying direct appropriations of at least 1500,000,000
for immediate use by the states.
Second, with these funds, and all that state and city
can add to them, the immediate increase of relief allowance
kLANNED primarily to train col-
lege graduates for positions in
social work, the curriculum also offers
social workers of experience oppor-
tunity to broaden the scope of their
professional knowledge. An
announcement of courses
will be mailed upon
request.
The
Yor)^ School of Social Wor)(
133 East Twenty-Second Street
New Vorfe
College
gxijaol of feoctal
Professional Training in
Medical Social Work, Psychiatric Social
Work, Family Welfare, Child Welfare,
Community Work
Leading to the degree of B.S. and M.S.
•
Address: THE DIRECTOR
18 Somerset Street Boston, Massachusetts
THE PENNSYLVANIA SCHOOL OF
SOCIAL AND HEALTH WORK
Two-year program of graduate training for principal fields
of Social Work.
311 So. Juniper Street
Philadelphia
to include the payment of rent, at least sufficient to cot
taxes and upkeep of homes.
'Third, that the present separate relief organization
state and locality, namely, the State Emergency Rel
Board and the County Relief Boards, be permanen
established by the legislature at once, and assured
adequate means to carry on after March 31, when t
present appropriations expire.
Fourth, that relief be supplied partly in cash as a mea
of giving families greater flexibility in managing their o'
affairs and enabling them to provide in part for necessit
not covered in the food-order system.
Fifth, that the facilities of libraries, museums, recreati
centers and educational institutions be maintained at f
capacity, as far as practicable using the services of the
now idle who are equipped with special skills useful
these activities.
Sixth, that every effort be made to strengthen the pub
employment system in Pennsylvania.
Seventh, that the foundation of an unemployment
serve or insurance system in Pennsylvania be establish
at the present session of the legislature.
COMMUNICATIONS
(Continued from page 132)
Milk is being distributed to needy children, and the rel
agencies pay an average of eight cents a quart to the deale
while local farmers sell for about two cents a quart. Road work
the only source of income in many families, two days a week t
limit except for foremen. Even for that work, it is said to
helpful to have the right (?) political affiliations or friends. Pric
of farm products are the lowest since the Civil War, busim
is stagnant, factories idle; a contractor doing a big business for
small town, employing some twenty men two years ago, m
has laid off all his help and is working as a foreman on the sta
road.
My professional training has not been able to get me a pay!
job — "we do not want any women over thirty-five," and I ha
passed fifty. Practising physicians and dentists are living
credit, and poorly at that, nurses are out of work. So I am havii
a taste of what real farmers experience as to income. I can n
afford to give volunteer services, as the price of gasoline to j
to the nearest agencies is prohibitive and even next month
grocery bill has to be carefully budgeted. Into this situation T.
Survey comes like a welcome old friend, bringing to me, w
cannot take any part in the active social work, the touch wi
what my comrades in the field are doing. M.
Back-road Circulation
To THE EDITOR: I have enjoyed The Survey, especially the illu
trations. Not one of the numbers has been neglected after tl
family has read it. The copies have all gone into further circu
don, some abroad, and others to the doctor in the small count
town where I was born, and he distributes them among his co
valescent patients in the back-country roads where readii
matter is not plentiful. I have always saved for him anythir
that came my way, for I know he has great pleasure in givi
away reading matter, clothes and anything we can spare.
Springfield, Mass. ADELAIDE C. WELCK
(In answering advertisements please mention THE SURVEY)
144
"HT*
-Hi/
ol. LX1X. No. 4
MONTHLY
April 1933
CONTENTS
RONTISP1ECE.
DCIAL WORKERS IN A CHANGING WORLD
William Hodson
ROM ALMS TO WELFARE ................ Ruth R. Lerrigo
iCURITY ............................... Albert C. Milbank
A'APPING HORSES IN A FLOOD ........ Gertrude Springer
TORE RELIEF INCLUDES MEDICAL CARE
//. Jackson Davis, M.D.
RE SOCIAL WORKERS POLICEMEN ? ....... : ...... G. S.
ULL-TIME WITH OVERTIME ........... -inne Roller Issler
3MMON WELFARE ....................................
JCIAL PRACTICE ......................................
EALTH .................................................
JDUSTRY ...............................................
3UCATION .............................................
SJEMPLOYMENT AND COMMUNITY ACTION. .
X)KS.
MMUNICATIONS.
)SSIP. . .
147
149
151
153
155
1 56
158
159
161
163
165
166
168
'75
Files of The Survey will be found in public and college libraries. All
ues are indexed in the Readers' Guide to Periodical Literature. Ask
: Librarian.
SURVEY ASSOCIATES, INC.
Publication Office, 10 Ferry Street, Concord, N. H.
ntral Office, 1 1 1 East 19 Street, New York, to which all correspondence
should be addressed.
THE SURVEY— Monthly— $3.00 a Year
SURVEY GRAPHIC— Monthly— $3.00 a Year
-ucius R. EASTMAN, president; JULIAN W. MACK, JOSEPH P. CHAM-
ULAIN, JOHN PALMER GAVIT, vice-presidents; ANN REED BRENNER,
iretary; ARTHUR KELLOGG, treasurer.
'AUL U. KELLOGG, editor.
ARTHUR KELLOGG, managing editor; MARY Ross, KEULAH AMIDON,
ION WHIPPLE, JOHN PALMER GAVIT, LOULA D. LASKER, FLORENCE
IEB KELLOGG, GERTRUDE SPRINGER, associate editors.
IDWARD T. DEVINE, GRAHAM TAYLOR, JANE ADDAMS, JOSEPH K.
1 RT, HAVEN EMERSON, M.D., ROBERT W. BRUERE, contributing editors.
COLLIE CONDON, circulation manager; MARY R. ANDERSON, advertising
i ntfer.
SO THEY SAY
In designing an orphan asylum I got some of my best ideas from
a chambermaid. — Henry Dubin, architect, Chicago.
The white man knows how to make everything but he does not
know how to distribute it. — Chief Sitting Bull, 1885.
Democracy pays an enormous price for traditions that have
outlived their usefulness. — Catholic Charities Review.
What the world needs in economic warfare is unanimous con-
scientious objection. — F. P. A. in New York Herald Tribune.
We must somehow produce children who will develop into
grown-ups utterly different from us. — Lincoln Steffens, California.
Children already know more about gangsters than their parents
do. — LeRoy E. Bowman, National Board of Review of Motion
Pictures.
Technocracy is like a comet that has swept across our economic
skies. We are not sure if it will ever come again. — John Kennedy,
Providence, R. I.
We have learned that you cannot beat virtue into an individual
nor beat vice out of him. — Bernard J. Pagan, New Tork State
parole commissioner.
If industries are to use modern tools and machinery they must
also use modern principles and channels of distribution. — William
Green, American Federation of Labor.
We may as well realize that if we ever could afford the luxury
of a purely denominationally planned Christian program we can-
not afford it now. — Albert W. Beaven, president, Federal Council of
Cburcbei.
If we can stand off and realize that the world is at least as
"haywire" as we are we may be less inclined to convict either the
world or ourselves of malice or of guilt. — Prof. Thomas D. Eliot,
Northwestern University.
We have been viewing industry upside down. The only object of
primitive industry was to furnish a livelihood for the worker.
That should be the primary object and obligation of industry
today. — Donald R. Richberg, Chicago.
So much money has been diverted from creative types of ac-
tivity in order to pay for the mistakes of a shaky civilization that
we are in danger of trying merely to mop up after our past without
providing any better future. — George Soule, New Tork.
All our historical American shibboleths about equality of op-
portunity are tested in their sincerity, not on the Fourth of July,
but when we come to make the budget of a community or a com-
monwealth.— Frank P. Graham, University of North Carolina.
An altogether too popular pastime of the American people is
sitting on the bleachers as far as international policy is concerned.
Altogether too many are not interested in the game; altogether
too many are interested in criticism. — Mary E. Woolley, president,
Mt. Holyoke College.
The county carpenters have scarcely been able to fill requests
for coffins as fast as they come in. Lack of medical care, insufficient
food and bedding with improper housing are the large factors in
the death rate. — Winnifred Wey Wencke, Quaker relief worker,
Logan, West Virginia.
When it is clearly understood that the higher education has as
its dominant aim the training of educated gentlefolk and not
merely the production of more or less intellectually trained bar-
barians, we shall begin to make progress. — President Nicholas
Murray Butler, Columbia University.
Teachers must abandon their shabby tolerance of liberalism
which straddles the fence in defense of an outworn price system
and which looks for a man on horseback when what it really wants
is a moron on a jackass. — Howard Scott, "Chief Technocrat," to
Department of Superintendence, National Education Association.
Civic organizations ought to guide their actions with respect
to schools from the broad fundamental policy that the schools are
not employment agencies . . . and are not created primarily for
children, but that they are really created for the welfare of society
of which children will become members. — Howard W. Nudd, di-
rector, Public Education Association, New Tork.
Knott in The Dallas News
April
'933
Volume LXIX
No. 4
Social Workers in a Changing World
A Four-Point Program for Those Who Follow the Pioneers
By WILLIAM HODSON
Executive Director the Welfare Council of New York City
HE changing trends in our industrial and social
life are gradually being defined and clarified as the
depression has abruptly focussed the thinking of
:he American people upon their national destiny. We are
shifting from individualism as a way of life to collectivism
is a basis of social organization; from the pioneering, ex-
ploiting methods ot America in the processes of coloniza-
:ion and settlement to a cooperative way of life in America
vhose free land is gone and whose people become more
nterdependent as cities grow and agriculture yields to
ndustry; from too great an insistence upon the ways and
neans of profit to the ideals of public welfare and more
videspread human happiness; from an economic system
vhich has been too frequently the sport of a few to gamble
or their own advantage, to an economic system which
:eeks to provide for the ordinary man and woman the
iccessities of life, security and satisfactions.
In the same way the pressure of events seems to make
iccessary and inevitable the collective approach to our
ocial and health problems and to the methods we have
levised for meeting them. Thus far social work has been
ndividualistic in conception and development. It has
;rown upon the experimental principle rather than as a
ictwork of organizations based upon a community plan
.nd with common objectives arrived at by common consent
nd executed by concerted action. The various forms of
ocial and health work and its differing auspices, both
mblic and private, have grown out of the ideals and
spirations of many groups, religious, racial, fraternal and
ion-sectarian. Where, in a particular community, there
•ecame evident the need for family aid, or care for children,
>r care for the aged, or the development of health activi-
ies, of recreation, and of character-building the pioneers in
ur field in many different groups have recognized those
needs as they saw them in a particular place and at a
particular time and have created a wide variety of instru-
mentalities for human service.
It was inevitable that this should have been the course of
growth in a new country in the process of finding itself and
of establishing its institutions which, in the nature of
things, could not have been foreordained. The variety of
human needs arising out of our transition from an agri-
cultural to an urban life created problems which had to be
met by the trial-and-error method and through wide
experimentation. There could not have been a master plan
which would provide the types of social and health services
which people in every community needed, nor could there
have been a uniform scheme of organization for the admin-
istration of social work either under public or private
auspices. Now, however, the question arises as to whether
social work, like industry, is out of its pioneering and
experimental stages. Out of the experience of the past we
recognize more clearly what people need and how to meet
that need.
There is a growing tendency to measure our present
social welfare and health resources against the background
of the total social problem. There is more pressure to
define the respective spheres of public and voluntary effort
and, with our depleted national income, to determine how
much social and health service we can pay for. We are
being pressed to revive the hopes of men in the mass for
security and happiness and to devise community-wide
plans for social work which will integrate the efforts of
public and private organizations to that end. Within a
limited area, councils of social agencies and community
chests, with varying degrees of success, have made a
beginning but the signs of the times indicate that we are
on the threshold of cooperative effort on a scale unprec-!
147
148
THE SURVEY
April 193
edented in the past. The overwhelming difficulties of the
present emergency and the long-time problems which lie
ahead seem to call for a pooling of knowledge and effort
which will mobilize the contribution of every group and
organization toward common purposes. For some of our
ills, fundamental changes in the present order of things
seem inevitable, for others legislation will help and the
impetus already given to the establishment of unemploy-
ment reserves, health protection and other forms of social
insurance, bears testimony to an awakened public con-
science. While organized social work has a stake and a duty
in all this, we are here concerned, primarily, with the
proper integration of social services as such.
THE breakdown of the industrial system has sharpened
and dramatized on a huge scale the weaknesses of the
present order. We have substituted to a considerable
extent a relief economy for an industrial economy with
the result that standards of living have fallen and we find
ourselves struggling at every point to meet the creature
necessities of life. In spite of the heroic service rendered by
social workers and socially-minded citizens against great
odds, it has not been possible to substitute charity for the
pay envelope. Our temporary relief measures have fre-
quently been inadequate. It has been difficult to find
enough money to provide food and shelter and often there
have been painful delays in getting assistance to those
who are in need.
The present so-called "temporary" emergency is assum-
ing a somewhat permanent character. It may be years be-
fore the fever of unemployment has left the body politic
and there must follow the long period of convalescence.
What will be the effect upon the morale of the workman
who has lived for months or years without work and with
relief as his only means of subsistence? It will take years of
painful readjustment before men can attain their former
standards of industrial efficiency after long periods of
idleness. Moreover, if the present trends are a sound indi-
cation of what may be expected in the future the work-span
will be reduced and work will be increasingly difficult to
secure in the later periods of the life of the individual. We
are told that the volume of production in the days of our
prosperity greatly exceeded the volume which can be
attained when a new day has dawned, and that many who
have heretofore maintained themselves by labor will never
have a job again.
These are but a few of the more obvious problems of
human welfare which have already made themselves evi-
dent— problems which must be dealt with on many fronts.
Social service organizations are the "residuary legatees"
of the failure of our civilization to function as it ought.
They have a specific task to perform which no one agency
can perform alone nor can many agencies working sep-
arately. What is clearly called for is a planned social welfare
economy. What are some of the elements in planning for
social welfare?
1 There must be a clear recognition on the part of the
• leaders of social work, in every field, of the necessity
for collective action through voluntary cooperation. Such
a state of mind is not always easy to achieve because of the
individualistic traditions of social work itself, as already
suggested. Robert W. deForest once put the nub of the
matter in the following language: "Cooperation in welfare
work is primarily a state of mind, a desire to use all of the
resources of the community for the public good. N>
amount of machinery for cooperation can produce helpfi
cooperation without that state of mind."
Cooperation in its true sense means the fulfillment of th
purposes of the individual and of the separate organizatio
through the fulfillment of common purposes and objective,
toward which all contribute as their capacity and exper
ence make possible. Real cooperation is without compu
sion but it involves a measure of control by "deliberate an
thoughtful processes dominated by mutual give and take.
If this process means anything, it means much more tha
friendly luncheon conferences and easy acquiescence abou
unimportant things. Effective cooperation often means
re-education of the cooperators with modifications c
attitudes, emotions and customary habits of thought — i
short a kind of re-orientation. There must be a disciplin
which can withstand the shocks of fundamental disagree
ment and find other channels for promoting the
will.
2 A state of mind must have means of expression ii
• action if socially useful results are to be obtained
Some machinery for collective thought and action must b
provided in every community. The machinery set up mus
obviously be representative of the major interests am
groups in social work with the service of an adequate am
competent staff. It must be democratically organized am
free of external controls, whether those controls be mone1
or the power of individuals who are not responsive to th<
deliberate processes of the group. Our councils of socia
agencies are the foundations on which to build but the)
will need to be strengthened and, perhaps, substantial!)
reorganized, in some places, to undertake planned actior
which is bold and constructive. A community which is no
fully conscious of its council's place in the scheme of things
will not readily look to it for leadership.
3 Once the mechanism is set up, it will be necessary tc
• analyze comprehensively the total needs of the peoplt
of any given community for social and health services anc
to survey critically the existing resources to meet thos<
needs. Research and fact-finding are indispensable. Hen
again considerable progress has already been made but ont
does not readily think of any city which has, as yet, r
comprehensive community-wide plan based upon sue!
imaginative stock-taking as will be called for in the future
A welfare program is not merely the sum total of all the
activity of all the organizations functioning in the field anj
more than an automobile is the sum total of all its parts
It is only as those parts are put together in a particulai
way that power and direction are assured. The vitality ol
a social-work program, when viewed as a whole, depends
quite as much upon effective inter-relationship and recog-
nized interdependence, as it does upon the efficiency ol
the individual organizations in their own fields.
4 Given the machinery for cooperation and the facts)
• necessary to produce enlightened plans, the problem:
then remains of securing the adoption of those plans andi
the necessary agreements for joint action in carrying them
out. So large a task of statesmanship obviously is not the
responsibility of the social workers alone. They must have
the backing and support of the community which means
that a council of social agencies is not merely a coordinating
center for the professional social workers representing their
April 1933
THE SURVEY
149
various organizations. There must be active participation
->n the part of public officials and board members of welfare
societies and on the part of the socially minded citizens
generally if enduring results are to be achieved. How to
integrate the thinking of laymen and professionals is a
troublesome question in social work as elsewhere. There
are some social workers who do not know how to work with
any but their brethren. There are a few board members
who do not want to deal with social workers because they
do not like them as individuals or as a group. The fact
remains that neither one can get along without the other.
In the main there is mutual respect and one clue to mutual
effort lies in a clearer definition of the specific contribution
which the technician and the layman can make to a partic-
ular problem together with a wise selection of time, place
and circumstance for the exchange of views.
There are at least three roads that may be traveled for
the future. We may go along in a more or less unplanned
and uncoordinated fashion, or we may seek, by one
method or another, more autocratic control over the ad-
ministration of social work. Between these two roads lies
cooperation which is not passive but dynamic in method
and result. We are met, at once, with the necessity for
steering between unwarranted invasion of the autonomy
and independence of individual organizations and the chaos
of unrelated, individual decisions independently arrived at.
It is not easy to achieve the disciplines which are necessary
to effective cooperative life because such living is giving
as well as taking, yielding as well as attacking. It means
exposing oneself to the influence of one's associates and of
accepting, now and again, the thinking of a group in
preference to one's own. It is a question of building upon
the loyalties to individual organizations, a concern for the
problem of the community as a whole, and of stimulating
a more searching examination of the extent to which each
of us makes his proper contribution to the group. There is
real tyranny in unplanned and uncoordinated living — it is
the tyranny of chance and uncertainty which makes men's
destiny the plaything of blind forces. There is tyranny,
likewise, in the dictatorship of men or groups whose
limitations of intelligence and understanding drive them to
control their fellowmen by regimentation and forced uni-
formity. Between the two lies a delicate balance between
the diverse needs of the individual and the common needs
of all. Unless we can harmonize the claims of men as in-
dividuals with those of men in the mass, in every aspect of
life, and find a way of accommodation that will satisfy
both, the outlook for social progress is not too promising.
From Alms to Welfare
Newark Reaches a New Goal in Public Case Work Under Civil Service
By RUTH R. LERRIGO
Field Staff of Survey Associates
CC
DON'T know much about what happened except
that the old Poor Overseer lost his job and a new
one got it," said the Keeper of the Morgue of The
Newark Evening News, pawing over the heap of 1930
clippings of the News' expose of the old Poor and Alms
Department. "But what I do know is a lot of families now
getting relief — and how they need it — and not a com-
plaint to make." Behind which simple view of an end re-
sult lies the tale of how public welfare in the largest city in
New Jersey about-faced in the midst of the depression.
From the most antiquated of poor-and-alms departments,
geared to the needs and practices of the 'go's, it has become
in two years a demonstration of what the right people
with the right ideas can do with a public agency, function-
ing under civil service, in a big industrial city.
What actually happened in 1930 to the Newark Poor and
Alms Department was not new legislation but new people
and a new philosophy. The law under which reorganization
was effected had been on the statute books since 1924, but
Newark hadn't bothered with it. The leaven of progressive
social thinking was not lacking in the city, but the leaven
had been slow in working. Back in 1918 Francis H. Mc-
Lean of the Family Welfare Association of America,
expert and authority in such matters, had been called in by
a determined group of citizens and social workers to make a
welfare survey of the community. From this grew the Wel-
fare Federation, Newark's coordinating agency for private
• social work, and a good deal of plain speaking for case work
; in the public department.
Came 1924 and the law making improvements possible.
But the time evidently was not ripe, for the Poor and Alms
Department remained in political shackles, doling out oc-
casional relief, — bread tickets, a dollar or two now and
then, an indiscriminate and skimpy coal order. Little or no
awareness was shown to differences in family needs and
none at all to case-work treatment. Cooperation with pri-
vate agencies was ignored as was any suggestion for train-
ing and skill as a qualification for workers.
Came 1930 with the old Poor and Alms Department
still keeping such records as it had in shoe-boxes, still with
one telephone and six cuspidors and its small staff spending
most of its time in the office. And then the deluge. The
surge of destitution which swept over the department in
1930 washed it out into full public view through the me-
dium of a journalistic investigation by the city's leading
newspaper. A host of abuses were exposed, to which, for
present purposes, there is no point in reverting.
The thought occurs that a faithful band of "insiders"
may have been biding its time awaiting just such an op-
portunity. Certainly from that point things moved fast and
in the right direction. Public opinion was aroused; the
public-welfare department was news, with the citizens
asking to be shown. Nevertheless this was a public amaz-
ingly uninformed as to the extent and degree of the growing
THERE is in social work scarcely any system
so bad but that it can be made to work well
if run by the right people in the right spirit; and
there is scarcely any system so good that it will
not work badly if run by the wrong people in the
wrong spirit. Joanna C, Colcord.
150
THE SURVEY
April 1933
community problem of unemployment distress. Relief was
still thought of in terms of chronic dependents. Investiga-
tion of need was de facto evidence of a cold heart.
In response to public demand City Commissioner Mur-
ray in charge of the Department of Public Works under
which the Poor and Alms Department functioned, ordered
a thorough investigation and study. The result was the
"Ellis report," a detailed and specific appraisal directed by
William J. Ellis of the State Department of Institutions
and Agencies, which told not only what was wrong but
what could be done about it.
Just here is where the right people came in and that long
time leaven actually worked. The new overseer, appointed
in February 1931 to undertake complete reorganization,
was Owen A. Malady, trained in the New York School of
Social Work, experienced in public welfare. To help him
with the extremely hazardous adventure of changing in
midstream from a horse to a high-powered motor-boat
came Mary P. Wheeler, experienced family welfare execu-
tive and teacher of case work, who agreed to loan herself
for an initial and extremely strenuous six months. Fortified
by the Ellis report and backed by the City Commissioners,
the firm of Malady, Wheeler & Co. embarked on the job of
overhauling the department at a time when the relief load
was pyramiding at the rate of about 400 percent a year.
The shoe-box files, the old-fashioned record forms and the
cuspidors were first to go out the window. Next, by the new
overseer's firm insistence on "transfers" to other duties in
the Department of Public Works a tactful elimination of
unsuitable personnel was effected.
Newark is, and was then, "on civil service." But civil-
service tests for the Poor and Alms Department were the
same tests by which the Department of Public Works got
its sewer inspectors, plumbers' helpers and so on. Mr.
Malady again stood firm, insisting that if he were to have a
reasonable chance to produce results he must specify the
qualifications for workers in his department. His firmness
was so effective that when, in June 1931, the first civil-
service test for the Department of Public Welfare was an-
nounced—by that time it had a new name — the qualifi-
cations were framed around social work with minimum
requirements and typical tasks calculated to discourage the
casual small-time political job-seeker. The result of this
first haul of the civil-service net was a new staff of teach-
able young workers, with varying degrees of experience,
but all good material with good educational background.
WITH an adequate office system and the makings of a
staff Malady, Wheeler & Co. were ready to go with a
three-point program of action.
First, a complete and prompt authentication of case
load. It was hoped to do this with trained workers loaned
from private agencies, but the over-burdened agencies
could not spare their people, so eight hand-picked police
officers were borrowed for the job of determining identity
and re-checking the needs of the entire list of those "on
the town." Queer things were turned up by this quick, but
on the whole effective investigation, the net result being
the removal of 946 cases from the relief roll representing a
weekly expenditure of about $4300.
Second, training the staff. This, together with careful
daily supervision, formed the big end of Miss Wheeler's
job. Weekly sessions of a training institute resulted in much
midnight oil burning over professional literature. Hours
of toil on Miss Wheeler's part produced new record forms
suited to the department's current problems and to the
quick and convenient appraisal of accomplishment. For the
first few months, stenographic help being out of the picture,
case-histories were written in long hand, after hours.
During all this time a continuing public interest demanded
to know results virtually as soon as the day's work ended.
The third point in the program is a long-time one, as long
as progress itself, — the organization and development of
case treatment with the best modern methods and tech-
niques. Efficient record systems, time-saving forms, con-
tinual and close supervision, new policies in administra-
tion, new standards in personnel, new cooperation with
private agencies, new approaches to public understanding,
are all a part of it.
THE problems of the reorganized Public Welfare Depart-
ment do not end with the establishment of case-
work treatment in the relief of families. Other important,
if currently less urgent activities, which had to be brought
along in the new set-up included the lodging house and em-
ployment bureau, the almshouse, camps for children,
certain medical services, pauper burials and the alimony
division which is credited with effecting some 1250 family
reconciliations in the first year after reorganization.
The latest news in the development of Newark's public
department is that nine top-notch case workers from pri-
vate agencies, chosen by Mr. Malady and on private agency
payrolls are to be loaned to the department to make possible
a more efficient decentralization of work through district
offices, each with an experienced supervisor and intake
secretary. Commenting on this demonstration of coopera-
tion between private and public agencies J. Isabelle Sims,
welfare director of the Newark Welfare Federation says:
It is obvious that it is practically impossible for a public de-.
partment to secure in times like these a sufficient number of
trained and experienced workers to meet the enormously in-
creased need for supervisors as well as for visitors. . . . We
believe that the new plan will be valuable to the workers as well
as to the work. It will give the private agency folk first-hand ex-
perience with the conditions and legal limitations under which
public employes function and will give backing and confidence to
the workers in the department. And if it turns out as well as we
expect it will be highly educational to some of the public officials
and a good many private citizens who are still pretty tentative
in their acceptance of the economic value of trained personnel to
the community.
With this comparatively happy state of affairs the re-
juvenated department looks ahead to progressive improve-
ment. It is not all perfect of course. Much still needs to
be done; old-line politicians still cast speculative eyes upon
it. Although its structure is permanent its work is emergent
under conditions of great difficulty. Its standards of relief
are not adequate. Insufficient funds exercise the usual
arbitrary dictatorship imposing too heavy case-loads and
gauging relief by the degree to which a dollar can be
stretched rather than by the needs of family life.
Says Miss Wheeler, now state manager of relief in the
New Jersey Emergency Relief Administration :
There was nothing mystical about this reorganization, there
was no laying on of hands. Nothing but the miracle-working
power of the combined spirit and determination of administra-
tors and workers, public officials, progressive-minded citizens
and private agencies, all bent on correcting a bad situation in
the interest of the whole community, brought about the result.
Security
By ALBERT G. MILBANK
"ISTORY is replete with instances where people
have changed their viewpoint as to what is of
real value to them. At this moment a desire for
security outweighs every other consideration — security for
one's principal; security for one's income; security for one's
job; security against the horrors of another war; security
against the rising tide of organized crime; security against
the growing indifference to the sanctity of contracts;
security for health and happiness.
At no other time, during the past quarter century, has
the desire for profits been so subordinated to the desire
for security. Already this desire has begun to take tangible
form. Never before in history could fifty-nine nations,
possessed of incomparable machinery for war, have been
persuaded to enter upon a Kellogg-Briand Pact in which
war was renounced as an instrument of national policy.
That covenant was not so much an expression of emotional
or reasoned idealism as it was the product of a disillusioned
human nature that had found to its cost that war did not
pay. The Kellogg-Briand Pact may not, probably will not,
prevent war but it does mark a complete reversal of na-
tional viewpoint in respect of the value of war as an
instrument of national policy. Sometime — perhaps before
long — we will find that unrestrained competition and the
overemphasis of the profit motive in industry not only do
not pay but if carried too far will end in certain destruction.
Underlying the shriller notes of the radicals we hear the
undertones of the conservatives who remind us that the
economic laws are inexorable. Without challenging this
premise it seems pertinent to point out that the Law of
Supply and Demand is not of necessity predicated upon
maximum profits as the sole purpose of industry. The
industrial age, it is true, has fostered that idea so that we
had come to regard it as axiomatic, but if men have begun
to question its validity, as in fact they have, just as they
questioned the age-old belief that a successful war paid
more than it cost, we are on the road to adopt for industry
a Pact of Paris that will renounce, as instruments of
industrial policy, greedy
competitive methods to
squeeze out the last
drop of realizable
profits.
So also when we are
reminded of the im-
mutability of the law of
the survival of the fit
it is pertinent to re-
mark that men will not
permit that law to work
out to its logical con-
clusion. If they were so
disposed, why the fran-
tic efforts to provide
work and home re-
lief? Why the Gibson
Committee and the call for federal, state, county and
municipal aid to the destitute? It is because even those
who preach rugged individualism have too much heart,
when disaster comes, to stick by their intellectual convic-
tions. Men shrink from letting the law of the survival of the
fit become the law of the jungle. Hence, charity and the dole
and a miscellaneous assortment of unproductive enter-
prises. But none of these methods suffices to furnish ade-
quate relief and none of them goes to the heart of the
trouble. Charity enforced by high pressure campaigns loses
its redeeming spirit of philanthropy. Moreover, you cannot
get blood out of a stone — nor, by the same token out of the
stony broke. A dole, however camouflaged, is a miserable
confession of failure to adopt preventive and constructive
measures that would make a dole unnecessary. It is very
easy to step over the line of making payments to those who
cannot work to paying those who won't work, which
quickly degenerates into paying men not to work. Creating
enterprises, of little or no economic or social value, merely
for the purpose of creating jobs may be justified on the
ground of public emergency but if the causes back of the
emergency remain uncorrected the emergency becomes
chronic and the remedy will only aggravate the disease.
1VT
Jl/fEE'TINGS of the Advisory Council of the Milbank
JL fJL Memorial Fund are given peculiar interest by the
wide sweep of the addresses made to them by the -president ',
Mr. Milbank. A year ago he spoke on Socialized Capital-
ism which, later published in Survey Graphic for July
fpj2, was widely quoted and reprinted. At the last meeting
of the Council he spoke on Socialized Individualism, from
which we are privileged to draw this brief article. It is
significant that a man who is a leader in the New York
bar, in business and philanthropy comes out for com-
pulsory sickness insurance and unemployment insurance
while holding the individual to his share of responsibility.
151
[Y own belief is that a new era started with the
catastrophic events beginning in the autumn of 1929;
that each of these events (and there may be more to follow)
have been and will be evidences of the corrective processes
which always work, unperceived, below the surface during
a period of depression just as destructive processes are
always at work, unperceived, below the surface during a
period of prosperity; that economically the country has
been purged of inflated commodity and security values;
that the people have become more realistic and more
social-minded and are beginning to see more clearly what is
of real value and wherein lies their real happiness and well-
being.
But, unfortunately, there are still clouds which hide
the sun.
It must be confessed
that these clouds still
create a grave menace
and may even yet nul-
lify much that has been
accomplished in the
past three years. Sound
currency, a reconstruc-
tion of our banking
structure and practices,
a drastic cut in the
costs of government, a
balanced budget, re-
duced taxation, tariffs
and debts, a dependable
exchange for interna-
tional trade, relaxing
152
THE SURVEY
April 1931
the rigors of the anti-trust laws, subsidies to afflicted
industries and to distressed groups, furnish a formidable
array of controversial problems, all within the province of
governmental action, that will challenge the wisdom and
patriotism of the political leaders whom the people have
chosen to give direction to their hopes for a better order.
Shall these hopes be realized by an obstinate refusal to
face facts or by courageously facing conditions as they
are? Shall they be realized by permitting the state to take
an ever-increasing part, both in the business and social life
of the country, or by stimulating the individual to carry
his share of responsibility and by clothing business with a
new dignity and a new significance? Will business prove its
capability not only to produce and market useful com-
modities; not only to bear its share of the revenues needed
by the state to perform the necessary functions of govern-
ment, but also to further the social as well as the material
needs of the people ? If the answer to these questions is that
we will rely upon the state, then we may as well admit here
and now that we are headed toward a form of State
Capitalism. Starting from the opposite philosophical pole
we will, if we insist upon calling upon the state to assume
those obligations which individuals and organized groups
of individuals ought to assume, qualify ourselves for
inclusion among Russia's Soviet Republics.
THERE is no gainsaying the fact that these obligations
cannot be avoided. Someone must assume them and
the question is, Shall we make the necessary provisions in
times of plenty to provide for the lean years, or shall we
squander our patrimony in riotous living and then depend
upon the state, already weakened by the burdens we have
placed upon it, to be resourceful enough to find a fatted calf
to be slaughtered for the penitent prodigal? What we do
now and for the next decade in choosing the course we will
follow will have a profound effect on the future of the
American people.
Americans are and always have been individualists.
There is something essentially fine in their spirit of inde-
pendence and self-reliance. There is something inspiring in
their generosity, ingenuity and initiative. These are qual-
ities well worth preserving. In our zeal for certain social
reforms, we should take great care not to destroy these
qualities and weaken the fiber of a great nation.
Now is the time to capitalize this well-nigh universal
desire for security. The five major hazards of life are death,
accident, sickness, old age and unemployment. A well-
rounded program of social insurance would cover them all.
Such a program is not unattainable.
Already group life insurance has made tremendous
strides. The workmen's compensation acts of the various
states make reasonable provision for industrial accidents.
Pensions and retiring allowances are common practice. The
only risks against which little or no provision has been made
are the hazards of sickness and unemployment. Sickness
insurance — or more precisely insurance against the cost of
medical care — is needed. This, as you know, is recom-
mended by the Committee on the Costs of Medical Care as
a voluntary and local measure. But, in my opinion, such
insurance will not produce the results contemplated unless
the scheme is compulsory and at least state-wide in its
scope. The creation of unemployment reserves to minimize,
if not wholly insure against, the consequences of layoffs,
whether they be due to seasonal, technological or cyclical
causes would complete the social insurance program.
The question which immediately occurs to one is whethei I
this is the time to ask the industrial goose to lay this golder i
egg when industry itself is numbered among the unem
ployed and is quite incapable of laying any eggs at all, mud
less one of the golden variety.
My answer is that this is the time to seek from the legis
latures of the various states action that will commit the
states to the principle of unemployment insurance tc
become operative when business conditions improve i
sufficiently to make the plan effective. It has been sug
gested that the state legislatures should adopt a plan to be
declared effective by their respective governors when the
indices of employment and business activity warrant a I
belief on their part that industry has reached a point that
it can sustain the burdens incidental to the operation oil
the plan.
The states should also be asked to provide for the ap-j
pointment of representative commissions which, through
coordinated efforts, would work out a detailed plan o!'
operation. I would like to see the new secretary of labor,
with her unique experience and rare talents, act as the
sponsor for a conference of such state commissions, ill
appointed, or of representatives of the states if such com-
missions are not appointed, to insure the maximum
uniformity as to plans that will not only benefit labor but
at'the same time be helpful and not harmful to the general
financial structure of the country. The plan, it seems to me,
should be based on certain fundamental principles.
First: It should be reasonably adequate to meet the
strain that will be put upon it.
Second: It should be on a contributory basis and, for the
same reasons that the employe's contribution should be
limited to a percentage of his wages when received, so the
contribution by the employer should be limited to a
percentage of profits when earned.
Third: The part to be taken by the state should be
restricted to supervision and regulation.
Great care and thought must be given to the handling
of the reserve funds as they accumulate in ever-increasing
amounts during periods of prosperity. How will they be
invested? How will they be made available when needed?
What will be their effect upon the intricate financial
structure of the country ? All these questions present their
difficulties but to my mind the difficulties are not in-
superable and the benefits, social and economic, are so
incalculable that given a will to solve them their solution
may be taken for granted.
IN conclusion may I again urge you not to forget the
unsolved problems which rest in the hands of the public
authorities. Interested as you are in new social reforms,
keep constantly in mind the importance of preserving the
social gains already won. You can do this most effectively
by doing your part toward sustaining the hands of the
President in restoring to a healthy condition an economic
structure which is showing some signs of convalescence but
which may yet suffer a serious relapse unless the treatment,
thus far effective, is continued. It is a time when social and
labor leaders should make common cause with the leaders
of business and finance to support the President in his
efforts to solve these problems on sound principles and in a
way that will preserve and not destroy those fine traits in
American manhood which are essential to the future wel-
fare of the Nation.
Swapping Horses in a Flood
By GERTRUDE SPRINGER
OO cumbersome to be swift, too large to be de-
cisive, too diverse to be united, the Emergency
Work and Relief Administration of New York
)ity, two months before the normal expiration of its term
)f appointment, resigned in a body and asked Mayor
D'Brien for a new deal in the administration of the city's
•elief funds of seven million dollars a month. To insiders
,vho knew the accumulated difficulties in the fourth winter
;>f trial-and-error method, the action of the commission,
nade up of fifteen citizens and social workers, was not
anexpected. To outsiders and to a large public, gunshy
since the Seabury investigation, it brought a shock of
ipprehension lest the great relief field, relieved of its
:itizen guards, become pasturage for politicians. This fear
sf political exploitation of relief read into the published
statements of the resigning leaders an ambiguity which
was magnified by a cloud of rumors.
The appointment by Mayor O'Brien of a commission of
five to succeed that of fifteen is in line with the recommen-
dations of the retiring body, as is his designation of Frank
f. Taylor, commissioner of public welfare, as its head.
Other members are less well known for their experience
and capacity in welfare work than for their qualities as
citizens. Although under the New York law work-relief is
administered by a citizen board and home-relief by the
rommissioner of public welfare, the effect of Mr. Taylor's
ippointment will be to bring both divisions under a single
'lead with the public represented by a non-political board
small enough to function readily and responsible enough
;o withstand the inevitable political pressures to which
my public office-holder, such as the commissioner, is
subjected.
New York's trial-and-error experience in the assembling
md operating of emergency relief machinery capable of
bearing the load is no different from that of other cities
except in size. The enormous sums involved and the great
numbers of people affected have demanded the utmost
precautions against exploitation. In three years there have
been three changes of financial base; first from exclusive
private effort to private plus municipal, and then to private
plus municipal plus state, with frequent breaks of con-
tinuity and a constant transfer from one responsibility to
another of whole blocks of cases sometimes thousands in
number. Added to this confusion have been the hampering
provisions imposed by an outmoded city charter and the
restrictions of state laws not framed to meet metropolitan
conditions.
As distress deepened and widened one emergency set-up
after another found itself swamped by the varieties of
pressures inherent in the situation. At the top was the
relief administration of the city, its operation conditioned
by law, by available funds and by human capacity. At the
Bottom was the great mass of desperate people frightened
into panic, each unable to realize that his was not a unique
situation and in his distress turning to his natural friends,
— his clergyman, his district political leader, such social
workers as he knew. From these intermediaries making
special claims for special people came the urgencies which
were hardest to withstand and easiest to understand.
There have been many rumors of organized political
pressure on the commission, — "Tammany is putting on the
screws to get control of the relief funds" — but this is
stoutly denied, privately as well as publicly, by members
of the commission. The will to reorganize the relief ad-
ministration came, they insist, not from the outside but
from the inside, from the members themselves who realized,
after a year of experience, that so large a body, so diverse
in its views, could not function swiftly and effectively in a
situation as changing and compelling as a river in flood.
Only a small, fully responsible body clothed with authority
to deal with the whole situation and not with just a part of
it could hold its ground. That the head of that body should
be the commissioner of public welfare was logical and
necessary. That the record of the commissioner indicated
competence and trustworthiness was fortunate.
EADERS in social work in New York as elsewhere are
fully aware of the glittering temptation to political
exploitation that attaches to the distribution of relief
funds. They are sufficiently realistic to admit that political
influence can never be wholly eliminated though they insist
that in New York it has not been a major characteristic of
the relief situation. How successfully it is resisted, from
whatever powerful source it emanates, must depend first
on the integrity, courage and independence of the relief
administration, and finally on the courage and candor of
the social workers and others who, close to the results of
the system, seeing at first hand how it affects the lives of
people, are not afraid to tell the truth, let the chips fall
where they may.
Since the effectiveness of systems hinges on the effective-
ness of people, the New York Welfare Council finds en-
couragement in the personnel of the new commission and
of a small committee on survey and review appointed by
Mayor O'Brien to follow the whole relief situation, its
coverage, its gaps and its lags, and to report to him per-
sonally. This committee includes C. C. Burlingham, active
and aggressive president of the Council; G. Richard Davis,
associated with the Jewish Federation, and Alfred J.
Talley, a former city judge without apparently any notable
welfare affiliations.
These then are the defenses which New York, confused
and anxious over the business of swapping horses in the
middle of a turbulent flood, has imposed against the possi-
ble danger of exploitation of the great sums dedicated to
the needs of the 170,00x3 families now dependent on public
relief. No one believes the danger is over or will ever be
over or that watchfulness can be relaxed. But the new
set-up puts responsibility squarely in one place and vests it
with an authority that leaves small opportunity to pass
the buck for sins either of omission or commission. Each
member of the new board has promised to give full time
153
154
THE SURVEY
April 193
The New Commission
FRANK J. TAYLOR, commissioner of public welfare, chair-
man.
HENRY ESBERG, retired business man, member of boards of
various social agencies.
REAR-ADMIRAL FREDERIC R. HARRIS, U. S. N. (retired),
consulting engineer.
MRS. SOL STROOK, trustee of Montefiore Hospital.
ARTHUR S. TUTTLE, former chief engineer, Board of
Estimate.
The Old Commission
LAWSON PURDY, chairman, director Charity Organization
Society.
JOSEPH J. BAKER, lawyer, president Brooklyn Jewish
Hospital.
S. SLOAN COLT, banker.
WILLIAM EWING, banker.
MARY L. GIBBONS, director, Emergency Home Relief
Bureau (City).
WILLIAM HODSON, director, Welfare Council.
SOLOMON LOWENSTEIN, director, Jewish Federation.
WILLIAM H. MATTHEWS, director Emergency Work and
Relief Bureau (Gibson Committee).
GEORGE V. MCLAUGHLIN, banker.
FRANK L. POLK, lawyer.
VICTOR F. RIDDER, publisher, president State Board of
Social Welfare.
ALFRED E. SMITH, former governor of the State of New
York.
JOHN A. STEVENS, engineer, business executive.
FRANK J. TAYLOR, commissioner of public welfare.
RALPH WOLFE, banker, president Jewish Social Service
Association.
and attention to his duties. If he fails to grasp the true in-
wardness of the relief situation, if leaks in the dike become
apparent, the public will have a right to ask why, and to
demand an unequivocal answer.
The change of horses, disturbing as it was to general
confidence, has had the effect of bringing out into the open
certain inadequacies and inequalities in the relief system
of which social workers have been acutely aware, faults
which may not bulk large in the statistical picture but
which work unnecessary hardship on whole groups.
Take, for instance, single women, in New York a large
and peculiarly defenseless group. The regulations are rigid
that a woman must be "domiciled" before she can receive
public aid. By definition therefore a girl who has moved
repeatedly from one cheap room to a cheaper one, and who
must finally leave her last poor shelter has no claim for
public assistance because she has no domicile. The Wom-
en's Division of the Emergency Work and Relief Bureau,
known as the Gibson Committee, has been the champion
of these girls and has befriended thousands of them with
work-relief. But the committee's funds are approaching
exhaustion and these girls, well aware that they have no
approach to public aid, are in a panic of fear at what lies
ahead. Even when a girl can, by hook or by crook, es-
tablish a technical domicile, the relief in kind supplied by
public aid is a new hardship. Flour, rice and dried beans are
pretty hopeless when you live in a tiny furnished room with
a smuggled gas-plate or electric-iron as the only means of
cooking — and lucky if you have either one. Single men
who, like the women, "do not fit easily into the genera;
relief program," are in little better case.
Back of all this has been the whole round, month afte
month, of cashless relief for families with its paralyzin
effect on the self-respect of human beings. "The rule i
cruel and demoralizing at all times," says William E
Matthews, director of the Gibson Committee's work, "bu
in the case of single men and women it is senseless as wel
The law stipulates relief in kind, thus blindly penalizing th
competent many for the incompetent few. But the law ca
be changed. If a relief law or a relief program does not fi
the needs of the people why do we not change the law c
the program to fit the people instead of distorting peopl
to fit programs? Laws and programs are not sacrosanct.
The exhaustion of the Gibson Committee's funds and th
necessary dismissal of large numbers of family men wh i
have earned cash benefits on work-relief projects, ha
shown up to the public another defect in the relief ma
chinery and has raised some sharp questions. Take, fo
instance, a group of some three thousand men, heads c
families, whose need for assistance was indubitable. The \
had been investigated and re-investigated and investigate
over again. They were assigned to work on public project :
on public property, though they were paid with privat '
funds. When these funds failed it seemed logical, even tl
dimly intelligent people, that these men should be trans i
ferred without interruption to public work-relief funds c||
which there was at the time no shortage. But rules a.n\
routines prevented so simple and humane a procedure
The men must be dismissed by the Gibson fund, mus |
apply for home relief, must take their turn for anothe
investigation, and if found eligible might then be trans i
ferred to work-relief to be assigned when and as work
projects were developed. What would happen during th
weeks required to go through all these motions was simpl
nobody's business.
It so happened that at this same time the city was reduc '.
ing its regular payroll, trimming down department staff
to meet budget cuts. At once incidents were reported tha
raised sharp questions. Were city officials taking care cj
good party men, dropped from the payroll, by slippin
them under the side of the relief tent ? Did the intricacies c!
the relief organization permit the maneuvering whic
would make relief funds a snug parking place for politica :
lame-ducks? As has been said, the Seabury investigatio.il
has given New York a low boiling point for suspicion c i
political abuse of public funds.
The objectives of the new centralized relief administra
tion are no different from those of the old one nor fror
those of any intelligent, sincere body in any city: help fo
those who need it, sure, swift and continuous, with no par
of the city uncovered and with the door never closed. Tha
the program has had gaps and breaks is no indictment cij
the old administration handicapped by its own weight an<
by divided authority, but it is a definite challenge to th
new one. The new administration has the record of thre
years' experience to steer by. It knows the weak spots. I
knows the points from which pressure will be exerted. I
knows that the only safe and sound way to handle relief i
to take each case in its turn and deal with it on its merit
regardless of political, religious or social influence. 1
knows, or should know, that the public, still a little cor
fused over the new deal, is in no humor for marked card:
for cards slipped from the bottom of the deck, or even fej
another misdeal.
Where Relief Includes Medical Care
By H. JACKSON DAVIS, M.D.
Director of Medical Care, New Tork State Temporary Emergency Relief Administration
NDER the emergency act passed in New York
State in 1931 for home and work relief, medical
care and medicines supplied to relief clients sick at
me are classed as necessities of life, along with food,
shelter and clothing. At the end of a year's operation of the
law, variously interpreted and used by different com-
munities, the Temporary Emergency Relief Administra-
tion undertook a series of surveys to find out the present
needs for medical care among relief clients, and the ways in
which it can best be given. From this followed a statement
of standards and regulations for medical relief just adopted
: by the Administration in line with recommendations of the
: State Department of Health and a committee of the New
York State Medical Society.
Is sickness unusually prevalent among the more than
three hundred thousand families now on relief rolls in New
York State ? Nurses on the staff of the State Department
of Health made a detailed study early in December of
: sixteen hundred families chosen at random from the files
of public- welfare agencies in eleven communities represent-
ing city and country conditions and different kinds of
industrial settings. Sicknesses reported by these families
during the preceding three months indicated a morbidity
rate somewhat higher than that found in a study of 8600
representative American families by the Committee on
the Costs of Medical Care (see Survey Graphic, December
1932, p. 634) or a study made by the United States Public
Health Service in Hagerstown, Maryland, ten years ago.
While sicknesses were not much more numerous among
- these unemployed families, they were, however, more pro-
longed. More than 40 percent of those disabled by illness
on the day of the survey had been ill for more than a year.
Among those who had been ill for less than a year, the aver-
age illness lasted more than twenty-five days. Commenting
3n the study, Edgar Sydenstricker, research director of the
Milbank Memorial Fund, declared in a letter to the state
commissioner of health, Dr. Thomas Parran, Jr.:
I cannot help feeling that your study indicates a much higher
morbidity among families hit by the depression than I had ex-
pected. The chronic morbidity rate is extraordinarily high and
since only those illnesses which lasted over a year are classed as
:hronic, I suspect that your survey included not only the persons
'who were very seriously affected by the depression but was
heavily weighted with families in which sickness itself was a cause
jf poor economic status.
The facts gathered by the nurses for this representative
sample of New York State's relief clients showed a group of
people who had carried the burden of unemployment by
'means of their savings and the help of friends and others
for a surprisingly long time before they had recourse to
public relief. On the average the head of the household had
been without work for 22.4 months and the family had had
public relief for only a little more than nine months.
More than half of these disabling illnesses reported by
the families (54 percent) had received no medical attention
whatever. In those which did receive medical care, 61
percent of the visits were made by physicians designated
and paid by the public authorities. The remaining 39
percent of the visits were made by family physicians.
Half of the patients who had been cared for by their family
physicians said they expected to pay the bill some time,
but among families so destitute these visits of family physi-
cians must have represented in large part a gift of care.
In only two communities was nursing service provided
for public-welfare clients. Competent graduate nurses
could reduce the need for hospital care, sift out unnecessary
medical calls, and give health instruction to people greatly
in need of it. Several hundred questionnaires were sent
throughout the state to graduate nurses listed with repre-
sentative nurse registries. The 194 replies from thirty
communities pictured the economic distress among nurses
themselves. These nurses had worked for an average of
ninety-four days during 1932 and had received an average
income of $478 for the year. The highest income reported
was $1105. Most of the nurses reported themselves as
wholly dependent on their earnings, many had one or more
persons dependent on them; in most cases savings were or
soon would be exhausted. More than 90 percent said they
would welcome work relief at relief wages of $3 or $4 a day.
SUCH a project was started in mid-February. At the pres-
ent time more than two hundred nurses, certified by wel-
fare authorities as in need of work relief, are employed in
fifty-three communities of the state at a salary of 117.50
for a five-day week, giving bedside care to relief clients
sick at home. Nurses are allocated to communities where
relief clients need more nursing care, where local nurses
need work relief, and where competent nursing supervision
can be given by an existing agency.
The standards recently adopted by the Administration
and approved by the Council of the State Medical Society
establish regulations for medical care under which the Ad-
ministration reimburses welfare authorities 40 percent of
the approved expenditures, as provided in the emergency
act. Authorized expenditures for physicians' services are
reimbursed on the basis of not more than $2 for a home
visit, $i for an office visit. This provision does not preclude
payment of higher fees by local welfare authorities in ex-
ceptional circumstances. An authorization for care is for a
period not exceeding two weeks and not more than ten
visits. Cases of chronic illness are handled individually, in
general allowing not more than one visit a week for a limited
period. (For detailed regulations see Health News, the
bulletin of the New York State Department of Health,
March 13, 1933). The State Medical Society has requested
each county medical society to appoint a committee to
confer with local commissioners of welfare at least monthly
on questions of mutual interest. It is believed that this
development of the plan, providing official cooperation be-
tween public-welfare officers and the organized medical
profession, will promote the common interests of patients,
doctors and taxpayers.
155
Are Relief Workers Policemen?
By G. S.
'M so disturbed, Miss Bailey, about something my
daughter told me at breakfast. She'll tell you her-
self of course, but it seems to me you ought to know
right away, so I just rang up. I'm afraid there's something
seriously wrong with one of those families you sent her to
yesterday. I'm afraid — well, there seems to be a man in the
case! Isn't that terrible? My daughter said she never imag-
ined such wretched children, but even if you're poor, sin is
sin, isn't it?"
Miss Bailey wondered. Wearily she turned through the
cards of the new applicants. Only yesterday she had sent
out four new investigators to visit these families. Recalling
her own long and careful preparation before she was en-
trusted with a first interview, she had had a qualm. But
these four had shown themselves promising and intelligent
in the three-day training institute where, with her best dis-
cussion technique, she had tried to clear their minds of
preconceptions and to establish bases for judgments. And
now the very first day along came sin, which, Miss Bailey
admitted with a sigh, she herself with all her training had
always found difficult and baffling.
Yes, here was the card. Deserted wife, four young chil-
dren, unemployed lodger, case reported by neighbor who
says children are cold and hungry.
Miss Bailey wasn't sure what she could do about sin
with four children needing to be fed, but at least one thing
was clear; "my daughter" had failed to take in the meaning
of that "confidential relationship" with the client on which
the institute instructor had dilated long and earnestly.
"Because she probably doesn't name names she thinks it's
all right to dish up family tragedies at breakfast. Well, I'll
have to try again." And Miss Bailey made a cryptic note
on her calendar for further conference with "my daughter."
Sooner or later the family visitor is bound to encounter
sin behind the door that opens to relief. What to do about
it, if anything, is not easy to decide even for the seasoned
case worker schooled in tolerance and trained in detach-
ment. Adjustments of intensely personal situations rooted
in remote causes and complex relationships have always
called for the highest skill with time as the essential tool
of treatment. The new recruit, inexperienced in social work,
driven by an overwhelming case-load, is troubled and con-
fused when situations counter to her own code are thrust
into her view. In her quick preparation for her job she
gained a general idea of community resources, of agency
policies and rules and of the ethics governing her relation-
ship with families, but — "Isn't this case different, Miss
Bailey? Shouldn't I do something about it?"
If one may judge from the practice of a considerable
number of supervisors of newly recruited visitors with all
manner and shades of background, the best answer to this
query, if the discussion is to be productive is, "Well, what,
for instance?"
"The futility of trying to make over morals in the brief
contacts which the relief worker has with the family is
better realized when a concrete case is discussed," said the
supervisor of a big-city relief district where a case-load of
What shall the untrained investigator do when she ob-
serves in homes such situations as:
Bootlegging?
Deserted wife with children on relief, living in sin with a
lodger?
Father periodically drunk and (a) cheerful, (b) abusive to
children ?
Father demanding shotgun marriage for reluctant daugh-
ter?
two hundred is not counted too heavy for an erstwhile
young bookkeeper out of a job. "Just to set down on paper
the cans and the can'ts, given the circumstances in which
we are working, is usually enough to convince the most
zealous moralist that, lacking the tongue of angels, she had
better keep out of tangled personal relationships and direct
herself strictly to her own job — that is, to get food-orders
out on time, to keep her records up to date and to be sure
that every family on her list is covered on regular schedule.
With things as they are, even that is more than she will
probably be able to do.
"In conferences with new workers I try to eliminate all
general discussion of the right or wrong conduct of families
on relief except as it relates to their eligibility for relief.
We cannot be concerned with sin, either by your definition ;
or mine. We are keenly alert to cruelty and sickness. Those
are things we can do something about and promptly. But
where codes of conduct are involved we discourage judg- >
mental attitudes in the visitors."
FROM another big city, from one who last year super-
vised a relief district and is now training workers for all s
the districts, comes similar comment: "The new investi-i
gator who can deal unemotionally with clients is of course
very rare, no matter what her earlier experience may have
been. We find that the thoughtful talking out of concrete
problems with the supervisor with some discussion in a
small group is the best way to increase a worker's capacity
for dealing with problems uncolored by our own personal
reaction. It is fairly easy to teach newcomers the practices
we follow in relief and the rudiments of the laws or policies
that govern our rules; it is much harder to give them the
mental slant that will free them of preconceptions and
enable them to meet every issue on its merits, forever
aware of the viewpoint of others and of how they got that
way.
"Take bootlegging for instance. I see no reason why it
should be approached by the relief worker as a moral issue.
At the point where we touch the family life it is entirely a
matter of finances. If bootlegging appears to be contribut-
ing to the family income to a considerable extent it should
be investigated like any other resource. Perhaps it is sc
profitable that the family is ineligible for relief. Usually it
is a small side-line with such uncertain and negligible prof-
its that they cut no figure in the family budget. In any case
it has nothing to do with the basis of relief, which is nee^:
and not morals.
"Likewise with the woman 'living in sin' with the lodger
156
April 1933
THE SURVEY
157
The worker's concern with the lodger is only with his eco-
nomic status in the family. If he is contributing to the
household support and the family life seems reasonably
normal he will be considered as a resource in the budget.
If he isn't, if he must be included in the food order, his
status will need to be discussed, but as a matter of eco-
nomics, not morals. If he is abusive to the children the prob-
lem is treated from that angle. I cannot imagine needed
relief being withheld from a woman and four helpless chil-
dren because of 'a man in the case.'
"I do not see that the emergency relief worker has any
place at all in the matter of a proposed shotgun marriage.
It is possible that if she had time and skill a discussion with
the father might clear the air. But given an overburdened
and untrained worker I feel that unless the daughter ap-
peals to her for help and she can send her to some organiza-
tion equipped to give it, the worker should not enter into
the situation at all — indeed that she should avoid any in-
volvement in it. Just as sure as she takes cognizance of it
she will find herself on one side or another of a family row,
making new trouble for everyone and helping no one."
The discussion of students in training of concrete cases
involving lapses from the accepted code brought out a
general opinion that the determination of need and the pro-
tection of children is about as far as the relief visitor can or
should go. Take a drinking father for instance: "We should
not feel qualified to attempt to reform him," concluded a
midwestern group, "but we should want to find out what
effect his drinking had on the children. If it was depriving
them of food or if we knew that they were subjected to
abuse on account of it, then it would seem to become our
business — not because we are relief investigators but be-
cause we are good citizens who would not tolerate mistreat-
ment of children. But we would not think that our function
of dispensing relief gave us any more right to act than we
should have anyway. If we felt obliged to act we should
first find out the law in the case and then call in the proper
agency with more time and skill and perhaps authority
: than we have. Certainly if the mother and children needed
food we would not withhold an order because the father
was on a spree, even if he smashed a few dishes or did a lit-
tle slapping in the course of it."
A group of volunteers went behind procedures to the
discussion of the worker's own adjustments. Said one: "We
must forget our personal code of conduct and apply only
is one of a series of articles drawn
from the day-by-day experience of people
directly on the relief job to whom new workers
without extensive training bring the problems
they encounter in the families they visit. The
questions are bona fide. The discussion is
from supervisors, necessarily realistic, who
must instill into the recruits the attitudes of
mind on which to base judgments and deci-
sions. The first of these articles, When Tour
Client Has a Car, was published in The Sur-
vey of March 1933. The next, What Price the
Power of the Food Order, in an early issue.
the rules of the organization we are working for." "But,"
said another, "if we feel the organization's code lower than
ours, that is if we feel ourselves superior, will we be able to
do our work happily and effectively?" "It isn't a question
of lower or higher," summed up a third, "but of the toler-
ance that each one of us has in herself. We can disapprove
these things for ourselves but suspend judgment on other
people. After all, what right have we to impose our stand-
ards of conduct on these helpless people? Going into their
homes armed with a grocery order makes it hard enough to
establish frank, friendly relations. If we go clothed in
righteousness, with a moral chip on our shoulders, we'll
never gain their confidence. It seems to me that we just have
to take people as we find them and go on from that point."
OLD cliches die hard and in many communities public
opinion even in these times would like to feel that
all the "poor" are "worthy."
"I don't know whether we are policemen or not," says a
supervisor in a small city who recently took her long pri-
vate-agency experience into a public department. "We try
not to be, though I suspect that the public would support
us in a high moralistic stand. Perhaps for that reason we
sometimes make gestures, call it passing the buck if you
like. We usually report cases of bootlegging to the prohibi-
tion authorities. Nothing much seems to happen, but our
consciences are clear as we continue to look after the fami-
lies that need our help. Our bootleggers are not the pros-
perous kind. If we have reason to believe that a woman is
living in sin we weigh the whole situation as it affects the
children. If she is a bad mother as well as sinful we may re-
fer the case to the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to
Children. We are chary of this, however, for unless a good
deal of time and skill can be expended we are apt to end
with a situation full of resentment with nothing really con-
structive accomplished.
"In any case we urge our visitors not to get excited over
moral situations but to stick pretty close to the limitations
of the relief job. We urge them too to try to overlook
father's periodic sprees and unless the children are flagrantly
abused to content themselves with making their lives as
bearable as possible. Of course, if we catch father wielding
the business end of a leather belt or find the children cower-
ing under the bed we call in the S. P. C. C. at once.
"As a general rule we discourage moralistic judgments on
the part of the workers and try to keep treatment at a
pretty common-sense level with need and not conduct as a
basis of decision. We do not call this 'case-work' but
'planning that would seem to be helpful to the family."'
By and large the supervisors and discussion groups of
visitors in training agree that except in rare cases unsea-
soned investigators should keep aloof from a family's per-
sonal relationships. Until the necessity for relief opened the
door to the visitor these matters were, they conclude, settled
within the family. They should be so settled now. The
visitor who, in the pressure of work, can see a family not
oftener than once in two or three weeks cannot possibly
arrive at an understanding of family difficulties, much less
straighten them out. To attempt to do so will weaken the
visitor's own emotional reserves, tempt her to use relief as a
club to impose her own ideas on the family and sooner or
later will cost her the confidence of the family and reduce
her relationship to that of a futile and fumbling meddler in
intimate situations which, but for the accident of unemploy-
ment distress, she would never even have known about.
Full-time with Overtime
By ANNE ROLLER ISSLER
Pacific Coast Representative of Survey Associates
IN these depressed days when reports from industry are
mainly concerned with lay-off, broken time, repeated
wage cuts, discarded welfare programs and the need
for relief, it is a heartening thing to come upon a little oasis
where the 1929 force of wage-earners is working full time
with eleven and a half months' employment guaranteed
them in 1933, including a half month's vacation with pay.
This story comes from California, where the Samarkand
Ice Cream Company, manufacturers of ice cream and other
frozen desserts has plants in San Francisco, Oakland and
Los Angeles. It is not a large concern. There are fifty-three
regular employes, and twenty-five or thirty temporary
workers, principally students, are taken on in rush seasons.
But it is a story of large social vision translated into ef-
fective business terms. The company is operating on a
guaranteed wage plan, adopted in the fall of 1929.
The manufacture of ice cream is a seasonal business.
Production rises to a sharp peak in summer and drops to
low levels in winter. How has it been possible, under the
handicaps in the business to reduce unemployment to zero?
And what are the prospects for continued stability?
J. P. Rettenmayer president of the Company states:
Our program was adopted after ten years' careful study, not as
a paternalistic welfare measure but as a sound business policy.
We believe that in time this program will commend itself to other
employers, not because of its benefits to employes but as a means
to business stabilization. We expect to be able to show that all
parties concerned — employes, stockholders, dealers, purveyors
and the public — will benefit by such industrial relations, which to
be sound in the economic sense must be socially just.
The program includes, in addition to guaranteed em-
ployment, yearly medical examination and advice, health
and accident insurance, group life insurance, a pension
system, a credit union, thrift promotion, profit-sharing,
and stock ownership in the event of Mr. Rettenmayer's
death. The company's cost of the program amounting to
$140 annually for each person employed is paid out of cur-
rent income.
Four factors have contributed to the success of the pro-
gram: the management's recognition of the compatibility
of social mindedness and economics; flexibility of operation;
modern plants; reduced labor turnover.
I first met Mr. Rettenmayer in 1930 when he served as
chairman of the industry section of the California Confer-
ence of Social Work. I recalled that meeting to Mr. Retten-
mayer when I went to him for some of the material on
which this article is based. His comment was an interesting
expression of the attitude which is, in large measure, re-
sponsible for the Samarkand program. He said:
That was a good conference. I very much enjoyed the contact
with social workers, even though their knowledge of economics
sometimes lagged behind their social viewpoint. I hope the time
will come when social workers will have a keener appreciation of
the problems of business, and business men a greater social vision.
In fact, I should like to see all California employers members of
the California Conference of Social Work, now a closed book to
most of them; we ought all to be studying social trends at this
time when they are dramatically acute.
The company has tried to make its plants as compact
as possible and as flexible as necessary. It has endeavored
to get the maximum utilization of equipment and person-
nel, in order to keep production costs within reasonable
limits, while giving good value and service. That there
were offsetting benefits to the company's cost from the
time the program was initiated is shown by the fact that
the company's labor costs compare favorably with those of
eighty-eight ice-cream manufacturers reporting to the
information exchange department of the industry's inter-
national association.
Flexibility of operation is an essential factor. Assured of
steady work and the other benefits of the program, the i
workers take a personal interest in the business as a whole.
Workers are shifted from one department to another, both
in busy and in slack seasons, and management can count
on understanding and cooperation from plant and office
force. While the eight-hour day is ordinarily maintained, no .
overtime is paid should extra work be necessary during the
busy season. All vacations are scheduled between October
i and April i.
"Anyone, however, may be called upon to fill another
person's job in an emergency," Mr. Rettenmayer states.
"For instance, should rush orders come in when all the
trucks are out, an office employe might be asked to make
the delivery of ice cream with his own car."
Gain in stability and efficiency has followed a two thirds
reduction in labor turnover since the present program went
into effect. According to a recent study made by Louis
Bloch for the California Department of Industrial Rela-
tions, the percentage of maximum over minimum number
of employes a year ago in the Samarkand Company was
38, the average for six other ice-cream companies in the
state was 117. Were it not for the occasional need for
temporary help, the labor turnover at Samarkand would
be still less, for there has been no lay-off from the regular
force since the program was adopted, three and a half years
ago. Freed of anxiety about their income, their health
safeguarded, a savings and pension scheme to provide for
the non-earning years ahead, the employes of this company
give full attention to their jobs.
The advantages to management, workers and stockhold-
ers from this plan are obvious enough. As to the public
benefits in such an enterprise, one has only to note the
facts: through job security the purchasing power of the
employes of the Samarkand Company is fully preserved,
and through the application of this policy none of its
workers has had to join the army of unemployed.
While 100,000 workers in San Francisco County, 399,000
in Los Angeles County, and 56,000 in Alameda County, are
without financial security because of unemployment, the
employes of the Samarkand Company in these three cities
are working full time, living and spending normally, and
aiding in a generous measure the community funds of their
respective cities.
158
THE COMMON WELFARE
Three-Fold Federal Relief
TT has been apparent ever since his first pronouncements on
I- the subject of federal unemployment relief that President
Roosevelt would break away from the system of loans to states
under the act of July 21 which tied unemployment relief to the
tail of the Reconstruction Finance Corporation. It presently
developed that his program was three-fold: I, conservation corps
enrolling men for immediate work on public lands; 2, grants to the
states for relief purposes; 3, a broad program of labor-creating
I public works. This last has not yet taken legislative form.
The first of these proposals, a new idea to Congress and to
many others, aroused considerable debate, not, it should be noted,
on its principles — they have been demonstrated in the California
forestry camps— but in its details, its method of recruiting, mili-
tary regimentation, rate of pay and so on. Whatever the final
form in which this project emerges — and it is dear to the presiden-
tial heart — it seems likely that in operation it will draw in not
family men from large cities, but the footloose men and boys now
wandering over the country.
The President's program for grants to the states for relief
purposes represents a considerable advance along the road blazed
by the original Costigan-LaFollette bill. To the sponsorship of
the Colorado and Wisconsin senators the present bill adds that of
Senator Robert F. Wagner of New York. This new bill would
make available through the R.F.C. a fund of #500,000,000 under
the control of a federal relief administrator appointed by the
President and responsible to him. The R.F.C. would function
only as the fiscal agent. Of this fund $200,000,000 would be avail-
able to the states on the basis of their expenditures of public-relief
monies, state and local, the federal administrator reimbursing
the states for one third of such expenditures in each three-month
period. The remaining $300,000,000 would be held as a discre-
tionary fund to meet needs in states without adequate resources.
The relief administrator might also make grants to states for the
care of transients and to aid cooperative self-help associations for
the barter of goods and services.
The bill as introduced does not go as far in its requirements of
evidence of performance by the states as social- work leaders hoped
it would or as the experience of the past nine months would seem
to justify. It does not specifically give the administrator power to
withhold a grant from a state for any reason except lack of need.
But by implication at least it makes it possible for an adminis-
trator with sufficient backbone, supported as presumably he will
be by the President, to require from the states a showing of or-
ganization and program and evidence of competent leadership.
Many months ago The Survey pointed out to its patient readers
that federal funds in whatever amount were no cure-all for the
ills that relief administration is heir to. Only the states, by vigor-
ous action, strong leadership and competent direction, can get
these funds promptly and in adequate degree into the places
where they are needed, — into the homes of helpless, long-suffering
people. However this present relief bill comes through the Con-
gressional mill it is already clear that relief administration,
whether for good or ill, will still be up to the states and to the
citizens thereof.
In the Balance
VX7HILE unemployment insurance bills are pending in twenty-
' three states, this measure of security for wage-earners is
still in the balance as we go to press. Most of the bills under con-
sideration are based on the plan sponsored by the American
Association for Labor Legislation and repeatedly modified and
strengthened since it was originally framed. In general this scheme
(as embodied in the Mastick bill before the New York Legislature
and backed by the conference committee organized early in the
winter) is based on: compulsory contributions only from em-
ployers, with provision for voluntary contributions from em-
ployes; a short waiting period; a maximum benefit period of one
week for each three weeks of employment during the preceding
year; maximum rate of benefit of fifteen dollars a week; separate
funds for each employer with provision for voluntary pooling of
funds within an industry or a community; reduced contributions
with increased stability. A new section this year provides that
contributions to the fund shall not begin until the upturn in
factory employment amounts to a 20 percent increase over the
figure for February 1933.
This plan has its roots in the Wisconsin act of 1932. A chief
variant is the Ohio plan, based on the notable report of the State
Commission on Unemployment Insurance (see The Survey,
Dec. i, 1932). The Wald bill in New York, sponsored by the United
Neighborhood Houses, follows this line and provides for compul-
sory contributions from employes as well as employers; in-
creased benefits for the worker with dependents with a maximum
of $17.50 weekly; and a general fund rather than funds segregated
by plant, industry or community, this to be made the basis of a
rating system later on, which would be to the advantage of indus-
tries that stabilize. Minnesota is considering a bill drawn to
protect the worker against cyclical rather than seasonal unemploy-
ment (see The Survey, February 15, page 58); and the Massa-
chusetts commission has brought in a bill in which the Wisconsin
principle has been further developed. One of the most liberal
measures is that drawn by the Baltimore Commission on Employ-
ment Stabilization (see page 165) which at this writing has just
passed the Maryland House without amendment.
Those who have borne a part in the long fight for compulsory
unemployment insurance in this country may hold to this scheme
of legislation or that, but they are united on urging recognition of
the principle on the statute books while the drastic lessons of the
depression are sharply in the public mind. Most of the state legis-
latures adjourn this month or next, not to meet again till 1935.
Unemployment insurance must come now — or once more be in-
definitely postponed.
Brandeis Dissenting
E5T month the United States Supreme Court handed down a
decision wiping off the statute books the Florida law laying a
tax on chain stores. But the "Chain Store Case" is likely to be
remembered by the public, as are so many Supreme Court deci-
sions of the last two decades, not for the verdict of the court but
for the dissenting opinion of Justice Brandeis. The majority of the
court held that the provision of the law increasing the tax in
proportion to the number of counties covered by each chain was
discriminatory. From this Justices Stone and Cardoza dissented
in part. Justice Brandeis performed his accustomed public service
of looking at the social as well as the legal questions at stake.
Briefly, he argued that the Florida tax law was aimed at the giant
corporations and that the state legislatures have the right to single
these out for taxation, even to the point of putting them out of
business. He reminds us that doing business in corporate form is a
privilege, not a right, and he points out that " business may be-
come as harmful to the community by excessive size as by monop-
oly or the commonly recognized restraints of trade." He concludes:
There is a widespread belief that the existing unemployment is a result in
large part of the gross inequality in the distribution of wealth and income
which giant corporations have fostered; that by the control which the few
have exerted through giant corporations, individual initiative and effort
are being paralyzed . . . that only by releasing from corporate control
the faculties of the unknown many, only by reopening to them the oppor-
tunities for leadership, can confidence in our future be restored and the
existing misery be overcome. ... If the citizens of Florida share that
159
160
THE SURVEY
April 193.
belief, I know of nothing in the federal Constitution which precludes the
state from endeavoring to ... prevent domination in intrastate com-
merce by subjecting corporate chains to discriminatory license fees. To
that extent, the citizens of each state are still masters of their destiny.
Justice Brandeis was not able to convince his colleagues by his
learning and eloquence. The fourteen corporate appellants, in-
cluding the Louis K. Liggett Company, Parson's Inc., the Nunally
Company and the Melville Shoe Company are rejoicing in the
decision of the court. But Brandeis, dissenting, has once again
contributed greatly to our understanding of the real issues in-
volved in the case at bar.
Minimum Wage Before Eight States
WIDESPREAD concern over sweatshop standards of wages
for women workers and young people during the depression
finds expression in a growing interest in the possibilities of mini-
mum-wage legislation. Profiting by the reasons given by the
Supreme Court in declaring unconstitutional the District of
Columbia law several years ago, a new measure has been drafted
with the help of Felix Frankfurter of the Harvard Law School and
is being sponsored by the National Consumers League and other
groups in a number of states (see The Survey, March 15, page
112). Governor Lehman sent a special message to the New York
Legislature, urging the immediate passage of minimum-wage
legislation for women and minors as a protection to industry as
well as to workers. At this writing, the model bill has passed the
New York Senate and is in committee in the Assembly. The same
bill is pending in Pennsylvania, New Jersey, Rhode Island, New
Hampshire, Texas and Arizona.
In Utah, a longer but perhaps more certain route to the same
end is under consideration. There the House has passed a resolu-
tion amending the state constitution to permit the legislature " by
appropriate legislation to provide for a minimum wage for women
and minors." If it is accepted by the Senate, the amendment must
be ratified by popular vote, when the way would be cleared for a
state minimum-wage law.
The Conference Carries On
DESPITE rumors and alarms, bank closings, earthquakes,
floods and fires, it now seems settled that the National Con- •
ference of Social Work will carry on, holding its annual meeting
in Detroit, June 11-17 as scheduled. Like all plans in this year of
more or less grace this one is still subject to change, but as matters
stand the conference program will go on, lock, stock and barrel.
In its physical arrangement changes have been imposed by con-
ditions beyond the control of the conference. The Masonic Temple
is closed and meetings will be held in the good old-fashioned way
in churches, hotels and halls. A rearrangement of financial guaran-
tees has taken the load off the bent backs of the social agencies.
Detroit hotels report some five hundred advance reservations,
more than usual so far in advance. Howard R. Knight reports the
normal rate of requests for information and a pronounced temper
among social workers that this year of all years organized social
work as represented by the conference must not fold its tent; more
than usual the members need to exchange experiences and pluck
new courage from fellowship.
Housing Exhibits
i
F your city wants a bird's-eye view of the best that has been
accomplished the world over in the field of large-scale low-cost
housing, a rare opportunity is offered, for the American Institute
of Architects is planning to send an exhibit to interested cities at a
nominal charge. The exhibit is a part of the exhibition of the
Architectural League of New York. The illustration of work done
in Europe and America suggests various lines of development and
indicates that though certain principles are universal, "each new
problem must be studied afresh ... no single experiment or
pattern can be made universal." Each of the twenty-five exhibi i
panels is devoted to a single development whose good points a
made all the more striking by contrast with a view of existing!
speculative shelter obtainable in the same locality at approxiij
mately the same price. Eight are European examples. The seven
teen from the United States are planned for definite locations (ii|j
New York, Detroit, Cleveland and Philadelphia) with refereno i|
to the law which empowers the Reconstruction Finance Corpora I
tion to make loans for self-liquidating housing projects. This is thi I
first time that the architects have included housing, per se, in thei: J
annual exhibit. It reflects great credit on the special committet j
responsible for it under the chairmanship of Clarence Stein.
Perhaps the most unique housing exhibition yet conceived J
presenting the arguments for good housing and city planning, i:|
on display at the New School for Social Research, 66 West icl
Street, New York City, until April 29. Organized by Raymonc J
O'Neill of the Gallery of Modern Life, Chicago, and originally J
exhibited there, the show consists of a series of stage models J
depicting the real and ideal aspects of city life. The object-lessor j
is clearly told and easily read. The exhibit is sponsored by thelj
Public Housing Conference.
Dark Ages in Housing
"AN outrageous attempt to return New York City housing tcl
**• the dark ages of the last century." Thus the Multiple!
Dwellings Law Committee set up in 1929 to protect the Newa
York statute from subsequent inroads, characterized certain bills)
before the legislature at this writing. Bills which would impairjj
light, air, fire protection, sanitation, which would extend mora-
toriums on alterations in existing structures, which would con-l
tinue to permit cellar occupancy, which would in many cases-1
nullify both the spirit and the provisions of the law. Some of these li
dozen bills will, no doubt have passed both houses and be waiting;
Governor Lehman's action when these words are read. By the
same time the two constructive bills — one requiring a toilet for:
every family and another which would prohibit the use of win- 1
dowless rooms in old law tenements by 1936 — will probably have t
been defeated. When Governor Roosevelt signed the bill last yean
extending until April i, 1933 the time in which janitors mayi
occupy cellars for living purposes he said: "I serve notice on any r
landlord who has not yet acted in accordance with the purpose of I
the law that I will do all in my power to prevent further extension .
beyond April i, 1933." His successor's interest in housing is well .
known. But th« public must back Governor Lehman. The hopes of!
those interested in maintaining and improving standards lie in a .
vigorous appeal to the governor to veto whatever vicious bills are
passed. Latest developments may be had from the Housing In-
formation Bureau, Welfare Council, 112 East 22 Street, New
York City.
A United Front on Economy
BELIEVING that accurate information intelligently applied is f
the chief need in regard to cuts in municipal expenditures, ;
over sixty national educational, cultural and social organizations
have joined together to urge local organizations to set up councils
on constructive economy, to be comprised of representatives of -
existing citizens' groups. The idea grew out of informal confer-
ences in New York, Chicago and Washington of executives of
national organizations under the chairmanship of Harold S. '
Buttenheim, Louis Brownlow and C. F. Mann following the •
Citizens Council on Crisis in Education in January, which recom-
mended such action. The aim of each council will be to gather
facts about local governmental costs, wastes and actual services
performed as well as services demanded in its community, to pass
these facts along to members of organizations which the council
represents, and when necessary to appear before the money-
allocating authorities. It is hoped that by pursuing this method
the present demands for reductions may in fact produce perma-
nent improvements in government.
April 1933
THE SURVEY
161
The central organization comprised of the committees ap-
pointed by the three originating groups will act in conjunction
with the various national sponsor organizations in a stimulating
ind advisory capacity, for it is agreed that no one uniform pro-
gram can meet all local situations. A clearing-house for informa-
•ion is being maintained in the offices of the National Municipal
League, 309 East 34 Street, New York City.
Honors for Dr. Bond
Wi
HEN a news flash declared that Philadelphia's highest civic
honor — the Philadelphia Award — had been conferred on
Dr. Earl D. Bond for "developing a new treatment for mental
jatients," the report missed the important meaning of Dr. Bond's
ichievement. Dr. Bond himself had defined the aim of the Insti-
rute of the Pennsylvania Hospital as "the applying to everyday
ife of results obtained from the practice of psychiatry." For the
three years the Institute has been working in a practically
an touched field — offering skilled psychiatric service to people who
lad not yet been broken by mental ill-health but still went about
their work, and offering it at rates within reach of everyday peo-
sle who could not afford the necessarily expensive care of the
private practice of specialists (see The Survey, November 15,
93°» P- 2I2)- Neither the friends of the Institute's patients nor
:hose patients themselves would be likely to speak of their ail-
nents as "mental cases." These are people who are struggling as
:veryone does to meet stresses within themselves and their cir-
mmstances, and failing to do so only to a degree which makes
hem unhappy, inefficient or sick. In naming Dr. Bond the Com-
nittee of Award honors the skilled service given in the beautiful
Juilding of the Institute and the continuous search which con-
identious clinicians — like other scientists— must always carry on
:o discover and test new techniques; but more importantly, they
lonor Dr. Bond and his colleagues for wise and courageous lead-
:rship of a still rarer kind — the will to bring professional skills
vithin everyday reach of those who need them.
That Family Budget
DESERVING cross-sections of the hundreds of thousands of
' families who are its clients, the Household Finance Corpora-
ion finds that financial jams come least often when the husband
urns his pay-check over to his wife and delegates to her the buy-
ng and the payment of bills. "Today's most shut-in housewife,"
leclares Burr Blackburn, research director of the Corporation,
' makes more business transactions than the average man of
ifty years ago." The ideal family shown by the studies is one in
diich the man is "chairman of the board of directors and presi-
!ent," to be consulted on major policies, and the wife is "general
manager and treasurer," to run the household, do the buying and
>ay the bills. To this end the Corporation invents a new slogan,
desks for wives," declaring hopefully that "more women at desks
i the home will do as much as more men at desks in business to
mil the country out of the depression."
How family budgets are changing at different levels in one part
'f the country is shown in the admirable compilation made an-
mally by the Heller Committee for Research in Social Economics
t the University of California. In contrast to 1929, 1932 showed
decline of between 20 and 25 percent in the cost of living meas-
ired by the Committee's standard — the habits of spending con-
idered typical for families at various economic levels. In 1932
hey found that the professional man or executive with a wife and
wo children would have needed not quite $5400 to purchase the
hings usually obtained by such families and make modest sav-
ngs; for a clerk's family with three children the amount was
1994; for a wage-earner's family, $1459. Neither of the two latter
>udgets make provision for an automobile. In response to requests
he Committee also prepared in 1932 a budget for dependent
amilies in which there is allowance for a minimum standard of
ealth and decency, but no allowance for medical care, insurance
•r savings. For an unemployed man, wife and three young chil-
dren, such a budget is 1 1057 a year. Figures such as these could
not be considered representative for the country as a whole; in
that California district, for example, winter fuel is less necessary
than in most parts of the country, and special winter and summer
clothing are unnecessary. Nor will any individual family neces-
sarily have profited to this extent by the drop in prices: the man
still paying fixed charges on a house or furniture bought in earlier
days will not note the usual decline in these items. A very human
touch — and an instance of the care with which the studies are
made — appears in the increase in the executive's budget under
the heading of "care of the person," with the note that "perma-
nent waves and finger waves have been added for the wife in con-
formity with a standard now firmly established for this class."
A Chance for Ideas
/CARRYING the slogan, Ideas Have a Chance in Des Moines,
^ comes the announcement from that Midwestern capital of a
community program in adult education based on the belief that
the continuance of this country's experiment with democracy
demands "better machinery than now exists for the rational de-
velopment of public opinion." The Carnegie Corporation has
made a grant of $120,000 to the Board of Education to finance the
undertaking for five years. The board has divided the city into six
sections and mapped out a series of forums on public questions
under trained leadership in each section. The announcement states,
These forums will not be formal classes. There will be no textbooks, no
fees, no enrolment, no assignments, no tests. Any problem of current and
general interest to the citizens of Des Moines will be considered appro-
priate for discussion at any forum.
The schedule makes it possible to attend twenty-seven of these
discussion meetings in any section without duplication of subject.
The forums, which started January 24, begin at 7 130 in the eve-
ning and close at 9 o'clock. Each leader is free to present the cur-
rent issues and events of his special field during the first part of
the meeting. The rest of the time is reserved for questions and
general discussion. Reading lists will be given if they are re-
quested, and the branch libraries offer special service to any indi-
vidual who wishes to explore further along the lines of a forum
discussion. For the first five months the leaders will be Lyman
Bryson of the University of California, Thomas Nixon Carver of
Harvard, Felix Morley of Brookings, Henry A. Wallace, secretary
of agriculture in the cabinet, and Carroll H. Wooddy of the Uni-
versity of Chicago. The project is directed by J. W. Studebaker,
superintendent of schools in Des Moines.
o
Relief— Self-Help—Barter
F immediate importance as current information are three
publications received as this issue of The Survey goes to
press: Public Welfare News, March issue, free from the American
Public Welfare Association, 850 East 58 Street, Chicago, contain-
ing an outline of the organization of relief administration in each
of the states; Monthly Labor Review, March issue, twenty cents
from the Superintendent of Documents, Washington, D. C., con-
taining the first fruits of the study by the United States Depart-
ment of Labor of cooperative self-help activities among the
unemployed; and Barter and Scrip in the United States, forty-odd
pages of selected references compiled by the staff of the library of
the Bureau of Agricultural Economics and published by the
Bureau, U. S. Department of Agriculture, as Bibliography No. 40.
THE depression has reduced by at least 75 percent the reason-
able expectancy of bequests to institutions and agencies, Leroy
A. Mershon, former trust official of the American Bankers
Association, told the committee on financial and fiduciary
matters of the Federal Council of Churches. For the past three
years, he said, will-makers have refused to incorporate public
bequests in their testaments while many thousands of others
have rewritten their wills revoking such bequests. The work of
twenty-five years in building up a bequest-minded public has
been undone.
162
THE SURVEY
April 193i
SOCIAL PRACTICE
Children Uber Alles
TO give battle to any ill-advised attempt to effect government
economies at the expense of essential services to the children
of the state the Missouri Conference for Social Welfare has re-
organized its recently inactive child-welfare committee into a
fighting band, twenty-two strong, with Alberta Chase of Jefferson
City as chairman and Herschel Alt of St. Louis as secretary. A
monthly bulletin of generous size is one of the means by which the
committee keeps the state informed on what is happening on the
five fronts on which it proposes to attack as well as to defend:
Coordination of child-welfare activities in Missouri, both public and
private.
Promotion of legislation for the protection of children.
Development of county public-welfare units.
Improvement of personnel standards of child-welfare work in state,
county and city.
Education of the public to the needs of children.
Jews on the Land
HARD times brought to the Jewish Agricultural Society last
year some thirteen hundred applicants, some of them rep-
resenting groups who desired to settle on the land, the largest
number applying since 1920. Most of the men were unemployed
or under-employed. Only fifty-three families were accepted for
settlement. While the Society holds that there is plenty of room
on American farms for Jews with necessary capital and other
qualifications it believes that land settlement must be a highly
selective process and that indiscriminate projects to turn Jews en
masse to the land should be discouraged. A recent survey shows
that of the families settled in 1928 by the Society 58.8 percent are
still on the land and of the 1929 settlers 62.9 percent. "The fami-
lies settled in those two years had not been sufficiently rooted
before the onset of the depression to withstand its shocks."
The Society's experiment with an agro-industrial plan of
settling families on small farms within commuting distance of
large industrial cities has been temporarily halted owing to the
lack of employment opportunities.
When Women Are in Prison
OpARDY though it is, this department cannot refrain from
-*• recording what happened last Christmas at the Federal In-
dustrial Institution for Women at Alderson, W. Va., in the
organization and management of which Dr. Mary B. Harris has
written a new page in prison administration. Christmas is always
a time of emotional stress in a women's prison, and Christmas
1932 promised to be more difficult than usual since there was
little or no money for the customary simple preparations among
the inmates themselves. Then someone suggested that the women
have a share in helping the distressed families in the surrounding
countryside. Immediately enthusiasm replaced gloom and apathy,
and everybody went to work. The staff contributed worn gar-
ments, thread and some new material, and the institution was
ransacked for odds and ends of every sort. Everything possible
was made into children's garments; ragged sweaters were un-
raveled and knitted into caps and mittens; the most unpromising
scraps were turned into patchwork quilts and stuffed animals.
Through the cooperation of the Red Cross and of the teachers
in the little mountain schools the needy families were listed witr
the age and size of each member. Families were "adopted" and
their needs considered by the women so the giving was noi
haphazard.
When everything was finished, a few nights before Christmas
an exhibit arranged by a committee of house-mothers was held ir
the big assembly hall with local people invited, as well as tht
staff and all the inmates. The hall looked like a department ston
with the six hundred or so garments and three hundred toy.'
attractively displayed. There was one whole table of toy animal;
made from old inner tubes.
Of the effect of the whole project on the life of the institutior
Dr. Harris says:
The spiritual effect on the women was worth all the time and effort thi
project cost. Work for others turned the thoughts of the women outside
themselves to the needs of others and joined them to the great company o
those who know that it is more blessed to give than to receive. The exhibi
was of great educational value in giving the women new ideas for thing
they can do for their own families when they go home.
Young Ears that Fail
A?TER seventeen years of educational propaganda and ten o
active demonstration the New York League for the Hard o
Hearing has won its long fight to have lip-reading classes for chil
dren with impaired hearing officially accepted as part of thi
elementary school system of the city. (See Let Them Hear b]
Annetta W. Peck. The Survey, March 15, 1932, page 672.) Theri
are now fourteen classes in the New York schools, all of then
originally promoted by the League with the cooperation of inter
ested teachers and school officials. The League's whole educa
tional program including audiometer surveys and preventivi
otological clinics as well as lip-reading has been adopted by thi
Department of Special Education. The League's own demonstra
tion school, started in 1922 side by side with its preventive clinic
will continue its Saturday classes for children not otherwis'
reached.
The victory of the League is the result of steady patient effor
in which it enlisted the support of otologists, social workers ant
individual teachers. It bought audiometers to test the hearing o
school children; it brought about the organization of hearing con
servation clinics; it made surveys and studies in the schools
demonstrated the value of lip-reading learned at an early age, am
trained teachers in some five different centers. The long driv>
ended when it was able to present to school authorities a no-cos .
plan by which the program could be adopted at this time.
Swapping Clothes that Fit
WORN out with trying to find in heterogeneous bundles o
donated old clothes the particular garments needed by par
ticular children, the school mothers of West Newton, Mass., hav
hit on a scheme of supplying such garments without the usua
confusion and accumulation of inappropriate and useless stock
From each room of each of the one private and three publi'
schools of the town a good dependable mother of one of the chil
dren, a mother who knew other mothers, was named to represen
that room on a committee for that special grade. Thus the mother
of first-graders formed one committee, the mothers of second
graders another, and so on, seven committees in all.
To the school nurse, who makes daily rounds, who knows th
homes the children come from, and who is as alert to broken shoe
and too thin garments as to sore throats and achy ears, is en
trusted the reporting of need. When third-grader Johnny ob
viously needs rubbers and a warm sweater which his family can
not supply the nurse calls up Mrs. Third Grade Committe
Chairman who in turn calls up one of her members in anothe
school: "Size 14 boy's rubbers please Mrs. Member, and
sweater for a plump boy a little large for his age — and he'd love i i
ipnl 1933
THE SURVEY
163
.„ be red." Mrs. Member then phones around to mothers of
i 'slump third-graders and presently the trick is done and young
fohnny is fixed up with garments of the right size and shape.
Peggy Duncanson Piper, 25 Sewall Street, West Newton, Mass.,
;nthusiastic volunteer organizer of the system, will answer ques-
•ions about it. Of it she says:
I Once the plan gets going it works smoothly and quickly. If a mother
.annot herself supply the needed garments she is bound to know some
jther mother who can. With four schools to work in we never have to
jubject the child to the humiliation of appearing in the cast-offs of one of
lis own playmates. One of our women's clubs has recently organized a
nending committee which puts every garment into apple-pie order before
t is delivered to the nurse. We are fortunate in having an exceptional
ichool nurse to work with, but I see no reason why, in towns not so
Blessed, the plan would not work just as well through the teachers. Cer-
ainly our teachers are delighted with it. It is they who see to it that
:he youngsters wear the garments every day and do not save them for
jest. To avoid duplication and check occasional repeaters the children's
lames are filed with the local social-service index.
For Facts about Housing
TO its own gratification the new housing information bureau
and monthly news-letter set up by the Housing Section of the
Mew York City Welfare Council, 122 East 22 Street, has met not
jnly a local but almost a national need for material and informa-
:ion about housing in its social aspects. The information service is
ree to all inquirers while a small fee to cover printing costs is
:harged for the news-letter if sent to non-members of the Housing
Section. More comprehensive — and expensive — information on
Current happenings in relation to housing the country over is
Contained in Millar's Housing Letter published weekly (annual
subscription $15) by John H. Millar, 440 South Dearborn
Street, Chicago.
Boys Without Homes
't T7HEN the Cleveland Boys' Bureau was launched not quite a
: ' * year ago under the auspices of the Associated Charities and
:he Y.M.C.A. it was with the idea of doing a real case-work job
or footloose home-town boys. It was adequately financed, had a
;ood physical plant, a first-class staff and the active interest and
iupport of the public. But last fall the transient boy in Cleveland
Became so numerous and his problems so pressing that the Bureau
elt obligated to change its policy and to accept these boys for
;helter and such help as exposure to its activities would afford. In
nid-winter a survey indicated that some twenty-four hundred
souths between the ages of fifteen and twenty-five were passing
:hrough the city monthly, a problem much larger than the Bureau
is constituted could possibly handle. A check by the Y.M.C.A.
hrough its Ohio branches showed that ten thousand or so youths
vere drifting around among the cities of the state.
As a result of the study Cleveland, through the Mayor's Em-
)loyment Commission, is now to have a special shelter for tran-
;ient youths which will be physically separated from any of the
/egular agencies but under the supervision of the Boys' Bureau.
The Bureau will return to its own work for the home-town boys,
nodified somewhat by the strain of the times.
SEVEN years after the passage of the Pennsylvania law regulat-
'ng adoptions the Child Welfare Division of the Public Charities
Association is undertaking a check-up of its workings and a study
>f the general status of adoptions in Pennsylvania.
NDIANA and Washington have joined the parade of the states
vhere old age is protected by mandatory relief legislation. The
lew law in Indiana stipulates a maximum monthly pension of $15
:o persons seventy and over, residents of the state for fifteen
fears, with costs divided between the counties and the state. The
Washington law, more generous, sets the qualifying age at sixty-
ive and the maximum monthly aid at $30. Counties must pay the
:osts.
Hospital Councils Everywhere
\ HOSPITAL council in every community where two or more
•**• hospitals now are working independently is the urgent
recommendation of a memorandum just issued by the Council
on Community Relations and Administrative Practice of the
American Hospital Association. Such a step, the memorandum
points out, is necessary for the study and planning of health needs
on a local basis to meet questions in which the hospitals them-
selves, the doctors, nurses, and the public have a common stake.
The memorandum outlines aims of a local hospital council,
general procedures, minimum cooperation, and special functions:
relations with the community, the medical and nursing profes-
sions, public health and so on. The present memorandum follows
recommendations sent out to the hospitals by the same committee
several weeks ago in a report on The Periodic Payment Plan for
the Purchase of Hospital Care, giving principles for group hos-
pitalization arrangements for people of limited means. (See
Survey Graphic, April, 1933, Organized Action in Medical Care.)
Correspondence on the fields covered by the committee, commu-
nity relations and administrative practice, may be addressed to
the Council of the American Hospital Association, 18 East Divi-
sion St., Chicago.
For the medical service plans approved by the California Medi-
cal Association, covering arrangements for periodical medical
care in the patients' homes, or by cooperative provisions, in
hospitals, consult the Bulletin of the Committee on Public Rela-
tions, California Medical Association (450 Sutter St., San Fran-
cisco), Vol. I, No. 2.
Spyglass Ahoy!
MOST attractive in illustration and typography and lively in
content, Spyglass makes its bow from the offices of the
American Child Health Association as a new periodical for em-
phasizing health values in the classroom. Its slogan — "Far and
near in the world of life" — is admirably carried out in the text
which adapts unusual pictures and situations to make important
ideas interesting. Issues during 1933 are scheduled for February,
April, September and November: price 20 cents a single copy, 75
cents a year of the Association, 450 Seventh Ave., New York City.
3000 School Lunches for $39.54
IN Los Alamos, California, the board of education used to pay a
cook $30 a month to prepare hot school lunches, and the
costs were met by a nickel from each child who took luncheon
and contributions from a local woman's club. The 95 children
in the school are from native American families and Portuguese,
Italian, Japanese and other nationalities; about half of them come
in from the ranches. This year money for lunches was lacking
and at best only about half of those who lunched at school had
been able to buy the hot food. So under the direction of the
teachers it was decided to see what could be done without money.
When the children are assembled in the dining-room, the teacher
announces, "Tomorrow we shall need two gallons of milk. Who
164
THE SURVEY
April 193
can bring some?" Nearly every woman in the district has volun-
teered her turn at helping in the cooking, giving two or three
days during the four winter months when the hot lunches are
needed. Most of the cooking is done at the school, though occa-
sionally dishes such as soup which require prolonged cooking are
prepared in the homes and brought over by the volunteer of the
day when she comes at eleven o'clock. The food is served cafe-
teria-fashion. Teams of children act a week at a time as servers,
clearers, dishwashers, sweepers and the like, and other children
are monitors for hand-washing. Every child who cannot go home
to lunch gets hot food without paying. The menus are made up
weeks in advance but shifted when necessary to take advantage
of donations. For 3267 meals the cash outlay necessary to supple-
ment donations was $39.54, contributed by the community clubs
and other donors.
Home Care for Mental Patients?
THAT family care of mental patients be seriously considered
with a trial demonstration under as favorable circumstances
as possible is urged by Horatio M. Pollock, director of statistics
in the New York State Department of Mental Hygiene. In a
recent article in The Psychiatric Quarterly (Vol. VII, pp. 28-36)
Mr. Pollock points out that family care has been used success-
fully in Belgium, Scotland, Switzerland and Germany. For many
years Massachusetts has used a boarding-out system for a small
number of patients. At the conclusion of the fiscal year ending
November 30, 1930, the state had 169 patients under care in this
way at an average weekly cost of $6.22, of which $4.1 5 was paid
for board and clothing. Mr. Pollock suggests study in New York
State of the possibilities for satisfactory care under such a system
Pertinent Publications
MENTAL HEALTH AND THE DEPRESSION. Proceedings of a Con-
ference in Chicago, December 1932. Illinois Society for Mental Hygiene,
203 N. Wabash Ate. .Chicago. Price 35 cents the single copy, 25 cents each for
10 or more.
TIMELY, practical and interesting discussion by experts.
THE FUNDAMENTALS OF GOOD MEDICAL CARE, by Roger I. Lee.
M.D., and Lewis Webster Jones. Publication No. 22, Committee on the Costs
of Medical Care. University of Chicago Press, $2.50.
SURVEYSOFTHE MEDICAL FACILITIES IN THREE REPRESENT-
ATIVE SOUTHERN COUNTIES, by C. St. C. Guild. M.D. Publication
No. 23. Committee on the Costs of Medical Care. University of Chicago Press,
«.
THE ABILITY TO PAY FOR MEDICAL CARE, by Louis S. Reed.
Publication No. 25, Committee on the Costs of Medical Care. University of
Chicago Press. $2.
PRINTED abstracts of the report of this study and of the
preceding one, No. 23, available on request from the Julius
Rosenwald Fund, 4901 Ellis Ave., Chicago. No. 25 includes
an important analysis of income distribution among
American families and of family budgets.
A FURTHER STUDY OF DENTAL CLINICS IN THE UNITED
STATES, by Miriam Simons Leuck. Publications of the Committee on the
Studyof Dental Practice, American Dental Association, No. 4. Universityof
Chicago Press, trice $1.50.
CLINICS in dental schools, health centers, hospitals, schools
and industry.
WHEN DOCTOR AND DENTIST ARE WILLING. Jewish Children's
Home, 534 Clinton Ave.. Newark, N. J. Price 10 cents.
ACCOUNT of a successful plan for volunteer medical and
dental services worked out by Benjamin L. Winfield,
executive director.
SPENDING LESS FOR HEALTHFUL FOODS. Consumers' Information
Service, New York Stale Department of Agriculture and Markets.
THE EYE PHYSICIAN IN INDUSTRY, by J. Guy Jones, M.D. Publica-
tion 107, National Committee for the Prevention of Blindness, 450 Seventh
Ave., New York City. Price 5 cents.
SAFE AT HOME. John Hancock Mutual Life Insurance Company, Boston,
Mass. On request.
and its possible economies in comparison with care in an institi
tion, adding that there are several villages within range <
existing hospitals which might be used for demonstration, whi
former employes of state hospitals might be willing to care fc
patients in their homes.
News from the Nurses
YALE UNIVERSITY has approved the recommendation <
the faculty of the School of Nurses that beginning in 1 9;
students admitted as candidates for the degree of Bachelor (
Nursing shall be graduates of an approved college or shall hav
received equivalent training in the judgment of the faculf
Nursing education took another long step ahead a few weeks ag
in the establishment of an Association of Collegiate Schools <
Nursing with Annie W. Goodrich, dean of the Yale School c
Nursing, as president. From Simmons College in Boston comi
word of a new course for head nurses with credit toward a degre'
Bringing in its early findings from the second grading of moi
than 1300 schools of nursing, the Committee on the Grading i
Nursing Schools recommends that schools be discontinued i
nearly all hospitals with less than fifty beds and in many large
ones. The Committee finds "wholesale overproduction" of nurst
and much unemployment of nurses already graduated. The
believe that hospitals would save money by closing their schoo
and employing graduate nurses, especially the small hospital:
which "either conduct poor schools or must spend dispropoi
tionately large sums in order to conduct good ones." Jane
Geister reported from the American Nurses Association tha
more than 160 hospitals closed nursing schools in 1932, largel
because they found them unprofitable. The New York Postgrac
uate Hospital has announced that beginning March 1933 it i
taking no more student nurses because of the present oversuppl
of nurses. A survey is to be made of possibilities for postgraduat
nursing education. By 1935, nurses now in training will be gradv
ated, thus discontinuing after just a half-century one of Nev
York's oldest schools.
IF an earthquake had to come it is a blessing that it found
full-time county health department in Los Angeles County an
a full-time independent health department in Long Beach wit
trained officers at hand to cope with its after-effects.
FROM a special correspondent in Buhler, Kansas, the New Yor
Times reports what with bank holidays and the like the doctoi
found they couldn't collect their fees but still had to care fc
sick neighbors. Hence a community club was organized, includin
most of the town; members pay a dollar a month into a healt
fund. The doctors have agreed to care for members and the!
families, and according to the report are making more money.
How to arrange diabetic diets at minimum cost for relief client
has been studied in Syracuse, N. Y., by a committee of the Acac
emy of Medicine cooperating with hospital dietitians. The find
ings, with sample diets, are reported in The Journal of th
American Medical Association, February 25, 1933, p. 566
Minimum Cost Dietaries for Diabetic Patients, by William A
Groat, M.D., and Marcia I. Rosbrook. The Temporary Emergenc
Relief Administration of New York State has mimeographe
menus and recipes for relief families (not diabetics) prepared b;
the College of Home Economics at Cornell University.
THE new year started badly for health in New York State with
general deathrate in January which exceeded the record for tha
month in all but two of the past ten years, due largely to in
creased mortality from influenza, pneumonia and heart diseast
Among other " highs " was a discouraging rise in maternal mortal
ity with a rate not exceeded in any month in the past twelv
years. The Maternity Center Association (i East 5yth St., Nei
York City) which is waging a national fight against materm
mortality, offers material without cost to local organizations fc
the effective observance of Mother's Day, this year on May i<
THE SURVEY
165
Nearer by Four States
X)MEWHAT to the surprise of its friends as well as of its foes
5 the federal child labor amendment has come to life this win-
;r, with four states ratifying and favorable action in one leg-
;lative chamber of another. The amendment, which was sent
ID the states by Congress in 1924 has made slow progress,
ut unlike most constitutional amendments, there is no specified
[ime within which ratification must be completed. Approval by
hirty-six states is necessary to make the measure effective. Six
tales have ratified since 1924. Now Oregon, Washington, Ohio
.nd North Dakota are added to the list. The amendment has
•een approved by the House in Minnesota.
Resolutions for ratifications are also pending, at this writing, in
owa, Kansas, Michigan, New Jersey, New York, Pennsylvania
nd Wyoming. The amendment would give Congress the power
o enact legislation regulating the employment of children. Com-
nenting in this winter's renewed interest in the measure, Labor
omments, "Since the depression set in, the spectacle of little
hildren trudging to work while their fathers vainly searched for
obs has emphasized the evils of child labor and legislative
entiment is turning."
New Bridge
^PANNING the entrance to San Francisco Bay the Golden
' Gate Bridge, now under construction, promises that region a
implified traffic problem. To the thousand or more men now
•mployed on the San Francisco Bay ferries, the new bridge will
nean the end of useful and necessary jobs. This, The Seamen's
fournal points out, " is in striking contrast to the very considerate
reatment given to the capital invested in the ferryboats." The
ares on the ferries are purposely fixed at a rate high enough to
jrovide for gradual amortization of virtually the entire capital
nvested. The unions concerned, Ferryboatmen and Masters,
Mates and Pilots, recently introduced in the San Francisco Labor
Council a resolution urging the payment of a dismissal wage, by
rollective agreement between unions and employers. The unions
rited the fact that more than fifty American corporations "have
voluntarily provided a graduated system of dismissal pay for
workers who are permanently dismissed because of the introduc-
rion of new machines or new labor-saving devices." The resolution
was unanimously approved by the Council.
Brookwood Splits
CASE workers often comment on the heavy strain the depres-
sion puts on family relationships. A similar tension seems to
have developed in the various workers' education groups. Closely
following the recent explosion at Commonwealth College (see
The Survey, February 1 5, page 80) comes news of an upheaval
at Brookwood Labor College, Katonah, N. Y., one of the best
known American experiments with workers' education. Here the
difficulty seems to have arisen as it did at Commonwealth, over
the question of affiliation between the school and one wing of the
labor movement. At Commonwealth a closer tie with the Com-
munist Party was the point at issue. At Brookwood, relationship
to the Conference for Progressive Labor Action was the problem.
A. J. Muste, organizer of the school and its director for twelve
years, has also been head of the Conference for Progressive Labor
Action, a political group. Growing resentment over the time the
director gave to the conference and his efforts to draw the school
and the organization closer together finally flared out in attack
and counter-attack. Mr. Muste and Tom Tippett resigned, and
nineteen students (a majority of the student body) "walked out."
The effectiveness of the student protest was somewhat marred by
the banking crisis, which made it necessary for the strikers to re-
main on the campus, fed and housed by their "enemies" until
money was available for their departure. J. C. Kennedy, former
head of the Seattle Labor College and since 1929 director of
studies at Brookwood, has been appointed acting director of the
school. He announces that the Brookwood program will go for-
ward and that the school "will cooperate with the C. P. L. A. as
with other progressive and radical groups to help bring about the
kind of militant labor movement needed in the United States
today."
Benefits in Rochester
/COOPERATIVE unemployment reserves funds, built up by
*^ Rochester, N. Y., employers over the past two years, began
to pay out benefits the first of this year. The plan, launched by
fourteen firms in February 1931, has grown to include nineteen
employers (see The Survey, March 15, 1931, page 654). The
smallest company taking part in the scheme normally has about
forty-five workers, the largest about thirteen thousand. The com-
panies accumulate their respective reserves by putting aside up
to 2 percent of their payrolls until their fund reaches a maximum
equal to five annual appropriations. Workers do not contribute to
the reserve. In their printed statement of the scheme at the time
it was announced the cooperating employers stated frankly:
The companies are opposed to compulsory unemployment insurance.
They are opposed to legislation that would establish either state or na-
tional unemployment insurance. They believe that plans similar to theirs,
. . are the best way ... of dealing with the problem involved.
Because of the depression two changes were made before the
plan went into operation. To spread benefits over a longer period,
the rate of payment was dropped from 60 to 50 percent of normal
wages, with a maximum of $i 8.75 a week. Some companies, as an
emergency measure, decided to pay part-time benefits on the
basis of one third of normal time instead of one half. Some com-
panies, including Eastman, have kept the original part-time
clause. Benefits are being paid only to employes laid off or put on
part time since January I, 1933.
The Maryland Bill
IN the effort to focus the present concern over unemployment
on constructive measures that will mitigate this industrial
hazard in the future, the Municipal Commission on Employment
Stabilization in Baltimore (202 Guilford Ave.) sponsors an unem-
ployment insurance bill recently introduced in the Maryland
legislature. The bill would set up a state fund by contributions
from employers and employes, beginning July 1934 (subject to
postponement by the governor to January 1935). In the first
year the rate of contribution would be I percent of payroll and
wages, in the second year il/$ percent, thereafter 2 percent. No
benefits will be paid until a year after the fund is started. Only
workers whose wages are less than $2000 a year and who have
made twenty-six payments into the fund in the past twelve
months, or forty in the last two years will be eligible. Benefits
will be paid at the rate of 50 percent of the normal wage, with a
maximum of $20, with proportional benefits for those on part
time. The bill provides for a maximum of twenty weeks' benefits
in any one year. The waiting period is three weeks. As it stands,
the plan would cover about 375,000 wage-earners. The scheme
does not include firms employing less than three workers, nor
166
THE SURVEY
April 193.
does it cover farm laborers, domestic servants, employes in inter-
state commerce and casual employes working less than four weeks.
Helping Themselves
ILJOW organized women wage earners help one another these
*• •*• days is told in a recent report from the New York Women's
Trade Union League. The League has set up a loan fund to which
the members who are in need may turn for small sums to tide
them over emergencies. With a maximum of $25 set to conserve
the fund these small loans have nevertheless saved the day for
about a hundred members of the organization or its affiliates. No
interest is charged and there is no time specified within which re-
payment must be made. The headquarters of the League at 247
Lexington Avenue, New York, are being used as a club for indus-
trial women during the daytime. Reading material is on hand,
there is a current-events program each morning and a light lunch
is served. "No questions are asked of any girl coming in." Be-
tween seventy-five and a hundred girls attend each day. "Prob-
lems of relief come up in special cases and are referred to the
League, but every effort is being made to keep the clubrooms
from becoming additional places at which to apply for relief."
Mrs. Franklin D. Roosevelt recently signed an appeal for funds
to increase the sum available for small loans and to continue the
club plan.
The Cost of Enameled Stoves
GAS ranges, a few years ago drab utility affairs, have now
appeared with "cabinet lines" and "color harmony," and
while the result to the housewife is satisfactory, a high price for
the improvement is being paid by women workers in the hazard
of industrial poisoning. This fact is made clear in a report just
published by the U. S. Women's Bureau, based on a survey of
fifty stove enameling plants (The Employment of Women in
Vitreous Enameling, Bulletin No. 101. Superintendent of Docu-
ments, Washington. Price, 10 cents). In a foreword, Dr. Alice
Hamilton of Harvard says:
The work can be done and in some places is done with a leadless enamel
and therefore it was hoped that if the lead in the enamel were shown to
cause injury to the women who apply it, those establishments that are
now using a lead enamel might be induced to adopt a leadless enamel and
thus do away with the most obvious danger attendant upon this particular
sort of work.
Nearly a third of the seven hundred women interviewed had
one or more symptoms characteristic of lead poisoning. Lead
poisoning may be contracted simply by breathing the leaded
enamel dust and more than three fourths of the women inter-
viewed worked at spraying and brushing. Two findings stand out
as particularly serious: the greater susceptibility of young workers
to the lead hazard and its peculiarly detrimental effects on married
women. If it is necessary to use lead in an industrial process, the
bulletin points out the need of much greater precaution to safe-
guard women workers. Comparatively few states have adequate
legislation on this subject, the report shows.
THE end of the first year's work of Pennsylvania State Employ-
ment Commission was celebrated with a review of the twelve
months' at the demonstration public-employment office in Phila-
delphia. It was brought out that the office is carrying a heavier
burden than any in the country, with about 50,0x20 registrations
and over 200,000 interviews. Although in 1932 Philadelphia
employment was at its lowest ebb, 5,743 positions were filled (see
The Survey, February i, page 87).
A BRIEF and telling discussion of unemployment insurance and how
it works is offered by the University of Chicago Press in Unem-
ployment Insurance by Mary B. Gilson, the third of the Public
Policy Pamphlets, edited by Harry B. Gideonse.
Depression Programs
PLANS for campaigns, local and national, to prevent curtail i
ment of public-school programs filled the foreground of th I
recent annual meeting of the Department of Superintendence o 3
the National Education Association. The recently organizec.
Joint Committee on the Emergency in Education outlined \
three-fold program: a public referendum on such questions o]
school practice as free highschools and "opportunity to develo] ;
special talents"; collecting and appraising methods used b;i
various school systems in meeting the depression; a survey ol
national organizations " to find which are friends and which foe
of free public education."
While the department was in session, the Carnegie Foundatioi
for the Advancement of Teaching published its annual report
with a section by Henry S. Pritchett, president-emeritus, 01
"the deflation of public education." Dr. Pritchett, differing
sharply from the professional school people, holds that th>
schools in the last two decades have more than kept pace will
industry's "extraordinary overproduction and costly expansion.'
He submits that:
The same necessity confronts public education that confronts industr
— reform, retrenchment and the return to a simpler and more sincere con
ception of the tax-supported education the state should offer.
Like the Department of Superintendence, Dr. Pritchett offer
the schools a three-fold program for the emergency. Fewer am
simpler courses of study, "looking toward the training of thi
habits of the mind rather than the furnishing of information"
tuition fees for secondary schools with "the standard of admis
sion . . . such as to exclude the manifestly unfit"; tuitions ii
tax-supported universities high enough to "carry the greate
part, if not the whole cost of professional education."
Emergency Education
MADE work for teachers, tried out experimentally in Nev
York City, through cooperation between public-schoo
authorities and the State Temporary Emergency Relief Adminis
tration, has been extended to two counties and fourteen citie
of the state. The two-fold aim of the plan is to provide work fo
highly trained but unemployed men and women whose name;
are on the home- and work-relief rolls, and to afford educationa
opportunity for thousands of unemployed adults. The projec
started in New York City in December with 218 teachers an<
nearly ten thousand students. Under the expanded program
about 250 teachers will be added in New York City, and mor
than 500 in other communities. In New York City the rate o
pay has been $15 a week for twenty-two hours work, fifteen hour
of teaching and seven of preparation. Both day and evenin|
classes are offered, with nine types of courses for persons ove
seventeen years of age who are not attending regular schoo
sessions: homemaking, commercial, trade extension, technical
recreational, general cultural, English for the non-Englisl
speaking, common-school subjects for illiterates, special voca
tpril 1933
THE SURVEY
167
nal. In several centers an effort is being made to develop
urses of college grade for highschool graduates who, because
I if the depression, have not been able to enter college.
Graduate Training in Pittsburgh
ONE hundred and thirty graduate students have been enroled
for full or part-time work in the first year of the new division
graduate training in sociology and social work at the Univer-
ity of Pittsburgh. The curriculum of this new professional school
11 j:mphasizes basic training in case work, community organization,
jind the rapidly growing field of public-welfare organization and
' tdministration. The Family Welfare Association of Allegheny
1" County, the Jewish Family Welfare Association and the Chil-
' |lren's Aid Society of the county are cooperating in field-work
upervision. The division of training, of which Prof. M. C.
ilmer is director, is financed as a two-year experiment by the
iuhl Foundation. At the end of the trial period it is expected that
he work will be continued by the university with funds from
>ther sources. Its program includes practical experience in social
vork, comparable to the medical student's interne year (see The
Survey, November 15, 1931, page 209).
Waste in Education
IT7ITH the pressure to cut school budgets, there is renewed
' interest in the "student mortality" problem — the waste due
o academic failure. In a recent report for the Bureau of Guidance
md Records at the University of Wisconsin, Prof. Frederick D.
3heydleur cites the university's four-year experiment with
'troublemen," assistant deans to whom students doing poor
York could turn for advice and help. The troublemen, in dealing
vith eight thousand students, found that two groups made up
ipproximately 40 percent of those interviewed: students "intel-
ectually unfit for completion of a college course," and those who
were "loafers, floaters, drifters and aimless bohemians." A third
;roup was carrying too much outside work, a fourth was "voca-
:ionally maladjusted," and those in a fifth, about 20 per cent of
:he total, were victims of poor instruction in both secondary school
md college.
To cut down academic failure, Professor Cheydleur recom-
mends more adequate entrance tests; placement tests to start
itudents off on the proper achievement levels; that postgraduate
Mtudents doing part-time teaching who are found to be sacrificing
:heir students to their studies be relieved of teaching duties and
smaller classes at least during the freshman year.
Using a New Tool
OOGEYMEN, "mystery thrills" and jazz programs for
' children coming into the home over the radio are being
:riticized by organized parents' groups. Speaking before the
•ilementary education department at Teachers College, Columbia
University, Mrs. George Ernst, chairman of a Parent-Teacher
Association in a New York suburb, reported on a study of forty-
rwo children's programs made by her organization. Only five
were classed as "excellent," two "very good" and six "good,"
is against ten "fair," eleven "poor" and eight "very poor."
The organization has set up a "grading committee" to follow the
::adio offerings for children and report to the membership monthly,
» that parents may know which programs to permit their
children to hear.
The Child Study Association of America recently sent a ques-
tionnaire to a "sampling" of its study groups. Many of the
parents replying regretted that the radio offers children so much
that is "sensational," "too exciting," "sentimental," "unreal,"
''obvious and melodramatic." The majority held, however, that
"cheap and silly" as is much that is offered, the "good outweighs
the bad," citing the broadcasts of stirring public events, sym-
phony concerts, grand opera, news summaries and the like.
Many of the replies stress the fact that with the radio as with the
movies, parents must take the responsibility of finding out what
these genii of the Machine Age bring their children, helping them
discriminate between the good and the tawdry and teaching them
to use this new tool in constructive fashion.
"New" Summer Schools
SUMMER institutes with progressive programs for teachers
and with progressive school sessions for boys and girls will be
held on four campuses in 1933 under the auspices of the Progres-
sive Education Association (716 Jackson Place, Washington,
D. C.). At Syracuse University and Buffalo State Teachers College
in New York, the College of Charleston, Charleston, S, C., and
Alabama College at Montevallo, institutes with demonstration
schools are being established. The teachers are to be drawn from
a wide variety of public and private "new" schools in all sections
of the country. Syracuse is offering demonstration work in all
six years of the junior and senior highschool with classes in
practically every highschool subject except mathematics. It is
also setting up demonstrations of first-, fourth- and sixth-year
elementary school work. The other three institutions stress work
on the elementary school level, particularly in reading, group and
creative activities and science. Each of the four institutes plans
courses in organizing, administering and supervising progressive
schools for principals and school superintendents, as well as in the
philosophy and techniques of progressive education.
Spade Work in Race Relations
NEED for definite college courses in race relations, particu-
larly in the South, was stressed last summer as it was two
years ago by the Peabody Conference on Education (see The
Survey, November 15, 1932, page 610). Teachers trying to
organize work in this field and librarians attempting to aid them
have been handicapped by the lack of well-arranged material,
especially on American race problems. An attempt to remedy
this lack in part is being made by a group of educators, headed by
Dr. Charles S. Johnson of Fisk University. This group is prepar-
ing a source book, to be used in connection with a syllabus of the
course on the American Negro given by Dr. Johnson at Fisk for
the last five years. The book will include brief factual material,
authoritative comment and interpretation, illustrative source
documents, references for further reading and a topical bibli-
ography. "These are to be given substantial unity," Dr. Johnson
states, " by a connecting text which attempts to be explanatory
without being dogmatic."
TEMPLE UNIVERSITY, Philadelphia, offers free tuition next
semester to all full-time seniors who cannot find employment and
might otherwise be idle.
INDICATION of the growing volume of book and magazine discus-
sion of the educational possibilities of radio and plans for realizing
them is given by a I5o-page bibliography, Educational Broad-
casting, by Robert Lingel of the New York Public Library
(University of Chicago Press. Price, $1.50).
AN Experimental Study of the Educational Influence of the Type-
writer in the Elementary School Curriculum, a digest in pamphlet
form of a two-volume report of a study covering fourteen thou-
sand elementary school children in twelve American cities, may
be obtained from the Typewriter Educational Research Bureau,
230 Park Avenue, New York.
A WORKSHOP on wheels for Philadelphia children opens this
month under the direction of Sam Cornelius, in charge of the
summer camp of Pioneer Youth near that city. A large truck,
fitted with tools, benches, and handcraft materials will make stops
in strategic blocks of Kensington, a textile-mill area of the city.
Children's clubs will be organized, and the truck will make fre-
quent returns where real interest is shown.
168
THE SURVEY
April 19m
Unemployment Relief in the South TJnemolo Vmen t
r TNEMPLOYMENT relief in the South has, until this past
'-' winter, been confined to the cities and larger towns. The
rural areas contained a large population of "share-croppers" and
casual laborers whose economic difficulties had become acute, but
for whom there was no organized relief program. With the coming
of federal aid last fall, most of the southern states formed state-
wide relief administrations through which these federal funds
have been disbursed, chiefly on a "work-for-relief" basis. County
units have been set up to register applicants, classify them as to
urgency of need, and assign them to various work projects.
Relief wages have been paid from funds secured from the Recon-
struction Finance Corporation and material and supervision
costs have been met from local and state funds.
These state-wide relief administrations have been set up so
hurriedly in many cases that they have been obliged to function
with untrained personnel in the local positions, and have ac-
cordingly had large relief lists almost from the very first. In some
instances, more than 75 percent of the counties' populations
have been afforded relief. These have been in plantation areas
where in previous years the planters have carried their field hands
through the winter months, but where, with an R. F. C.-financed
work program, a certain shift of responsibility has occurred.
Three recent trends are noticeable. First, a determined effort
is being made by the state relief administrations to develop the
hastily assembled staff employes into more competent relief
workers and, at the same time, to awaken them to a recognition
of the social and health problems which surround them. Second,
an extensive curtailment of the work-relief program has been
timed to coincide with the opening of the planting season in order
to get the population back to work on the land. And third, a
concerted drive is being made to educate and require all of the
past winter's relief recipients to plant subsistence gardens this
spring so that there will not be a recurrence of the past few
months' complete dependence on outside aid.
Except for the provision in some instances of materials and
supervision for the work projects, practically none of the southern
states have participated in the financing of the relief costs. There
has been some local fund-raising, chiefly in the larger cities, but a
relatively small amount of public relief from local sources has
been provided. •
In Mississippi the relief administration is in the hands of the
State Board of Public Welfare, an executive department created
by the governor last November for the sole purpose of handling
the relief job. This Board has delegated to the county boards of
supervisors the local responsibility for the relief program, retain-
ing for itself certain supervisory functions. Each county unit is
required to employ one or more social workers approved by the
State Board and under its general supervision. The social workers
are empowered to sign the disbursing orders which are later paid
by the chancery clerks of the county from R. F. C. funds which
have been deposited to the credit of the State Board in that
county. The disbursing orders are generally in the form of mer-
chandise orders, although some cash is paid. All able-bodied
recipients of relief are required to work out their relief on public
projects arranged by the boards of supervisors.
All but one of the eighty-two counties in the state have par-
ticipated in the program, one to the extent of 82 percent of its
population. Approximately 150,000 families have been aided, or
thirty percent of the total state population. For the four months,
November to February inclusive, the R. F. C. provided $2,-
759,425; and for March and April another ^950,537.
Work projects have been chiefly local in character, including
road repairs, sanitation and beautification of public property.
Rates of pay have varied from one locality to another but have
averaged less than a dollar a day. The relief average for the
state as a whole is $1.80 per week. About 75 percent of the relief
granted is worked out by the recipient.
"Tennessee started out last fall by placing its state relief ad-
ministration in the hands of its highway department where it has
Edited b;
JOANNA C. COLCORL
and RUSSELL H. KURTil
remained despite the efforts of the experienced social workers o I
the state to have a relief commission set up. The governor ha: I
named a central committee consisting of his secretary, the statil
finance director and the head of the highway department, tcl
administer such funds as can be secured from the R. F. C. Thert
has been no state aid and very little local public financing o.j
relief. For several months no direct relief was allowed, as th< .!
previous governor was opposed to a "dole" and insisted that al I
relief granted must be worked for on the state highways. The nev .1
executive, Governor McAllister, has recently modified thi:!i
prohibition and is allowing allocations for direct relief to be mad< «j
to the four larger cities of the state and to a few of the counties '\
None of the state-secured funds are available for service ancl
operation expense, however, a restriction which has great!; I
handicapped the work in some quarters and caused a completi I
suspension of intake in Memphis early in March.
IN each county a relief superintendent is appointed by thill
governor, who is responsible for the local operation of the statcl
program. In the rural areas, there is also a relief committee tc
assist the superintendent in determining who is entitled to relief I
In Memphis, Chattanooga, Nashville and Knoxville, the mayo: |
or chairman of the county board is authorized to designate one o: i
more of the local agencies to handle this investigational function i
Outside of these cities, social workers are conspicuous by then I
absence. There are none on the staff of the central committee
hence no state-wide supervision of relief policy except thai )
furnished by technicians from other fields.
Cash wages are paid for work relief, the rate until recent!)
being twenty cents per hour. On March I the rate per hour wa; '
cut to I2>4 cents and the hours lengthened. For each dollar o.j
R. F. C. money spent for relief wages, the material and super ;
vision costs met from local and state funds average from fifty tc \
seventy-five cents. Federal aid to the extent of $2,466,123 has!
been secured since the beginning to last through March.
Kentucky's relief administration was launched last fall undei
the direction of a relief commission which resigned within r;<j
month and left the program under the supervision of a director
responsible to the governor. Committees of five have been set uj
in each county sharing in the funds. So far these funds have com<
exclusively from the R. F. C. There has been no action on the:,
part of the state itself to participate in the relief-financing pro ;«
gram of its subdivisions.
The principle of requiring all able-bodied applicants to wort
for the relief which they receive predominates in the Kentuck)
program. It is the obligation of the local committees to pass upon
applications for aid, to line up work projects, and to see that tht
necessity for direct relief is reduced to a minimum. Payment is ir
orders good for food, fuel, clothing, drugs and so on. Cash reliei
is prohibited, whether direct or in the form of work-relief wages
All merchandise orders are cleared through the state relief ad-
ministration and are paid from a central fund.
The assistant director of the Relief Commission is a trainee
social worker, occupied with the task of developing the loca
workers into competent relief executives. She is assisted in thi;
by a staff of field representatives.
In Louisville the Department of Public Welfare had beer
operating a work-relief program in which cash wages were paid
The state administration's ruling against cash wages caused i
conflict when Louisville was obliged to ask for state help. This ha;.
Ipril 1933
THE SURVEY
169
lommunity Action
This department is an emergency information
service to public officials and to members,
executives and supervisors of citizens' com-
mittees. News of interesting developments will
be gratefully received by the editors, Russell
Sage Foundation, ijo East 22 Street, New Tork
een compromised by the state paying the wages in merchandise
rders, or "scrip" as it is called locally, for two weeks' work out
f three, Louisville paying the third week's wages in cash from her
wn funds.
The R. F. C. has granted this state $5,162,166 since last Octo-
er of which $2,609,708 was for the months of March and April.
Louisiana's operations have been under an Unemployment
'elief Committee appointed by the governor last August. The
tate was districted and relief units were set up in each parish
county) at which registrations were taken for cash wage-relief
mployment. Work has been provided, largely on the highways
nd in the parks, at $1.50 per day. The daily rate for white and
<egro workers is the same, but the latter have been assigned
;wer days in the week. Relief wages have been paid entirely from
1. F. C. funds, except in New Orleans where there has been
articipation by the city. A total of $7,602,506 has been secured
•om the R. F. C. for the seven months beginning last October
nd ending April 30, 1933.
At the middle of February, 29 percent of the State's population
ere working for relief wages. In New Orleans only 11 percent
•ere relief charges but in some of the rural parishes as high as 89
•ercent of the population were on relief. A drastic retrenchment
.•as in prospect for the rural areas.
Louisiana has gone far beyond most other states in the matter
f providing staff. In February there were 1287 investigators and
lerical workers on the Unemployment Relief Committee's pay-
jll, stationed in the headquarters, district and parish relief
tfices. The combined relief case-load at that time was 136,000.
New Orleans is practically the only community in the state
lat is meeting part of the relief bill from local tax funds. The
ity is providing $60,000 per month from a bond issue approved
ist spring, and with this is supplementing, to the extent of fifty
;nts per day, the $1.50 relief wage paid by the state from R. F. C.
inds. In some localities there are small voluntary emergency
inds, but in the main the state is on a strictly federal aid basis.
While the state's program is essentially one of work relief,
icre has been a recent modification in the case of New Orleans
> allow a larger part of the funds to be used for direct relief.
Alabama has set up a Relief Administration consisting of a
oard of five receiving its authority from the Governor. This
oard has retained a director to supervise all phases of the state's
rogram except that of investigating and certifying relief ap-
licants, which function has been turned over to the State Child
r'elfare Department. County officials are called upon to set up or
esignate agencies within their counties to handle the actual work
distributing relief. In most counties the local Child Welfare
oard has been named. Where emergency committees have been
rmed the selection of the director of relief is subject to the
iproval of the State Child Welfare Department acting for the
elief Administration. Local relief directors are paid from local
inds, but other local staff members are paid from the relief fund.
It is the desire of the Relief Administration to have all em-
oyable applicants work out their relief, and to that end work
lief divisions are provided in each county unit. Direct relief
, however, given as needed. Excluding the City of Birmingham,
>out 90 percent of the relief given has been in the form of work.
he local common labor rate is followed with payment in cash.
This program got under way January i. Approximately $2,-
10,000 has been received from the R. F. C. for the first four
onths of the year. In addition, the City of Birmingham and
Jefferson County secured $496,704 from the same source in the
closing months of 1932.
The Relief Administration has, in addition to its work relief,
accounting and social-service divisions, a committee on sub-
sistence gardens and another on Home Economics. It is hoped
that a considerable measure of rehabilitation and self-help can be
achieved through the efforts of these committees.
Birmingham's relief load mounted until, in January, 18,642
families were receiving relief of which about 65 percent were
Negroes. The 1932 relief bill of the largest agency, the Red Cross
Family Service, was $1,187,017 which was more than twice the
combined expenditures of the previous six years. The Chest
provided 28 percent of this budget, the city and county 15
percent and the R. F. C. 57 percent.
Birmingham has continued to develop its diversified work-
relief program which provides employment for about half the
relief cases in any one month. Payment is in grocery orders or
rations issued from one of the several food depots operated by
the Red Cross Family Service, except for a limited number of
workers paid in cash.
North Carolina has been using its State Department of Welfare
for the administration of state-wide relief. In January its case-
load exceeded 140,000 relief families and was continuing to climb.
Work relief predominates in this state.
The R. F. C. extended aid to the extent of $3,036,000 up to the
end of February and an additional $2,038,000 for the months of
March and April.
An extensive subsistence garden program is being launched
with the aid of the state agricultural department. It is reported
that the state administration does not anticipate a substantial
decline in relief demands until these gardens begin to yield a
food supply.
In South Carolina a State Relief Council directs the program.
It is represented in each of the forty-six counties by relief councils,
appointed by the governor, each with a director of welfare and
a social worker. Counties are grouped into seven districts. There
is no participation by local governmental officials.
Three quarters of the counties' allotments are earmarked for
work relief, one quarter for direct relief. Work relief is at wages
ranging from forty to seventy-five cents per day for laborers; one
dollar to $1.25 per day for foremen. Most of the work projects
are in connection with road building and repair.
Despite the formal set-up of the relief administration, it is
reported that the actual selection of accepted relief cases from
the many registered applicants is done without an investigation or
home visit, the general theory being that the low wages will
automatically bar all those except the really destitute. It is also
reported that when an investigation is considered necessary, the
responsibility for making it is assigned to the foreman on the
project where the applicant is expecting to work.
Every county in the state is now sharing in R. F. C. funds, which
were granted in an amount totalling $1,700,800 up to March i.
For the months of March and April a grant of $2,101,015 nas
been made.
Texas, a state of six million people residing in 254 counties,
began devising its first relief administration in March with the
aid of a representative from the American Public Welfare Associa-
tion. Prior to this development, the three regional directors of
the Chamber of Commerce of the state were charged with the
responsibility of "equitably distributing" such R. F. C. funds as
the governor had secured for the relief of destitution within the
state's far-flung borders. Up to March I, $4,135,134 came
from this source with $1,377,955 more allotted for March.
•
Fruits of Experience
CHESTER I. BARNARD, state director of emergency relict
in New Jersey, in resigning the position held for eighteen
months, made the following major recommendations to the gov-
ernor and legislature:
i. That emergency relief hereafter be chargeable 100 percent
170
THE SURVEY
April 19
to the state, and administered locally by state employes, except
in such municipalities as may elect to pay 50 percent of relief
costs and retain control of the local disbursement of funds. The
discretionary powers accorded the director in the law of 1932 have
been more and more invoked for special grants until, of the
municipalities receiving state aid, 65 percent are receiving more
than the "normal" 50 percent refund which the law contemplated.
This, Mr. Barnard believes, results in great inequality, especially
as the Emergency Relief Administration has no adequate ma-
chinery to examine the claims of individual towns as to inability
to meet relief costs. He would use the wider taxing powers of the
state to create an "equalizing" fund for unemployment relief,
recognizing that the time has passed when the term "emergency"
can logically be employed.
2. That a policy be adopted of paying rentals for persons on
poor relief lists in the amount to cover the taxes, water rate, and
3 percent on the assessed valuation of the property, involving
payments of ten to twelve dollars per family per month, and
adding a million dollars a month to the state's relief bill. Such a
formula, he states, clearly avoids any possibility of profit to land-
lords, yet is sufficient to cover the unavoidable out-of-pocket
expenses to which the ownership of these properties subjects
them. The present practice (of avoiding the payment of rent till
eviction proceedings have been started) "is by indirect methods
to require the use of private property for the housing of public
charges without compensation, at the same time that public
authority is imposing substantial charges in the form of taxes
against the property so used."
3. That men performing "work-for-relief" under the New
Jersey plan for 1932 be removed from the application of the
State Workmen's Compensation Act, at the same time vesting
the state director of emergency relief with power to create in
effect an insurance system within the emergency relief administra-
tion for their protection.
New England Developments
THE New Hampshire Committee on Unemployment Relief,
with the vigorous cooperation of Governor Winant, has
been introducing new blood into the somewhat antiquated system
of poor relief in that state. In the summer of 1932, several cities
and counties which were in trouble over increasing relief ex-
penditures turned to the state for help. The governor had at his
disposal a small discretionary fund, which he agreed to apply to
the purpose wherever the overseers of the poor or the county
commissioners would accept the services of a trained social
worker, whose salary would be paid by the state, and who would
be responsible, under the existing local authority, for family
investigations and for setting local standard of relief. Several
public officials, scenting interference with cherished ways, or
anticipating awkward discoveries, refused the assistance offered.
But others accepted eagerly, and by November, seven trained
workers were stationed in different counties, under a supervisor
in the office of the Committee on Unemployment Relief. About
this time, New Hampshire secured the first of a series of loans
from the R. F. C. which amounted to about $1,400,000 on Feb-
ruary 1 5. With this money in hand, the program was pushed more
vigorously, and in the end the most recalcitrant local officials fell
into line. Early in March, twenty-eight trained and experienced
social workers were on the state payroll, and in many places had
so far succeeded in overcoming the initial prejudice which had
greeted them, that overseers and commissioners were asking for
more to be assigned as the load increased. The Commission has
experienced great difficulties in finding trained people enough
to meet the demand which has been aroused for their services in
rural and urban New Hampshire. Precedence is given to residents
or former residents of the state, but many have had to be drawn
in from outside its borders.
Rhode Island was the first New England state to undertake
state relief. In 1932, a loan fund of $2,500,000 from accumulated
gasoline and automobile taxes was made available to cities and
counties for relief. The State Unemployment Relief Commission
allocated the money, on the basis of assessed valuation, but h;
little more than a financial supervision over its expenditure
the local directors of aid. Some communities did not borrow t
amounts allotted, so that approximately three hundred thousai
dollars of the fund was not expended.
Shortly after his inauguration in January, Governor Gre
declared an unemployment emergency to exist, in order to secu
consideration by the legislature of the new administratior
relief legislation, which, modelled closely on the New York a<
reorganized the State Unemployment Relief Commission, ai
greatly extended its discretionary powers, enabling it to set i
standards for local administration. An appropriation of thr
million dollars was included, to be secured through furth
diversion of road tax funds and a special tax on corporati'
earnings. This provision was bitterly fought by the state highw
department, automobile clubs, and other interests. In the end
bond issue of three million dollars was substituted, which will
voted upon by the people at a special election within the next ti
months. Otherwise the bill was enacted substantially as draw
Governor Green becoming chairman of the new state commissic
Since relief could not wait upon the special election, recoui
was had to the R. F. C., which in February loaned $893,000
Rhode Island. State assistance to municipalities will no longer
on a loan basis, but will be outright grants on a 50-50 matchi
basis. The loans made to municipalities last year have be
remitted. In addition, the October tax payments in 1932 ha
been returned to the towns and cities for relief purposes. It
expected that about seven million dollars will be available I
relief during 1933; and of this, due to the remissions just me
tioned together with the aid received from the R. F. C., t
municipalities will have to find only one million in new mom
The enlarged staff of the Commission, in addition to the i
rector, Henry T. Samson, who holds over from the previo
administration, consists of an assistant director, a chief accout
ant and two field accountants, two field supervisors, an engine
in charge of work-relief projects, and a case-work supervis*
Trained social workers, either secured through the Commissi
or approved by the case-work supervisor, must be in charge
the actual contacts with families in the local relief offices, soi
of the smaller of which will probably be combined for administi
tive purposes. All salaries are paid from funds allotted by t
state, though the directors of public aid, who are nominally
charge of local distribution of home relief, continue to be a
pointed and paid by the municipalities. Work relief is to
managed by local boards appointed by the state commission,
in New York.
In New Hampshire, where the county governments ha
always had an important share in relief, the tendency appears
be towards centering responsibility for emergency relief in t
county units, a plan strongly urged in the report by the Brookir
Institution on New Hampshire government. In Rhode Islar
where the township is the only functioning unit of governmei
no such tendency is apparent, unless the proposed combinati
of small townships into "welfare districts" be a step in the sai
general direction.
Gardens!
NOW is the time for garden committees to be getting th<
plans in order in the northern half of these United Statj
Down in Dixie they are busy, apparently, the year around.
The Russell Sage Foundation (Charity Organization Depa
ment) 130 East 22 Street, New York, has prepared a short repo
The Subsistence Garden: A Community Program, based |l
reports secured from sixty-nine cities and twenty-three stat
It does not tell how to grow vegetables; but it does suggest tfc
preliminary steps in community organization, publicity a.
finance, the personnel and equipment required, the knotty prcq
lems of transportation, supervision of gardens and gardeners, a
preservation of produce, which are likely to be met, and t
returns to be expected. A single copy may be secured free;
small charge will be made on quantity orders.
THE SURVEY
171
The Princeton Plan
HE ABOLITION OF UNEMPLOYMENT, by Frank D. Graham. Princeton
Jniversity Press. 99 pp. Price $2 postpaid of The Survey.
U this book, popularly thought to be a simplified scheme for
[avoiding progressive starvation, Professor Graham of Princeton
i..s included a very readable analysis of the causes of unemploy-
jent (Chapter VII), and a valuable discussion of other proposed
[ads to recovery. As a lagniappe, he disposes of several fantastic
;llacies without betraying his professorial status.
j Dr. Graham earnestly suggests that idle workers be employed
I produce the goods they actually require as consumers under
Llationships they already understand. An Emergency Employ-
lent Corporation, with or without government support, would
I: formed to bring together, voluntarily, idle men, material and
anufacturing and distributive facilities. The Corporation would
lake contracts with going concerns for the rental of idle equip-
lent, and would supply these producers with material and work-
is to manufacture identical goods. The total weekly output of
srporation goods would be given current dollar valuation, for
counting purposes, but all wage-payments would be made in
nsumption certificates, representing shares in the total produc-
i>n. These certificates would constitute requisitioning power,
actly equal to the output, on retailers who would stock the
•ods, and retailers would use the certificates either for stock
placement, or as scrip, redeemable also in the Corporation goods
: presented.
Wherever possible, consumption certificates would be used
jr payments. Some costs, however, would require cash, and to
leet these the Corporation would sell certificates for cash.
ippliers of raw material would be offered a price premium to
ke certificate payment.
The wage-rate would be based on the value of an hour's un-
illed labor. The relative rewards of different types of workers
. Duld remain as at present; the absolute pay would depend on the
prporation's total output of final goods.
Dr. Graham has suggested reasonable-sounding methods of
,mdling slow-moving merchandise, worker-training, transport,
serve labor supply, instalment sales and so on.
In dealing with objections (Chapter VI), the author touches a
gh-water mark, both in methodology and in full, consistent,
ctual rejoinder. He freely admits the administrative difficulties,
e possibility of gross inefficiency, but accepts no anticipated
'fficulty as a real danger except the possibility of not getting
-arted.
Dr. Graham maintains that cooperation of enterprisers and
ganized labor would be assured, because each group is capable
• judging its true interest. The events of recent months, particu-
rly the banking crisis, preclude belief in this principle. Labor
ould be highly suspicious of this potentially largest employer in
e country, with no established labor policy, while producers
id rentiers would justify infanticide to protect skeleton markets
;ainst such a baby competitor.
The broader 1933 principle of "crisis decision arrovation" is
:ely to bring the Graham plan into being. Already there are
mblings in several commonwealths. Attorney-general O'Brien of
.ichigan has drafted legislation designed to take over idle indus-
tries, and idle equipment of industries, at work only part-time, to
provide employment. Socialist legislators in Pennsylvania and
California have similar ideas. The economists' dreams of pure
equilibrium and a closed order of society may arrive by default.
Dr. Graham states (p. 78) what Bassett Jones has mathemat-
ically demonstrated recently, that productivity cannot support
debt, because the growth factor of productivity does not, on a
price basis, and cannot, on a natural resource basis, be in conso-
nance with the growth factor of the compound interest table. The
Graham plan would avoid burdensome interest charges. Could it
pay taxes? Or escape taxation entirely? The real administrative
difficulty would arise when the enterpriser demanded rent ade-
quate to pay obsolescence, taxes and fixed charges.
Several observers, including advisers of President Roosevelt and
Technocrat Scott, have been quoted as stating that even if in-
dustry returned to its 1929 level, several millions of the presently
unemployed, estimated by Business Week to exceed fifteen mil-
lion, could not be absorbed. Dr. Graham believes his balanced
load plan of production-consumption, without resort to agricul-
ture, could care for all employable. Certainly there exists enough
raw material and plant equipment for the experiment. At the
peak of employment in manufacturing industries, about nine
million were at work; at present, about five million producing
approximately 62 percent of the 1929 physical volume of goods.
Let the reader compute for himself what would happen to the
physical volume of goods if any considerable portion of the fifteen
million unemployed were put to work even at a low-efficiency
factor. Undoubtedly it would be large enough to supply at once a
minimum standard of living for the families of all Corporation
employes. The results, in addition to pleasing the Socialists and
economic planners, might tickle the Technocrats, for conceivably
it could show that a price system is not needed. Dr. Graham is on
the threshold of a new concept of value. LEON HENDERSON
Russell Sage Foundation
Chicago in Chains
THE GOVERNMENT OF THE METROPOLITAN REGION OF CHICAGO,
by Charles E. Merriam, Spencer D. Parralt and Albert Lepawsky. University of
Chicago Press, pp. XX11; 193. Price, t2 postpaid of The Survey.
THE crazy quilt as a design for a bed covering has had its day;
as a pattern for the government of metropolitan areas it is
still in the height of fashion. In the chamber of metropolitan
horrors, Chicago ranks as the chief spectacle and in the brief
book under review Professor Merriam and his collaborators have
exposed it in all of its revolting aspects. They have defined the
Chicago region as that area within a radius of fifty miles of the
intersection of Madison and State Streets. It contains some five
million souls and maintains a total of sixteen hundred local gov-
ernments with independent taxing powers. These governments
support some seventy-seven hundred elective officials and eighty-
five hundred employes, spending $350,000,000 annually. It boasts
350 police forces, 343 health agencies, 1000 school systems, 167
public water systems, 556 independent courts. The economic and
social losses arising from this disorganization are daily becoming
more serious. In Part II of their book the authors describe the
system (or lack of system) at work. Their indictment is complete.
In Part III, they examine several possible ways out. A first
step might be the consolidation of the twenty governments
wholly within the City of Chicago. Annexation by referendum is
appraised as a slow process. N.ext is the possibility of a federation
of friendly cities, but recent experience in Pittsburgh and St.
Louis suggests that it is difficult. Outright consolidation of
Chicago and Cook County is held to be the most obvious solution
as far as the county area is concerned. But profitable as this
would be, it would not meet the needs of 1,500,000 people outside
Cook County.
The state government has been a drag. The legislature, in
which Chicago is denied proportionate representation, is unduly
meddlesome. Constitutional home rule for municipalities, en-
abling greater control by the region over its own destiny, is cor-
rectly held to be indispensable.
In the chapter on independent statehood for Chicago, Professor
172
THE SURVEY
April 19.
Merriam advances a possibility to which he has often called at-
tention in the past. On its broadest scale the new state would in-
clude parts of Indiana and Wisconsin. This plan offers the most
complete theoretical solution of the difficulties. Unlike most ob-
servers, Mr. Merriam does not believe that it is outside the range
of practical possibility. Because many of Chicago's problems are
common to all large cities, this dramatic picture of one region in
chains should inspire action in others. H. W. DODDS
Princeton University
Cell Days
PRISON DAYS AND NIGHTS, by Victor P. Nelson. Little, Bryan. 283 pp. Price
$1.75 postpaid of The Surtey.
ONE of the things for which The American Mercury will be
remembered when, like all good magazines, it has ceased to
find publication interesting, will be the encouragement it has given
to prisoners to describe prison life and to tell the stories of their
own extraordinary careers. Victor Nelson is Mr. Mencken's
latest "find." The book displays the usual one-sidedness in its
efforts to assess and interpret the work of prisons and of prison
officials, but it is a brilliant interpretation of the thoughts, ex-
periences, emotions and conduct of great numbers of prisoners.
The chapter on Remembered Conversations, tossing the ball of
small talk back and forth among those whom society has locked
up, gives a searching and (in the last analysis) terribly dishearten-
ing picture of the sterile minds and warped attitudes of persistent
law-breakers. Every institution officer — and everyone else, for
that matter — ought to learn something about criminals from such
conversations. So, too, the chapters on Men Without Women,
on Prison Stupor, on Prison Ethics and Etiquette and on The
Freedom of the Convalescent are all shrewd analyses by one who,
whatever else may be said of him, may qualify as an expert in this
field. Nelson knows his professional colleagues — and knows them
well. In some respects the book is the best yet written by a man
who has looked at the sun from inside a prison.
On the other hand, the author is, in the main, bitter and unfair
about current penological efforts. For a man who has received
most of his education in prisons to say that he never saw an at-
tempt to reform a criminal is ridiculous. At the present moment
he is on parole to a Massachusetts psychiatrist, Dr. Abraham
Myerson; and this, too, might be interpreted as an attempt at
reformation. Insofar as Nelson suggests that American penology,
by and large, is inadequate, he is right; but he goes a great deal
farther than that and if his statements are fully believed, his book
will not only be misleading but will harm the very thing he pro-
fesses to wish, namely, an intelligent penology. He is to be con-
gratulated on his knowledge of his own kind, but the ranks of
prisoners have yet to produce a man who can talk sanely about
the sensible treatment of those who persistently break society's
laws. WINTHROP D. LANE
Trenton, N. J.
Clubs for Working Boys
LADS' CLUBS, Charlet E. B. RusseU and Lilian M. RusseU. A. (f C. Black, London.
272 PP. Price 5s net.
T TNTIL his death in 1909 Charles Russell was a very active
*-' worker in the organization of clubs for working boys. The
term "lads" seems to be more in the English vogue. For the
United States the title is not so good; indeed, because of the title
I hesitated to take the book off the shelf for more than a month.
I found the contents very much to the point for one who is work-
ing with boys. The Russells' handbook was so popular in England
that Mrs. Russell was persuaded to write this revision twenty-
three years after Lads' Clubs first appeared. The chapters deal
with organization, management, finance, discipline and other
matters important to workers in this field. The preface is written
by A. H. Norris, chief inspector of reformatory and industrial
schools. NELS ANDERSON
Stib Low Junior College
CO MM UN 1C A TIONS
Who Shall Go to Conferences?
To THE EDITOR: Our inquiry, Who Shall Go to Conferences? (s
The Midmonthly Survey, January 1933, page 45) brought for
a variety of opinions indicating that while the matter of conve
tion attendance from chest cities is of course a minor one, it do
raise the question of centralized authority as against individu
agency autonomy, a moot question in social-work administr
tion. On the whole the suggestion that the chest nominate del
gates was met by a feeling that such authority carried with it tl
danger of dictatorship, of losing the democratic values inhere
in the local agency autonomy. It seems to me however that eve
in this relatively unimportant matter a greater degree of fairnc
in the use of funds could be assured not necessarily thro<i|
centralized control, but through a central body fairly represer
ative of the individual agencies.
Following are excerpts from some of the letters received
answer to our query. We shall welcome any further coi
ment.
WALTER M. WEST, executive secretary, American Association
Social Workers: It would seem to me that conference attendan
is one of these things that could be over-simplified and ove
systematized. One person does not bring away from a conferen
the same thing that another does, and it is unlikely that t!
values secured from several delegates could be concentrated
the experience of any one person. . . . Judgments, I thin
should be as decentralized as possible since each agency is in tl
best position to determine conference representation as it relat
to education and morale. Quite possibly many agencies have fall
into negligent habits about conference delegates. I should thin
that a central organization might well call the attention of tl !
several agencies to the need for careful consideration of the vali
of conference attendance, recognizing that any particular co :
ference may have more to offer to one type of social worker th; I
to another — which argues against strict equalization from I
central source.
GEORGE RUBINOFF, Bureau of Jewish Social Research: There :
merit in your consideration that social workers' attendance I
conferences should bear some relationship to the needs of t
community as well as of the workers. Nevertheless the answer '
your question involves fundamental considerations of communi
planning since it derives from the same roots as the whole gam
of questions on agency programs, activities and budgets and t
essential conflict between agency autonomy and communi
planning. Ordinarily I would assume that the individual agenc:
would be in a much better position to judge the extent to whi
their people needed or could profit by conference attendance,
set of principles might well be prepared by the Council of Soc j
Agencies for application by the individual agencies, but I can s
great hazards in an extension in this matter of the powers of 1 1
Community Chest.
HOWARD R. KNIGHT, general secretary, National Conference
Social Work: I have felt that more careful planning and prepai
tion of the attendance at the National Conference from any giv
community would result in far greater benefits to the communi
from that attendance.
A. D. HARDIE, general secretary, Federation for Commun
Service, Toronto, Canada: Within the last two years we ha
formed a representative committee to go over the names of pi
posed delegates submitted by agencies to endeavor to see th
conference allocations were used to the best advantage of tli
community. The matter has not been given a fair trial. . . .
think that the right method is to set aside at the beginning of t
ar the sum to be used for conferences, this to be distributed
long agencies by some central committee.
JOANNA C. COLCORD, Russell Sage Foundation, New Tork: It
ems highly undemocratic to me to have the chest decide who
all attend the National Conference. . . . The best method of
ndling conference attendance that I know of was developed
fore my day in the Minneapolis Associated Charities. A lump
m was allowed for conference attendance. Staff members who
shed to go and were willing to pay part of their own expenses
gistered with the general secretary. When all bids were in, the
mp sum was divided and each person notified of his propor-
jnate share. If it turned out to be less than some could afford to
pplement for the trip they withdrew and a new division was
ade. The division finally reached meant the largest number of
rsons who could go at their own expense less the fraction of the
mp sum available for each one. SIMON DONIGER
tecutive Director, Jewish Guidance Bureau, Newark, N. J.
"Living on a Surplus"
THE EDITOR: At a meeting of the Los Angeles Chapter, A.A.-
'., which the writer attended, Professor Burgess, whose article
ipeared in the January Midmonthly Survey, asked a question.
was addressed to the speaker of the evening, William H. Harri-
.an, superintendent of the Los Angeles County Charities. "Mr.
arriman," said the professor, "you have referred to the method
getting food by the Unemployed Relief Association as ' chisel-
ig." You also told us that your organization provides them with
isoline to run their trucks for this work. Can you tell us what
• ese needy people do for the things that cannot be chiselled —
Busing, fuel, light, clothing, etc.?" Mr. Harriman made some
relevant remarks, but left the question unanswered.
Having read Professor Burgess's article I gather that he made
••> further effort to get an answer to his question. But using his
ost vivid imagination around a few sacks of food and untimely
lalogies, he gives a confused and confusing picture of "idle
bor exchanged for excess crops by California cooperatives,"
hich is presumably solving the problem of unemployment
thousands. He picks up little deeds of sweetness and light —
.-re a donation of cheese; there of five hundred boxes of or-
iges; elsewhere empty jars brought in by Boy Scouts; he gives a
mple of produce intake "on a Saturday morning late in August"
r his up-to-date information in January. But he fails utterly to
ow how the problems of adequate food, housing, heat and light,
Dthing and medical care are being met. Unless we are to assume
at since the "appropriation from the Los Angeles County
^ard of Supervisors of $10,000 for gasoline solved many prob-
ms," it covers all of them. A less informed and more inade-
late presentation of the self-help movement in Los Angeles is
ird to imagine.
Lack of space obviously does not permit a full discussion of
ic development and present condition of these Unemployed
elief Cooperatives. Their lack of a unifying policy and a large
jjective is painfully apparent. Their archaic, catch-as-catch-can
ethods of getting assistance are playing them into the hands of
(;nal officials and reactionary groups. There are many, like Pro-
ssor Burgess, who like to think that these thousands of self-
:lpers are housed and fed and clothed adequately. The facts are
tat they have never had even enough food. Their own Bulletins,
hich apparently Professor Burgess does not read, discuss little
se than evictions, gas, light and water shut-offs; lack of staples;
'ilk, meat. "Conditions," they say, "are becoming more critical
'ery day. . . . Many of the commissaries are practically
npty. ... In many homes the light, gas and water have been
irned off; and the treatment of the unemployed in the hospitals
shameful. . . . Unscrupulous officials do nothing but pass the
ack."
The Board of County Supervisors has promised $10,000 for
larch and a like sum for April. There are approximately fifty
lousand members in the county units to be cared for. The city
lits have a membership of about twenty thousand and an ap-
THE POLICEWOMAN'S
HANDBOOK
BY ELEONORE HUTZEL
Published under the auspice* of the Bureau of Social Hygiene,
Inc., thit book is a by-product of Mitt Hutzel'* experience a*
Deputy Commissioner of Police and Director of the Policewom-
an's Division in Detroit. Social workers concerned with problem*
of delinquency of women and children will find it of practical
assistance. Price, $2.00.
COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY PRESS
2960 BROADWAY, NEW TORK CITY
Something New —
New Noiseless Typing made available to all business
THE NEW REMINGTON NOISELESS
SEVEN PORTABLE DESK MODEL
The crowning achievement of typewriter engineers— a small typewriter,
light, compact, built for the exacting service of office use. Capable of the
highest grade of typewriter performance — writing, manifolding or cutting of
stencils-AND IT IS NOISELESS.
MARY R. ANDERSON
112 East 19th Street New York, N. Y.
Photic: Algonquin 4-7490
When calling at THE SURVEY let us shoic you the
new REMINGTON NOISELESS NUMBER SEVEN
propriation of $10,000 for two months was made by the City
Council. There is no "surplus" of vegetables or fruit and won't
be for some months. Only about 20 percent of the self-helpers are
being given any assistance by the County Charities. Like other
victims of very poor relief these thousands of independent Ameri-
cans live below the minimum level of subsistence.
No, there is no promise in ragged individualism, nor in the
bartering of collective power for a mess of vegetables!
Los Angeles, California MATILDA ROBBIXS
To THE EDITOR: "We are doing for ourselves and not waiting for
others to care for us. Action speaks louder than words. We are
making history instead of propounding pretty theories." These
are the words of C. M. Christoffersen, president of the Unem-
ployed Cooperative Relief Council, coordinating agency for some
forty organized associations in Los Angeles County, on reading
Miss Robbins's letter.
My article made no claim that this movement, in its present
form, is a fundamental solution of the unemployment problem.
Whether the principles upon which it and many other coopera-
tives in a score of states are built may be taken as a basis for a
far-reaching plan to "solve" this problem by putting the unem-
ployed to work to produce and exchange goods exclusively for
their own consumption is, however, a question which this vital
movement has led many to ask. Prof. Frank D. Graham of
Princeton in his suggestive volume, The Abolition of Unemploy-
ment, makes an excellent case that such a national scheme is
practicable. The movement in operation in Los Angeles County,
however, is merely meeting an emergency need primarily by the
simple methods of barter of labor for food, described in my article.
Mr. Christoffersen (writing March 9, 1933) answers many of
Miss Robbins's criticisms:
Some of our recent accomplishments may be enumerated as follows:
Houses are being painted and repaired in exchange for rent or other neces-
saries. . . . We now have a sufficient quantity of cabbage, carrots, let-
tuce and fish. ... At present we have on hand more oranges than neces-
(In answering advertisements please mention THE SURVEY)
173
CLASSIFIED ADVERTISEMENTS
Rates: Display: 21 cents a line, 14 agate lines to the inch. Want advertisements
five cents per word or initial, including address or box number. Minimum charge,
first insertion, $1.00. Cash with orders. Discounts: 5% on three insertions; 10% on
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TEL.: CT TRVFV X/fTDX/fOXTTT-IT V "2 EAST 19th ST.
ALGONQUIN 4-7490 OU*\.VJC.I IVllUiVUJlM A JTUL I NEW YORK CITY
SITUATIONS WANTED
WANTED: by man (37) work with young boys in
institution. Will do anything which will contribute
towards his support. Experience. Roger Whitney, 132
Main St., Norwalk, Conn.
YOUNG WOMAN, attractive personality, B.A. and
M.A. degree, desires summer position as companion
to adult or tutor to children. Will travel or locate
anywhere. 7123 SURVEY.
SOCIAL WORKER desires position in MASSACHU-
SETTS. Five years experience in family agency, case
work supervisor. University graduate, social work
certificate. 7124 SURVEY.
MAN, Jewish, age 31, married, now professionally
employed, desires executive position in institution.
Experience in East and Mid-west. 7125 SURVEY.
YOUNG COLLEGE WOMAN, B.S., Case work
training and experience, settlement house training,
desires connection. Moderate salary, references. 7126
SURVEY.
MATURE AMERICAN GRADUATE NURSE,
widely experienced, with executive ability of a high
order, wishes superintendency of institution for chil-
dren or adults. Nearly eight years in present position.
7127 SURVEY.
COLLEGE WOMAN, youthful 35, desires library,
research, social, or office work in New York City.
References. 7128 SURVEY.
YOUNG MAN, college graduate, four years' experi-
ence, boys' organization, desires new connection
offering larger opportunity for development. 7113
SURVEY.
IS THERE AN ORGANIZATION with an opening
for a young man who has prepared himself for work in
the social-religious field (A.B., B.D.)? Social work
experience and executive ability. 7114 SURVEY.
WOMAN, executive experience here and abroad.
Social worker and/or Director Religious Education;
organization, settlement, church. Correspondence in-
vited. 7129 SURVEY.
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ice. AUTHOR'S RESEARCH BUREAU, 516 Fifth
Avenue, New York, N. Y.
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sary, and are bartering a quantity of them for dried pears with the San
Jose group. . . . These, of course, are but the highlights on recent devel-
opments, but perhaps will enable you to bring out the fact that we are
constantly adding to our variety of surplus supplies.
I feel that the fundamental principle is that the mere fact that it is
obtainable proves that it is surplus.
Yes, of course we are getting along on less than we might desire, but we
are nevertheless living. There are thousands of people who obtain food
from no other source than through the cooperative activities, and they are
still healthy and active after months of such diet. In fact, I might point
out that many of our group are living better than others who are eking
out an existence by working all day for low wages. . . .
The roots of our work go much deeper than " the stomach," I believe.
While we had no definite plan for "moral rejuvenation" or "rehabilita-
tion," it has nevertheless worked out that way. Many sensitive people
find it impossible to preserve their self-respect while obtaining aid from
organized charity, but feel different about coming into our group. "He
who does not work, neither shall he eat" — is much more far-reaching
than merely "driving" people to work!
Some charity workers find it difficult to appreciate a movement
of this kind. Undoubtedly, expert case-work technique, profes-
sional skill in handling the needs of "clients," is lacking. The
unheard of procedure of clients conducting their own relief pro-
gram is being adopted!
Mr. Christoffersen, in addressing a college audience, made this
striking statement: "Ordinary charity methods are designed to
meet the needs of abnormal persons in normal times and un-
suited to meet the needs of normal persons in abnormal times."
There may in some cases be more than a grain of truth in this
drastic criticism and it may explain why some charity workers
fail to appreciate the significance of this movement. The inadi
quacies of the scanty livelihood provided by the cooperatives
also a target for those of communistic bent. In a land of potenti; I
plenty, direct action seems a more effective method than th \
slower road of cooperation.
The contributions from the county supervisors and from til
Los Angeles City Council, referred to in Miss Robbins's lette !
are evidence that responsible authorities have some degree c j
confidence in this organization.
It does not need even the " vivid imagination " with which ]
Robbins credits me, to see the potentialities of self-help orga
tions springing up throughout the United States where groups c i
men, abundantly able to support themselves if employment wer
available, organize to meet their own needs— and in spite of dis
sensions within, lack of managerial experience and attacks frot
officials and social workers, have a considerable degree of success
Claremont, California J. STEWART SURGES
But Still a Large Number
.
To THE EDITOR: In the note in The Midmonthly Survey [Fi
ruary, page 84] about our report on self-help you say that th
committee estimates that well over a million persons in the Stat
of Washington are members of the leagues of the unemployed
That estimate was intended to cover the entire nation, but a mis
take in the mimeographing conveyed the wrong impression
The number organized within this state is not over a quarter o
a million. ARTHUR HILLMAI
Department of Sociology, University of Washington, Seattle
(In answering advertisements please mention THE SURVEY)
174
pril 1933
THE SURVEY
GOSSIP:
of People
and Things
'We Knew Them When"
PHE Bulletin of the New York A.I.C.P.
L (and to get this you don't have to know
bat A.I.C.P. stands for) calls attention to the
ct that Sinclair Lewis, author of Ann Vickers,
as once upon a time one of its visitors at-
ched to the Joint Application Bureau. Was
at where he learned about social workers?
And the New York Children's Aid Society
eps up with the claim that Mrs. Franklin D.
oosevelt learned about social work from
em. At the age of five she was taken by her
•andfather, the father of President T. R., to
e Thanksgiving dinner at the old Newsboys'
ome, an activity of the Society. Here she
Iped wait on table, "How successfully," she
- iys, "history does not relate," and here she
iw her first show, put on especially for her
:nefit.
j Speaking of Mrs. Roosevelt, Survey Asso-
ates puts in its modest oar with mention of
: ic fact that since 1926 she has been one of
lem.
To the deep regret of everyone connected
ith the New York Charity Organization
ociety, Lawson Purdy, for fifteen years its
; :cretary and director, has resigned. Mr.
urdy has long contemplated retiring at
: :venty, an age he is now approaching. He
as been for years active in the administrative
ffairs of Trinity Church and was recently
ppointed its comptroller. Porter R. Lee, di-
:ctor of the New York School of Social Work,
jcceeds him as secretary of the C.O.S.
BEGINNING next fall Pioneer Youth will
aim the full-time service, as assistant direc-
)r, of Agnes Sailer who for four years has been
: :aching at the City and Country School in
few York, with her time off spent in Pioneer
outh's summer work in the mill-towns of the
outh and the mining towns of West Virginia.
A volunteer for volunteers says the Ameri-
an Red Cross as it appoints Frances Evelyn
'aton of Washington, D. C., as assistant direc-
3r of volunteer special services to succeed
osephine L. Atkinson, resigned.
Glory and Grief
AS a depression team Mary Amberg of
f* Chicago offers the twins born to one of
er neighborhood families which already
ioasted nine girls and one boy. The twins were
•>lemnly christened Gloria and Dolores.
To the honor roll this month comes Dr.
tichard A. Bolt, director of the Cleveland
'hild Hygiene Association, who has been
warded an Oberlaender Trust fellowship "to
arry on a detailed study of maternal and
hild welfare conditions in Germany and
lustria." . . . Martha Berry, of the Berry
•chools, Georgia, has added to her already
.otable collection of honors for public service
he Eleanor Van Rensselaer Fairfax Medal
"f the National Society of Colonial Dames in
he State of New York. . . . The Cameron
'rize for 1933, an award made annually by the
University of Edinburgh, Scotland, on the
recommendation of its medical faculty, has
been given jointly to Dr. George F. Dick,
professor of medicine of the University of
Chicago, and to Dr. Gladys H. Dick of the
John McCormick Institute for Infectious
Diseases, in recognition of their work on the
etiology and treatment of scarlet fever. The
prize at present exchange amounts to about
$685. Other Americans who have received
it in past years include the Bostonians, Dr.
Harvey Gushing, Dr. George R. Minot and
Dr. William P. Murphy.
THE Catholic Charities Review asks every-
one who is contemplating going to Paris in
May to participate in the international cele-
bration of the centenary of the St. Vincent de
Paul Society, to communicate with Richard H.
Farley, 535 Fifth Avenue, New York, who is in
charge of travel arrangements.
. . . and Sometimes W and Y
DRACTICE has made William Hodson of
A the New York Welfare Council virtually
perfect in knowing just what organizations
people are talking about when they toss off
T.E.R.A., A.I.C.P., F.W.A.A. and so on. But
the other day he met a new one. On his desk
was a card leading off with A.A.S.W.T.E.A.
"Whew," quoth W.H., "now what!" He got
A.A.S.W. — American Association of Social
Workers. But T.E.A. What new stunt was
Walter West pulling? T.E.A.— T.E.A. ? Then
came a great light, "Oh TEA, tea,— it isn't a
new organization at all. It's a party."
DR. Lawrence C. Kolb, a senior surgeon
in the U. S. Public Health Service, has been
appointed superintendent and chief medical
officer of the Hospital for Defective Delin-
quents which the United States Bureau of
Prisons is building at Springfield, Mo. The
new institution, which will be completed in
midsummer, will serve as a special medical
center for the whole United States prison
system.
IN line with the general broadening of its
program as reported in this department last
month, the William T. Carter Foundation of
the University of Pennsylvania is undertaking
a year's experiment to prepare physicians for
dealing with the more common behavior prob-
lems of children. In cooperation with the
Children's Hospital and the Child Guidance
Clinic, Dr. Frederick H. Allen, director of the
clinic, has been appointed a special member
of the staff of the Foundation to conduct a
weekly seminar where physicians will discuss
the child problems on which parents and
others seek their advice. The Foundation has
also added to its staff Elizabeth McCord of the
Community Council, seasoned caseworker and
teacher.
FROM Sioux City, Iowa, on the eve of setting
sail for Fort Wayne, Indiana, writes Uncle
Alec Johnson, whom age cannot wither nor
custom stale: "Tonight I gave my concluding
talk of a course of six to the staffs of the welfare
agencies. I am to speak at a dinner meeting of
175
social workers whom I mean to tell how I
look upon them with a mixture of sorrow and
envy, sorrow for their immediate hard lives,
envy for the fine things they will live to see.
Next Sunday I am to talk to the Unitarian
Club of Davenport. I spoke in this same church
forty-three years ago, the occasion being the
first anniversary of the beginning of organized
charity in the community. Then I told them
our hopes for the new movement. Now I am
to tell them how some of these hopes have been
disappointed while some of them are still
glowing. Rather interesting, isn't it!"
REV. Paul Sperry of Washington, D. C.,
has been appointed director of the National
Library for the Blind, a post vacant since the
death last summer of Etta Josslyn Giffin.
Clever,— Eh, What!
TUST not to take things too seriously and
^ because someone heard the word "stoop-
nocracy" on the radio and thought it was
funny, a merry group of New York financial
and business big-wigs have incorporated the
Society of Stoopnocrats for the declared pur-
pose "of relieving destitute and unemployed
individuals without regard to race or creed."
Says the chief Stoopnocrat, "Our society
takes its inspiration and its spirit of buffoonery
from one of the most famous and greatest
charitable organizations, Ye Ancient Order of
Frothblowers of England." One of the rules of
the English society is that, in order to en-
courage good fellowship, a member must
stand treat unless he can produce his especially
designed cuff-links. The American model
proposes to "confer various fanciful titles on
its members in order to elicit their interest."
HER parents, Mr. and Mrs. Lytle G. Zuber
of Columbus, O., promise that she will answer
to Tripp, though they have named her officially
Lucy Fitzhugh Lay Zuber. Her mother, you've
guessed it, is the erstwhile Carolinian, Lucy
Lay, before her marriage on the staff of the
National Conference of Social Work.
HOWARD W. Odum, director of the Institute
for Research in Social Science of the University
of North Carolina, gave the Edward Douglas
White lectures this spring at Louisiana State
University under the foundation recently es-
tablished as a memorial to the late Judge
White of Louisiana, chief justice of the United
States Supreme Court. Professor Odum has
recently been elected chairman of the North
Carolina Commission on Interracial Coopera-
tion.
To mark the end of its first hundred years the
New York Institute for the Education of the
Blind has issued a handsomely printed report
full of history and engaging pictures.
State Relief Changes .
T5 ECAUSE a year away from a job is about
-*-* all a job can stand Walter Pettit has
returned to his duties as assistant director of
the New York School of Social Work by which
he was loaned to serve as executive director of
the State Temporary Emergency Relief Ad-
ministration, known to its more or less loving
friends as the T. E. R. A. Frederick I. Daniels,
public welfare commissioner of Syracuse, suc-
ceeds him on the relief job.
About the same time the status of Harry L.
Hopkins, chairman of the Administration, was
176
changed by act of the legislature from volun-
teer— if you can call it that when he was
loaned by the New York Tuberculosis and
Health Association — to paid, with his salary
fixed at $11,500. The same legislative action
increases the Administration from three to five
members. The new appointees are Alfred H.
Schoellkopf of Buffalo, and Henry Root Stern
of Nassau County.
John Colt of Princeton, president of the
Princeton Bank and Trust Company, has been
appointed by Governor Moore of New Jersey
as state director of emergency relief, succeed-
ing Chester I. Barnard, who, as forecast two
months ago in this stronghold of inside in-
formation, has returned to his duties as presi-
dent of the New Jersey Bell Telephone Com-
pany.
OUT of a combination of his duties as super-
visor of parole in the United States Prison
Bureau and executive secretary of the U. S.
Parole Board, Ray L. Huff has acquired a new
title, parole executive of the prison bureau.
When the Banks Closed
tpVERYBODY had his pet story of what
•*-* happened the Monday morning the banks
closed but the one that gave us most entertain-
ment was that of the dignified and urbane
Father Brennock, head of the Family Division
of the Catholic Charities of New York, who
to his complete astonishment found himself
dashing around in a taxi to church after church
gathering up the collection-plate takings of the
day before in order to change a thousand dollar
bill on the changing of which destiny, at that
moment, seemed to hinge.
The New York papers played up in that
cherished position, a front-page box, the story
of a pathetic looking woman with a baby in
her arms who was promptly and gallantly given
place at the head of a long line that hectic day
when people were withdrawing money from
savings banks. Presently another woman and
baby appeared and begged for precedence.
And then another, and another. About the
sixth time it happened the paying teller poked
his head out of the wicket. "Let's see that
baby," he said; "Yeah, I thought so. Same old
baby. Now suppose you go back to the end of
the line." Which she did, returning the baby
to its mother who had been thriftily renting it
out for twenty-five cents a trip.
A year's gallant fight against losing odds
ended last month in the death of Forrest Bailey
who, until ill-health overcame him, was co-
director of the American Civil Liberties Union,
and who figured valiantly in activities in behalf
of Sacco and Vanzetti, the Gastonia textile
workers and the Kentucky coal miners.
THE young of New York state are to be
safeguarded in their health and welfare by a
State Children's Council appointed by Gov-
ernor Lehman and headed by Ruth Andrus of
the Education Department. Representatives of
other departments who constitute the Council
are: Dr. V. C. Branham, Correction; Dr. Eliza-
beth Gardner, Health; Frieda S. Miller, Labor;
Dr. Sanger Brown, 2nd, Mental Hygiene, and
James H. Foster, Social Welfare.
THE Survey felt a particular personal regret
for two recent deaths, modestly chronicled in
the newspapers. Katherine Schaub, victim of
THE SURVEY
deadly radium poisoning acquired in a war
industry, succumbed at last to the doom that
had hung over her for more than ten years. Her
own poignant story of her experience was
published in Survey Graphic of May 1932.
Radium poisoning is still a compensable
disease in only five states. Dean Van Clute,
author and poet, was found dead in the tiny
apartment where, blind and helpless from
arthritis, he struggled to maintain himself.
His personal narrative, Invalid's Adventure,
published in Survey Graphic of December
1930, was one of several articles written from a
bed in a public hospital which helped establish
him in the writing world.
The Survey's Little Candle
TTS gleam in Washington, D. C., semaphored
•*• by Ray H. Everett, Social Hygiene Society:
"The Social Trends issue of The Graphic was
used as the basis of discussion at the January
meeting of the Washington Sociological Society.
All present agreed that the digest of that
tremendous mass of data was a corking good
job."
Its glimmer in a Bronx subway train — of all
places: "Say, lissen, Mamie, if you ain't read
what Frances Perkins sez in The Survey
Graphic about these cheap dresses you jes'
don't know what you're talkin' about."
THE retirement of Annie Florence Brown as
executive secretary of the Lend-a-Hand So-
ciety, Boston, after twenty-one years in the
post, was the occasion of a pleasant demonstra-
tion of appreciation on the part of the Board
of Directors, the pleasantness including the
presentation of a purse of gold pieces — yes,
gold. Miss Brown is succeeded by Mary C.
Coburn, recent graduate of Smith and of the
Simmons College School of Social Work, with
two years' experience with the Cambridge
Family Welfare Society.
MARY Augusta Clark, F.A.P.H.A., which,
if you don't already know it, means Fellow of
the American Public Health Association, is
now research associate in the division on
community clincs of the National Committee
for Mental Hygiene. She is continuing the
consultant service on statistical records and
reports in child-guidance clinics and the like
which has engaged much of her time in her
seven years with the Commonwealth Fund.
JEANIE V. Minor, best known for her long
and gallant service with the New York Child
Labor Committee, is now on the staff of the
Adjustment Service, New York, associated
with John Erskine and M. R. Trabue.
NEWCOMER on the field staff of the Family
Welfare Association of America is Walter
Wilbur, attorney of Charleston, S. C., who has
been for years on the board of the Charleston
Bureau of Social Welfare and a member of the
State Department of Social Welfare. For its
reestablished Department of Studies and
Information the Association has borrowed
Margaret Wead of the Travelers Aid Society
and Manfred Lilliefors of the Family Welfare
Society of Bridgeport, Conn.
BECAUSE for a whole year not one of its
boys was committed to the St. Charles School,
the Big Brothers of Peoria, 111., have received
from Rodney Brandon, director of the Illinois
April 19.
Public Welfare Department, the first chart
issued under the new state incorporation of t
Big Brother Movement. To the effective wo
of the Big Brothers in twenty-two Illim
communities many competent observers :
tribute the pronounced drop this past year
the population of the St. Charles Scho<
though other correctional institutions in t.
state have increased upwards of 15 percent.
BECAUSE he's in the family, Chicago forgiv
Judge Andrew A. Bruce, professor in the la
school at Northwestern University, for the stoi
he told at a meeting of the Minnesota Sta
Conference of Social Work. A Madison boo
seller, to fill an order for a well-known boo
wired to his Chicago jobber, "Please send tv
Seekers After God." Back came the retui
wire, "No Seekers After God in Chicago."
THE first call has been sounded for tl
twenty-sixth annual meeting of the Americ:
Home Economics Association to be held :
Milwaukee June 26-30. The theme will 1
Home Economics in a Changing World.
FARTHEST-from-home honors at the Ne
York School of Social Work, — and correct u
Mr. Lee, if we are wrong, — seem to go to Han
Pollak, assistant in the department of econon
ics at her alma mater, the University of Wi
watersrand in Johannesburg, South Afric.
Miss Pollak specializes in industry and has I
her credit various investigations into factor
and home conditions of women in Witwater
rand industries.
Lucky John Daley
WHEN the severalth John Daley that da
registered with the Travelers Aid S<
ciety at Schenectady, N. Y., the secretar
could no longer restrain her curiosity. "Ho1
come all you John Daleys are traveling?" sh
queried. "Five of you were here yesterday
Look at that stack of cards, each one of thei,
is a different John Daley."
The last John Daley looked a little sheepisl
then came clean: "Well, you see it was lik
this. A guy named John Daley was sittin
through the psalm-singing at a mission waitin
for his flop. The guy up front was going gooc
It was 'daily we sin, daily we're temptec
daily we come nearer to death.' When h I
called for sinners to repent John Daley wa'
the first one on his knees hollering 'Lord,
come to you daily.' That night he got two cup •
of coffee and an extra blanket. John Daley's
good name, Miss. It's sure brought luck to u ,
fellas on the road."
FOR such cold comfort as salary-cut socu
workers can find in it there is the report of th
Associated Press on what has happened to th
stipends of the clergy. Statistics are meage
and averages are thrown out of actual meanin
by the occasional big-city church which sti!
maintains a high salary level. Cuts range, how
ever, from 10 to 66 percent, with, as usua
the country minister the hardest hit. Man;
rural churches have closed entirely or hav
merged with others. But at that the countr
minister is often better off than his city brothel
says the report, since he usually has a garde
plot and "his parishioners are generous a
butchering time." Several instances are citec
both in rural and urban districts, of hand-to
mouth existence with the minister dividing th
weekly collection pro-rata with the janitor am
the organist.
ol. LXIX. No.
MONTHLY
May 1933
CONTENTS
RONTISPIECE
NEW RELIEF DEAL Joanna C. Co/cord 179
/HAT PRICE THE POWER OF THE FOOD ORDER?
Gertrude Springer 182
EFLATION— WHERE IS THY STING ?... William J. Norton 1 84
UILDING MEN— GROWING TREES Arthur Dunham 1 86
HE SHIFT IN CHILD LABOR Beatrice McConnell 1 87
KNNSYLVANIA'S WELFARE SET-UP Ruth A. Lerrigo 188
HE DETROIT CONFERENCE 189
F.NTUR1NG FOR IDLE BOYS AND GIRLS. . . . Alice Hinkley 190
HE COMMON WELFARE 192
DCIAL PRACTICE 194
KAI.TH 195
VDUSTRY 19?
DUCATION 198
NEMPLOYMENT AND WAYS OUT 199
OOKS 202
OMMUNICATIONS 204
OSSII'. . 207
Files of The Survey will be found in public and college libraries. All
sues are indexed in the Readers' Guide to Periodical Literature. Ask
le Librarian.
SURVEY ASSOCIATES, INC.
Publication Office, 10 Ferry Street, Concord, N. H.
eneral Office, 1 1 2 East 19 Street, New York, to which all correspondence
should be addressed.
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SURVEY GRAPHIC— Monthly— $3.00 a Year
Lucius R. EASTMAN, president; JULIAN W. MACK, JOSEPH P. CHAM-
ERLAIN, JOHN PALMER GAVIT, vice-presidents; ANN REED BRENNER,
•cretary; ARTHUR KELLOGG, treasurer.
I PAUL U. KELLOGG, editor.
, ARTHUR KELLOGG, managing editor; MARY Ross, BEULAH AMIDON,
EON WHIPPLE, JOHN PALMER GAVIT, LOULA D. LASKER, FLORENCE
OEB KELLOGG, GERTRUDE SPRINGER, associate editors.
• EDWARD T. DEVINE, GRAHAM TAYLOR, JANE ADDAMS, JOSEPH K.
•(ART, HAVEN EMERSON, M.D., ROBERT W. BRUERE, JOANNA C. COL-
3RD, contributing editors.
MOLLIE CONDON, circulation manager; MARY R. ANDERSON, advertising
tanager.
SO THEY SAY
A sick economic system is always ready to promise saint-like
conduct. — Heywood Broun, New Tork.
That tendency to stand together . . . which is the vice of so
many professions. — Walter Lippmann, New Tork.
We mustn't sit back now and let either George or Franklin
do it for the rest of our lives. — Helen Cody Baker, Chicago.
It is the general impression that the ideal of the minimum wage
for men has been pretty well attained. — New York Times editorial.
Any religion that does not help to keep people young has some-
thing deeply the matter with it. — The Rev. Harry Emerson Fosdick,
New York.
The birth and mortality rates of "plans" are beyond the present
power of a sociological actuary. — Evelyn C. Brooks and Lee M.
Brooks in Social Forces.
Now that fact-finding commissions have apparently gone out,
an era of fact-facing seems to have come in. — Bart Andress,
Brooklyn Bureau of Charities.
Crises of social change will weed out the unfit, but they mow
down a lot of the fittest by sheer accident. — Prof. Thomas D.
Eliot, Northwestern University.
A million dollars in gold by itself will not produce one copper
penny. Put a hen on it and it will not hatch. Water it and it will
not grow. — Henry Ford, Detroit.
It costs the state of New York as much to send a man to prison
as it costs a father to send his son to college. — Bernard J. Pagan,
New Tork State parole commissioner.
For Beauty's sake women would have turned over a new leaf
long ago if the mirror reflected spirit as well as matter. — -Susie
Lyons, The Union Poorhouse, Jamaica, B. W. I.
It just seems inconceivable that conditions can ever right
themselves enough to have prosperous conditions in the country
again. — Daniel Webster, Detroit speech, July 1837.
The descendants of the frontiersmen have been slow to learn
that democracy is not necessarily a synonym of vulgarity and
provincialism. — Roscoe Pound, Harvard Law School.
Living through what someone has called "a snatch of history"
has its difficulties but while the actors are so gallant it has its
compensations too. — Natalie IV. Linderholm, Family Welfare
Society, Boston.
The most superficial glance back into history will prove that
more social disorders have been prevented by common sense with
bread than have ever been put down by desperation with bayonets.
— Ellen Glasgow, Virginia, in The Nation.
In this depression those with soft, cruel hearts are giving a great
deal to feed and clothe men, women and children who are made
destitute by the business system which the donors themselves
make no effort to change. — George Soule, New Tork.
The people who have children must eventually become as ac-
tively interested in saving for them a good quality of education as
the people who have only dollars are interested in saving their
cash. — C. E. Turner, Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
If our unemployed workers were suddenly set down empty-
handed in an undeveloped but fertile continent they would not
starve but would immediately proceed to organize the work of
providing for their own wants. — Prof. Frank D. Graham, Princeton
University, in The Abolition of Unemployment.
A requirement that the applicant for admission to the freshman
class must write in a good legible hand a three-hundred-word
letter couched in correct idiomatic English would, if honestly
enforced, depopulate the colleges of the country. — Henry S.
Pritcbett, president-emeritus, Carnegie Foundation for the Advance-
ment of Teaching.
Young men as well as forests will be conserved in the government's emergency work -program now getting
underway all over the country. These boys with grub axes and bags of seedling trees are part oj a con-
tingent already at work replanting a burnt-over area in the Columbia National Forest in Washington,
May
'933
Volume LXIX
No. 5
A New Relief Deal
By JOANNA C. COLCORD
Director Charity Organization Department, Russell Sage Foundation
ET thee up unto the top of Pisgah" the prophet
of old was directed, " and lift up thine eyes west-
ward and northward and southward and eastward
ind behold with thine eyes." We moderns claim no pro-
ihetic powers; but the need to get away from the levels
ncumbered with a mass of detail, and reach a point from
vhich may be seen a wider stretch of the landscape, behind
its as well as before, is one that presses upon us all.
If the federal relief bill now pending in Congress is
:nacted into law, some individual in these United States
vill shortly find himself with the crushing burden laid upon
lim of administering single-handed the enormous sum of
lalf-a-billion dollars. His will be the decision as to what
>arts of the country shall receive grants, in what amount,
ind whether on the matching principle, or free of local
ibligation. His to say what standards of administration
vill be accepted; and for what prescribed purposes, within
he wide area of relief of distress, the funds shall be spent.
To him the millions of his fellow-countrymen will look who
lave no means of earning their own livelihood; on him will
;he duty primarily rest of seeing that they meet no avoid-
ible suffering. It is a tremendous, a challenging, an ap-
>alling responsibility for one person to face. Our adminis-
rator-to-be will surely need a "Pisgah-sight," as Browning
)uts it, before he maps out the course we are to follow.
In 1932 — to look no further back toward the retreating
lorizon — unemployment as estimated monthly by the
American Federation of Labor increased from 10,304,000
n January to 11,969,000 in December. There was spent
luring the year 5500,000,000 for relief and its administra-
ion, according to the estimate made by the Statistical
Department of the Russell Sage Foundation. For the first
even months, this came entirely from state and local
unds; during the last five, approximately $83,500,000 was
pent from federal funds allotted by the Reconstruction
Mnance Corporation to thirty-six states. (A total of $112,-
000,000 was allotted, but this covered grants for January
and in some cases, February needs.) Seven states made
available a total of possibly $100,000,000 to $110,000,000,
but how much of this was actually spent in 1932 is difficult
to determine. The balance, whatever it may have been,
tame from local funds, both public and private.
The early months of 1932 saw the Social Work Con-
ference on Federal Action on Unemployment joining hands
with a group of liberal members of Congress in what was
apparently a losing battle at Washington for federal aid.
Local communities, in all but five states, were bearing the
entire burden as best they might. The large sums privately
raised in a few great cities to supplement the regular cam-
paigns of the private agencies were approaching exhaustion.
Community chests could not increase receipts to cover the
deficiency. Tax funds locally raised were being threatened
by increasing tax-delinquencies; bankers were increasingly
coy toward the flotation of municipal and county bond
issues, even where legal limits of bonded indebtedness had
not already been reached. Only one state — California —
had developed any program for the care of non-resident
homeless men, and this hopeful beginning had to be dis-
continued for lack of funds in the spring. Communities
which had pinned their faith to huge work-relief programs
saw the end of them in sight; and as spring came on, the
emphasis was in some communities transferred to subsist-
ence gardens for the unemployed, since relief funds were
less and less available. No one dared formulate what the
next winter had in store; when overwhelmed by the
mounting evidences of need, Congress at its last gasp in
July passed the Emergency Relief Act, and made available
a loan fund of $300,000,000 for relief.
When the act came into operation, but six states had
state relief commissions functioning in a supervisory rela-
tion to local units of relief administration. A hastily as-
sembled handful of people experienced in community
179
180
THE SURVEY
May 1933
organization was charged with the duty of supervising,
under the terms of the act, the expenditures made by
state governments.
The act contained many major defects. It made the
administration of relief a subsidiary interest of a financial
corporation, dealing in billions in other directions. Its relief
to states was extended in the form of interest-bearing loans,
collectable from later grants to states for highway con-
struction. It permitted the federal government to make
loans directly to municipalities and counties. (This pro-
vision was so unworkable that it soon fell into disuse, how-
ever.) It contained no specific authority to advance monies
to states to cover the costs of administration, nor did it
provide specifically for the army of homeless families and
individuals traveling to nowhere on the railroads and high-
ways. (In practice, the RFC has stretched a point and
permitted the fund to be drawn upon in some instances for
both these purposes.)
The Emergency Relief Division of the RFC was directed
to require information from governors before recommend-
ing loans. But even this proved difficult, or in one case im-
possible, to secure in the early months. The anomaly of the
loan provision became apparent when pressure was exerted
upon the states as to their methods of administration. The
federal government was giving nothing; it was lending
money at a low rate. Therefore, the money the states were
spending was their own, and theirs the decision how it
should be spent, without having to take the "pauper's
oath" — so the reasoning ran, when the RFC attempted to
bring pressure on certain states to exhaust their own re-
sources before applying for a loan. The only control, in
effect, which the RFC could exercise, was the coercion of
the banker, who can make or withhold a loan according to
whether he approves or does not approve the conditions
offered by the borrower. Anything beyond that was a
matter of tactful suggestion on the part of the field staff
and goodwill on the part of governors and legislatures.
A governor who was socially-minded and took his re-
sponsibility seriously was generally glad of all the sugges-
tions that could be offered, and tried to act upon them.
In this way, over twenty states were enabled to set up state
relief organizations, under qualified personnel, and give
each county, if not ideal supervision, at least far better
than they had ever known before. The first of these was
Louisiana, which, through the initiative of New Orleans
citizens, had a state commission in operation on July 29.
BUT in other states, a legislature which refused, even
where the governor was amenable, to meet the stipu-
lations of the RFC, was likely to prove a stumbling-block
to complete cooperation; and in others, the determination
to make relief follow the use of other public funds into the
channels of political patronage has raised its sinister head,
creating conditions difficult to cope with, for a federal body
without any real authority except to withhold funds.
The continuity and sound development of state programs
has been hampered by the determination of the RFC not
to make loans or give assurances that they would be forth-
coming for more than a month or two in advance. Crisis
after crisis has supervened; and again and again, the de-
pendent unemployed of large cities and even states have
suffered the keenest anxiety until the last moment of safety
had been reached, as to whether their relief would have to
be suspended. In one city, funds sufficient for a bare mini-
mum for four weeks had to be stretched to five, with re-
Federal Relief
THE 1932 ACT
AMOUNT
$300,000,000
DISTRIBUTION
Interest-bearing loans to
states or political subdi-
visions, or advances on fu-
ture grants-in-aid for roads,
on governor's certification
of need and of exhaustion of
local resources.
LIMIT
Fifteen percent ($45,000,-
ooo) of total amount to any
one state.
ADMINISTRATION
Authority for making loans
vested in Reconstruction
Finance Corporation. Re-
sponsibility for local admin-
istration vested in governors.
THE 1933 BILL
AMOUNT
$500,000,000
DISTRIBUTION
About half of sum in grants
to states before October I on
matching basis of one fed-
eral to every three local and
state relief dollars. Balance
in outright grants at dis-
cretion of administrator.
LIMIT
Fifteen percent ($75,000,-
ooo) of total amount to any
one state.
ADMINISTRATION
Full authority for grants
vested in federal relief ad-
ministrator appointed by
the President. Responsibil-
ity for local administration
remains with the states.
NEW POWERS
Administrator may make
grants to states for care of
transients and to aid coop-
erative self-help associations
for the barter of goods and
services.
Accounting on a quarterly
basis permits planning three
months ahead.
sultant protests and disorders, which called forth a cele-j
brated editorial in a local paper, denying that relief was a
civic right which unemployed citizens might claim, and
insisting that it was extended to them only by grace or
favor of the taxpayers.
Loans have been applied for with the frank statement.!
made in the public press, "Our people are going to be taxedj
to pay for these federal funds — we might as well get our
share of them." This is tantamount to saying that the loans.
are only disguised gifts, which will never be repaid; and;
this conception is frequently expressed in private conversa->
tion. Because repayment was to be made out of highway
grants, several governors have insisted that the loaned
funds be spent on road construction, and have denied the
use of them for direct relief in the larger cities. One ex-;
cellent state program has been hampered by legislation put
through over the protests of the state relief committee
confining the appointment of relief directors to resident
voters of the state.
A peculiar difficulty has arisen in those parts of the
country where "share-cropping" is the rule. According tc
the accepted custom, the owner of the land advances mone)
or food over the winter to keep his laborers on the land, anc !
the debt is liquidated when the next season's crop is mar- :
keted. Under the impact of available federal funds, this i
whole system — which, whether good or bad, is an acceptet
folkway to which both parties had become adjusted — ha; •
May 1933
THE SURVEY
181
roken down; and in some counties as high as 85 percent
f the population is being fed from funds received from the
overnment. The Asheville, N. C., Times comments
ditorially on the situation in some parts of the South:
\Ve have always had in the southern states a considerable
>opulation which at certain seasons of the year is more or less idle,
"here is not much stirring on a cotton farm, for example, in
anuary and February.
It is true that times have been desperately hard on the land as
ell as in the towns during the past year. The cotton crop of this
tate sold last year, we believe, for about #16,000,000 as against
normal three or four years ago of $75,000,000 to £80,000,000.
But the thought persists that on the soil most persons who live
lere should as a general proposition be able at least to live. . . .
The remedy which is being desperately applied by some
tate relief commissions is to require the planting of sub-
stence gardens, by people who have never grown their
wn food, but tended only one crop in successive seasons.
'No garden — no relief" is the slogan, directed as much to
le land-owner as to his tenants.
BUT the wonder is not that relief on this grand scale has
been in some sections poorly administered — the won-
jler rather is that such progress has been made, by a people
, ho on the whole and over large areas have had so little
xperience with relief and hold such archaic notions as to
d\v it should be administered. That politics and patronage
ave crept into the distribution of public funds is not so
emarkable, in the American scene, as that they should so
-equendy have been kept out.
So much for the region just traversed. If our adminis-
rator-to-be turns his eyes to the landscape immediately
round him, he will find little to help him in estimating the
•robable demands upon him for many months in advance,
o many unknown elements exist in the financial and in-
ustrial field as to make accurate forecasting impossible,
.mma T. Winslow, writing in the Social Service Review
ir March 1933 says that:
Relief agencies in 108 cities and city areas of 50,000 or more
opulation spent approximately $299,000,000 for relief during
932 as compared with about Si 68,000,000 in 1931, an increase of
8 percent. . . . The total expended from public funds was about
24;,ooo,ooo in 1932 as compared with $120,000,000 in 1931, a
se of nearly 105 percent. Expenditures from private funds were
bout $54,000,000 in 1932, approximately 12 percent above the
•;3 i expenditure of $48,000,000. In 1932 public funds financed
2 percent of the total expended for relief; in 1931, 71 percent.
dlen T. Burns of the Association of Community Chests
nd Councils has said:
Relief reports show that on the average in each of the last three
1 ears the relief load of the country has doubled over the preceding
ear \Vhile it is hazardous to predict the same rate of increase for
/ vi there is no question that the increase for this coming year
ver 1932 will be as great in amount as 1932 was over 1931. The
icreased exhaustion of resources of the unemployed is what
lakes such an increase in relief inescapable.
Fred C. Croxton testified before the Senate Committee
n Manufactures on January 9, that in the states or parts
f states then covered by Federal relief loans "almost
xactly 80 percent of the relief money is coming from the
-PC now."
All these official statements, put together, make it
bvious that if present trends continue, the half billion
ppropriation will not suffice for a single year.
He will see that all but four states have now some form
of statewide relief organization, more or less effectively
developed; and that social workers of training, experience
and good professional standards have been brought into
positions of influence in more than half of them. The stage
is set for a rapid development of sound relief practices.
He will see the private social agencies enabled by the
taking over of the relief function by public agencies, to
return to their proper task, which is not mass-relief to the
unemployed. He will take note of the interesting coopera-
tive plans between public and private agencies, described
elsewhere in this issue, which are rapidly replacing the
isolation of the past.
He will know that a step has been made, by other divi-
sions of the federal government, toward assuming the care
of men with no settled place of residence; and that the
"reforestation plan" is capable of further expansion.
He will be aware that the realization has dawned on the
country at last that what we are undergoing is neither
"temporary" nor an "emergency," and that the wreckage
of the depression will remain to be dealt with as construc-
tively as possible after the wheels of industry turn again.
And he will operate under a law that implements his
work better, both as to financial resources and the powers
and responsibilities conveyed upon him, than did the 1932
act. He will be able to approach state governments with a
stronger case as to standards, since he has outright gifts,
and not loans, to offer them.
WE do not know what he will see when he turns to look
ahead. We can only say what we hope he will be able
to look back upon when he mounts another Pisgah two
years hence.
First. An opportunity firmly grasped to oust from relief
administration everything that savors of self-interest or
political favoritism.
Second. The development of a body of public servants
in our state and local governments equal in training, per-
sonal integrity and vision to the task in hand.
Third. A use of national credit in such a way as to
stimulate and not check local and state appropriations and
responsibility.
Fourth. Adequate relief standards, not only for our large
cities but for rural and semi-rural regions as well, combined
with the fostering of home gardening and other self-help
and cooperative programs among the unemployed.
Fifth. An increase of awareness on the part of the public
that relief is with us for a long time; that it is not just any-
body's job, but demands to be planned and directed by
people with expert qualifications; and that it is a social duty
carrying no stigma to those whom it helps.
Sixth. The emergence of a program of permanent care for
those dislodged from, or rendered permanently unfitted for,
an increasingly complex industrial life.
Seventh. The replacement of the relief function by more
constructive measures against unemployment and the
losses due to unemployment before large scale federal relief
shall have become a habit from which we no longer seek
to free ourselves.
We passionately wish him success, we social workers, in
leading us out of this morass in which we are bogged down;
and we hope to be permitted to help to the utmost of our
abilities in finding the way to the Promised Land.
What Price the Power of the
Food Order?
By GERTRUDE SPRINGER
SAW them with my
own eyes, Miss Bailey,
every last one of them,
from Mr. Zimmerman down,
filing into the movies." Miss
Bailey drew lop-sided flower-
pots on her memo pad as she
listened to the excited voice on
the telephone. "They're one
of my best families. I visit
them every week. I just hap-
pened to be passing the
movie — they didn't see me.
I'm in a drug-store now. I
wouldn't have believed they'd lie to me about not having
any money. What had I better do?"
"Did they really lie or did they just not tell you, and
what had you thought of doing?" Miss Bailey fingered the
Z's in the card file on her desk and drew out the short and
simple annals of the Zimmerman family. Mechanic, two
years unemployed; mother, occasional cleaning jobs; four
young children; no resources; weekly grocery order.
"No-o-o," judicially, "I don't believe I'd wait for them to
come out. Those shows run two hours don't they? Suppose
you just go on with your work and we'll talk it over
tomorrow. Oh, by the way, your friend Miss Thompson
left a message. Someone gave her seats for the McCormick
concert tonight and you are to call her up if you can go.
Yes, it certainly is nice. Enjoy yourself."
"And I hope some big hard-boiled taxpayer doesn't
catch a fifteen-dollar-a-week city investigator sitting in a
five-dollar concert seat," she added grimly after the re-
ceiver was safely up.
But the Zimmermans refused to stay in that compart-
ment of Miss Bailey's mind reserved for tomorrow's
troubles. Again she looked at the card. In six months the
welfare had paid their rent just once, yet no one was dis-
turbed because they kept a roof over their heads. They
still seemed to have gas for cooking though the welfare paid
no gas bills. "It's just pleasure they mustn't be resourceful
about," she mused.
It is often startling to an inexperienced investigator to
discover that "the poor" still have a taste for pleasure and
a considerable resourcefulness in finding it for themselves.
Pre-depression case work, aware of the uses of recreation in
sustaining family morale, encouraged initiative in simple
pleasure-seeking and counted an occasional movie as a
necessary family expenditure. But shrinking funds and
lengthening relief rolls have pruned away every expendi-
ture not necessary to bare subsistence while the pressure
for economy has spread public disapproval over even the
appearance of indulgence. Hence a fifteen-cent movie
becomes a major luxury, a hair wave an evidence of deceit
and the family dog a suspicious character.
"Our new workers," said the head of a small-city public-
welfare department with a long private-agency experience
What shall the untrained relief investigator do
when she observes in homes such situations as:
The family on relief that she "catches" filing
into the movie theater?
The girl in the family who blossoms out with a
new permanent wave?
The family that, at the morning call, was in rags
and despair, and is all dressed up and going to a
party when she returns at night with a food order?
The family that supports a man-shed dog?
behind her, "represent prett;
definitely our community
thinking, set in the old pat-
tern of poor relief unadjustec
to the present situation anc
to the kind of people who now
come to us for help. At first
they lean heavily on policie;
and want rules for everything
But as they become aware o
how rarely rules fit individua
cases they fall into confusion
afraid to give relief, afraid t(
withhold it, wanting to bi
kind but mistrusting their own judgments. Their nex
stage is, it seems to me, a reflection of the quality of thei
agency. I believe that new workers take on the character o
the agency and the attitude of their supervisors. We cai
never transmit to them attitudes we do not have ourselves
If the new worker feels in the organization a warm am
friendly interest in clients, tolerance and sympathy fo
people in trouble, she is pretty likely to feel the same way
""OUT the necessity for economy in the use of funds i
-D so emphasized that it is small wonder that ne\
workers get the idea that ability to keep relief down is th
major criterion of performance. The lowest relief — the bes
worker. This makes a worker afraid to recognize the fu
needs of families and to take cognizance of differing ele
ments in differing situations. Somehow or other we hav
to help workers to face these needs frankly with thei
families even though we cannot meet them all.
"Ordinarily our petty tyrannies arise from fear o
ignorance or both. The worker who is herself uncertain c
agency backing is likely to reflect that insecurity by par
icky and arbitrary dealings with her families. Here we ge
back to the supervisor and the need for a full measure c
reassurance and backing from her. The supervisor shoul
carry in her kit a sense of humor, a light touch and a
ability to understand why a permanent wave might seer
to a girl more useful in getting her where she wants to g
than a payment on the rent. And of course friends wi
sometimes give a girl the price of a permanent when the
won't pay the rent, and I have even heard of practic
permanents, though I have never had one. At least th
girl's version of how she got it is entitled to credence unt
other and more definite signs of opulence show themselvi
to our weather eye. If the first investigation was right i
establishing the family's need for relief, a stray permanen
unsupported by other evidence of affluence, seems unini
portant in relation to the whole situation and nothing i
make into an issue.
"Of course we have our troubles about movies. I remen
ber a flurry over a family that went regularly once a wee
all eight of them, and were as regularly reported to th
office by jealous neighbors. We were morally certain th
182
lay
1933
THE SURVEY
183
e family had no hidden income of $1.20 a week for movies
tr anything else. The worker's most tactful approaches to
he subject were met by complete reticence. Finally she
/ent to the movie herself on the family's regular night and
/aited near the entrance. Sure enough, here they came,
/ith bright and shining faces. She took a nearby seat,
/aved a cheerful greeting and at the end of the picture
/ent out with them, chatting about the glamorous heroine.
Vt her next visit to the home the story came out. The father
ad made a dicker with the theater management for three
ours work a week in exchange for the family admission,
''earful of losing the privilege to competitive neighbors, he
ad sworn the whole family to secrecy.
"Of course it doesn't always turn out that way. Another
f our families, seemingly without resources, were such
iveterate movie-goers that we finally told them we should
ave to make a reinvestigation. Among other things, we
iscovered that the father was not only a relative of the
ouse-manager but that the manager actually owed him
loney on an old debt and was paying it off with free
ickets. In both cases a knowledge of facts was the answer;
i the one the facts showed the movie indulgence entirely
.istified and the reticence warranted, in the other the facts
bowed up natural resources which automatically removed
lie family from the relief rolls. Facts, all the facts, are the
nly foundation for fairness in relief administration."
Fantastic as it may seem in a big city, dogs are a real
roblem to small-town relief workers. In a Massachusetts
>wn the public-welfare director issued a formal order that
it- unemployed receiving city aid must choose between
icir dogs and their weekly checks. "We've found that
umy dogs eat as much as a child, and the bigger dogs eat
I lore than a child."
"We don't go as far as that," commented a worker in a
'ennsylvania mining town, "but we do try to persuade our
miilies to give up all but one dog. Occasionally when dogs
utnumber the members of the family we exert pressure,
nt I suspect that we only encourage a sort of dog boot-
t^inij. The total dog population does not seem to de-
i '•ease. We don't set up a special item in the budget for the
og but generally we regard him as one of the family,
/ iking his chances along with the rest and perhaps doing a
, ttle backdoor panhandling on his own account. I can
link of no quicker way to lose the confidence of a family
•ul to invite deceit than to use the power of the food order
day-by-day experience of emergency
relief workers has been drawn on for a
series of articles of which this is the third. 'The
questions are bona fide, brought to their super-
visors by new workers without extensive train-
ing. The discussion is from supervisors who
must, under the pressure of mounting case-
loads, develop in recruits the capacity to deal
frankly with families in distress and to make
fair and discriminating decisions. Earlier ar-
ticles have been, When Tour Client Has a Car,
and Are Relief Workers Policemen? The next,
How We Behave in Other Peoples' Houses,
will appear in an early issue of the Survey.
to force it to give up its pet, regardless of the size of his
appetite."
In the old days minor indulgences for families on relief
were no problem to a case worker, public or private. She
used them now and then for her own purposes — a night at
the movies for family solidarity, the makings of a modest
party dress for youthful feminine morale. But with unem-
ployment bringing to public relief thousands of families as
habituated to movies and to silk stockings as to bread and
butter, the whole matter takes on complications which call
for a large degree of patience and understanding.
"Workers who come to us without any very wide ex-
perience outside their own circle are often amazed and a
little shocked to find that the unemployed do not put in
all their time being miserable," said the supervisor of a city
relief district. "We old-timers have learned the enormous
resourcefulness and resilience of people and we marvel and
rejoice at the courage that will dress up for a party in the
few decent clothes saved from the wreck of the past. Any
spark of gay spiri t that these people have preserved through
the troubles and defeats they have undergone should, it
seems to me, be blown on and not trampled out. To use the
power of the food order to discourage normal sociability
and pride in personal appearance is to beat down the family
in its struggle to maintain its own standards.
"One of our visitors came in at the end of her first day in
the district to report that a certain woman on relief was
washing her curtains.
' 'We only allow her one bar of soap a week,' she said,
'I told her she didn't have to use it up on the curtains, in
fact she didn't have to have curtains at all.' '
" 'Was the woman herself dirty ?' I asked. 'Were the chil-
dren dirty? If she had taken down the curtains or left them
dirty would the family have needed less food? No? Then
why not let her have clean curtains if she can manage it all
on one bar of soap? Pretty smart of her it seems to me.'
"Another young visitor was scandalized when one eve-
ning she found a girl starting to a party in a pink chiffon
dress 'every bit as good as one I have myself.' The girl's
uncertain earnings of two or three dollars a week were the
last vestige of income for a family of seven. The dress, it
turned out, had survived from the days when the family
income was seventy dollars a week, twelve of which the girl
earned. If, burdened and discouraged as she was, she could
find any release in dressing up in her old finery, more power
to her. Certainly it did not change the family situation."
Supervisors with a full measure of current experience say
that dictatorial, censorious attitudes on the part of visitors
toward small indulgences by families that have hitherto
made their own choices in life inevitably result in a contest
of wills and wits in which the visitor, even armed with a
grocery order, is the fore-ordained loser. A good worker
will discuss with the family its own strategy and luck in
getting these things for itself. She will not accept a per7
manent wave or an occasional movie spree as sufficient
evidence to overturn her initial judgment on the family's
need for help. If the luck seems too recurrent or the
strategy a little too good to be true, a new investigation is
indicated with the family told frankly why it is made.
"The worker who travels along with her families treating
them not with the blanket formula, 'It's against the rules,'
but with the candid explanations due to reasonable people,
will seldom need to resort to an ultimatum or to use the
food order as a club to knock out the few remaining per-
sonal choices that unemployment has left to its victims."
Deflation Where Is Thy Stin
Detroit Social Workers Conspire to Pull Themselves Up by Their Bootstraps
By WILLIAM J. NORTON
Executive Vice-President Children 's Fund of Michigan
'UST after noon on Saturday, February n, Sarah
Jones, social worker in Detroit, cleared her desk,
reached for a telephone and called her friend to
make a date for the theater. She was well content. A great
depression lay like a pall across the continent, but she had
long since grown used to that. It had brought a lower
salary and increased the burden of her work. Her budget
had been adjusted to the cut and she was steadily rolling up
a savings account against future contingencies. The added
work was to her liking. Crazy world, in which the need for
her services should be most pronounced when the fortunes
of many who had been better off than she had crumbled !
Two and a half days rest lay ahead this Saturday after-
noon, followed by Sunday and Monday, the thirteenth,
which would be celebrated as Lincoln's Birthday.
Sarah looked in her pocketbook and was surprised to
find less cash than she thought was there. She looked at her
watch. The bank was closed for the day. Oh well! She
would spend what she had and early Tuesday go to the
bank and draw more cash. Her money, she thought with
satisfaction, was in the First National Bank. Someone had
said it was the largest bank between New York and Chi-
cago and everyone said it was so strong that it could
weather any storm. Thinking of banks and with a few
minutes to spare before her date at the theater, Sarah
wrote some checks to pay her January bills. She mailed the
checks, glad in the knowledge the debts were out of the
way and went blithely to enjoy the brief vacation.
While Sarah rested in the theater, her mind absorbed by
the illusions created by the folks on the stage, a handful of
harried men sat about a polished table in a luxurious down-
town office, unwilling actors in the prelude of a real drama
about to be propelled upon the stage of public affairs, a
giant tragedy that would engulf almost every family in
Greater Detroit. The Union-Guardian Trust Company, an
old and respected financial institution, had come to the end
of its rope. Its investments were frozen. Relentlessly, day
by day over a long period, withdrawals of money had
sapped its cash reserves. Last minute efforts to save it had
proved futile, and these men, representing the group-bank-
ing holding corporation to which the trust company be-
longed, fearing the hurricane that might break over the
other banks in their chain when the news got abroad, were
atruggling desperately to localize the destruction.
Members of the clearing-house were summoned to a
hurry-up conference. Clearly the gentlemen in charge of the
other banks had been ignorant of the conditions of the
trust company. Panic seized them as they visioned runs on
all Michigan financial institutions weakened by the long
strain. A frantic call for the governor to rush from Lansing
to attend a midnight session. Importunate demands that
he declare a ten-day bank holiday for all banks in the
state. A cabinet member, U. S. Treasury officials, and
bankers from New York, Chicago and Pittsburgh hurrying
to Detroit. The largest depositors routed out of bed
for hasty consultation. Lengthy telephone talks with th>
President of the United States. Meeting upon meeting
Such were the beginnings of the real and mighty dram;
hidden from the eyes of trusting, innocent Sarah Jones. A
she started for work Tuesday morning, February 14, thi
unusual clamor of the newsboys attracted her attention
They were shouting extras and the word "Bank" in glaring
headlines attracted her. She bought a paper and read with ;
shock that all the banks in the state had been closed. Shi
had only cash enough in her bag for a couple of days. Prac
tically all her money was in the First National Bank. Wha
did it mean? What should she do?
Hurrying to the office, she found her associates talking
excitedly in little knots. They knew no more than she. Tb
chief was in baffled ignorance. Upstairs in the Community
Fund offices they knew nothing although it was eviden
they were worried. She learned that the Fund had $554,00:
— all the cash it possessed — in the closed banks. That wa
bad news for her and all her associates. Sarah read th-
governor's proclamation again and the newspaper stor
very carefully. These were reassuring. The condition wa
only temporary, they said.
THEN a strange thing happened. She laughed. It oc
curred to her that she wasn't in this thing alone. All th
other workers were in it. All Detroiters, all Michigander
were in it. All were companions together in some sort o:;
strange emergency, and in companionship was strength
Sarah felt exhilarated. She was one of a great membership
each of whom was face to face with the same crisis. Slv
would go on with her work and await eventualities. He
work was first anyway. Her money was important, but i
she couldn't get it, she couldn't get it. Neither could any I
one else get theirs. So that was that. She realized that sh'
loved her work for its own sake. So she put banks am
money out of her mind and knuckled down to the day':
routine.
The thing that happened to Sarah Jones happened t<
hundreds of thousands of Detroiters. At first they wer<
shocked. Then they grinned. Next they proceeded calml]
and good-naturedly about the ordinary affairs ot life
Stuck? Yes. Everyone else was stuck, even the bankers
who seemed to be trimmed worst of all. They husbanded
what little cash they had, shared it with one another, cu
their expenses to the bone, cracked jokes at the expense o
their fellow-townsmen in the banks, and went to work
Teachers taught school, policemen pounded their beats
doctors treated their patients, lawyers looked after thei!
clients, stenographers banged their typewriters. There wa]
nothing else for it. The money of 800,000 totally unsus
pecting depositors was tied up in two giant banks, th
First National and the Guardian National Bank of Com
merce, that had emerged from consolidations of somethim
like twenty smaller institutions a few years ago. Only tw<
small commercial banks had resisted the urge.
184
•May 1933
THE SURVEY
185
Days passed. Plan after plan for reopening was an-
nounced as a completed fact. Each time the balloon of
Dtiblic expectation swelled, only to collapse because of
some impracticability in the plan not made public. In due
time, two 5 percent releases were made of the impounded
deposits. Finally the federal government and General
Motors created a new bank which promises to buy the
'liquid assets" of the two old ones and make a further
distribution of deposits, once announced as 50 percent,
then as 40, and again as 30. Detroit still waits expectantly
ror these crumbs and goes about its work. Nearly two
months have elapsed and the only money anyone has seen
;omes from the small independent banks that were per-
mitted to reopen, from outside the city, and from the 10
jercent of deposits hitherto released.
WHAT of social work? Fortunately, by far the major
portion of relief work is centered in the city Depart-
.ment of Public Welfare, and that is largely financed just now
by funds from the federal government. Thus no one starves.
All private agencies are desperately hard hit. None escaped.
All have most of their surplus funds in the closed banks or
trust companies. They reacted in the same fashion as all
the other corporations. First, they proceeded without
money, waiting for the moratorium to be lifted. Then, as
.realization of the seriousness of the situation dawned, they
cut budgets drastically, dropped departments, put the
remaining workers on a subsistence wage, and dug in to
let the storm blow.
Sarah Jones who mailed her checks February 14 to pay
her January bills received them all back with polite notes
that they were drawn on a closed bank. This was old news
to Sarah. And would she please adjust the matter? This
brought to her the pleasant knowledge that she not only
had no visible means of support but she was also in debt.
She received word from the chief that the agency would
pay her salary in full for February if, when and as it got
the money. That was good news. Along .with this notifica-
tion was another that after March I the agency abrogated
all agreements with her. It would like to have her stay but
it could make no promises of future compensation until the
confused situation began to clear itself.
Sarah's friends were all in the lurch. So were her clients.
She didn't like the idea of quitting. So she staid on the job.
She used her cash, and when she was flat broke, the agency
for which she worked began to feed her out seven dollars
a week to apply on board and lodging. Those two 5 percent
"dividends" released by the bank helped. Her credit was
good and no one pressed her for more than she could pay.
Shortly the agency was able to do a little better by her so
that she could meet minimum living costs. Sarah worried
a little, but not too much, and kept right on sawing wood.
The Community Fund, which supplies Sarah's agency
and nearly all of the other private agencies with their gift
money, acted promptly when the banks closed. It conducts
its campaign in the fall. Its fiscal year begins with the cal-
endar year. A hiatus thus exists between pledging time
and the beginning of spending time which permits the
Fund to go into the early months of each year with a large
cash surplus. Usually this is invested in readily marketable
securities thereby adding an interest earning to the Fund.
But this year, because of the condition of the securities
i market, the money was kept in the banks, the banks that
were closed and are still closed.
January's allotment of $250,000 had been distributed as
usual. February's allotment was to have been distributed
about the fifteenth out of the bank balances of $540,000, a
distribution which, of course, did not take place. As soon
as it became evident that the Detroit bank collapse was
no temporary affair, the board of directors of the Com-
munity Fund, the board of the Council of Social Agencies
and the Central Budget Committee united in creating an
Emergency Committee of ten, to which was assigned all
the powers and prerogatives of the governing groups for the
period of the emergency. Five of this Committee are
executives of social agencies and five are board members.
A meeting of presidents and executives ratified this
action.
The Committee went into action. Decisions were made
that February payments of previously budgeted allowances
to all agencies would be the first claim on funds taken in;
that workers who were laid off would be paid in full at the
old rates to March 15; and that all other commitments
made in the past were abrogated. Next, it was decided
that in the immediate future, relief, child-caring and health
agencies dealing with the helpless, and old-folks' homes
would be preferred in receiving funds for the remainder of
the year; that agencies whose main sources of revenue
originated outside the Community Fund would be asked
to adjust themselves promptly so as to get along with only
a minimum or nothing from the Fund; that agencies not in
the preferred groups but chiefly dependent on the Fund
for support would be skeletonized; and if this was not
practicable that they would be placed in suspense until the
situation cleared.
A few consolidations were hurriedly arranged. The Com-
munity Fund staff itself was skeletonized to the bare re-
quirements needed to receive, account for and distribute
money. Every item of overhead that could be challenged as
having even the appearance of luxury in a time of disaster
was wiped out.
Segments of the campaign organization were resuscitated
and an earnest effort was made to collect on unpaid pledges.
The stricken citizens responded handsomely. More than
two hundred thousand dollars had been collected up to
April 8. The 10 percent paid by the banks also helped.
A few workers living elsewhere who wanted to go home
were given transportation. Those who remained received
seven dollars a week for a time unless their circumstances
demanded more in which event they received what they
needed. Later February compensation was paid in full.
Later yet one-half of March compensation was paid. A
housing committee arranged for mass housing. No one
availed themselves of this privilege. A few people did move
into the settlements and others doubled up in their lodgings.
IN the meantime, .agency budgets have been radically
reorganized. As the picture unfolds itself, it looks as if
about 60 percent of the private social work of Detroit can
be carried through the year. Staffs will be smaller. Pay will
be drastically less. But Sarah Jones and her fellow social
workers in Detroit have no intention of abandoning the
work they have built up with such labor and care. Pay is
important, but the need of their clients is more important.
Kurt Peiser, recently come from a comfortable berth in
Cincinnati to head the harried Jewish Welfare Federation
in Detroit, summed it up when in turning down a flatter-
ing offer to go elsewhere he said: " I would rather be work-
ing in Detroit during these great days than anywhere else
in the world."
Building Men
Growing Trees
Emergency Conservation Work Blazes New Trails
By ARTHUR DUNHAM
Public Charities Association of Pennsylvania
" IVe want to build men as well as trees!"
E scene is the office of Secretary of Labor
Frances Perkins. The audience is a group of
emergency relief representatives from a dozen
states. The speaker is W. Frank Persons, loaned by the
American Public Welfare Association to represent the
U. S. Department of Labor in the selection of 250,0x00
American men to march into the forests in a collective
adventure new to America.
It was on March 31, less than four weeks after his
inauguration, that President Roosevelt approved the
act establishing emergency conservation work. Five days
later he appointed Robert Fechner, a leader from the field
of labor in Massachusetts, to act as director of emergency
conservation work with an advisory council representing
the War, Interior, Agriculture and Labor Departments.
Less than a week later, the outlines of the plan had
emerged, eligibility requirements had been determined and
a series of conferences of state relief directors had begun.
Let us return to our meeting. Major R. Y. Stuart, chief
forester of the United States, is talking about how the
• forests are entwined with the very life of the Nation; what
is needed to safeguard and conserve them; how a conserva-
tion program of many years may be telescoped into a few
months with the aid of 250,000 men scattered through
twelve hundred forest camps and working in the forests for
a period of six months on selected projects. He is followed
by Horace M. Albright, director of the National Park
Service, whose description leaves his audience feeling richer
in the contemplation of these priceless sanctuaries against
the engulfment of human life by the machine.
And now a representative of the Army is speaking, Col.
Duncan K. Major, Jr., of the General Staff:
This is no military project. No man is drafted; no one becomes
a soldier or loses his civilian status. There will be no military
discipline, drill or uniform. But the Army, at the command of the
President, is ready to use its far-flung organization and machinery
for the physical examination and for the enrollment of 250,000
men through the medium of the Army recruiting stations; for
conditioning them for two weeks (without military drill) in
military posts; and finally through assuming responsibility for
the care of the men in the forest camps — administration, hous-
ing, subsistence, sanitation, medical care and free-time activities
— everything, in fact, except supervision over the actual work
in the forests where the men will work- under the leadership of
national and state foresters and employees of the national and
state park services.
Questions fly thick and fast. Hours of work? Eight a day,
five days a week. Cash allowance? It is $30 a month; most
men are allotting about $25 to their dependents, which will
be mailed to them direct each month by the Army; the
men will need no more than $5 cash in camp, for they
receive full subsistence. How about Saturdays and Sundays
and after-hours? Educational opportunities for those who
want training in forestry; games and sports, circulating
libraries, educational movies, to say nothing of hiking,
mountain-climbing, fishing, swimming. Religious service
on Sundays. And the possibility of leaving camp for
limited time outside of working hours and of having visi
tors at camp. All of this, work and play, against a hack
ground of camp life in the great out-of-doors, living fo
six months in the forest, close to earth and sky and watei
An unforgettable experience for any young man.
And now as to selection. Mr. Persons is speaking:
This undertaking is preeminently an opportunity to help th
boy who has arrived at man's estate and who is perishing fo
the chance to exercise the birthright of every American citizen-
the right to support himself and those whom he loves. Selectio
is to be made primarily from physically fit unemployed unmai
ried men between the ages of 18 and 25 who are citizens of th
United States, who have dependents and who wish to allot t
these dependents a substantial portion of the $30 monthly cas
allowance.
In addition to the young men between 18 and 25, there will b
selected a certain number of men, married or unmarried, withou
age restrictions, who live in or near the forests where the wor
is to be done, who are unemployed and who have had actuj
experience in forest work. These experienced woodsmen must b
chosen with due regard to personal character because they ar
needed as leaders and instructors. Moreover, living in the vicinit
of the camps, they have a special claim on this opportunity fc
employment and to ignore that claim would be to engende
antagonism among these neighboring families against the fores
camps and the young men brought in from outside to work i
them.
The standards of choice for the young men are furthc
explained:
The group of young unmarried men is selected partly becaus
of the type of work and the camp life involved, and partly becaus
young unmarried men have had great difficulty in recent yeai
in securing either work or relief. Some of them have never ha
a chance to hold down a job since they left school. This work
reserved for young men who have dependents and want to hel
Emergency Conservation Work
Publications of the U. S. Department of Labor. Available
on request to Room 716, Department of Labor Building,
Washington, D. C.
A Chance to Work in the Forests. Questions and Answers
for the Information of Men Offered the Opportunity to
Apply for Emergency Conservation Work. Emergency
Conservation Work Bulletin Number i; April 17, 1933.
National Emergency Conservation Work — What It Is
— How It Operates. Emergency Conservation Work
Bulletin Number 2; April 20, 1933.
An Act for the Relief of Unemployment through the Per-
formance of Useful Public Work, and for Other Purposes.
Public No. 5, 73d Congress. Approved March 31, 1933.
Executive Order: Relief of Unemployment through the
Performance of Useful Public Work. April 5, 1933.
186
\fav 1933
THE SURVEY
187
:hem, rather than for unattached, homeless transient men,
Because the money can be used more productively if it benefits
vhole families than single individuals. The requirement of
'hysical fitness is an obvious necessity for work in the forests.
Married men are not selected for this work because it is believed
hat it would be less fitting to separate married men from their
amilies for a six-months period on the basis of a cash allowance
>f #30 a month, which is all that can be paid on this work.
Vloreover, possible expansion of public works is a prospect
eserved for married men.
1'W several excellent reasons, the names of eligible men are to
>e selected first from the lists of families now receiving aid. The
iresent need of these families is a matter of knowledge and veri-
ied record; in general they are the families who have been longest
n need. Furthermore, this procedure avoids wholesale registra-
:ion and application of the unemployed, with the resultant ex-
icnse, delay and final disappointment to thousands of applicants
vho could not be given any of the 250,000 places. In one city,
in a mere hint of such registration, so many hundreds of men
gathered about the state employment office that the state police
lad to be called in to aid the city police in handling the crowd.
;Vlen may stand in line for a grocery order, observed a social-work
eader, but the time has come in America when they will fight
or a job. Wholesale registration or application for a project
imited to 250,000 places would be a tragic mistake. Finally,
t may be added that when the volume of need is so great and
•elief funds are so inadequate to the need, it seems proper to use
:hese cash allowances to take care of some families now receiving
•elief, thus setting free these relief funds for the care of other
amilies who are in need.
Moreover, the young man who can at the same time realize
lis ambition to start his life's work and to lift his family off the
niblic relief-roll is quite certain to be steadfast in his purpose
n fulfill his entire period of enrollment.
There is another test — one which cannot be compressed
into any formal eligibility requirements, but which per-
vades the whole enterprise:
These peace-time forest volunteers should be made up of
young men of character, men who are clean-cut, purposeful,
and ambitious — the finest young men that can be found in all
the eligible group. Participation in this emergency conservation
work is a privilege; the undertaking is one of the most significant
experiments ever entered upon by the American government.
The best men available are wanted.
Five hours — nearly midnight — and the meeting is
breaking up. Tomorrow the members of this group will
return to their states to designate local agencies and or-
ganize selection in accordance with their state quotas, de-
termined on the basis of population. Through them social
workers enter the picture as full partners with the federal
departments.
The first contingent of about twenty-five thousand men,
drawn from seventeen large cities in order to make a
prompt beginning, have already had their physical exam-
inations and are being enroled at the army posts. Seven
hundred and forty-nine forest camp-sites have already
been approved by the President.
Emergency Conservation Work does not solve unem-
ployment, even though it will touch a million people in
camps and homes and cost more than $ 150,000,000. But it
is a constructive attack; it has spiritual values beyond
even the work itself; most of all, perhaps, it is a rallying
of the American pioneer spirit in the advance upon those
social and economic frontiers whose conquest must form
the next chapter of our national life.
The Shift in Child Labor
By BEATRICE McCONNELL
Director Bureau of Women and Children , Pennsylvania Department of Labor and Industry
HILD labor cannot be ignored as a vital factor in the
present economic crisis. Children are leaving school
and going to work at a time when millions of adults
ire jobless and many of these children are acting as the sole
.upport of their families because their fathers and older
irothers and sisters are unemployed. While it is true that
he number of gainfully employed children has fallen off in
he past two years, this decrease measured against the
lecrease in all wage-earning shows that child labor has only
cept pace with the drop in adult employment during the
lepression.
The reduction in the absolute number of child workers
\as been the most obvious and the most frequently dis-
•ussed effect of the depression on child labor. A more
iignificant though less conspicuous effect has been the
•hange in the types of employment and in general working
xjnditions. There has been an unquestionable shift of child
vorkers to the less desirable, less well paid, and less well
•egulated types of employment. Thus domestic service, a
ype of work unregulated as to hours or general conditions
)f work, is taking a relatively larger number of 14- and 15-
year-old girls now than in previous years. Selling maga-
'ines, candy or pencils, with bootblacking boxes and other
;treet trading "occupations" as an excuse, children are
Struggling in ever increasing numbers to secure a few pen-
nies from the casual passerby. Industrial home-work has
taken on a new lease of life during the hard times and the
employment of children in this most difficult-to-regulate
type of employment has become an increasingly serious
problem. In Pennsylvania, where machinery has been
established in the Bureau of Women and Children for the
enforcement of the state's home-work standards, the pro-
portion of illegally employed children during the past year
was more than double that of the preceding year. Not long
ago a pale little ten-year-old was found who regularly be-
fore and after school pulled bastings from the clothing the
older members of the family had "finished," thereby adding
perhaps 50 cents to the weekly home-work pay.
The shift in child labor to these less desirable types of
employment does not by any means imply that children
are no longer found in factories and stores. During the last
school year more than twenty-two thousand employment
certificates were issued to fourteen- and fifteen-year-old
children in Pennsylvania. About three thousand were for
after school or vacation employment, the others repre-
sented the shift from school to full-time employment for
these children. We do not know how many of these young-
sters were employed in industry, but we do know that far
too many of the available factory jobs are being filled by
children rather than by adults. In half the 153 plants in-
188
T HE SURVEY
May 193-
eluded in a recent survey made by the Bureau of Women
and Children, we found that eight hundred minors under
sixteen years of age constituted a considerable part of the
work force. In one county where the manufacture of cheap
cotton clothing tends to concentrate, practically one fifth
of the employes in the plants visited were under sixteen
years of age. These same establishments also employed a
large number of sixteen- and seventeen-year-old girls; in
several, more than one-half of the employes were under
eighteen years of age. The last Census shows that the num-
ber of sixteen- and seventeen-year-old minors employed in
Pennsylvania's clothing industry had increased 67 percent
in ten years. The weekly earnings of the fourteen- and
fifteen-year-olds in the clothing industry in October, 1932
averaged a little over $3. More than three fourths received
less than $5; 44 percent received less than $3; and 22 per-
cent less than $2. Only five of the children received as much
as $10 for a week's work. Considering the meager earnings
of these young workers, the most ardent advocate of the
need for children's help in maintaining the home today
could scarcely justify the waste in human values involved
in substituting gainful employment for school attendance.
Information on actual hours of work was not available
since nearly all the work is on a piece-rate and no time
records are kept. In most instances the children were
scheduled to work approximately the maximum number of
hours permitted by Pennsylvania's child labor law.
Other indications point to the fact that far too many of
the available jobs today are being filled by children who
should be in school. Recently a continuation school was
established in a Pennsylvania district where never before
had there been enough employed children to require such a
school. In Philadelphia in September, October and Novem-
ber 1932 over sixteen hundred general employment certifi-
cates were issued for fourteen- and fifteen-year-old children,
more than eleven hundred of them for children taking their
first jobs. In the same three months' period more than
twenty-seven hundred age cards were issued to sixteen- and
seventeen-year-olds who were presumably cutting short
their schooling and swelling the already overcrowded laboi
market. During this three months' period 891 certificate;
for fourteen- and fifteen-year-olds were refused, about om
fourth because the employment was not legal, the child wa:
under age or below the sixth grade in school, three fourth;
because the child could not pass the medical examination
The question we confront is: Shall we continue to allow
our children to pay for the breakdown of our economic
system or shall we unite in a firm endeavor to give their
their opportunity today to prepare for their share of tht
world's work tomorrow? A child's loss of schooling, 01
recreation, of adequate food and shelter now cannot be
made up "after the depression." Industry no longer need;
and should no longer be permitted to demand the service;
of children of fourteen and fifteen. No child who has left
school and gone to work at these ages is free to develop
mentally or physically according to modern standards. Child
labor laws should be so strengthened that the health and
safety of the next older group, the sixteen- and seventeen-
year-old workers, are more effectively safeguarded. Work-
ing hours should be shortened; night work eliminated,
medical examination and employment certificates required
and employment in hazardous occupations prohibited.
According to the last Census, more than half our boy;
and girls of sixteen and seventeen in Pennsylvania had left
school. It is folly to assume that any considerable propor-
tion have found employment. If idleness is disintegrating
for an adult it is infinitely more so for an adolescent. These
boys and girls should be either in school or at work. Any
movement to keep children in school places added re-
sponsibility on the schools. To work out school programs
combining the cultural with the practical to meet the
needs of all children is no simple task. The difficulty is in-
creased by the present cuts in school budgets, and yet only
by raising the age at which children may become wage-
earners, setting up better safeguards for young workers and'
enriching the school experience of adolescents can we!
protect our youth from heavier depression burdens than
they can safely bear.
Pennsylvania's Welfare Set-up
By RUTH A. LERRIGO
Field Staff of Survey Associates
*ITH 400,000 families "on relief" and a legis-
lature which persisted, until the last minute, in
giving beer and Sunday fishing precedence
over unemployment relief, the Pennsylvania State Emer-
gency Relief Administration has been 'tending to its
knitting with significant results. Through a series of seven
regional institutes, held at strategic points for its workers
throughout the state, it has demonstrated an administra-
tive mechanism of large possibilities. At each institute
doctors, teachers, social workers, mayors, lawyers, club
women, poor-board officers, the whole patchwork quilt of
citizens who share responsibility for relief in their own
counties, under an unpaid County Emergency Relief
Board of seven citizens, turned out in double the expected
numbers to give a strenuous day to spirited discussion of
knotty problems. All together, within an eleven-day period,
the series of institutes brought together more than three
thousand people.
Although the vast majority of those present were not
trained social workers, their interest in procedure in case
investigation, their response to appeals for understanding;
of problems of morale and to raising standards of relief]
above a subsistence level would have done credit to a pro-j
fessional group. Earnest attention was given to conferences
with state personnel and to absorbing information and in-
spiration from an A-i list of speakers.
The set-up for the institutes was managed and speakers
arranged by the State Board office at Harrisburg, with a
uniform program for each meeting. Advance field agents
made local arrangements, secured local sponsors and|
generated enthusiasm for the plan throughout the state.
The day's program in each case included a half-day of
general sessions at which the purposes and plan of the state
program were presented and clarified, with particular
emphasis laid on human values in relief giving. At a special
session, usually sponsored by the local Public Charities!
May 1933
THE SURVEY
189
Association, the legislative situation with all its difficulties
was outlined. "County tables" at luncheon sessions
brought local workers together. The other half-day of the
program was devoted to round-table and forum discussions
on special topics, designed to divide the crowd into interest
groups. Subjects of discussion were practical ones. Large
groups met over county organization, others over methods
of relief administration. Smaller groups discussed homeless
and transient problems, gardens and canning projects, and
the Pennsylvania plan for community markets. The
auditors and accountants devoted the entire day to develop-
ing uniformity and method for their particular job.
Interest in the institutes was expressed in requests for
similar meetings to follow, in smaller units. The state ad-
ministration hopes to develop this plan systematically,
using the state staff qualified as teachers to develop the in-
stitutes into quick training courses. Particular care will be
taken to keep round-table groups small, with leadership
which, will guide discussion on tracks that lead to definite
destinations — lessons learned from experience.
Besides the state director of relief, William B. Rodgers,
who took part in all the institutes, the assistant director,
Eric Biddle; the state field director, F. Richard Stilwell:
Alice F. Liveright and Helen Glen Tyson of the State De-
partment of Welfare; Mary Denman; W. Frank Persons of
the American Public Welfare Association; J. Prentice
Murphy of the Philadelphia Children's Bureau; Walter
Davidson, Minnie Harman and Gus G. Meyer of the
American National Red Cross; Thomas Devine of the
Family Welfare Association; Arthur Dunham of the Public
Charities Association and others of the State Emergency
Relief personnel made up the troupe whose combined ef-
forts were largely instrumental in the success of the whole
undertaking. Governor Pinchot, chairman of the SERB,
spoke at the first one of the series of the institutes.
Valuable as the institutes have been to the immediate
administration of relief in Pennsylvania, the state's "long-
lookers" see a larger importance in the extent to which they
have generated county-wide citizen participation in wel-
fare problems. A long-cherished project for the state has
been the establishment of a uniform, county-unit basis for
local welfare work, now handled for the state's sixty-seven
counties through 424 poor districts and approximately 920
directors of the poor, with results ranging from very good
to very bad.
Obviously desirable as a uniform, modernized plan of
county-welfare departments seems, its achievement pre-
sents large difficulties. While the systematic establishment
of county-welfare units by the SERB makes strides in
the right direction, those who are familiar with Pennsyl-
vania's powerful poor-board lobby at Harrisburg do not
anticipate that the present poor boards will commit suicide.
The imminent hazard that administration of state funds
would be transferred back to these boards, leaving only
Reconstruction Finance Corporation funds for the SERB
to administer, hung over the SERB, threatening its en-
tire program throughout the legislative session and is not,
at this writing, wholly dissipated. It should be noted that
the present flexible arrangement allows the County Emer-
gency Relief Board to determine the distributing agency
, and that in nineteen counties the poor boards have been
designated.
Taking practical steps to open the way for county wel-
fare departments in the future, the Poor Relief Division of
the Public Charities Association of Pennsylvania has in-
vestigated ways and means from a legislative standpoint.
After struggles with existing legislation and constitution-
ality, they have succeeded in getting a bill introduced
which would clear the way, by permissive legislation, for a
modernized county-unit set-up. Such units would be ad-
ministered by unpaid volunteer County Boards of Welfare,
acting in an advisory capacity to a single executive di-
rector, the final responsibility for funds remaining with the
county commissioners, in accordance with the state consti-
tution.
Whatever may grow in the future from the work of the
State Emergency Relief Board in Pennsylvania, the job
now being done goes farther than the huge task of adminis-
tering emergency relief. It is bringing into active participa-
tion a body of representative citizens aloof and uninterested
in welfare "peace times." Whether or not the after-depres-
sion period holds and clinches this new strength, the
aroused public-consciousness is now present, the orderly
efforts to translate it into lasting gains are going on and the
emergency relief administration is giving it a strong im-
petus towards permanence.
The Detroit Conference
FTER a good deal of what down-easters call "open
shet weather" the National Conference of
Social Work has come into the clear on its plans
for the Detroit meeting, June 11-17. It will be a hard-
times conference with frills, such as the daily bulletin and
formal social features, all lopped off. But the program
stands, packed full of the realities of the times. Detroit
social workers, after the shattering blow of the bank
collapse, have caught their second wind and are prepared
to welcome their professional brethren in the adventure
of putting on a conference against what seemed, two
months ago, impossible odds.
Conference headquarters, exhibits and so on will be at
the Statler Hotel. Evening sessions will be in the audi-
torium of the Cass Technical Highschool. Division and
associate group meetings, luncheons and dinners will be in
downtown hotels and churches, all in easy walking dis-
tance. The president's reception, as near to a formal fea-
ture as survives, will be at the Detroit Art Institute in the
shadow of the much discussed Diego Rivera murals. For
the usual conference dinner a very informal and inexpen-
sive substitute is promised.
Speakers at general sessions will include Harold G.
Moulton, president of Brookings Institute, on Sources of
Poverty; Judge Henry W. Anderson of Richmond, Va.,
on Revision of Social Attitudes in America; the president,
Frank J. Bruno of St. Louis, on Social Work in the New
Era and Joanna C. Colcord of New York, on Sixty Years
of the National Conference. For the fifth general speaker
the Conference has bait out in prominent waters but at this
writing the fish has not yet been landed.
The forty or so groups associated with the national
conference will all be on the scene as usual with spirits
and programs intact but with frills notably absent.
A last word from Howard R. Knight says that the Cen-
tral Passenger Association and the Trunk Lines Passenger
Association will announce lower convention rates about
May 15. Delegates from this territory should, he says, make
inquiry before purchasing tickets.
Venturing for Idle Boys and Girls
By ALICE HINKLEY
Welfare and Education Secretary, Westcbester County Children ' s Association, Inc.
FOR more than a year the results of fhe enforced
idleness of thousands of boys and girls in West-
chester County, N. Y., have been increasingly
apparent, in the numbers of young people above com-
pulsory school age in courts and penal institutions, in the
tragic discouragement of others who fail to find useful
places in the community.
The Westchester County Children's Association believed
that there were in the county forces which, if enlisted, could
lessen the dangers of the situation. Its effort, beginning in
the fall of 1932, was to give impetus to those forces.
Westchester County is often pictured as a front yard for
New York City, which it adjoins on the north. Actually it
has an area of about 450 square miles and 500,000 inhabi-
tants, with four large cities and many small and mainly
autonomous communities, all struggling with the common
problems of unemployment and decreased school budgets.
In fifteen of the larger local communities the Children's
Association has branch committees through which ques-
tions of social welfare may be locally interpreted. These
committees were asked to discover the approximate num-
ber of idle young people in their respective communities,
and the existing facilities for work relief, training or recrea-
tion. A study of the court records in several communities
showed unmistakably a relationship between idleness and
causes of arrest. A staff member assembled material from
school and recreation authorities, work relief, welfare
agencies, police, interested individuals and outside sources
of information.
At this point a conference of more than a hundred
representatives of community agencies was held, to evolve
a method of procedure. Several communities, already
trying to provide some
occupation for their
young people, supplied
practical data on what
could be done. Out of
the conference came a
County Committee on
Youth Emergency Ac-
tivity, with three sub-
committees: Schools,
Recreation Groups,
and Junior Achieve-
ment Craft Companies.
It had two functions:
to assemble informa-
tion and suggestive ma-
terial, and report to all
communities the day-
time activities success-
fully initiated in any
center; to focus county-
wide attention on this
need and to stimulate
volunteer aid and community support to local agencies
organizing programs to meet it.
It was agreed that while a central committee could serve
in these ways, the development and conduct of actual
programs must come through local initiative.
The central committee and its subcommittees prepared a
report designed to help in building programs. This report
was sent to everyone in any way related to the task in
hand. It may possibly contain suggestions for other Ameri-
can communities concerned over the meager lives of their •.
jobless youth.
THE report urges first of all that efforts made in behalf
of this age group should not conflict with but find I
their place in the whole community welfare program. An I
adequate local program must include:
Immediately available training opportunities which will better .]
prepare boys and girls for work when work is available.
Constructive recreational opportunities — physical activities, r
music, work in the arts and crafts, discussion and study groups. |
Whenever possible, without interfering with necessary help to !)
the family wage earner, a means by which some money may be >
earned.
As a device for starting the work, the committee sug-
gested an active local committee representing agencies
which have something to offer unemployed girls and boys.
In several communities in which this is being tried, the
group is known as the Youth Emergency Committee.
The report of the subcommittee on schools proposes that
unemployed adults with the necessary background be
certified as teachers for these projects by the Emergency
Work Bureau. This is
being done in New
York City, where in-
structors of special
classes for the unem-
ployed are compen-
sated out of public
appropriations for
work relief. These spe-
cific suggestions are
made to the schools:
Offer day courses to
those over sixteen years
which will attract the
unemployed back to
school. In order to interest
not only graduates, but
also those who left school
in the lower grades, to
return for training, there
is a need to supplement
the traditional courses.
These courses should be
on an elective basis. N'n
Fidi Gioiafor the Winchester Co. Children's Also. Inc.
Let's give them something better to do
190
May 1933
THE SURVEY
191
attempt should be made to force these students to go on with
• academic work. Enrolment should be permitted at any time and
discontinuance of attendance allowed at the pleasure of the
student. Courses should have a large degree of recreational
content and should permit students to explore their interests and
develop their abilities under guidance.
Activities suggested as courses or club programs include
the use of the various shops, art, crafts, music, dramatics,
home nursing, commercial work, with practice groups,
ship-model making, debating, English usage, sewing,
mending, shoe repair. It is highly desirable of course that
these activities be held during the daytime. In case the
school is filled to capacity during the hours of regular
session, it may be possible to conduct this work imme-
diately following school dismissal. The committee further
suggests that each local community:
Make a follow-up of all drop-outs and recent graduates at-
tempting to effect the return to school of those who are idle by
means of a program which will interest them. . . .
Interview prospective graduates of the current term to en-
courage their return to school if they have no jobs to go to and
are not going to college.
Offer recreational as well as academic nightschool classes for
^ those not enroled in dayschool.
Offer programs of free entertainment in the auditorium and
gymnasium, open to all, taking care that those unemployed
receive a special invitation. These may include: concerts, motion
pictures, play nights in the gymnasium, athletic contests, lec-
es, plays, public forums, community singing, dancing.
A canvass of idle boys and girls was recommended as a
;t step. "Some place for registration, possibly providing
for games, should be kept open during the day. Cards
ght then be sent out. The most successful method of
;anizing new groups however, is by seeking out several
tural leaders and interesting each individually in getting
a group of young people together for some activity desired
by them."
A detailed list of activities, which had been found to be
of interest to this age group was given, including a list
prepared by a village librarian of new ways in which
libraries could participate more actively in serving young
people.
THE final recommendation of this committee was for
counseling service:
There has never been a greater need for individual counselling
service for young people than at this time. The understanding
1 leader with experience in dealing with boys and girls can con-
tribute immeasurably to the present stability and future welfare
i of those with whom he may confer individually. So many are
confused and at a loss to know what to choose even among train-
ing possibilities. It is especially urgent that such a service be
considered a necessary part of an emergency educational or
recreational program.
The Junior Achievement Committee outlined the plan
of the Metropolitan Junior Achievement, Incorporated,
active in New York City, which provides training for
volunteers to direct groups in the crafts.
Sometimes tangible results seem to come at a snail's
pace. It is cheering to consider however, that a program
may be slow in emerging, because members of a community
i are examining a problem not previously faced and taking
• stock of their resources to meet it. If this venture is success-
ful it is likely to mean a permanent advance in local stand-
ards of education and recreation. Already in a number of
Westchester communities unemployed boys and girls are
being reached by programs shaped to their specific rjeed.
In one of the larger cities following the organization of a
Youth Emergency Committee, names of a thousand idle
boys and girls were secured by a house-to-house canvass.
The director of the continuation school sent cards with
return postage to this list offering activities and classes,
many of them recreational in content. The card was an
invitation to come to the school at stated hours to talk
over the matter. There was an immediate response, and
boys and girls have been placed in classes in hair dressing,
commercial work, metal craft, interior decoration, commer-
cial art, electricity, automobile, machine- and wood-shop,
printing, book-binding, sewing and cooking. The school is
trying to get in touch with those not yet enroled through
posters, feature stories and paid advertisements in the
local papers.
IN one of the smaller villages, the regular recreation
center which had been used largely for late afternoon
and evening programs is now open all day, with greatly
extended activities. It has used effectively the services of
people paid out of the county work-relief fund, as well as
of volunteer community talent. Several volunteers have
been conspicuously successful. An amateur boxer teaches
his art to an enthusiastic group of boys, and there are
"community sings" and archery classes under volunteer
leadership.
In a neighboring village a very new but enthusiastic
recreation commission had a trained director but no
housing facilities of its own. The director was using one
school building for a dancing class and athletic games,
another for bridge instruction and the clubroom of a
volunteer fire company for bowling teams. A corner in the
center of town had for some time been a general loafing
place and was gathering more recruits eighteen and twenty
years of age than could be comfortably accommodated.
The police were beginning to receive complaints. Inquiry
revealed that the management of an apartment building
across the street was willing to loan a vacant store without
charge. With a few games, a ping-pong table built by the
boys themselves and odds and end of furniture, a club was
opened. Now seldom less than forty boys will be found
there, largely the loafing group from the opposite corner.
As a first step in a more differentiated program, instruction
in commercial art is being provided for eight of the group
who requested it.
Communities in which there appears to be no recognized
agency ready to take the initiative in this work present
special difficulties. If a program is to develop properly,
there must be some person or group of persons in the com-
munity thinking consecutively about local problems and
keeping in touch with the general field. It is doubtful
whether any imposed program will succeed. It must grow
out of recognized community need. Never perhaps have so
many capable people had unemployed time and a real
desire to be of use to their communities. Unless many
well-meaning efforts are to fail — wholly or in part — while
their organizers learn wastefully from experience, there is
an obligation for those with professional training in educa-
tion, recreation and community welfare to train volunteers
in standards and viewpoint as well as in techniques. In so
doing they will contribute to the future of their professions
as well as to the clarification of present confusions.
THE COMMON WELFARE
Forty Years on Henry Street
ON April 29, residents, neighbors, friends and fellow-
workers joined in celebrating the fortieth anniversary
of the coming of Miss Wald to Henry Street in New York.
Her work there began when a little child led the young
nurse to a wretched sickbed one March morning in 1893,
piercing her compunction and setting her on her life work.
She has written of it, "All the maladjustments of our
social and economic relations seemed epitomized in this
brief journey and what was found at the end of it." Ever
since there has been this give and take between Miss Wald
and her neighbors. She has come upon cocoons of intimate
human needs and comprehended them. The spinning wheel
of her imagination has drawn threads of action from them;
so that out of the help extended in the individual case have
come projects and movements charged with promise for
the many.
As a feature of the celebration, which was carried out by
the H. S. S. Alumni Association, wall panels visualized
developments which have felt the creative touch of the
founder of the House on Henry Street — the visiting nurse
service and school nurses; ungraded classes in the public
schools, playgrounds and the like; together with such out-
ranging things as the Children's Bureau. For the frame of
her spinning has become citywide, nationwide, worldwide,
as in the spread of public health and rural nursing, and her
work for peace. But those who see only these accomplish-
ments miss the heart of it all — the everyday living of a
woman who has turned everyday human relations to
glowing account.
The week of the anniversary was a full one on Henry
Street, with dances, reunions and parties arranged by
various groups — with a new pantomime and children's
festival at the Playhouse, and the American premier of
Kurt-Weill's opera, Der Jasager, at the Music School.
On her visit to the Far East, Miss Wald described the
work of the settlement and what it stands for to an oriental
artist. He drew some ancient characters in a circle. Asked
what they meant, he said "Human Brotherhood." This
became the insignia of settlement and nursing service.
Miss Wald was not well enough to attend the celebration,
but the associates who have worked with her throughout
the years, her neighbors and others who have shared in the
four stirring decades, linked hands with her in spirit on
this anniversary night in that circle of fellowship.
The State as Parent
DAY after day the story of a Czech baby and her par-
ents has found its place on the front pages of the
newspapers among the affairs of governments and finan-
ciers. It would be hard to dramatize more movingly than by
the case of Helen Vasko the respective concerns of family,
science and society, represented by the Children's Court
in Westchester County, New York. Science could say only
that failure to remove a cancerous growth from the child's
eye would certainly result in death; that operation was
dangerous and no surgeon could promise a cure, but there
lay the only chance. The parents, naturally frantic with
anxiety and confused by publicity and volunteered advice,
were tempted to endure the present evil rather than as-
sume the chance of immediate death and certain loss of
the eye. Judge Smyth of the Westchester Children's
Court ordered the baby held for operation as a neglected
child, appointed counsel for the parents and a guardian
for the child, and directed appeal to a higher court to re-
view the decision. The Appellate Division sustained Judge
Smyth's order unanimously, asserting the right of the
state "in a proper case, to assume the discharge of duties
of parents or guardians in matters involving the life, health
and physical welfare of their children. . . ." With final
agreement of the parents, the operation has been performed.
Decision in such a circumstance cannot help but be al-
most intolerable for a parent, but action has been taken
on the basis of the state's duty to ensure for a child the
best that qualified judgment can advise. In this instance
the child has had the benefit of one of the things that
medical science can say unreservedly of cancer: that in'
many cases it is curable by prompt operation. Whether or
not the child's life has been saved no one will be able to
tell for some time to come, but there can be no reasonable
doubt that she has had the benefit of the only chance and
hence that the insistence of the court has been- kind.
Milestones
IMPORTANT milestones in Negro education in this
country were marked when the fiftieth anniversary of
the founding of the John F. Slater Fund and the twenty-
fifth anniversary of the Negro Rural School Fund, Inc.:
(the Jeanes Foundation) were observed at Hampton Insti-
tute last month. Typical of the great service rendered by
these funds is the story of the County Training Schools.
In 1911, when the first of these schools for teacher-training
was established by the Slater Fund at the request of four
Southern county superintendents, there were not as many
as fifty highschools for Negroes in the entire country. In
1931-2 there were four hundred County Training Schools
in fourteen states. Further, many of the training schools
have now become regular four-year highschools; others,
after having been aided as County Training Schools for a
time, have proved their worth and been taken over by
public funds. The County Training Schools have afforded
thousands of Southern rural school teachers a measure of
special preparation for their important task. Further, they
have stimulated the movement for higher educational
facilities for Negro youth for, according to the U. S. Office
of Education figures, there were in 1929-30 a total of 1150
Negro secondary schools in the United States receiving
their support wholly or in part from public funds.
Insurance by Inches
J
THE gains so far made by unemployment insurance
in the 1933 legislative sessions must be written up ir
the public education rather than the achievement column
In New York several bills were introduced, well-attendee
hearings held, and one bill passed the Senate. In spite o
the governor's message stressing the importance of settint
up unemployment insurance machinery at this time, im
portant political influences were stubbornly opposed. A:
192
1933
THE SURVEY
193
one upstate politician said to a representative of the Amer-
ican Association for Labor Legislation, "We say there
ain't gonna be no such law, and there ain't."
In Maryland, the liberal measure which passed the
Assembly was killed in the Senate. The Utah bill, passed
by one house, is at this writing buried in a committee of
the other. The bill drafted by the California State Unem-
I ployment Commission has been introduced in both houses,
, but so far it has not come to vote. The Ohio Legislature
recessed for several weeks, leaving the unemployment
i insurance bill in committee. It convenes again May 15.
Michigan lawmakers are considering a bill which would
set up a commission to study the question and its possible
application to the special problems of that state.
Senator Robert F. Wagner of New York has again intro-
duced his bill to give federal encouragement to state un-
employment reserves legislation. His scheme would permit
employers under state laws to deduct a percentage of the
amount in their reserve fund from their federal income tax.
This device would minimize the risk of interstate competi-
tion which to many industrialists and business men is the
chief argument against any state plan of insurance.
Housing — a Public Utility
BY the recent enactment of housing laws, eight states-
New York, New Jersey, Ohio, Texas, South Carolina,
Kansas, Arkansas and Delaware — are now legally qualified
to apply for Reconstruction Finance Corporation loans for
slum clearance and large-scale low-cost housing projects.
The New Jersey law is unique in that it regards public
housing corporations as public utilities and places them
under the jurisdiction of the state Board of Public Utilities.
Rents, which are set by the Board, may not exceed a maxi-
mum average of $12.50 per room in cities of the first class
and $10 elsewhere. Dividends are limited to 6 percent,
cumulative, annually. The right of eminent domain is
granted.
With eight states set to take advantage of the law with
one city, Cleveland, ready with a carefully worked out
city-wide plan for slum clearance and rehabilitation, with
the opportunity to relieve unemployment through the
resumption of building operations, the RFC may well be
asked why it has made only one housing loan thus far, that
of $8,000,000 to the Fred F. French Company of New
York for a slum-clearance project on the Lower East Side?
Perhaps, since the ice has at last been broken, other loans
may follow shortly. The opportunity cries for action.
Minimum Wage Progress
IT must be a satisfaction to Secretary of Labor Perkins
that her own state of New York was first to pass new
mandatory minimum-wage legislation which she has re-
peatedly urged as one of the most dependable bulwarks for
labor standards. A fortnight later a similar measure was
adopted in New Hampshire. Both states based their action
on the model bill drafted by a committee headed by Felix
Frankfurter of the Harvard Law School (see The Mid-
"nonthly Survey, March, page 118). New York also passed
a second minimum wage measure which would apply
equally to men and women but without providing an ap-
propriation for its enforcement. At a hearing before Gov-
ernor Lehman, the usual spokesmen for the National
Woman's Party condemned the Wald bill as "a discrimina-
tion against women." Friends of the measure quoted dis-
tinguished legal opinion supporting its constitutionality
and pointed out the practical reasons for experimenting
first with such protection for women and children as the
smaller and the more exploited group before attempting
the difficult administrative task of extending it to men. At
this writing it is generally believed that the governors of
New York and New Hampshire will sign the model bill.
A similar measure passed the lower house of the New
Jersey Legislature, but the Senate added an amendment
to exclude hotel and restaurant workers, throwing the
bill back in committee. In Pennsylvania a mandatory bill
which passed the House is still in committee in the Senate,
and spokesmen for "the machine" have indicated that it
will stay there.
Felix Adler
FELIX ADLER, who died last month, was for half a
century one of the men whose influence reached across
boundaries of nation and creed and class. Before he was
thirty, he gave up the rabbinate for which he had been
educated and began his real life work: the formulation of
"the principles of good living" in terms of a growing
philosophy rather than established religious dogma, and
their application through the Ethical Culture Society
which he founded and led. Like all great social philosophers
his interest and his hope rested increasingly in childhood
and youth. The Ethical Culture schools have been from
the beginning an essential part ->f the movement. Even
before they came into being, Dr. Adler helped open the
first free kindergarten in New York City. He influenced
some of the earliest American experiments with workers'
.education and did much to bring art and manual training
into public schools.
Almost every effort for civic betterment in New York
City in the last six decades was strengthened by his hand.
He was one of the first to expose the evils of the old red-
light district and its political ramifications. He helped
initiate free nursing service, and took the lead in arousing
public consciousness to the far-reaching effects of bad
housing. His concern for youth led him to serve as the
first chairman of the National Child Labor Committee
and to take an active part in prison reform. At a little
gathering of friends on his eighty-first birthday, Dr. Adler
summed up his goal for "the good life":
The ideal destiny of mankind is to develop a higher human
type than exists at present. I mean by this to set free the gifts,
the talents, the responsibilities that are latent in all men. I speak
of an ideal goal. There, every faculty with which men are endowed
would be brought out in such a manner that no one faculty would
dominate the rest.
What Is the Gold Standard?
ANYONE who would like to learn in clear simple words
the meaning of going off the gold standard and what
the gold standard is anyway, was in luck if he heard the
radio conversation on the subject between Leverett S.
Lyon and Charles O. Hardy of the Brookings Institution.
It was given 'as one of the Economic World Today series
sponsored by the National Advisory Council on Radio in
Education and the Brookings Institution. Both those who
heard it and those who did not will be glad to know that it
may be had in pamphlet form under the title, The Gold
Standard, University of Chicago Press, 15 cents.
194
THE SURVEY
May 1931
The Practice of Relief
DESIGNED to aid workers in newly organized relief units to
obtain a quick but comprehensive grasp of their duties, the
Illinois Emergency Relief Administration, 10 South LaSalle
Street, Chicago, has published a manual, Relief Standards and
Procedures in Dealing with the Families of the Unemployed,
which may well serve as a model of its kind. Over a hundred
closely knit pages are devoted to a presentation of the "tried and
familiar practices" which seasoned social workers will recognize
as basic in intelligent relief administration, and to a clear and
compact statement of resources for information and cooperation
with a summary of important social-welfare legislation in Illinois.
It is interesting to note that the commission gives as the funda-
mentals of a community program the division of responsibility
between various organizations and districts, and the establish-
ment and effective operation of a social service exchange.
The foreword to the manual, signed by Wilfred S. Reynolds,
executive secretary of the commission, credits its preparation to
Martha E. Phillips, a member of the staff.
A Legislative Watch-Dog
/CALIFORNIA social workers, who are rarely caught napping,
^-^ were more than ever on the job during the recent session
of the state legislature by reason of the service of their own official
observer on duty at the state capitol. The plan was sponsored by
the State Conference of Social Work through its legislative com-
mittee, Albert A. Rosenshine chairman. Prior to the meeting of
the legislature some thirty-four important agencies throughout
the state3 including three chapters of the American Association of
Social Workers, appointed legislative representatives to act in a
liaison capacity with the conference committee. Through this
group a fund was raised for a social welfare legislative informa-
tion service and for the employment of Tevis Martin, San Fran-
cisco attorney, to serve as watch-dog in Sacramento. Mr. Martin
did not appear as the opponent or protagonist of any bill. His
role was to analyze all bills touching social welfare and to report
on them and on their status in the legislative mill. He informed
affected groups of public hearings and when so desired arranged
for representatives of such groups to appear before committees.
The whole program, which appears to be unique in the activ-
ities of state conferences, was confined to the social-welfare field,
not only because funds were limited, but because the education
and health fields had their own protective organizations as social
welfare had not.
The Weak Spot of Welfare
OTATES groping to correct inadequacies in their public-welfare
^ organization will find a framework for improvement in the
chapters on welfare contained in the exhaustive analysis of the
state, county and town governments of New Hampshire made
for Governor Winant by the Institute for Government Research
of the Brookings Institute, Washington, D. C. The whole study
was made under the direction of H. P. Seidemann of the Insti-
tute's staff with Frank Bane of the American Public Welfare
Association collaborating in the sections concerned with weltarej
Local administration was found to be the chief weakness in th I
welfare program of the state. Some years ago the ineffectivenesj
of small diversified local institutions was recognized and alms!
houses, jails, hospitals and houses of correction were consolidate^
on a county basis. Outdoor relief was not considered of sufficient
financial importance to require the development of a county plarj
In the current situation relief has swamped other activities anil
the town system has broken down. There is a constant shift <•.
the load to the counties but on the basis of technicalities and noj
by clear plan and purpose. Relief in New Hampshire is almosl
wholly from public funds. In 1931 the combined budgets of thl
five private family welfare societies in the state amounted to onl I
$55,251 while public expenditures for outdoor relief came tl
$1,800,000.
A general overhauling of the statutes bearing on public relief ij
recommended — "specifically the law disenfranchising all person!
who receive public assistance should be repealed" — to permit thl
formation of county units where, under full-time superintendent!
of public welfare, appointed by the county commissioners frorl
lists of eligibles furnished by the State Board of Public Wei fart I
all activities concerned with outdoor relief, child welfare, correcp
tion and institutional care would be directed and integrated.
Prisoners Before Prisons
THE New York Commission to Investigate Prison Admir
istration and Construction, Sam A. Lewisohn chairman, th
studies of which during the past three years constitute a signifi
cant contribution to modern penology, has recently publishe
three special reports: Prisoners, Their Crimes and Sentences
Probation in New York State; and An Educational Project a
Elmira Reformatory. Each report acknowledges the generou
collaboration of experts in its particular field. All the studies wer
directed by special committees of which E. R. Cass of the Ne-
York Prison Association was in each case the chairman. Copiei
free as long as they last, may be secured from Mr. Cass, 13
East 1 5 Street, New York.
The report on the Elmira project has much public interest sine
that experiment is held significant in the whole development c
programs of education for prisoners. It is based on vocation;
tests and includes study courses and library work coupled wit
vocational training through prison industries supervised from a
educational standpoint. Outmoded occupations have been di;
In Small Compass
SELECTED BIBLIOGRAPHY FOR PROBATION OFFICERS. Com-
piled by the director of the Curriculum in Probation Work, Notre Dame, Ind.
A four-page list of the books found useful at the University
of Notre Dame in the training of young men for the cor-
rectional field.
FIVE YEARS OF PLANNING LITERATURE, by Evelyn C. Brooks and
Lee M. Brooks. Reprinted from Social Forces, University of North Carolina,
Chapel Hill, N. C. 10 cents.
INCLUDES a twenty-three page representative bibliography
classified into twenty-two sections.
FAMILY CONDITIONS IN PHILADELPHIA, MAY. 1932. Prepared
and published by the Industrial Research Department, Wharlon School of
Finance and Commerce, 3440 Walnut Street, Philadelphia.
A summary of the effect of continued unemployment on
some 9500 families, touching on the extent of distress and
the effectiveness of relief methods.
SUGGESTED STANDARDS FOR HOMES FOR THE AGED. Prepared
and published by the Section on the Care of the Aged, Welfare Council of New
York City, 122 East 22 Street, New York. Price 15 cents.
FOURTEEN mimeographed pages outlining the methods of
organization and management by which these institutions
may be made as good as they deserve to be.
(fay 1933
THE SURVEY
195
arded and the project method substituted for the topical in
cademic instruction. The keynote of the whole educational
.rocess, clearly described in the report, is individual training as
pposed to mass treatment.
The Straight Path of 'Case Work
A PTER four years of study and exploration the Committee on
•*• Training of the Family Welfare Association of America, 130
•last 22 Street, New York, has submitted a report (fifty cents)
/hich it is careful to emphasize as tentative in its nature with its
ugaestions " to be thought of as points of departure rather than
s fiats or ex-cathedra utterances." The material was gathered
nd formulated between 1927 and 1930 and is not concerned with
he adaptations of case work to the emergency situation, a fact
yhich, as Linton B. Swift points out "may be of peculiar value
n helping us to avoid straying too far off the path toward our
iltimate goals."
The committee, including fifty family workers from all over
he country with Lucia B. Clow of Milwaukee as chairman, con-
• ludes that " in dealing with people of any sort ... a deep
espect for personality is essential" and that an understanding of
he personality of human beings is a basic requirement for the
oung social worker. The supervisor, it says, is the key person
esponsible for giving the student "an understanding of what lies
>ack of behavior ... an ability to learn to think through and
o analyze a problem, to evaluate the possibilities of treatment,
o make case work mean more than an assembling of knowledge
,md techniques."
Ground Gained
TNDIANA social workers are rejoicing in new social-welfare
*• laws enacted by this year's legislature which mark gains on at
east three fronts. The first, introduced by the American Legion,
'uithorizes the governor to appoint a commission to study existing
:hilj-welfare laws and recommend changes and codification to
he 1935 session. The second, also backed by the Legion, creates a
.tate probation board of four appointed by the governor, which
s empowered not only to supervise all probation work in the
tate but also to conduct examinations for appointments, thus
: >pening the way to leveling upward both qualifications and
tandards. The third bill, sponsored by the League of Women
Voters, establishes double compensation for minors injured in
ndustry.
THE American Foundation for the Blind, 125 East 46 Street,
York, has issued a directory, compiled by Helga Lende, of
152 periodicals printed in twenty languages in thirty countries
lealing with the blind and with work in their behalf. Of the
icriodicals listed 209 are in embossed type.
THE last annual report of the New York Association for Improv-
ng the Condition of the Poor, — its eighty-ninth, by the way, —
iffords a vivid picture of the struggle of a large city agency to
naintain the standards of its many varied services while carrying
i relief load that has quadrupled in four years. The A.I.C.P.
:njoys the generous confidence of the contributing public but the
leeds of the last year have obliged it to dip into its capital funds.
THE National Federation of Settlements, 101 West 58 Street,
New York, has available at five cents each, reprints of the follow-
ing articles: English Dole and American Charity, by Helen Hall,
chairman of the unemployment division of the Federation, from
The Atlantic Monthly, May 1933; The Little Green Card (work-
lines and breadlines), also by Miss Hall, from Survey Graphic,
May 1933; and Saloons — Retrospect and Prospect, by Albert J.
Kennedy, secretary of the Federation, from Survey Graphic,
April 1933.
Emergency Medical Relief
THE first month's real working of New York City's medical
relief plan counted more than ten thousand visits by doctors
and two thousand by nurses to some 2400 unemployed persons or
members of families of the unemployed sick in their homes.
Physicians and nurses who give the service are reimbursed from
funds granted by the State Temporary Emergency Relief Ad-
ministration (see The Midmonthly Survey, February 1933, p.
66). In addition to this medical home relief, the Emergency Relief
and Nursing Service provided work relief for thirty doctors and
175 nurses found to be in need of it on the basis of J2i for a four-
day week, and to a corps of clerks and stenographers. The back-
ground of need which the emergency service is designed to meet
is suggested in a recent study of the Association for Improving the
Condition of the Poor, comparing experience of clients in the
Mulberry District in 1930 and in 1932. In the former year 67.4
percent of the illnesses recorded, excluding colds, received medi-
cal care through hospital, dispensary or private physician. At the
time of the 1932 study sickness was more prevalent among this
group, which included a large percentage of the same families
visited in the earlier study, but only 44.5 of the illnesses, again
excluding colds, were receiving medical care. The percentage
Pertinent Publications
HEALTH EDUCATION IN THE CITY OF BOSTON, by Ruth I. Parsons
and C. E. Turner. Reprint from the New England Journal of Medicine.
On request, plus five cents postage, Boston Health League, 43 Tremont St.,
Boston.
FINDINGS and recommendations of a cooperative study of
health education through governmental and private health
agencies, schools, health department and general organiza-
tions.
WHAT TO TELL THE PUBLIC ABOUT HEALTH. The American Public
Health Association, 450 Seventh Ave., New York City. Price $Z.
BOUND volume collecting brief, illustrated articles prepared
by and for the A.P.H.A. A useful appendix lists organiza-
tions supplying health-education material. The Association
also has a new catalog of ready-made health illustrations
available at low cost for "dressing up" reports, articles and
the like.
AMERICAN AND CANADIAN HOSPITALS, edited by James Clark
Fifield with the cooperation of the American Hospital Association. Midwest
Publishers Company, Minneapolis. 1493 pp. plus appendix. Price $W.
MONUMENTAL directory, with historical, statistical and
other information.
THE INCIDENCE OF ILLNESS AND THE RECEIPT AND COSTS
OF MEDICAL CARE AMONG REPRESENTATIVE FAMILIES,
by 1. S. Folk, Margaret C. Klem, and Nathan Sinai. Committee on the Costs
of Medical Care. An abstract of the report under this title, available on request,
Julius Rosenwald Fund, 4901 Ellis Ave., Chicago.
THE ROSfrLOOS MEDICAL GROUP, by Alien B. Mills and Cameron
St. C. Guild, M.D. Miscellaneous Contributions No. 13, Committee on the
Costs of Medical Care. On request, Julius Rosenwald Fund, 4901 Ellis Ave.,
Chicago.
DESCRIPTION of a voluntary health insurance plan.
196
THE SURVEY
May 19:
cared for in hospitals had declined from 16.7 to 9; in dispensaries,
from 22.4 to 17.7; by private physicians, from 28.-? to 17.6.
Why Does Malnutrition Increase?
rT~*HAT the past five years have shown a steady and substantial
*• increase in diagnoses of malnutrition among the clients of the
Jewish social agencies of Philadelphia is the upshot of a study re-
cently made through the diagnostic clinic of the Community
Health Center of the city, which serves member-agencies of the
Federation of Jewish Charities. The clients included are almost
all Jewish, adults and children referred for health examinations
semi-annually or annually, many of them coming back through-
out the five-year period. The basis of diagnosis, made by a
salaried medical staff of experience and standing in the com-
munity, is believed to have remained constant throughout the
time. The figures include all patients examined in each of the five
years from May to October inclusive. For the whole group of old
and new cases, diagnoses of malnutrition increased from 23 per-
cent of the number examined in 1928 to 36.5 percent in 1932, a
proportionate increase of 56 percent. Diagnoses of malnutrition
rose among all age groups with the more serious problem defi-
nitely centered in boys and girls between six and sixteen. Esther
Jacobs, executive secretary of the Center, comments: "In the
group over twenty the fact that lack of adequate or proper diet
does not develop symptoms as quickly as in children would affect
the total picture and make it less spectacular, though probably
just as serious in terms of future well-being."
The percentage of clients diagnosed as malnourished is some-
what higher among old cases than among new, though it is among
the new cases that the increase through the five years has been
most marked. Miss Jacobs points out that the old cases, continu-
ing over a period of years, include a large group from broken
homes and adds, "Just what part poor heredity and what part
emotional factors play in these cases where malnutrition persists
must undoubtedly be considered in the problem as a whole."
Concerning the general increase in diagnosed malnutrition she
asks, "Is it due to physical defects and poor heredity, or has the
depression, with its lowered standards of living, involving in-
adequate food budgets and overcrowded living conditions, been
largely responsible? In either case can we lose sight of the possible
effect of the emotional element as a cause in malnutrition? The
insecurities and conflicts which arise when unemployment strikes
at the very foundations of family life surely might be a basic
cause and one not easily amenable to treatment."
Arbitration Replaces "Battle"
ACTIVE measures to counteract some of the abuses of medical
care under the Workmen's Compensation Act to which at-
tention was called by the recent report of Governor Roosevelt's
commission (see The Midmonthly Survey, January 1933, page
23) have been taken under the leadership of the New York
County Medical Society. The crux of the abuse has been the rise
of small groups of "lay and medical racketeers" through com-
mercial clinics which obtained authorization to treat injured
workers by bribery and other means which reputable physicians
would not employ. Care of injured workers had been concen-
trated in these clinics and independent physicians hesitated to
embark on the medico-legal "battle" of a compensation case.
The report found that much of the medical testimony before the
referee or Industrial Board was "determined by the financial in-
terest of the party which employs the physician." To meet this
situation the County Medical Society evolved an arbitration
agreement with the insurance carriers, acting through the Na-
tional Board of Casualty and Insurance Underwriters, which per-
mits all family physicians who are members of the County
Society to treat injured workers under the Compensation Act
without express authorization, on the basis of a fee schedule
agreed upon by the two groups. The physician is obligated to
send a prompt report to the company on diagnosis and probable
needs for care, to ask advice on cases which do not come with
the scope of his training and experience, and to consult the carri'
when other than routine care is required, abiding by the con
pany's decision. The carrier agrees that reasonable bills for servic
given under the agreement will be promptly paid. Cases of di
pute concerning required treatment or costs are referred to
arbitration board composed of two members of the County Mec
cal Society and two representatives of the insurance carrie
whose decision is final. The society has established a Bureau
Compensation Arbitration which receives complaints from tl
companies or the physicians and if they cannot be settled ii
formally, arranges arbitration proceedings. Details of the agre
ment and procedure may be obtained from the Bureau of Con
pensation Arbitration, Dr. Morris Rosenthal director, 2 Ea
103 St., New York City.
What St. Louis Pays for VD
/^OUNTING out indirect economic losses to industry, famili>
^-' and society, which assume enormous proportions but are ni
readily measurable, the annual costs of venereal diseases
metropolitan St. Louis are estimated as between $2,071,000 ar
$2,560,000 in a study by H. C. Loeffler of the St. Louis Bureau >
Municipal Research, for the Missouri Social Hygiene Associatio
Public institutions — city and state — provide medical and cu
todial care to the extent of more than $500,000 a year. Patient
payments to private physicians amount to more than anoth
half million. For private institutions the cost runs between $932
ooo and $956,000, including hospitals, social agencies and tl
like, while the control of prostitution lies somewhere between tl
divergent sums of $115,000 and $565,000. During normal perioc
of business activity, the report estimates, general economic loss*
would loom even larger than these estimates. The report als
declares that the cost of adequate first year treatment of syphil
is much greater than the amount available for health care in tl
budgets of workingmen's families, citing studies by varioi
physicians, and quoting the estimates by Leon Bromberg ar
Michael M. Davis that 80 percent of the population cannot ps
for adequate care of syphilis at private rates and fully one thii
of the population, if infected, must be cared for free or for nomin
amounts. The Missouri Social Hygiene Association presents tl
study in the hope that it may call attention to expenditur
"which through a broadly conceived and effectively carried 01
community program might well be considered preventable."
ORGANIZATION of an international society for the study of hea
diseases is announced by Dr. Ernst Boas, chairman of the hea
committee of the New York Tuberculosis and Health Associatio;
IT still pays 6 percent, the Wisconsin Anti-Tuberculosis Associ
tion points out, referring to the funds that the public is investir
in the fight against tuberculosis and the deathrate from tube
culosis in 1932 which showed a drop of more than 6 percent undi
that of 1931.
DEFICITS are robbed of their worst terrors at the Butler Hospit
in Providence, R. I., by a plan used for the past five yea
whereby loyal friends subscribe to one or more "shares" in tl
deficiency fund up to a "par" of $100 a share. In 1932 there we
ill subscribers who held 197^ "shares." •
FIELD service is to be one of the major activities of the Nation
League of Nursing Education during the coming year and
available to states and institutions which desire studies of
nur
ing service in general or in some special phase. Fees for the studi
will be based on individual requirements and adjusted insof;
as is possible to meet the available resources of the organizatit
requesting the study.
Way 1933
THE SURVEY
197
Profits and High Wages
CONVINCING testimony to the value of fair labor standards,
intelligent management and an enlightened industrial rela-
tions policy is afforded by the last annual statement of the Rocky
Mountain Fuel Company, of which Josephine Roche, a former
iocial worker, is president. In the six years since she became the
'lead of this Colorado coal-mining company, Miss Roche has
jperated under a union contract, in spite of the organized oppo-
sition of powerful open-shop employers in the field. In 1932, one
)f the most difficult years the industry ever faced, the Rocky
'Mountain Fuel Company's six mines worked an average of 191
•lays, as compared with 126 days worked by all other mines in
:he state. Under its union contract, the company has continued to
pay the highest wages in any Colorado coal mine. The daily wage
!ast year averaged $6.79, the annual earnings $1650. And with
'this high wage level, Miss Roche reports:
The company's earnings yielded a net profit, after deducting all over-
lead, administrative and selling expense, taxes, fire insurance, workmen's
:ompensation insurance and royalties, more than sufficient for bond
'.nterest and other financial items. After bond interest and these other
items were paid, approximately $49,000 was left to apply against book
reserve charges, or five times the amount available for such reserves in
In a year of sharply curtailed demand and lowered prices, Miss
Roche lays this showing in part to economies in operation and
overhead, and to intensive sales efforts, but "particularly to the
intelligent cooperation and careful work of the hundreds of
employes of the company and to the steadily increasing support
jiven the company's policy by the coal consuming public."
Labels for Fair Goods
REVIVAL of labels by which consumers may know that the
goods they purchase were made under conditions fair to
• labor is being urged from many quarters as a protection to stand-
1 ,ards of wages and hours. The Union Label Trades Department
;jf the American Federation of Labor is beginning an intensive
campaign to mobilize the buying power of AF of L members be-
' hind the union label. At a conference recently called in New York
by the Women's Trade Union League, Mrs. Franklin D. Roose-
; velt, speaking as an individual and not as the wife of the Presi-
dent, endorsed the plan put forward for a distinctive tag or label
to assure the public that certain fixed standards had been main-
tained by the manufacturers, and urged that women newspaper
• writers and advertising experts to be called on to lay out a pub-
licity campaign stressing the humanitarian appeal of the scheme.
Late last month a new kind of "fashion show" was held at the
Waldorf Astoria under the auspices of the League of Women
'Voters at which moderate priced models, made under approved
working conditions, were shown by local manufacturers. George
W. Alger, impartial chairman of the Cloak and Suit Industry,
f commenting on this project stated:
I believe that today there is enough aroused public opinion among
decent buyers so that if the consumer knew by a label attached to the
goods that certain goods were made under decent conditions and at fair
wages and also knew that certain other goods, which bore no such label,
were presumptively made at the expense of the lives of the workers; that
a choice would be made by enough buyers of the decent merchandise to
make the department stores and the chain stores consider it good business
to "pander to the moral standards of their buyers."
The Cost of Low Wages
" TN an effort to arrive at a better understanding of economic
-•• conditions through an analysis of their own experience,"
109 students at the Bryn Mawr Summer School for Women
Workers in Industry last summer made a record of the effect of
the third depression winter on their own living standards. Only
thirty-nine of the group had had a half year (twenty-six weeks)
full employment in the preceding twelve months, and all but
seven had had shorter or longer periods of unemployment or
part-time. The median year's wage for the women was $420, as
compared with $696 for students in the same school in 1931, ?793
for students in four similar schools in 1930 and $887 for the same
four schools in 1929. The study shows that of the workers who
had been out of jobs, 41 percent had been forced to reduce the
quantity and quality of their food, 49 percent had lowered their
clothing standard, 58 percent had saved on housing and 61 per-
cent on urgently needed medical care.
It is interesting to note that only eight workers had turned
to public employment offices in search of jobs; comparatively few
even knew of the existence of such offices. Stories of exploitation
by fee-charging agencies were not lacking and "the situation
represented a widespread ignorance of facilities for placement
and a completely unorganized labor market." The report of the
study, made under the direction of Amy Hewes, is published as a
U. S. Women's Bureau pamphlet (No. 103. Price, 5 cents from the
Superintendent of Documents, Washington.)
THE John R. Commons Research Library, a permanent memorial
to the work of a great economist, has been established at the
University of Wisconsin. Included in the collection of books,
pamphlets and periodicals in the labor field are the books by
Professor Commons himself, housed in a special case. One section
of the library is devoted to national and international labor un-
ions, others to employment, industrial accidents, labor statistics,
housing and so on. The library is open to the public.
COMMONWEALTH College, a school for workers at Mena, Arkansas,
is offering a summer vacation that combines courses and round
tables on American labor problems with swimming, hiking, and
summer camp life. For those who are willing to contribute fifteen
hours a week to "communal tasks" the cost for room, board,
laundry and tuition for the ten weeks' term is $40, or $25 a month.
"Those who don't work pay double."
SHOCKED by the record of minors injured in industry recently
reported by the Children's Bureau (see The Midmonthly Survey,
March, page 118) the Indiana League of Women Voters and the
labor organizations joined in drafting and pushing a measure to
stiffen the state child-labor law. The bill was passed in the recent
session of the General Assembly and Indiana is now one of the
states in which minors employed in violation of the child-labor
laws will be paid double compensation in the event of injury while
so employed.
A detailed study of fifty typical employe stock-purchase plans
recently completed by the Industrial Relations Section of Prince-
ton, under the direction of J. Douglas Brown, leads to the con-
clusion that "both employers and employes have lost more from
the movement as a whole than has been gained in improved morale
and dollars gained."
THE second "Progress Report" of the Public Employment Center
of Rochester, N. Y., gives an interesting picture of the set-up,
methods and achievements of this model agency (54 Exchange
St., Rochester, N. Y.).
198
THE SURVEY
May 193j
Reading While Waiting
BOOKS and reading courses for unemployed young people
who, because of the depression can go neither to college nor
to work, are being offered by the Oregon State Library. The plan
was put forward by the state librarian, Harriet C. Long, at a
gathering representing some fifty educational agencies, and found
immediate favor. Late in March more than two hundred persons
in thirty counties were enroled for 172 courses in eighty-four
subjects. The reading courses carry no academic credit, but many
of them are planned to give background information for students
hoping later to attend college. Thus a girl now working a day or
two a week in a woolen mill is following a reading course in home
economics, and a young man now at home who hopes to enter the
forestry service in better times is reading in that field. The courses
are made up without charge and the only cost to the borrower for
the necessary books is postage. The reading with a purpose
courses of the American Library Association are used wherever
suitable, but in most cases it has been found desirable to outline a
special course. The student, on his application blank, agrees to
read at least one book a month, and the books for his course are
reserved on that schedule unless he prefers to go ahead more
rapidly. College authorities in the state have been keenly inter-
ested in the plan and have cooperated by writing about it to
students who had been forced to drop out by the hard times.
Problems Welcome
VOCATIONAL, family and personal problems may be laid
before competent advisors by women who are college
graduates or under-graduates under a new plan launched by the
Merrill-Palmer School (71 Ferry Avenue East, Detroit, Michi-
gan). Information or guidance is given by the advisory staff or
the inquiry is referred to the appropriate center or specialist. In
addition to the advisory service for which the school has come to
feel a genuine need among college women, information will be
gathered on " the life needs of college women to ascertain how well
their education has fitted them to meet life under modern condi-
tions and eventually to analyze this information and make the
results available." There will be no charge for casual inquiries or
preliminary interviews. Clients who wish to cooperate in the
research study by giving information which will be useful to the
research "are regarded as cooperating clients and will be required
to pay no fee for ordinary diagnostic and advisory service." To
others, a charge will be made. Inquiries are welcomed.
Adult Education
PERIODS set aside for direct adult education was one of the
•*• interesting new departures in the recent conference of the
Progressive Education Association in Chicago. The conference
program included study courses for those "desiring opportunity
for consecutive thinking and discussion on related topics." Among
the subjects offered were Principles and Practices of Progressive
Schools, Creative Teaching in the Arts, Some Problems of Ameri-
can Life. Those who enroled were enthusiastic about the stimula-
tion and refreshment gained through such group study and think-
ing. The plan will probably be extended at the next conference.
In spite of the depression the Chicago meeting was better at-
tended than any previous conference of the Association. The
"panel" method was twice used with conspicuous success: once ir
a discussion based on the Social Trends report, and again in ex-
ploring the question of the schools and controversial issues.
New Ways in Teacher-Training
USE of New York City as a laboratory for college students, ir
the same way that it is used by the progressive elementary
schools, has been emphasized in the first year's work of New
College, the experimental teacher-training college at Columbia
University. In addition to the cultural and sociological opportuni-
ties of the city itself, the 143 teachers in training have had a
chance to "learn by doing" as student teachers at Public School
No. 43, the Dalton School, Lincoln, Walden, George Washington
Highschool and so on, and as assistants to professors in New
College and Teachers College. The New College Camp in North
Carolina opens June i, for intensive work in the sciences, home
economics, handcrafts and physical education. Eventually the
plan is to make of this camp an all-year community center. A
group of upper-class students leave June I for a year of foreign
study in Germany and England, the year's work to be organized
around a seminar concerned with the civilization of the country
Prof. Thomas Alexander, head of New College, reports:
Work on the integration of the curriculum goes on continuously
Integration is based on intensive study of the students through analysis
of cumulative data and through the close contact of students and faculty
Such study influences the curriculum and gives the basis upon which thf
faculty members are able to help the students integrate their experience;
toward the accomplishment of their continuously expanding aims.
THE Highlander Folkschool plans to extend its work into a neigh-j
boring state with a chain of "cooperative libraries" (see The,
Survey, March, page 120), with Kennesaw, Georgia, as the
center. The plan starts with about three hundred volumes. More,
books, particularly on labor problems, economics and coopera-
tion, are needed. Don West, co-director of the Folkschool, i<
in charge.
THE Atlanta School of Social Work finds it necessary to limit its!
student body next year to fifty specially qualified young men and
women. The school has written to college presidents in the area
served, asking them to recommend such students, and pointing
out that what is not wanted is particularly "the student who
apparently is not fitted for anything else and is not known to be!
fitted for social work."
THE 1933 session of the Williamstown Institute will be omitted,
it is announced. Whether the sessions will be continued is to hinge
on the answers to two questions: "first, whether the Institute can
be reorganized so as to add to the work it has performed in the
past a new feature of first importance; and second whether the
funds necessary to carry out this program can be obtained.'
The new feature proposed is a round table for continuous study
throughout the year of questions to be discussed at the next fol-
lowing session of the Institute.
CAMPS and play-schools will be conducted for the third summer in
southern industrial towns by Pioneer Youth of America (69 Bank
Street, New York). Progressively inclined teachers are needed tc
act as leaders, and students and untrained workers as assistants.
STUDENTS of education are to meet at Stanford University on
June 6 to honor Ellwood P. Cubberley when he retires as dean of
the school of education after more than thirty years of service.'
Conferences on the progress of school administration since n/x,
will be held.
Unemployment and Community Action
May 1933
THE SURVEY
199
'This department is an emergency information
service to public officials and to members,
executives and supervisors of citizens' com-
mittees. News of interesting developments will
be gratefully received by the editors, Russell
Sage Foundation, rjo East 22 Street, New York
Public-Private Relationships
THE last few months have seen a decided trend toward joint
plans of various sorts between city or county departments of
mblic welfare and private relief agencies. No one of these plans
s exactly similar in all details to any other, but they may be
>riefly described under certain heads:
1 Where no public-welfare department exists, or where it
. carries out other functions than to dispense relief.
This is still the case in Baltimore, Birmingham, Cleveland,
Houston, Pittsburgh, St. Louis and a number of smaller places. In
all these cities, the private welfare agencies dispense public
relief funds, allocated to them for the purpose by city or county
Tovernment or by a county relief committee representing the state.
2 Where both public and private relief agencies carry on
• independent work in the community.
(a) The most frequent type of cooperation until recently was
a division of the case load, on some agreed-upon basis, so that
each agency was solely responsible for both relief and service to
its separate group of clients. It was usual to find the public
j department assuming the care, among other types, of "uncom-
plicated" unemployment, while the private agency retained the
1 care of individuals and families who present more deep-seated
difficulties. With the failure of private funds, the commoner form
of cooperation at present will be found under (c) below.
(b) Another plan is to divide the relief-giving function on the
i same families between the two agencies. This was a fairly common
arrangement up to the depression, especially in places where
| rulings and legal restrictions limited the purposes for which
public-relief funds might be spent. Chicago and St. Paul, which
} had this system of supplementation, have now abandoned it;
Indianapolis, Providence and Scranton still continue it. Under
pressure of reduced incomes, several private agencies which
I hitherto have kept their case loads separate — e.g., Bridgeport,
Connecticut and Syracuse, New Tork — -have been forced, tempo-
rarily, at least, to seek supplementation from the public depart-
! ^nent on individual family relief budgets. In cities where the public
agency operates a commissary, the pressure is often very strong
fc upon the private agency to send its families there for food, while
I continuing to meet their other relief needs.
(c) In one group of cities, while the public and private agencies
,maintain their separate identity, the relief function has passed
j almost completely to the public department, which relies, how-
ever, on the private agency to carry out service plans, and in
some places to make investigations and recommendations,
: on the group of families for whom the two agencies are jointly
i working. Such is the case in Cincinnati, Rockford, Illinois and
. .Englewood, New Jersey. An extreme case of this sort of adjustment
: is found in Worcester, Massachusetts, where a specially-created
agency, supported in part from private funds, receives all applica-
tions from the unemployed, makes plans for their care, and requi-
sitions for the necessary relief on the public department, which
does no independent work with these families.
(d) In several cities, notably Springfield, Massachusetts, and
Philadelphia (in 1931), the private agency, while carrying its own
separate case load, has lent the full-time services of trained
Edited by JOANNA C. COLCORD
and RUSSELL H. KURTZ
members of its staff to the public department, continuing to pay
all or part of their salaries. The private agencies of Chicago and
Philadelphia are at present serving the enlarged public depart-
ment by sharing their office space and the time of their supervisors
in training new recruits to the public department's staff.
(e) In Milwaukee, a mutual referral service has been set up
between the two agencies, under which the private agency may
transfer some cases completely, refer some for relief while retain-
ing them for service, or in some cases carry them both for relief
and service. In this way each agency has its own selected case
load, while they function together on another group common to
both. A similar plan has recently gone into effect in Newark, N. J.
(f) Grand Rapids in 1931 set up a new agency to act as a joint
"receiving station" for all applications, and allocate them to the
public department or the private agencies, as the applicants'
circumstances seemed to indicate. This was later discontinued in
Grand Rapids but several other cities, among them Evanston,
Illinois, Richmond, Virginia, Salt Lake City and Wichita, are
using this method.
3 Where there has been an actual merger, wholly or in part,
• of the work of the two agencies.
(a) In one group of cities, the same administrative officer
serves as director of public relief and general secretary of the
private family agency, administering two separate funds and
directing in theory two separate staffs. This is the much-discussed
"Iowa plan," which was in effect in many Iowa counties as well
as in Akron, in Princeton, New Jersey, and in a modified form in
Portland, Oregon, long before the depression. Recent new recruits
to a similar plan are Huntington, West Virginia; Lincoln, Nebraska;
and Saint Paul, Minnesota.
(b) In some communities where there has been a serious failure
to raise private funds for relief, the private agency has been
completely incorporated with the public department, certain of
its staff, its records, and so on, going over into the public agency's
office. Among such instances may be mentioned Erie, Pennsylva-
nia, Columbus, Georgia, and Kansas City, Kansas.
It is generally agreed, however, that consolidation instead of
cooperation spells loss to the community of an unique and
indispensable service which only a private agency can render;
and that the more hopeful progress is to be found in the various
experiments in cooperation.
The April News-Letter of the Family Welfare Association of
America contains a discussion of various forms of public-private
agency cooperation. It may be secured from the Association at
130 East 22 Street, New York City.
Relief During Bank Holidays
IT can be said with some assurance that no interruption oc-
curred, due to the recent nation-wide suspension of banking,
in the supply of relief to those who needed it. This was due,
however, to extraordinary and ingenious emergency efforts on
the part of those responsible for the administration of relief, and
to remarkable cooperation, on the one hand from the R. F. C. and
federal and local banking authorities, on the other from local
merchants who continued to honor orders from relief admin-
istrators when no assurance could be given as to date of payment.
The reports from representatives of national agencies who were
in the field at the time are unanimous that there was no suffering
from relief restriction directly due to the bank holidays.
The Community Fund drive for $600,000 for non-relief giving
200
T HE SURVEY
May 193
agencies in St. Louis, alertly watched by other cities because of
its following a United Relief Campaign of December and January,
got under way late in February just in time to run head-on into
the bank holiday. After a week's campaigning which resulted in
pledges of approximately $125,000, the effort was halted, but has
since been resumed with encouraging results.
In cities such as Detroit and Cleveland, where important banks
failed to reopen after the emergency closure, serious situations
have resulted due to the impounding of funds, particularly those
of community chests and private agencies in the non-relief field.
Recent State Legislation
INFORMATION on relief legislation in ten states, passed
during the first three months of 1933, is taken from a report
entitled Legislation for Unemployment Relief, issued by the
American Public Welfare Association.
Iowa has enacted legislation providing for the permissive use
by the counties of state -printed stamp scrip for both direct and
work-relief disbursements. This, in effect, provides a relief cur-
rency liquidated by a transaction or modified sales tax, following
the Hawarden, Iowa plan.
Oklahoma has made an appropriation for the distribution of
garden seed with the proviso that the governor shall have the
power " to determine and investigate and correct such lists so
supplied, by addition of others and elimination of those not
entitled to such relief."
Montana has authorized the appointment by the governor of
a State Relief Commission of five to serve for two years.
North Dakota has placed the administration of poor relief in
the hands of the county commissioners who are authorized to
employ social workers and establish county welfare boards if they
see fit.
Utah has voted its governor wide powers in the relief of unem-
ployment and has set up the Utah State Emergency Commission
of eight members with the governor as chairman. This Commis-
sion is to be selected to represent farming and stock-raising inter-
ests, mining and smelting, merchandising and manufacturing,
engineering and construction, real estate and investments, public
utilities, social service, health, labor, and unemployment. Its
function is "to aid the executive departments and the counties
in formulating and executing a state-wide 'emergency program'
to consist of the following projects in the discretion of the Com-
mission: a weed and pest eradication and reforestation program,
a road program, a public building program, and a miscellaneous
program formulated by the commission. The program is to be
partially financed by the sale of scrip."
Illinois has levied a sales tax which is calculated to yield
$3,000,000 a month for relief after May i, provided the courts
find it constitutional. A test suit is now in progress. Another act
requires relief applicants to furnish sworn statements of their
condition and to submit to reasonable examination.
Kansas has passed enabling legislation which allows counties to
exceed previous legal tax limits in order to provide funds for
relief purposes. Another act has standardized the county poor
relief procedure by setting up a "poor commissioner" under the
county commissioners in each county.
Ohio extended by two years the term of several relief measures
passed in 1932 and 1933.
Oregon has authorized its governor to negotiate with the
R. F. C. for a loan of $10,000,000 to be used for work relief.
A State of Oregon Unemployment Work Relief Commission will
be set up to direct the program if the loan can be secured. The
act further provides that, unless federal requirements interfere,
the funds "shall be loaned to employers in all lines of agriculture
and industry in the state to be used by them to pay wages to
additional persons by them. . . ."
Pennsylvania has provided $5,000,000 to carry its going relief
program until June I. A legislative effort to provide the twenty
to thirty million dollars which it is estimated will be needed to en-
able the state to qualify for further R. F. C. funds is still under way
at this writing. Kxpenditures in this state have risen to betwee
six and seven million dollars per month. Since September 1932, th
state has provided $12,000,000 and the R. F. C. $3o,ooo,ocx
Saved by a Hair
THE State of Illinois in receiving its March allocation froi
the R. F. C., had virtually reached the forty-five-millior
dollar limit imposed by the provision in the Kmergency Relii;
and Construction Act of 1932 which restricted what any one stat
could receive to 15 percent of the total of $300,000,000 provide
in that act. State legislation was rushed through levying a sals
tax for relief purposes, but receipts from this source were not t
be available before May i. The month of April approache
without definite financial provisions being completed.
To save the day, Congress acted late in March by appending
rider to the reforestation bill then before it, amending the Erne;
gency Act by striking out the 1 5 percent limitation. The Presider
signed this bill on March 31, and on April 3 the R. F. C. made
further loan of $3,725,000 to Illinois, bringing the total of feder;
aid extended to that state to $48,463,621.
No other state has received nearly the forty-five-million-dolls
maximum, although Pennsylvania has had $29,929,875, Obi
$15,283,937 and New York $19,800,000. There was a balance <
approximately $52,200,000 in the federal fund on April 4. Ne1
legislation for the appropriation of an additional $5oo,ooo,oc
was pending on that date.
The "Extra-Territoriality" Issue
SEVERAL state relief administrations have been under crit
cism for appointing upon their staffs trained social workei
not residents of the state.
The General Federation of Women's Clubs in a recent con
munication on unemployment relief to its membership says:
The direction of the work by trained personnel is imperative: voluntei
assistance in supplementing the trained workers is invaluable but ecoi
omy in the use of the funds demands the direction of the work by thoi
who are trained and specially competent.
But it is literally true that many states have not availabl
within their borders residents with the necessary training an
experience to direct large-scale relief enterprises. In private soci;
work, no residence requirements have ever been imposed. Th:
results in the free movement about the country of workei
trained and in process of training, and in the acquirement b
such persons of a rich background of work under varying
munity conditions and systems of laws and administration,
profession of social work has always deplored the requirement
prior residence which many public-welfare positions impose;
there has never been any instance of protest from a resic
group of social workers over the appointment of a qualifi
person from another state or even from another country.
In most cases, the state relief commissions have successfu
defended their importation of "outsiders;" but the newly-reoi
ganized State Commission in Rhode Island has been under pai
ticularly heavy fire from small-town legislators who feel tha
local boys and girls have all the qualifications for relief admini;
trators that could be asked for. In the course of public hearing:
it appeared that three out of twelve state relief supervisors had n
Rhode Island settlement. "There are plenty of qualified schoo
teachers without jobs" one legislator stated. "Don't they giv
social training in normal schools? If they don't, the school shoul
be investigated." Another, speaking on behalf of nurses, sai-
persons with this qualification could better adminster relief tha
those with social-work training. To such statements as these, a
imposing volume of replies came from informed citizens and boar
members, backing up the Commission's stand, and pointing 01
that training for one profession is not necessarily training for ar. •
other, and that in selecting social-work personnel, residence is ||
vastly subordinate qualification to competence.
Governor Green, in a speech on March 27, referred to his at
May 1933
THE SURVEY
201
ackers as either misinformed about what constitutes competence
or relief administration, or "politicians who think only in terms
f jobs." "The first thing we must consider," he said, "is the effi-
iency of the supervisors. The second thing is where they come
rom. . . . If we could do it, we would like to appoint unemployed
>ersons living in Rhode Island who are trained social workers.
Vhere this is impossible, the emphasis must be on their efficiency."
In spite of the governor's stand the lower house of the legis-
ature voted unanimously for an amendment which provides that
he relief commission shall employ only electors of the state.
Self-Help and Organized Relief
in 1912. Contact between grievance committees and groups of
organized unemployed with the relief stations was discontinued.
After a trial of several months, the Public Relations Office
has given up the attempt to adjust grievances (turning that
function back to the relief stations) and is confining its attention
to standardizing practices and developing policies.
There are some definitely local issues which must be settled in the neigh-
borhood where they arise. Such things cannot be satisfactorily adjusted
by carrying them many miles to a supreme court which, in the nature of
things, must carry them back to the local community to find out what it is
all about. But the tremendously important business of serving the neigh-
borhood must not be interfered with by organized groups whose avowed or
concealed aim is the disorganization of that service. [From the News-Letter]
f T TTl'H the growth and spread eastward of cooperative self-
» * help among the unemployed, the question of the relation of
hese projects to the organized relief agencies of the community
>ecomes one of considerable moment. Community chests and
elief committees are seeking light on what their attitude should
je towards these new agencies in the relief field.
In Dayton, and to a less degree in Pittsburgh, Councils of Social
Agencies have been directly responsible for organizing coopera-
ive movements among the unemployed. The same type of
igencies in Omaha and in Waterloo, Iowa, have cooperated closely
md sympathetically with the self-help organizations in their
:ities. In Seattle, while the public statements of the leaders of
he Unemployed Citizens' League were often antagonistic to or-
ganized social work, in private the relief committees of the locals
:xchanged information with the social agencies, and the latter
ivere called upon to prepare simple instructions for the procedure
jf the League's "home visitors."
In Denver, according to a report recently issued by the U. S.
3urcau of Labor Statistics, the Unemployed Citizens League has
received substantial gifts of Red Cross flour and cloth, and the
Mayor's Committee has cooperated with it in a program of house-
renovation by unemployed tenants in exchange for rent. It ap-
jears from this report that the League has had some hand in
securing food for its needy members from federal relief funds al-
otted to Denver, though the mechanics of the transfer are not
made clear.
The Minneapolis Organized Unemployed, Inc., likewise has
shared in the distribution of Red Cross flour and has established a
clearing contact with the social service exchange.
In California, according to unverified information, the County
Unemployment Relief Committees have furnished gasoline and
oil for transporting the foodstuffs collected by the Exchanges;
and such supplementary assistance from public funds is strongly
urged in the report of the University of Washington faculty, sum-
marized in this Department for February.
The Wagner-Costigan-LaFollette bill for a further extension of
federal relief contains a specific provision that funds may be used
in the discretion of the administrator "in assisting cooperative
and self-help associations for the barter of goods and services."
Complaints En Masse
CHICAGO'S recent innovation in mechanisms for dealing
with complaints, protests and disruptive demonstrations of
the unemployed has not worked out with any degree of success.
'This mechanism was a central complaint bureau called the Public
Relations Office, designed to take this particular burden off the
shoulders of the fifteen harassed district supervisors.
Groups of the organized unemployed continually visited these stations
(before the office was established), some in a friendly spirit and others
with the frank intention of interrupting the work. The task of interpreta-
• tion of policies and hearing of grievances fell upon the district supervisors
who were also carrying a huge administrative burden. A great deal of
tension developed in many neighborhoods and any irritation was directed
at the local stations, the points of contact between the service and the
( Community. [From a recent Council of Social Agencies News-letter]
Everyone concerned recognized the need of a centralized inter-
pretative service, and the Public Relations Office was set up late
A1
St. Louis Resumes Work Relief
FFER a two-year holiday in the work-relief field, St. Louis
^ has launched a city-bond-financed work program for about
fifteen hundred men selected from the relief rolls. Thirty cents an
hour will be paid for common labor and the prevailing scale on
other types of work. In addition to park, street and sewer opera-
tions, special projects for engineers and for clerical and research
workers have been devised.
The six thousand men on the rolls of the Bureau of Homeless
Men have received notice that they will be expected to work out
their relief this summer on a seventy-eight-acre farm which the
Bureau has rented. Each man will put in three or four seven-hour
days per month and will receive a credit of three dollars a day for
each day worked, plus free meals and twenty-five cents spending
money while working. The work will be done by hand under
skilled supervision. The produce raised will be used in the cafe-
teria operated by the Bureau. "About sixty men per day will be
shuttled by the Bureau from the city to the farm and back."
Rent Policy in Minneapolis
THE Minneapolis Department of Public Relief outlines its
rent policy as follows:
A definite schedule of rents has been established. A man is kept in the
field to look after this particular problem and to contact the property
owners and landlords. It is our policy to make continuous contributions of
the amount agreed upon so long as the circumstances in the family remain
the same. When the circumstances change, the landlord is notified. The
tenant is required to come to the office once a month to ask for the con-
tribution. This places the responsibility upon the tenant. The rent
checks are not given to the tenants but are mailed directly to the landlords,
thus protecting the department against any misuse of the rent check.
This method of handling this most vexatious problem has reduced evic-
tions and quieted the situation of those who, by necessity, must seek this
aid. This policy is fair to the public treasury and the property-owners.
The average rental allowance made by the department in Janu-
ary was $8.69; in December $8.78.
Industrial Cooperation
riTH a relief roll of one out of every three in the population,
Alliance, Ohio has tied its principal manufacturers into its
scheme of relief, by a device which maintains the connection
between men laid off and the plants to which they hope sometime
to return. The local Red Cross Chapter is responsible for the
distribution of city and county relief funds, and has secured the
appointment in each of seven cooperating firms of a "contact
man" who acts as its representative, investigating and recom-
mending for relief, and keeping records for the Red Cross, whose
worker is present at the plant on scheduled days to issue relief
orders. Weekly meetings are held, at which the social workers and
their aides, the contact men, discuss problems and work out
methods of procedure. The Executive Secretary of the Red Cross
feels that the plan has helped to keep up the morale of the people
out of work; has given the employers a vivid insight into the
individual problems which unemployment creates; and has
strengthened the spirit of cooperation in the community.
202
THE SURVEY
May 1933
Forgotten Soldiers
THE B. E. F., by W. W. Waters. John Day. 288 pp. Price $2.50 postpaid of The Survey
THIS is a review of the story of the Bonus Army as told by
the commander to William C. White — and not a discussion,
either defense or criticism, of the enterprise itself. Opinions will,
differ as to the wisdom of the invasion last summer by 20,000
to 25,000 unemployed World War veterans of the National
Capitol demanding the cash payment of the bonus. They will
also differ as to the justice of the bonus itself. But there can be
no doubt that Mr. Waters has told a graphic and convincing story
of an episode unique in our national history from the time a little
band of unemployed veterans in Portland, Oregon, — led by him —
left for Washington; through the rigors of their 35oo-mile hike
across the country; the rapid recruiting of veterans from every-
where on Pennsylvania Avenue, and later in the mud flats of
Anacostia; the patient wait for Congressional action and then
the eviction from Washington in a sudden night raid, and the
anti-climax at Johnstown and the collapse of the whole movement.
The climax of the story is a detailed account of the eviction,
after Waters had been promised ample time for an orderly dis-
banding, in a night attack by the National Guard with tanks,
cavalry with drawn sabres, machine-guns, bayonets and tear-gas
bombs, directed with superb military efficiency by the secretary^
of war, under orders from the White House. There are sixteen
pages of excellent photographs.
Since it is to be hoped that our government will never again be
guilty of such a stupid blunder, students of sociology and of
American history will wish to add this book to their libraries.
Children's Aid Society, New Tork OWEN R. LOVEJOY
Five Criminals
CAKE STUDIES IN THE PSYCHOPATHOLOGY OF CRIME, by Ben Karpman.
M.D. Volume One. Cases I-V. 1008 pp. Limited edition. Price $12.
DFPRFSSIONS appear periodically to challenge ideas but
crime, like poverty, appears to be with us at all times. The
study of criminals is now regarded as of paramount importance
for the purpose of gaining insight into their nature as well as for
understanding their crimes. Dr. Karpman has presented a book
whose sale is restricted to members of the medical, legal, scientific
and other professions directly interested in medical-social prob-
lems. Its direct content does not afford a large amount of practical
material that can serve social workers. Nonetheless, it is a re-
search and reference volume of commendable type, giving the
results of the studies of a psychiatrist in an institution for the
criminally insane, who reviews in detail the life histories of five
men.
The author's fundamental assumption is that all abnormal
psychic reactions are merely quantitative exaggeration of normal
reactions, while the psychic mechanisms are the same. The
general view, despite a large variety of procedures, is mainly
psychoanalytic. Leaving aside this fact, however, there is
definite evidence of a systematic effort to evaluate the social,
ethical and individual psychogenetic factors involved in criminal
behavior. In this connection, it is interesting to note the analysis
of letters written by the individuals together with judgments
upon prisoners by fellow-prisoners.
A vast field of generic and specific psychopathology is covered
in reviewing the lives of these five men. Hence one notes discus-
sions on the relation of dope and education, the nature of bunko
games, the nature and reactions of homo-sexuality, with emphasis
upon the lack of emotional emancipation. There are discussions
of personalities, of dreams, of insanities, of their cause and pos-
sible cures, of phantasy, love and vagabondism, of loveless homes,
of alcoholism, of wanderings and amours, of pathological liars, ol
inferiority complexes, of amnesia, romance and romancing.
There is much reference to causes and possible cures of crime
in which there appear such ideas as " Crime is part of the world
which no man can control and never will be able to control," and
"Slums do not breed criminals but criminals go to the slums."
Despite its voluminous character, as naturally results because
of the mode of approach, this book holds a definite and valuable
place for all those making thoughtful researches and investiga-
tions into normal and abnormal psychology. One welcomes it as
a contribution to the direct and practical study of the develop-
ment and distortions of personality both of which underlie the
psychopathology of crime. IRA S. WILE, M.D.
New Tork City '
Glands Without Magic
THE TIDES OF LIFE: The Endocrine -Glands in Bodily Adjustment, by R. C.
Hoskins, Ph.D., M. D. W. W. Norton, 352 pp. Price $3.50 postpaid of The Surrey
R. HOSKINS' position in scientific and medical circles is
such that a book over his signature carries the respect due
to qualified authority. Beyond that basic requisite, however, this
clear and interesting exposition of dawning scientific knowledge
of the endocrine glands seems to me to have implications of spe-
cial interest to the general reader for whom it is intended. The
book is dedicated to "G. A. H. who collaborated with Mr. W. W.
Norton in the preliminary beguiling that led to the writing. . . ."
The general reader, confused by commercial and pseudo-claim-
ants who have invested the subject of endocrine glands with all
but black magic, may well be grateful that lay interest in a sci-
entific subject should have seemed sufficiently important to be-
guile the director of research of the Memorial Foundation forj
Neuro-F.ndocrine Research of the Harvard Medical School.
The old division of town and gown shows a healthy bridging
when a research scientist takes thought to put his knowledge in \
terms accessible to an ordinary reader. The reader's second source
of gratitude should be that there is a publisher interested in]
initiating such a beguiling. Obviously such a book as this could !
not have been expected to make sales through the lure of sensa-
tion-mongering. It is another witness of a policy apparent in the
list of W. W. Norton — an active effort to get from qualified
people statements of subjects in which some intelligent readers are'
interested, but not at the price of a dressing-up or a writing-
down aimed to give a book "popularity" at the sacrifice of
authenticity. MARY Ross!
Our Elizabethans
HOLLOW FOLK, by Mandel Sherman and Thomas R. Henry. Crowell. 221 pp. Price
$2 postpaid of The Survey.
THIS is a study of the culture and the people in isolated com-
munities of the Blue Ridge Mountains of Virginia. The
ancestors of these people moved into the mountain valleys more
than a century ago. Some of them continued the search for wider
economic opportunities. Others have stayed for generations
untouched by modern influences. They live the life that their
forbears lived, eking out an existence, a simple, unlettered folk,
still speaking what has been called the "purest Elizabethan"
to be found anywhere.
The authors of Hollow Folk selected five communities which
represent varying degrees of isolation ranging from one in which
the scattered families subsist off the "grudging unaided bounty
>f nature" to a small town where there is some organized social
md economic life. The work of gathering and interpreting the
lata was undertaken by a staff of psychologists, a nutritionist, a
jsychiatrist, a sociologist and a field worker who spent months
iving in the huts of the mountain people. With the assistance of
•applies of chewing-gum, pennies, plugs of tobacco, cigarettes and
ntelligence tests they collected material picturing the "moun-
aineer" and his life around such headings as Living and Dying,
Religion, Fear and Superstition, Desire and Worry, Education
jnd Mentality, Work and Play, Love and Morality, Government
ind Law.
The picture is arresting and challenging. Within one hundred
-niles of the national capital is a civilization which has "stood
still." There is appalling poverty, illiteracy, and lack of knowledge
jf the simplest habits of health and cleanliness. One accustomed
to a different standard may wonder that children born in such
circumstances manage to live. Yet they do. On the other hand,
psychiatric investigation disclosed that the children in the most
isolated community are remarkably free from conflicts. For the
whole population, worry is reduced to a minimum. "No man
worries about losing his job. He has none to lose. Nobody worries
about paying bills. There are none to pay. Nobody worries over
social inequalities, for none exist. There are no worries over
frustrated ambitions, for there are few ambitions to be frus-
trated. . . ."
The method of the study is interesting and significant. The
environment of the mountaineer is simple and undeveloped, his
reaction to it is so direct that this record of his culture comes as
near perhaps to the "laboratory" experiment as is possible in
the study of social groups. The writing is full of colorful, graphic
pictures of attitudes and personalities. Lois MAC-DONALD
\e:v York University
The Menace of Insecurity
IK FAMILY, by Katharine D. Lumpkin, Univ. of North Carolina Press. Chapel
Hill. 184 pp. Price $2 postpaid of The Survey.
1""\R. LUMPKIN made a study of forty-six families being
*— ' served by a social agency in New York City. If they were
not typical American families, they at least served as a means for
examining the processes involved in family life. For the reviewer
the two best chapters are the ones dealing with control within the
family and member roles. There is written between the lines of
this little volume a warning and a moral. It is perhaps a platitude,
luit nonetheless important. The family, according to this moral,
is not economically secure in capitalistic society, and with the
loss of economic security the solidarity of the family fails. This is
perhaps the chief point of the book. NELS ANDERSON
.v//- Low Junior College, Brooklyn
The New Year Book
IAL WORK YEAR BOOK, 1933, edited by Fred S. Hall. Russell Sage Founda-
n. 6SO pp. Price $4 postpaid of The Survey.
ATTER by some eighty pages than its 1929 predecessor,
richer by the extension of its subject matter into more fields
closely related to social work, and handier by the addition of an
index and by clarifying typographical devices, the second issue of
this indispensable reference volume comes at a time when its
information, combining present status with solid background, is
of increasing usefulness to a steadily widening public. The 171
signed topical articles bear down less on history and on the course
of events since 1929 than on the situation as it exists in 1933.
A considerable number of articles such as Education and Social
Work and Law and Social Work serve to define relationships,
while articles such as those on Behavior Problems and on Social
Planning serve to tie together a variety of related interests. New
and useful features in the volume are the directory of state public
agencies, the classification of topical articles into thirteen subject
groups and an index which is a boon to the hurried seeker after
information. Survey Associates, we are happy to note, is included
as a national research agency.
BOOKS THAT LIVE ON
FOR THE SOCIAL WORKER
Cited by Parent's Magazine as a distinctive contribution to
the field of child study and parental interest
BEHAVIOUR ASPECTS OF
CHILD CONDUCT
By ESTHER LORING RICHARDS, B.A., M.D., D.Sc.
With an Introduction by DR. ADOLF MEYER
"Those who wish to know more concerning child behavior and the blending of
medical, social, psychological and educational forces which enter into the situations
responsible for the activities of the child will flnd this one of the most valuable books
that have appeared to date."— Fnnklin G. Ebaugh, M. D.
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'A decade hence there will be Socialists who will turn to it in assessing the views of
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Socialist Planning and a
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A Symposium edited for the L. I. D.
by HARRY W. LAIDLER. Ph.D.
With an Introduction by Norman Thomas
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"A penetrating look at the present American economic tangle." — Columbia
Mis sour tan
FALCON PRESS, Inc., 330 West 42nd St., New York, N. Y.
DIRECTORY OF SOCIAL AGENCIES
NEW YORK
39th ed. 1932-33
A consolidated, classified and descriptive directory of social
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in need of information as to the social service resources of
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Charity Organization Society.
850 pages Cloth $3.00
Published by the
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No III SOCIAL WORK ETHICS — Lula Jean Elliott.
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1 30 East 22d Street, New York
(In answering advertisements please mention THE SURVEY)
203
204
THE SURVEY
May 193;
CO MM UN 1C A TIONS
How to Get Professional Books
To THE EDITOR: I am writing in the hope that you may be able to
help me in the solution of a problem which I suspect may be quite
general among social workers working alone in rural or semi-
rural communities. The problem is how to get books — recent ones
— on sociology, social work, education, mental hygiene and the
like that one wants and needs to read and yet cannot afford to
buy. I have been accustomed to working in communities where
professional books were accessible through school and public
libraries, and I very much miss being able to get hold of profes-
sional books other than those I am able to buy.
I believe there is a National Health Library that provides cir-
culating library service for health workers. Is there such a library
service for social workers? If not, wouldn't it be possible to estab-
lish something of the kind, charging a fee and postage to the bor-
rower and putting it on such a basis that it would be a good busi-
ness proposition as well as a great help to social workers? I shall
appreciate any information you may be able to give me on this
subject. SELA M. CHENEY
School Social Worker, U. S. Indian School, Mt. Pleasant, Michigan
[If our correspondent will communicate with the Michigan
State Library, Lansing, Mary K. Frankhauser librarian, she will
receive full information on its service to readers through in-
dividual loans of books, magazines and pamphlets to any reason-
able number, and through traveling libraries varying from ten to
fifty volumes on selected subjects. Any resident of the state may
borrow by filing an application card and by payment of carrying
charges. "We are constantly sending out books of the kind men-
tioned by Miss Cheney."
Although at the present time state libraries are being forced to
curtail their activities, a considerable majority of the states, either
through their state libraries or their universities, continue to offer
a lending service to adults. The American Library Association,
520 North Michigan Avenue, Chicago, has available a sixteen-
page memorandum, State Book Service Facilities, which gives
full information, state by state. It will be sent on request, but it
would be a good idea to enclose postage.
So far as The Survey has been able to discover there is no
general country-wide lending service to people in small or rural
communities but there are a good many places where social work-
ers can borrow professional books under special circumstances.
The University B.xtension Division of the University of Wis-
consin, Madison, has an extensive loan-package library which in-
cludes not only books but the latest pamphlets, magazine and
newspaper material, typed excerpts from books and so on, on any
subject of public, civic or educational importance. Because of a
large demand from alumni this service is frequently extended into
states without such facilities. Almere L. Scott, director of the de-
partment of debating and public discussion, will answer inquiries.
Most state universities with extension departments offer a similar
service.
Bertha F. Hulseman of the Russell Sage Foundation Library,
130 East 22 Street, New York, says: "To date the library has not
felt that it could attempt a mail lending service, though readily
acknowledging the need of it. In a few instances we have sent
books by mail to individual borrowers and more often to libraries
for the use of certain of their borrowers."
Ethel Wigmore of the National Health Library, 450 Seventh
Avenue, New York, says: "Members of any of the seven national
health organizations which support this library may borrow
books at the cost of wrapping, transportation and insurance. The
same service is open to non-members at a fee of $2 a year. We are
always glad to extend to all libraries the courtesy of an inter-
library loan. Your correspondent might borrow books from us by
applying to her local library for such a loan. Our books are prett;
closely limited to the health field, in its broadest aspects of course i
though in some instances, as in mental hygiene, they impinge or
social welfare."
The Child Welfare League of America, 130 East 22 Street
New York, lends books to its member agencies. The Elizabetl
McCormick Memorial Fund, Mary W. Taylor librarian, 84!
North Dearborn Street, Chicago, will lend books and special ma
terial on child welfare.
The Methodist Federation of Social Service, Room 804, 1 5(
Fifth Avenue, New York, has a considerable library on social ant
economic subjects which it lends to its members (annual due;
$i) and occasionally to others, for carrying charges. It will sent
its list on request.
The general advice of the American Library Association to thi
yearner after special books is to apply to his local library if he ha:
one, to request special service from the state library agency. If n<
local library exists, apply directly to the state library or to thi
state university. In the event of a complete impasse consult thi
American Library Association in Chicago. In any case, reques
material well in advance of the time it is needed for the wheels an
sometimes slow in turning. — THE EDITORS.)
Speaking of Sin
To THE EDITOR: I do not agree with G. S. on the subject of his o:
her article under the caption Are Relief Workers Policemen
While it would be a colossal job for a case worker to undertake th<
making over of morals, unless we make some effort to do so in al
cases contacted we are practically giving our approval to a condi
tion which is bound to grow worse and which, in all cases, will re.
act upon the children in the family. To ignore such a condition ir
families is to tacitly approve. Not only will the delinquent seen:
to have secured the approval of society but, in addition, acquaint
ances and neighbors will be encouraged "to go and do likewise."
When it has come to the knowledge of a case worker that tht
mother of a family is living in sin with a man not her husband anc
in her home, drastic action should be taken either to remove thi
man from the home or the children from a bad environment.
Philadelphia A WORKEI
The Client's Car
To THE EDITOR: I have read the article entitled When Your Clieni
Has a Car in the March Midmonthly Survey with a great deal ol
interest. And I think it is very well done. I thought you might be
interested to know that I heard of a case (in a western state!
where the good ladies at the church were so indignant with the
relief organization for refusing relief to a man who had one ol
those characteristic battered Fords which he used to haul in wood
from the hills for sale, that they espoused his cause and worked up
some business for him among their own membership. So the laity
reacts sometimes in one way and sometimes in another to this dif-
ficult question. I shall look forward to the later articles in the
series with interest. MARY C. BuRNETiii
Head, Department of Social Work, Carnegie Institute of 'Technology. \
Pittsburgh
From an Emergency Worker
To THE EDITOR: Since I am one of the many hundreds who have
been drafted in to emergency relief work without much training.
I would like to express my joy concerning the new series of ar-
ticles dealing with "the new problems." As hard as one may try.-
such things as owning a car, political affiliations, and detective
duty cannot be considered less than "problems." And so often the
solving has been very difficult. It will be not only helpful bul
healthy to see how, why and that others are meeting the same,
circumstances. I find that after reading a copy of The Survey, 1
am more intelligently trying to help my clients see their situation
and mine.
«y
1933
THE SURVEY
205
I was very interested in the letter from L. W. Tostevin [March
idmonthly Survey, page 132] in regard to community discus-
m groups. The need for just such a thing has long been appar-
t. In a large city such as Chicago small groups seem practically
t of the question. However, we do have a well-organized group
people calling themselves "Communists," and the organization
called "The Council of the Unemployed," and another group
lling themselves "Socialists," or "The Workers' Committee."
)th of these organizations are mainly interested in real or im-
ined problems in relation to the unemployed and the relief
ranization. These groups have been organized, in the main,
>m within the community, and have been of strong emotional
vor. Many people decry these organizations, but so far, nothing
s been done to counteract them which might be called at all
ogressive.
As usual the main item is to find a leader. It seems to me that a
ally worth while and lasting thing should grow out of an effort to
ve forums, call them "Understanding Forums," through which
e present world and local situations might be as intelligently as
issible, discussed. Perhaps this is only an idle dream, but "of
ch stuff is the world made." N. H. W.
ricago, III.
Why Civilization Fails
THK KDITOR: In the April number of The Survey, the article
Social Workers in a Changing World, page 148, says: "Prob-
TIS which must be dealt with on many fronts. Social service or-
nizations are the 'residuary legatees' of the failure of our civiliza
>n to function as it ought."
Is there anyone now who tries to honestly reason out why our
vilization fails to function as it ought? It seems to me that most
;ople have lost sight of the supreme Power and fail to give God,
ho is the maker of all things, any consideration. As long as this
mdition exists, our country will never return to normal, but
ill keep going down until it is utterly destroyed by the self-
ifficient greed and selfishness of our people. T. L. JONES
(. Louis, Missouri
The Price of Idle Schools
o THE EDITOR: In the frantic worry these days concerning the
herewithal to buy food, many Americans have forgotten that
.her kind of food, mental nourishment, commonly called knowl-
Ige or education. We parents in Florida have turned our
loughts to this mental food many times in recent weeks, ever
nee the announcement was made that the school year would
! id, for grammar schools, on April 21, for highschools on May 19.
Parents, headed by the P.T.A., made a thorough investigation,
he families who travel northward each summer planned a long
acation. When the merchants realized what this early northern
ligration of tourists would mean to them, they learned that edu-
'ition does not concern parents only. An open schoolhouse or a
osed one became an important question to every man and
oman in the state.
Supervisors and principals patiently gave facts and figures.
he whole problem was promptly laid at the taxpayers' door.
'nly about one third of the income supporting our schools has
' een collected. Much of this lies in idle automobiles which stand,
nused, in garages because their owners cannot earn money to buy
cense tags. One third of the funds from that source go to our
rhools.
In 1929 two cents of the gasolene tax was diverted to the
:hools. In 1931 that was changed and given to the road depart-
lent. Now the question becomes, is it more important to build
Dads or to educate our children? Florida has had a good tourist
;ason. It has been nothing like the boom days of 1925 of course,
•ut-of-the-state licenses are as plentiful down here as snow up
'Orth. Travel has been brisk and travel means gasolene. Then
'hy not give our schools a part of the gasolene tax, we ask?
Rumbles are heard of a possible increase in juvenile delinquency,
fa greater need for reformatories. Every thinking person knows
that these are the natural results of neglected education. Our
state legislature met in April beginning too late to change the
program for this school year. But surely plans may be laid for
a full term next year.
There are dire predictions of a three-to-five-month term next
year. They tell us a full term next year means cheaper teachers.
That might be a worse calamity than shortening the term. Al-
ready our teachers have cheerfully accepted two 10 percent salary
cuts. Our present staff must be retained intact and no item of the
curriculum sacrificed. But how — where will the money come from ?
The problem the state of Florida faces today may tomorrow
face every one of her sister states. It is a national problem, this
strict maintenance of the splendid public-school system. Food
for the mind as well as the body is one of life's necessities, es-
pecially among our children. One cannot thrive without the other.
Time can never be regained for them. JESSIE R. MCALLISTER
Daytona Beach, Florida
Shoddy Schools
To THE KDITOR: The recent earthquake has shown the people ot
California the need of becoming earthquake-conscious as are the
people of Japan where school children are frequently put through
earthquake drills. We must recognize that we are living in a defi-
nite quake area; we must see to it that in the future our buildings
are so well constructed that they will withstand major shocks.
No set of buildings seemed to suffer so tragically as did the
schools and in comparison with many other buildings they failed
wretchedly to withstand the severe tremors. Charges of graft
have been made by taxpayers' organizations and the district
attorney has begun an investigation into school-building in Los
Angeles County. Mr. Vandegrift, state director of finance, be-
lieves that faulty construction is responsible for the condition in
which the school buildings find themselves. He says, "In one
school a column supposed to be a strength column was filled with
broken brick and mortar. In another a brick school was reduced
to utter ruin. Twenty-five feet away was a reinforced concrete
building which was hardly damaged at all." Mr. Vandegrift be-
lieves that if the quake had occurred four hours earlier ten thou-
sand children might have perished.
Many of the buildings which went down so easily were con-
structed during the boom years of 1923 and 1924 when the popu-
lation in Southern California grew so rapidly that it was almost
impossible to erect buildings fast enough to meet the expanding
needs of the school population. Bond issues were floated and by
the time the schools were built new ones were needed. Usually the
money voted was insufficient to provide for Class A or B struc-
tures. The buildings were put up at a time when labor and mate-
rial costs were high and when most citizens were too busy making
money to devote time to public matters.
According to Colonel Carlos W. Huntington, state registrar of
contractors and director of the Department of Professional and
Vocational Standards, flimsy construction and the use of im-
proper materials were responsible for much of the damage that
followed the earthquake. Intense competition forced the success-
ful bidders to use poor material. Money was stretched to the point
where the lives of our pupils have been endangered. If private
contractors are not able to construct the type of schools which
Southern California needs they should be publicly constructed
and the public should be willing to pay what it costs to build
Class A buildings.
It is now recognized that safety has been sacrificed to beauty in
the erection of school buildings. Arch and dome, tower and pedi-
ments and statuary were freely used and these are a real danger
to life during a heavy quake. Schools will no longer be constructed
to impress Easterners with the wealth of southern California nor
to advance some subdivision scheme by which promoters may
become rich. From now on the health and safety of our school
children will receive paramount consideration.
BEIRER ROBINSON
Instructor in Sociology, Jf^oodrow Wilson High School, Long Reach,
California
CLASSIFIED ADVERTISEMENTS
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ALGONQUIN 4-7490 OUIVVJC,! iVULUVU^rN 1 njL I NEW YORK CITY
SITUATIONS WANTED
YOUNG MAN, college graduate, four years' experi-
ence, boys' organization, desires new connection
offering larger opportunity for development. 7113
SURVEY.
IS THERE AN ORGANIZATION with an opening
for a young man who has prepared himself for work in
the social-religious field (A.B., B.D.)? Social work
experience and executive ability. 7114 SURVEY.
SOCIAL WORKER, man, broad experience, family,
institutional, court and psychiatric casework, high
standard agencies. University trained. 7133 SURVEY.
YOUNG COLLEGE WOMAN, B.S., Case work
training and experience, settlement house training,
desires connection. Moderate salary, references. 7126
SURVEY.
YOUNG WOMAN, capable, refined, educated, de-
sires position as traveling companion or tutor.
Experienced teacher. 7131 SURVEY.
WANTED by young lady, new connection offering
larger opportunity for development. College graduate
and ten years experience in girls organization. 7132
SURVEY.
WOMAN, American Hebrew, social work training and
experience, desires position institution, school or
camp. Thorough knowledge dietetics, purchasing
supplies, managing helpers. 7134 SURVEY.
WOMAN (Jewish) experienced immigrant education
and physical welfare, desires position. 7135 SURVEY.
LITERARY SERVICE
RESEARCH : We ?ssist in preparing
special articles, papers,
speeches, debates. Expert, scholarly service.
AUTHOR'S RESEARCH BUREAU, 516 Fifth
Avenue, New York, N. Y.
OPPORTUNITY
Research projects in social sciences, psychology, phi-
losophy and publish results. Write Dean, School of
Human Relations, 114 Remsen Street, Brooklyn.
WANTED
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ENGRAVING
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Photo Engraving Specialists. 140 Fifth Avenue,
New York City. Plates that print. Ask The Survey
about us. Platemakers for Survey Midmonthly and
Survey Graphic.
SUPPLYING INSTITUTIONAL TRADE
SEEMAN BROS., Inc.
Groceries
Hudson and North Moore Streets
New York
BOYS' CAMP
GREEN MT. BOYS' CAMP
HANCOCK, VT.
Great opportunity for boys to become accom-
plished horseback riders and athletes; reduced
tuition. No extra charge for riding or instructors.
Send for booklet. W. E. COMES, Boi 136.
EXCHANGE
SEASIDE PARK, NEW JERSEY. Cottage, 7 rooms
and bath in exchange for inland cottage for the sea-
son (New England preferred). L. Graff, 141 Jora-
lemon Street, Brooklyn, N. Y.
OPPORTUNITY
Midtown New York — 2 room apartment on East
River, completely furnished. Kitchen. Ideal for two
people. June to October. $50. Phone Algonquin
4-7490, Extension 18.
BOARD
A GOOD PLACE TO LIVE. Bedford Lodge, 32
Bedford Terrace, Northampton, Massachusetts
Bessie E. Trow
Mary Gove Smith
APARTMENT WANTED
Lower New York. One or two room apartment (fur-
nished or unfurnished), bath, kitchen or kitchenette
J35.00-$40.00 per month. 7122 SURVEY.
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Your Own Agency
^ This is the counseling and placement agency
< sponsored jointly by the American Association
|' of Social Workers and the National Organization
J for Public Health Nursing. National. Non-profit
> making.
130 East 22nd St.
New York
GERTRUDE R. STEIN, Inc.
VOCATIONAL SERVICE AGENCY
18 EAST 41st STREET, NEW YORK
Lexington 2-6677
We are interested in placing those who have
a professional attitude towards their work.
Executive secretaries, stenographers, case work-
ers, hospital social service workers, settlement
directors; research, immigration, psychiatric,
personnel workers and others.
PERSONAL STATIONERY
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The World Crisis.
cents postpaid. Stephen Kisel, 610, 7
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Problems confronting you.
East 42
Depression Reduction. The Sei Side of Life,
Explanation for Young People by Mary W:'
Dennett. Single copy $.25 instead of $.35; 5 cop
$1.00 instead of $1.67. 100 copies $15.00 instead
$20.00. Lower rates for larger quantities. Order fr- ;
the author, 81 Singer Street, Astoria, Lo
Island, New York City.
PERIODICALS
The American Journal of Nursing shows the p
which trained nurses are taking in the betterni';
of the world. Put it in your library. $3.00 a yf .
450 Seventh Ave.. New York, N. Y.
Mental Hygiene: quarterly: $3.00 a year; publislt
by the National Committee for Mental Hygic.
450 Seventh Ave., New York.
ROCKPORT, MASS.
FOR SALE — Thurston owned, old-fashioned bungalow, 5 rooms, flush
closet on first floor, excellent condition, good cellar, electric lights, 2 fire-
places; corner lot 40 x 195 ft., fruit trees, flowering shrubs. $3200, easy
terms; also sea view lots and house on Bearskin Neck; waterfront camps to
let during Spring, $10, $15, $25 week-end. HELEN L. THURSTON, 20
Pleasant St.; tel. 534 Rockport.
DISCUSSION
THE NEW FEDERAL RELIEF PROGRAM
AS IT AFFECTS
THE UNEMPLOYED WORKER AND THE FARMER
Speakers: LEM HARRIS
Executive Secretary, Farmers National Committee for Action
J. B. MATTHEWS
Executive Secretary, Fellowship of Reconciliation
Auspices: SOCIAL WORKERS DISCUSSION CLUB
FEAGIN AUDITORIUM WEDNESDAY, MAY 10, 1933
316 West 57 Street 8:15 P. M.
Admission 25c
EARN A TOUR TO EUROPE
All or part by organizing and acting as ship hostess. Liberal
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100 touts la chaos* ham, 25 days $179. Mediterranean Cruise $365.
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B.F.ALLEN ' 154 Boy Iston Street ' Boston, Massachusetts
STUDY TOURS
AMERICAN SUMMER SCHOOL
STUDY IN THE
SOVIET
UNION
For information applv:
Irving V. Sollins, P. O. Box 142,
Station D, N. Y. C.
SPrlntf 7-2000, Ext. 68
In cooperation with
INTOURIST, Inc.
545 Fifth Ave.. N. Y. C.
Directed by Harvey Zorbaugh and
Irving Sollins, School of Education,
N'ew York University; and Daniel Kulp
II, Teachers' College, Columbia
University.
6 week courses in Education and Socia
Science. Alertness requirements . . .
Academic credit. Sail July 1st — Lon-
don, Leningrad, Moscow, Warsaw,
Berlin, Paris. Return New York Sept.
4th.
65 DAYS ABROAD, $395
Includes all expenses New York to New
York.
(In answering advertisements please mention THE SURVEY)
206
May 1933
THE SURVEY
GOSSIP:
of People
and Things
Welcome, J. C. C.
NEW name flies this month on The
. Survey's masthead, Joanna C. Colcord
aving joined the good company of contribut-
ig editors, thereby becoming in name what
le has long been in fact. The department,
Inemployment and Community Action, edited
y Miss Colcord and Russell H. Kurtz, her
ssociate in the Charity Organization Depart-
ient of the Russell Sage Foundation, is a
antribution known to all Survey readers. What
nly this office knows is her continuous and
enerous contribution of ideas, criticism and
ounsel of which her name on the masthead is
ut slight acknowledgment.
"Now don't forget," said the Chicago case
•orker to the volunteer (according to Helen
'ody Baker), "to specify cod-liver oil for the
iaesarian babies." "But why," queried the 100
ercenter volunteer, "Why should the Caesar-
m babies get cod-liver oil and not the Amer-
•an babies?"
EDWARD D. LYNDE, wheelhorse of family
'elfare work in Cleveland for the past ten
ears, has resigned as secretary of the Associ-
ted Charities to accept appointment as
ssistant general director of the Family Welfare
Association of America, with headquarters in
Jew York. Stockton Raymond succeeds him in
Cleveland. The FWAA has reorganized its
ties so that Linton B. Swift is now yclept
Jenenil Director with Mr. Lynde assistant GD
>r administration, and Margaret Rich assistant
iD for education.
ON account of uncertain conditions the Ohio
public Health Association has called off all
s usual spring conferences with the confident
- <pccration that they will be held in the fall.
- GOOD news for everybody concerned with the
. Tective organization of state relief administra-
" on is the appointment of Ray C. Branion as
<ecutive secretary of the California State
' .elief Commission of which Archbishop Hanna
f San Francisco is chairman. This commission
" ^directly responsible to the governor and com-
" letely skirts the State Department of Social
Welfare, Rheba C. Splivalo, director. Mr.
i ranion has behind him experience with the
Jew York Charity Organization Society, the
.ed Cross, work for the handicapped and so on,
s well as his recent notable performance in
S anta Barbara with the late President's Com-
- Mission on Unemployment.
NORTH, East and West shared with the
outh its regret at the recent death of Prof.
ugene Cunningham Branson, economist, soci-
iogist, teacher and author, for the past twenty
1 ears head of the department of rural social
-'onomics at the University of North Carolina.
AFTER prayerful consideration and a little
uestionnairing the Association of Community
'bests and Councils has decided that its two
ammer institutes, Blue Ridge and Great
.akes, are too valuable to let slip. They will
oth be held the week of July 24-29. At Blue
Ridge, N. C., the topic will be The Socialization
of Community Forces, and at College Camp,
Wis., The Trends in Social Work. Both topics
will be organized in advance by special com-
mittees. Details from the Association, 420
Lexington Avenue, New York.
A REFRACTORY budget has obliged the Massa-
chusetts Society for Mental Hygiene regret-
fully to accept the resignation of Caroline
Gordon, for nearly two years its executive.
PORTER R. Lee, director of the New York
School of Social Work has been appointed act-
ing director of the Department of General
Work of the New York Charity Organization
Society to remain in that capacity, dividing his
time with the school, until some permanent
plan of administration for the society as a
whole has been worked out. This department of
the C.O.S. includes the family work, through
its district offices, the central administration
office, the tenement-house committee and a
number of other activities. Mr. Lee is still the
director of the School of Social Work and will
remain so.
THE Golden Rule Foundation, which cham-
pions the forgotten and destitute mother as an
object of Mother's Day sentiment, had more
than five hundred entries in its contest, open to
highschool students, for the "best original
tribute to mother in poetry, prose or song."
Barter Offer
USED baby carriage and dining-room side-
board for good manure, wood or anything
edible. — Anderson, S. C., Daily Mail.
IN spite of hard times sight-saving classes
are holding their own in the educational sys-
tems of 119 communities throughout the
country. To prepare teachers and supervisors
for this work the National Society for the
Prevention of Blindness will offer training
courses during the summer at Western Re-
serve University, Cleveland; University Col-
lege, University of Chicago; Teachers College,
New York, and, probably, State Teachers
College, Buffalo. For dates and details query
the Society, 450 Seventh Avenue, New York.
HOWARD P. JONES, a valued contributor to
the pages of The Survey, is now editor of The
National Municipal Review of which he has
been for some time a department editor.
SPEAKING of initials as we did at great
length last month, we rise to commend the
Pennsylvanians who have made their initials
spell something. Trippingly from the tongue
falls SERB, meaning the State Emergency
Relief Board.
MARIAN Perkins, recently with the Couzens
Foundation in Detroit, is now executive of the
Tuckahoe-Bronxville Family Society, New
York.
THE "Chicago Group" of organizations
working actively in the field of government and
housed in neighborly fashion at 850 East 58
Street, has a new accession in the Public Ad-
207
ministration Service, a reorganization of the
old Municipal Administration Service which
since 1926 has served public officials, research
agencies and others concerned with govern-
ment. Charles S. Ascher is the new director.
THE New York State Department of Labor
which proudly, but withal regretfully, yielded
Frances Perkins to the President's cabinet, has
as its new commissioner Elmer F. Andrews of
New York City, since 1930 Miss Perkins'
deputy and since her translation to higher
places, the acting commissioner. Mr. An-
drews is an engineer by profession, without
political entanglements, trained and experi-
enced in the skills demanded by his new
responsibilities.
The Little Cabinet
THOSE who believe, like The Survey, that
the government should be for as well as
by human beings, had their hopes lifted by
the first crop of appointments to the "little
Cabinet" in Washington, especially to those
bureaus with which the concerns of social
work are allied.
The first good news, right after inauguration,
was the appointment of RAYMOND MOLEY of
Columbia to be assistant secretary of state.
Then that SANFORD BATES is to remain head of
the Prison Bureau in the Department of Jus-
tice, thus assuring the continuance and con-
solidation of the progressive practices and
policies he set going on his appointment by
President Hoover four years ago.
It was a sharp break with what might be
called the Fall regime in the Department of the
Interior, with forces which had had a pretty
free hand in exploiting wards of the govern-
ment, when President Hoover appointed to the
head of the Indian Bureau two outstanding
and disinterested Philadelphians, leaders in
the wartime work of the Quakers— Charles J.
Rhoads as commissioner, J. Henry Scattergood
as assistant commissioner. Hopes were enter-
tained that the non-political status of the
Bureau might be underscored by the contin-
uance of their able administration which has
brought the Indian Service to new estate along
social and educational lines. President Roose-
velt, however, in the face of a politically strong
drive for a candidate identified with the dis-
credited earlier regime, has swung the pen-
dulum further over in appointing as commis-
sioner an ardent champion of the cause of the
Indians — JOHN COLLIER, executive secretary of
the American Indian Defence Association.
Interestingly enough, The Survey brought
out Mr. Collier's first article challenging the
old abuses in the Indian administration; and
has repeatedly handled his arresting findings.
Said The New York Sun of the Collier
appointment: "For twenty years he has fought
[for the Indian) courageously and uncompromis-
ingly. Politically he is a rank outsider. All the
winds of patronage were set dead against him.
Yet here he is slipping in under the tepee." Of
thejob itself Secretary Ickesof the Department
of the Interior said: "The commissioner ought
to be the representative of the Indians them-
selves in the Department of the Interior. He
should be their advocate, fighting for their
interests and pleading their cause." So, there
was John Collier. Commissioner Collier's own
conception of his task is " to bring about liberty
and positive opportunity for the Indians with-
out an undiminished responsibility by the
United States for their welfare."
If further assurance were needed of the
208
quality of the new administration of the
Indian Bureau it is found in the appointment
of NATHAN MARGOLD of New York as solicitor
of the Department of the Interior with re-
sponsibility for the legal aspects of Indian
affairs as well as for national parks, public
lands, reclamation projects and so on. Mr.
Margold'is a conservationist by conviction
and a lawyer of ability and experience who has
had much to do with the legal affairs of Indi-
ans, succeeding the late Louis Marshall as
volunteer counsellor to the Pueblo tribes and
recently acting as chairman of the Indian Af-
fairs Committee of the American Civil Liberties
Union.
DANIEL W. MACCORMACK of New York,
the new commissioner-general of immigra-
tion is a banker by trade, a Scotsman by birth
and a Catholic by faith, who after the war
helped to rehabilitate the finances of Persia and
represented that country at the League of
Nations. People who know him well say that
he is temperamentally liberal and tolerant.
Half a dozen other appointments, some of
them temporary, add further encouraging color
to the Washington scene. MARY LADAME, long
on the staff of the Department of Industrial
Studies of the Russell Sage Foundation, has a
desk in the Department of Labor though if
she has a title we haven't heard it. ROBERT
FECHNER of Boston, director of the Civilian
Conservation Corps, has been identified with
organized labor for thirty-five years. He is vice-
president of the International Association of
Machinists and a frequent lecturer on problems
of labor and industry at Harvard and at Dart-
mouth. At his right hand is W. FRANK PER-
SONS, borrowed for two months from the
American Public Welfare Association to or-
ganize the difficult business of recruiting men
for the forestry camps, a task in which he was
assisted for a hectic fortnight by ARTHUR
DUNHAM of the Public Charities Association
of Pennsylvania.
THE Family Welfare Society of Bridgeport,
Conn., has a new general secretary in Margaret
Warner and a new case supervisor in Dorothy
Stockham, both products of the New York
School of Social Work.
THE New Jersey Children's Home Society,
Trenton, has a new superintendent, C. Lester
Greer, drafted for the job after six years as
supervisor of the older boys' division of the
Illinois Children's Home and Aid Society.
THE Social Work Publicity Council, 130 East
12 Street, New York, has available reprints of
two papers which drew more than passing at-
tention at the Philadelphia meeting of the
National Conference. They are, Creative Writ-
ing for Social Work, by Viola Paradise (15
cents), and What Shall We Tell the Public? by
Arch Mandel (10 cents).
JAMES L. Fieser has just rounded out his
twentieth year with the American Red Cross
during which time he has lent a helping hand
to the victims of more than a thousand dis-
asters, major and minor, and has seen practi-
cally every section of the country, under, he
says, the worst possible conditions.
JUNE I is the deadline for filing applications
for the 1933-34 scholarship in health education
which the Massachusetts Institute of Tech-
nology is again offering to public health nurses.
THE SURVEY
As in previous years the National Organization
for Public Health Nursing will select and recom-
mend candidates. Application blanks from that
organization, 450 Seventh Avenue, New York.
HORNELL Hart has resigned the chair of
social economics at Bryn Mawr College and
will next fall go to Hartford Seminary as
professor of social ethics.
The Calitornians
' I "'HE Los Angeles Council of Social Agencies
*- reports a new president, Rev. Harry Beal,
dean of St. Paul's Cathedral, who has succeeded
Mrs. George Herbert Clark. . . . Ellenor L.
Lynch recently with the nursing service of the
New York State Health Department, has suc-
ceeded the late Daisy M. Gould on the staff
of the Pasadena Preventorium. . . . Evelyn
Rauch, formerly with the Los Angeles Trav-
elers Aid, is now on the staff of the Santa
Barbara County Welfare Department. . . .
Social work has reclaimed Phileta Fitzgerald,
once identified with children's work in the
state, but for several years a lady of leisure.
She is now administrative assistant in the
California State Department of Social Wel-
fare. . . . Sidney McQuire, for sixteen years
executive secretary of the Los Angeles Tubercu-
losis and Health Association, died recently.
THE American Red Cross announces nine
first-aid and life-saving institutes in various
parts of the country during the last half of
June. Courses are divided into standard, ad-
vanced and special, the last including pageantry
and waterfront leadership. Places, dates and
so on from H. F. Enlows, American Red
Cross, Washington, D. C.
NOT to lose the long experience of Charles H.
Johnson, for many years New York State com-
missioner of social welfare, Governor Lehman
has appointed him to the vacancy in the State
Welfare Board created by the death of Dr.
George David Stewart. Irene H. Meyer of
Buffalo is another new member in the place
left vacant when David C. Adie was appointed
commissioner.
STANFORD University has its president
back, Dr. Ray Lyman Wilbur having returned
to active duty after time out to serve as secre-
tary of the interior in the Hoover cabinet.
MATTIE M. Washburn> for thirteen years a
supervising nurse on the staff of the Division of
Public Health Nursing of the New York State
Department of Health, has been promoted to
assistant director of the division.
DR. John C. Faries, for fifteen years direc-
tor of the Institute for the Crippled and Dis-
abled in New York, has resigned. He is
succeeded by Col. John N. Smith, West Point
graduate and business executive.
FOR thirty-two years Martha J. Megee, who
died recently in Harrisburg, Pa., pioneered in
social work. Hers was the first district office
of the old Philadelphia Society for Organizing
Charity when Mary E. Richmond was its
secretary. Nine years later she was pioneering
again as director of the Social Service Depart-
ment of the Pennsylvania Hospital. The war
years found her with the Red Cross breaking
new ground in civilian relief and in the after-
May 193.
care of disabled soldiers. After three years o
comparative calm with the Pennsylvania Chil
dren's Aid Society she was drafted by Di
Ellen C. Potter, then state secretary of welfare
to blaze humane new paths in public poo
relief. From 1913 on she was director of th
Bureau of Assistance in the Department o
Welfare, always battling, aflame with righteou
indignation, for better treatment for the old
the feeble and the ill in county institutions. /
former member of her staff hearing of her dead
wrote: "What a gay place Heaven is toda'
with so many old and forlorn people — tic
longer old and forlorn — out to greet thei
friend."
NEWSPAPER correspondents in Washingtoi
to whom Madam Secretary Perkins has bee;
pay-dirt in the way of copy, made a big to-d
when, soon after she took over the Labor De
partment, the girl employes all blossomed ou
in smocks. "Miss Perkins," said the Associate!
Press, "recently wrote an article, The Cost of
Five-Dollar Dress, and the girls gathered tha
bargain dresses were not pleasing to her eyi
Hence the all-enveloping smocks. " The article
Mr. A. P., since you didn't seem to know ii
was published in Survey Graphic in Februar)
Still speaking of the Madam Secretary, as
lot of people are these days, the New Yorl
School of Social Work adds its we-knew-heii
when note. In 1909-10 she was a student at thl
school — then the School of Philanthropy-
and wrote a thesis, still in the files, on Mai
nutrition Among School Children. And
pretty good thesis it was, say those who hav
seen it. One of her courses was Efficiency an
Relief, which ought to be coming in hand
just how.
P.S. She got an A in it.
The Twain Meet
' I ""HE Community Council of Philadelphi
•*• and the Pennsylvania School of Socii
Work have established a cooperative affiliatior
now effective, including an interchange t
staffs and a joint use of offices. The research di
partment of the Council, directed by Ewa
Clague, will henceforth be conducted by dr
School under the auspices of a committt
representing both agencies. Similarly Elizi
beth McCord, case consultant of the Counci
has charge of the extension department of th
School carrying on with a joint committee i
School and Council a program of training f(
employed workers and of education in soci
work for board members, volunteers and othe:
interested. The administration of the join
project is entrusted to Karl de Schweinit
executive secretary of the Council who also be
comes director of the School. Kenneth L. N
Pray, hitherto director, becomes dean, r
sponsible for educational policies and activitie
Each organization keeps its separate corpora
entity. The Council will continue to stress »
cial planning, conducting independently tl
annual conference, the section for the care
the aged, the Health League and various ente
prises in community planning and action .
indicated from time to time. In the fields
research and of adult education where tl
interests of the two agencies coincide there w
be joint action with the School as the admini
trative unit.
This reorganization, the logical developm
of three years of close cooperation between
two organizations, should mean, the Phil
delphians say, more economical and effect!'
operation of both.
in
I
1. LXIX. No. 6
MONTHLY
June 1933
CONTENTS
lONTISPIECE Photograph by Margaret Bourke-White
•T HELP THROUGH Paul U. Kellogg
EP-CHILDRF.N OF RELIEF Gertrude Springer
0. 1933 Rntb Douglas Keener
LTROIT'S NEW DISTRICT PLAN Ella Lee Cowgill
PROBATION OFFICER COMES UP FOR AIR
Parker L. Norton
I EMERGENCY MESSAGE TO COMMUNITY LEADERS
Arnold Bennett Hall and Harold S. Buttenheim
)W WE BEHAVE IN OTHER PEOPLE'S HOUSES.. .G. S.
iEPING DOCTOR AND PATIENT TOGETHER
Mary Ross
iE CITIZEN AND HIS PUBLIC SERVANT
Leonard D. White
IE NEGRO IN TIMES LIKE THESE Alain Locke
CACHING SEX TO YOUNG PEOPLE J. Rosslyn Earp
HE COMMON WELFARE
ICIAL PRACTICE
iALTH
IDUSTRY
^EMPLOYMENT AND WAYS OUT
X)KS
MMUNICATIONS
3SSIP
22O
221
222
223
224
226
227
229
230
233
236
239
Files of The Survey will be found in public and college libraries. All
ins are indexed in the Readers' Guide to Periodical Literature. Ask
Librarian.
SURVEY ASSOCIATES, INC.
Publication Office, 10 Ferry Street, Concord, N. H.
neral Office, 112 East 19 Street, New York, to which all correspondence
should be addressed.
THE SURVEY— Monthly— $3.00 a Year
SURVEY GRAPHIC— Monthly— $3.00 a Year
Lucius R. EASTMAN, president; JULIAN W. MACK, JOSEPH P. CHAM-
.RLAIN, JOHN PALMER GAVIT, vice-presidents; ANN REED BRENNER,
i~retary; ARTHUR KELLOGG, treasurer.
^AUL U. KELLOGG, editor.
ARTHUR KELLOGG, managing editor; MARY Ross, BEULAH AMIDON,
-ON WHIPPLE, JOHN PALMER GAVIT, LOULA D. LASKER, FLORENCE
)EB KELLOGG, GERTRUDE SPRINGER, associate editors.
EDWARD T. DEVINE, GRAHAM TAYLOR, JANE ADDAMS, JOSEPH K.
ART, HAVEN EMERSON, M.D., ROBERT W. BRUERE, JOANNA C. COL-
IRD, contributing editors.
M oi. LIE CONDON, circulation manager; MARY R. ANDERSON, advertising
SO THEY SAY
The mural painter must give himself to the wall.— Jose Marie
Sert, Spanish artist.
College should be as unlike the world as possible. — William
Lyon Pbelps, Tale University.
To begin with, a good social worker never blames anyone for
anything. — Neva Tork Junior League Girl.
Idle men should be penalized, fined, by being put to work-
governmental work. — Bernarr Macfadden in Liberty.
We are a peace-loving people seldom paying pensions for more
than three wars at a time. — Editorial, Boston Post.
Our nation is resting comfortably after a paralytic stroke.—
Joseph McGoldrick, Department of Public Law, Columbia Univer-
sity.
If there is one field that cries aloud for mergers and more mer-
gers it is the field of philanthropy.— Mrs. August Belmont, New
Tork.
Let us pray that our general citizenry may have the common
sense not to expect easy exits from hard situations.— Rev. Ralph
W. Sockman, New Tork.
The trouble you see about you is not the end of the world but
merely the end of much folly and miscalculation and stupidity.—
Walter Lippmann, New Tork.
The profession of social work is rooted in lay soil. It either gets
along with the layman or it i&\\s.—Eduard C. Lindeman, New
Tork School of Social Work.
The manner in which the child eats his food is the real opening
into his character. — Eugenie Lorenburg, child psychologist, Jean
Jacques Rousseau School, Geneva.
Civilization cannot progress without prophets but there are
some voices crying in the wilderness that belong there. — Bart
Andress, Brooklyn Bureau of Charities.
The only protective coloration which the young person of today
can assume comes from the rouge-pot and the cocktail shaker. —
Henry Noble MacCracken, president, Vassar College.
When we talk in millions and billions of dollars there is always
the danger that money itself will be expected to effect the cure.—
Annual report, New Tork Catholic Charities.
It is to those whom we call fanatics that we owe practically
every step that has been made in our slow journey toward a
better world.— Dr. J. L. Biggar, The Canadian Red Cross Society.
The working of American welfare practices in depression is
merely an exaggerated example of the way they always work.—
James M. Williams in Human Aspects of Unemployment and Relief .
Committing crimes is so safe today that a man with any sporting
instinct and not much in the way of ethics will not hesitate to take
a chance.— Dr. Walter N. fhayer. Jr., state commissioner of correc-
tion, New Tork.
Perhaps the most influential part of a man's education comes
not from the school he attends but from the community in which
he lives and from the work by which he makes his living. — Glenn
Frank, president, University of Wisconsin.
There is only one way to administer relief to intelligent people
and that is to determine the need beyond a doubt and then send
the wife and mother a check to be cashed and used as she pleases. —
William B. Rodgers, Pennsylvania State Emergency Relief Board.
One of the encouraging things in these days of stress is the recog-
nition of the pervasive implications of economic issues to workers
in every field of sociology — indeed the realization that economics
means — society.— Professor Felix Frankfurter, Harvard University.
Photograph by Margaret Bourke-V
THE SMILE WITHOUT GUILE OF LETCHWORTH (/» p. 224)
June
'933
Volume LXIX
No. 6
Get Help Through
GREAT hope hangs on legislation passed and
pending in these last weeks of the special session
of Congress. That hope is that we have begun at
length to work out prevention and protection with respect
to unemployment along lines more civilized than our
enforced idleness and disaster relief of today.
The primary purpose of the first of these measures to
pass, the Wagner-Lewis Act carrying an appropriation of
half a billion dollars, is to get national help through to un-
employed wage-earners and their families. Last July three
fifths as much was voted by Congress in the form of relief
loans by the Reconstruction Finance Corporation. For
weeks this spring, the last of its $300 millions dwindling,
the RFC was making day-to-day decisions. Local bodies
could not plan ahead. The week the Wagner-Lewis bill
passed, seven states were at the end of their tether. That
merely visualized the unaccountable thing that so scien-
tific, efficient and generous a nation as ours could still ad-
minister relief, after three and a half years of mass unem-
ployment, on a stop-gap, piecemeal basis — with neglected
rural-industrial areas, where four- and five-year-old chil-
dren have gone undernourished most of their lives; with
great cities where for long stretches aid has been shut off;
and with relief standards in many localities which ignore
rents and temporize with hunger. The field staff of the
RFC, state emergency administrations, local citizens com-
mittees, and established social agencies, both public and
private, have striven to bring order out of this chaos.
Infinite spendings of time, money, heart and skill have been
put into emergent efforts. That some communities and dis-
tricts have lifted themselves out of the ruck, only shows
more clearly how the help we have extended has failed to
cover the country, span the calendar, or conserve the
decencies of life.
The governor, Franklin D. Roosevelt, who in the fall of
1931 set up the first state relief administration and under-
pinned it with the income tax, is now President. The social
worker, Harry L. Hopkins, whom he then made state
director, he has now made federal administrator. More is
involved than a political election, the sequence in cast of
characters, the shift in scene from state to nation. There is
a new basis for action: grants — not loans; freedom with
respect to half the total; the matching principle for the rest;
planning for at least three months ahead. In New York,
the inauguration of the state fund not only backed up but
spurred on county and city appropriations and lifted local
standards and personnel. The introduction of such a proce-
dure, nationally, offers the chance to integrate resources
and leadership — federal, state, local.
THE relief bill is one of a group of related measures that
bear on mass unemployment — the public works and
industrial coordination sections of the recovery bill, and the
long fought for federal-state employment-service bill. The
strategy of these measures is to lower the relief load by
public works that will open up employment opportunities
and stimulate private business; and in turn will cut down
the need for emergent works by coordinating and reinvigor-
ating normal industrial operations and by the skillful re-
placement of labor. An affirmative shove all along the line,
making for a revival of purchasing and providing power.
There is no sound basis, however, for anticipating that $500
millions for relief now will last out any more than the $300
millions voted last summer. We have yet to close those
yawning gaps in our coverage of relief needs. We confront
employments permanently destroyed, municipalities half-
bankrupt, and an incalculable overhang of dislocated, dis-
couraged folk, depleted physically and spiritually. The
pressure of the relief load should be behind steps toward
industrial recovery, but the easement of that load must
come the other way round, and work back.
Unquestionably, when signs of recovery multiply there
will be agitation to slash relief. It will be at this stage that
relief administrators and social workers must stand their
ground, if constructive gains are not to be wiped out.
Just as today, in the midst of inaugurating complicated ma-
chinery, they must see that help gets through to people in
distress. P. U. K.
211
Step-Children of Relief
By GERTRUDE SPRINGER
kUT of a hodge-podge of figures gathered up and
down these United States one day in late March
social workers have put together a mosaic of our
homeless citizenry, a composite picture of the men, women
and children who must turn to the shelter of a shanty-town,
a jail or a charity for a place to lay their heads at night.
It is a cold numerical picture that the committee has drawn
— there were so many men of such and such ages, so many
women, so many families with so many children — but be-
hind the long array of figures, classified and analyzed by
Nels Anderson of Columbia University, are disturbing
glimpses of how hundreds of thousands of disinherited
Americans were living on March 22, 1933. Here are the
sordid jungles and shacks alongside dumps and railroad
tracks, the odorous mass lodging-houses of cities, the
bleak, bare rooms in missions and flop-houses, the fetid
town jails. And through them all shuffles the aimless pro-
cession of the homeless, certain today only of the uncer-
tainty of tomorrow.
This census of the homeless was the second undertaken
this year by the Committee on Care of Transient and
Homeless of the National Social Work Council. The data
gathered in three days in January proved so fragmentary
that a second, more intensive, effort followed. The present
count is frankly only a sample. Its findings must be multi-
plied several times to gain a true numerical picture of the
situation, but there is no reason to think that such multipli-
cation would change its human aspects except as to volume.
The count reached into 765 cities in the forty-eight states
and touched the activities of some three thousand organiza-
tions, public and private, including 606 branches of the
Salvation Army, which accept responsibility in some degree
for the shelter of the homeless. Incomplete reports were
received from four large cities, Chicago, Detroit, Phila-
delphia and Los Angeles, and very inadequate reports from
cities of less than 25,000. Of the 3115 cities or towns of
more than 2500 population, 2350 were unreported as were
the 13,000 incorporated communities of less than 2500.
If the census had covered these communities and had in-
cluded all the hitch-hikers and freight-train riders, the
count of 201,596 made on March 22 would, Mr. Anderson
estimates, have been multiplied by five or six.
Only when the homeless of the forty-eight states are
added up do the figures become impressive. Community by
community, state by state, even granting that the figures
represent only 20 percent of the problem, they are not too
large to stagger resources or to defeat intelligent treatment.
Only ten states reported more than 5000 homeless, and four
— California, Ohio, New York and Pennsylvania — more
than 12,000.
There are, it may be deduced from the statistical sample,
three kinds of homeless Americans. Largest in numbers are
the resident homeless who, without any settled habitation,
remain in their own community, crowding the shelters
afforded by public and private welfare agencies, throwing
up crazy shacks of their own in open spaces, living a catch-
as-catch-can existence — the stepchildren of organized
relief. From these are recruited the local wanderers who
mill around their own states, tramping and hitch-hiking
from one town to the next and back again, beckoned on by
the rumor of a job or of more and better relief, sharing with
the resident homeless such casual shelter as they can find,
unwelcome wherever they go. A season or two of this and
the more adventurous take to the longer roads, to the
freight trains and the highways that invite to distant and
greener fields. These last are our national homeless who
have lost their right of settlement, their legal claim to the
protection of any community — the pariahs of organized
relief.
Only by large categories does the census reveal just who
are these homeless of the land. Of those enumerated in
shelters provided by communities the great majority,
145,742, were males unattached to families, 7970 were
females likewise unattached, and 14,187 were members of
3155 transient families, 5544 of them children under fifteen.
In addition, the count covered 33,697, among them 1956
women, who lived without benefit of organized shelter.
Some half of them were found in shanty-towns, the rest in
jungles or box-cars, sleeping on docks, in depots, wherever
they could find a resting place.
THE tabulation by ages was not as complete as by
sexes, but even so it indicates clearly that the problem
of the homeless is not a problem of youth but of middle-age.
The figures show that, alarmists to the contrary, only
about 10 percent of the homeless are boys under twenty-
one, while somewhere between 30 and 40 percent are men
past forty-five, inevitable recruits for the army of those
who seem foredoomed never to work again. All of which
means that for every homeless youth in the land for whom
the future holds at least the hope of a job, there are prob-
ably six destitute men past the dead-line of reemployment.
There, if you please, is something for social agencies to think
about. The unattached women, while forming about 8
percent of the homeless legion, were generally younger
than the men. In the regions favored by transients, the
South and the Southwest, almost a fourth of them were
girls under twenty-one. Lone women past thirty were rarely
found.
Benevolent society gave shelter to its homeless that
March night in a variety of ways. Private social agencies
took in 120,798, about a third of whom were under the roof
of the Salvation Army. Public shelters, such as municipal
lodging-houses, registered 21,427. Jails and police stations
were the resort of 11,487. These last were chiefly in small
cities and towns where no other shelter is provided. If the
truth were known about the thousands of small communi-
ties unreached by the census, the town jail would probably
appear as the Great American Shelter with its chief single
rival the shanty-town or jungle which asks no questions of
its denizens and imposes no rules, where the individual
makes his last stand against the regimentation of the mass
shelter.
While the March census affords a general view of the
212
June 1933
THE SURVEY
213
. homeless of the nation, a close-up of the homeless of a
state is afforded by a study made in Pennsylvania by
Morris Lewis of the Committee on the Care of Transient
and Homeless in collaboration with the Division of Re-
search and Statistics of the State Department of Welfare.
"Of all the people who in the course of a year stop at least
one night in Pennsylvania approximately 600,000 find it
necessary to ask for food and lodging for which they cannot
pay."
In its general outline this wandering army, at least a
third of whom are Pennsylvanians, follows the national
picture of which it is of course a part. One out of seven of
the males is under twenty-one; one out of five is a Negro,
usually with a more definite objective than his white mate-
of-the-road. The proportion of colored boys to colored
adults is smaller than among the whites. They grow ven-
turesome, it appears, at a later age. It appears too from
this study that the resident homeless and the transient do
not differ greatly in their general characteristics. Age range,
sex and marital status are about the same. Education is
somewhat higher among the transients, who indeed are
rarely illiterate. From which Mr. Lewis draws the reason-
able conclusion that the resident homeless are the springs
that feed the stream of national transiency and will con-
tinue to feed it until communities and states accept their
clear and definite responsibility for treatment at the
source where the problem is localized and wholly manage-
able.
As soon as the homeless take to the road the difficulties
of dealing with them on anything approaching a humane
basis multiply enormously. Settlement laws vary from state
state and often from town to town. In Pennsylvania
.e twenty-four-hour treatment" — a night in an alms-
:se, an inadequate meal — is about all that is accorded
n Pennsylvanians who step out of their own bailiwick.
Added to the legal barrier to intelligent treatment of the
wandering homeless is the passive barrier of a community
attitude which ignores the problem and denies responsibil-
ity. "We intend to have a heart and to be humane plus,"
says a local Pennsylvania poor officer, " But we intend to
encourage these people to pass us by. As you note they are
sheltered in the jail."
"We are all mindful of this futile wandering of large
masses of people," says Mr. Lewis. "We deplore this aim-
less flight, and yet we do no more than force the continued
movement of these searching miserable men." That some-
thing can be done about it under existing Pennsylvania
laws Mr. Lewis and his associates are convinced. Their con-
viction is expressed in a proposed program which would set
up a planning committee for transient and homeless with
its own director, under the State Emergency Relief Board,
to unify policies and coordinate services. State and local
registration bureaus would be established and community
and state preventive and protective programs developed
which would utilize all existing facilities. So far as possible
transients would be treated individually in the various
communities. When this failed they would be directed to
service centers in some twelve suitable communities where
the state would assume responsibility for their care and
treatment.
This program of state and local treatment is an example
of the integrated city-state-nation planning urged by the
Committee on Care of Transient and Homeless as a means
of insuring humane treatment for the individual dislocated
from a normal way of life in his own community and of
checking the growing ranks of those who have lost all their
legal, social and economic moorings. "Let's stop this sense-
less passing on," says the committee. "Making relief for
the homeless difficult is no substitute for adequate
planning."
As a taking-hold point for communities that are ready to
end "this senseless passing on" the committee outlines the
steps by which the size and nature of the local problem may
be determined and local resources mobilized in the organi-
zation of a program that will go beyond "twenty-four-hour
treatment." The committee holds no brief for the mass
shelter, 'but since at this time it seems indispensable, it
outlines adequate shelter organization and suggests mini-
mum standards for care and service.
It is apparent from the information gathered by the
committee and others that the time has passed for consider-
ing homeless and wandering Americans in terms of an
emergency. Their number is growing. Youths, women and
families are swelling the stream. Ruthless passing on by
small towns, mass treatment by cities, hasten the processes
of human disintegration and threaten to create a new class
of national nomad paupers. The new federal relief law per-
mits the use of federal funds by the states for the care of
the destitute without legal residence. But unless these
funds are used purposefully in an orderly plan in which
states and communities participate, they may in the long
run work more harm than good. Present methods of treat-
ing the homeless are creating a social problem that, pros-
perity or no prosperity, will take a generation to liquidate.
A.D. 1933
BY RUTH DOUGLAS KEENER
BEHOLD this marvel now of humankind:
That men, defrauded, still are strong to find
Courage at night to plan ingenious schemes
Of earning meager bread, that there still gleams
Within their minds the promise of success
If they but reach beyond their weariness,
That in the morning hope sufficient soars
To send them knocking on indifferent doors.
Detroit's New District Plan
By ELLA LEE COWGILL
Recently Metropolitan Secretary, Detroit Council oj Social Agencies
IN spite of all the trials and tribulations, the elimina-
tions, and the crises that have attended social work in
Detroit this past year or so, a considerable portion of
the citizenry are of the opinion that it might have been
worse. For in the very teeth of the depression, the Detroit
Council of Social Agencies, through district councils cover-
ing the whole metropolitan area, set going a device for
general cooperation, for effective community planning and
for citizen participation which has taken a good many
creaks out of the laboring social machinery.
Early in 1932 a good share of the people of Detroit found
themselves confused and frustrated in their efforts to deal
with the tremendous human problems of the depression.
There were many complaints of neglect and of malinger-
ing. There was undeniable duplication of work and waste
of money. Neighborly folk who wanted to help those in
need were discouraged by the frequent discovery that their
efforts were interfering with the clear-cut programs of
established social agencies.
The demonstrated fact that duplication of effort had
been minimized in the two localities where the Council of
Social Agencies had been experimenting with district
councils, gave the lead for the city-wide extension of the
plan discussed and approved at a meeting of representa-
tives of the social agencies. The first step in each district
was to call together the ex-officio leaders, the ministers,
school principals, social workers, and fire and police in-
spectors, with a good sprinkling of deeply concerned lay-
men. This group constituted itself the District Council
with immediate responsibility delegated to an executive
committee, the chairman of which represents the district in
the Council of Social Agencies and participates in its gen-
eral social planning for the city.
At first these committees groped their way somewhat,
for to many of their members social work was a new, un-
mapped field of thought. But gradually, under the guidance
of the chairmen, who include three employment managers,
an engineer, two judges, a newspaper man, two school
people and a Y. M. C. A. secretary, they rid themselves of
big city confusions and became more like small-town folk
with natural leaders coming to the fore, with everyone
finding common ground in the discussions and enjoying
the recognition and sense of participation which many of
them had missed in the over-all city organization.
The executive committees meet every month to consider
the changing conditions and problems in their communi-
ties. These people know every crevice and corner of their
districts and have a sense of responsibility for the welfare
of the people living there. Sore spots that were overlooked
when the city as a whole was considered are brought to
light. Neglected facilities are rediscovered and put to use.
The regular reports of the departments of health and of
public welfare supplied to each district, with their statis-
tics on morbidity, prevalence of contagious diseases, rates
of dependency and the like, offer points for vigorous action.
The chief purpose of the general district meetings,
monthly or quarterly, is to acquaint the people of the
community with the needs and facilities of the district and
to bring general discussion to bear on the plans and proj-
ects of the executive committee. A notable by-product has
been a rising level of understanding of social work. The
meetings differ as the neighborhoods differ. Some are held
in clubs or large church houses, others in settlement houses
or schools; some are formal, others informal; all are frank
and friendly.
At a recent typical district meeting about a hundred
people were present, including lawyers, doctors, real-estate
dealers, landlords, an Italian priest, the rabbi of the Re-
formed Jewish Synagogue, the rector of an exclusive
Episcopal church, and a leading colored physician. The
chairman was the dean of the engineering school of one of
the state colleges. The neighborhood faced an acute prob-
lem of rentals and evictions. Because the department of;
public welfare had no money for rents, ten to twenty fami-
lies were being evicted from their homes every day. A way
out was proposed by a real-estate man with a former cor-]
poration counsel giving a legal opinion. A plan by which
delinquent taxes could be applied on rents of welfare^
clients was later drawn up by a small committee and passed'
on to the common council and the mayor. It was never
accepted in its entirety, but it became the basis of much
constructive action.
ONE of the councils which has a school-attendance super-
visor as chairman and a Negro lawyer as vice-chair-
man, is in a newly developed section of the city, built up
largely with the small homes of industrial workers including
literally every nationality and race found in cosmopolitan
Detroit. The department of welfare has kept the wolf from
the door of many of the people. A small section of the dis-
trict is an exclusive residence community. At one of the
early meetings, held in a shabby settlement house, the very
mixed gathering sat around at little tables in most friendly
fashion. The welfare department was at that time feeding
large numbers of people at cafeterias, with considerable
opposition from the community. The program committee
had thought that a good presentation of the plan mighi
bring about a better feeling. The subject was careful!)
presented and the advantages of the method emphasized—
but the audience remained cold. The chairman asked foi
discussion. At first there was silence, then a colored mar
got to his feet. " I don't like to say anything here," he said
"I know the city is doing the best it can, but this is ver)
bad for my people. For years we have been trying to teacl
our race the value of the family dinner table and to hav<
the parents feel responsible for feeding their own children
But now, by this plan, you take all that away." The audi
ence began to warm up. Presently a Pole spoke up:
don't know what the city ought to do. We have to hav
food and if this is the only way to get it, we will have t<
take it this way, but my girl — she goes to highschool-
she doesn't like to be seen going to the cafeteria."
After the meeting samples of the cafeteria food wer
served. Everyone sat at the little tables and ate, but whil
214
June 1933
THE SURVEY
215
, they ate, they talked about how they could rid their com-
munity of what they felt was a menace to its people. Skill
of presentation had not changed honest opinion. When a
new supervisor went into this district and recommended
that the cafeteria be discontinued, she was backed by the
entire community.
Always at these general meetings in each district there
are reports from standing committees, which include case
work, clothing, health, recreation and interpretation.
The manner in which the clothing committees work has
already been told in The Midmonthly Survey (A Clothing
Pool, January 1933, page 28) but the accomplishments of
the recreation committees are equally entitled to a word.
With drastic cuts in the budgets of public and private
agencies most recreation activities must be carried on, if
at all, by volunteers. Several of the districts have developed
such interesting and profitable projects on a volunteer
basis that the central recreation committee is now planning
a city-wide cooperative volunteer program. Each district
committee will canvass all facilities in its territory and will
arrange definitely for needed extensions and additions. The
central committee will recruit and train volunteers and
assign them as they are called for from the districts. Work-
ers are to be selected from three sources — from the clients
of the department of public welfare, who will serve on the
wage-work plan; from clubs and churches; and from pro-
fessional people, temporarily unemployed.
The district plan has reemphasized the fact that there is
an abundance of good will in Detroit, as in every other
community. In days of prosperity this fact was almost for-
gotten, and it was assumed that most community services
must be carried on by employed workers. When hard times
came — and they are very hard in Detroit — good-will
seemed to spring up spontaneously on all sides. Social
workers were often disturbed and irritated because the
work of these well-disposed people did not follow in the
grooves which their techniques had made. Machinery
was needed to coordinate organized social work and un-
organized neighborliness. In a small community such
coordination is natural and easy. In a large city, where
social planning is largely on a citywide basis, it is hard for
the individual or for the small church or club to know where
to fit into the general scheme. The district plan, by break-
ing the city down into the pattern of a small community,
tends to overcome this difficulty and to give everyone a
definite part in harmony with the citywide program.
A Probation Officer Comes Up for Air!
By PARKER L. NORTON
Formerly Chief Probation Officer, Bridgeport, Connecticut
"HAT a pity we have to grow up ! Of course some
of us don't grow, and I recall with moderate
envy the peaceful career of Sadie who for several
decades has thrice daily found supreme bliss in her vigorous
imitation of the shrieking, rumbling, hissing train which
passes the asylum where she will doubtless pass the rest of
her vegetative existence.
Lacking Sadie's easy satisfaction with life as she finds
it, and priding myself on being a modernist and scientifi-
cally minded and all that, I still somewhat bewail the long
'line of wrecked illusions lying in the ditches along the
highway from the yesterdays to now.
Not the least of my regrets is the enchanting prospect
.of reincarnation. How pleasant to escape the disappoint-
' ments of the past, the confining reality of the present, and
step forward a few centuries into the future to contemplate
' the new social order which would be tomorrow's fulfillment
of the vague beginnings of today. Surely I may be par-
doned for confessing to a suppressed desire for further
knowledge concerning the probable status of my chosen
profession at a time when the chemical compounds now
responding to my name may be forming new combinations
east o" the sun or west o' the moon.
What will the probation officer be like about 2033?
'Will he even be? Will he have followed the tithing-man and
the witch doctor, the priests and the kings into the re-
spectable oblivion of cloistered museums? Will he have
taken on new titles and be working through new methods
toward new goals? Or will he still retain his present in-
definable and precarious balance between two groups —
tolerated by the police as an inefficient sentimentalist and
patronized by the trained case worker as an infant prodigy
with some promise but little adequate preparation ?
Possibly at the beginning of another century the fourth
generation then starting on its scientifically determined
daily program will be so systematically supervised by some
type of behavioristic nurses to make quite superfluous any
additional attention after this pre-school period of correct
conditioning in the home — if the home itself is not by that
time a museum piece.
Perhaps in that enlightened century, after endless
tussles with truants and other maladjusted victims of our
educational mill, the average school board will have
awakened to the necessity of fitting the school to the physi-
cal, emotional and mental needs of child life, and through
this change will have eliminated at least half the problems
of the probation officer.
At the present moment, however, in consideration of the
comparative infrequency of intelligent parenthood, to-
gether with the blissful ignorance of applied psychology
possessed and practiced by the average schoolma'am, I
feel inclined to rise to the defense of my fellow probation
"experts" and insist that just now we should be accepted
in social-work circles as at least necessary evils — and at
times even more necessary than evil.
Of course, it must be granted that there are misfits
among the many thousands of probation -officials herding
misguided youth and protesting parents through the
hundreds of juvenile and adult courts in this adolescent
nation of ours. Political lame-ducks seeking temporary
solace till some juicier plum drops into their prayerful
palms; disappointed maidens of uncertain age and certain
temper finding a vicarious satisfaction in the marital
messes of broken families; embryo lawyers more concerned
with legal technicalities than with childhood needs; peri-
patetic pedagogues fleeing from the simultaneous demands
of forty children toward the supposedly less exacting
demands of one-at-a-time; tired business men escaping
216
THE SURVEY
June 193\
from the gamble of profit-and-loss to enjoy the fruits of a
regular monthly salary; retired farmers harrowing souls
instead of soils and still producing weeds; ex-service men
guilelessly unaware that military discipline can never
permanently remove the causes of youthful indiscretions;
former detectives and policemen trying to bolster their
slipping authority by subjecting "young crooks" to the
bullying bluster of the "third degree"; superannuated
ministers and missionaries preaching theological moonshine
to bewildered children — practically every form of activity
known to man has in some court been accepted as adequate
training for "just looking after the kids."
"If you can, do; if you can't, teach," has in most sections
of the land been discarded as sufficient preparation for the
teaching profession, but the probation office is still to some
extent over-supplied with this type of well-meaning in-
competent. Happily, standards are slowly rising and in
some of the better courts a college degree is now taken for
granted, not to mention training in a school of social work,
definite field experience, an emotionally balanced per-
sonality, a tension-relieving sense of humor and a liberal
and tolerant attitude toward life as a whole and child life
in particular.
AT least part of our perplexity in goal seeking and finding
is due to the hindering fact that our boss is a judge.
In order to reach that dizzy pedestal he usually first had
to be a lawyer — and who, I ask, is more ignorant of human
needs than the average law student? Precedent, precedent,
precedent! Not what might have been, not what should
have been, not what yet may be — but merely what was,
and with the implication that as it was so shall it be for-
evermore, amen. It is asking quite too much of even the
long suffering probation officer to expect him to avoid
temporary discouragement when his entire investigation
and carefully constructed recommendations for the welfare
of the child are ignored by the judge in favor of a strictly
theological-legalistic interpretation of life in terms of
crime and punishment. But how the well-trained probation
worker does appreciate the occasional judge or referee who,
while knowing something of the law, is primarily a social
worker in his point of view and possessed of a social-
worker's interest in literally reconditioning the child!
If I did not happen to be financially dependent on my
job I would include in my very next report a recommenda-
tion that all judges in both juvenile and adult courts be
retired on a life pension and replaced the following morning
with trained and experienced case workers from the child-
welfare field.
Another item to be noted in passing is that of salary—
though too often it is hardly worth mentioning. Any
probation officer to be worthy of the name should have
eight years of elementary school, four years of highschool,
four years of college, two years of training in a school of
social work, and at least two years of practical experience
under professional supervision before he is fitted to be
turned loose among "the heartstrings of a child." And for
these twenty years of preparation many positions now offer
as much as $1800 per twelve months, and oftener in rural
sections even less. Looking for bargains at the counter of
vocational technique is like any other fire sale; the goods
are sure to be somewhat damaged and the community gets
what it pays for — and little more in the long run.
Having once enjoyed the pleasures of being a school
principal, I recall those happy days of getting a year's pay
for only nine months' work and of being able to threatej
with "failure" any pupil who did not believe or do whatevej
I told him. Having had to endure many a sermon before I
was old enough to escape, I realize that the ministerijj
mutterings of "hell fire" are quite sufficient to bring an I
unruly believer to immediate terms — and the non-believel
is hardly worth consideration. The legal profession cal
always fall back on the "jail house" as a last resort and i I
many cases it is a preliminary menace as well. The phys
cian is literally lord of life and death at times and I ofte:|
envy him his power to command instant and lastin
obedience to his decrees.
I want to be just what I am, a respectable and sell
respecting worker in the probation field. I don't care t>
return to my pedagogical days, but as a probation office
I need to know both educational theory and practice ii
order to avoid stroking my clients the wrong way and draw
ing sparks from them as from the cat's fur on a winte
night. While this nation is supposed to be democraticall-
free from religious compulsion, as a worker with childrei
in almost any community outside the larger cities I hav
to be a "believer" in order to hold my position — and thi
is fearfully wearing on my self-respect. The very esseno
of successful work with any person, either child or adult
lies in gaining his complete cooperation; it is quite impossi
ble to do this on a basis of legal force, but I must knov
enough of the law to avoid getting tangled up in it and thi
entire juvenile court procedure and phraseology is stuff'
with the legalistic atmosphere inherited from the adul
courts. I should hesitate to perform a self-appendectomy
but I must know enough about such things to join force:
intelligently with the doctor in our cooperative attemp
to give the child a brief respite from that chief enemy o
mankind the undertaker.
BRIEFLY, in spite of my endeavors to mind my owr
business and be a recognized specialist in a well-definec
field, I too often find myself a mere dabbling amateur in th(
jealously guarded precincts of my professional betters
To my client I must be a doctor-lawyer-teacher and ir
addition must play the role of a parson when necessary
I must act as an industrial-relations expert, a communit)
organizer of warring social groups, a recreational authority
and at all times must maintain an international impartial-
ity toward all colors and races — and this in the Old South;
where the very existence of "civilization" is based on the
continued exploitation of the Negro! I must be a statistician
for purposes of the monthly report, though all fractions are;
still quite "improper" to me. I must diplomatically turn!
my client over to the local theocracy on demand, and t
smilingly pretend that it is "for his own good." I must
know all about sex education and birth control — but never
mention these tabu subjects in polite society. I must keep
in touch with the progress of all the sciences, including the
latest guesses in mental hygiene, but must have enough
political acumen to conceal my knowledge most of the!
time. I must constantly explain that I am "too busy" to
sing in the church choir, take a Sunday School class, or ,
run a Y. M. C. A. Bible study group. I must neither smoke
nor drink in public, must avoid the use of emphatic
language, must shun wild parties and at all times pose as a j
shining example to youth. To be caught with The Nation,
The New Republic, The American Mercury or any other
liberal literature is at the risk of my professional standing.
Who wants my job?
An Emergency Message to
Community Leaders
By ARNOLD BENNETT HALL and HAROLD S. BUTTENHEIM
N any fair appraisal of the enduring glories of Ameri-
can achievement, a place of high honor must be
accorded to the financial and physical sacrifices made
ifor education and culture and religion by our pioneer fore-
fathers. The building and conducting of schools and
churches in the wilderness was a task requiring a degree of
foresight and devotion to the public good for which a
modern counterpart is too generally lacking.
In those early years there must have been many who
sought comfort before culture. We can readily imagine
embattled taxpayers of Pioneer Center arguing that, until
physical needs had been more adequately met, they would
insist on delay in planting the seeds of mental and spiritual
growth. But saner counsels generally prevailed. And by the
extent to which such counsels continued to prevail may be
measured the subsequent gains and losses in America's
cultural life.
A crisis of reaction now threatens. Many worried or
thoughtless taxpayers seek to balance their city's budget by
disproportionate reduction in the program for the educa-
tion or welfare of the city's children. In an era of surplus
production, the amazing doctrine gains credence that the
common good can be advanced by the starvation of essen-
tial community services. In a panic caused not by pestilence
or famine, but by greed and economic maladjustment,
America's most urgent need is a re-birth of the pioneer
spirit and a rededication of individual service and sacrifice
for the common good.
To galvanize this latent spirit into effective action is the
great challenge of the present emergency to local com-
munity leadership. In every city and town there is urgent
need for a declaration of faith that will arouse a profound
feeling of concern over the effect of ill-considered, dis-
criminatory retrenchment upon the educational and cul-
tural interests of the community.
If we were to suggest topics for inclusion in such a
declaration of faith, the following items would be among
them:
FIRST irreParat>le damage that is being done to the
youth of today and to the spiritual and intellectual
heritage of tomorrow by denying abundant educational
opportunities to the present generation. Youth goes this
way but once. If boys and girls do not get the intellectual
and spiritual stimulus that a sound educational program
can provide now, it cannot be made up to them in after
years when prosperity returns and the public funds are
more easily available. We have no right to unload upon the
1 youth of today the burden of our adversity.
SECOND ^e snou'd emphasize the dramatic emergency
provided by the problem of enforced leisure.
Through our unemployment, there exists today a demand
upon the cultural resources of the community such as this
country has never faced before. If our libraries, museums,
parks and other cultural and recreational institutions can
fill these hours of leisure with stimulating emotional
satisfactions, they will help maintain a spiritual and
intellectual calm during the period of unemployment and
despair which may have a tremendous influence in termi-
nating the depression itself, in undermining the counsels of
despair which the present disaster breeds, and thus turn
the present hardship, in part at least, into a national asset.
We believe the capacity of our people to find their comfort
and their happiness in the love of beauty and other forms
of cultural experience to be a matter of profound political,
as well as spiritual, importance. People will turn to these
resources now who unfortunately do not think of them in
times of prosperity. There is now an opportunity for the
cultural interests of the communities to come into their
own, to contribute their full quota to the stream of Ameri-
can life and understanding, and to play a role of rapidly
deepening significance. To deny these cultural interests
the right to live and serve constitutes a tragic myopia.
We should attempt to articulate what is to us a
firm conviction as to both the fundamental and
the practical value of cultural interest in our American life.
If there is anything that can give perspective to our think-
ing in the present tragedy, if there is anything that can
bring out a sense of balance between competing values,
if there is anything that can give comfort and hope and
inspiration amidst the present starvation and distress, we
believe it is the spiritual values of life which are so closely
inter-related with the love of beauty in its varied forms and
whole range of cultural interests. We believe these to be
the real foundations of national happiness and of national
vision, and an emergency like the present calls for the most
solicitous regard for the preservation of these interests.
It is bad enough for men to lose their jobs. To lose their
souls is infinitely worse.
FINALLY:
We should want to sound a challenge to con-
structive economy that would find expression
in rigorous examination of all governmental forces, including
the educational, cultural and social activities, looking to-
ward elimination of unnecessary costs. This last suggestion
applies to that vast number of American cities and coun-
ties in which, by simplification of governmental machinery,
reduction of wastes, modernization of methods, and ban-
ning of "politics," substantial economies are possible
without curtailment of essential community services.
There is need, also, for forceful emphasis of the fact that,
in a surplus economy, the only virtue in saving is to permit
wise and liberal spending for the more abundant life which
such economy makes possible.
Along such lines, we believe, many a local leader has the
ability to present — by pulpit, platform or press — a dra-
matically stirring appeal to the fundamental emotions and
to the finest traditions and ideals of American life.
217
How We Behave in Other
People's Houses
By G. S.
kUT Miss Bailey, I
asked herifshecared
if I smoked and she
didn't even answer." The
young relief investigator was
plainly aggrieved. "The old
woman was sitting there, but
I didn't suppose I had to
canvass the whole family
before I had a cigarette."
Miss Bailey scanned again
the note the girl handed back:
Dear Miss: Please excuse me. I am not complaining. I don't
know how we would get along without the food ticket. But
please could you ask the young lady who brings it not to smoke
before my mother. She is old and don't understand that ladies
do such things. It makes her feel terrible to take the food ticket.
She don't like to eat the things. Please excuse me. Yours truly,
Mrs. Anna Wilson.
"And anyway," the girl went on, "I've never heard that
social workers mustn't smoke. I know plenty who do, and
trained ones too."
"On the job?" queried Miss Bailey mildly. "And do
school teachers and trained nurses and other professional
women smoke on the job and in public places?"
"But haven't I a right to smoke if I want to?"
"Good gracious, yes. Or to walk on your hands down
Main Street — if you want to. I'm not bothered about you.
But I am bothered about the state of mind of Mrs. Wilson
when she wrote this note. You can see how upset she was,
so afraid of giving offense yet having to do something about
her mother's feelings. I imagine she must be quite a nice
woman, isn't she?"
"Oh yes, I've never had a bit of trouble with her."
Miss Bailey's mouth lost its humorous curve. "Well,
she seems to have had with you, which is quite important,
isn't it? If your families don't trust you, yes, and respect
you, where will you come out with them ? You know, you
have to meet them where they are, not where you are. I'm
not interested in your smoking. That is your business, not
mine. But it is my business when your personal habits touch
your relationship with your families. Good manners, tact,
consideration for other people's feelings and prejudices are
just as important in Mrs. Wilson's kitchen as they are in
the White House — more so, for Mrs. Wilson can defend
herself only at the mortal risk of losing her food ticket.
In this business we can't be the kind of people who give
that kind of offense. If you are the sort of person to whom a
cigarette is worth the distress this particular one cost Mrs.
Wilson and her old mother I suppose you'll have to have
the cigarette. But you'll never be a social worker."
"And that," quoth Miss Bailey wearily as the door
closed behind her visitor, "endeth the sermon for today."
No one has yet been able to draw up a code of manners
that will meet every contingency in the relief investigator's
day. Yet it is on the rock of manners, on little ways of
JVhat about reliej 'investigators who, when
visiting families:
Smoke if they feel like it
Holler upstairs
Pump the children and the neighbors
Look under the bed for extra shoes and into
the cupboard for food?
behaving in other people's
houses, that many routine
workers come to grief.
"We tell our new workers
not to holler upstairs to find
out if a family is home," says
the supervisor of a large city
district where the investiga-
tors are themselves on work-
relief wages, "and we try
constantly to get over to them
why hollering is as cheapen-
ing to them as it is humiliating to the family they holler at.
We had one young chap whose records were a joy to behold,
who knew all the rules backward and forward, but whose
procedure in a tenement-house was to stand at the foot of
the stairs and bellow: 'Food tickets, food tickets! Hi-i-i!!
Murphy, Jones, Rossi, Cohen. Come an' get 'em.' His
answer to our protests was, 'Well, they always come,
don't they?'
"Now, that young man probably hollered at his grand-
mother and she at him. He just didn't know any better,
and because he didn't know any better he hadn't any busi-
ness in homes of people in trouble. He knew the rules, but
he lacked the instincts."
"One of the disturbing things we observe in these hurried
days," says the director of a child-welfare agency, "is the
way in which children look more and more to the visitor
and less and less to their parents. The untrained visitor
lets the children in on everything. They know that in
her rests the selection of the food they eat, the clothes
they wear, the pleasures they have, even the house they
live in. They lose respect for their parents while the par-
ents resort to all sorts of exhibitionism in their attempts to
maintain their status in their own homes. Many a bluster-
ing, bullying father is really making a last stand for his own
self-esteem."
BUT given a staggering schedule of visits, the fact re-
mains that voluble children and neighbors do offer the
investigator a short-cut to information.
"There is no easier way to get information than by
pumping the children and the neighbors," says a social
worker who stepped from a private family society to the
job of directing a large staff, recruited almost overnight, in
a public department. "But it is information that is apt to
turn and bite you. In the first place a lot of it won't be true,
and in the second place this backstairs approach breaks
down the basis of a relationship in which self-respecting
adults face a difficulty together and work out a solution in
which both have a share. If the family itself has little reti-
cence with the children and neighbors, the more reason the
visitor should have.
"No one knows better than I do how hard it is to exclude
children from these interviews. Very often the parents are
more than willing to have them present. In such cases the
218
June 1933
THE SURVEY
219
visitor will do well to ask to have the children sent out of
the room. If they don't go she should politely postpone the
interview, explaining why, and take her departure. Now I
don't mean to say that the visitor should treat the children
with stony silence. Far from it. Their play, their school
— all their affairs should be within the circle of her friendly
interest. But the discussion of relief is the business of the
grown-ups.
"The visitor who seeks or accepts information from
neighbors or permits them to sit in on an interview is asking
for trouble. However indifferent the family may seem to
neighbor participation in their affairs the day will come
when they will resent it and the visitor will find her hand
weakened. We urge our visitors never to question neighbors
about a family and to resist all questioning from that
quarter. \Vhatever the neighbors may know, and no doubt
they know a lot, the visitor who swaps information with
them is putting a rod in pickle for herself.
"These things are not rules laid down by a lot of old-maid
social workers, but are practices that have been tested by
many years of experience in dealing with all sorts of fami-
lies in all sorts of trouble. We know that relief, no matter
how necessary, is a ticklish business. It does something to
a family. On the way it is handled depends what it does.
It can fort.ify courage, or it can break down self-respect.
Only those limited in human experience and those whose
personality is itself without dignity say, 'These people
don't care. They don't know the difference.' Whoever says
that marks himself as more insensitive than those of whom
he says it."
The matter of checking up on claims of actual destitu-
tion comes down to the purpose of the home visit. If it is
the purpose of proving the applicant ineligible for relief
ken a search of the premises might be in order. If it is for
be purpose of seeing the family in its own surroundings
> gain insight into its condition in order to deal justly with
i needs then a search would seem to defeat that purpose.
"I can't get wrought up because people lie about them-
Ives under the strain of applying for relief," says the head
"a small city department. "I'm pretty sure that if I were
awn to my last dollar I'd say I didn't know where my next
leal was coming from — and how I'd hate the safe and sc-
are person who pointed out that that last guilty dollar
/^HANGING times, heavy case-loads and
^ an influx of workers without extensive
training have brought new problems to relief
organizations. Out of the day-by-day experi-
ence of those directly on the job 'The Survey
has drawn a series of articles of which this is
the fourth. The questions are all bona fide.
The discussion is by supervisors who must
deal with them. Previous articles have been:
When Tour Client Has a Car (The Mid-
monthly Survey, March /pjj), Are Relief
Workers Policemen? (April), What Price the
Power of the Food Order (May}. When
Families Won I Behave, will appear next.
made a liar out of me. Perhaps if one grocery order would
solve the problems of these families we might snoop out
the cupboards and show them up. But we know it won't,
and what earthly purpose will it serve to force a family to
lose face at the outset of a long and complicated relation-
ship the essence of which is mutual confidence and good-
will?
"One of our new workers barged in here at the end of her
first day to report that Mrs. Somebody-or-other had lied in
her application. 'She said there wasn't a bit of food in the
house, yet when I went there that same afternoon, mind
you, there was half an apple pie on the kitchen table and
through a crack in the cupboard door I could see a package
of oatmeal. I just wasn't going to let her get away with it.
I pushed open that door and I said, 'If this isn't food what
is it?' There was a can of tea there too and something that
looked like tapioca. 'You aren't going to get yourself any-
where by holding out on us.'
"That woman had five children and her husband had
been without work for a year. A fine chance our bright
little investigator left herself to carry that family along on
an honest basis. She simply dared them to beat her at the
game. And believe me, they can beat us if they want to,
and taking away face is one of the surest known ways of
making them want to."
BUT there are communities where modern relief methods
with their emphasis on cooperation between the giver
and the recipient have made little impression, where iron-
clad rules require that the visitor look in the cupboard for
food and in the cellar for coal.
"Given such a rule," says a supervisor who grinds her
professional teeth against it, "we are challenged to see how
we can work under it with the least loss of self-respect to
the client and to ourselves. I've come to the conclusion that
it isn't the rule that does as much damage as dumb ways of
enforcing it. The visitor who goes at it self-consciously and
by indirect approaches is bound to be set down as a snooper.
The one who goes at it objectively as a routine part of the
initial investigation, who says frankly, 'It is necessary for
me to look in your cellar to see if you have coal,' will usu-
ally create less resentment than the one who goes all around
Robin Hood's barn before she gets to the cellar.
"But at best it's a poor business, and I still think that
the first visit should be used to demonstrate to a family,
not that we have them under suspicion, but that we'll
trust them if they'll trust us. If we can get off on that foot
the truth will ultimately come out much more clearly than
if we look for it under the bed or in the closet."
In the old days before the cataclysm, when workers'
attitudes could be shaped by training, those congenitally
addicted to hollering upstairs, to pumping information out
of children and to peeping into cupboards were usually
weeded out before they got into other people's houses. But
under the present stress there is no time for shaping atti-
tudes. Supervisors generally must take their relief investi-
gators as they find them. Which leads them to the conclu-
sion that the only answer is to use surer judgment and
greater discrimination in the selection of those people
whom they turn loose on the lives of the unemployed. "For
unless the new recruits possess the natural qualities of
courtesy, tact and consideration, the training and super-
vision we can now give them are just about wasted. Unless
we are good pickers we are visiting just one more misery on
the victims of the depression."
Keeping Doctor and Patient Together
By MARY ROSS
HE family doctor, a physician recently observed,
has been patted on the back so much of late that
that part of his anatomy must be getting rather
sore. As figures of snowballing clinic registrations roll in,
however, it becomes evident that an even more acutely
painful spot must be developing in the region of the hip-
pocket. People with little or no money are likely to go to
the clinic rather than the doctor if they are up and about,
or to call in the city physician rather than their own, if they
are sick at home. The result of hard times for both patients
and doctors is a series of efforts to balance the seesaw
which threatens to crush the charitable services at one end
of the line and leave the doctors high and dry at the other.
One of the most extensive of these is the provision in the
New York State law (see Midmonthly Survey, February
J933> P- 66: Where Relief Includes Medical Care, by H.
Jackson Davis, M.D.) which defines care in illness as one of
the necessities of life and authorizes use of relief funds to
pay for physicians' visits to indigent people sick at home.
The provision, however, does not extend to hospital or
clinic care, nor does it, as a relief measure, aim to take ac-
count of those who could pay a little. The widely cited
Cleveland plan (see Midmonthly Survey January, 1933,
p. 5) considers the "vertical patients" who go to clinics and
run the gamut of poverty: dispensaries agree to refer new
applicants back to their family physician, if they have one,
or to a cooperating neighborhood physician if it appears
that they can pay something, then or later, and only if
doctor and patient cannot agree on regular or part-pay
rates does the patient come back to the dispensary.
In Alameda County, California, existing pay clinics at
the Alameda County General Hospital and a number of
privately-supported health centers were discontinued in
August 1932, leaving without medical resources patients
who had enough income to disqualify them for county care
but not enough to afford usual private rates. The Alameda
County Medical Association thereupon worked out a plan
whereby such people can be referred by public and private
social agencies to private physicians on a geographical and
alphabetical list compiled by the Association and including
practically all of its membership. The doctor enquires into
the patient's economic and social condition and arranges
appropriate fees, considering the nature and probable
length of the illness. If what the patient can pay is negligi-
ble according to existing rates for the service needed, the
physician may treat the patient without charge or refer
him back for county care. In any case the physician makes
a report to the Alameda County Hospital.
In San Diego, California, the medical society, welfare
agencies and community chest banded together to organize
a central "clinic service" at the county hospital, a clearing-
house for people referred in by doctors, hospitals and social
agencies. Clinic and hospital care is open to patients re-
ferred by the service at limited fees, and in the case of
hospital illness, plans are worked out to include the doctor's
bill as well as the hospital's. Persons able to pay more than
the limited fees are referred to private physicians.
In Buffalo, New York, a united attack on the problem
has just emerged from several months' hard work on the
part of a committee appointed by the Council of Social
Agencies and including representatives of the physicians,
dentists, hospitals, social agencies and the public. The
plan, previously endorsed by the social agencies and the
hospitals, was accepted overwhelmingly by the Erie
County Medical Society, which first brought the subject
before the Council, though only after a spirited debate in
which one member insisted that the committee "that was
sent out for oranges has brought us back lemons." In effect,
it takes the Cleveland idea of keeping the patient and his
family physician together, but puts the delicate matter of
amount of payment under a standard procedure.
Dispensaries are to work out their fees, if any, on the
basis of average costs in the various clinics in the city,
with top charges at cost. The patient found by the dis-
pensary's financial investigation to be able to pay more than
cost will be referred to a private physician of his own choos-
ing. Patients whose incomes entitle them to free or part-pay
care will be accepted if they have not employed a family
physician during the preceding five years. Applicants who
have used a family physician during that period will be
accepted for emergency treatment and financial investiga-
tion only, and a report of their needs and resources sent to
the last physician employed. Patients referred to private
physicians by the dispensaries or directly by social workers
in the public and private agencies will be rated in the follow-
ing categories: full-pay, cash or deferred payment, with the
amount stated; part-pay, cash or deferred payment, the
amount stated; or free.
THE private physicians agree to care for part-pay pa-
tients at the top price fixed by the dispensaries or as
much of that as the patient can pay, and not to make addi-
tional charges without the knowledge and consent of the
dispensary referring the case. Indigent and part-pay patients
who are advised to consult their family physicians, but de-
cline, will not be coerced or denied treatment by the dis-
pensary. A central record system is to be evolved and kept
by the Social Service Exchange. One of its functions will be
to keep patients from "shopping" around; they will not
be permitted to change dispensaries without the approval of
that first consulted.
The plan also provides for the thorny question of pre-
scriptions. Indigent patients under the care of private
physicians may obtain drugs without charge from the
Buffalo City Hospital or its branch dispensaries provided
their names are on the lists of public or private welfare
agencies. Those in limited circumstances, whether or not
known to the social agencies, may have prescriptions filled
at regular drug stores at agreed prices; the physician indi-
cates the economic category under which the patient is
being cared for. The committee which evolved the plan
stays on as a guide in steering the new project and is work-
ing out the financial scales to be used in rating, and Buffalo
hopes for progress effective and equitable for all concerned
through common action by the physicians, hospitals and
welfare agencies.
270
The Citizen and His Public Servant
By LEONARD D. WHITE
Professor of Political Science, University of Chicago
JCH man, poor man, beggar man, thief!" Most
of these time-honored citizens and many others
scattered up and down the country were recently
asked, "What do you think of your public officials?" ' The
loud chorus of "not much" from the heavy throats of the
native-born, middle-aged, well-educated and reasonably
prosperous men somewhat outbalanced the determined
jretty good" from the shriller voices of the ladies and the
Dung people, and the quieter but certain tones of the for-
Closer analysis of the results of the over one hundred
housand specific responses reveals an intriguing assort-
ment of opinion, which closely approaches the views ex-
pressed in a similar investigation in Chicago about five
years ago. Thus the attitude of women toward public
officials is definitely more friendly than men — whether
because they are more idealistic or less sophisticated can be
left to the reader to guess. The older one becomes the less
favorable grows one's attitude toward public office — a de-
cline in esteem which probably reflects the disintegrating
effect of repeated breakdown of official standards by un-
principled politicians.
A college or university education seems also to impair
respect for the standing of officialdom. In fact the highest
esteem is regularly discovered among those having the
least formal education, and vice versa. Some experience
with university education leads the writer to the opinion
that this decline in esteem — sometimes of devastating
proportions — is due chiefly to the conscious development
in college and university graduates of an appreciation of
high standards of governmental performance, resulting in
a critical attitude toward existing institutions. Certainly
the influence of high standards of governmental perform-
ance is great, as revealed in the opinions of persons who
know other governmental agencies than ours. The prestige
index of foreign-born persons consulted in this study was
twelve points higher than that of native-born persons of
native parentage, while the prestige index of native-born
with foreign parentage conveniently stood almost exactly
mid-way between. Apparently respect for government would
be heightened in this country by the free admission of aliens !
The experiment, finally, confirmed a shrewd guess that
the prestige of the federal official is higher than that of the
state, and esteem by the public of the state official is
greater than that of the city, in proportion respectively of
eight, seven and six — ten representing a "perfect" score.
Or, in terms of an academic rating, the federal service
earned a B, the state a C, and the city a lowly D.
The question arises, why the bad repute of government
among the 7168 persons who expressed their opinion in
this experiment? Much light is thrown on this issue by the
answers to a specific inquiry as to the relative competence,
honesty and courtesy of municipal and private employes.
The question was put in the form of a completion test, with
opportunity to choose one ot nine answers ranging from
highly favorable to highly unfavorable to the standing of
city employes. Thus by way of example: "City employes
are almost always much more efficient (neither more nor
less efficient, almost always much less efficient, etc.) than
employes of private corporations."
The answers were dismaying. Almost three times as
many persons believed in the superior efficiency of private
as against the city officials; more than twice as many pre-
ferred to trust the honesty of privately employed persons
as against city employes; and over four times as many
were satisfied as to the superior courtesy of privately em-
ployed persons. Taking the three extreme items on either
end of the scale as representing a definite conviction, the
scales are balanced against the city in the matter of effi-
ciency in the ratio 491:1408; in the matter of integrity,
386:744; and in the matter of courtesy, 424:1789. Ap-
parently the public has had its trials in dispatching business
in its city halls!
NO one would assert that the opinions recorded in this
study are the product of reasoned reflection, careful an-
alysis, and objective consideration. They arise from favor-
able or unfavorable personal experiences, and are heavily
weighted with hearsay, rumor, prejudice, bias, and what is
read in the "papers." Nevertheless they are real and count
heavily in the psychological environment in which govern-
ment performs its functions.
Public employment is not without its appeal. To men and
women in the work-a-day world, a city, state or federal job
— in the classified service — spells security, if not absolute
at least relative to the fearful insecurity of the industrial
world. To many in all walks of life, there is an appeal in
public employment, probably bound up with a psychologi-
cal identification of self with the whole social group, which
can never be equalled in other types of employment. To
young men and women, the foreign service, the reclama-
tion service, the forestry service, make their several ap-
peals, over-riding the claims of gain in the commercial
world. These appeals can be consciously cultivated to a
certain degree, and reproduced in other areas of govern-
ment activity. Much harm is being done, per contra, by
contemporary attacks on government as an incident to the
campaign for reduction in taxes. A truly satisfactory pres-
tige standing for public employment can be attained only
by good works, and not by faith. Every successful demon-
stration of intelligent and honest government raises stand-
ards all along the line, every failure renews cynicism and
distrust.
The primary value of a high prestige attaching to public
employment is that it predisposes young men and women
of the greatest promise to seek a permanent career in gov-
ernment circles. The "pulling power" of the public employ-
ment cannot rest on large financial prospects, but it can
build itself to the necessary levels on the basis of respect,
recognition, and prestige. It can — but not yet.
"He loves me, he loves me not!" Not yet.
The Negro in Times Like These
By ALAIN LOCKE
Professor of Philosophy, Howard University
THREE-DAY conference of national scope and im-
portance was held May 11-13 m Washington on
the general theme of The Economic Status of the
Negro. It was sponsored by the Julius Rosenwald Fund and
was attended by over two hundred delegates representing
practically every phase of educational, welfare, research
and service work for Negroes in the country. Like its
predecessor, the National Interracial Conference in Wash-
ington in 1928, this conference was planned as a fact-finding
enterprise with no organizational or program commit-
ments; and beyond the plan of holding later regional con-
ferences to discuss the findings with reference to local condi-
tions, the project will probably terminate officially with the
published report of its committee on findings. Just as the
1928 conference was a clearing-house inventory of the con-
dition of the Negro at the peak of prosperity, so by interest-
ing though painful contrast, this one will provide a similar
analysis of Negro life at the inverted peak of the depres-
sion. The careful student of Negro life will impatiently
await the promised publication and the comparisons and
contrasts it will make possible.
Meanwhile certain broad generalized conclusions, sig-
nificant enough for rough diagnosis and sound enough for
emergency action, can be drawn from the results of the
conference. Even with the sharp clash between the radical,
moderate and conservative schools of social thought
represented in the conference, there was, on the factual
side, a certain basic agreement about the present condition
of the Negro. Oddly enough report after report showed
that the Negro worker had on the whole not suffered dis-
proportionately in labor displacement and unemployment.
Yet the greatly disproportionate seriousness of his economic
situation, both with respect to public and private relief and
his chances for proportional re-employment, clearly indi-
cated that as the "marginal man" he was nevertheless in a
precarious economic position. Unless great fairness and
careful corrective attention were given to this situation, it
was obvious that there was great danger of a wholesale
wiping out of most of the gains the bulk of Negroes had
been able to make in their forward plunge between 1918
and 1928.
In industry, generally speaking, the displacement of
Negro labor was found to be connected definitely with the
Negro's larger share of unskilled labor and the heavier toll
of the effect of the machine on this class of labor. Acute
problems of inequity in public relief in city and rural areas
of the South were reported, especially in the administration
of farm loans and mortgage protection. The same dispro-
portionate effect of curtailment in school funds and funds
for public improvement was reported. In fact, it seemed
that the only redress and hope in this aspect of the matter
lay in an insistence upon a scrupulously fair administration
of all types of direct and indirect federal aid, so that in
farm relief, public-works programs and subsidized relief a
principle of equitable distribution could for the first time
be generally enforced in the South. It was evident from this
phase of the discussion that probably not since the very
beginnings of Reconstruction had there existed such a
favorable chance for the national government to influence
the condition of the Negro masses.
Obvious as was the need for reabsorbing a considerable
element of the indigent and semi-indigent Negro population
back to self-sustaining farm life, it was generally conceded
that the return of any large number to the old conditions of
tenant-farming, with discriminatory policies in education,
civic facilities, legal protection would be inhuman and im-
possible. The crux of the problem was, therefore, to re-
construct the typical rural and small-town conditions from
which the Negro had fled, or else cope with a continued
public problem of maldistribution, economic instability
and costly dependence of increasing thousands of Negroes
in the industrial and city centers.
Perhaps the most interesting feature of the conference
was the unplanned but inevitable clash of radical and
conformist social views as they now begin to divide Negro
leadership. Several speakers of acknowledged standing
counselled as their only hope for the Negro a solution outside
the present social order by joining forces with programs
calling for the radical reconstruction of society; others
definitely urged the Negro to form, so far as he was able, a
cooperative profit-sharing economy of his own; and there
was in general evidence a growing impatience with the
paternalistic and philanthropic schools of race improve-
ment and advance. With this hitherto powerful wing of
race leadership badly on the defensive, the issues of the
conference swung back and forth in animated debate be-
tween the liberals and the radicals.
FOUR pictures will represent adequately perhaps the
characteristic range of the objectives and hopes of the
progressive minds of the conference. First, — the vivid,
brave hope of Will Alexander and Mr. Raper of the Atlanta
Interracial Commission of a self-reconstructed, modernized
New South, free from lynching, peonage, land tenantry
and public-fund discrimination, reabsorbing its full share
of the unstable bulk of the Negro population. Then the
realistic program of Eugene Kinckle Jones of the National
Urban League, calling for a planned and balanced adjust-
ment of the Negro largely through federal aid, direct and
indirect, artificially balanced between modernized rural
transplanting and rationed absorption into diversified
industry. W. E. Burghardt DuBois held up a plan of
independent and progressive economic action, based largely
on a service organization of Negro professionals and
consumers cooperation for the masses, practically eliminat-
ing the industrial classes and the profit-motive, in which
after all the Negro had been permitted to have so little
share. Prof. Broadus Mitchell of Johns Hopkins stated that
the Negro had put too much faith in philanthropy and in
the aid he might expect to get from capitalism, and stated
it as his opinion that the only hope for bettering the eco-
nomic and social status of this minority group is through
affiliation with radical proletarian reform. The great lesson >.
of the whole conference was the more critical integration of i
the problems of the black minority with those of the life of j
the majority in times like these.
.222
Teaching Sex to Young People
By J. ROSSLYN EARP
Director, State Bureau of Public Health, Santa Fe, New Mexico
"Y discoveries on teaching the elements of
human reproduction to young people were the
result neither of initiative nor intelligence —
they were forced upon me. Seven years ago a group of sen-
iors at Antioch College demanded from me a course in sex
hygiene. I protested that they already had all the credits
they needed for graduation. They replied that they did not
want any credit, they just wanted the course. Under such
circumstances I could not refuse. Attendance at the class
was voluntary. Practically all the seniors came, men and
women, and stayed till the end. The following year the
course was offered as a regular credit course to seniors. The
addition of the credit made no noticeable difference in the
interest of the students in the class.
I made several discoveries in those two years. I was much
surprised at the complete ignorance among these very
mature students of the elementary anatomy and physiology
of reproduction. Undoubtedly they knew more about the
reproductive apparatus of the earthworm than they did
about their own. Then I was agreeably surprised to find how
easily the subject could be handled in a mixed group.
Discussion was frank and free. I do not think that after
the first few days anyone hesitated to ask any ques-
tion that occurred to him or her. There was neither
embarrassment nor vulgarity. The students were quite as
much surprised as I was to discover that such a thing is
possible.
A third observation I count -as highly significant. The
class does not seem to come to an end. I have taught other
subjects — for example public health. At the end of the
term grades are distributed for better or for worse and so
far at least as the teacher is concerned no more is heard
about it. My course at Antioch is still going on. For six
years I have been getting letters reporting engagements,
marriages, births and the like — and all reviewed in the
light of what we said there. Sometimes even yet the teach-
er's counsel is sought as to what should or should not be
done.
These observations have been confirmed in subsequent
experiments. I was asked to be a "counsellor on men's and
women's relations" at the Student Y. M. C. A. and
Y. W. C. A. camp at Estes Park, Colorado. During my
first year there I dealt as best I knew how with the problems
raised by the students. The first question that I can re-
member was, "Should a boy kiss a blind date good night
when he sees her home?" The questioner was concerned
perhaps as much with the etiquette as with the morality of
the situation. It was rather like conducting a cardiac clinic
in a newspaper column. On the last day I asked the stu-
dents if they would not have preferred some direct teaching
of anatomy and physiology. They voted unanimously that
they would. Next year therefore I began by asking the
same question and receiving the same answer and pro-
ceeded to lecture through the hour allotted and to spend
the remainder of the day answering the questions aroused
by the lectures.
I have also adapted the subject at the demand of
Y. W. C. A. business girls and have recently conducted a
course in the summer school of the University of New
Mexico. I feel justified now in saying that it is possible to
teach the anatomy and physiology of human reproduction
to mixed groups of college students, and that such teaching
meets a deep and widely distributed demand. In six years
it has aroused no indignation or protest.
Naturally I have ideas as to how the subject should be
taught. It is essential that the teacher himself be emotion-
ally free. No trace of prudery, prurience or embarrassment
must appear in his words nor in his accent. The subject
must be handled objectively, scientifically, and care must
be taken that no personal implication can be suspected in
anything that is said. Personal problems may be brought-to
the teacher — but not in class.
Biology forms the groundwork. From that beginning
questions of sex ethics can be discussed in an atmosphere of
reason rather than of prejudice. But the experience of
humanity in the social control of the sex instinct cannot be
overlooked. The literature of sociology is so much more
accessible than that on the biology of reproduction that I
usually let the students do each his own piece of research
in this field and the class discusses their findings. Among
the subjects investigated one summer by my students in
the University of New Mexico were: the bases of monog-
amy, the age at which to marry, adolescent sex play, is
there a compromise possible between the ideas of romantic
love and trial marriage? sex education in school, methods
of stirpiculture, the sex mores of Soviet Russia, and so on.
I HOPE that the information these courses give is some-
times of value. As a matter of fact I know that it is. But
the acquisi tion of knowledgeis less important in my judgment
than is the freeing of emotional inhibitions. In my medical
practice I have more than once heard from a wife confi-
dences which the lady assures me she could not possibly tell
to her husband. Many marriages go on the rocks simply
because one or both mates are just not able to talk to each
other about the difficulty they may be in. Many children
are left uneducated or are thoroughly demoralized because
their parents either cannot mention sex or cannot speak
naturally about it. The acquisition of emotional freedom is
of greater importance than the acquisition of sound
knowledge. Hence the great importance of teaching the sub-
ject to a mixed group.
Finally I believe that many students have found help in
this course in the construction of their philosophy of life.
In this day when authoritative and dogmatic religion is
losing its grip many students are floundering in search
of some meaning for life, often hiding their private despair
under a cynical exterior. In the biology of sex they find a
wonder-provoking design and a continuity of purpose — or
at least the means by which continuity of purpose and ideal
can be achieved. We do not stress this aspect of our teach-
ing, though we do not forget it. The outlines of a plan are
plain enough for these young architects of life to seize upon
them and adapt them each to his own need.
223
THE COMMON WELFARE
Smock Squad
Hop light, ladies, your cake's all dough,
And never mind the weather if the wind don't blow.
TAKING their leitmotif from an old Virginia reel song,
a thousand Hop Light Ladies, jobless since the work-
relief funds of the Gibson Committee ran out, have
stepped out to brighten New York and, they hope, to find
a living for themselves. They travel in couples and the color
of their gay smocks tells you what they have to sell. If they
come to your door in rose-color they are ready to hop to it
and do odd painting jobs right on the spot; if in green they
will trig up your moribund window boxes with fresh plants;
if in lavender they will make dates to take children, yes and
dogs, to the park to play; if in yellow they will offer you
good visible house-numbers which most of New York cer-
tainly needs. The blue-smocked squad will run open-air
book marts in public squares.
More power to you, Hop Light Ladies. Such cheerfulness
and ingenuity as yours deserves to get a good break.
Letchworth Village
ON June 14 eleven corner-stones were laid at Letchworth
Village, Thiells, New York, thus bringing to com-
pletion an institution which at its founding, twenty-five
years ago, represented a new conception in the scientific
and social treatment of the feebleminded.
The Village, a community of some three thousand souls,
is actually, due to its system of classifying its charges, six
independent institutions under one administration. The
site of 230x3 acres in a lovely secluded valley of the Ramapo
Hills was chosen in 1908, but long before a spadeful of
earth was turned the scientific and social purpose of the
institution was clearly defined and its whole physical de-
velopment projected. That purpose and the plan adopted in
1912 has never been compromised. Letchworth Village has
grown not sporadically but wholly by plan. In its stand-
ards, both medical and social, it has never yielded ground.
From it a host of professional men and women have gone
out to carry its scientific methods and its humane spirit
into many institutions throughout the country. Of it
Margaret Bourke-White, one of whose camera studies is
reproduced as the frontispiece of this issue, said: "I saw
there a varied and active life, occupation the keynote.
Nowhere have I seen life more completely shaped to meet
the needs, the best interests and the aptitudes of each and
every person."
A happy circumstance of the ceremonies of June 14 was
the presence of many of the people whose vision brought the
institution into being and whose devotion has never fal-
tered through the years. Here was Franklin D. Kirkbride,
member of the commission appointed in 1907 to select a
site, now secretary of the board of visitors; here was Frank
A. Vanderlip, first president of the board of managers; here
was Dr. Charles S. Little, first and only superintendent to
whose imagination, courage and wisdom the Village is a
monument. Regrettably absent was Homer Folks who
fought the first and every succeeding legislative battle to
make the institution what it is today. Happily present was
Dr. Frederick W. Parsons, commissioner of the state de
partment of mental hygiene, whose driving determinatior
brought the appropriations to complete the Village sub
stantially as its founders conceived it.
Dividends of a Generation
MAY anniversaries signalized some of the returns on thi:
generation's hard work which have not falterec
even in hard times. The twenty-fifth birthday of the men-
tal-hygiene movement, celebrated in New Haven by the
pioneer Connecticut Mental Hygiene Society, and th<
simultaneous twentieth birthday of the Massachusetts
Society, look back over these years to the growth of one
man's dream to organized work in twenty-nine countries ir
the world. That man, Clifford W. Beers, together with
Newton D. Baker and Commander Evangeline Booth oi
the Salvation Army, was justly honored a few days latet
by the medal presented by the National Institute of Socia
Sciences "for distinguished services rendered to humanity."
What this quarter-century has meant in the care of the
mentally ill came forcibly to mind also in conjunction with
news of the sudden and untimely death of Dr. Henry A.
Cotton, director-emeritus of the New Jersey State Hospi-
tal. When Dr. Cotton became director of that hospital at
the end of 1907 ninety women patients were kept in strait-
jackets day and night, while others were restrained bi
wristlets, muffs, anklets and straps. Shortly before his
death he said that some seven hundred "instruments o
torture," of this nature were discarded at the outset of his
administration, never to be used again. Dr. Cotton's work j
in New Jersey has been one concrete instance of the ideal
which the mental-hygiene movement has helped to forward
so wisely and effectively — that the "insane" are sick people j
to be cared for and often to be cured, not merely incon-
venient or dangerous misfits to be hobbled behind brick
walls and bars, and further than that, that mental illness,
in lesser degree, is a concern of the world of ordinary people.
Barriers of another sort have been broken down by
another organization which has just reached its first quar-
ter-century mark, the National Society for the Prevention
of Blindness. Started in 1908, as a campaign against
ophthalmia neonatorum, "babies' sore eyes," the Society
has won a signal victory in that field and has broadened its
efforts to include "sight-saving" in schools and prevention
of eye accidents in industry and elsewhere. A number of
people were very busy in 1908, and we of 1933 may well
stop to applaud the results of their efforts.
The Octopus Rent
WAGES may come and wages may go, but rents stay
fixed forever. This statement summarizes the find-
ings of a study of 1104 families living in New York City
tenements made by the League of Mothers' Clubs, showing
income, rents and housing conditions. The same organiza-
tion made a similar study of 1014 families in 1928, the
majority of the families being the same in both surveys and
in all cases of the same economic status. With a median
income of $1049 f°r tne grouP m 1932 compared to $157°
224
June 1933
THE SURVEY
225
in 1928, median rents were $319 and $316 respectively — 45
percent of the family income in 1932 and 19 percent in
1928. While the income decreased 33 percent, rents re-
mained stationary. The more the income dropped below the
minimum subsistence level, the greater the proportion spent
for rent. Only families with incomes of $2100 or over spent
as little as 20 percent of their income for rent — the normal
proportion. Most of the families interviewed were reported
to be living under bad conditions, over 75 percent residing
in old-law tenements.
From these and other equally significant facts, the survey
concludes that commercial housing, while satisfactory for
other groups, cannot provide decent homes at a profit to
the landlord for families whose incomes are less than $1500.
The only solution suggested is public housing for the lower-
income groups. The value of this study, which may be
obtained from the League of Mothers' Clubs, 70 Fifth
Avenue, New York City, lies in the fact that it is full of
accurate and specific data which should be helpful in
planning a housing program.
Acts of God
A 5 if we didn't have enough to bear God visited this land
of ours in the two months between March 10 and
May 13 with twenty-six of His inscrutable acts, — floods,
fires, earthquakes and tornados — of such proportions that
the Red Cross had to step in to pick up the pieces. Added
up, the acts killed 420 people and injured 5790, destroyed
or damaged 15,806 homes and affected 37,270 families, —
on the whole a man-sized disaster at any time or place.
"But," says the Red Cross cheerfully, "we are having
marked success in raising money for disaster relief," — more
than can be said for unemployment relief. Which indicates
once again that swift, dramatic, unpredictable disaster
stirs the pocket-nerve more readily than the drag of long
slow misery.
Mooney Acquitted
WHEN Tom Mooney went to trial in San Francisco
last month on the last of the murder indictments
growing out of the Preparedness Day outrage in 1916,
District Attorney Brady refused to offer evidence and the
judge directed a verdict of not guilty. Once more Mooney
has dramatized the shame of his long imprisonment on
testimony proved or admitted false — testimony which The
Survey, first of magazines of national circulation, discussed
in a staff article by John A. Fitch in the far-away issue of
July 7, 1917. His lawyers are appealing to the United
States Supreme Court for a writ of habeas corpus. Another
course now open is a plea to Governor Rolph for pardon
which, for the first time, Mooney is willing to accept.
Building from the Bottom
OVER five hundred people from seventy-three cities
attended the National Conference on the Renewal of
Home-Building held last month in Chicago. Here were pre-
: dominantly dealers in building materials, engineers, real-
estate subdividers, architects and mortgage-finance men.
There were plenty of talks about the last word in air-condi-
tioning and the pre-fabricated house; but there were also
i new notes, first a recognition that the future great home
market lies in a field which up to now the industry has
largely ignored. As James S. Taylor, of the Division of
Building and Housing of the Department of Commerce re-
ported, the $5ooo-or-less dwelling is the one with which the
trade must henceforth concern itself. Second, a discussion
of the need for good rural housing and of the movement for
the "garden home," to cost $2500, with land enough for
subsistence and accessible to industrial employment. To
quote Dr. L. C. Gray, of the Federal Bureau of Land
Economics, with one foot firmly on the soil, but only one.
These representatives of the building industry listened
eagerly to Louis Brownlow, of the Public Administration
Clearing House, who stated that henceforth to be successful
they must build neighborhoods and not merely houses; to
Roy Wenzlick of St. Louis, who warned them that until the
price level is stabilized with both dips and booms eliminated
there will be no stability for the building trades; and to
members who declared the land speculator must go.
The meeting appointed a committee of fifteen, headed by
Alfred K. Stern, chairman of the Illinois Housing Commis-
sion, to organize a National Housing Conference Board.
Do Surveys Pay?
HUNDREDS of thousands of dollars have been spent in
recent years on surveys of state and local govern-
ments in the effort to discover and eliminate sources of
waste. This flow of expenditure has been a river connecting
the political scientist who knows what ought to be done and
the public official who knows what can be done. Has it been
worth while? The immediate stimulant for this question is
the receipt of five volumes totaling fifteen hundred pages,
the report of a survey conducted for Governor B. M. Miller
of Alabama by the Institute for Government Research of
the Brookings Institution. Does the public read such
reports ? Act on them ?
To the first question the reply must be no. Nobody reads
them except the specialists. But the chief recommendations
do see the light of day as they filter through the press.
As to action — economy in government — there are some
straws in the wind. Probably the first reorganization of
state government following a survey was that of Illinois
under Governor Frank O. Lowden, which cost $50,000.
It is difficult to tell how much was saved, but Mr. Lowden
recently stated that improvement in tax collection alone
saved millions of dollars a year. Last year North Carolina,
following a survey, installed a system of centralized pur-
chasing which saved the state government more than a mil-
lion dollars the first year, it is estimated by Russell Forbes,
secretary of the National Municipal League. Cincinnati,
the model of efficient municipal government, reorganized
and adopted the manager plan after a survey headed by
Lent D. Upson, director of the Detroit Bureau of Govern-
mental Research. Cincinnati saved a million and a half
dollars in two years not to speak of huge savings since then
that cannot be estimated since there is no way to tell how
bad conditions might have been had the old regime con-
tinued. Former Governor Gardiner of Maine, writing in
The National Municipal Review, reports substantial sav-
ings in his state from reorganization following a survey by
the Institute of Public Administration.
In terms of cold cash, then, such surveys are worth while.
This seems a narrow measure to apply. Its use can only be
justified on the ground that the sole criticism levelled at
such work is that it is a waste of money. When that argu-
ment falls, all reasonable objections have been met.
226
THE SURVEY
June 1933
On the Way to Socialized Courts
A'J encouraging step on the thorny way to socialized court
procedures has been taken in New York where the legislature,
egged on by social workers, singly and in committees, acted to
remove the New York City Family Court from the Magistrates
Court, lowliest of judicial bodies, and to merge it with the Chil-
dren's Court. These courts now become two parts of a new
Domestic Relations' Court with one set of judges under whose
control all divisions, including psychiatry, investigation, pro-
bation and so on, will function. The new law changes in no way
the functioning of the Children's Court, but raises the status of
the Family Court and permits in it the socialized practices which
prevail in the former and for which social workers have long
battled.
The new law considerably extends requirements for support.
For instance it enables the court to provide for physically
handicapped children up to twenty-one years and to require
step-parents to support minor step-children and also extends the
obligation to support to include husband, wife, father, mother,
grandparent, child and grandchild. Under an amendment to
its domestic relations' law New York State will not recognize as
valid common-law marriages contracted in the future. Existing
common-law marriages are not affected.
Self-Help by Request
THEY'VE added neighboring to relief in New Bloomfield,
Pennsylvania, and thrown in a dose of good solid advice on
forehanded ways of helping one's self. Each member of the wel-
fare committee has taken on three families who are on relief to
help them in the neighborly ways that a grocery order doesn't
touch. One of these ways is to encourage them by every possible
means in the seven-point self-help program which the committee
has requested all those on relief to undertake. This starts with
advice to plant a big garden and to "can and dry everything you
can." From neighboring farmers families on relief should earn,
against next winter, at least ten bushels of wheat for flour and
grits, a supply of potatoes and corn, — "products from corn make
dishes fit for kings," — a pig or two and a few settings of eggs —
"then raise the chickens for next winter's eating and eggs."
From fruit growers they should arrange for seconds and surplus
crops of apples and peaches to dry and can. The welfare com-
mittee proposes not only to cheer the families on to undertaking
the program but to help them with its details to the end that,
given a good season, the cellars of the community will be stocked
with food as never before.
Social Work in Germany
WHOEVER sees social work as something bigger than his
own desk will be interested in the series of papers on condi-
tions in Germany in relation to practice and methods in social
work, social insurance, education and so on which Ruth Weiland
is offering by private subscription. It was Ruth Weiland who
conducted the institute on German affairs in advance of the Inter-
national Conference in Frankfurt last summer. The present
offering is in response to many requests for continuing informa-
tion. Each of the series of six papers discusses one topic with short
notes on important events in related fields. Subjects announced
are:
Federal and state legislation in the field of child welfare.
Responsibility of local authorities for needy individuals.
The importance of sickness, invalid and old-age insurance for people who
are economically weak.
Welfare for the unemployed in practice.
Development and extent of social welfare in country districts.
The effect of unemployment on child and youth delinquency.
The papers are in English of at least ten pages each. Publication
began in May, to continue at short intervals. The price for the
six is f>3 by postal order to Miss Weiland, Schwarzburg-Allee 3,
Berlin-Charlottenburg.
Miss Weiland is one of the leading social workers of Germany
well known in this country where she has lectured at various
times. For four years she has been the business manager of the
German central organization for the welfare of youth, a position
recently resigned.
What Indianapolis Needed
suspected that they needed recreation; we found them
starved for it." So, on the heels of this discovery, the
recreation committee of the Indianapolis Council of Social
Agencies went to work. It organized a managing committee of
twenty-five, employed a director, barred the words "unem-
ployed" and "charity" from its vocabulary, mobilized every
community facility for recreation and tapped every source of
interest and goodwill. Two types of activity were planned, day-
time clubrooms for reading and quiet games and a city-wide
program of neighborhood evening entertainments. The former
has moved slowly because of the careful organizing and super-
vision which each club requires. The latter has spread over In-
dianapolis like wildfire till it is a queer neighborhood that doesn't
have its Leisure Hour Club with a regular weekly program of
entertainment.
Mostly Emergency
CHILDREN, YOUNG PEOPLE AND UNEMPLOYMENT, prepared
and published by The Save the Children International Union, Geneva.
Copies from the American office, 156 Fifth Avenue, New York. Price, 35 cents.
A series of enquiries into conditions in Germany, Belgium,
Switzerland and. the United States. A human document,
not statistical, which makes disquieting reading.
COMMUNITY PROGRAMS FOR SUBSISTENCE GARDENS, by
Joanna C. Colcord and Mary Johnston. Russell Sage Foundation, 130 East
22 Street, New York. Price, 25 cents.
Organization requisites to success based on the experience
of the past two years.
COMMUNITY CHEST ACCOMPLISHMENTS. Compiled and published
by the Civic Development Department, U. S. Chamber of Commerce, Wash-
ington, D. C.
A statistical summary of chest campaigns from 1919 to
1932 inclusive.
HOW TO HELP. Handbook of the National Women's Commillee, Welfare and
Relief Mobili'ation, Mrs. Nicholas F. Brady chairman. Single copies free
from Mary Simms, Y. W. C. A., 600 Lexington Avenue, New York.
First aid for busy women who want their volunteer efforts
to count in the present situation.
EMERGENCY RELIEF IN PENNSYLVANIA, by Arthur Dunham.
Price 25 cents from the Public Charities Association of Pennsylvania, 31 1
South Juniper Street, Philadelphia.
A concise report of the development and operation of a
large relief organization. Essential facts and not opinions
or controversies.
.June 1933
THE SURVEY
227
Except for the director, volunteers run the whole show. Local
committees have drawn in some two hundred persons while
six hundred more give their services as entertainers. The weekly
audiences passed eleven thousand before the clubs had been
t going four months.
The overwhelming response to the Leisure Hour Clubs has
given the recreation committee of the Council fresh incentive
toward achieving the whole recreational program recommended
for Indianapolis in The Leisure of a People, the study made for
the Council in 1929 by the National Recreation Association. An
evaluating committee is now studying the past year's experience
so that future efforts may profit from it. "The approach we have
made seems sensible," says Allan Bloom, chairman of the recrea-
tion committee. "It allows for experimentation without obscuring
the needs and values of the well-organized character-building
agencies, and it provides amusement and some degree of participa-
tion to thousands of people whom the over-taxed recreational
facilities of the city cannot reach."
Gang Prevention
A NEAR-GANG of unruly highschool boys roistering in a
•**• branch library was really responsible for the genesis of the
Coordinating Councils of Los Angeles County, California, now
attracting much attention from juvenile workers. Good team-play
among the school principal, the police and probation officers
straightened out the boys and restored peace to the library with-
out any official action. Here was an idea that the Juvenile Court
!was quick to seize upon as a device for keeping children out of
trouble and reducing the volume of cases crowding the court
; calendar. From a small beginning in Whittier have developed
twenty local Coordinating Councils which now dot the county
in clearly defined districts. Through a local council the social
influences of a neighborhood are focused not only on children
headed toward delinquency but on the delinquent homes and the
delinquent community where the responsibility too often rests.
Linking the local councils together is the Central Council, a
policy-forming group composed of representatives of official and
non-official social and legal agencies. The Central Council has a
research department and is active in bringing child-guidance
clinic service to locals that lack that facility. Each local has a
confidential case-study committee.
The virtues of the Los Angeles plan, in the development of
which Judge Samuel R. Blake of the Juvenile Court has been a
prime factor, seem to lie in its capacity to bring together com-
munity forces, previously scattered and spotty, and relate them
directly to the child and the things that influence him. In a
pamphlet, Why Have Delinquents?, published by the Rotary
Club of Los Angeles (20 cents), Kenneth J. Scudder and Kenneth
J. Beam, both associated with the Probation Department, have
answered many inquiries on the method of organizing the system,
the way in which it functions and the purposes it serves in mobiliz-
ing community responsibility. Included is a scale for rating homes
credited to Goodwin Watson of Columbia University.
THE powers that be in Richmond, Virginia, have adopted the
recommendation made nearly a year ago by the Mayor's Ad-
visory Committee on Relief that the city employ as case workers
only persons eligible for membership in the American Association
of Social Workers.
BEER has come to the rescue of old-age pensions in Massachusetts
where the legislators have for the past two years had great
difficulty in finding funds for the state's share of expenditures
for some seventeen thousand pensioners. All revenues derived
from beer, both by the state and the towns, will for the present
be used for this purpose. Eighteen states now have mandatory
old-age-relief laws which require some form of government
financing, while six have laws permitting counties to act.
Looking Into Philadelphia's Eyes
A COMMITTEE of the Philadelphia County Medical Society
•**• has added up figures to show that while some twenty-one
thousand school children were noted last year as apparently in
need of glasses, hardly a third of that number had received atten-
tion at the dispensary eye services or from private physicians or
in any other way. This high percentage of "untreated eyes" was
practically the same three years ago; the committee believes it
due to reluctance to use clinic service or inability to pay the fees
of ophthalmologists. School nurses were asked to investigate the
financial conditions in the families of the last two children on
their lists who had been declared visually defective; the median
family income for the group was $7 a week. About one fifth of the
families could pay something for eye service. The society there-
fore has proposed a plan submitted to all approved ophthalmolo-
gists in the city, asking them to volunteer to care for children
referred by the nurses under a special fee schedule, which may be
amended by the nurse according to the family's situation. The
ophthalmologist may select hours to suit his convenience; the
nurse provides him with a statement of the patients' financial
status.
Forty Years' Progress
EOKING at the figures dug up by the Illinois State Depart-
ment of Health, it seems clear that he who ventured from
home to travel to the Chicago World's Fair in 1893 took his life
in his hands in contrast to today's traveler. It wasn't that Chicago
was especially unhealthy that year; health was better, in fact,
than ever before in that city and compared favorably with other
large cities. But 1933 finds Chicagoans apparently twice as safe
in respect to health and accident as they were in 1893. Medical
journals on both sides of the Atlantic had gravely warned their
1893 readers against the dangers of going to large expositions,
especially the danger of typhoid. Last year's deathrate from that
disease in Chicago was less than one hundredth the rate of 1893;
the deathrate from diphtheria was less than one fiftieth that ob-
taining in the year of the Columbian Exposition, that from tuber-
culosis, less than one third. Despite the speed of current life, fatal
accidents are only half as common, in proportion to population,
as they were forty years ago. The risk of dying in a railroad wreck
was considerably greater for Chicagoans of that time than their
present danger of being killed by an automobile. Even the risk of
"personally inflicted violence" has declined. The homicide rate
in the city has gone up from 8 per 100,000 of population in 1893,
to 12.8 in 1932, but suicide — bank holidays notwithstanding—
declined from 28 to 16.9. Keeping up with an exposition is a
strenuous job for the city health department, which strictly super-
vises eating places and other health hazards on the grounds as
well as throughout the city; for the health and social agencies,
which watch out for the perils against which the American Social
Hygiene has issued warnings — the pitfalls laid by some commer-
cial interests for visitors away from the home town; and for the
state health department, which has set up requirements for auto
tourist camps within the city and nearby. Among the records of
228
THE SURVEY
June 193
the Century of Progress, none has greater actuality both for the
visitors at the fair and those who stay home than the added as-
surance of life and health that these past decades have brought.
Better Nurses
" DATHER extraordinary progress" in raising the educational
•I*- standards for students admitted to nursing schools is
reported by the Committee on the Grading of Nursing Schools as
the result of its current survey of 80 percent of the accredited
schools in the country. Three years earlier, at the time of the first
grading, only 73 percent of the student nurses in the schools had
finished highschool; in 1932, the figure was 90 percent. "All over
the United States," the Committee reports, "schools of nursing
have found that to require a highschool diploma for admission
improves the quality of the applicants and does not diminish
their number." While highschool education now is generally ac-
cepted as a minimum, comparatively few schools, however, are
making efforts to select their students from among the abler
graduates. The Committee urges as "the next great step" that
only those be admitted whose standing in highschool was above
the average. The importance of selection for the school and the
nurse is underscored by a recently published study by Elsie O.
Bregman, which estimates that $5,000,000 is spent fruitlessly
each year by schools of nursing in attempting to train students
who do not complete the course. Schools requiring highschool
diplomas were found to obtain a higher type of students than
those which did not. Intelligence tests could reduce the waste
considerably. Analysis of intelligence tests of ten thousand stu-
dent nurses showed that the student nurse brain-power resem-
bled that of normal-school students and exceeded all but 8 percent
of the general population.
The City's Care of Syphilis
BECAUSE of the long and costly treatment required by the
ailment, the present economic crisis has brought sharply to
the fore the need for free treatment of persons afflicted with syph-
ilis. In normal times, the New York State Department estimates,
Print and Reprint
THE ESTABLISHED POINTS IN SOCIAL HYGIENE EDUCATION,
by Maurice A . Bigelow. Price 10 cents.
EDUCATION FOR MARRIAGE, by M. J. Exner, M.D. Price 10 cents.
HEALTH FOR MEN. Price 10 cents.
THE TRUTH ABOUT SYPHILIS AND GONORRHEA. Price 5 cents.
NEW or revised publications of the American Social Hygiene
Association, 450 Seventh Ave., New York City. Quantity
rates on request. For lists of other publications and ex-
hibit material, write the Association.
INVESTING IN HEALTH. Metropolitan Life Insurance Company, 1
Madison Ave., New York City. On request.
ILLUSTRATED report of twenty-three years' returns in
better health and longer life among policy-holders served
by the Company's welfare division. For a list of health
films loaned without rental fee, including one available
with sound as well as in silent form, consult the welfare
division.
MEDICAL ASPECTS OF HUMAN FERTILITY. A Survey and Report of
the National Committee on Maternal Health, Inc., 2 East 103 St., New York
City.
SUMMARY of activities, publications and studies of the
Association and events in the field of its interest.
Pamphlets, reading references and reprints dealing with
the costs of medical care are furnished without charge by
The Julius Rosenwald Fund, 4901 Ellis Avenue, Chicago,
111.
30 percent of the syphilis cases are treated at public expense; al
the present probably at least 50 percent must have free treatment*
Looking over clinic records from the cities of the state, the Del
partment finds that about a third of them have made a good starl
in that they seem to reach half or more of the estimated number!
of persons requiring treatment without cost. Effectiveness c
clinic service, however, depends not only on reaching the patient
but also on keeping him under treatment long enough to cure ol
arrest the disease. An ideal program calls for sixty treatments fol
each new patient registered; thirty treatments is a minimunl
standard. Amsterdam, Hornell, Yonkers, Utica and GloversvillJ
head the list of cities according to thoroughness of treatmenti
since all reach or exceed the ideal standard. Albany carries off th'l
banners in the extent of its services plus continuity of treatmenti
since it would appear from the records to be reaching 96 percen £
of the indigent cases and carrying them on the average through
the minimum course. "To serve a community well," the Depart*
ment declares, "a clinic must be centrally located, have con I
venient hours, possess at least a minimum amount of medicaji
equipment, and have a personnel which realizes the public healtll.
importance of investigating sources of infection and examining
contacts."
The basis on which the Division of Social Hygiene estimates!
the need for free service in New York State cities of twent)''
thousand population and more is to assume — according to thf!)
findings of extensive earlier surveys — that there will be 6.6 new>
cases each year per 1000 of population and that fully half of
these will require free care.
ROUTINE use of iodized salt on the tables of child-caring institu-
tions as a preventive of goiter has been recommended by the Com-
mittee on Public Health of the Academy of Medicine in Cleve-
land, Ohio, which lies in the "goiter belt."
SPEAKING up for the preservation of the health and physical \
education budgets of schools, Professor C. E. Turner reported to
the American Physical Education Association that at our present
rate more public-school children will go to mental hospitals than
to college.
WITH the addition of an ear, nose and throat clinic, sorely needed
by its storm-lashed clients, the Seaman's Church Institute of
New York City has now become a complete health center as well
as a shore community for merchant seamen. The medical clinic
of the center is under the supervision of the United States Public
Health Service.
AN alumni association — no less — is the Sunnjfrest Graduate
Club of former patients at the Children's Building of Healthwin
Sanatorium, St. Joseph County, Indiana. The club will meet
weekly at the office of the tuberculosis association in South Bend,
maintaining its interest in health improvement under the guid-
ance of Mrs. T. Dale Swem, nutritionist of the county tubercu-
losis association.
IN addition to classes held in the public-health districts and
hospitals for expectant mothers, the Cleveland Health Associa-
tion has recently opened a class for patients of private physicians,
held in the building of the Cleveland Academy of Medicine. The
work is made possible by a special contribution, and no charge is
made to members of the class except a nominal charge to cover
the cost of printed material.
DETROIT reports dental examinations of 300,000 schoolchildren
in 1932, among which 123,000 had permanent decay, 150,000
temporary decay, 75,000 abscessed teeth, and only 45,000 "satis-
factory" teeth. Volunteer dentists from the Detroit District
Dental Society, the Children's Fund of Michigan, and the De-
partment of Health provided for indigent children 35,056 ap-
pointments and 87,015 "operations."
June 1933
THE SURVEY
229
Children on Strike
BABY STRIKERS," as the headline writers have christened
them have put Pennsylvania sweatshop conditions and
•xpluited child workers on the front page. Some two hundred
>oys and girls from fourteen to twenty years old "walked out"
it the D. and D. shirt factory in Northampton. In Allentown
ibout a hundred and fifty workers of the same ages went on
;trike against the Penn-Allen Company, another shirt factory.
n !• uyette County, about 250 girls struck against wage cuts that
>rout;ht their wages under 50 cents a day. The National Child
,abor Committee reports that forty or more sweatshops in this
irea employ abput thirty-two hundred boys and girls, more than
i fourth of whom are under sixteen years of age. In case after case
•hiklren were found working for a dollar a week. They come from
'amilies where the father has been unemployed for a long period,
n some instances from two to four years. Mrs. Gifford Pinchot,
yife of the governor of Pennsylvania, joined four hundred strik-
•rs, the youngest thirteen, the eldest eighteen, in picketing Allen-
own sweatshops. Some of these youngsters showed paychecks of
ixty cents or less for a full week's work. In the closing hours of its
ession, the General Assembly at Harrisburg voted a legislative
nvestigation of child-labor conditions in Pennsylvania industries.
Correcting Men and Jobs
HOW an adequate public-employment service fits into com-
munity needs, even in a depression, is easy to read between
he lines of the last annual report of Fritz Kaufman, director of
he Division ot Employment of the New York State Department
if Labor. The New York service, reorganized in Frances Perkins'
erm as state industrial commissioner, now has ten offices,
'attractive and well equipped." To these offices, unemployed
nen and women made more than 963,000 visits in 1932, about
!o,ooo a month. Nearly 35,000 employers used the service, 44
>ercent of them for the first time. About 58,000 placements were
naile, a drop of 27 percent from 1931, directly due to the general
msiness situation. "While placements have decreased, many
employers are now using the service for workers of greater skill
md experience," including commercial and professional openings.
The service has cooperated with social agencies in meeting place-
nent problems. The service has also helped organize the New
I'ork City labor market through developing a clearance system
n which forty-eight non-profit-making bureaus now pool surplus
abor calls. Mr. Kaufman reports that present funds make it
mpossible to respond to "several requests for the extension of
he service to new localities."
Working a Six-Hour Day
VX7ORKERS" experience with the six-hour day and their
• opinion of it are reported in A Study of a Change from
'.ight to Six Hours of Work by Ethel L. Best, just published as a
rVomen's Bureau pamphlet (No. 106. Superintendent of Docu-
nents, Washington. Price five cents). The plant investigated
nade the change from three to four shifts in December 1930.
The number of workers was thereby increased 39 percent. At
the same time hourly rates were raised \11A percent, with a like
increase a year later. The 265 women in the force of 434 who had
worked under both plans were interviewed. Nearly 80 percent of
them preferred the shorter day. The chief reasons they gave
were increased time for leisure and home duties, less fatigue. For
almost a third of the group earnings were higher under the six-
hour day. On the other hand, the principal reason cited by those
who favored the eight-hour day was the higher pay possible under
that plan. Most of those who objected to the shorter work-day
were on the evening and night shifts. While no lunch period is
provided in the six-hour day, the management offers a milk
service which many workers patronize. In this plant an effort has
been made so to schedule each woman's work that she stands for
an hour and a half and then shifts to a process where she can sit
at her work. The additional hours of free time are used by most of
the women reporting for household duties, gardening, shopping,
recreation and study.
Occupational Disease
/CANVASSING the whole question of occupational disease
^-* compensation, the report of a commission appointed by
Governor Pinchot of Pennsylvania a year ago offers a basis for
such legislation in that state, although no action was taken in the
recent session. The commission, of which T. Henry Walnut of
Philadelphia was chairman, recommended the type of law which
includes "a schedule listing the special diseases to be covered."
Since the radium poisoning cases in New Jersey (see The Survey,
May i, 1932, page 138) many advocates of occupational disease
compensation have held that this type of law is not adequate in
modern industry where processes change over night. They urge
that the law be made to cover any disease arising directly out of
occupational hazard. The Pennsylvania commission points out
however that "occupational disease legislation should recognize
that accidents happen at a given point of time with a particular
employer, that occupational diseases are frequently of slow
New and Useful
INDUSTRIAL TRENDS IN WISCONSIN, by Edwin M. Filch and Ruth
L. Curliss. University of Wisconsin Bulletin No. 1890.
A PRELIMINARY survey to determine whether there is any
basis "for hopes of future industrial decentralization in
Wisconsin" which throws much light on some of the practi-
cal aspects of this much-discussed development.
REVIEW OF THE ECONOMIC COUNCILS IN THE DIFFERENT
COUNTRIES, by Eili Lindner. Prepared for the Economic Committee of
the League of Nations. Price. 75 cents from the World Peace Foundation,
4O Ml. Vernon St., Boston.
A DETAILED study that shows the variety of, in many
respects, the weakness of efforts so far made to organize
"the economic aspects of government," as well as the
great need for such organization.
EMPLOYE MAGAZINES IN THE DEPRESSION. Industrial Relations
Section, Princeton University, Princeton, N. J.
THE use of employe magazines as a channel of communica-
tion between management and workers, based on a study
of six hundred such publications.
OPERATING RESULTS OF MANUFACTURING PLANTS IN
MINNESOTA, 1926-30. by George Filipetti, William Dachtler, Judson
Burnett. University of Minnesota Press, Price, $1.00.
AN example of the kind of spade work that must precede
intelligent economic planning in this country.
THE OCCUPATIONAL PROGRESS OF WOMEN, 1910-1930, by Mary
V. Dempsey. Bulletin of the Women's Bureau No. 104. Price 10 cents,
Superintendent of Documents, Washington.
A SURVEY of the change in the number and occupational
distribution of women workers in this country in the last
two decades.
230
THE SURVEY
June 193'
development, clear up and recur and that special provisions fitted
to this difference in character must be made."
After a survey of the problems in connection with chronic
incapacitating miners' asthma, one of the chief industrial hazards
of the anthracite coal regions, the commission recommends a
special study by the U. S. Bureau of Public Health Service in
cooperation with employers and workers in the industry.
Blind Alleys and New Roads
HOW chances for wage-earning have shifted in recent years is
shown in a detailed study of occupational trends in one
center (Occupational Trends in New York City. National Oc-
cupational Conference, 522 Fifth Avenue, New York. Price, 50
cents). Covering more than a hundred professional and occupa-
tional groups and using United States Census data, this study
seeks a basis for answers to such questions as:
Are there too many facilities for the training of bookkeepers, too few
for salespeople? Which of the skilled trades are obsolescent? Do the pro-
fessions and the personal service occupations offer relatively better
prospects than the factory or the farm? In what fields of employment are
new emergent occupations to be sought? Where can economies in voca-
tional training be effected with least damage to the careers of young
people now in school? What new facilities for adult occupational read-
justment are most imperatively needed today? Which lines of employ-
ment will probably offer the best opportunities in 1936?
The report is detailed and practical. It shows, for example, the
drop in the number of tailors and dressmakers in the last decade,
the decrease in the proportion of men clothing operatives in the
wage-earning population, the marked increase in women opera-
tives in that industry. The number of milliners has dropped
steadily since 1910. There is, apparently, a relatively small but
steady demand for bakers, barbers, carpenters and painters. The
drop in the number of draymen, teamsters and carriage drivers
is almost exactly made up by the number employed as chauffeurs,
truck and tractor drivers between 1910 and 1930. The report is
not only practically useful in the occupational area it pictures,
but a model for similar and much needed studies in other centers.
BECAUSE of the difficulty of raising funds, plans for the summer
school for office workers at Oberlin have been revised. A two-
weeks institute has been substituted for the four-weeks session
first laid out. There will be courses in economics and literature
focused "on the significance of changing economic and social
conditions." Recreation will include summer sports, dramatics
and handcrafts. The institute is being organized by the Affiliated
Schools for Workers, 302 East 35 St., New York City.
WAGES During the Depression, by Leo Wolman, a significant
study in brief compass is included in Bulletin No. 46 of the Na-
tional Bureau of Economic Research (51 Madison Avenue, New
York) published last month.
THE federal child-labor amendment was ratified last month by
the Michigan and New Hampshire legislatures. This makes eight
states that ratified in 1933, and brings the total to twelve.
THE Bryn Mawr Summer School for Women Workers in Industry,
completing plans for its thirteenth session, invites college under-
graduates to take part in the Fourth of July week-end. The guests
will occupy dormitory rooms, attend classes, meet the faculty
and the students, recruited from factories all over the country,
and for a time become almost a part of the regular campus routine.
ALARMED by reports of magazine salesboy abuses, the National
Child Labor Committee (419 Fourth Ave., New York) invites
civic groups to cooperate in a survey of the actual situation and
in dealing with any problems uncovered. Practices which should
be reported are described in a memorandum prepared for national
distribution, and available without cost through the Committee.
Unemployment and
Edited bf
JOANNA C. COLCOR1
and RUSSELL H. KURT:
"Shelter Allowances"
NEW plans continue to be tried out for dealing with the vexel
question of rent. From Wisconsin comes the term "shelttl
allowance," coined by the Industrial Commission. The procedurl
adopted in April is as follows:
(1) "Shelter allowance" shall be based on the general principle of paJ
ment of taxes, insurance, and upkeep costs. The definite formula to tl
followed is:
First: Use 1933 tax bill as a base.
Second: Add fire and windstorm insurance cost, not to exceed 10 pel
cent of the taxes.
Third: If property is occupied by more than one family, use the pnl
portion which the occupancy by the relief family bears to the tot I
resident capacity of property.
Fourth: Add the upkeep cost which shall not exceed $36 per year for!
family unit. The Relief Agency shall use the utmost discrimination I
scaling down this $36 maximum in relation to the assessed valuation J
the property, probable repair costs, etc.
Fifth: Divide the sum so obtained by twelve to obtain monthly "she!
ter allowance" for the family.
(2) The size of the house or apartment shall be in accordance with til
number in the family. One room per person is suggested although tl
Relief Agency may vary this, especially in case of small or very larj
families.
(3) Allowance for shelter shall be among the last items of the famiil
budget to be assumed by the Agency; as long as a family has any inconl
at all, that income should go toward rent, even though the Agency muli
supply groceries or other necessities.
(4) The home visitor shall decide each month whether or not sheltil
allowance shall be given a family, keeping in mind the provisions in par;|J
graph (3).
A special Rental Bureau is proposed in Baltimore to be set ul
under the Committee on Unemployment Relief, to take over froi:
the relief agencies all dealings with landlords. This Bureau wi I
secure complete data as to the property, its financing, the tal
situation, etc. If this shows that the landlord stands in need (U
rent payments, a rate will be figured out to cover taxes, grounl,
and water rent, with a possible addition up to 50 percent of tr|
sum thus arrived at.
The province of Ontario has adopted an even simpler ind
vidual formula. To the actual taxes levied on the property tli
preceding year, the relief authorities add 50 percent, and dividl
by twelve to obtain the monthly relief rental to be paid to th
landlord. A maximum of $15 per month is observed.
Wilmington, Delaware, prefers a flat sum for all relief rental
The average assessed valuation of properties lived in by familit
on relief was found to be #1300. Average fixed charges were est
mated to be:
Taxes ................................................. $ 28.fl
Water rent ........................................... 1 1 ..]
Mortgage of $650 at 6% ................................. 39-c|
Repairs and depreciation ................................
Insurance ............................................. 4-'~
Total carrying charges per annum or $9. 03 per month ......... #108..
On the basis of this formula, $9 was established as a maximui'
rent. If properties are valued at less than $1300, the rent allowejj
is proportionately reduced.
Ohio has just passed an "indigent tenant" law the effect <.
which is to remit taxes in monthly installments not exceeding
$10, to landlords housing indigent tenants and willing to accej
such sums in full satisfaction of the rent. Decision as to who '
June 1933
THE SURVEY
231
Community Action
This department is an emergency information
service to public officials and to members,
executives and supervisors of citizens' com-
mittees. News of interesting developments will
be gratefully received by the editors, Russell
Sage Foundation, ijo East 22 Street, New York
indigent lies in the hands of the clerk of the board of county com-
missioners, unless the municipality designates some other "offi-
cial, individual or corporation not for profit" to make the investi-
gation. Considerable apprehension has been expressed that this
new channel of relief is improperly safeguarded in the law.
Subsistence Gardens
THE Illinois Emergency Relief Commission has issued a pam-
phlet by J. C. Ready, director of subsistence gardens, on
The Growing, Conservation and Use of Vegetables, which covers
ground left untouched by this Department's pamphlet on Com-
munity Programs for Subsistence Gardens. (See the Midmonthly
Survey, April, 1933, page 170.) Soil, fertilizer, garden technique,
and the eradication of pests make up the first part; recipes for the
preparation of vegetables as food and directions for canning and
drying the second. A third section gives directions for the culture
and use of individual vegetables.
Springfield, Illinois, is setting as its goal the harvesting of
enough cabbage, beans and root vegetables from its 124-acre
community garden to supply the needs in this line of all families
on direct relief, for a period of forty-four weeks after the harvest.
In addition, the men who work in the large-unit garden will be
assigned individual plots and encouraged to raise and can green
vegetables for their own tables.
Out on "The Coast"
THE new relief administrator of California has won the first
round with Los Angeles County authorities, removing the
power of assignment of men to work-relief jobs from the County
Bureau of Employment Stabilization and placing it in the County
Welfare Department. Future RFC funds allotted to Los Angeles
County will be spent for the relief of destitution and not simply
for the relief of unemployment. Destitute persons, in the defini-
tion of the administrator, are "those without food, shelter, cloth-
ing or medical attention, even though they may hold equities in
their homes." The County Welfare Department must, however,
in future, determine their eligibility to work relief.
Sales Tax Voided
rpHE state sales tax, under which Illinois hoped to obtain
*• forty million dollars a year for unemployment relief and for
aid to the schools was unanimously pronounced unconstitutional
on May 10 by the State Supreme Court, because it exempted
gasoline, and farm produce sold direct; and because of the ap-
propriation being set up for a dual purpose. About five million
dollars has already been collected under the law, which may have
to be refunded.
'Township System" Defined
AT THE 1933 sessions of the Indiana legislature, the statutes
relating to outdoor relief were amended in a number of
particulars:
Public aid is limited by definition to food, fuel, clothing and shelter.
Such aid shall be contingent upon the applicant's performance of what-
ever work is offered to him by the overseer of the poor.
An affidavit supporting the applicant's contention of need is required.
For the first time, the township overseers of the poor are authorized to
employ "investigators and other assistants" and to fix their salaries "at
not to exceed $4 per day, payable from the township poor fund." Investiga-
tors must qualify by standards established by the Governor's Commis-
sion on Unemployment Relief.
Indiana's backward system of relief administration through
township overseers of the poor has thus been better implemented
although the essential weakness of petty political domination
remains. This weakness may be somewhat overcome in future by
the more active participation of the Governor's Commission on
Unemployment Relief, created by legislative act at this same
session. Its duties are "to adopt and execute measures to relieve
the unemployed and to coordinate and assist the several agencies
of the state which are engaged in such relief." It is charged with
the responsibility of administering such federal aid as the gov-
ernor secures and has, in addition, a state fund of two million
dollars at its disposal for relief purposes in the ensuing sixteen
months.
This state has received $5,1 19,886 from the RFC since October
28, 1932.
Another State Organizes
MARYLAND applied for its first federal aid in April and re-
ceived $153,530 to supplement, for a time, the local relief
programs. At the same time the legislature approved a bond issue
of $i 2,000,000 for Baltimore's use in refunding relief expenditures
from early 1932 to the present and to carry that city's program
into 1935. It also created, by transfers within the state budget, a
$3,000,000 fund which is available for relief use at the option of
local governments.
Provision has been made for a state relief administration to
begin functioning next October. In the meantime the governor's
advisory commission, in collaboration with the Board of State
Aid and Charities will exercise supervision. These groups have
secured the services of a special representative from the Family
Welfare Association of America to assist in preparing the local
units for an enlarged part in the program under the projected
state plan.
Baltimore's relief load totaled 23,153 cases in March of which
17,341 were on work relief at cash wages of $2.40 per eight-hour
day. The average work-relief wages per man per month were
slightly under $25. The work-relief bureau, operated by a joint
committee from the agencies and the city administration, has
aggressively extended its program and has given over one million
man-days of work to the unemployed of this city in its first year's
operation.
The private agencies continue to render investigational and
relief service in the joint program, the city government providing
the relief funds with the aid of the state. While there is no public-
relief department in this city, the Mayor and his finance officer
have participated in the determination of policies in increasing
measure during the past year. A Mayor's committee, headed by a
prominent banker, serves as the coordinating body between the
public and private groups.
Emergency Conservation Work
APPROVAL of the "forest expeditionary force" method of
•**• handling the problem of the unmarried young men with
dependents has been widespread among the relief agencies of
states and cities. The prospect of wholesome occupation for this
group has apparently taken a load off the mind of agencies help-
less in the face of this peculiar problem. And, they report, their
spirits have been gladdened by the eagerness with which the op-
portunity to enroll has been accepted.
The greatest difficulty — for there were bound to be some, of
course — has been the fear on the part of parents that the proj-
ect was a new and disguised form of militarism. In a series of
bulletins issued throughout April and May, the United States
232
THE SURVEY
June 1933
Department of Labor has taken pains to dispose of this bogey.
It should be emphasized that the fact that a man goes to a United States
Army recruiting station for enrolment does not mean that he joins the
army .... The machinery of the army recruiting stations is used because
it is the most convenient and most effective way of handling the enrolment.
. . . The man does not enlist or become a soldier. He does not become
liable to military law.
And in another section: "The men will be civilians and will be
treated as civilians. There will be neither military drill nor mili-
tary discipline."
Reports are general that the men gladly make the allotments,
averaging $25 per month, from their pay to their families.
On the whole, the project has had a good "press." There have
been some instances, it is true, of criticism because automobiles
were in evidence at the camps on visiting days, or as a result of the
misconduct of a disgruntled or indiscreet minority. These in-
stances have been rare, however, and of minor significance.
A feature writer for The Chicago Daily News summarizes his
impressions thus:
What these lads will make of themselves remains to be seen. When
they set about the work for which they enlisted they may find loafing
at home more agreeable. There may be desertions — even mutiny. But I
doubt it. I think they are going to enjoy the practical communism of camp
life, and profit by it. I think they will be turned back to society in better
health, better educated and better equipped for the job of being a citizen.
What the Chests Are Facing
THE St. Louis drive for $600,000 to support the twenty-odd
group-work agencies not included in the recent United Relief
Campaign, fell afoul of the banking holidays and came to a beT
lated demise in April with only $280,000 pledged.
In Cincinnati, the Chest campaign for $2,000,000 ended on May
i with $1,817,000 pledged by the public, of which $500,000 is for
relief purposes. Two hundred thousand dollars of the goal was to
have been for unemployment relief service, an item which the
county has since accepted, leaving the Chest with a net oversub-
scription of $17,000.
Chests generally have been contemplating the outlook for their
fall campaigns with some misgivings in view of the depleted re-
sources of subscribers and the questioning on the part of the pub-
lic as to why it is asked to give since the federal government has
assumed so large a share of the burden. In this connection, one
Ohio paper says:
What is likely to be the effect of this action (federal aid) upon relief
methods in the future? What can it be except to make it tremendously
more difficult to persuade citizens of local communities to meet their own
needs, through the "community chests" which have wrought so effec-
tively during recent years?
But a more discerning editor in the same state says:
A new and really informed campaign of charitable need should be taken
to the people during the remaining months (before the fall campaigns).
It will no longer do to make sweeping appeals for funds to "feed the hun-
gry." It is well known now that the community funds are not feeding the
hungry. Tax funds are doing that.
Sound effort to make people understand the supplementary job of pri-
vate social work has been too largely suspended. Reeducation of the pub-
lic in the essential social services will have to be carried on. Prospective
givers to community funds must be made to see that if they do not partici-
pate in being a good neighbor, a good counsellor, a guide to children, a
promoter of recreation, and a builder of human morale, the sorely pressed
weaker portion of the society of the cities and towns is literally going to
rise and overwhelm all society in some kind of an explosion.
Reorganization in Louisiana
THE Louisiana Unemployment Relief Committee passed out
of existence in May and was supplanted by a new Emer-
gency Relief Administration, established by proclamation of the
governor. At the same time the New Orleans Welfare Committee
ceased to function and turned its task over to the county unit of
the new administration.
This reorganization involves little immediate change in state \
policy but in New Orleans it was accompanied by a reduction of i
the daily work-relief wage from $2 to $1.50 per day. The relief i
program in this state is almost exclusively one of work relief and i
the rate of pay in New Orleans has, in the past, been a subject of I
considerable controversy between the NOWC and its clients. New
Orleans has paid fifty cents per day more than the rest of the state, <
drawing upon proceeds of a local bond issue to do this. It has
tried on several occasions to lower its rate to the general state \
level, but has always met with resistance from organizations of \
the unemployed. The exhaustion of this bond issue on May i,
coinciding as it did with the reorganization in administration, has j
resulted in the differential being wiped out in spite of opposition. I
The new administration declares its intention to see that "the I
weekly and monthly levels of relief per family are not decreased \.
below the amount needed for each family in each case. To that \
end, the matter will be worked out by increasing the number of i
days per worker where that is necessary to maintain the standard i
of relief properly needed in each case, and where any further relief •
is needed and properly grantable, it will be given by way of direct i:
relief in food and clothing."
In the Keystone State
THE Pennsylvania Legislature adjourned May 6 after eighteen
weeks devoted to what the press of the state terms a "hope-*
lessly muddled session." "The Old Guard of the Senate made
practically a perfect record in heading off social legislation," :i
says one editor; while a correspondent declares that "their biggest
blunder was on relief. When the entire $90,000,000 program is
analyzed it is discovered that the legislators really provided only j
$13,000,000 (for relief for the biennium) of which they are abso-
lutely sure." Seven million of this was appropriated by special
legislation in the early days of the session to keep the relief pro- >
gram from collapsing during April and May.
At one stage of its deliberations the legislature was almost per- i
suaded to approve a bill delivering the unemployment relief
function back into the hands of the politically-controlled poor
boards, but this step was averted, and the State Emergency Re-
lief Board with its county units continues as the administering
agency.
The SERB in April gave the Philadelphia County Board spe-
cial authority to continue using retail grocers as food sources, thus
ending a long discussion over the wisdom of installing in that
county a commissary of the "community market" type made
famous by the State Board's sponsorship. The agreement was in
the nature of a. compromise, the Philadelphia board agreeing to is-
sue food orders restricted to foodstuffs making up the balanced
ration approved by the state board.
"Back-to-the-Plow"
* I ''HE South has its own peculiar problems in relief administra-
•*• tion, due to the quasi-feudal system which prevails in the
rural areas. During the past winter, plantation field hands by the
hundreds of thousands were allowed by the planters to be
cared for by the state relief administrations through work relief
financed by RFC funds. To the citizens of the southern states, this
type of relief employment has come to be known as "working for
the RFC," an expression that vies with being "on the Cross,"
which dates from Red Cross flood-relief days.
When the planting season approached this past spring, land-
owners began to worry about getting their tenants back to
work. Efforts have been made by the relief administrations ever
since February to cut down the relief rolls in the interest of get-
ting men back to their plows. (See this department for April.)
That these efforts have not been entirely successful is indicated by
news dispatches from some of these areas. A Mississippi paper
says:
State officials had hoped to discontinue all relief work by May i, but
floods, late cold weather and other unforeseen contingencies have made it
L June 1933
THE SURVEY
233
necessary to continue work of the State Board of Public Welfare, and a
new loan will be sought from the federal government for May and June.
On May 6, the RFC made $218,925 available for the first half
of May.
From South Carolina comes word that the relief administration
of that state has ruled that no county relief council may employ
farm laborers or tenants on work relief without the signed ap-
proval of his landlord. "Otherwise," says the ruling, "serious inter-
ference with farming operations is inevitable."
"Complaints have been made in some of the coastal counties
where summer crops are being planted," says a South Carolina
paper, "that laborers and tenants have refused to return to the
tilling of the soil and chosen instead to work for the RFC (sic)
for cash wages. "
Recreation
RECREATION and Unemployment is the title of a valuable
handbook just issued by the National Recreation Associa-
tion, 315 Fourth Avenue, New York (25 cents). It is devoted to
"suggestions for community groups who are trying to meet the
need of the unemployed for activities which will fill their leisure
hours happily and constructively and will help in maintaining
courage and mental and physical well-being."
Columbus, Ohio will use unemployed men and girls as umpires
and scorers on its ninety-five public ball diamonds and tennis
courts this summer, under the direction of the public recreation
department. Hundreds of other men will be kept occupied on
work relief in custodial and maintenance capacities.
A downtown settlement in St. Louis has developed an enlarged
program for the boys and girls of that district by the use, on
work relief, of unemployed men and women referred from the re-
lief agencies. One man who had spent forty years with the circus
instructs the youngsters in the art of tumbling; a commercial
artist teaches cartooning; a draftsman directs a wood-working
department. Other unemployed people supervise the game rooms
and gymnasium.
Work Relief Ended in Ontario
THE ambitious program under which during the past two
years the Dominion, the province, and the municipalities
have split the expenses of large work-relief programs three ways,
has been discontinued, following the issuance of a survey and
report on Unemployment and Relief in Ontario, 1929-1932, by
the Unemployment Research Committee of the province; and of
the Campbell Report, so-called, made by the advisory committee
on direct relief to the provincial government. The latter report
states:
Your committee accepts the view which it believes now widely prevails
that all normal governmental works enterprises should be dissociated from
relief planning and administration. It is believed that any services planned
for or rendered by persons receiving relief, in consideration of such relief,
should be provided and administered separately from and independently
of ordinary public-works programs.
The municipalities are now reimbursed only for direct relief
expenses. Relief officers are given discretionary powers in requir-
ing able-bodied heads of families to work in return for relief re-
ceived, though they may not pay cash wages. The Dominion still
conducts road and forest camps where single men, from quotas
assigned to each province, work in return for maintenance and a
little spending money.
Direct relief, which formerly included only food, fuel, clothing,
1 footwear and shelter, has been extended to cover medical service
and medical supplies, payment for these services being no more
than one half the standard medical charges existing in the local-
ity. During the few months this provision has been in effect, how-
ever, dominion and provincial relief administrations have had
to meet such unexpectedly heavy demands from the municipali-
ties for reimbursement for medical care, that the whole plan is up
for re-examination.
Soft-Coal Misery
MACHINE AGE IN THE HILLS, by Malcolm Ross. Macmillan. MS pp. Price, i2
postpaid of The Survey.
MALCOLM ROSS spent last winter in the hills and hollows
of Kentucky and West Virginia and has written a moving
account of the miners themselves, with soft-coal mining as the
sooty backdrop of his story. In his pages the people come alive, as
does the squalor of their homes and the meagerness of lives which
for years have been at the mercy of a disorganized, over-expanded
industry. Like a strand of hope running through the tale of idle-
ness, ignorance, dirt, hunger, conflict, dispossession, fortitude,
misery, is the work of the American Friends Service Committee.
For into the soft -coal camps, the Quakers have come as they did
to war-stricken Germany and Russia, feeding and clothing the
children, serving as a link of sympathy and communication be-
tween the baffled communities and the outside.
The greatest help that could be offered the miners, the writer
submits, would be to stabilize their industry through controlled
production and rational sales practice, at the same time giving
the men the protection of a forward-looking union. He outlines
the tentative Quaker program of small local industries or farming
projects, organized as supplements to mining.
Casting about for some means to hasten the slow processes of
social evolution, Mr. Ross suggests an application of the British
penny-a-ton plan. The three million dollars a year which such a
tax would produce in this country would be used, he suggests, for
health education and medical care, instruction in trades, initiat-
ing new industrial projects in the soft-coal region, better school-
ing, books. Mr. Ross concludes:
During this winter — and the next — American newspapers will occa-
sionally carry items telling of bloodshed at a coal tipple. In glancing at
them remember that the incidents are merely surface indications of a deep
despair engendered by a vast social injustice. Profound modern issues are
concealed in this prosaic penny-a-ton plan borrowed from English ex-
perience. The American people, charitable but careless, have an oppor-
tunity to act.
BEULAH AMIDON
Lynching and Its Cure
THE TRAGEDY OF LYNCHING, by Arthur F. Rater. University of North Caro-
lina Press. 499 pp. Price $2.50 postpaid of The Survey.
A^L students of government must welcome this careful, schol-
arly study under the auspices of the Southern Commission on
the Study of Lynching, made up of members of both the white and
Negro races, by this young Georgia white scholar who is field
secretary of the Commission on Interracial Cooperation. It is
always difficult for the student of mob violence to arrive at
exact facts, and the careful research which is here presented
gives one a satisfying sense of finality.
Lynchings are, of course, not merely crimes against an in-
dividual, they are crimes against the state and challenges of our
ability to carry on the orderly processes of government. Depress-
ing as are the frightful details which have so frequently accom-
panied lynchings, the book gives one hope as it analyzes the kind
234
THE SURVEY
June 193'-'
of persons who make up the mob — mostly irresponsible, prop-
ertyless people, young men between eighteen and twenty-five
(with exceptions, of course). In no examined case in 1930 was a
man with a college education a member of the mob with one
exception, and he was a man who within six months had been
liberated from an insane asylum.
The explanation why almost no lynchers have ever been pun-
ished by local courts, that a lynching is the product of community
standards and consequently will not be condemned by that com-
munity, is a successful appeal to reason; and the step beyond
which suggests that a prevented lynching which spares the lives
of the mob has done nothing more than restrain would-be mur-
derers from becoming actual murderers, while the next step of
mob-compelled court proceedings, described as "legal lynchings,"
without any of the real atmosphere of intelligent judicial pro-
cedure, are helps to the thinking of the most unwary.
The depression in which we have been struggling has brought
out clearly the economic clash between the two races, when jobs
have so frequently been taken from Negroes and given to whites;
but the economic clash during slavery when at no time did more
than 45 percent of the white population of the South own any
slaves, with the consequent economic bitterness between the
slaves who did work that the poor whites might have been paid
for, is nowadays not so well known, but with this fact in our
minds it seems less startling.
The note of cheer in the book is the evidence which the analysis
contributes of faith in education and the spread of intelligent
influence, of attention to health and economic opportunity, and
one graph traces the comparative lines of the price of cotton and
the prevalence of lynching. Mr. Raper's conclusion that "lynching
can and will be eliminated in proportion as all the elements of the
population are provided opportunities for development and are
accorded fundamental human rights," leaves one with a sense of
the spur of hope to redemptive endeavor.
New York City L. HOLLINGSWORTH WOOD
Father William
LIFE BEGINS AT FORTY, by Waller B. Pitkin. McGraw-Hill. 175 pp. Price $1.50
postpaid of The Survey.
THIS book is not facetious as the title might suggest nor is its
chief value limited to those who are just crossing the forty-
yard line in their race from the cradle to the grave. Perhaps the
greatest service it can render is to those past the forty-year line.
The author says: "I think it highly probable that the very year
which brings the first marked decline in physical energy — namely
the thirty-seventh or thirty-eighth — normally lifts our practical
intelligence to its final high level. ... At twenty he was frittering
away horsepower on some jackass scheme. At forty he manipu-
lates every mouse-power so that it does the work of a hundred
horses."
To many of us the chief interest lies a considerable distance up
the road from the point at which Mr. Pitkin says life begins, and
it is recommended as a stimulating tonic to those who have
reached their intellectual and philosophical maturity at fifty,
sixty, seventy or eighty years and who at that point are equipped
to enjoy the harvest of a life not misspent.
The fear some have expressed that with a decreased birthrate
and the consequent increase in the average age, society would be-
come ultraconservative or static is delightfully refuted by the au-
thor who says, "Well, my friends, history refutes you. It is the
old men who are the radicals and the young men who are the
sappy conservatives."
The author believes the early future will greatly increase the
absolute and relative number of upper-grade people throughout
the world. He does not look upon the present depression as an un-
mixed evil. "The great crash of 1929 appears to have been marked
the beginning of a new era in which the nit-wits steadily lose
ground to the best minds." It may reassure the readers of The
Survey that the author finds ample opportunity for the further
exercise of their function. "Social welfare work calls for an in-
determinable army of advisers, inspectors and other mature as-
sistants for the solving of poverty, crime, bad housing and oui
many other social problems."
We can go forward then, those of us who begin to live at forty
feeling that we are just well on the way and the years ahead wil
be an upgrade toward the delectable mountains rather than a
downgrade into the valley of death. OWEN R. LOVEJOV
Secretary the Children's Aid Society of New Tork
A Sociologist Views Industry
INDUSTRY AND SOCIETY, A Sociological Appraisal of Modern Industrialism
by Arthur J. Todd. Holt. 626 pp. Price, $3.75 postpaid of The Survey.
I"N times of hopelessness prepare for hope, might well have been
-*• a subtitle to Professor Todd's new volume. He is appraising
the impact of industrial life on society as a whole and his account-
ing covers the whole gamut of critical comments about modern
economic organization with some. portions of which everyone is
familiar. Here, however, all the items and all the points of view
are arrayed together so that he who reads may weigh. It is a
valiant achievement in synthesis with the scales clearly tipping
toward the hopeful side. To be sure, the book gives evidence of
having been largely conceived and executed before the depression
had become so severe, so that the worst aspects of prolonged hard
times hardly get their due. Yet, even so, the discussion of the
business cycle gives a perspective on the problem which is wise
and heartening.
Professor Todd is definitely a meliorist, an evolutionist who
would test, experiment and hold fast to that which is good. His
reading of the facts is world-wide; yet it may fairly be questioned
whether he takes sufficient account of the peculiar disabilities of
a capitalist economy and of the class alignments and conflicts
that it seems inevitably to entail. More attention might havei
been paid to the problems of conflicting economic interests, —
how they arise, their spiritual no less than economic consequences*
and how greater unity of interests is to be achieved. In other
words, the only danger in a volume of this scope is that the facts;
will obscure what scientists are calling the frame of reference.!
The question of how the data are being viewed is, of course, as
important as what data are under examination. And on this score
I feel the author is not too clear.
This is a needed book. Its documentation alone is exceedingly
useful. Its perspective is large, liberal and humanistic in the
best sense. The study might, however, have had a little more bite
and cutting edge if the author had not tried quite so hard to be
dispassionate! ORDWAY TEAD
New Tork City
Why Zoning Has Failed
URBAN LAND USES, by Harland Bartholomew. Harvard University Press. 174 pp.
Price $3.50 postpaid of The Survey.
IN this fourth volume of the Harvard City Planning Studies,
Harland Bartholomew, pioneer city planner, gives the results
of his years of exploring in the field of zoning. Based on an original
study made within the last five years of sixteen self-contained and
six satellite cities, Mr. Bartholomew finds that, founded originally
on the desire of certain better residential districts to obtain pro-
tection, and on the recognized need 'by municipal authorities to i
curtail enormous losses brought about by uncontrolled growth,
zoning has not succeeded in producing either objective. And as
a means whereby the health, morals and general welfare of the
community can be promoted, perhaps its prime purpose, zoning
has to a large extent been a failure. Why? Mr. Bartholomew con-
cludes that zoning has failed because usually it has been based on
inaccurate and/or insufficient information. Which fact points the
way toward his suggested solution. There are definite limits to
the amount of land which can and will be used for various pur-
poses, definite laws of absorption or norms for single-family
dwellings, multi-family dwellings, parks, playgrounds, industrial ,
uses and other purposes. A study of conditions in these typical
communities indicates this but shows that a scientific, reliable
technique may be devised whereby a workable zoning system
can be created. By comparing specific figures in any city under
Consideration with the norms he works out for these cities it
should be possible to arrive at a satisfactory norm for future
rrowth.
Information as to how to proceed to make the necessary sur-
veys, what facts and conditions must be audited so as to arrive at
a program for the best use of the land considering the best inter-
ests of the community consistent with individual rights, are
clearly outlined in this volume. While not primarily concerned
with economic values, Mr. Bartholomew's prescription should
appeal to the pocketbook nerve of all property owners, for as he
says, "Accurate analysis will eliminate the most serious future
zoning difficulties by allotting the proper and reasonable propor-
tion of urban land to each required use, according to a pattern
best suited to local needs in each city, while unbalanced allocation
can only result in decline of property values in districts which are
zoned for uses for which they can never be utilized."
Even in 1933 it is still a problem as to how to put the long ac-
cepted principle of zoning into practice. Mr. Bartholomew's book
answers the many questions involved. LOULA D. LASKER
Youthful Promise
SFVKN PSYCHOLOGIES, by Edna Heidbreder. Century. 42S pp. Price $3 postpaid
of The Survey.
THIS is a handy volume presenting the different viewpoints
which are responsible for the seven brands of psychology
which are most popular in America, even though at least three,
structuralism, gestalt and psychoanalysis, are European im-
portations. With primary interest in their effect upon the develop-
ment of psychology, the author has aimed to present each system
as a unit and has offered her views on them in a reasonable manner
without too much destructive criticism. Her presentation 'in-
dicates the difficulties in harmonizing the various appeals and
psychologic angles despite some similarities, and likewise the
difficulty of proving or disproving many of the factors of dif-
ference. It cheers the troubled spirit to read that the significant
fact about psychology is that it is young and that it may be
growing, "that it has both the rawness and promise of youth, and
that it is in the very midst of the struggle for that command of
tools and materials which is characteristic of the mature science."
The author has presented a readable, non-technical and useful
book which should answer many questions for those who are
struggling to fit the scheme of human behavior into one category
of psychological thought. IRA S. WILE, M.D.
A>;f York City
RUN OF THE SHELVES
A DESCRIPTIVE LIST OF THE NEW BOOKS
EDUCATION ON THE AIR 1932, edited by Josephine H. MacLatchy. Ohio State
University. 367 pp. Price $3 postpaid of The Survey.
RADIO AND EDUCATION 1932, edited by Levering Tyson. University of Chicago
Press. 306 pp. Price $3 postpaid of The Survey.
PROCEEDINGS of two conferences on radio and education bring
together summaries of going experiments with adult education
on the air, the possibilities in such applications of this new means
of communication, and the obstacles in the way of radio's de-
velopment as an educational agency.
BUNKLESS PSYCHOLOGY, by Herbert Hungerford. illustrated by Ruth W. Hunger-
ford, The Green Lamp League. Pages 114. Price $1 postpaid of The Survey.
THE author gives an exposition of the methods which he has found
helpful to himself in establishing mental equilibrium after being
shattered on the rocks of his own personal conflicts. Bunkless
psychology is one which meets one's own personal needs and
adjustments. It enables one to regulate his own affairs while
facing honestly the realities of life, with formulations in terms of
BOOKS THAT LIVE ON
FOR THE SOCIAL WORKER
The Dynamics of Therapy
IN A CONTROLLED RELATIONSHIP
By Jessie Taft, A.B., Ph.D.
Shows in concrete detail how the relationship between
therapist and child is initiated, developed and brought to
constructive termination. The therapist's part in the treat-
ment contacts is as fully and frankly recorded as the child's.
THE MACMILLAN CO.
New York
S3. 50
"A decade hence there will be Socialists who will turn to it in assessing the views of
the present period."
Socialist Planning and a
Socialist Program
A Symposium edited for the L. t. D.
by HARRY W. LAIDLER, Ph.D.
With an Introduction by Norman Thomas
$2.00
"Sets up a concrete goal toward which an increasing number of intelligent men and
women may strive." — • The Call of Youth
"Interesting to all who are interested in Government. — Montgomery, Ala.,
"A penetrating look at the present American economic tangle." — Columbia
Missouria n
FALCON PRESS, Inc., 330 West 42nd St., New York, N. Y.
DIRECTORY OF SOCIAL AGENCIES
NEW YORK
39th ed.
1932-33
A consolidated, classified and descriptive directory of social
agencies serving the City of New York. The handbook of
social workers, teachers, doctors, lawyers, donors, and others
in need of information as to the social service resources of
New York. For fifty-one years one of the activities of the
Charity Organization Society.
850 pages Cloth $3.00
Published by the
CHARITY ORGANIZATION SOCIETY, 105 East 22nd St., New York
Studies in the
Practice of Social Work
No. 1. INTERVIEWS — A Study in the Methods of Analyz-
ing and Recording Social Casework Interviews. $1.00
No. II. SOCIAL CASEWORK — Generic and Specific. A
Report of the Milford Conference. $1.00
No. III. SOCIAL WORK ETHICS — Lula Jean Elliott.
$.50
AMERICAN ASSOCIATION OF SOCIAL WORKERS
1 30 East 22d Street, New York
(In answering advertisements please mention THE SURVEY)
235
Some Basic
Statistics in
Social Work
PHILIP KLEIN
with the collaboration <>/
RUTH VORIS
Derived from data of family agencies in the
City of New York, and published for the New
York School of Social Work, here is the result
of a pioneering enterprise in the use of stutis-
tics for the study of social work.
Considerable advance beyond the present
practice of "muddling through" can and must
be made. This book is a notable step forward,
accomplished through the facilities of four
major welfare agencies. It is full of valuable
data, the usefulness of which will not die soon.
$3.50
COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY PRESS
29*0 BROADWAY, NEW YORK CITY
CO MM UN 1C A TIONS
faith and reading, and the acquisition of the power of serene
tolerance and self-control.
JOB INSURANCE, by John B. Ewing. University of Oklahoma Press. 263 pp. Price
$2.50 postpaid of The Survey.
LIKE so much of the output of the University presses, this book is
unnecessarily academic and hard to read. But for the persevering
reader genuinely concerned with experiments in compulsory
public unemployment insurance in this country, there is much
valuable material here. Particularly useful is the analysis of the
"Wisconsin plan" and the "Ohio plan" and the comparisons
drawn between the principles and the practical applications of the
two types of legislation.
THE PLANNED COMMUNITY, with Analytical Charts of American and European
Housing. Architectural Forum, 220 East 42 Street, New York City. Price 25 cents.
THANKS to the Architectural Forum, the reproduction of the
photographs of the twenty-five charts presented at the recent
architectural exhibit in New York of American and European
low-cost housing projects are now available in pamphlet form.
Each chart — which it may be recalled included pictures of good
and bad housing and explanatory material (see The Midmonthly
Survey, March, 1933) — is given a full page. This pamphlet is an
unique and invaluable manual to the teacher and student of
housing.
CHRIST IN THE BREADLINE, by Kenneth W. Porter, Seymour Cordden Link,
Harry Elmore Hard. The Driflwind Press, North Montpelier, VI. 27 pp. Price 50
cents, paper; $1 in boards, autographed, postpaid of The Survey.
THESE "poems for Christmas, Lent and other Holy Days" were
first published in December 1932 but the interest they aroused
rapidly exhausted the first edition. In a foreword to the second
edition, just issued; John Haynes Holmes welcomes them "for
their spirit of pure and lofty idealism and searching criticism of
our so-called Christian civilization." The poets have contributed
to Poetry, Plain Talk, The Saturday Review of Literature, Unity
and have appeared in several anthologies.
Saved by Insanity
To THE EDITOR: Against the background of the prison-refor
chapters of Ann Vickers, why doesn't one of your criminoloj
experts do an article on the Ruth Judd case in Arizona? A tube
cular psychopathic woman commits murder and is sentenced i
hang. Prison life and the contemplation of her fate aggravate hi
mental condition to such an extent that the warden, opposed
capital punishment, has her tried for lunacy and the jury finds h<
insane. She is committed to the State Hospital until such time i
she regains her sanity, when she is again liable to hanging,
seems that even the public in the West (where "stringing thei
up" was popular enough with the '49ers) sees something ami:
here. In California, the lower house passed a bill to abolish capit;
punishment, but it lost in the Senate in spite of support by won
en's clubs, civic bodies and other groups.
CALIFORNIA
The California Cooperatives
To THE EDITOR: There is something to be added, I think, to tl
discussion between Professor Burgess and Miss Robbins regarc
ing the Unemployed Cooperatives as found in your April Mic
monthly issue. From some contact with representative associa
tions of this kind in Los Angeles County, we conclude:
a. That the families on the cooperative list are unable
obtain enough assistance from the cooperatives to maintain them
selves.
b. That a considerable proportion of the families are receivin
assistance from the public and private social agencies. Clearin
with the Social Service Exchange a list recently submitted, w
found that this percentage was over 75. The list may not hav
been fully representative. The men and women on their list als
are receiving (and very properly) their proportionate assignmen1
of work relief on RFC and city funds.
c. It is a fallacy to assume that the group in the cooperative
is new to receiving relief. The same clearing with the SSE showec
many of them had been known for years.
d. The movement in spite of these qualifications is significan
and valuable primarily because of the effect on the morale o
those participating. It gives them an outlet for energies and ;
feeling that, as Mr. Christoffersen says, "We are doing for our
selves and not waiting for others to care for us." Secondarily
there is some return in food and other salvage which helps evet
if it does not obviate the relief from public and private agencies
SEWARD C. SIMON:
Executive Director, Community Chest and Council of Social Agen
cies, Pasadena, California
A Plan to Oust the $5 Dress
To THE EDITOR: This might better be addressed to your waste-
basket because it is written by an ignorant layman and it wil
soon find its way there. But as a would-be conscientious shoppei
I want to ask a question about these bad working conditions
among garment-makers that was smoldering in my mind ever
before you published Miss Perkins' recent article about the $5
dress, a question which was further stirred up by Miss Schneider-
man's recent meeting to consider the use of a garment label.
At present there seems to be no possible way for us to learr
whether we are buying clothes made under proper conditions, if,
as I am told, a high price is no guarantee. Why cannot some such
procedure as the following be developed ? (pending more thorough
measures) : Let the conscientious retailer who believes that hii
things are properly made say to the state and federal labor bu-
(In answering advertisements please mention THE SURVEY)
236
ius, "We believe that the garments we sell are made under
od conditions. We should like you to carry out a thorough in-
ection of the places where they are made and report to us. If
u find good conditions, as to hours, pay, etc., we should like a
itement from you to that effect which we may use in advertis-
;." Instead of, or together with, a signed and dated testimonial,
; government authorities might supply a symbol to be used as
placard on the street, like the ubiquitous Bell telephone sign or
smaller forms on tags or labels.
Of course such a scheme would be open to abuse, but what
orm is not? After a dozen retailers, or even a smaller number,
d won the right to display such a statement or symbol, the
iscientious shopper, buying a garment anywhere, could ask
easantly), "Has this store had its garment shops inspected?"
d a little later the inquiry could be, "Why does this store not
ve the government labels showing that these garments are
ide under proper conditions?"
Meanwhile all the welfare agencies would have their hands full
educating the shoppers to raise the question and to favor the
umended shops. I hear that our indifference is the chief hin-
ince to better conditions.
[f the inspectors inform my conscientious retailer that condi-
ns are not as they should be, he may either reform or do noth-
;, in which latter case things would at least be no worse than
:y are now.
It seems to me the retailer must and can take the initiative if
: government will meet him halfway. Or perhaps it lies first
:h such agencies as The Survey to persuade the retailer to act.
ere would be no use in having the federal or state bureaus offer
pection and reward if no desire for it had first been aroused.
a; York City G. W. BARNES
As to Morale
THE EDITOR: We are becoming quite acutely conscious as
ial workers of the mental-hygiene aspects of the relief problem,
'eral recent articles in The Survey make some reference to this
'blem, as for example, Shock Troops of the Settlements in the
luary Midmonthly and in the same issue a review of Dr. Pratt's
ent pamphlet Morale. Probably most of us are ready to grant
.t if the unemployed person is to keep some measure of neces-
y self-respect he must not be blamed as an individual for his
ure to make the normal work-adjustment. We recognize the
ial nature of the maladjustment, and that it must be met by
ial measures. However, to quote Dr. Pratt, "social workers are
;d with an immediate factual situation which must be dealt
h as they find it, leaving to others the task of fundamental
ial reconstruction."
\rc there not implications here which need to be thought
t:ough? Should we — indeed can we — develop any very effec-
K; mental-hygiene procedures for maintaining the morale of the
k:mployed in the immediate situation without direct facing of
|:'se problems of "fundamental reconstruction"? For example,
liat part are the unemployed themselves, as an economic group
ill as an integral part of that larger group which comprises all
!vj labor with hand or brain, to play in achieving a more equi-
I: le social order? To deny an important political function to the
fu-mployed is to challenge the very basis of our allegedly demo-
fctic society. Perhaps as we face the economic and political
Clitics of the total situation we shall come to realize that the
Ijividual unemployed man, when he stands alone, is indeed
filmed to a very real frustration with its attendant unhealthy
Iherness and blind resentment — and that our techniques may
I) igate slightly but can never remove the causes of that frustra-
1 :i. Experience has already shown however, as witness The
fi'vey accounts of development in Chicago and elsewhere of
* ntaneous organizations of the unemployed, that where even a
Kill beginning is made in encouraging cooperative efforts at
»-help and group expression, morale is greatly improved.
J t is probable that within the next few months and years we
11 see a growing realization by the unemployed that in union
(In answering advertisements pit
237
SURVEY READERS ARE CORDIALLY
INVITED TO THE
JUNE CONFERENCE
League for Industrial Democracy
at Camp Tamiment, Forest Park, Pa.
(near Stroudsburg)
Thurs., June 22nd to Sunday, June 25th, 1933
Subject:
A NEW CONSTITUTION
FOR AMERICA
Speakers: Norman Thomas, Paul Blanshard, Karl
N. Llewellyn, Louis Waldman, Felix Cohen,
Lewis L. Lorwin, Alfred M. Bingham, Broadus
Mitchell, John Chamberlain, Peter H. Odegard,
Luther Evans, Phillips Bradley, Paul J. Kvale,
Isador Lubin, C. A. Hathaway, Nicholas Kelley,
Harry W. Laidler, Henry J. Rosner, Jesse H.
Holmes, J. B. Matthews.
For further information write
League for Industrial Democracy
112 East 19th Street
New York City
Qflrje Untoersttp of Cfjtcago
jferliool of Social &erbtce 3i>mim0tratton
Summer Quarter
First Term, June 19-July 21
Second Term, July 24-Aug. 25
Academic Year, 1933-34
Autumn Quarter, Oct. 2-Dec. 22
Winter Quarter, Jan. 2-Mar. 23
Spring Quarter, Apr. 2-June 1 3
Courses leading to the degree of
A.M. and Ph.D.
Qualified undergraduate students admitted
as candidates for the A.B. degree
Announcements on request
•use mention THE SURVEY)
238
THE SURVEY
June 1*
and solidarity lies their strength and their only opportunity for an
effective voice in solving their own problems. Situations of con-
flict and tension are certain to arise, as indeed they have arisen
already in hunger marches and demonstrations. The problems
raised for the social agency and worker may be increasingly dif-
ficult and will have to be met pragmatically in terms of concrete
situations. But are we prepared to grant, in terms of our own
mental-hygiene philosophy, the potential therapeutic values to
the unemployed themselves of group action when intelligently
directed into constructive programs? And as social workers must
we maintain strict neutrality or may we, as the Chicago settle-
ment workers are doing, assume some responsibility for directing
these movements into constructive channels? May this come to be
indeed our most important mental-hygiene function?
Tankers, New York FLORA DAVIDSON
Whither Social Workers?
To THE EDITOR: Mr. Hodson in your April Midmonthly has
written a minister's sermon on social workers in a changing world,
and to the superficial eye the impression is gained that social
workers are aware of the fact that the world is changing, that they
have ideas on the subject and that some of them propose to do
something about it.
With respect to the nature of the change, it is pertinent to in-
quire what Mr. Hodson really means by saying that we "are
shifting from individualism as a way of life to collectivism . . .
from too great insistence upon the ways and means of profit to
the ideals of public welfare and more widespread human happi-
ness. . . ." If Mr. Hodson discerns these glad tidings upon the
horizon let him tell us more about them. To many of us it seems
as though we have never had as much individualism as we have
right in our midst today. And where is this collectivism? Mr.
Roosevelt, at Washington, closes eighteen thousand banks and
opens some thirteen thousand ten days later, cuts federal salaries
15 percent and herds 250,0x30 boys into reforestation camps under
a military regime. Is this collectivism, or is it the beginning of
fascism? What ideals are prompting boss-ridden legislatures to
pass minimum-wage laws for women and children that are jokes?
What signs are there that our economic system "seeks to provide
for the ordinary man and woman the necessities of life, security
and satisfaction?" Where is this "awakened public conscience"
that has given an "impetus" to the "establishment of unemploy-
ment reserves, health protection and other forms of social insur-
ance?" What have become of the unemployment-insurance pro-
posals and promises that filled the air before our late election? We
have been studying unemployment insurance since 1930. What
else remains to be known about it?
The question arises as to whether Mr. Hodson has examined
carefully the basic assumptions that lie behind his proposals. He
calls for "collective action through voluntary cooperation,"
and explains that "effective cooperation often means a reeduca-
tion of the cooperators with modifications of attitudes, emotions
and customary habits of thought." Earlier Mr. Hodson speaks of
the inevitability of "fundamental changes in the present order of
things." Well, are social workers to effect these fundamental
changes? By cooperation, with the bankers and the industrial-
ists? And are the bankers and the industrialists going to be co-
operated out of the dividends and interest that give them a vital
stake in the present order of things? What do you mean, coopera-
tion? Are we social workers going to modify the attitudes, emo-
tions and customary habits of thought that are part and parcel
of a profit economy?
Community machinery for collective thought and action " must
be democratically organized and free of external controls. . . ."
Whose collective thought? Certainly not the fifteen million un-
employed. Social workers and board members? They may not
know it, but they are rapidly fading out of the picture. Ninety
percent of unemployment relief comes from tax-supported funds.
Relief machinery is controlled by local politicians, responsible to
state legislatures and ultimately to the federal government.
How democratically organized and free of external controls
these agencies of government? What kind of "bold and constr
tive" and "planned" action are councils of social agencies going
take in a period of rapidly falling income and standards? W
sort of community "leadership" is a council of social agen>
really providing?
Well, what does it all mean, if I am not naive?
PHILIP Lov.
To THE EDITOR: The substance of Mr. Lovell's letter seem
be that the world is in a sorry plight, that little is being done ab
it, and that we are not on the way to better things.
There is no question that widespread suffering exists and t
relief is tragically inadequate. How much greater that suffei
would have been but for the labor and devotion of social work
Mr. Lovell will perhaps appreciate if he is familiar with the re
history of the past four years. The part that welfare agencies ;
their central councils have played in forcing upon city and st
governments the major responsibility for emergency relief i
matter of record, and the effort to improve standards of admi
tration and to secure larger appropriations goes on continuou
. . . It was the social workers who led the fight for federal grai
in-aid to the states for unemployment relief. That they are
content with merely remedial relief measures the record of
hearings on the federal bill will show. The real problem centers
the way out of our present chaos. We are proceeding on the the
that our existing institutions can be reorganized in an ord<
and rational way. It takes time to alter the thought and actioi
a whole nation which has come reluctantly to a realization t
its accepted principles of economic organization are faulty am
need of substantial revision. To those who are willing to fol
the road of reconstruction there are signs of encouragemi
These signs are minimized or ignored by those who would sc
the present economic order and substitute something new.
What indications are there that a new ferment is at we
First of all there is a healthy criticism of the capitalistic systen
current books, magazines and in the press, coupled with sug|
dons for fundamental reforms in industry which are now m
widely accepted than ever before. Wherever men congregate t
are discussing proposals for economic planning and indust
reorganization which a short while ago would have been regar.
as visionary or worse. President Roosevelt and his administral
are, in my opinion, courageously leading the way toward a r
dispensation. The progress made on federal relief, stimulatior
huge public works, a national system of unemployment exchan
and the regulation of production and of hours and wages in
dustry is indicative of a real concern for the welfare of all
people and gives promise of helpful results.
Within the year Wisconsin has passed the first unemploym
reserve act and Ohio has an excellent report from its Commiss
on the subject, although no bill has yet been reported out
Committee. In New York, Maryland, Minnesota and Utah
unemployment reserve bill was passed in one house of the leg!
ture. In all, twenty-six states, mostly industrial, have had
subject under discussion. Mandatory minimum-wage bills w
on the statutes this year in New York, New Jersey, New Har
shire and Utah. California already had such a law. The first
providing allowances for aged persons was passed about ten ye
ago. Now some twenty-four states have some such provision
Granted that action on urgently needed legislation is be
delayed by the opposition of selfish interests, the fact rema
that there has been distinct progress during the year.
These are a few of the reasons why I think there is still h<
for a "new deal" within the framework of American institutic
I have no illusions about the fact that we have only made a
ginning and I recognize the delays and difficulties that lie ahe
I do not think they could be eliminated under any proposals
a new order that the American people will accept. We have
ideal choice, our present reliance must be in experiment «
adaptation. WILLIAM HOD;
Executive Director, Welfare Council of New York City
June 1933
THE SURVEY
GOSSIP:
of People
and Things
No Difficulties
PICKED from the incoming mail of parole
officers and relayed by the sprightly news-
letter of the United States Probation System:
"I am not working at present and so face no
difficulties."
"Charles is all right. He has married himsel
a wife and is still living with no difficulties."
"Days employed, none. Wife employed and
we live with my parents and face no difficul-
ties."
"Days employed, seven. Duties, taking care
of a cow and three pigs. No difficulties."
"Dear Judge, I surtinly thank youse for my
payroll and if I ever do get in any difikulties
1 hope youse dont ketch me."
As an expression of appreciation and esteem
to Amos W. Butler, its earliest living ex-
president, the American Prison Association has
published in a dignified brochure the speeches
made at the dinner given in his honor at the
Prison Congress last fall in Indianapolis, in-
cluding with them a sheaf of congratulatory
messages received on that occasion.
GEORGE Aubrey Hastings whose assign-
ment by President Hoover to the follow-up
work of the White House Conference carried
him up and down the map last year, has re-
turned to New York where he has been ap-
pointed assistant secretary of the newly created
State Milk Control Board. He will be in charge
ot the Board's New York City office.
CHICAGOANS by the hundred turned out on
May 22 for the civic dinner arranged by the
Friends of the Juvenile Court as a trib-
ute to the Hon. Mary M. Bartelme, retiring
judge of the Cook County Juvenile Court.
Edward L. Ryerson, Jr., was chairman of the
dinner committee.
QUAKER common sense holds that the basis
for constructive action is understanding. There-
fore the Friends have for years worked steadily
to enlighten us on the troubled question of race
relations, particularly Negro-white relations,
in this country. To this end they are organizing
a four-weeks' institute to be held at Swarth-
more College in July with lectures and round-
tables on aspects of the problem and techniques
of dealing with it. Quaker thrift makes it possi-
lilc for a fee of $75 to cover room, board and
tuition. Opportunities for summer recreation
are included. For further information write the
Institute of Race Relations, 20 South 12 Street,
Philadelphia.
THE offices of the President's Conference on
Home Building and Home Ownership have
been moved from Washington, D. C., to 42
Broadway, New York. James Ford, editor of the
conference publications, is in charge.
THE Survey herewith bows its appreciation
to the public-health nurses of Cleveland who,
according to Virginia Wing of the Brush Foun-
dation, are addicted to it to an extent only
• surpassed by their own professional journals.
Miss Wing's check-up of the reading habits of
the city health department nurses showed that
6 1 percent of them read Public Health Nursing;
59 percent, The American Journal of Nursing;
14 percent, The Survey and 9 percent, Hygeia,
while a sprinkling of interest goes to some half
dozen small publications.
No longer will tongues twist — much — over
the alliterations of the Association of Com-
munity Chests and Councils. It's now, if you
please, Community Chests and Councils, Inc.,
the Inc. by grace of incorporation under the
laws of the State of New York. Along with a
new name comes a new president, John Stewart
Bryan, newspaper publisher of Richmond, Va.,
who succeeds J. Herbert Case of New York.
Mr. Case has been trying to resign for a year
and only now succeeded.
ANOTHER newly amended name is that of the
American Association for Old Age Security,
Inc., henceforth the American Association for
Social Security, Inc. The fact that the fight for
old-age assistance is half won with laws in
twenty-five states, led the Association at its
recent annual conference to broaden its front
to take in unemployment and social insurance
of all kinds and to amend its name to fit its
new program.
"From Alms to Welfare"
D Y one of those accidents that seem to hap-
-*-* pen occasionally in the best regulated
editorial families The Survey's article on the
reorganization of the Newark, N. J., Depart-
ment of Public Welfare (see From Alms to
Welfare, The Midmonthly Survey, April 1933,
page 149) failed to mention the motivating
drive of Joseph P. Murphy, chief probation
officer of Essex County, in converting into
reality the hopes of social workers for a strong
integrated public department. Mr. Murphy,
long a protagonist for reorganization, served
the department as consultant during its first
crucial year and originated many of the struc-
tural and administrative changes which were
basic to the reorganization. Since then his ac-
tive interest has been a continuing factor in the
department's development. The Survey is
grateful to Mr. Murphy's friends for calling its
attention to the mischance which failed to
credit him with his contribution to a situation
which was full of credit for every one concerned.
OUT of the record: The nurse assigned to
follow up this boy found that he had a stomach
ache. As a result of her work he was operated
on for appendicitis.
THE Rome State School, New York, an-
nounces its eighteenth annual summer school,
from July 5 to August 16, for a variety of
special courses having to do with retarded and
mentally deficient children. Details from Dr.
Charles Bernstein, Rome, N. Y.
A MEMORIAL not in terms of marble or
granite but in the forces of life itself has been
envisaged by the Madison (Wisconsin) Social
239
Workers Club for Lena K. Schmidt, director of
the Public Health Nursing Association of
Madison, who was killed on March 5 when her
car was struck by a train as she was returning
from visits to patients. The Club is endeavoring
to raise funds from organizations and individu-
als to put on a permanent basis the fund for
codliver oil for needy children of the city which
Miss Schmidt herself started in 1931.
FOR the third summer in a row the National
American Red Cross is offering teacher training
courses in home hygiene at the University of
California, Pennsylvania State College, Colo-
rado Agricultural College and Syracuse, N. Y.,
University. Applicants must be registered
nurses. For date and details query I. Malinde
Havey, American Red Cross, Washington,
D. C.
CALIFORNIANS will have the chance this
summer to imbibe some of the mellow wisdom
of Dr. Richard C. Cabot of Boston who has
accepted the invitation of the University of
California to give two courses in social ethics
at the summer school. Mrs. Cabot, formerly a
teacher at Wellesley, will accompany him to the
coast and will give a series of seventeen public
lectures on the psychology of childhood and
youth.
PAUL S. Bliss has retired as executive secre-
tary of the St. Louis Chapter of the American
Red Cross, to which he was appointed a year
ago, and will devote himself to writing. He is
the author of several books of verse, has been
identified with social work publicity both in
Minneapolis and St. Louis, and is a past-chair-
man of the National Social Work Publicity
Council.
THE Children's Welfare Federation, New
York, will conduct its seventh annual training
course for camp counsellors from June 22 to 25
at Northover Camp, Bound Brook, N. J. Karl
D. Hesley of Henry Street Settlement will be
the director. Details from Dr. M. Alice Asser-
son, 386 Fourth Avenue, New York.
IN the impressive twenty-three page Repre-
sentative Bibliography on Social Planning
published in the March issue of Social Forces,
The Survey was gratified to find itself listed
in all but two of the twenty-two classifications
with, by quick count, sixty-odd references in
all. What it doesn't understand is how it got
left out of the Forestry Division. Is it possible
that someone couldn't see The Survey for
the trees?
Big Birthdays
TN its spacious country setting, vibrant with
*• the beauty of Connecticut in May, the
Children's Community Center of New Haven,
Byron T. Hacker executive director, celebrated
its hundredth anniversary with a pageant, The
Crusade for Children, which — Chicago take
notice — might well have been called A Century
of Progress. In a dozen scenes and interludes it
depicted incidents of a forward march, which
began in 1833 when "the little white house in
Grove street" was opened by The New Haven
Female Society for the Relief of Orphan and
Destitute Children, and which "was seldom to
flag and never to cease." Officers, staff and the
whole family of some 350 children had a gor-
geous time acting in the pageant and joining
240
in the general rejoicing over the auspicious
beginning of the second hundred years. The
pageant as well as a history of the five hundred
years, was written by Willard E. Solenberger
who, very much of a person on his own account
incidentally, is the son of Edwin D. Solenber-
ger of the Philadelphia Children's Aid Society.
Now here's another even bigger birthday,
the i3Oth of the Newark Female Charitable
Society, which began when New Jersey's largest
city was a little country village. Originally the
society boarded out a few summer children
with nearby farmers. It now maintains modern
nutrition camps where several hundred under-
nourished children are treated annually. It
also conducts a day nursery at its building 305
Halsey Street which is likewise headquarters
for clinics of the Department of Child Hygiene.
In fact the only thing dated about the society
on its I3oth birthday is its name, and this
chronicler is just sentimental enough to hope
that the Females never change it.
NOT so big, but certainly not to be sneezed
at, is the birthday of the Yonkers, N. Y.,
Charity Organization Society which on June
9 turned the half-century mark. "We're not
having a celebration," says Julia V. Grandin,
the general secretary, "but we're not over-
looking emphasis in our publicity." The Yonk-
ers COS took to the field just six months behind
its next-door neighbor, the New York COS.
The Buffalo society is the matriarch of the
clan, antedating the others by almost four
years.
DR. Justin Miller, picked by the North
Carolina Conference for Social Service as its
new president, is a veteran at the job. He was
president of the California Conference of Social
Work in 1929-30 before going to North Caro-
lina as dean of the law school of Duke Univer-
sity. N. C. Newbold of Raleigh and Mrs. E. M.
Land of Statesville are the new vice-presidents,
J. S. Holmes of Raleigh the treasurer and Ger-
trude Weil of Goldsboro the secretary.
The Ordeal of Osborne
TT'S a bad time to get a book published as
•*• anyone knows who read Robert O. Ballon
on The Social View of Book Publishing in Sur-
vey Graphic for May. But in spite of the
general cagyness of the commercial publishers
there is a good chance for Frank Tannenbaum's
The Ordeal of Thomas Mott Osborne to come
out provided that social workers and others
who realize its importance will bespeak their
copies in advance of publication. The North
Carolina University Press, Chapel Hill, N. C.
will publish it as soon as it has orders for 250
copies. Orders for 125 are already in hand, with
125 still to go. The University promises a
volume of 320 pages of its usual high standard
of typography and binding, dedicated to George
Foster Peabody with an introduction by Frank-
lin D. Roosevelt. The price is $3. Survey read-
ers have already had a taste of the stuff the
book is made of in the series of articles on
Thomas Mott Osborne by Mr. Tannenbaum
which appeared in Survey Graphic in 1930-31.
THE American Association of Schools of Pro-
fessional Social Work has compiled a statistical
report on students in its twenty-four member
schools at the end of 1932. The three largest
enrolments are: New York, 521, of whom 163
are full-time; Chicago, 435, full-time 169;
THE SURVEY
Fordham, 361, full-time 46. Graduate students
at the New York School number 417; at Chi-
cago, 294 and at Fordham 83. The School at
the University of Minnesota has the largest
number of students from other departments
electing courses in social work, 172 of its total
enrolment of 319 being so classified.
NEW officers of the Connecticut Conference
of Social Work are: president, Bessie Wessell,
Connecticut College, New London; vice-
presidents, Mrs. Edward Eggleston, New Lon-
don, Walter H. Wheeler, Stamford, Mrs. Ed-
win A. Ross, Norwich, Leroy A. Ramsdell,
Hartford; treasurer, Ralph Mattison, New
London; chairman of the 1934 conference,
Rev. R. J. O'Callaghan.
Versatility
TETTER received by W. H. M., New York:
•^— ' "I am very much interested in Miss
So-and-So. Can you not give her a position on
the Emergency Work Bureau? She would make
an excellent investigator or would be good as a
caretaker in one of the city comfort stations."
JESSE O. Stutsman, a penologist of national
reputation, died recently in Lewisburg, Pa.,
where he was conducting a training school for
officers at the federal penitentiary. He had
been superintendent of the Detroit House of
Correction, the Pennsylvania State Prison at
Bellefonte and at the time of his death headed
the Federal House of Detention in New York
City.
CLEVELAND has borrowed from Boston
Sybil Foster, educational director of the
Massachusetts Society for Mental Hygiene,
and Edith L. M. Baylor of the Children's Aid
Society to make a survey of the functions and
intake of its children's protective agencies.
UNDER the vigorous leadership of Forrester
B. Washington, director of the Atlanta School
of Social Work, a movement is on foot to pro-
mote an annual conference on tuberculosis
among Negroes in Georgia. Mr. Washington's
committee, with which Dr. J. P. Faulkner
secretary of the Georgia Tuberculosis Associa-
tion is associated, grew out of a meeting of
Negro leaders held at the school and sponsored
by the GTA which faced the facts of tubercu-
losis among Negroes in the state and sought
means for its control.
JOHN Henry Williams of the Department of
Economics at Harvard University has been
elected Nathaniel Ropes Professor of Political
Economy, succeeding to the chair long and
honorably held by William '/. Ripley. Profes-
sor Williams, an authority on banking and
currency, has previously been connected with
Princeton and Northwestern University. Pro-
fessor Ripley retired with the rank of professor-
JUST fifteen years after she completed its
organization and became its first executive
secretary, Virginia M. Chetwood announced
her retirement from the Bergen County, New
Jersey, Tuberculosis and Health Association.
When Miss Chetwood started in 1918, the only
way to get examinations of suspected cases of
tuberculosis was to have them made by the
county physician in his office in the county
jail. By 1920, tuberculosis clinics, a first objec-
June 1933
tive of the Association, were opened, and five
years later they were turned over as a going
concern to county control. School nursing was
inaugurated by the Association in thirteen
communities, then taken on by local boards of
education. Red Cross nursing service, started
in 1924, was first directed by the Association
and now has its own directorate. The Associa-
tion now maintains a county-wide educational
program. The fifteen pioneering years under
Miss Chetwood's leadership have seen the
happiest form of service of the voluntary
health agency — demonstrations so vivid that
one by one they become a going part of general
community life. Miss Chetwood was succeeded
on May I by Gertrude Eckhardt, formerly
educational secretary of the Association.
THE American Society for the Control of
Cancer has removed its lares and penates from
25 West 45 street, New York, to the new Rocke-
feller Center, 1250 Sixth avenue. At its recent
annual meeting the society elected Dr. George
H. Bigelow of Boston as president and Dr.
James Ewing of New York as vice-president.
Dr. James B. Murphy of New York is chair-
man of the board.
ON account of an ailing budget the Public
Charities Association of Pennsylvania has had
to part company with Elsie H. Lawrence since
1928 associated with its Child Welfare Division
and active in the formulation of its Ten -Year
Program.
What Next Department
A LADY instructor at a school which shall
be nameless — you'd be surprised — has
told a waiting world that her research indicates
that what every home really needs is miniature
grand opera, with all conversations between
parents and children carried on in song or
chant. "Parents should carry on a dialog in
song with their children. The uninspiring tasks
of dressing, face-washing, going to bed, spinach-
eating and tooth-brushing will become a
pleasure and gain new gusto and zest when
made the subject of a singing game."
Might be an idea here for staff meetings, or
even board meetings when gusto and zest
begin to flag.
PUBLIC health lost another of its pioneers
recently, Dr. Charles Oliver Probst who died
at the age of seventy-five at his home in
Columbus, O. He was the founder of public-
health administration in Ohio and laid down
the fundamental policies under which the de-
partment grew and prospered for forty-seven
years. At the time of his death he was superin-
tendent of the Franklin County Tuberculosis
Sanatorium and member of the Public Health
Council of the State Department of Health.
MARTHA L. Hawkins, whose nursing experi-
ence has carried her from coast to coast, has
joined the staff of the Northern Westchester
District Nursing Association, New York.
"CAN we do business with you on the barter
basis?" wrote the Rochester, N. Y., Council of
Social Agencies to Paul L. Benjamin in Buffalo.
"We want you to lead a discussion on certain
sections of the Study of Social Trends. Natu-
rally we have no money, but if you will come we
will trade you a Rochester speaker the next
time you want one."
Vol. LXIX. No. 7
MONTHLY
July '933
CONTENTS
FRONTISPIECE Early Drawing by Charles Dana Gibson 242
PARTNERS IN A NEW SOCIAL ORDER. . .Gertrude Springer 243
PLANNING FOR A GOOD LIFE Frank J. Bruno 244
MOBILIZE FOR THE NEW DEAL William Hodson 245
PRIMITIVES OF A NEW AGE David Cushman Coyle 246
THE FEDERAL RELIEF JOB Harry L. Hopkins 247
TRAINING PUBLIC WORKERS 250
A CENTURY OF WELFARE Helen Cody Baker 251
I THINK I'D BETTER CALL THE NURSE. .. .Mary Ross 253
A FARM PHILOSOPHY E. L. Kirkpatrick 255
RELIGION AND MENTAL HYGIENE
Charles F. Read, M.D. 256
VOLUNTEER AMONG THE VETERANS
Gladys E. H. Hosmer 257
THE COMMON WELFARE 259
UNEMPLOYMENT AND WAYS OUT 261
BOOKS 264
COMMUNICATIONS 268
XXSSIP. 270
Files of The Survey will be found in public and college libraries. All
ssues are indexed in the Readers' Guide to Periodical Literature. Ask
he Librarian.
SURVEY ASSOCIATES, INC.
Publication Office, 10 Ferry Street, Concord, N. H.
..'/ Office, 112 East 19 Street, New York, to which all correspondence
should be addressed.
THE SURVEY— Monthly— §3.00 a Year
SURVEY GRAPHIC— Monthly— $3.00 a Year
Lucius R. EASTMAN, president; JULIAN W. MACK, JOSEPH P. CHAM-
ERLAiN, JOHN PALMER GAVIT, nice-presidents; ANN REED BRENNER
rcretary; ARTHUR KELLOGG, treasurer.
PAUL U. KELLOGG, editor.
ARTHUR KELLOGG, managing editor; MARY Ross, BEULAH AMIDON,
.EON WHIPPLE, JOHN PALMER GAVIT, LOULA D. LASKER, FLORENCE
.OEB KELLOGG, GERTRUDE SPRINGER, associate editors.
EDWARD T. DEVINE, GRAHAM TAYLOR, JANE ADDAMS, JOSEPH K.
IART, HAVEN EMERSON, M.D., ROBERT W. BRUERE, JOANNA C. COL-
ORD, contributing editors.
MOLLIE CONDON, circulation manager; MARY R. ANDERSON, advertising
tanager.
SO THEY SAY
There is absolutely no financial problem. — John P. O'Brien,
Mayor of New Tork.
This is a great country. You never know where our heroes will
come from. — Will Rogers.
Methodist ministers form the most unbulldozable group in
modern society. — Dr. Henry Crane, Scranton, Pa.
They tell me the Rockefellers ain't doing any too well these days
either. — Kid Williams, New Tork taxi-driver.
In general, wherever I went I found civilized people unhappy
and anxious, and uncivilized people happy and carefree. — George
Bernard Shaw.
The radical who is forever raising questions is not popular
socially, but nevertheless we need him. — Bishop Francis J. McCon-
nell, Methodist Episcopal Church.
I believe that our system should be revised by economists with
an eye for facts, not by prophets with the gift of visions. — Ellen
Glasgow, Virginia, in The Nation.
Control of money and constant association with money is
perhaps the most demoralizing of human occupations. — Nicholas
Murray Butler, president, Columbia University.
Our idea of prosperity is a front-page story telling that all secre-
taries of unemployment relief organizations had been thrown out of
work. — F. P. A. in New Tork Herald-tribune.
The reason liberalism hasn't made more progress is because one
liberal would so much rather carve up another liberal than to carve
up a conservative. — Harry Elmer Barnes, New Tork.
The fools who talk nonsense have probably done no more
damage in the world than the eminently practical men who oppose
all prophets as fools. — Rev. Ralph W. Sockman, New Tork.
The democracies have acquired the ambition for an ordered
society long before they have organized and disciplined themselves
to establish such a society. — Walter Lippmann, Neva Tork.
For the first time in many weary months the figures show a drop
in unemployment. There are many hopeful signs, especially those
reading "Help wanted." — Howard Brubaker in The New Torker.
Back of Congress is the body politic which must be regarded
as ultimately responsible for any economic order we may have. —
James H. Williams in Human Aspects of Unemployment and Relief .
We would get better results from our schools if we paid one
tenth as much attention to a teacher's scholarship and ten times as
much to her aptitude. — Elizabeth Miller, Detroit housewife.
An experience like the one we are now living through shows that
social trends, like human beings, have a way of running out of
breath and sitting down to rest. — New Tork Times editorial.
I know of nothing more degrading to the honest workman than
to be put on a made-work job and to be handed a food order for
pay. — William B. Rodgers, Pennsylvania State Emergency Relief
Board.
Our old tool, the price system, has had a long trial and has been
quite successful in overcoming the most ingrained weakness of
human nature — namely, sloth. — Philip Cabot in The Atlantic
Monthly.
The brutal fact is that we have reached a point in human history
at which the virtue of benevolence will have to take a distinctly
secondary position when compared with the virtue of justice. —
Paul Hutchinson in The Forum.
Do you think there will be an end to all this? Oh yes, presently,
when the human race uses its brains on its own upkeep as well as it
uses them on inventing gadgets and trying to get something for
nothing. — Mary Ware Dennett, Astoria, N. T.
Sunrise, as I see it, is a time when all the things we have been
stumbling over come at last into plain sight. . . . When I speak
of a new day I mean that it is time to wake up and go to work. —
Edward A. Filene, Boston, to the International Chamber of Commerce,
Vienna.
// was only a generation ago that the Gibson Girl as Lady Bountiful was a fair picture
of what the public saw in social work. Even the more recent "social stretcher-bearer''
status is a far cry from the social work of today, an established profession aware of
the economic causes of calamity and alert to new measures making for the better life
July
J933
Volume LXIX
No. 7
Partners in a New Social Order
The National Conference of Social Work Bears Witness to What It Knows and Believes and
Steps Out on a New Course
By GERTRUDE SPRINGER
EADS up, eyes forward, three thousand men and
women went out of the Detroit meeting of the
National Conference of Social Work with a sense
partnership in shaping a changing order. Gone were the
fears that stalked the meeting two years ago when social
.vork shrank from the unpredictable; gone was the do-or-
iie spirit with which it faced the confusions of only a year
Dack. It was no longer a little band whose accepted func-
:ion was that of social stretcher-bearer, but a responsible
jrofession with a full-sized job to do in the projects for
lational recovery and with the capacity and the determina-
:ion to do it.
It was a grand conference but it was no place for clois-
:ered souls. "Social philosophies are sterile unless they are
oined to social action," resounded all over the place. The
erment was not in the realm of ideas, but in the field of
iction. "It's our job to do something about this cock-eyed
•vorld we've known about for years. The time to start is
low. Come on, let's get going."
The conference started quietly enough. Though there
.vas talk of yeasty risings among the groups holding earlier
lessions there was little to indicate, that first hot Sunday
light, that this was going to be different from other con-
erences. But through a long week of crowded meetings,
"\th professional aspirations emerging as accomplish-
nents and with leadership as a tangible fact, resolution
leepened and strengthened and a new crusading spirit
vas born.
In the cheers that rang out of the Statler ballroom at
hat last session, so loud and long that they aroused
somnolent taxi-drivers in the street outside, you could
ilmost hear the trumpets and see the banners. The gavel,
is it passed from the retiring president, Frank J. Bruno,
to the new one, William Hodson, was like a torch. The
address of Harry L. Hopkins, federal relief administrator,
brought to focus every urge that had stimulated the confer-
ence during the long crowded week. "Relief is no longer
playing a lone hand. It is one of the great forces of the
government marching with other forces to effect the re-
covery of our people."
Mr. Hopkins spoke to the crowd that filled every nook
within reach of the amplifiers as simply and directly as he
would have spoken to a friend. "This is our job, we have
been asked to do it and we propose to do it." Here was no
remote person, but one of themselves, who had come up
through experience comparable to theirs, who spoke their
language and who was as eager as they to do the immediate
job and to get on to something better. ". . . and believe
me he meant it," is likely to be heard in many a city and
town in the weeks ahead while the new concept of relief
administration is taking form. For many a social worker
wondering how to carry back home and translate into her
own situation the vigor and urge of the conference found
her answer at that last meeting.
As an experiment this year the program committee of
the conference set back the presidential address from the
opening night until the final evening session, on the theory
that this address would then round up the preoccupations
of the conference, clarify its concerns and focus its direc-
tion. The idea was good, but in practice it robbed the
conference of much of the sense of leadership which it
draws from its president and made him less a figure to the
whole conference than he has a right to be and as his
franchise for leadership requires him to be. Mr. Bruno's
scholarly address, striking with reason and clarity at the
roots of social workers' problems and hopes, would, it
243
244
THE SURVEY
July 19331
Planning for the Good Life
BY FRANK J. BRUNO
"1X7HEN 10 to 20 percent of the families of the nation
' live only where they are told to live, in houses not
of their own choosing, are clothed with hand-me-downs
that violate self-respect, are compelled to eat what is given
them and in many instances are moved from place to place
without having any voice in their own disposition, democ-
racy has been about as completely destroyed as it has ever
been in any status short of slavery. . . .
We are working not in a world of poverty but in one
of great potential wealth and our eyes are fixed on a society
where the vast potentialities for production may be geared
into the common good. It is infuriating to be forced to
demonstrate that commissaries are brutal; we are impatient
with the defeatism of "share-the-job" and "back-to-the-
land," with their eyes fixed on lower and yet lower stand-
ards of living till the very souls of men become as lead. We
know we live in an age in which all of that is unnecessary;
that a kind of life, measured at least in the produce of the
machine and conditions of labor, is possible that would
place all definitely beyond any economic hazard. And we
shall insist that any planning in which we have a part shall
take into account these new and rich possibilities which the
toil and invention of our forebears have handed down as
their gifts to this generation, and that it shall lead to higher
and better standards of living for all who participate in the
work of the world.
seemed to many people, have carried farther had it fallen
on fresher ears than those that heard it after almost a week
of concentrated listening.
He denied that the social sequellae of industrial disloca-
tion are a new problem : " Unemployment, starvation wages,
deplorable housing conditions, child labor with its sequence
of illiteracy, delinquency and hopeless adult years have
been the dark shadows which no prosperity could out-
distance." He pointed out the lag in law and ethics that
has widened the gap between physical and social progress,
mapped out the road to "the far distant goal toward which
we are headed," and inventoried the devices by which
social work might share in "the conquest of industry's
perennial disgrace."
The conference opened on a keynote of solid, substantial
economics. Welcomed by Tracy W. McGregor, chairman
of the Detroit committee, and greeted briefly by Mr.
Bruno, the delegates heard Harold G. Moulton, president
of the Brookings Institution, blame the depression on the
maldistribution of wealth and appraise the possible meth-
ods of ensuring a higher income to the masses in order to
increase consumption. He discussed a study, now in prog-
ress at Brookings, of the distribution of wealth and income
in relation to progress over a period of thirty years, a
study which, though it lacks two years of completion,
shows how continuously America's capacity to produce
has been substantially in excess of its actual production.
"We could readily produce sufficient to give everyone
in society the basic necessities and many of the comforts of
life. All we've got to do is hit on all eight cylinders instead
of four."
"But how?" ran a murmur through the audience. "The
time is now, it will not wait another two years while ex-
perts formulate the groundwork of a sound program."
Perhaps it was reaction against the cold logic of cause
and effect that sent the delegates the following nightl
enthusiastically into the arms of David Cushman Coyle.j
consulting engineer of New York, whom local newspapers
tarred slightly with the brush of technocracy. Mr. Coyle.
whose paper and answers to questions from the floor drew
an ovation rare at conference sessions, was concerned less!
with how we got the way we are than with where we gel
from here.
In a time like this the intelligence of the American mind may
be roughly measured by the extent of its bewilderment. . .
The next step is to find out which of the old axioms, old economic
laws, old moral standards and old valuations have lost survival-
value and will have to be abandoned.
Mr. Coyle threw out as no longer adequate "the olc
established technique of distributing surplus income by
hope, investment, bankruptcy and disgust," and sought £
formula for diverting surplus income from debt creation tc
conscious spending. He sees society in the primitive stag*
of a new civilization rooted in the economics of spending
with
. . . the success of our passage into the new age of plenty de
pendent on whether the public can be led to assent to the neces
sary measures for distributing purchasing power and for allocat
ing surplus income to spending for services.
Homer Folks, dean of New York social workers and twic<
president of the conference, brought the delegates down t<
earth, after their thoroughly enjoyable flight with Mr
Coyle, by putting firmly before them their obligation am
their opportunity to turn present public concern in ai
emergency into substantial permanent gains:
It would be extremely unfortunate if the present opportunit;
should pass without the enactment generally of legislation settinj
up unemployment reserves. We must unite in support of sorrn
concrete proposals as practical, immediate objectives. We must
however, consider all the realities and must not assume that un
employment reserves, health insurance, old-age security and th<
.like are necessarily utterly different, wholly good and entire!;
adequate'to the need. It is clear that insurance benefits adequat
in amount, in duration and in variety to meet the needs of th
insured cannot be provided without drawing on public funds
Insurance benefits and public relief are both derived from taxes
Unquestionably, we must meet the need but we have before u
a decision as to how far we will meet it by development of publi
medical and relief services and how far by insurance. . . .
MR. FOLKS' stand on the usefulness of social insur
ances was fortified at least in the field of health b;
the experience of England, related by Dr. Georg
McCleary, formerly principal medical officer of the Nat '
ional Health Insurance Commission, who outlined England'
experience since 1912 and repeated the convictions of th
National Commission report of 1926 that "national healt :
insurance has now become a permanent feature of the socia
system of this country and should be continued on it
present compulsory and contributory basis."
The extent to which social workers have broken out
the air-tight compartments of their special activities
evident in the content of the conference programs and th
way in which all divisions cut deep into new areas of genen
concern. It is clear that social work is now on too broad
base to permit departmentalization of its fundament:
interests. Every division now penetrates every othc
division in the conference organization, and many divisio
programs might well have been any division. Take fc
it
:;
'July 1933
THE SURVEY
245
instance the meeting on Law as a Creative Force in Social
Life, and the one on Youth in a Troubled World — both
were under the joint auspices of the Family and Mental
Hygiene Divisions, but the hundreds who jammed St.
John's Church and the hundreds more who were turned
away were not limited to any single field of work. And take
the meeting on Social Workers and a New Social Order,
in the Division on Professional Standards and Education,
where chairman Harry L. Lurie audaciously poised the
philosophic concepts of Antoinette Cannon of the New
York School of Social Work against the harsh realism of
Karl Borders fresh from the arena of the Chicago League
for Industrial Democracy. That was anybody's meeting,
and whoever missed it missed a good one. Then there was
the meeting on Education for Legislation under the Divi-
sion on Educational Publicity with Peter Kasius of St.
Louis and Lillian J. Johnson of Omaha discussing the re-
sponsibility and the practical procedures of social workers
in getting laws enacted. And, to name only one more, the
meeting on Local, State and Federal Inter-relationship
in Public Welfare under the Division on Administration
of Public Social Work, where areas of taxation were ana-
lyzed by Prof. S. D. Leland of Chicago University and their
capacity to sustain social services appraised.
These are only samples of divisional programs that indi-
cate the broader and wider reach of conference interest
and that presage, it seems to this observer, the discard
of the present cumbersome divisional organization. Social
work is more united than it has been for many years —
no one field stands apart from the others, and no one field
of activity can segregate its concerns.
A demonstration in achieving a closer knit program was
given by the Family Division led by Anna Kempshall
and the Mental Hygiene Division led by Stanley P.
Davies, both of New York, which with the exception of a
single separate meeting apiece, pooled their time and con-
solidated their two programs. So successful was the ex-
periment that the Children's Division has already
concluded to join in next year.
These double-headed meetings were really a conference
all to themselves, reaching far into the economic and
political background of social work, setting forth its cur-
rent preoccupations, appraising its techniques. There were
group discussions where the refinements of case-work
therapy were discussed; there were meetings where the
ripened understanding of the relationship of worker and
client showed itself as an anchor in a storm and there
were meetings that went far beyond any limitation of case-
work interest. Such was the meeting, for instance, where
Ewan Clague of Philadelphia, looking at the problems of
economic reform as of June 17, 1933 and in the light of
pronouncements from Washington of that very morning,
estimated what kind of political and economic government
might emerge. "Never in our lifetime have the opportuni-
ties for reform been more numerous and never the danger
greater."
Mention has already been made of two of these joint
division meetings, but more must be said of one of them at
least, where Jane Addams pleaded the right of youth to a
way out of its bewilderment:
Older people learn to be hopeful because they know that things
change. Young people who have grown to thinking years since
1 929 believe that things will go on as they are, and they are hope-
less and bewildered. They want to know why things have to be
Mobilize for the New Deal
BY WILLIAM HODSON
PARTICIPATION in change is our job because we know
-•• better than anyone else the miserable results of our
present system. Social workers are fully aware of the extent
of need in this country, of the inadequacy of unemploy-
ment relief, and of the stop-gap nature of relief of any kind.
In most communities with which I am familiar they have
proclaimed these things. Anyone who will take the trouble
to read the hearings before the Costigan-LaFollette Com-
mittee on Federal Unemployment Relief will find the testi-
mony of ' representative social workers from all parts of
the country, to the same effect. We have the will to make
relief more decent and more adequate but more than that,
we have a deep yearning for a better social order and the
determination to make ourselves and our first-hand knowl-
edge felt in bringing it about. We may differ among our-
selves as to how and when we can be most effective, but the
issue will never be settled on theoretical considerations.
We may lose ourselves in abstractions. Let's face the prag-
matic test and mobilize our wisdom, intelligence, and
courage to make the best contribution to the New Deal
of which we are capable. Surely no conscientious group in
society can do less.
like this — and orthodox answers do not go. The time is near when
we shall have to quit dodging and say something.
Grace Abbott, chief of the United States Children's
Bureau, following Miss Addams, said:
It was a troubled world for many children long before 1929.
Just in the race for happiness, they had no chance for reaching
the goal. We are not planning, I hope, to return to that day. Nor
must we again be caught as we are now, scrambling together
public agencies and giving them tasks we would not have en-
trusted to them in ordinary times. ... In general the doctrine
of the fatherhood of the state has not been opposed. It has moved
with authority, but unequally and uncertainly, with no agreement
as to what should be done. We now have a new conception of
progress toward equality for children. Our old struggle to secure
real equality before the law for all citizens still continues, but
in other fields we are now considering not so much how to
compel equality as how to establish a boundary or a limit beyond
which inequality shall not be tolerated. . . . Everything in the
long list that government has attempted to do for children is now
in jeopardy through an hysteria of economy that destroys social
planning. As we call in psychiatrists to treat deserting fathers,
I think we need to turn communities over to psychiatrists to find
out what is the matter with a legislature that abandons its re-
sponsibility for children and leaves them on anybody's — nobody's
— doorstep.
ONLY one mention more of this division and that for
Dorothy Kahn, director of the Philadelphia County
Relief Board, and her eloquent and realistic attack
on "relief in kind" resting in "the name of economy on
the basic appeal of the profit system":
The system that we have set up to protect our relief funds from
abuse protects the food business of the nation more than it pro-
tects the relief funds. . . . The amazing thing is that there are
not so many but that there are so few abuses by clients. Anil
credit for this fact belongs not to the eagle-eyed administrators
of relief, but to the fundamental decencies of human beings. . . .
By placing foolish conditions, checks and controls in the way of a
full participating relationship between client and relief adminis-
246
THE SURVEY
July 1933
Primitives of a New Age
BY DAVID CUSHMAN COYLE
\X7HEN the normal adjustment of society to a state
' of high productivity shall have been attained it will
be found that the cultural activities of life occupy central
place. Slum districts will give place to parks, public-health
services will be greatly extended, the treatment of criminals
and mental defectives will be brought up to modern stand-
ards. Education for children and for adults will grow in
quality and in extent. There will be a demand for music and
drama and architecture and for all the arts. The arts of
living, of using leisure time, of social cooperation, of per-
sonal relationships will develop in more ways than we now
know. . . .
Social workers have struggled for years to establish the
decencies of life for their own sake. The time has now come
when you can demand the money for an adequate social
program in the name of economic law. The fates have taken
your side. The heavy artillery has come up. In fact it is
parked in the White House. The stars in their courses are
fighting for you. There is no way out of this dark valley
but your way. If we get out at all we shall come through
along the road that you have explored. For the first time
in human history we go forward into the beginning of a
new stage of culture knowing what we are doing. We, the
primitives of a new age, go out with open eyes to meet our
destiny.
trator, we invite half of the difficulties which are in some places
bringing discredit to public relief.
In the Children's Division the philosophic aspects of
case-work for children came on the carpet with Charlotte
Towle of the University of Chicago pointing out the neces-
sity of "knowing the child as well as all about the child"
and J. Prentice Murphy of Philadelphia gently warning
against case-work becoming "too nebulous, too mystical."
The status of children's work in the United States was
reviewed by C. W. Areson of the Cleveland Humane
Society with the conclusion that "the children's field has
before it a further time of stress" with its hope in the re-
planning of community programs with clearer lines of
responsibility, the elimination of outworn services, and
new developments in public service.
The division on Delinquents and Corrections, led by
Jane M. Hoey of New York, undertook to define in its
program the social functions of the five major pieces of
machinery set up in each community to deal with delin-
quents, considering each as a cooperating force in a com-
munity social- welfare program, namely: the police depart-
ment, the courts, probation, correctional institutions and
parole. Each speaker gathered opinions from progressive
leaders over the country and summarized them as goals
to be attained. While these goals did not emerge clearly
in every case, the program as a whole indicated how far
case-work technique is penetrating into the field of penol-
ogy, including institutions where intra-mural methods
are steadily giving way to extra-mural and where case-work
is a procedure accepted if not wholly embraced.
The Health Division, Albert H. Jewell, Kansas City,
Missouri, chairman, rested substantially on the discussion
of the significance to social progress of the findings of the
Committee on the Costs of Medical Care, with various
digressions into what is happening to health in the de-
pression. Here was the challenge of Dr. C.-E. A. Winslow
of Yale University, Dollars or Lives — Which Are Essen-
tial? which readers of The Survey will have an opportunity
to read in full in a later issue. And here was the assurance
of Anna Drake of Cincinnati, that safeguarding the health
of children does not require the discovery of new facts but
a shaking down to proved essentials and sticking there.
Startling to a good many in his audience was the asser-
tion by Dr. Jay Arthur Myers of Minneapolis that after
twelve years' observation the staff of the Lymanhurst
School sees sanatoriums and preventoriums for children
with the first-infection type of tuberculosis as "usually
unnecessary" and the time not far off when tuberculosis
organizations will "feel apologetic" for maintaining chil-j
dren there:
Our observations have convinced us that the use of their own
homes, foster homes when necessary, the family physician, the
school system, nursing and social organizations, is the best solu-
tion of treatment and protection for these children. . . . The .
summer camp for tuberculous children is little more than a ges- .
ture. I am doubtful if it has any more value than providing an
outing. Such camps as those provided by religious organizations,
luncheon clubs and philanthropists are excellent, but for a tu-l
berculosis organization to make claims for the camp as a major
factor in tuberculosis control is absurd.
The whole conference was so shot through with industrial
and economic problems that to an outsider it must have
seemed like lily-painting to set up a separate division for
their consideration. Such was the interest, however, that
every meeting of this division, Leifur Magnusson, chair-
man, was crowded, with discussion spilling out into corri-i
dors and on to sidewalks long after time had been called.
It was fitting that with the conference in Detroit, the \
automobile should have served as clinic material for a
study of the social implications of wages, hours and
productivity in a great mass industry. J. C. Bowen, chief
statistician of the U. S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, in a
series of charts showed the amazing development of the
industry,' translated the staggering processions of figures
into human beings and traced the effect of the rise of the
automobile on other employment.
AT one of its sessions this division looked at the gains
_/~~Y_ in unemployment insurance. Marvin Harrison, mem- '
ber of the Ohio State Senate, presented the philoso-
phy of the Ohio plan and assured his hearers that "in two
years unemployment insurance has become a leading issue
to the people of Ohio and whatever may happen to the bill
in this session the issue cannot and will not die." Paul
Raushenbush, of the Wisconsin Industrial Commission,
outlined the Wisconsin plan, "the first to emerge from a
crack-brained proposal to a clear political issue," and
pointed out that the fight is not over when legislation is
secured:
New kinds of social legislation entail new kinds of political
scraps. . . . You can't enforce a new law against determined
opposition. You must have the continuing and united support of
all interested groups in meeting the endless problems of ad-
ministration.
Rounding out the fast and furious discussion, Prof.
Joseph P. Chamberlain of Columbia University urged
social workers to stand together and throw into public
thinking their knowledge of the realities of insecurity:
The danger to the objective is divided councils. We must have
unity of front and everyone must sacrifice something. We must
July 1933
THE SURVEY
247
get together and agree on what we want. We have a case and the
proof to back it up. We are too inclined to let ourselves be divided
and to sacrifice the good in an effort to get the best.
Gains in minimum-wage laws for women and children,
which continued to add up while the conference was actually
in session, were reviewed by Lucy Randolph Mason of
i the National Consumers' League who repeated Mr.
Raushenbush's warning that in social legislation, especially
when it has come as rapidly as this, "the same public
interest which is responsible for the enactment of a statute
must be shown in its administration if it is to be of the
fullest practical value."
Reviewing the content and the constitutional aspects of
'. the new standard minimum-wage bill already passed by
five legislatures but not yet tested in the courts, Benjamin
V. Cohen of New York gave comfort to his hearers by
reminding them that the Supreme Court decision of 1923
in no way affected the present bill.
IT is not possible in this brief summary of the conference
to do even meager justice to the programs that crowded
the week. Here in the Division on Neighborhood and
Community Life, W. J. Newsletter, Cleveland, chairman,
Clara A. Kaiser of Western Reserve University traced the
disastrous effects of "squeezing recognized values out of the
community program," and Karl Borders of Chicago urged
the social value of organized protests of the unemployed
against relief methods since "nothing could be more devas-
tating to the essential spirit of all that is American than
to have millions of able-bodied citizens sit down in con-
tentment and feed from the hand of charity in any form."
• Here the contribution of the volunteer to the leisure-time
programs of public agencies was assessed. "We never
knew before," said William G. Robinson of the National
Recreation Association, "how much could be done with so
little money, how much leadership was inherent in groups
themselves, how much volunteer service was available."
Here were estimates of the implications of the barter and
exchange movement, with the conclusion by Witt Bowden
of the United States Department of Labor that "Soul-
stirring and almost incredible as have been the efforts of
the unemployed to live without money and without
charity . . . barter is a reversion to primitive economy
and will only survive the emergency as it adopts the ideas
and the tested methods of the cooperatives."
In the Division on the Organization of Social Forces,
John B. Dawson, New Haven, chairman, was a timely
paper by Arch Mandel of Dayton with a warning that
"while we now look to government for the support of
social welfare it is possible, indeed probable, that when
business is safely ashore and emergency funds cease,
government participation may go back to the level of
1928." Here also was the salty wit of Julius Amberg,
Grand Rapids attorney, who saw in the "shotgun mar-
riages" of various social agencies after the near-collapse
of the Grand Rapids Community Chest, a definite social
gain since it forced on "our unsocially-minded business
men and our community-unconscious women" the neces-
sity of replanning the community program and centralizing
administration.
The Division on the Immigrant, George L. Warren, New
York, chairman, faced the fact that "so far as dealing
with new immigration is concerned we no longer have a
problem," but that obligation remains to the fourteen
The Federal Relief Job
BY HARRY L. HOPKINS
WE propose to do a decent job for one purpose only _
to get relief to the unemployed.
Relief stations are not cut-rate employment agencies
where workers can be obtained at less than a self-support-
ing wage. The administration will not be a party to such
attempts to take advantage of human distress.
This administration does not propose to subsidize a lot
of miserable low wages around the United States or to
starve people slowly with federal money and call it relief.
It will not lend itself to pushing further down than they are
the living standards of any community.
Our job is to relieve the unemployed, not to develop a
big social-work organization. If better public-welfare
administration, state and local, is a byproduct, so much
the better. But the job is unemployment relief.
There are four million families, probably eighteen million
of our people, living today on public outdoor relief. If you
believe that this can go on you're licked before you start.
If I believed that it could or would go on I should approach
the whole thing in a very different way.
People who get work on the roads should come from the
relief lists. The great cities are going to get their share of
workers on roads no matter how far we have to move them.
We do not propose to build up a large overhead organiza-
tion. We shall have a small central staff in Washington, a
statistical and research staff and a field staff — -probably
not more than fifty or sixty people in all. The real job must
be done in the local communities and that is where we
propose to have it done.
The states must bear a fair share of the cost of their own
relief problems. The administration will meet any state
halfway, will consider any reasonable proposition, but it
will not be bluffed by the representatives of rich states
threatening to shut up the relief stations.
Any state or local commission can pay rents or give medi-
cal service with federal funds if it wants to. It cannot use
federal funds to pay for hospitalization or for the care of
children in foster homes or institutions.
Proposals for aid to self-help or barter projects must come
through state commissions. The administration will not
deal with individuals nor with unofficial groups. It hopes
that through state commissions some half-dozen projects
in different places can be selected for experimentation
with the aid of the best advice obtainable.
The administration is prepared to set aside fifteen or
twenty million dollars for the care of transients. It will wel-
come from any state or group of states a proposed plan of
treatment which, when and if approved, it will finance 100
percent. But the money so provided must and shall be
used for transients and not for local people.
The policy that public funds must be administered
by official public bodies must be interpreted realistically
in various parts of the country. Hundreds of private agen-
cies have offered their services in the administration of
public funds. It would be a serious handicap to relief work
if the abilities and the interests of these individuals were
lost. But I would ask for their cooperation to the extent
that these individuals be made public officials working un-
der the control of public authority — state, county or city
— and operating under the same fixed responsibility as
obtains in the spending of federal funds for other purposes.
248
THE SURVEY
July 1933
million foreign-born and their children, with their assimila-
tion to be promoted and with discrimination, prejudice and
intolerance to be opposed. A high spot of this division was
an address by Col. Daniel W. MacCormack, the new com-
missioner-general of immigration, who assured as liberal
an administration of the immigration laws as the laws
themselves permit, but advised his hearers to look to the
revision of the law itself for fundamental changes in policy.
More cheering even than his formal address were the in-
formal conferences with groups and individuals which
went on all one afternoon and evening in which he sought
their experience and deliberated with them as experts.
THE whole sweep of the professional aspirations and
status of social workers in a changing world came out
in trenchant papers and sharp discussion in the divi-
sion on Professional Standards and Education in joint ses-
sions with the American Association of Social Workers. Here
was voiced, as Harry Lurie said, "the revolt against the obli-
gation of the individual to adjust to his environment," and
here was sought the answer to the question, "Is this to
be a profession just because it is paid and knows its tech-
niques, or is it ours to reason why ?" Here was presented the
program statement on economic objectives for social work
prepared by the Committee on Federal Action of the
American Association of Social Workers (see The Compass,
May 1933). It was received, somewhat to the surprise of
those who had promulgated it, as "not going far enough."
Here was heard the criticism that the professional schools
"have been training students, not for the broad general
field of social work, but for the specific field of private
charity," and here was heard Karl Borders' claim that
"No intelligent social worker can fail to be concerned with
the whole social and economic order in which his work is
set. The logical pursuit of this concern will bring him out a
political and economic radical." Here, too, on the other
side of the picture was Antoinette Cannon's protest that
"social workers are not a united band like Tammany Hall" ;
Edith Abbott's call to "hear less about revolt and more
about constructive social legislation" and Neva Dear-
dorff' s almost plaintive observation that "we seem to be
headed toward the promotion of causes of many sorts."
Mention has already been made of the discussion of
Education for Legislation in the division on Educational
Publicity, Philip L. Ketchum, Omaha, chairman, but a
word must also be said of the entertaining and provocative
exposition of The Jig-Saw Puzzle of Health Publicity by
T. J. Edmonds of Des Moines, with its advice to take every
statistic apart and see what it is made of before accepting
it as a great and solemn truth.
Of all the conference programs that suffered casualties
by reason of the pressure of events in Washington probably
that of the division on the Administration of Public Social
Work, A. L. Bowen, Springfield, Illinois, chairman, and its
ally, the American Public Welfare Association, was hardest
hit. Shift after shift was made in its program as one after
another of its stars was held in Washington by the failure of
Congress to adjourn on the date predicted or was called
there to confer with the Federal Relief Administration.
But enough remained, fortified by a galaxy of pinch-hitters,
to put on sessions that were squarely in the conference
interest and that taxed every meeting-hall. This was no
heyday for officials that had suddenly come to the center
of the stage, but an earnest discussion of what the great
wave of public relief is doing to masses of people and of
what may be expected when that wave recedes. Here was
Wilfred S. Reynolds, executive of the Illinois Emergency
Relief Commission:
In these three years of depression . . . the public has become
relief-minded — public tax relief-minded. The steady flow of enor-
mous sums of state and federal relief funds and the occupancy of
the spotlights by the public-relief official and public-welfare
machinery in ever widening circles of responsibility may endanger
certain other vital and important areas of social work by submerg-
ing them in stagnant pools of a backwash. ... As unemploy-
ment recedes its retreat will be strewn with permanent social
and individual ills whose treatment will require an expanded,
strengthened and balanced welfare program. To prescribe, main-
tain and enhance such a welfare program is the supreme challenge
now facing the statesmen of public and private social work.
From David C. Adie, New York's new, or almost new,
state commissioner of social welfare, came advice to every
state to prepare for the time ahead by reorganizing its
department of social welfare:
First, in the light of a new philosophy of state responsibility;
Second, with a concrete program against disease, poverty,
insecurity and social maladjustment;
Third, with a working plan for recruiting and training an
adequate personnel to make effective the new relationships of
the state to its people.
From Aubrey W. Williams and Burdette G. Lewis, field
men of the American Public Welfare Association, came
warnings that in large areas of the country social work is
still in a pioneering stage which requires close attention
lest it crystallize into primitive and out-moded forms, but
where the advance in methodology must be kept within
the range of understanding, the simplicity of which is indi-
cated by a case record reported from the Kentucky
mountains by Marion Tingling:
He's old.
She's old.
The mule's dead.
The cow's dry.
They need relief.
They got relief.
A^ the dinner of the American Public Welfare Associa-
tion, which jammed the biggest room available, social
workers welcomed as one of themselves W. Frank
Persons who spoke, not of his coming responsibilities as di-
rector of the new Federal Employment Service, but of his
job of whipping together the civilian conservation camps
where the principles of social work had determined the
basis of organization:
The emergency is telescoping the ten-year conservation plans
of the government. But these plans have now gained social
aspects which must be carefully watched if their values are to
be preserved. . . . The swift job of recruiting showed us that,
while the unemployed will still stand patiently in line for relief
orders, so great is their desperation for employment that they will
not stand patiently in line when a job is at stake.
To address the Committee on the American Indian,
Lewis Merriam, Washington, chairman, came John Collier
no longer as one viewing the Indian Bureau from the out-
side, but as United States commissioner of Indian affairs, ;
charged with the responsibility of administering a govern-
ment department of which he had long been the best friend
and severest critic. Mr. Collier tossed aside his prepared
July 1933
THE SURVEY
249
manuscript and talked to his audience man to man, review-
ing the facts conditioning the operation of his bureau, the
traditions of segregation, institutionalism and centraliza-
tion, all entrenched in law, which must be broken down
before a more social and equitable treatment of the Indians
can be established:
The existing service is terribly poor and terribly expensive.
So much money is lost in detailed processes of administration
that little is left when it gets down to the Indian. . . . The
economy bill imposes a cut of some 39 percent on the Indian
Service, though some of this will be replaced by emergency relief
funds for reforestation camps and public works. The method
we shall use to meet the situation is one we should have used
anyway, a more diffused system with a redistribution of available
funds particularly in the appropriation for education.
FROM the satellites that whirled all week around the
central body of the conference was thrown off a con-
stant shower of sparks that registered the will to get on
with the present job and to drive on to a sounder basis for the
future. This was clearly evident in the three-day session of
the Association of Community Chests and Councils held at
Dearborn in advance of the conference. This group had
lost all its sense of panic of the last two years and was facing
the responsibility of its function in the community. It was
less concerned with how to get money — "Let's have smaller
and smarter campaigns" — than with how to secure flexi-
bility in planning programs to maintain essential com-
munity services. There was less talk of "selling" social
work, and more of the content and philosophy of com-
munity-planning. This group has gone a long way in a year
and its adjustment should delight the psychiatrists.
The National Federation of Settlements, with Jane
Addams, Lea D. Taylor, Helen Hall and Mary Kingsbury
Simkhovitch, to name only a few, pouring their vigor into
the proceedings, faced forward as it always does. Its resolu-
tions reaffirmed its earlier stand on unemployment in-
surance and old-age security, endorsed the method of
health insurance as a measure of security and stated its
belief that "profound changes in the social structure are
necessary." It demanded, "since no other form of relief and
security can take the place of that independence and power
that is given by money," that "an adequate standard of
wages for all workers must be vigorously maintained." It
pledged its support to secure minimum-wage legislation
tor the protection of women and children, promised its
effort "to promote and organize public opinion favorable
to the initiation and development of slum-clearance and
low-cost housing programs," and offered its experience in
the determination of policies and programs in the shift of
recreation from private to public management.
The ferment of youth welled to the surface all through
the National Conference of Jewish Social Service, with a
vigorous protest against any complaisance in accepting or
even tolerating the world as it is. From groups of young
workers, "practitioners of social work," from New York and
Chicago came firm demands for an organization which
should actively protect the worker in his job and in his
free expression of protest against social injustice and
against certain existing methods of welfare administration.
Older heads in the conference sympathized keenly with
many of the contentions raised but occasionally wished
that the young contenders might be a little more modest
in their discovery of social injustice and the right to pro-
test, recalling that Florence Kelley for instance had burned
even as they, but had not walked out on the job — on
the contrary had remained in it to fight to her dying
day.
Not on the issue of a trade union for social workers but
on the issue of the breadth of its organization the Jewish
Conference found itself in a fine lively fight over the elec-
tion of its new officers — a fight that resulted in a tie vote,
and the drafting by long distance telephone of Jacob
Billikopf of Philadelphia to the presidency for the coming
year.
All through the Associate Groups in all their programs
was a determined and realistic stand flush with the future.
The American Association of Hospital Social Workers saw
its trend into the problems of public institutions with fresh
challenges from organized medicine and group-clinic prac-
tice. The Social Work Publicity Council elected as its chief
job for the coming year the interpretation of the need for
competent social work whether in public or private agen-
cies, by professionals or volunteers. The Child Welfare
League of America looked squarely at its immediate prob-
lem of meeting growing child needs with diminished re-
sources, and appraised the trend toward larger government
responsibility. The National Child Labor Committee
rejoiced in the presence at its annual luncheon meeting of
its founder, Jane Addams, and threw its weight into the
advancement of legislation for a minimum wage for minors.
The Family Welfare Association examined the changing
emphases of family work and the relation of the family
agency to the community. Linton B. Swift's analysis of
the basic principles determining relationships of public and
private agencies in the family field is to be expanded into
a pamphlet for general use. The two church conferences,
of the Federal Council of Churches and the Protestant
Episcopal Church, extended their concern far beyond the
spiritual implications of social work into the dynamics of
social reconstruction.
Here the roster must end, though it is by no means com-
plete and has omitted mention of many groups that added
contributions of notable vigor to the discussions of the
week.
This had been announced as a "hard-times conference,"
but so smoothly did it function and so completely were
essentials preserved that only the initiated realized that
its organization was different from that of any other con-
ference. Here Howard R. Knight, the secretary, emerges
as the hero of the occasion. It was due to his courage and
determination that the conference was held at all, and it
was his capacity for organization added to the efforts of
the Detroit folk, lay and professional, that pulled it to-
gether out of the confusions of early March, and put it
across against the advice of the cautious. It is to the credit
of those same counsellors of caution that before the con-
ference was a day old they frankly admitted that to have
yielded to their timidities would have been a disaster to
social work.
Speaking of heroes, there was a heroine there too — J«ne
Addams, who spoke at three meetings on a witheringly hot
Sunday, and was at the end fresher than her audiences.
She was listed in the conference program for two addresses
but she spoke four times, and brought her practical wisdom
to many discussions with a vigor unimpaired by her illness
of a year ago.
It was a quiet conference on the social side, with no
dancing, no formal dinner and no organized entertainment
except a boat trip on the St. Croix River and the president's
256
THE SURVEY
July 1933
reception at the Detroit Institute of Art where the dele-
gates had an opportunity to oh and ah over the Diego
Rivera murals. The Get-Acquainted Dinner on the second
night of the conference with Uncle Alec Johnson, senior
past-president in charge, set the pace of cheerful informal-
ity for all similar functions of the week.
The final registration was, to everyone's surprise and
gratification, 3105, of which number 764 were Detroiters,
thus answering the carpers who in March asserted that
"We can't afford to hold a national conference for Detroit-
ers and no one else will come." But although this will rank
as a relatively small conference it was large enough to
indicate that some radical change in the conference set-up
must be made if it is not to lose itself in its own intricacies.
There is a limit to human capacity, and ten days — as the
conference span was for many people — of constant activity
from eight o'clock breakfasts to nine o'clock evening meet-
ings, strains that capacity beyond endurance.
This present conference, a small one remember, added
up a total of 294 different meetings in a week with 462
speakers and discussion leaders. It began with fifty-four
meetings on Monday, rose to sixty-six on Tuesday, reacted
slightly on Wednesday, but rallied to sixty-four on Thurs-
day. The conference itself took cognizance of this over-
crowding in the traffic lane of ideas and in a resolution gave
its program and executive committees authority to modify
the organization for the Kansas City meeting in 1934, and
to recommend at that meeting such permanent reorganiza-
tion as may seem desirable. Prophecies are plentiful that
Detroit was the last conference that will be held under the
old divisional plan.
In Detroit, social work sensed new strength in itself.
Its function was assured, its leadership was recognized and
proved, its philosophy was a part and parcel of the promised
new social order. Within itself was the urge to step out in
front, to bear witness to what it knows and believes, and
to set about the business of getting things done. The con-
ference will meet in 1934 in Kansas City, in 1935 in Mon-
treal. In the intervening period all its new-found strength
and vitality will be put to the test in the crucible of events.
How they emerge hangs largely on the depth of conviction
which each and every person carried back from Detroit
into his own community. For after all it is not the con-
ference itself that counts but the individual hangover after
the conference goes home.
Training Public Workers
A RAINING district where during a four months'
apprentice period emergency public relief workers
are whipped into shape before they go on the
payroll has proved so effective in Los Angeles County,
California, that long-headed social workers are seeing it as
a beginning in raising the community level of professional
standards in public social work. The project, initiated by
Alice Canfield, deputy superintendent of charities of the
county, and warmly supported by her chief, W. R. Harri-
man, and by the county civil service commission, was born
of the necessity for quick expansion of the staff. Under the
pressure of the mounting relief load the business of breaking
in beginners taken, as required by law, from the certified
civil-service list, was more than over-burdened supervisors
could bear. Miss Canfield's idea was to strain out the
temperamentally ill-equipped and to break in the good ones
before they ever got on the civil-service list. With a horde
of college graduates, displaced teachers and professional
people looking for jobs there was no doubt in her mind that
a considerably higher standard could be attained than the
"highschool graduate, six months' experience in welfare
work" required by civil service. As a matter of fact, the
third group of thirty accepted for training were all college
folk but two.
The merits of applicants for training are passed on by a
committee. Each person accepted clearly understands that
she must put in four to six months, perhaps longer, before
she goes on the payroll, and that even when that happy day
arrives she still must pass the civil-service examination.
The training, directed by Genevieve Kelly, includes a
thorough grounding in welfare resources, public and pri-
vate, the structure and functions of the public- welfare
agencies, and the laws governing procedures. At the same
time students are very definitely expected, though under
the law they cannot be required, to take certain courses
offered by the School of Social Welfare at the University of
Southern California, especially the course on case-work
principles. Gradually the student is assigned to cases, work-
ing up after four months or so to a load of anywhere from
thirty to fifty. At the end of the fourth month she may be
assigned to a regular district. At this point she crosses the
threshold of the cashier and goes on half pay. When she has
shown her competence to carry some seventy cases she goes
on modest full pay with the rank of "student-as-needed."
There she remains until she has passed the civil-service
examination, when she is classified as a student visitor
with a six months' probationary period still to go.
The School of Social Welfare, which like other schools in
these times has found it impossible to supply a sufficient
number of trained people to meet the local emergency
demand, cooperates with Miss Canfield and Miss Kelly by
arranging needed courses at convenient hours, and by as-
signing approximately half of its students for field work in
the training district, though naturally their routines are
different from the trainees on full time.
Social workers in Los Angeles see in Miss Canfield's plan
an encouraging advance in the recognition by the public
department of the need for trained workers and of the
facilities for training. Under her procedure of giving prefer-
ence to those with academic background, the best qualified >
persons are being admitted to training. This training does >
not, of course, constitute professional preparation such as
that offered by the School of Social Work — Miss Canfield
makes that perfectly clear — but it constitutes a device \
which has demonstrated its usefulness in the emergency
and which may with continuing cooperation between the
school, social-work leaders, public officials and the civil- 1
service commission, point the way to a general upward
levelling of standards and a breaking down of caste lines
between social workers in public and private agencies.
The Council of Social Agencies of Los Angeles has re-
cently taken a forward step in the direction of a community J
plan of training which would be realistic in relation to need ;
for workers but would not compromise the training pro- «
gram of the School of Social Welfare or permit of sidedoor i
entrances to the profession. A committee often represent- i
ative social workers, including Miss Canfield and Professor i|
Erie Fiske Young, assistant director of the School of Social :
Work, is undertaking to formulate standards for admission '
to apprentice training which might ultimately be accepted •
as civil-service requirements.
Anybody's boy — a city youngster surrounded by toppling skyscraper, bank, school, church, ticker tape,
jazz, sex lure, whiskey, movies. The photograph above of the vivid colored symbols of these forces
crashing down on youth, is from a mural, Delinquency, in the Social Service Exhibit at Chicago
A Century of Progress in Welfare
By HELEN CODY BAKER
Council of Social Agencies of Chicago
^OCIAL WORK EXHIBIT!" sniffed the taxpayer-
on-a-holiday. "Busybodies — that's all social work-
ers are." He spoke to thin air, but a woman stand-
ng near him answered, smiling, "Oh, come now, are we
-eally as bad as that?"
She was a human, friendly sort of woman. After a sur-
prised minute, and a glance at the badge she wore, he
grinned. "I take it back, lady. I guess you're O.K."
"And I never realized," said the volunteer who told me
'ibout it, afterwards, "that I'd said 'we' until I'd taken him
ill around the family service booth and explained every-
thing. I hope you don't mind my posing as a social worker.
You see, this is my third day on duty and I really/«r/ like
me."
Multiply the taxpayer-on-a-holiday by who-knows-how-
nany hundreds. Add an appropriate number of wives and
Children. Sweeten with a good strong minority of other
axpayers who think social workers serve a useful
mrpose. Sprinkle lightly with serious students who take
copious notes. Bake in the hottest week that June
in Chicago has ever granted us, and cool with the icy blasts
that followed it. That's the crowd that filled our seven
booths during the opening week of the Social Work Ex-
hibit at A Century of Progress.
Interested, curious, thoughtful, indifferent, or frankly
bored. Tripping gayly in the morning, plodding painfully
at night. Streaming past, eddying into the booths, giving us
a glance or ten minutes or half an hour — so the great Ameri-
can public contemplates a hundred years of progress in
work for human welfare.
"My sister gave land for a camp like that," says a mid-
dle-aged woman from Iowa, gazing reflectively at a
modeled camp in the Recreation Booth. It isn't labeled
"United Charities" or "Camp Fire" or "Boy Scouts."
One of the first things we decided about this exhibit was
that individual agencies were not to be advertised as such.
Ninety Chicago agencies, both public and private, and
seven national agencies came in with us on that basis. Be-
251
252
THE SURVEY
July 193-
tween two and three hundred people worked on the plan.
Twenty committees met regularly for months to review a
hundred years of progress in their specified fields, boil down
the results to a few significant achievements, and choose a
simple, dramatic form of showing the great American pub-
lic what we had in 1833, and what we have in 1933,
with a few intermediate steps.
TWO half-grown boys stand before the 1 5-foot map of a
growing community, while our volunteer in charge ex-
plains that a hundred years ago — here at the left where the
little winding dirt road begins — our "social service" was
something very different from what it is today. The people
who lived in those scattered log cabins helped each other
out whenever they had trouble. The road widens and
straightens. Here's a church and a state house, with a few
little buildings clustered around each. "Institutional care,
beginning under church and state," the legend reads. The
road goes on, to a swiftly expanding city where social
agencies are popping up all over the place — each with a
high fence or stone wall around it, "a chaos of benevo-
lence"— but no plan. At the right, the city of today and
tomorrow, with wide straight streets. A central radio (the
Council of Social Agencies?) shedding light on buildings
labeled Family Service, Child Welfare, Housing, Educa-
tion, and so on. "And a ball park!" one of the boys ex-
claims. "Of course a ball park," the volunteer agrees, and
directs them to the recreation booth.
A highschool teacher from Michigan City turns from the
central panel in the "crime and delinquency booth" to
unburden his soul. The depressed little figure in the
center of the panel — anybody's boy, crushed between the
confused forces of a disintegrating social order — reminds
him of his senior class, just graduated, can't go to college,
can't find work. Whom can he talk to or write to about some
plan for their leisure time? We give him a list of names and
of books. A thoughtful man and woman spend a long time
before the niche where our change in thinking about handi-
capped children is shown. And then — could we tell them of
a good school for a "mongolian type" of child? The hour we
give them is time well invested.
THERE are seven rooms in our exhibit, on both sides of
one of the main aisles of the Hall of Social Science. A
reception room where comfortable chairs are never empty
sums up the whole story with the 1 5-foot community map,
mentioned above, and several other interesting charts.
Then Family Service, the Care of Dependent People Out-
side the Family, Social Aspects of Health, Recreation and
the Use of Leisure Time, a room where certain large trends
of social work are demonstrated — such as the Settlement
Movement, the Urban League, and Services to the Foreign
Born — and another where supplementary services which
the case worker uses are grouped together.
It's a rough guess that seven thousand people have been
in and out in this first week. There's always a little group in
front of the nursing exhibit, with its five small dioramas:
the rural nurse, visiting nurse, frontier nurse, industrial
nurse, and school nurse, and the gallant processional of
those who have healed the sick from the time of Christ
until today. Another high light is the diorama at the en-
trance to Family Service, where a lovely lady and haughn
lord come down the cathedral steps. The lady draws he'
cloak about her, to escape contamination from the beggar;
clustered in the foreground, and the lord drops a casua
coin into a cripple's hand.
From that diorama, our changing conception of charity
follows the walls around to a balopticon where the case
work story of a family which asks help because the father':
eyes have been injured in an industrial accident is con
vincingly told by lighted slides and captions.
Our seven thousand visitors have taken something awa\
with them, and perhaps left other things behind. One man
at least, is through with the notion that social workers an
busybodies!
I could write a long story about the months of work anc
time and thought that went into the planning and execu
tion of this exhibit — the difficulties surmounted, the dream;
that did or did not come true. But that's water under th<
bridge. A few things made it possible, and must be men-
tioned. The grim determination of the Exhibits' Committee
that our hundred years of work for social welfare must hav<
a part in A Century of Progress; the generous appropria-
tion of the State of Illinois, which more than paid for the
space; the tireless energy and enthusiasm of our executive
director, Eleanor Eells; and the fine team work of Chi
cage's public and private social agencies who — with a litth
deeply appreciated help from other sources — raised th<
balance of the money and worked out the plan.
AND yet — I mean this sincerely — we do not think of it as
Chicago's exhibit. It has been a labor of love for socia
work and social workers everywhere. Please come and set
it when you visit Chicago this summer. Oh yes, you will
Everybody will !
And you will come to the Hall of Social Science, becaust
that is where social workers irresistibly gravitate. The rest
of the Fair is a gorgeous show from the Avenue of Flags at
1 2th Street to the 39th Street entrance; dizzy with color
gay with bunting, vibrating with band music from ;
hundred outdoor amplifiers.
Three and one half miles of other buildings testify to oui
progress in applying science to the mechanics of living
with the Hall of Science as the focus of this thought. The
Hall of Social Science alone demonstrates the social conse
quences of this hundred years and the necessity for socia
engineering to keep pace with mechanical achievement.
One more word about the Fair as a whole. The rest of the
world said Chicago never could do it. A great many Chi
cagoans said so too. A few people believed that it could be
done. And it is done! It opened on time — a few days aheac
of time, in fact. It is bigger, brighter, gayer, cleaner, and, s<
far at least, more financially successful than we dared tc
hope. Chicago is mad about it! The rest of the world seem;
pleased.
There are a few people, of course, who see a certain in
science in this gesture after four such years as we have jus'
gone through. Others see only the courage. One thing to m<
seems apparent — the spirit that built A Century of Prog
ress could do anything. It could even, if it happened to b< i
in the mood, pay Chicago's teachers' salaries and clean uj
her politics.
I Think I'd Better Call the Nurse
By MARY ROSS
miesf
MIDSUMMER
afternoon was no
_ heavier than Miss
Bailey's spirits as she laid
the telephone receiver deci-
sively on its hook. Mrs. Har-
ris must be removed from
the list of relief workers.
Conscientious she had been,
oh woefully so! Armored in a
sheathing of will that appar-
ently knew no yielding. The
calm accents of the VNS director still rang in Miss Bailey's
ears and the painful scene stood before her eyes. A bed
n which lay a man with only a few days to live. On one
side the nurse, on the other the determined Mrs. Harris,
'n the background an anxious wife and children. And Mrs.
iarris insisting despite the nurse's protests that the
ambulance must be called, the patient sent to the hospital.
'We can't waste taxpayers' money," Mrs. Harris enunci-
ated clearly over the sick man's head, "by having a nurse
:ome to this house every day when there isn't a thing she
:an do for your husband anyway. Acute cases have got to
50 to the hospital even if they'd rather die at home."
Mrs. Harris had been wrong in her facts: it wasn't
;heaper, but more costly to the city to keep a sick man in a
lospital than at home when the family could care for him
vvith the help of the advice and skilled service that a nurse
:ould give on a daily visit. There was much a nurse could
io to keep him comfortable and even more to keep up
:he family's morale. Mere ignorance was excusable and
•emediable, but this sadly true incident, coming on top
if less glaring lapses, made it clear that Mrs. Harris just
ladn't the attitude in her which would make it possible
or her to play ball with a co-worker, with her own super-
visor, whom she had not consulted; with the family whose
icrvice was the only reason for her job, and the doctor who
lad continued to see them long after he knew there was
10 money to pay him. Her services were discontinued.
Happily the Mrs. Harrises among new relief recruits
lave been so rare in the experience of the nurses that a
;tory like this is a museum piece. "Absolutely no com-
plaints," writes a director of nursing in a large eastern city.
'Naturally an occasional misunderstanding but not any
nore so than at any other time." "On the whole," comes
i report from the South, "our working relationships with
:he new recruits among relief workers have been very
Peasant and friendly. Difficulties that have arisen have
seen taken up with the executive or assistant executive
is a matter of policy in working relationships rather than
i direct complaint and settled very amicably." From a
Dacific city, "Cooperation between relief workers and
lublic-health nurses has improved during the time in
vhich many untrained workers were added to the staffs
>f relief organizations. We are called much more fre-
luently."
What about relief investigators who, in
visiting families:
Find a public-health nurse also on the job?
Opine that codliver oil is an old wives' tale?
Predict the gory-ness of approaching tonsillecto-
Report prenatal patients when the stork is on
the wing?
Cooperation, these letters
point out, is not one of those
things that just drops like
manna from providence. In
one city success is attributed
to the "exceedingly intelli-
gent and careful person"
loaned by a social agency to
supervise new relief workers;
in another, to the fact that
calls for visiting nurses from
the largest relief organization
come through a special department long under the direction
of a medical social worker. In some cities and states effec-
tive institutes have acquainted new relief workers with
the duties, privileges and perquisites of co-workers from
the allied professions; in some places, emergency relief
organizations are organizing meetings for nurses, giving
them the advice of dieticians and other specialists in ways
to use best the relief in food or money that is available for
welfare clients. Instruction will "take," of course, only
when it falls into open minds of people ready to offer in
teamwork the consideration and common sense they
themselves would like to receive, and experience shows that
among the new relief workers such minds are the rule.
The rubs that come are mostly the inevitable and usually
transitory result of inadvertence and failure to realize what
damage a casual remark may wreak in a delicate profes-
sional situation, and above all, the complicating pressure
of busy-ness.
"Our principal trouble in these busy times," writes a
director in an eastern city, "is that no agency seems to
have time to cooperate. Policies are changed, workers
discontinued and plans left in the air, with apparently no
one at fault. Our own staff had a 25 percent reduction so
I can sympathize with agencies having to double up and
workers take on new responsibilities!" Sometimes the
delay of busy-ness brings tragic consequences. It was
costly for the relief worker to have forgotten to telephone
the nurse that the Tonettis were spotted and snuffling
when she called with the food card three days before; in
the intervals measles were scampering up and down the
sidewalk to all the families in the neighborhood. Even less
urgent matters bring their complications. "One of the most
annoying lapses" writes a nursing association in a middle-
sized city, "is the eleventh-hour reporting of prenatal
patients. We are having the utmost difficulty in getting
medical supervision. With time, plans can be worked out,
but the reporting of a patient due any day and no plan
made, makes our problem many times more difficult.
The irritating part of it is that often the worker has known
of the pregnancy for some time."
Probably nurses have had more opportunity than most
to learn that an important part of wisdom is the knowledge
of what one is ignorant of, and not infrequently they have
had occasion to see that adage underscored in the too-
253
254
THE SURVEY
July 1933
VERLOADING in both relief agencies
and nursing services brings to each its
special questions and to both the interlocking
dilemmas raised by inexperienced workers,
inexperienced clients and the pressure of time.
'This discussion, bringing together bona-fide
experiences from directors of nursing in many
scattered corners of the country is the fifth in
a series in recent issues of 'The Midmonthly
Survey dealing with new frontages in relief
organizations. Earlier articles have been:
When Tour Client Has a Car (March 1933),
Are Relief Workers Policemen? (April],
What Price the Power of the Food Order
(May), How We Behave in Other People's
Houses (June). Next comes When Families
Wont Behave.
ready advice or even diagnosis handed out by inexperienced
caseworkers, as by one's personal friends. Scientific opinion
on such everyday matters of food or colds has traveled a
long way from the saws of one's childhood and it is best to
hold off on well-meant advice till one is sure of one's
authority. Maybe the nurse was right when she said the
baby could have ripe bananas. Few, fortunately, are the
relief workers who fail to realize the newer rationale of
codliver oil, but a few there are who indulge their private
shudders before wide-eyed youngsters quite willing to
rebel. Call it lack of common-sense or mental hygiene or
fairness to someone else on her job, the very occasional
worker who details the horrors of her own tonsil operation
or stirs up the client's doubts about the adequacy of a
clinic or airily suggests a change of doctor or treatment may
in a minute undo many weeks of skilled, sagacious nursing
visits. If one has doubts, the client is the last person to
whom to communicate them. A friendly word direct to
the nurse ordinarily lays them; persistent misgivings are
the business of supervisors.
/OCCASIONALLY a relief worker has rushed in where no
V-/ nurse would dare to tread. From the annals of a city
nursing service comes the story of a public-health nurse
called in from the street by a neighbor to see a woman sick
in a rooming-house. The landlady said that her roomer was
on the relief lists and she had asked the relief worker to
call the nurse. The worker refused, saying the client was
lazy and could get up if she wanted to. When the nurse
brought in the city doctor he sent the client to the hospital
where she died a week later from cancer.
From a midwestern city comes the tragi-comic story of a
relief worker calling on a 3oo-pound client who had com-
plained that she needed a larger grocery order for her chil-
dren. "Perhaps," the worker tactlessly suggested, "if you
ate less, there would be enough food for the children."
The mother, in tears, hurried for comfort to the nurse who
had been arranging for her visits to a clinic for treatment
of the glandular condition to which her weight was due.
It took a series of interpretations to client and social
worker to smooth out an upset that might have been1
averted by a question. The obverse of this incident,
showing what happened when a new relief worker realized
her inexperience and used skilled aid constructively,
appears in an incident from another city where a family
had been badgering the worker for a higher food order,
also on the ground that there wasn't enough for the chil-
dren. The nurse, consulted, knew the family as old-timers
whose story would bear examination. In the light of her
previous dealings with them, the prestige these had giver
her and her special knowledge of foods, she was able tc
convince them that the trouble was not with the amount
of the order but with what they were trying to buy with it:
a firm lesson or two and it became quite adequate.
GRANTING, as the nurses so wholeheartedly do, the
rubs that come from inevitable differences or mistakes
in judgment, from inexperience and haste, there still seems
reason to believe that some of the new relief workers, like
the general population, are a bit foggy at times as to just
what is the nurse's job. The girl who commented while
visiting a client with a new baby that it was strange that
the kitchen floor wasn't scrubbed up when the nurse had
been there just that morning, was guilty of an error in
manners and professional ethics in criticizing a colleague
behind her back instead of talking things over with her
own supervisor; and beyond that, she was wholly ignorant
also of the nurse's aim in her visit. The National Organiza-
tion for Public Health Nursing offers as a definition of their
profession, "An organized community service rendered by
graduate nurses to the individual, family and commu-
nity. This service includes the interpretation of medical,
sanitary and social procedures for the correction oi
defects, the prevention of disease and the promotion o
health, and may include skilled care of the sick in their
homes."
A public-health nurse is essentially a teacher of health,
a teacher whose skill and experience stand ready for the
patient and all who have an interest in him, for the com-
munity and all the groups working for its welfare. She is
not a houseworker and she is not a doctor. Save for a<
first visit or a sudden emergency, she does not care forii
sick people except under the direction of a physician. It,
isn't cussedness, but professional duty that occasionally
makes it necessary for a nurse to withdraw from a easel
when the family refuses to receive or follow a doctor's!!
advice. Nor is it laziness or indifference that makes her '
decline to give actual bedside care to sick people when she
is working with one of the nursing organizations whose
services are wholly educational and does not include care:|
of sick people; if the need is crucial you'll find that she1
usually does tuck in a little care on the side out of her so-|
called free time.
Like everyone else, the public-health nurses are walking
through shoeleather and racing Fords to keep up with the
extra calls from people who in usual times would not have
occasion to ask for the community's service. But in a sheai .••
of letters and a clutch of conversations the answer that
comes from them is not a complaint at the repercussions
that relief emergencies cast on an allied profession but first
a warm sense of appreciation of how well a difficult job
is gearing in and second a readiness to serve even more
fully in using the professional and social skills with which
training and experience have endowed them.
A Farm Philosophy
By E. L. KIRKPATRICK
Associate Professor of Rural Sociology, University of Wisconsin
OME cime ago I talked with the president of the
Student Section of the American Country Life
Association about the need of some sort of a philos-
ophy for farm life. I asked her, a junior in home economics,
an energetic and intelligent young woman, what she
thought teachers and students might do about it.
"Teachers could dig around and find something that's
right with farm life if they would," she said. "We farm
boys and girls go to college with a lot of sentiment for
country life, but we soon learn about all the things that are
wrong with it — wrong with the farm, the neighborhood
and the home town. Those of us who have any notion of
getting ready to live on a farm when we go to college get it
knocked out of us before we finish. Why don't we make it
the subject of our next conference?"
With that suggestion we went to work, officers of the
Student Section, and members of the Student Advisory
Committee of the American Country Life Association, of
which I happen to be chairman. WTe held a preliminary
meeting of representatives of a dozen colleges and came to
the conclusion that what we needed to discuss was Basic
Elements of Rural Life. That was too large and general a
topic, however, and these student delegates broke it down
nto seven questions for discussion.
When the conference was held there were three hundred
students representing colleges all the way from Kansas,
Wisconsin and Michigan, New York, Tennessee and the
aarts between. They manned their own conference and to
:he adults on the side-lines they seemed really to be going
somewhere. Here are the questions and the answers as they
:ormulated them:
1. To what extent does farming provide steady work as
'ompared with other occupations?
Farming escapes unemployment difficulties. The farmer
s never out of work. He and his family have a steady job.
This is indeed reassuring when millions of industrial work-
:rs are out of employment. There are few bread lines or soup-
dtchens in the open country. The farmer may not get
nuch for his products but he usually has something to eat
ind always some way to occupy his time.
2. I'D what degree does the farm provide a good living on a
noderate income?
The farm provides a better living than is enjoyed by
irban families on equivalent incomes — shelter and good
vholesome food at any rate. Comparable studies made by
he U. S. Bureaus of Labor Statistics and Agricultural
. Economics show that farm families eat more meat, eggs,
,nilk, fruits and vegetables than workingmen's families,
ind thus are well provided with vitamins. People with
arger incomes in the city set a better table, of course, but
he majority of urban families are in the workingman's
lass and do not fare as well as farmers, generally.
3. In what respects is the farm a superior place to rear
hildren?
The farm has many advantages in the rearing of chil-
Iren. Among these are greater physical strength, freedom
rom dangers of traffic and the like, better opportunity to
use time effectively, greater diversity of tasks, and direc-
tion or guidance from closer association with parents. The
country has the more wholesome social and moral back-
ground for children. The farm child is usually better trained
in initiative, ability and dependability.
4. In what way does farming promote cooperation in family
life?
The nature of farm work, with common interests and
objectives, work and play together at home, and group
participation in church and social activities, makes for
cooperation in family life. Members of the family are
more likely to be pals and partners on the farm than in the
city. Farm conditions make it necessary for members of
the family to work together. The family farm is the founda-
tion of American agriculture.
5. What are the most satisfying community activities in
rural life?
The most satisfying community activities are those in
which as many persons as possible in a given area partici-
pate. These include educational, religious and social affairs,
such as club meetings, play days, picnics and visiting in the
rural areas. The open country is still characterized with
satisfying group activities according to recent studies. To
quote from one of them :
"Mr. Getman is an active organization leader and sup-
porter. He is one of a group of farmers who helped organ-
ize the Equity, the Jersey Breeders' Association, the
Farmers' Club and the Orchard P.T.A. He attends practi-
cally all of the meetings of the organizations with which he
is affiliated and serves on committees several times during
a year. He likes the Farmers' Club best because of the
opportunity it gives him to work with his neighbors. He
helped promote this organization because of his interest in
the community. He does not find his work in the different
organizations burdensome and gives community picnics as
his favorite form of recreation.
"Mrs. Martin is affiliated with seven organizations. She
attended seventy-three meetings and served as president
of the Upton Mine Homemakers' Club, the Monona Com-
munity Club and receiver for the Royal Neighbors. She
joined the Homemakers' Club for social times and for the
opportunity which it gave to learn. She regards her work
with organizations pleasant and satisfying."
6. In what ways does farming afford opportunity for
satisfying leisure?
The farm affords more opportunity for leisure than does
the city generally and more than is appreciated by farm
people at present. Any one who is as free as the American
farmer can, if he will, live a zestful and creative life. The
farmer's work with "living, growing, blooming and bearing
things gives him an advantage over the person who is
dominated by the presence and pressure of lifeless products
and deadening mechanical work." Farmers could just as
well have less of the "unable-to-get-away" delusion and
more of the "take-a-day-off" spirit. They need less of the
traditional contempt for any one who does not work in-
cessantly.
255
256
THE SURVEY
July 1933
7. What effect does farming, dealing with nature, have on
one's philosophy of life?
Farm life, dealing with nature, affords an opportunity to
meditate and thus determine a wholesome philosophy of
life. Its environment teaches responsibility, obedience to
nature, the laws of life. Ruskin once said, "There is no
wealth but life." If this be true the farm is a place of wealth,
for it deals with life — plant life, animal life, human life.
Farming, as a vocation, tends to bring out qualities of
originality, courage and management in a rural civiliza-
tion, in contrast to a lack of the development of those
qualities in the routine and directed factory and commer-
cial life in the city.
These same young people will hold their conference this
year at Blacksburg, Virginia, August 1-4, to discuss Basic
Elements in Relation to National Policies Affecting Rural
Life on the same realistic lines as last year. I for one plan
to be there.
Religion and Mental Hygiene
By CHARLES F. READ, M.D.
Managing Officer, Elgin Slate Hospital; Based on a Radio Talk for the Illinois Society for Mental Hygiene
AN it seems is the only animal that has learned
to laugh. Man is also the only creature that
can long remain unhappy in the midst of
animal comforts. Walk the crowded streets of any city
today and count the well-fed, well-clad men or women
with whom you would take the chance of changing places
if you could. Check over your friends and try to answer
the same question.
Upon the whole, barring the very young and the feeble-
minded, we are not a happy people today. "What shall we
do to be saved from the evils which assail us from without
and within," has been the cry of mortals throughout the
ages. Today this cry is perhaps more universal than ever
before in the lifetime of those who utter it.
Year after year we seek deliverance from ignorance and
foolishness — our sins, if you please to use this term. This
search for salvation constitutes the story of our spiritual
development. This belief in the possibility of better things
spells faith — the essence of things hoped for, the substance
of things not seen. Without faith we know we are alto-
gether done for, since faith is the only thing that affords
stark humanity a presentable covering.
But today the entire world seems to have lost faith in
itself — the nations in one another, man in his fellow-men
and in himself. Creditors, because they have lost faith in
the ability of anyone to make good in these times, foreclose
on debtors whose assets can pay only a few cents on
the dollar. Time-tried employes lose their jobs and with
this their faith in our government. Stocks go down and
down because they are merely certificates of confidence in
the ability of a corporation to make profits, and confidence,
the seal of faith, is gone.
What is the answer?
Can we somehow regain our self-respect? Is it possible
for us to recover the feeling that mankind is really worth-
while ? Or must we succumb to the conviction that we are
nothing better than a fungoid growth on the surface of a
great ball, whirling in fruitless circles through cold ether?
The devastating failure of the World War to reveal any
immediate result worthy of the terrific sacrifice involved,
has produced such a cumulatively destructive effect upon
human faith as the world has never before witnessed. In
our disillusionment we forget that we are still too close to
this catastrophe to conclude that humanity has thereby
proven itself to be an ignoble experiment. The Crusades,
too, cost millions of lives and failed just as miserably to
accomplish any concrete purpose, yet they have left to us
for all time the inspiration crystallized in the word Crusader.
Joan of Arc as a peasant walked with her God and died
a failure so far as those about her could judge, but her name
is now a portion of our common heritage, an inspiration
miraculously distilled from out the welter of a sordid age.
Our own Abraham Lincoln came up from nowhere to add
tenfold to our faith in humanity; the impact of his person-
ality upon millions of people cannot be estimated by any
measure of force known to physics. Whence came such men
as St. Francis of Assisi, Leonardo da Vinci, Shakespeare
and Louis Pasteur? These were human beings who knew
how to live; through them poured a tremendous current of
vital energy, stepped up beyond all ordinary human experi-
ence in such a way as to defy clear explanation. These men
were giants, while everywhere we look today men seem to
be so very small.
How then shall we renew our faith in ourselves and in
humanity as a whole? How shall we be saved from utter
pessimism?
In recent years a great stream of literature has poured
forth in the effort to explain the sources of human be-
havior. The results have been disturbing and even dis-
tressing to the orthodox, but out of it all has come a hopeful
conclusion that the total output of human energy can be
tremendously increased and far better directed if we will
but use a new technic of living. We are beginning to recog-
nize in our behavior the unfortunate results of early
training and environment; we are beginning to appreciate
the fact that we are unhappy and inefficient, jealous, in-
tolerant, disagreeable, and all of that — sinful, if you please
— because our habits of feeling and thinking are throw-
backs to childhood days. Possessed of this knowledge we
may hope to live better lives as time goes on.
This enlightenment — along with other more obvious
teachings — constitutes the contribution of the mental-
hygiene movement to the technic of living — an answer, in
part at least, to our cry for salvation from those evils which
are closer to us than hands or feet. It constitutes the
background of the practice of humanism. It is an effort to
overcome what Boisen terms "the sense of isolation" in
our spiritual life. Yet, as he goes on to say, "because of the
social utility and therapeutic value of belief in a personal
God it seems very doubtful if a purely humanistic religion
can ever make headway outside of university centers."
For ages there has existed, and will continue to exist,
another technic directed to the attainment of the good sort
of life, a practice noted for its gross failures, as well as its
glorious successes, the practice of a belief that we are not
wholly animal, that human life is somehow a tremendously
important occurrence in which each individual plays a
worthwhile part under the guidance of Deity.
There is much talk nowadays about science doing away
with religion and about "reconciling" religion with science
\July 1933
T H E S U R V K V
257
— all of which in my humble opinion is sheer nonsense. In
the face of millions of goodly lives made possible through
the offices of some sort of religious faith, there can be no
argument concerning a lack of scientific support for belief.
Indeed these two great forces in the lives of men cannot
be related to one another in any way. They are so entirely
different that they belong in quite separate categories.
I believe in Deity because I have been brought up in this
faith and knowing myself as I do, I have concluded that
regardless of so-called scientific facts, I can lead a happier,
more worthwhile life with the aid of a religious technic
than without it.
I believe in what we call conversion just as I also believe
that a similar event may occur without any obvious reli-
gious experience whatsoever, as the crystallization of one's
conviction that a certain line of conduct is the only possible
way for him to lead the good life.
I believe that many people are unhappy because they
have been brought up religiously and have forgotten how
to pray, or are ashamed to do so because they have been
bulldozed, without thought of their own, into accepting
the assertion that there is no God.
I believe it would be an excellent thing for this country
if everyone, believer and nonbeliever as well, were to take
five minutes a day in which to consider the good life — call
it prayer or meditation as you please — and how best to
realize it personally, either with or without the help of
Deity.
No! Religious faith today does not need to reconcile itself
with science, as we commonly understand the term. Reli-
gion can very well disregard the "facts" which scientists
themselves confess to be quite hopelessly mixed with theory.
What religious practice needs just now is a clearer vision
of the origins of good and evil. Old rituals may well remain,
the ancient faiths continue unimpaired, but prayer must
issue not only from the full heart but from the enlightened
mind as well.
If we can hopefully use the technic of a religious ap-
proach to the good sort of life, we need not be intellectually
ashamed to do so. Religion practised with enlightenment
by its followers, priests, clergymen, rabbis and laity, con-
stitutes a fine philosophy of life and dignifies humanity with
such faith in its worthwhileness as is sorely needed in our
present distress and disillusionment.
A Volunteer Among the Veterans
By GLADYS E. H. HOSMER
Member The Gray Ladies, the Hospital Recreation Corps of the American Red Cross, at the Veterans' Administration
Hospital of Bedford, Massachusetts
YOUNG woman of means and leisure who had done
outstanding work overseas during the World War
stood on a curbstone and watched the American
Legion parade. Several busloads of disabled, hospitalized
veterans were in the line. Suddenly it was borne in upon
her that she had forgotten that in this country there were
thousands of men for whom the War was not yet over, and
that, inconsistently, she was doing nothing in their behalf.
Perhaps, too, she experienced a surge of nostalgia for the
stirring, stimulating atmosphere of war days and wartime
activities. At any rate, the following morning she walked
into the headquarters of a local disabled veterans' welfare
organization and asked that she be given something to do.
She was assigned to a group of volunteer recreational
workers at a veterans' hospital of 650 neuropsychiatric
•cases.
What did she find to do?
These volunteers, numbering some twenty women from
five or six neighboring towns, meet at the hospital every
• Monday afternoon throughout the year, to act as hostesses
in the recreation hall, or, weather permitting, on the green
expanse of lawn outside at an entertainment, usually
music in some form, at which punch or ice-cream is served,
and cigarettes distributed. Uncle Sam feeds his charges
well, hence the ice-cream, no unusual treat or supplemen-
tary diet, is merely a gesture of hospitality and the act of
serving it a means of individual contact between the pa-
tients and these women from "outside", who bring with
• them into the self-contained hospital world a sense of con-
tinuity with the normal, everyday world.
Invariably these women make friends among the patient
• group, and their interest becomes aroused in certain of the
various patient activities. Through the social service de-
partment they procure clothing for indigent patients or
their families, or a job for a patient about to try his luck
on a trial visit at home. The occupational therapy depart-
ment enlists their services in arranging a sale of handicraft
products, or special lessons and additional instruments for
the hospital orchestra. The athletic director appeals
to them for a cup or prizes for an athletic meet or inter-hos-
pital contest, or to arrange for a noted athlete to give a
demonstration that will stimulate the interest in bowling,
or tennis, or the use of the indoor swimming pool. One
member has succeeded in arranging for a selected group of
patients to play golf regularly at a nearby golf club, and
procured contributions of the necessary equipment.
Cooperation with the recreational worker furnishes the
widest field for volunteer activity. The peculiar advantage
of such effort lies in the relief from monotony that it injects
into the inevitable routine. One group makes it a point, at
purposely irregular intervals, to hold a tea in the receiving
ward. Here, in a small ward housing not more than twenty-
five men, there is a chance to express friendliness to those
who have just come into the hospital and who are worried
and ill-at-ease in their strange surroundings. Lately
I read in the narrative of a young man's personal experi-
ences as a patient in "a mental hospital the statement that
in such places "tragedy and humor walk together, usually
with tragedy a step in advance." Nowhere is the tragic
side more apparent than in the receiving ward. Sometimes,
fortunately for the onlooker, humor is foremost. A volun-
teer was pouring tea one day at one of the receiving ward
parties. A personable new patient remarked to her, in that
expansive mood that the atmosphere of a tea-table wher-
ever located customarily engenders: "Miss Volunteer, if I
told you that I receive vibrations from the planets, you'd
think that I was in the right place, wouldn't you?"
The Volunteer replied quite truthfully, "You know, R.,
I haven't at all a scientific mind and lots of things are
perfectly incomprehensible to me — radio, for example!"
258
THE SURVEY
July 1933\
Somewhat later in the afternoon the youngest ward
surgeon poked his head in at the door.
"Have a cup of tea, Doctor?" the Volunteer proffered.
Over his teacup the youngest ward surgeon talked of the
research investigations in electro-cardiography in which
he was then engaged, elaborating upon the photographic
reproductions of the electric waves generated by the
heartbeat which he had secured.
"Doctor," said the Volunteer, "I'm sorry for the extent
of my limitations, but what you have told me is just as
mysterious to me as what R. has just been saying!"
The volunteer from without the hospital walls is able to
go back into the community and interpret needs and make
contacts inaccessible to the organized staff, who have gen-
erally neither the local acquaintanceships nor the time to
unearth such amenities as desirable locations for picnics,
flowers for the annual Hospital Day, magazines in quan-
tities, and volunteer entertainment talent.
A talented young violinist was prevailed upon to play at
the hospital. After a program in the recreation hall, where
most of the patients had gathered to hear her, she and her
accompanist were escorted to the "disturbed" ward.
As she finished the last of her selections there, a man who
had the reputation of being extremely intractable and
difficult to handle, came over to where she was standing and
said beseechingly: "Please, may I try your violin? I used
to play."
The instrument was an unusually valuable one, but
without a moment's hesitation the player gave it into his
hands. He drew the bow across the strings; haltingly,
discordantly, the notes came at first, then more surely.
Obviously he had had good training and was hungry for
this mode of expression; to feel that something that was an
integral part of his personality was still alive in him.
Outside the door of the ward, the violinist, tears in her
eyes, turned to the Volunteer: "That man must have a
violin, and an opportunity to play it. I just can't bear it if
he doesn't!"
A generous friend was appealed to for the wherewithal to
purchase an instrument and with the cooperation of the
recreational worker and the hospital authorities, for it
meant the assignment of an extra orderly for orchestra
practice, the man was given a chance to play with the
hospital orchestra group. Gradually, steadily, he played
his way back to himself and today he is completing a
series of "Trial visits" and is on the highroad to
recovery.
Mainly through volunteer effort opportunities are found
from time to time for the orchestra members to play, indi-
vidually or collectively, outside the hospital, and the sense
of being of service and of still having a part in the commu-
nity life engendered thereby has helped many men towards
a renewed social readjustment.
On one occasion an emergency arose due to the prolonged
illness of the hospital seamstress. According to red-tape
regulations, she could not be replaced or a substitute pro-
vided as long as she was carried on the payroll, since she
was entitled to a given amount of sick leave before her
name could be dropped. In no time the mending had piled
up to mountainous proportions. The harassed chief nurse
took counsel with the Volunteer.
"Of course!" said the latter, "I can easily get together
a group of women and a couple of extra sewing-machines
for an all-day sewing meeting in the nurses' home; we
can at least make a dent in the pile!"
It required four all-day sessions of concentrated effort
to make an appreciable effect on the accumulation of torn,
worn and buttonless garments, but a real crisis was averted
and a valuable service rendered.
Every summer a picnic is arranged for a group of patients
from the most "disturbed" ward of the hospital. In a
secluded pine grove five miles from the hospital's walls,
twenty men for the whole of a beautiful June day feel the
soft earth under their feet and sunshine that has not
filtered through iron gratings. A generous and hospitable
hostess provides home-grown strawberries in cream-topped
shortcakes to end a noon meal eaten with relish in the
open air. There are games and contests with prizes, vigor-
ously competed for by those who feel actively inclined-
some, I can assure you, are very actively inclined! —
and those who wish merely lie on the pine needle-covered
ground and look up at the swaying branches of the trees
and the blue sky and white clouds beyond, or gaze out
across the meadows dotted with daisies. Several months
after one of these picnics a participant, at the time appar-
ently one of the least rational of all, came to the Volunteer
and said: "The doctors say that I am well enough now for a
trial visit at home. I want to tell you that I remember that
picnic and I thank you for it. I think it was one of the things
that started my getting well."
Volunteer effort is well expended in pioneeering along
lines that anticipate official provision. In the hospital that
I know best musical instruction has been furnished from
outside sources. The rudimentary equipment for the print-
ing of a hospital paper, a potent factor in socializing the
little hospital world and in building up an esprit de corps
among patients and personnel alike was so provided. When
the appropriation for a baseball field had to wait upon the
necessary legislative action, a satisfactory makeshift was
provided for the oncoming season.
Dr. Adolf Meyer has defined mental hospitals as "at-
tempts at mass treatment gradually working their way back
to the individual patient." In large hospitals the chance
for the official personnel to work with individuals is un-
avoidably limited and must of necessity be restricted to the
most pressing or the most clamorous cases. Ward surgeons
make their rounds once, perhaps twice a day, and crowd i
personal interviews into a schedule packed full of routine
duties, punctuated with staff conferences and interpolated
twenty-four-hour service as officer of the day for the entire
hospital. The scant quota of nurses administer dosages,
fill out endless charts and reports and unwind the intermi-
nable red tape that binds up clothing inventories and the
requisitions for all supplies and property of a governmental
institution. Orderlies' days are filled by group vigilance
and routine chores. Small wonder that such institutions
are sometimes accused of giving merely custodial care and
no individual treatments! The miracle is that so much is
given!
The alert volunteer often finds herself able to contribute
a modicum of help in meeting individual needs. The very
fact that she is not identified with officialdom and that her
interest and efforts are purely volunteer in character often
establishes an entente cordiale that breaks through reserves
and is productive of confidences illuminating and helpful
to all concerned. Rarely is the charge of "playing favorites"
leveled at the volunteer's activities, but it is nevertheless a
pitfall about which one must walk warily. The besetting
problem is to dig out the man who is diffident and retiring
and hence the more in need of friendly contacts.
THE COMMON WELFARE
No Child Labor
THE Industrial Recovery Act burgeoned directly into
the field of social welfare before it was two weeks old
n the provisions — or lack of them — in the code of the
:otton textile industry. This code, the first to be placed
jefore the Recovery Administration, was no sooner pub-
ished in the newspapers than the National Child Labor
Committee led off an effective hue and cry over the fact
that it nowhere mentioned child labor — and cotton
textiles have historically been among the most ruthless
jffenders in employing young children for long hours at
>eggarly pittances. Secretary of Labor Perkins at once took
jp the cudgels and announced that she would demand pro-
visions against child labor in every code submitted under
the act. And at a hearing on the textile code in progress as
this issue of The Survey was going to press it was pointed
3ut that the proposed minimum wage of $i I a week in the
Vorth and $10 in the South was a pretty good — employ-
ers said a complete — protection, for youngsters are not
worth that much to the millmen. Then, on the following
lay, the employers offered to write into the code an
igreement to employ no workers under 16 years of age,
hereby not only covering themselves with glory but set-
ting up a waymark in American social history.
The incident points the need for everlasting watchfulness
m the part of the Labor Department, the advisory com-
nittee of consumers set up by General Johnson under his
idministration of the act, and of sharp-eyed social agencies,
ienry P. Kendall pointed out in the Economic Planning
ssue of Survey Graphic (March 1932) that the overwhelm-
ng majority of cotton-textile employers stood behind the
voluntary code which he had engineered. But a grasping
ninority refused to come in, undercut their more enlight-
ened competitors and wrecked the agreement. Now the
:ode is to have the sanction of law; it will profoundly affect
he whole structure of industry and labor; it must safe-
guard the interests of workers, consumers and progressive
employers.
Interstate Shark-Hunting
BY APPROVING the requisition of the governor of
North Carolina for the extradition of Harry L.
Drake, indicted for conspiring to "evade and nullify" the
usury laws of that state, Governor Horner of Illinois has
set a new precedent and, if the extradition is accomplished,
will have put a new and powerful weapon in the hands of
these engaged in the perennial battle against loan sharks.
The indictment against Drake was secured through the
efforts of the North Carolina Civic Association, one of the
avowed purposes of which is to drive out voracious salary-
buyers. Some thirty-four of the 150 or so of the string of
small-loan shops which Drake heads are in this southern
state where his customers are mostly mill-workers. The
Drake business was started about forty years ago in Chi-
cago by the present defendant's father. It extended itself
to New York and flourished there until some twenty years
ago when a tightening up of the usury laws made it un-
profitable and drove the Drakes westward. They are active
now in seventeen states, mostly in the South and West
where borrowers have little or no protection under the law
and where interest rates may run up to 350 or 400 percent
annually. Prosecution of absentee owners of such businesses
has hitherto been blocked by the inability to secure their
extradition. Even if, in the present case, Drake is successful
in his efforts to avoid returning to North Carolina for trial,
the action of Governor Horner marks a gain in the fight
against loan sharks and will strengthen the attack on other
cases now under observation.
A Code for Social Workers
IT WAS two years ago at its Minneapolis meeting that
the National Conference of Jewish Social Service found
itself weary of discussion per se, and ready to take a
resolute stand on matters of social policy. The status of the
Jewish social worker likewise called, it seemed to the con-
ference, for clear delineation. The findings of two com-
mittees appointed at that time were presented and adopted
at the recent Detroit meeting of the conference. Both were
framed by authoritative professional minds. Together they
constitute a platform of significance to social work and
social workers everywhere.
The Committee on Status, Solomon Lowenstein, New
York, and Maurice Taylor, Boston, co-chairmen, went into
all the implications of professional training, staff repre-
sentation, personnel practices and salary schedules, laid
down standards where experience is sufficient to warrant
their determination, and discussed tested procedures
applicable to situations where standards are not yet de-
terminable. The Committee on Social Policy, Ben Selek-
man, Boston, chairman, took a thrust at a social economy
in which "men are merrily on the make" and urged "recog-
nition of the principle that maintenance of human life
constitutes the primary fixed charge upon both industry
and society." It calls on social workers to direct their efforts
toward a "collective, planned social economy," to oppose
"planning for the creation of artificial scarcity in the name
of profitable price," and to assert its conviction that "a
planned society must preserve democratic principles." As
immediate measures it urges:
. . . the organization of the employment market so that the
maximum number of available jobs will be open in orderly and
organized fashion to workers, provision for a well-rounded system
of compulsory social insurance for those rendered involuntarily
idle, the establishment of a permanent system of public relief, the
establishment of fair standards of labor and conditions of work,
and recognition of labor unions as an institution necessary to the
ordered functioning of industrial life.
Social workers have been charged, and of late rather
sharply, with being "too busy to think about the social
implications of their task." The new social policy of the
Jewish Conference is an answer to that charge. Its percus-
sions are likely to reach far beyond the group which has
adopted the platform and to strengthen the resolve of
other groups not yet emboldened to so forthright a stand.
Long Hours for Nurses
WHILE talk of the forty-hour week is going the rounds
in industry, nurses may be hoping that some federal
eye will gaze at some of the professions. Just-published
259
260
THK SURVEY
July
figures of the Committee on the Grading of Nursing Schools
show that working hours of student nurses were somewhat
longer in 1932 than three years before when the first survey
was made. The Committee believe it should be "unthink-
able" to have student nurses' hours on duty exceed forty-
eight a week; "duty" does not include the additional time
these girls must spend in classrooms and study. Yet last
year only 140 nursing schools out of 1224 meet the stand-
ards long recommended by the National League of Nursing
Education and now set as a general industrial aim: the
eight-hour day and forty-eight-hour week. Eleven states,
ranging from Arizona to Vermont, include not a single
school which passes that test. The happy opposite is Cali-
fornia, where practically all observe a state law requiring
the forty-eight-hour week. The Committee comments that
in California "Visitors who inquire 'how hospitals manage'
are told that they manage very well. Once the idea is ac-
cepted, it is relatively easy to administer." They believe
furthermore that unless hours are shortened voluntarily,
"there is always a real likelihood that, as happened in
California, organizations interested in the welfare of women
will make a shorter working week for nurses a matter of
state legislation. . . . Here is a matter which demands
reform."
Medical Relief and Three Point Two
MEDICAL care paid from emergency relief funds is
riding along smoothly and effectively in New York
State though not on the bandwagon suggested by a current
report. In June 1932 the percentage of total home-relief
expenditures incurred for medical care in upstate welfare
districts was 1.5; and through ensuing months that figure
swelled till by last April it reached the popular spring per-
centage of 3.2. More important than mere percentages is
the greater uniformity and efficiency with which medical
service on this basis is reaching out to those who need it
(see Survey Midmonthly, April 1933, p. 155: Where Relief
Includes Medical Care, by H. Jackson Davis, M.D.).
"Physicians," reports the director of medical care, "have
recognized the increased responsibilities of welfare officials
to the taxpayer. Welfare officials have recognized the fact
that an ever increasing amount of free or unpaid service is
being given by physicians with the result that it is becom-
ing imperative that some payment from public funds be
made to them. ... In several counties for the first time
county and town welfare officials have participated with
members of the county medical societies in a frank round
table discussion of little understood and frequently misin-
terpreted aspects of the mutual relationships, with the
result of increased breadth of understanding."
The Balance of Men and Women
/^URIOUSLY enough, in spite of the increase in num-
^> bers of women in industrial, professional and political
roles, the last Census showed that men had at last gained
numerical supremacy in one category where women long
have held the majority: musicians and teachers of music.
Save in the colleges, women lost a little proportionately in
teaching generally during the decade 1920-1930. "Men
may be driving women out, as well as keeping them out of
the higher ranges of teaching employment," Sophonisba P.
Breckinridge comments in her recent monograph, Women
in the Twentieth Century (McGraw-Hill, 364 pp.: price $4
postpaid of The Survey) which complements her chapter on
women's activities in the report of the President's Com-J
mittee on Recent Social Trends. Concerning women asj
teachers Miss Breckinridge casts out a question for which |
the answer cannot yet be supplied. On the one hand shel
cites a view from a newspaper editorial, declaring that the]
ineptitude of men voters is the fault of their early educa-j
tion, "intrusted almost exclusively to women unaccus-j
tomed to thinking politically," on the other, the dictum oil
Rudyard Kipling that "the woman-taught man is quite the)
most unprofitable to irritate or bully." The self-imposed
limitations of the Recent Social Trends Monographs,)
which like the original report confine themselves to objec-
tive data, must have limited the author, had she been
otherwise inclined, to leave that point with the posing of
the question. One cannot help wishing that she might havei
gone to it, using the array of data so ably presented in other i
parts of the work on Women's Use of Spare Time (including
the rise of the women's club movement); Women and!
Gainful Employment; and Women and Government. As it
is, surely this most careful and impressive history of fact
will give pause to any who still might be inclined to raise
the old query, Are women people?
More Relief Policy, Please
THE Federal Relief Administration in its early utter-
ances on policy has spoken clearly on the necessity for
"adequate qualified personnel" in every relief operation inj
which federal funds figure. This is good as far as it goes,
but one step farther, taken at this time before state policies ••
jell, would, it seems evident, assure in each state the best;
available as well as "adequate qualified personnel." There i
is already a tendency in the direction of applying the old I
rules of local patronage to the employment of relief work- i
ers. The Louisiana League of Women Voters, evidently]
without taking the thought of which it is surely capable,;
protested to the state relief commissioner the employment
of "women from outside Louisiana" in handling relief!
money. The Rhode Island Legislature, over-riding Gov-
ernor Green's pronouncement that efficiency and not resi-
dence should be the determining qualification, ruled that
only electors of the state may be employed on relief work.
Such rulings as this, — and the federal relief administrator,
out of his experience in New York surely knows it — • will
work in many states for a contradiction of that "adequate
qualified personnel " which the FRA requires. If a state has
such personnel within its borders, well and good; if it
hasn't, and a good many are in that case, it should, and if
it is to do its job, it must, keep itself free to reach out for
competent workers wherever it can get them.
Social workers are a peripatetic race, with experience
accumulated in many places under many conditions. The
profession has never been held down in its development by
the old concept of residence as a sine qua non of competence.
From this professional travelling about has come much of
the peculiar ability of the trained social worker to size up a
situation and to know more about a community in a short
time than do the people who live in it. It would be unfortu-
nate at this time when trained personnel is so greatly
needed if a policy generally took form that would hamper
the free distribution of competent workers. The weakest
states and communities would inevitably be the worst
sufferers. In the new set-up every state and every com-
munity should take its personnel where it can get it without
regard to sectionalism. Residence qualifications for workers
will be a ball and chain on effective relief administration.
261
July 1933 THE SURVEY
Unemployment and Community Action
This department is an emergency information
service to public officials and to members,
executives and supervisors of citizens' com-
mittees. News of interesting developments will
be gratefully received by the editors, Russell
Sage Foundation, fjo East 22 Street, New York
A Real-Estate Clinic
THE Real-Estate Clinic of the Pasadena Realty Board was
established at the request of the Council of Social Agencies of
that city, to give service to those experiencing difficulty in keep-
ing up the payments on their homes. A precedent was found in the
operation of the Joint Committee of the Philadelphia Real-Estate
Board (See this department, November 1932).
A committee of five, appointed by the Pasadena Realty Board
assists individuals referred by social agencies. It is frequently
found that regular payments of principal and interest have been
made for some time but can no longer be continued. Adjustments
have been made in such cases by arranging deferral of principal
payments by which means the monthly cost has been cut in half
or more; sometimes complete re-financing is necessary and possi-
ble. Rates of interest have occasionally been reduced.
Another type of service is that of advice to persons whose real-
estate obligations are about to be liquidated by banks. Often the
individual wishes independent and unprejudiced counsel before
disposing of the property pledged as security.
Because of its official standing the Real-Estate Committee is
able to accomplish far more in its negotiations, than could the
client acting alone or by the representation of a single individual.
The prestige of the Real-Estate Board has been a valuable asset.
The Board itself, it is reported, feels that this activity has given
it prestige by demonstrating the willingness of the real-estate
interest to bear its share of the problems of the community.
Giants of Relief
THE largest single home-relief organization in America is the
Cook County (Chicago) Bureau of Public Welfare with its
case load of nearly 200,000 families and its staff of 4066. Last year
it dispensed $25, 645, 620 in relief as compared with $685,108 in
1929. Its peak month this year showed expenditures of nearly five
million dollars.
Two years ago when the unemployment load began to mount,
the private agencies were the first to attempt to carry it. Later an
emergency service was set up but within a year this was absorbed
by the public department which at the same time relieved the
private agencies of their excess burden.
The statistics of the United Charities, largest private agency,
illustrates the changes that have taken place in the case loads of
the private agencies over this period. In May 1928, the UC had a
total case load of 2548 of which 742 were relief cases. In December
1931, the total case load had mounted to 34,267 of which 22,432
, were relief cases. In May 1933, the total case load had subsided to
.^500 (estimate) of which 2625 were relief cases.
In making these transfers from private to public care a fre-
quently-revised manual entitled Division of the Field has been
followed. Elaborated as it is by categorical definition and detail,
the manual follows, in the main, the basic principle of turning
over to the public agency the "uncomplicated" unemployment
cases, retaining for the private agencies the care of families in
which social problems abound.
In addition to the County Bureau's expenditures of $25,-
645,620 in 1932, the other major family and work-relief agencies
spent $l 1,834,135, bringing the total to $37,479,755- The private
Edited by JOANNA C. COLCORD
and RUSSELL H. KURTZ
agencies distributed $8,444,767 or 22.5 percent of this total; the
work-relief bureau, $2,221,026; and the Mothers Pension Depart-
ment, $1,168,342.
The expenditures of this same group of agencies, nine in num-
ber, over a period of four years is shown in the following table:
Public agencies
Private agencies
f930
$1, 748,501 $2,408,231
1,045,748 1,411,180
'93' '93^
$5,5I4,55' $29,034,988
7,925,388 8,444,767
Total $2,794,249 $3,819,411 $13,439,939 $37,479.755
The Welfare Council of New York City has similar though not
comparable statistics for its major relief agencies for the same
period. Its compilation includes eleven family-service agencies,
the Emergency Work and Relief Bureau, and several other relief
agencies in the "private" group; the Mayor's Official Committee
and the School Relief Fund in the "semi-official" group; and sev-
eral public agencies in addition to the Home Relief Bureau, City
Work Bureau, and Department of Public Welfare in the "public"
group. The four-year comparison of these agencies' relief dis-
bursements is summarized as follows:
'929
'93°
$9,°21>°4i
36M51
'93' '93?
8,769,759 $57,7°6,°48
2,135,605 3,689,018
JU1.4J1 ^.iJJ.u^j j,uoy,uiu
2,55°,°67 5,278,4°4 15,382,771 19,178,695
Public agencies
Semi-official agencies
Private agencies. . . .
Total $10,043,479 $14,660,896 $46,288,135 $80,573,761
The comparative proportions of total relief being furnished by
public agencies in these two areas over the four-year period is
shown herewith:
'929 '930 1931 1932
Chicago 62.6% 63.0% 41-0% 77-5%
NewYork 74.6% 61.5% 62.2% 71.6%
Details of a County Set-up
\ DMINISTRATION of relief in King County, Washington
•£*- (Seattle), has been completely reorganized under the new
state law, a county welfare board being set up in three depart-
ments.
I. RELIEF. One of two chief relief officers is in charge of the
fourteen city districts (one of which deals only with homeless
men) and the other of the six county districts. About 18,000
families are now on relief. The commissary system has been
abandoned. Posted in each office is a list of retail grocers, who
have registered at the central headquarters of the board and have
agreed, in writing, to abide by the provisions and prices of the
approved list of grocery items. Vouchers are given to the heads of
families, who, in turn, present them to the retail grocery store of
their selection. In this choice, the unemployed are urged to trade
at the store nearest their homes or where money is owed. If a store
is unable to supply voucher holders with specified articles, it is
withdrawn from the certified list and a new voucher, drawn upon
another store, is issued. Grocers who fail to observe rules concern-
ing quality and specifications of items are removed from the list.
After the grocer has received vouchers in exchange for foodstuffs,
he presents the invoice, showing quantity and prices and the
signature of the person receiving relief, to the Welfare board.
This invoice is not negotiable and payment is refused for vouchers
presented by third parties. Approximately noo grocers are now
262
THE SURVEY
July 1933
handling vouchers. Relief funds are used only to supply food,
clothing, garden seeds and fuel.
An experienced social worker as supervisor responsible to the
chief relief officer, is in charge in each district. The visiting staff
contains some trained workers on salary, and many aides on relief
wages. Courses of instruction are being given to the latter through
the University of Washington Extension Department.
II. TECHNICAL SERVICES. A volunteer legal aid service has been
organized to assist clients with property and eviction problems.
A "technical officer" is in charge of the production of fuel, re-
pair and distribution of shoes and clothing, gardening and work-
relief programs in general. Self-help groups, particularly the
newly-organized Economic Security League, are cooperating
closely. Opportunities for volunteer work are offered in return for
relief vouchers, and regular paid jobs which may open in the city
departments and public works are rilled by men who have volun-
teered to work out their relief. About 8000 families have been
furnished garden seeds and, when necessary, vacant lots assigned
to them, to cultivate under the supervision of trained agricultural-
ists.
III. ACCOUNTING. The chief accountant supervises audits,
commitments, payroll and complaints. Invoices presented by
dealers are taken by the accounting department. They are
checked, totaled and certification made to the chairman of the
welfare board by the chief accountant, on Saturday of each week.
These audited commitments are then certified by the chairman
to the state director of relief commission. Meeting on Tuesday of
each week, the state commission certifies the total to the gover-
nor, who issues his personal check, payable to the King County
Welfare Board, against funds held in trust at a local bank. The
chief accountant then signs checks to the individual dealers, up to
the amount placed at the disposal of the board by the governor.
One copy of every voucher for which goods have been given goes
back to the supervisors in the various districts where they are
checked and entries made on families' card files.
"Renovize Philadelphia"
/CONFRONTED on the one hand by the constantly increasing
^-* number of families receiving food orders, and on the other by
thousands of properties in excessive disrepair, a representative
group of business, professional and civic leaders in Philadelphia,
recently organized a campaign to start building work. Six thou-
sand volunteers under team leaders made a canvass of residential
and business properties to get owners to pledge repair and
improvement jobs at regular wage rates. As a result, property
owners agreed to complete within a six months' period about
twenty-one and one-half million dollars of work in repairing,
modernizing and remodeling.
The committee did not attempt to assign unemployed building-
trades workers to do specific jobs, but advised owners to place
orders with firms with whom they had previously dealt. To aid
owners who needed architectural or engineering service, an ad-
visory bureau was created, supplemented by a construction bu-
reau which advised on costs and the letting of contracts. As a
further aid, a comprehensive exhibit covering 5000 square feet of
floor space was set up in a central office. Rooms were built as
examples of "before" and "after" treatments. Extensive pub-
licity through news releases and circulars, helped to simplify the
work of the canvassers and to bring to the exhibit large numbers
of prospective renovizers.
Although a considerable portion of the work pledged represents
repairing and renovating which would have been done in regular
course, the committee believes that the house-to-house canvass
did initiate much new work. This conclusion is backed up by the
April bulletin of the Pennsylvania Department of Labor and
Industry, which reported decreases in employment for all types
of construction in the areas reporting except in Philadelphia.
According to the bulletin, employment in that city by building
contractors increased 16.1 percent in March as compared with
February, and payrolls increased 22.1 percent. This substantia
improvement in building employment probably is attributable tc
the success of the Renovize Philadelphia Campaign.
Subsequent to the campaign a check revealed that approxi-
mately ?io million of the total amount has already been expended.
Relief in Wisconsin
THE Wisconsin Industrial Commission, the emergency relief
administering body of that state, reports that in Apri
$1,793,120 was spent on family and homeless relief in those loca i
ties that received part of their funds from the Reconstruct! 01
Finance Corporation, localities comprising 72.6 percent of th<
state's population. This aid went to 76,761 families and 12,46^
unattached persons, a relief-roll making up 16.4 percent of the
population of these areas. The cost of relief averaged $20.19 Pei
family and 72 cents per capita of the population.
Milwaukee County accounted for $757,875 of this total. Hert
30,198 families and 6725 unattached persons received aid, this
being 20.7 percent of the population of the county. The cost of re-
lief averaged $23.98 per family and $1.04 per capita of the popula-
tion. Racine shows the next largest expenditure with 4182 families
and 91 1 unattached persons, 28.8 percent of the population receiv-
ing relief to the amount of $100,976 at a per capita cost of $1.38.
while the average per family was $23.10.
Employment-School Census
/CINCINNATI has for the past five years made use of an
^-* ingenious device to discover the extent of unemployment
in its midst through inquiries prosecuted in connection with the
annual school census. It was found that the results checked
closely with the Federal Unemployment Census of Cincinnati in
1931. The school census taken in May 1933 disclosed that 26 per-;
cent of the working population was totally unemployed in that
month, this figure being the same as that reported through the
census taken the previous year. Part-time employment in 1933
was 22.2 percent, a slight reduction from 1932. This figure, how-
ever, includes 8800 men employed on work-relief by the Depart-
ment of Public Welfare.
Duration of unemployment, taken for the totally unemployed!
group, showed that 45 percent had been out of work over eighteen;
months, while only 3.5 percent had been unemployed for three'
months or less out of the last two years.
New Angles on Self -Help
nEADING, PENNSYLVANIA, has succeeded in incorporat-
•* *- ing into its county relief program some phases borrowed
from the self-help movement.
Last year, an ambitious project in work-relief was launched
in Reading, a boulevard -being constructed with public funds. At
first wages were paid in cash, but later this was changed to pay-'
ment in food vouchers. Considerable dissatisfaction ensued among
the workmen, and the quality of the work dropped. At this point a
new supervisor of work-relief took office. "It did seem to me," he
writes, "that there was more than a little justice in the resentment
of those who objected to building roads for other men's cars to
travel on in return for groceries. On the other hand it seemed es-
sentially just and fitting that men should be asked to work in their
own behalf — to produce and distribute that which force of neces-
sity made them consume."
The road-building project has been largely discontinued, and
the county program now includes such work as cutting and deliv-
ering firewood and coal, renovation and repair of donated clothing
and shoes, manufacture of children's garments and bed-coverings,
renovation of furniture, repairing of stoves, and renovation of;
tenement property in lieu of rent. All work is done by the un-
employed clients, with the exception of the director and a handful
July 1933
THE SURVEY
263
of regular employes, who are paid in orders redeemable in food or
other necessities, including those which they themselves produce.
The value of theseorders is calculated at forty cents for each hour's
work, and a cash bonus of five cents an hour is given in addition.
However, it should be made clear that the gross amount of the
rood voucher is based upon individual need as determined by case
work and never upon hours worked.
This is not strictly a self-help project, since the management
comes from outside the group. The director states, however:
One thing self-help organizations and the Reading organization have in
:ommon — both lift the barrier which depression set up between the worker
ind his work. Another thing in common, in both organizations — labor is
:xchanged for goods. In self-help organizations, if I understand them
iright, the organization exists as a medium for exchange between in-
dividuals to individual advantage. The Reading organization itself bar-
ers with the individual, benefiting him and deriving for itself an ad-
vantage shared by the taxpayer and the unemployed.
The analogy between the Reading project and the salvage
ivork, which has been carried on for years by such agencies as the
Soodwill Industries, is also obvious. The director of one of these
enterprises in Milwaukee writes:
We of the Goodwill Industries are very much interested in the self-
lelp movement for through the years we have been carrying on just such
in endeavor. . . . While the Goodwill movement has not been promoted
is a barter movement, yet a reasonably large percentage of service in the
joodwill Industries consists of the exchange of labor for commodities
.vailable in the Goodwill stores; although of course most of the Goodwill
ervice consists of the payment of wages in cash to the people served. We
ee in the present barter and self-help movement many features which
:an be applied in the work carried on by Goodwill Industries for handi-
•apped and less fortunate people.
Lo the Poor Indian
FROM Superior, Wisconsin, comes word that the federal In-
dian Service and the state relief administration are cooperat-
ng in a special type of unemployment relief to the non-ward
ndians of the northern counties. This has taken the form of open-
ng up hitherto inaccessible land on which the Indians are being
helped to establish themselves on ten-acre tracts. The Indians, on
a work-relief basis, fell trees, build bridges and shelters, and clear
the land for cultivation. The Department of the Interior is super-
vising the rehabilitation phases of the program while the local
arm of the state relief administration continues to provide relief
until a measure of self-support is achieved.
At the same time, the President has ordered that the quotas of
the Civilian Conservation Corps be extended to make room for
14,400 Indians in seventy-two new forest work-camps in western
and southwestern states. The Indian Service will supervise these
:amps and direct the forestry work. It is interesting to note that
for the Indians the usual period of physical conditioning at con-
centration centers is being waived.
Clothing Collection
PHE Cleveland Associated Charities, realizing the difficulties
L involved in getting second-hand clothing donated in a year
when people were hanging on to their old garments, tried several
new forms of publicity in a spring clothing campaign. In addition
to the regular newspaper and billboard appeals, cards were posted
in 272 gas stations where people waiting to be served had ample
( time to read them. Four hundred taxicabs also carried, for ten
[ Jays, stickers on both windows reading "Associated Charities
needs clothing."
There was also carried on an educational project — a Recogni-
tion Day or "at home" to members of volunteer sewing groups
who this winter had made garments from Red Cross government
iTiaterial. These included more than 100 church groups, and a
arge number of clubs of every variety, social, literary, civic, and
so on. For the first two afternoons of the week of the clothing
drive, members of the A. C. Sewing Center Committee, a year-
round volunteer group of twenty-five socially prominent women,
kept open house to several hundred guests, many of whom
brought donations of second-hand clothing.
Elaborate displays both of new and remodeled garments were
on view for the entire week. The remodeled clothing showed how
scraps of every sort serve some good purpose — baby blankets in
pastel shades knitted from odds and ends of yarn hung next to
large, family blankets made from wool remnants of men's suits
and overcoats. Aprons and blouses made from men's shirt tails
vied with handkerchiefs made from shirt sleeves. Stocking caps
made from old hose mingled with baby bonnets fashioned out of
old silk lingerie. A total of some six thousand second-hand gar-
ments came in during the campaign and many others since.
Ohio Forges Ahead
THE Ohio State Relief Commission has strengthened its staff
in the past few months by the addition of field workers and
increased office personnel. It has continued to move in the direc-
tion of greater relief uniformity throughout the state by the
familiar device of establishing citizens' committees in the various
counties to represent it in the administration of state and federal
relief funds. Adequate relief on a more uniform basis and a
strengthening of local personnel are among the objectives of the
Commission.
The six largest cities of the state, Cleveland, Cincinnati, Colum-
bus, Toledo, Akron and Dayton all use their private agencies in
large measure to render the investigational and relief-issuing
services in connection with the relief granted from public funds.
Cincinnati and Columbus have large work-relief programs directly
under the supervision of the public department and Toledo and
Akron have recently resumed smaller operations after a lapse of
several months. In Cleveland the only work relief is that conducted
by the Associated Charities on a highly selective basis.
The State Relief Commission recently compiled the results of
the relief financing made possible by the special legislation of
April and September 1932. This shows that in the twelve months
ending March 31, 1933, the "enabling legislation" allowed the
local governmental units to bond themselves to the extent of
#6,710,174 for special relief purposes; that the state excise tax on
public utilities yielded $8,741,056; and that the diversion of gaso-
line taxes and motor-vehicle license fees to relief amounted to
14,847,081. In addition the RFC made available to the state
$i 1 ,743,774 in this same period, bringing the grand total of special
relief financing effected by state aid to 132,042,085.
Municipal Land-Holding
THE small town of Colliersville, "Tennessee, has obtained from
the State Legislature an amendment to its charter permitting
the town to hold lands secured through foreclosure of taxes and
lease them for cultivation by unemployed citizens, at a rental
covering the use of the land only, plus taxes on land and improve-
ments. The purpose is to create within the township an "enclave
of economic ground-rent" to be held in perpetuity for the use of
individual citizens. This return to the colonial system of "com-
mon lands" held by the community but used by the citizens is of
interest in the present emergency.
THE Family Welfare Association of America, 130 East 22 Street,
New York, has issued a six-page mimeographed summary of the
material in its files bearing on commissaries and economies in
food relief. Ten cents.
THE New Jersey Emergency Relief Administration, 540 Broad
Street, Newark, discusses its "work for relief" program in a four-
page leaflet. Free.
264
THE SURVEY
July 1933
A Blind Man's Vision
THE BLIND IN SCHOOL AND SOCIETY, A Psychological Study, by Thomas
D. Cutsforlh. Appleton. 248 pp. Price $2.50 postpaid of The Survey.
DR. CUTSFORTH, blind since the age of eleven years, has
studied the difficulties of those suffering like himself but
without the benefit of his more adequate training and experience.
He has produced a thought-provoking volume that should create
more interest in and understanding of the blind. He stresses the
point that the blind child is not merely a normal child without
vision but a child differentiated from others by reason of his total
constitution, his visual impairment and his mode of life organiza-
tion. He urges, therefore, modes of training that will recognize
the blind child as such in order that he may gain through internal
expansion and development the highest capacity for satisfactory
adjustment in all groups of society. Dr. Cutsforth accuses too the
educational institutions for the blind of failing in their real pur-
poses. He offers a new outlook and plan and strengthens and sup-
ports his position by well-chosen illustrative case histories.
Here is a noteworthy contribution in the field of the psychology
of the blind, in terms of their education and their gropings, their
inner conflicts and modes of adaptation. Emphasis falls upon
their own organization rather than upon institutional develop-
ment along lines destined to make them mimics of patterns which
in truth belong merely to those who see. This volume merits
wide reading. Its contents deserve analysis and thought, particu-
larly the statement that no schools for the blind have succeeded
in educating the blind into his own world of experience so that he
can live in harmony with himself and his world, although a few
blind individuals have partially achieved it for themselves.
New York City IRA S. WILE, M.D.
The Story of Dr. White
FORTY YEARS OF PSYCHIATRY, by William A. White, M.D. Nermus and
Mental Disease Publishing Company. 154 pp. Price $3 postpaid of The Survey.
BETWEEN the unemphatic covers of what looks like a tech-
nical book Dr. White has hidden away a story whose interest
is by no means limited to his fellow psychiatrists. It is the story
of a Brooklyn boy who remembered from his earliest years the
clang of the ambulances going to and from the hospital half a
block from his home; whose interest in science was aroused by the
chatter of a playmate who was the son of a surgeon; who won a
scholarship to Cornell while his parents were away from home and
started off at once at fifteen for the college education which other-
wise would not have been possible, blithely asserting that he was
seventeen so that he could get in, utterly unprepared by high
school for the courses into which he launched himself. He never
could pass his examinations in mathematics and Latin and Greek
but they let him stay; he earned his way at wages of fifteen or
twenty cents an hour. His talks with the surgeon's son had led
his reading to Herbert Spencer, whom he adopted as the key to
unlock all knowledge. From Spencer he had learned by fifteen
"that there is a kernel of truth in everything no matter how false
or absurd it may appear upon the surface, and that it is that
kernel of truth which is of value; and therefore nothing is to be
scorned because everything really possesses for the unprejudiced
mind something invaluable, if one will take the trouble to try tc
find it."
At nineteen the boy was entering Long Island College Hospita
Medical College; at twenty-one, pale and thin from two years
hard grind intermixed with odd jobs to earn money, he was riding
the ambulance of an emergency hospital. Then the alms anc
workhouse staff on Blackwell's Island for a few months, anc
back to the college hospital for a dispensary service in nervous
diseases starting the long line of work and study at Binghamtor
State Hospital, the Pathological Institute, St. Elizabeth's ir
Washington, and Europe.
Dr. White was one of the earliest students and spokesmen foi
what he calls "the value of an idea — psychoanalysis." The fort)
years of which he writes bridge the rise of the idea of preventior
applied to mental disease — mental hygiene; the application o
knowledge of the mind to thinking and action in law and th<)
social sciences; and within psychiatry itself a development littlij
short of revolutionary wherein "meaning replaces description."
Dr. White sees modern psychiatry as. "the first medical specialt)
that perforce had to deal with man as a whole and not with sorm
particular organ"; that "strikes at the very heart of the most im
portant and significant problem that is presented to man, namely
the problem of himself. . . ." Hospitals, techniques, professiona
organization and development enter into this informal memoran
dum of forty years; its importance, however, lies not only in th<
record of advances in medicine and social science in which Dr
White has participated with such distinction but more particu
larly in adventures of a boy who started out with Herbert S pence
under his hat and did not blink at "the new ways of thinking . .
developed by man's efforts at a more adequate understanding o
his cosmos." MARY Ros:
Psychoanalysis
PSYCHO-ANALYSIS TODAY: Its Scope and Function, edited by Sandor Lorana
M.D. Covici Friede. 364 pp. Price $4.25 postpaid of The Survey.
PSYCHOANALYSIS OF THE NEUROSES, by Heltne Deulsch (translated from III
German). Hogard Press, London. Through Robert O. Ba/lou. 237 pp. Price $4 posl
paid of The Survey.
THE sizeable volume edited by Dr. Lorand contains twenty
five essays on psychoanalysis covering in order, first, genera
theoretical considerations; second, mental hygiene and education
third, clinical problems of the neuroses and psychoses; and fourth
applied psychoanalysis in other fields. Dr. Lorand has enlistee
from this country and abroad an able group of contributors whicl
includes many of the most distinguished representatives of psycho
analysis. The book brings psychoanalysis up to date, supple
menting the basic contributions of Freud by the importan
developments which have resulted from his own later work anc
that of others.
In spite of an attempt to present the material in non-technica
language wherever possible, this is not a book for beginners. Fo
the lay person or psychiatrist who is fairly well read in the foun
dation literature, the volume should be invaluable as a read;
means of orientation to the psychoanalysis of today and as •
reference book extraordinary. The standard of work is higl
throughout and shows skillful editorial leadership. The essay:
are both concise and comprehensive. There is no more duplicatior
or repetition than is desirable for emphasis and clarity, and eacl
author sticks conscientiously to his own special topic. In general
this book is unique in the degree to which it has achieved a simpl<
presentation of the confusing and widely ramifying material o!
psychoanalysis. No longer does this scientific discipline confim
itself to the realm of nervous and mental illness, but reaches ou •:
to touch all the biological and social sciences. Dr. Lorand's bool
stands as the most useful single volume yet to appear which in,
eludes all these broader aspects.
Dr. Deutsch's book is number 23 of the International Psychol
analytical Library, edited by Ernest Jones. As the name implies
it deals solely with problems of nervous illness and comprises ;,:
series of eleven lectures. These were no doubt prepared for stun
dents at the Vienna Psycho-analytical Institute and consequently'
for good understanding, there is need of considerable general
knowledge of psychoanalysis as a background. The book gives iti
ighly satisfactory presentation of those familiar groups of
isycho-neuroses which were first and most thoroughly studied by
he psychoanalytic method. Theoretical and general considera-
ions are illustrated by abundant case material, and all is set
>rth in simple language and with a graceful style. The resulting
omfort and pleasure for the reader is not gained at any sacrifice
f scientific values. The book is high grade throughout from every
tandpoint, and in its field may well become a classic for accuracy,
larity and brevity. MARTIN PECK, M.D.
'oston, Massachusetts
Small Loans
HE PERSONAL FINANCE BUSINESS, by M. R. Neifeld. Harper. 490 tP.
Price $5 postpaid of The Survey.
rHE economic aspect of the small-loans problem is set forth
here with great clarity. One admires the author's broad grasp
f details and the astonishing ingenuity with which material ap-
arently unrelated to the subject has been woven together to
apply a well-integrated background. In the first part of the book
ie author lays down The Basis of Personal Credit. In the second
art he deals with Personal Finance, analyzing with care and pre-
sion the nature of the finance business, the borrower and his
roblems, the lender and his problems, the relation of the enter-
rise to the field of banking, and the public relations aspect. It is
iteresting for the lay reader to see how many different mis-
nderstandings of his own there are about the nature of the busi-
ess and how they are cleared up. The testimony of people who
re most closely connected with the business, such as labor, bank-
ig commissioners, legal aid societies, in favor of the type of
.•gulation afforded by the Uniform Small-Loans Law is per-
jasive as to its merits. The book will well repay thorough study.
t is particularly valuable for people in communities where the
nail-loans business has not as yet been brought under control of
ell-tried legislation.
To social workers the chapter on Social Aspects of the Per-
jnal Finance Business will be particularly interesting. It at-
:mpts with considerable success "to show who the potential
orrower may be by showing who he cannot be." One notices such
mtences as this: "The positive uplift in family morale that
>mes from self-respecting negotiations with personal finance
impanies is in contrast to that engendered by contact with social
*encies in the usual course of their welfare work." A valuable
ook in any social-worker's library. JOHN S. BRADWAY
>uke University
Fewer, Better Churches
HE NEGRO'S CHURCH, by B. E. Mays & J. W. Nicholson. Institute of Social
and Religious Education. 321 pp. Price $2 postpaid of The Survey.
''HIS volume on the whole justifies its claim to be "the first
I- comprehensive study of the contemporary Negro church."
luch is made, rightly enough, of the prominence of the church in
le Negro communities and its historic role as the one institution
i which the Negro has been free to exercise unrestrained, or
jarly so, his group initiative, his ability to organize, and his need
>r self-leadership. But in spite of a record of moral, educational
id spiritual support such as could have come from no external
)urce, and a curious tendency on the part of the Negro church to
5 a composite institution at one and the same time church,
>rum, community and social center, race organization, the study
iscovers the Negro church much more the product and reflection
f its external environment than a moulding force or counter-
:ifluence, compensating or offsetting the economic, social or
iltural disabilities of the Negro minority. Every detailed an-
ysis finds it reflecting the external conditions of its constitu-
te)', and subject in only slightly modified degree to the prevail-
. ig trends, emphases and changes of the organized religion of the
lajority in the same or similar communities. This being so, there
little to support the thesis that the church has a special influ-
ice or function in Negro life, or that its development has come
r can come from within. Which, if true, specifically means that
le future of the Negro church depends very largely upon progress
nl change in the educational, economic and social condition of
BOOKS THAT LIVE ON
FOR THE SOCIAL WORKER
The Dynamics of Therapy
IN A CONTROLLED RELATIONSHIP
By Jessie Taft, A.B., Ph.D.
Shows in concrete detail how the relationship between
therapist and child is initiated, developed and brought to
constructive termination. The therapist's part in the treat-
ment contacts is as fully and frankly recorded as the child's.
THE MACMILLAN CO.
New York
$2.50
"A decade hence there will be Socialists who will turn to it in assessing the views of
the present period."
Socialist Planning and a
Socialist Program
A Symposium edited for the L. I. D.
by HARRY W. LAIDLER. Ph.D.
With an Introduction by Norman Thomas
12.00
" Sets up a concrete goal toward which an increasing number of intelligent men and
women may strive." — The Call of Youth
"Interesting to all who are interested in Government." — Montgomery. Ala.,
A dvcrtiser
"A penetrating look at the present American, economic tangle." — Columbia
Missourian
FALCON PRESS, Inc., 330 West 42nd St., New York, N. Y.
DIRECTORY OF SOCIAL AGENCIES
NEW YORK
39th ed. 1932-33
A consolidated, classified and descriptive directory of social
agencies serving the City of New York. The handbook of
social workers, teachers, doctors, lawyers, donors, and others
in need of information as to the social service resources of
New York. For fifty-one years one of the activities of the
Charity Organization Society.
850 pages Cloth $3.00
Published by the
CHARITY ORGANIZATION SOCIETY, 105 East 22nd St., New Yerk
Studies in the
Practice of Social Work
No. 1. INTERVIEWS — A Study in the Methods of Analyz-
ing and Recording Social Casework Interviews. $1.00
No. II. SOCIAL CASEWORK — Generic and Specific. A
Report of the Milford Conference. $1.00
No. III. SOCIAL WORK ETHICS— Lula Jean Elliott.
$.50
AMERICAN ASSOCIATION OF SOCIAL WORKERS
1 30 East 22d Street, New York
(In answtring advertisements please mention THE SURVEY)
265
266
THE SURVEY
July 193.
the Negro masses, as brought about outside the church but, it is
to be hoped, with the most intelligent cooperation from the
church. Evidence that the Negro population is overchurched in
both rural and urban areas suggests as an immediate practical
objective, fewer but better Negro churches; just as the demon-
strated dependence of the church on its environment, demands for
progress, constructive emphasis on the institutional type of
church and cooperation with practical programs of social im-
provement and reform. ALAIN LOCKE
Howard University
Social Trends
TRENDS IN PUBLIC ADMINISTRATION, by Leonard D. While. McGraw-Hill.
365 fp. Price $4 postpaid of The Surrey.
PROBLEMS OF EDUCATION IN THE UNITED STATES, by Charles H. Judd.
McGraw-Hill. 214 pp. Price $2.50 postpaid of The Survey.
THE METROPOLITAN COMMUNITY, by R. D. McK.em.ie. McGraw-Hill. 352
pp. Price $3.50 postpaid of The Survey.
RURAL SOCIAL TRENDS, by Edmund deS. Brunner and J. H. Kolb. McGraw-
Hill- 386 pp. Price $4 postpaid of The Survey.
' I ''HESE four volumes form part of a series of thirteen mono-
-*• graphs prepared under the direction of the Research Com-
mittee on Recent Social Trends to amplify and document the
chapters written by their respective authors in the monumental
report of the Committee issued several months ago (see Survey
Graphic, January 1933). Both for the specialist and for the
general reader with special interest in these various fields, they
bring together a wealth of fact made readily accessible by the ex-
cellent typography, arrangement and indexing of the books. As in
all the publications prepared under the direction of the Com-
mittee, the emphasis is on objective fact brought together from
existing authoritative sources and in some instances from field
investigation, and "kept as free as possible from emotional color-
ing and unverifiable conjectures." The volume by Professors
Brunner and Kolb gives in addition to an analysis of Census data
(much of it previously unpublished) the report of field studies
originally initiated by the Institute of Social and Religious Re-
search and carried forward through the cooperation of the Insti-
tute and the Committee, while Professor McKenzie's dynamic
analysis of the metropolitan community includes chapters by nearly
a dozen students in special fields engaged in research in universi-
ties and other centers in various parts of the country. While part
of the material of these monographs was dealt with in the Com-
mittee's general report (Recent Social Trends, McGraw-Hill, 2
vols., 1568 pp., price $10 postpaid of Survey Graphic) these sup-
plementary publications include much valuable material neces-
sarily omitted from rounded presentation of the report but essen-
tial to full understanding of the changing social patterns which
they delineate. MARY Ross
German Insurance
UNEMPLOYMENT INSURANCE AND RELIEF IN GERMANY. National
Industrial Conference Board, Inc. 107 pp. Price $2 postpaid of The Survey.
DURING the summer of 1932, the National Industrial Con-
ference Board sent a member of its research staff, Mr.
Trivanovitch, to investigate and survey unemployment insurance
and relief in Germany. He interviewed officials at headquarters in
Berlin and studied relief agencies in a limited number of other
cities. His findings are set forth in five brief chapters: Unemploy-
ment insurance and emergency relief, Welfare relief, Methods of
providing relief for unemployment, Proposals for reform of un-
employment insurance and relief, Lessons drawn from German
experience. The appendix contains additional factual material
dealing with the administration of unemployment insurance.
The general provisions of the act of 1927, and subsequent
changes, are given in sufficient detail to furnish the necessary his-
torical data. Distinction is made between unemployment insur-
ance, emergency relief and welfare relief and the stages are traced
through which the proportion of workers covered by the first
named has decreased while those under the latter two have in-
creased. Since the Conference Board assumes that the insurance
scheme was designed for the purpose of providing relief for pro-
longed unemployment, the logical conclusion follows that this
experiment has been a failure. The Board evidently believes that
only seasonal unemployment insurance applied to a limited group
of industries should be considered. However, tribute is paid to th
administrative system which "functions with remarkable eff
ciency under the direction of capable and honest administrators.
Since the Conference Board considers the scheme a failure it i
most regrettable that more was not made of the fact that ther
was no opportunity to accumulate a surplus under the 1927 ac
and that the economic and political plight of Germany has bee
peculiarly unhappy throughout the period under consideratior
One may well hesitate to draw lessons as to the "failure" of sue
a plan in a country so distraught and chaotic. It would be bettt
to see Germany as a part of an upset world and unable to handl
an exceedingly serious employment situation alone. The boo
presents inconsistent statements regarding the employment e>
changes, e.g. pp. 78 and 81. Nor is it wise to conclude that th
placement activities of these exchanges are of little importanc
when as late as 1931 official reports showed over 3^ millio
placements made through these offices.
The conclusion of the Conference Board seems to be that sine
unemployment insurance cannot deal with mass unemploymer
relief that it is of little value and that resort should be made t
straight relief at the outset. "State unemployment relief, if undei
taken, should be devised so as to supplement and not replace th
work of private welfare agencies." The fact that private charit
secures funds based on willingness and not ability to contribute
not noted. It may be mentioned that the Conference Board do<
not here indicate its one-time conviction, expressed in a 193
publication, that it is "advisable to promote . . . the efforts (
employers to work out a solution of the problem wholly or largel
by private and cooperative endeavor, in the form of unemploymer
reserves or other sound measures." RUTH M. KELLOG
University of Chicago
The Lost Environment
SOCIAL PATHOLOGY, by John L. Gillin. Century. 615 pp. Price $3.75 postpaid
The Survey.
TN this thorough and up-to-date volume Professor Gillin follow
-*- what he calls the sociological approach. In doing that h
merely touches a note of group consciousness because the sociolog
cal approach is nothing if not the scientific approach. The prol;
lems of social pathology he divides into five classes includin
those of individuals, of the family, of social organization, of ec<
nomic organization, and of the culture pattern. In terms of thesi:
types of pathology Gillin pictures a fluxing environment t||
which some individuals and groups adapt easily, others with diff !
culty and still others not at all.
The social pathologies as reported by the sociologist are tr
maladjustments between human beings or between human bein§
and their environment. Gillin confines himself almost wholly tj
an examination and description of the outstanding social prol
lems, assembling at each point the most reliable case and stati;;
tical material available. He does not deal with treatment c
"solutions," and for that we do not quarrel with him. The bi
ginning of a way outis always an understanding of social problem,
and that is essentially the view of the author.
This volume excels in certain respects most others of recerl
publication in this field. It is objective. It is up-to-date. It als
has in common with other leading books in the field a quality th;
should be examined here. It considers social problems largely i
terms of maladjusted persons and groups, which is the accepte
approach, but the book takes little account of the environmen
It assumes by implication that social pathology is entirely <
largely a matter of individual or group maladjustment.
American sociology within recent years has placed conside
able emphasis upon the need of seeing "the situation as a whole. •
yet this imperative is generally ignored in the study of our mo: i
baffling social problems. We always remain within the gente
limits prescribed by the mores. Maladjustment generally mear •
that the person or the group is out of harmony with the enviroii
ment, although the environment be a changing phenomenon |
This leads to the logical conclusion that adjustment is a matter <M
personal adaptation, which puts the sociologist, whatever he m;i
think of religion, in a class with the evangelist. Ignoring the eilJ
vironment, the student of social problems finds himself forced in
the direction of more psychiatry, more clinics, more courts and
nore institutions.
Gillin's book is as good as any in this field where all authors are
•nore or less restricted. He does broaden the field here and there,
3ut the time has come when we need to scrutinize the whole en-
vironment and perhaps make of the larger social and economic
ife a kind of therapeutic. At least we ought to take the very im-
x>rtant step of examining the environment as objectively as
leretofore we have examined man. NELS ANDERSON
Setb Low Junior College, Brooklyn
Case Work in School
:ASE STUDIES OF NORMAL ADOLESCENT GIRLS, by Elsie M. Smithies.
Applelon. 284 pp. Price $2 postpaid of The Survey.
THIS is a practical book written out of the author's experi-
ence as assistant principal in the University Highschool of
Chicago University. Teachers and social workers will find the
:ase-study approach most helpful. The illustrations used are
ypical: instances of self-distrust, physical disability, exhibition-
sm, volitional retardation, depression, insecurity, environ-
nental pressure, parental dominance, shame and inferiority fear.
\s will be observed, the classifications are those of "common
ense" rather than logical and technical. Similarly the diagnosis
;md treatment are in each instance of a character that can be ac-
omplished in any intelligently organized school which is sensi-
ively attuned to the common problems confronting adolescent
lirls.
The discussion is designed to illustrate the methods and in-
trumentalities that have been employed effectively in resolving
lifficulties of adjustment. The reader follows each case through
ts successive stages as the personnel office dealt with it — from
he first report of an instructor indicating something wrong in the
mpil's class-work or relations to her companions, through the
•arious steps in the diagnosis, the interpretation of the problem,
md treatment. An introductory chapter on the technique of case
vork describes the methods which are later illustrated in detail
;nd a concluding chapter summarizes the discussion with a sug-
:estive analysis of the most common problems of adolescent
readjustment.
The limitations of the book are probably the limitations of
icrsonnel work at the present time. Thus we may question
whether the volitional tests and the attention profiles employed
ontributed anything to the diagnosis over and above the prior
hservations of the pupil's instructors. And particularly does the
'tudy reveal how definitely at present personnel work in schools
•'perates outside of the substance and core of courses of study and
he curriculum. Clearly the time has come for the mental-hygiene
pproach to modify the organization and structure of subjects
''f study as well as the relations of the student's life outside these
acred precincts. V. T. THAYER
'.ducational Director, Ethical
Culture Schools, New York City
Forced Labor
ORCED LABOR IN THE UNITED STATES, by Walter Wilson. International
Publishers. 192 pp. Price $1.50 postpaid of The Survey.
TUCKILY this belongs to the class of books carrying their own
'— ' antidotes. Determined to make out a case against capital-
>m, the author seeks to prove the existence of a great deal of
:>rced labor in the United States and its possessions. Within the
"nited States he finds it mainly in prisons, though he also finds
nstances of peonage in various parts of the country. In the
'ossessions he turns his attention to forced labor in the sugar,
offee, rubber, mining and some other industries. A valuable study
•f the subject could probably be made by a competent investi-
ator. Mr. Wilson is so reckless in his statements and so loose in
is interpretations that his book has no value.
rrentnn, New Jersey WINTHROP D. LANE
RUN OF THE SHELVES
A DESCRIPTIVE LIST OF THE NEW BOOKS
THE HANDICAPPED CHILD. Report of the Committee on Physically and Men-
tally Handicapped of the While House Conference on Child Health and Protection.
William J. Ellis, chairman. Century. 452 pp. Price $3 postpaid of The Survey.
THE ENERGIES OF MEN, A Study of the Fundamentals of Dynamic Psychology,
by William McDougall. Scribner's. 389 pp. Price $2 postpaid of The Survey.
BOILING down his Outline of Psychology and Outline of Abnormal
Psychology, Professor McDougall has provided what he calls an
introduction to purposive psychology. He naturally stresses its
hormic phases which recognize that man and man's primary
strivings are based upon certain inherited propensities. Wide
knowledge and capable exposition make clear the author's con-
cepts of the native bases of mental action in terms of maturation,
environment and species pattern. It is an excellent book, rich in
suggestion, direct on organization and refusing to be entangled by
schools of psychology which are out of harmony with his basic
doctrine.
SWEEPING THE COBWEBS, Lillien J. Martin and Clare de Cruchy. Macmillan.
181 pp. Price $1.50 postpaid of The Survey.
TAKING care of the old today is more significant and necessary
than protecting the young. As old age in the forties has now
advanced into the sixties, there is greater need for an older gen-
eration to adjust to an era of reverses, limitations and frustrations
both real and imagined. The authors offer a program for the
mental rehabilitation of the old based upon internal changes along
with some modification of the external world. They emphasize
the importance and the methods of shifting patterns and habits in
terms of life goals. It should not be forgotten that the senior
writer is still a young woman of eighty. She applies common
sense, good humor, psychologic technic and understanding to the
problem of salvaging old age. She points a way for the old to gain
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years of better adaptation and adjustment, not through resigna-
tion but through an intelligent revaluation of life involving new
programs, formulated in terms of rational philosophies and at-
tainable goals.
TALENTS AND TEMPERAMENTS, The Psychology of Vocational Guidance,
by Angus Macrae. Applelon. 206 pp. Price $2 postpaid of The Survey.
A SIMPLE, non-technical discussion of psychology as applied to
vocational guidance, non-dogmatic in viewpoint, eclectic in out-
look. Unfortunately a large measure of it is based upon facts
derived from English rather than American experience.
MEN'S MISDEMEANANTS DIVISION OF THE MUNICIPAL COURT OF
PHILADELPHIA, prepared by George E. Washington. Published by Thomas
Skelton Harrison Foundation. 181 pp.
IN 1926 very bad probation work was being done by the men's
misdemeanant division of the Municipal Court of Philadelphia:
that is the essence of this report. It is one of a series of studies
which the Bureau of Municipal Research of Philadelphia has
made of this court's organization and activities, and unfortunately
is published seven years after the field work. That robs it of much
interest beyond the historical — and stops an honest reviewer
from comment. Outside of that it is a competent document.
MUNICIPAL HOUSING, by Helen L. Alfred. League for Industrial Democracy, 112
East 19 Street. New York. Price 10 cents.
A WELL-DOCUMENTED pamphlet by the secretary of the Public
Housing Conference giving a concise picture of American slum
conditions and containing a descriptive summary of the best that
has been done here and abroad in the field of low-cost housing.
The author concludes that immediate action by municipal and
state authorities is needed to improve the existing deplorable
situation.
LABOR PROBLEMS, by Frank Tracy Car/ton. Heath. 468 pp. Price $2.60 postpaid
of The Survey.
To point the way toward a solution of labor problems through a
clear understanding of them, the author offers an impartial
analysis of the historical background and the economic, social and
psychological factors that have shaped labor organization and
industrial relations. Written as a college textbook, it has interest
and value for general readers.
CONSTRUCTIVE ECONOMY IN LOCAL GOVERNMENT
BUDGET MAKING AND ADMINISTRATION, by Dorothy Leonard Judd.
National League of Women Voters, 532 Seventeenth Street, N. W., Washington, D. C.
Price 10 cents and 15 cents respectively,
THESE two study guides prepared for Leagues of Women Voters
are of value to any groups developing an informed membership on
municipal government. Both pamphlets are written in syllabus
form and contain much factual material in addition to appraisals
of the efficiency of various governmental methods. A series of
pertinent questions, constituting a sort of review of the preceding
pages, and a splendid reference list of source material, are in-
cluded in each pamphlet.
ELEMENTS OF A LOW-COST HOUSING LAW AND ITS ADMINISTRA-
TION, by Charles S. Ascher. Price 35 cents from National Municipal League, 309
East 34 Street, New York City.
THIS monograph, originally published as a supplement to The
National Municipal Review, offers practical aid in drafting a
housing law whereby a state will be qualified to apply for loans
from the R. F. C. for self-liquidating housing enterprises. Steps
to be taken in drafting a law, in creating an official administrative
agency and corporations to carry out housing projects, with de-
tailed provisions as to type of project, financial set-up, and so on
are outlined. While drawing liberally on the provisions of the
New York and Ohio laws and the proposals formulated by the
American Institute of Architects, Mr. Ascher concludes that
there is not necessarily one right way to organize for public
housing.
HOW TO BECOME A CITIZEN OF THE UNITED STATES, by Marion Schibsby
and Read Lewis. Published by the Foreign Language Information Service, 222 Fourth
Ate., New York City. Price 25f.
IN simple language this pamphlet tells the immigrant who wishes
to become a citizen the procedure he must follow. Of real value to
the would-be citizen, it is also of genuine help to those interested
in assisting him to achieve his aim.
THE SURVEY
July 193
CO MM UNICA TIONS
Look Out for "H. C. Cummings"
To THE EDITOR: We were approached on June 3, by a man givir
the name H. C. Cummings and claiming to be an assistant fie!
director of the U. S. Public Health Service. "Cummings" had
pleasing personality and told an excellent story, difficult to veri]
on short notice. He appears to be about forty years of age, weigl
about 150 pounds, and is about 5' 6" in height. He is partial!
bald and has thin light brown hair. His face is rather full with
snubbed nose, and he wears tortoise-shell glasses. He was wearir
a light grey felt hat and a grey suit with brown shoes. He has
good personal appearance.
He seemed to be acquainted with the Pacific Coast and clairm
to have been connected with the western office of the U. S. Publ
Health Service. He also seems to have traveled and knows mar
cities and is fairly conversant with the leading names in soci
work and health work generally. He used the names of Benjami
A. Christner, president of the Youngstown Chamber of Con
merce and president of the First National Bank of that city, an
also of Dr. Walter N. Thayer, of the State Department of Inst
tutions and Agencies, State Office Building, Albany, New Yor!
Dr. Thayer says he does not know the man and he is not expecte
in that office as he claims.
He works the game of being caught without funds during tl
course of his field trip and by a suggestion and indirect remai
makes an apparent effort to get funds from friends under ci
cumstances that make such efforts ostensibly impossible. E
then may request it to enable him to get to another city beir
apparently caught with only a dollar or two in money.
Information regarding such a person would be appreciated b
the National Child Labor Committee and suspects may be turne
over to the police pending identification by the undersigned.
JAMES E. SIDB
National Child Labor Committee
419 Fourth Avenue, New York
City to Country
To THE EDITOR: I came across an interesting evidence the otht
day of the movement of people from the city to the country i
the report of one of our representatives carrying on flood-reli<
work in western Kentucky. In handling groups of refugees froi
flood or other disasters in rural sections we have found in recer
years that enough vacant houses were available for temporar
shelter. Our Mr. John L. Teets writes regarding Livingsto
County, Kentucky: "Population of the county is increasing at
rapid rate with families returning in the past six and eigl'
months from Chicago, Detroit, California points, Florida, Akro
and St. Louis until there are now no empty houses in the count}
If it is necessary for the flood refugees on the Illinois side to con-
over into Kentucky, an immediate housing problem woul
develop." ROBERT E. BOND
Director Disaster Relief, American Red Cross
Gossip Set Right
To THE EDITOR: Here is evidence that members of the faculty <
the School of Applied Social Sciences at Western Reserve Unive
sity really do read The Survey. On the last page (page 240) <
The June Midmonthly Survey an obscure little item purports t
tell about the enrollment of students in the twenty-four schoo
which make up the membership of the American Association i
Schools of Professional Social Work. These faculty people he;
protest that the writer of that item missed some of the most si|
nificant and pertinent facts in the statistical report to whic
reference is made in the item. From their point of view the a«
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ALGONTQEuLiN 4.7490 SURVEY MIDMONTHLY
SITUATIONS WANTED
HERE I AM
Education, A.B.-B.D. Experience, 4 years
social work boys' organization. Enthusiasm:
education and applied religion. 30. Married.
Would like connection New York or vicinity.
7139 SURVEY.
i THERE AN ORGANIZATION with an opening
>r a young man who has prepared himself for work in
ic «ocial-religious field (A.B., B.D.)? Social work
iperience and executive ability. 7114 SURVEY.
/OMAN, American Hebrew, social work training and
iperience, desires position institution, school or
'imp. Thorough knowledge dietetics, purchasing
applies, managing helpers. 7134 SURVEY.
.'OMAN (Jewish) experienced immigrant education
id physical welfare, desires position. 7135 SURVEY.
'ANTED: Position as Executive Secretary. Eight
;?ars present position. Experienced organizer,
hildren's, Family and Girls' welfare work. 7148
URVEY.
,'oman with M.A. degree, three years' graduate
udy, experience in teaching and social service,
ishes teaching or administrative work, preferably
ith girls or young women. 7149 SURVEY.
oung woman, twenty-six, single, A.B. and two years
urses' training. Experience includes traveling with
atient, department store and office work. South in
inter. Temporary or permanent. References. 7150
URVEY.
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GERTRUDE R. STEIN, Inc
VOCATIONAL SERVICE AGENCY
18 EAST 41sT STREET, NEW YORK
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We are interested In placing those who have
a professional attitude towards their work
Executive secretaries, stenographers, case work-
ers, hospital social service workers, settlement
directors; research, immigration, psychiatric,
personnel workers and others.
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The World Crisis. Problems confronting you. 15
cents postpaid. Stephen Kisel, 610, 7 East 42nd
St.. N. Y.
Depression Reduction. The Sei Side of Life, An
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Dennett. Single copy $.25 instead of $.35, 5 copies
$1.00 instead of $1.67. 100 copies $15.OO instead of
$20.00. Lower rates for larger quantities. Order from
the author, 81 Singer Street, Astoria, Long
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PERIODICALS
The American Journal of Nursing shows the part
which trained nurses are taking in the betterment
of the world. Put it in your library. $3.00 a year.
450 Seventh Ave.. New York, N. Y.
Mental Hygiene: quarterly: $3.00 a year; published
by the National Committee for Mental Hygiene,
450 Seventh Ave., New York.
ancement of social work as a profession depends upon the
•revious preparation of the students enrolled in the schools,
/nether these students are following a full-time program, and
he length of their enrollment in the schools. Table III of the
eport quoted gives some evidence on these points which appar-
ntly was overlooked. Even though that section of The Survey
> labelled Gossip, must it give an inadequate interpretation of a
actual document? J. E. CUTLER
•Oean School of Applied Social Sciences, Western Reserve University
Public Relations
\> THE EDITOR: The import of the paragraph headed Complaints
:.n Masse in the May Midmonthly (page 201) is misleading,
"he Public Relations Office of the Cook County Bureau of Pub-
ic Welfare was established as part of a program to coordinate
he practices and policies of the public-relief service; its primary
'unction so far has been the adjustment of complaints presented
o it by organized groups of unemployed.
The success of this experiment, which you question, may be
neasured in two ways: From the point of view of the district-office
upervisor it has been and is thoroughly successful in this respect:
t has relieved one of the most vexatious problems of district
elief administration. Individual complaints, both from the justly
iggrieved and the unsatisfiable, continue to be received at the
local office but representative committees are no longer recog-
lized there. Insofar as some of these committees were previously
lisruptive of all orderly procedure, the situation is vastly im-
proved.
But from a larger point of view — that of just and satisfactory
service to the public and the represented client — the success of
.his innovation is more open to dispute. Many local units have
boycotted the Public Relations Office wholly or partially, declar-
ing it was too remote from the point of contact to serve its pur-
pose. A cogent but less outspoken reason for objection has been
that direct action and the securing of immediate results on
pressed cases, were virtually impossible. Some fifty local groups
are clearing through this office and many prefer the procedure
because the " answer" received through this recognized channel is
more complete, specific and final than that formerly obtained.
A most important precaution in conducting such a department
must be against the easy degradation into "just another run-
around." This is a sore spot to many a baffled client and, of
course, should be eliminated.
All in all the experiment is by no means a failure and the
Public Relations Office in Chicago is still operating in the func-
tions for which it was established. It has exciting possibilities for
the development of its services if supported with wisdom, cour-
age and energy. S. H. OLMSTED
Supervisor Public Relations Service
Cook County Bureau of Public Welfare, Chicago
Page Miss Bailey
To THE EDITOR: I want to express my appreciation of the four
articles in recent Surveys by Gertrude Springer. I have found
them most helpful and enjoyable. I am an emergency worker in
the Family Welfare Society office while the regular worker is
with the State Emergency Relief, and have gotten a good deal
of help from these articles. I have also used them for volunteers
as well as our own visitors. I hope there will be many more of
them. (Mrs.) MARGARET E. TOBIN
Acting Secretary Family Welfare Society of Champaign and Urbana,
Illinois
(In answering advertisements please mention THE SURVEY)
269
270
THE SURVEY
GOSSIP:
of People
and Things
June Alphabet
JUNF.'S brides may be fewer this year but the
candidates who came forward to receive
justly merited honorary degrees give proof
that we are suffering no moratorium in merit.
"A master in planning and a genius in admin-
istration" read Dartmouth's citation to Charles
S. Little, organizer and superintendent of
Letchworth Village (see The Midmonthly
Survey, June 1933) who has become a Doctor of
Science. To Mrs. August Belmont, "actress,
author, philanthropist and orator" New York
University awarded the degree of Doctor of
Letters. Wisconsin expressed the appreciation
of the whole country in adding the letters
LL.D. to the already illustrious name of the
Secretary of Labor and first woman member of
the Cabinet, Frances Perkins. For his services
in a special field of industry — occupational dis-
ease— Howard College in Birmingham, Ala-
bama, has conferred the same degree on Dr.
Carey P. McCord of Cincinnati.
Mount Holyoke, looking westward, has seen
and recognized the remarkable services of
Linda Anne Eastman, librarian of the Cleve-
land Public Library. On Lewis H. Carris, man-
aging director of the National Society for the
Prevention of Blindness, Hobart College has
conferred its LL.D. Oswald Garrison Villard,
editor of The Nation, receives this distinction
from Howard University as "a life-long cham-
pion of human right and human dignity," while
Columbia University has conferred it on that
friend of all just causes, Charles C. Burlingham.
Among those who this June have been doubly
doctored, so to speak, are President Roosevelt
himself, LL.D. of Rutgers and of the Catholic
University of America; Justice Benjamin Car-
dozo, LL.D. of Brown and Chicago; and John
H. Finley, associate editor of The New York
Times. Dr. Finley becomes a Doctor of Letters
of Trinity and a Doctor of Humane Letters, as
does New York's governor, Herbert H. Leh-
man, of Yeshiva College, which has been cele-
brating its second commencement and giving
its first honorary titles. To her friends in person
or through print, it will seem an especially
happy choice that Amherst has chosen that
same title for Mrs. Dwight W. Morrow. The
University of Michigan has conferred its doc-
torate of laws on Stephen P. Duggan, director
of the Institute of International Education, and
one of its daughters, one-time associate editor
of The Survey and director of research of the
New York Welfare Council, Neva R. Dear-
dorff, is named as an honorary Master of Arts.
That seemed a rather odd designation for one
already a Doctor of Philosophy until the ex-
planation was forthcoming: it is the highest
honorary degree Michigan confers on a woman!
As this issue goes to press we hear advance in-
timations of the applause that will echo across
Harvard's greens when former-Governor Alfred
E. Smith adds its LL.D. to his existing distinc-
tions— the F.F.M. he claims as a graduate of
the Fulton Fish Market, and the more sedate
honors given by Dublin University, Columbia
and the Catholic University of America.
WHILE the National Conference of Social
Work, meeting in Detroit, was picking William
Hodson, director of the New York City Welfare
Council, for its president, Governor Lehman
was picking him for another big responsibility
closer home, — that is for one of the five mem-
bers of the State Temporary Emergency Relief
Administration, TERA to you. Alfred H.
Schoellkopf of Buffalo was moved up to the
chairmanship, resigned by Harry L. Hopkins,
and Mr. Hodson named to the place vacated by
Mr. Schoellkopf.
WILLIAM JOHN COOPER, United States com-
missioner of education since 1929, has resigned
to become professor of education at George
Washington University, Washington, D. C.,
where he will direct courses in educational
administration.
JOHN L. ELLIOTT, veteran settlement worker
and founder of Hudson Guild, has been elected
senior leader of the New York Society for
Ethical Culture, succeeding to the place held
until his death in April by Dr. Felix Adler,
founder of the society. Dr. Elliott has long been
active in the society as a teacher of ethics in its
schools and as a member of the joint leadership
system instituted by Dr. Adler some ten years
ago.
BRYN MAWR COLLEGE will in the fall claim for
its sociology department the services of Prof.
Herbert Adolphus Miller who parted company
with Ohio State University some two years ago.
His recently published book, The Beginnings of
Tomorrow (see Survey Graphic, May, page
277) has attracted much comment.
TUCKER P. SMITH is the new director of
Brookwood Labor College, Katonah, N. Y.,
succeeding A. J. Muste. The new administra-
tion proposes a program of workers' education
designed to reach the labor masses, employed
and unemployed, including field activities, in-
stitutes and publications.
THE large hole left in the American Indian
Defense Association when John Collier, after
many years' service, resigned as executive secre-
tary to become U. S. commissioner of Indian
affairs, has been filled by the appointment of
Allen G. Harper, Harvard '13 and for some time
past the effective executive secretary of the
Pennsylvania Civil Liberties Committee. Thus
it is assured that the Indians will have both an
official friend at court and a cooperating friend
at the counsel table.
President Dodds
AT a time when the functions and the very
structure of government are in an almost
daily state of off-again, on-again, it is significant
that Princeton University has chosen for its
new president not a classical scholar nor a
modern money-raiser but its own professor of
politics, Harold W. Dodds. Dr. Dodds has been
editor of The National Municipal Review, sec-
retary of the National Municipal League, chair-
man of the School of Public and International
Affairs at Princeton, member of the New Jersey
Regional Planning Commission, electoral ad-
viser to Nicaragua, and technical adviser to
July 1931
General Pcrshing in the Tacna-Arica plebiscite
of 1925-6. He has, thus, starting from the vita
home field of municipal reform, reached out tc
state, regional, national and Internationa
aspects of government, which has become thi
greatest of all employers, increasingly thi
custodian of social and economic well-being
Over the years he has written for The Survey
notably his City Government Grows Up in ou,
special number on municipal government pub
lished in October 1931. We congratulate Prince
PANOPLIED with an Oberlaender Trust fel
lowship, Dr. W. W. Peters, formerly associati
secretary of the American Public Health As
sociation and recently associated with Cleanli
ness Institute, has gone to Germany anc
Austria for six-months study of the visua
method of public-health education. Beginning
the first of the year he will at the request of tht
Near East Foundation make a study of iti
medical and public-health work in a half dozer
countries, including Greece and Turkey. Ir
April he will visit medical and health centers it
Persia and in May of 1934 he will, D. V., com<
home.
... by Any Other Name
/CAUGHT by a caseworker as she mountec
^ the tenement stairs to call on Mrs
Sonnenschein:
"Who's that goin" to Sonnenschein's?"
"Oh, don't you know? That's Mrs. Sonnen
schein's trouble-woman. She comes ever)
week."
As a memorial to the late James M. Edsell
Brooklyn educator, certain school childrer
chosen from the district which he directed wil
enjoy each year a fortnight's outing in t
summer camp. The income from the modesi
fund raised as a tribute to Mr. Edsell's long anc
devoted service has been dedicated to thi;
purpose. Children will be selected by a com
mittee of school principals on the score o!
character, health and need.
SOME bright young publicitor landed tht
Y.W.C.A. on newspaper editorial pages by
picking up the sixtieth anniversary of the in
vention of the typewriter and making a Y.W
celebration of it. The typewriter, says the
Y.W., and — who will deny it? — was "the key
which opened the door of new opportunity tc
women and started uncounted thousands ol
girls on business careers." Hence the honors tc
Christopher Lathan Sholes, modest printer and
journalist who, curiously enough, had a
shrewd notion that his new contraption might
help to an easier livelihood women "who hac
always had to work so hard."
How settlements not only strike deep root!
in their neighborhoods but can send runners
out into the whole plot of city life, was brought
out with vividness at the luncheon given by
Philadelphians in late June to Helen Hall, head-
worker of University House. Leaders in th<
Council of Social Agencies, the city Federatior
of Settlements and the Community Counci
joined in recognizing the part she has playecj
in some of the most spirited advances in Phila-i
delphia in the last ten years as an outgrowth ol*
her neighborhood work along the Schuylkill |
The occasion was her acceptance of the head I
workership of the Henry Street Settlement irf
New York, with its many activities on the East
Side and its city-wide nursing service. Mis;
July 1933
Vald herself becomes president of the unique
.ocial institution she founded forty years ago.
Vew York neighborhood workers are rejoiced
hat Miss Hall will hereafter be one of them,
or she has stood out among the younger group
vho are giving new distinction to the settle-
nent movement. Since 1928 she has served as
hairman of the Unemployment Division of the
National Federation of Settlements, directing
ts pioneer Case Studies of Unemployment, and
ts legislative work, federal and state. Last
ummer she visited England and the continent
0 gather comparative materials, some of which
ntered into her articles in the May issues of
'he Atlantic Monthly, The New Outlook and
Survey Graphic. In 1931 she was a member of
jovernor Pinchot's Commission on Unemploy-
nent. At the June conference of the Chicago
federation of Settlements on the grounds of the
Zentury of Progress, Miss Addams traced settle-
nent trends from their English beginnings till
oday, and Miss Hall was chosen to speak for
he Justice of Tomorrow.
THE Survey's downstairs neighbor, the
American League to abolish Capital Punish-
nent, has, in line with its present concen-
ration on research and educational work,
evived its news bulletin in the form of a
nimeographed quarterly replete with legisla-
ive information.
'HiGH-water mark for technicalities is
passing on,' " says Deborah B. Pentz of the Los
fegas, Nev., Chapter of the American Red
Zross, about the telegram received by the
ocal public welfare department from a similar
lepartment in California: "Man named so-and-
<o deserted wife 1929. Now serves her with
lotice of divorce claiming residence in your
•ity. Wife ill and destitute. Since residence of
lusband determines that of wife please wire
permission to us to send her to Los Vegas
mmediately."
Summer Institutes
I T may be vacation season for some people but
^ it's institute time for schools of social work
vith most of them buckling down to provide
:oncentrated doses of training to meet the exi-
;encies of the times. The New York School of
>ocial Work will repeat from July 19 to August
6 its institute for executives and staffs of child-
taring institutions which has demonstrated its
'alue over several years. In addition it will offer
rom August I to 25 a public-welfare institute
in the administration of unemployment relief,
his with the active cooperation of the Ameri-
:an Public Welfare Association and the Family
iVelfare Association of America. It invites ap-
plications from state, city and county public-
velfare workers, but warns that enrolment will
>e limited. Details from the School, 122 East 22
Street, New York.
The Atlanta School of Social Work, to name
inly one other very much on its job, is main-
taining its full faculty at the school all summer
md is offering three types of courses to em-
Joyed workers: a seminar for experienced
:ase-workers, another for those engaged in
tommunity organization or group work, and
1 course for untrained folk, volunteer or
>aid, in unemployment relief, rural as well as
irban.
And still on the subject of institutes, Aubrey
jiVilliams, field representative of the American
'ublic Welfare Association, writes from Texas:
'I have been privileged to attend the South-
vest Social Service Institute which Elmer Scott
THE SURVEY
and his staff of the Civic Federation of Dallas
organized and have carried through here at
Camp Waldemar. The Institute has attracted
people from five or six states and has been one
of the most unusual pieces of social and eco-
nomic education with which I have had the
pleasure of being associated. I feel that it is the
representative type of effort that has great
value in social work."
SHERWOOD Smith is the new executive secre-
tary of the Jacksonville, Fla., Community
Chest succeeding Tom Devine.
Listed in the cast of characters of a social-
work pageant: Four gentlemen fund-raisers
who can sing as a quartette.
WITH the pious hope of regular monthly
publication the social workers of Buffalo, N. Y.,
have started a news-letter, The Council
Courier, organ of the Council of Social Agencies,
the Social Workers Club and the local chapter
of the American Association of Social Workers.
Richmond News-Reel
THE Community Chest has yielded Alex-
ander Weddell, its able and affable presi-
dent, to public duty as ambassador to Argen-
tina. Dr. Douglas Von der Hoof, likewise able
and affable, succeeds him. . . . Acting as wel-
fare adviser to the Virginia League of Munici-
palities is Clara Somerville, expert in social
surveys, who has recently become a Richmond-
ite by adoption. . . . Mrs. Frank Preston
(Doretta to her social-work cronies) is directing
a study of health and nutrition conditions
among school children, both white and colored.
. . . Virginia Union University is out for $70,-
ooo which if pledged will be more than matched
by northern foundations. "The rather feeble
training department for social workers," says
its director, June Purcell Guild, "is rejoicing
over the placement of its first student outside of
Richmond. Northerners probably do not realize
that, although schools for Negroes are required
by law, it is next to impossible to get state sup-
port for Negro colleges."
PENNSYLVANIA has a new State Social
Hygiene Committee with Charles Alspach of
Reading as chairman. It aspires to become a
section of the State Conference of Social Wel-
fare.
THE Girl Scout organization on its recent
twenty-first birthday, assured its 300,000
active members and its more than a million
graduates that this "touch of age" was not to
be taken too seriously since Girl Scouts, what-
ever their age, "never cease to be girls in
spirit."
JOHN M. GLENN, director-emeritus of the
Russell Sage Foundation, made the commence-
ment address at the Atlanta School of Social
Work last month, viewing, in the light of his
long experience, social work in past and present
AMONG the honors dispensed by the School of
Journalism of the University of Missouri at its
recent silver anniversary celebration was a
medal to Malvina Lindsay, staff-writer and
star reporter of The Kansas City Journal-Post
and contributor "of articles high in intellectual
quality to a number of magazines" (see Chris-
tian Charity Ltd., by Malvina Lindsay, Survey
Graphic, December 1928).
271
THE Federal Council of Churches has made
the happy choice of Dr. Mary E. Woolley,
president of Mount Holyoke College, as chair-
man of its Department of International Justice
and Goodwill. She succeeds Alanson B. Hough-
ton, who at his own request becomes vice-
chairman.
Blah Department
Up to now the 1933 Blue Ribbon for Blah
seems to this desk to go to a press release which
starts off blithely: "How does the busy little
boy improve his bank account? Largely by
earning his own pocket money." Follows a
statistical study of " youthful bankers in more
than fifty cities" with a listing of their activi-
ties including "those which might be termed
as leading toward self-improvement for whose
faithful performance many children receive
compensation from their parents . . . such as
taking cod-liver oil, practicing music, eating
vegetables and getting good grades in school."
HENRY SAMPSON, Providence social worker,
has resigned as secretary of the Rhode Island
State Unemployment Commission after an
experience with a legislature which from all
accounts did not distinguish unemployment
relief from politics.
PUBLICITORS will be interested in the form
and a much larger audience in the content of
A New Deal for the Negro in which Eugene
Kinckle Jones has telescoped into twelve
economical pages the gallant story of the Na-
tional Urban League's effort to relieve distress
and bolster morale in a year, 1932, when "the
lot of the Negro — the economic pariah of the
American family of peoples — was sad indeed."
Copies from the League, 1133 Broadway,
New York.
THE Institute of Social and Religious Re-
search, an inter-faith group headed by Newton
D. Baker, has undertaken a nation-wide
study of religious prejudice which will take
about a year and cost something like $i 8,000.
The necessary financial sinews are being sup-
plied by John D. Rockefeller, Jr. Baltimore is
the first of five communities of widely differing
types which will be studied. Galen Fisher,
director of the Institute, and C. E. Silcox of
Toronto are making the survey.
PHYLLIS MOULTON, recently placement sec-
retary of the Employment Center for the Handi-
capped, New York, has joined the staff of the
Yonkers Charity Organization Society where
she did field work during her student days at
the New York School of Social Work.
THE Family Welfare Association of America
has changed its stance in the matter of member-
ships and now invites individual members, on a
much broader basis than formerly, in either of
two classifications: Professional, persons who
are members in good standing of the American
Association of Social Workers with at least a
year's experience in the family field; and As-
sociate, laymen identified with family social
work for at least a year through service on
boards, committees or in other volunteer
capacities.
STANLEY P. DAVIES, president of the Ameri-
can Association of Social Workers, will in Sep-
tember assume the post of general director of
the New York Charity Organization Society,
resigned in the spring by Lawson Purdy and
272
T II K S U R V E Y
July 193
filled ad interim by Porter R. Lee of the New
York School of Social Work. Mr. Davies, who
wears a Ph.D. from Columbia University, has
been for a number of years associate secretary
of the New York State Charities Aid Associa-
tion at the right hand of Homer Folks. He has
been especially occupied with the development
of its mental-hygiene program.
Barter Victim
WITH everybody buzzing about barter
along comes this story from Tucson,
Ariz., by way of a letter to The New York
Sun: There is no money out here anywhere.
Jim was telling me how they are bartering and
trading around town getting what they need
without any money. His friend Sam owned a
store on an Indian reservation. An Indian came
in, bought $15 worth of groceries and paid for
them with baskets. Sam traded the baskets
for two Indian blankets, took the blankets to
town and traded them for two saddles which
in turn he traded for a cow. At the wholesale
house where he went to buy supplies for his
store he offered the cow in payment. The
merchant didn't want the cow but would take
it if Joe, the lumberman, to whom he owed
money, would accept it in payment. So Sam
hustled off to see Joe. Now Joe didn't want a
cow either, but he would take it if his employes
would accept their pay in beef — he having no
money to pay them with. The men agreed,
the cow was butchered and the whole deal
put through with Sam returning to the reser-
vation with $70 worth of groceries for his
store.
Just where in the barter chain this unearned
increment accumulated the story does not
show, but every one seems satisfied except
possibly the cow.
AMONG the regrettable depression casualties
are the excellent publications of the Newark,
N. J., Public Library: The Library Letter,
dealing with children's literature; The Library,
characterized by The Boston Transcript as
"one of the best of all library publications,"
and Design in Industry, a bulletin sponsored
jointly by the library and the Newark Museum.
The increase in the library's work during the
first months of 19.33 ranged, in the various de-
partments, from 7 to 47 percent over the same
months last year.
CONSTRUCTIVE Economy in Government is
the subject now on the air in the fifth series of
weekly radio programs on governmental prob-
lems sponsored by the National Advisory
Council on Radio in Education and the Ameri-
can Political Science Association, this time in
cooperation with the recently organized Com-
mittee on Citizens Councils for Constructive
Economy. For fifteen successive Tuesday eve-
nings at 7.15 (Eastern Daylight Saving Time)
public officials, experts in public service, tax
authorities and others will offer suggestions for
economies in the field of governmental social
service. The three programs already presented
have been by Governor Ely of Massachusetts,
Governor Ritchie of Maryland, President
Frank of the University of Wisconsin, Pro-
fessors Thomas Reed and A. N. Holcombe.
The National Municipal Review will publish
these broadcasts as delivered, while reprints of
individual programs may be obtained for 15
cents (less in quantities) from the National
Committee on Radio in Education, 60 East 42
Street, New York City. Copies of future
programs free.
JOHN STEWART BURGESS has resigned from
the department of sociology in Pomona College,
California, to join the department of the same
name in Temple University, Philadelphia. A
transcontinental jump, but not so long as the
previous one which brought him over the
Pacific from Yenching University in Peking,
China. Professor Burgess has been a contribu-
tor to The Survey for many years, chiefly on
Chinese subjects but most recently on that
notable self-help project, the Unemployed
Cooperative Relief Association in Los Angeles
(Living on a Surplus, January Midmonthly
Survey.)
GRITH FVRD, old English for Peace Militia,
is the name for the camps which the Order of
Woodcraft Chivalry, under the wing of Toyn-
bee Hall, is establishing in the neighborhood of
English industrial centers. The first one is at
Godshill in the New Forest. They are designed
for young unemployed men of all classes who
will build their own camps, grow as much as
possible of their food and " volunteer for work
which while non-economic, is yet of social
value.
WARDEN LEWIS L. LAWES of Sing Sing
Prison is in full accord with the principle that
prisoners should work at the jobs to which
they are best suited, but what, he rises to
enquire, can Sing Sing offer in the way of
appropriate work to a diamond-setter, a police-
man, a lion-tamer, a cartoonist, a horse trainer,
an aviator, four real estate brokers, two law-
yers and a journalist.
A COLUMN of figures just naturally asks to
be added up as witness the man who, according
to the news-letter of the National Council of
Jewish Women, was seen walking down the
street with this placard:
Age 35
Weeks out of work 20
Number of children 4
Total 59
STET: "... and always bear in mind,"
stern teacher instructed the new case-work
students, " that anyone who enters social work
in a flipping manner does untold harm."
FRANK J. BRUNO, with the Detroit National
Conference over the dam, set off for England
as the happy possessor of a year's leave of
absence from Washington University, St. Louis.
WITH the appointment of Valentine E.
Macy, Jr., of Ossining to the Westchester Park
Commission, a member of a family whose name
is almost synonymous with Westchester
County progress is to continue the family
tradition. Mr. Macy is the son of the late V.
Everit Macy, former president of the Com-
mission.
AFTER more than a half century as teacher
and administrator in the Ohio State School for
the Blind, J. Frank Lumb, blind since the age
of nine, has retired from the superintendency
of the institution.
ROBERTA TOWNSEND, for two years director
of work for the adult blind of the state of Ver-
mont, is now supervisor of industrial work in
the department for the blind and crippled of
the Brooklyn Bureau of Charities.
ON one of the days when the banks were
closed and the discussion of scrip was fast and
furious an old colored woman came into a dis-
trict office of the Boston Family Welfai
Society greatly troubled on account of hi
meager little bank account. "Honey, Ah do;
know what we's comin" to. All mah money
shet up in dat big bank, an' dat ain't de wor
of it. Ah hears dat mos' any day now we is a
goin' to get stripped."
New Officers
NATIONAL CONFERENCE OF SOCIAL WORK (electi
for 1934) President, William Hodson. New York; vie
presidents, J. Prentice Murphy, Philadelphia; Mai
L. Gibbons, New York; Joel D. Hunter, Chicago.
Executive committee (new) Anita Eldrid^c. S;
Francisco; William J. Ellis, Trenton, N. J.; Willia
Hodson, New York; Katherine F. Lenroot, Washin
ton, D. C.; Harry L. Lurie, New York.
Division Chairman: Children; Lawrence C. Col
Cleveland; Delinquents and Correction, William
Ellis, Trenton, N. J.; Health, Virginia Wing, Clev
land; Family, Edward D. Lynde, New York; Industri
and Economic Problems, Mary Anderson, Washingto:
D. C.; Neighborhood and Community Life, Stua
Queen, St. Louis; Menial Hygiene, Dr. H. E. Chambe
lain, Chicago; Organization of Social Forces, Otto 1
Bradley, Minneapolis; Administration of Publ
Social Work, Margaret Reeves, Santa Fe, New Mex
The Immigrant, Florence Cassidy, New York; Prt
fessional Standards and Education, Harry L. Luri-
New York; Educational Publicity, E. C. Lindemai
New York.
Chairman Program Committee, Stanley P. Davie
New York. Chairman Editorial Committee, Mary V
Hurlburt, New York.
Nominated for 1935: President, Katherine F. Lei
root, Washington, D. C.; vice-presidents. Rev. Robei
F. Keegan, New York; Helen Hall, New York; (
Whit Pfeiffer, Kansas City, Mo.
AMERICAN ASSOCIATION OF HOSPITAL SOCIA
WORKERS: President, Elizabeth A. Gardner, Minni
apolis; vice-presidents, Lena Waters, Philadelphia
Harriett Bartlett, Boston; Hannah Joseph!, Ne'
York; secretary, Helen Almy, Denver; treasure,
Lelia Dickenson, Chicago.
AMERICAN ASSOCIATION OF SOCIAL WORKER;
Vice-presidents (new) Porter R. Lee, New Yorl
Dorothy E. Wyson, Los Angeles; secretary, Elizabet
H. Dexter, New York; treasurer, Leroy A. Ramsdel
Hartford.
AMERICAN PUBLIC WELFARE ASSOCIATION: Prest
dent, Fred K. Hoehler, Cincinnati; vice-presiden.
Blanche LaDu, Minneapolis; directors (new) Ga
Shepperson, Georgia; Lewis Merriam, Washingtor
D. C.; William J. Ellis, New Jersey; Benjamin Glass
berg, Milwaukee; Sophonisba P. Breckenridgt
Chicago; Frederick I. Daniels, New York; Alice
Liveright, Pennsylvania,
CHILD WELFARE LEAGUE OF AMERICA: President
J. Prentice Murphy, Philadelphia (reelected); vice
presidents, Mrs. Lessing J. Rosenwald, Philadelphia
Cheney C. Jones, Boston; Mrs. Samuel S. Drurj
Concord, N. H.
GIRLS' PROTECTIVE COUNCIL: Honorary Chairman
Stella A. Miner, New York; chairman, Ruth Robert
Mix, New Haven; vice-chairman, Lavona C. Inman
Kansas City; secretary and treasurer, Gertrude Grasse
Brooklyn.
NATIONAL ASSOCIATION OF JEWISH CENTEI
EXECUTIVES: President, M. H. Chaseman, Albany
N. Y.; vice-presidents, Allen Bloom, Indianapolis
William Cohen, Brooklyn; Miriam R. Ephraim. Nev
York; William Pinsker, Brockton, Mass; secretary
treasurer, Harry S. Albert, Paterson, N. J.
NATIONAL CONFERENCE OF JEWISH SOCIAL SER-
VICE: President, Jacob Billikopf, Philadelphia; via
presidents. Marc Grossman, Cleveland; Blancl
Renard, St. Louis; Louis Oettinger, Scranton; treas-
urer. Violet Kittner, Cleveland; secretary, Michae
Freund, New York.
NATIONAL COMMITTEE ON VOLUNTEERS IN SOCIAI
WORK: Chairman, Evelyn K. Davis, New York
vice-chairman, Mrs. Edward O. Brown, Chicago.
NATIONAL PROBATION ASSOCIATION: Board oj
Directors (new members) Joel R. Moore, U. S
Department of Justice, Washington, D. C.; Judgi
George W. Smythe, White Plains, N. Y.
SOCIAL WORK PUBLICITY COUNCIL: Chairman
Philip Ketchum, Omaha; vice-chairman, Natalif
Linderholm, Boston; treasurer, Victor Manning
New York.
ol. LXIX. No. 8
MONTHLY
August 1933
CONTENTS
RONTISPIECE The Henry Street Settlement's Summer Camp
N INTERSTATE AUTHORITY FOR UNEMPLOYMENT
INSURANCE Frances Perkins
HEN FAMILIES WONT BEHAVE Gertrude Springer
BB-TIDE OF EMPLOYMENT Margaret H. Hogg
HE BAROMETER OF BOOKS Beatrice Sawyer Rossell
EW STANDARDS FOR UNEMPLOYMENT INSURANCE
Abraham Epstein
COMMUNITY LEARNING HOW TO PLAY
Ruth A. Lerrigo
WO MONTHS OF THE NEW DEAL IN FEDERAL RELIEF
Russell H. Kurtz
LOCAL RELIEF AGENCIES
MINIMUM STANDARDS OF SERVICE
TYPES OF RELIEF
RULES FOR WORK-RELIEF
BARTER QUESTIONNAIRE
ILL THE CODES ABOLISH CHILD LABOR?
Gertrude Folks Zimand
HESE TWO Henrietta R. Smedes
DMMON WELFARE
)CIAL PRACTICE
EALTH
DOKS
DMMUNICATIONS
3SSIP. .
277
279
280
281
283
284
285
286
287
290
291
292
294
296
298
301
Files of The Survey will be found in public and college libraries. All
sues are indexed in the Readers' Guide to Periodical Literature. Ask
e Librarian.
SURVEY ASSOCIATES, INC.
Publication Office, 10 Ferry Street, Concord, N. H.
•neral Office, 112 East 19 Street, New York, to which all correspondence
should be addressed.
THE SURVEY— Monthly— $3. oo a Year
SURVEY GRAPHIC— Monthly— $3.00 a Year
Lucius R. EASTMAN, president; JULIAN W. MACK, JOSEPH P. CHAM-
IRLAIN, JOHN PALMER GAVIT, vice-presidents; ANN REED BRENNER,
cretary; ARTHUR KELLOGG, treasurer.
PAUL U. KELLOGG, editor.
ARTHUR KELLOGG, managing editor; MARY Ross, BEULAH AMIDON,
SON WHIPPLE, JOHN PALMER GAVIT, LOULA D. LASK.ER, FLORENCE
JEB KELLOGG, GERTRUDE SPRINGER, associate editors.
EDWARD T. DEVINE, GRAHAM TAYLOR, JANE ADDAMS, JOSEPH K.
ART, HAVEN EMERSON, M.D., ROBERT W. BRUERE, JOANNA C. COL-
>RD, contributing editors.
MOLLIE CONDON, circulation manager; MARY R. ANDERSON, advertising
onager.
SO THEY SAY
Our genius for not obeying superfluous laws is immense. — David
Cusbman Coyle, New Turk.
It is possible to be learned and not have any sense. — William
Lyons Pbelps, New Haven, Conn.
No relief system can be popular long. It shouldn't be. — John F.
Hall, Community Fund, Seattle,
When anyone endeavors to re-educate the world he has a diffi-
cult and long-drawn-out task. — Newton D. Baker, Cleveland.
The school and the social order must be saved together or they
will sink together. — Glenn Frank, president, University of Wis-
consin.
Private social work seems, these days, to have no responsibilities
and no obligations, — just opportunities. — Neva R. Deardorff, New
York.
Our municipal rulers . . . appear willing to do anything for the
taxpayer except to get off his back. — "Judge Samuel Seabury, New
York.
It isn't human beings that make this a different world now;
it's merely facilities and inventions. — Adolpb Lewisobn, New Tork,
on bis eighty-fourth birthday.
Universities would be in a better position if they did not have
to do so much nursing of the student body. — Robert M. Hutcbins,
president, University of Chicago.
We could pay all local government costs except education by
giving up smoking, gum-chewing and beauty treatments. — C. A.
Dykstra, city manager, Cincinnati.
A great deal of our research does more to make facts shut up
than to make them speak for themselves. — Harry Elmer Barnes to
New Tork Social Work Publicity Council.
Every. advance in social organization requires some surrender of
individual freedom by the majority and the ultimate coercion of a
destructive minority. — Owen D. Young.
This is the very bedevilment of war — it poses a situation where
there is no really right thing to be done about it. — Rev. Harry
Emerson Fosdick, Riverside Church, New Tork.
If we have to face the alternative of having the government
waste money or the rich save money, the former is preferable. —
Quoted by Harold S. Buttenbeim, New Tork.
The best way to provide medical care for all the people is to
make it possible for all the people to have an income substantial
enough to pay for it. — Samuel Goldsmith, Chicago.
His [the Negro's] ability to make the most of a bad deal from
which there seemed no possible escape will always be one of Amer-
ica's strange romances. — James H. Hubert, Urban League, New
Tork.
If we are content with grafting certain temporizing procedures
on a highly unsocialized industrial organism then let us not delude
ourselves into thinking that such legislation is really social. —
Peter Kasius, Provident Association, St. Louis.
When we think ourselves so smart that we extend our paternal-
ism [in relief] to the point where we take over the work of the
mothers and fathers of the country, we are riding for a fall. —
William B. Rodgers, Pennsylvania State Emergency Relief Board.
Especially would I pay tribute to that army of men, women and
children whose unhappy position we have striven to improve.
From their almost mute faith in our institutions there should come
the strength to build anew, that never again, God willing, shall
another such army be necessary to satisfy man's greed. — James
M. Langley, chairman New Hampshire Committee on Unemploy-
ment Relief, in official report to Governor Winant.
The sun shines bright and they're burned black as night — at Henry Street Settlement's
summer camp miles from the East Side of New York
August
J933
Volume LXIX
No. 8
An Interstate Authority for
Unemployment Insurance
By FRANCES PERKINS
From an Address by the Secretary of Labor at the Institute of Public Affairs, University of Virginia
"E have to take care of the unemployed in pe-
riods of grave depression. We in this country
have been doing that job for several years large-
ly through different forms of charity. This experience,
I believe, has convinced our forward-looking men and
women that some form of unemployment insurance or
reserves should be set up in the different states so that in
the future it may take the place of the breadline or other
charities in helping to tide over a slump period for those
who want work and lack it.
Compulsory reserves against the ordinary hazards of
industrial unemployment are sound in principle, my experi-
ence and close studies of the subject lead me to conclude.
With a system having the machinery to collect payments
during periods of excess or stable employment on an
actuarial basis, much of the distress which comes with the
loss of employment, through no fault of the worker,
could be greatly lessened.
No one has yet found a cure for unemployment although
we are experimenting in that direction under the National
Recovery Act, and in urging unemployment reserves I
realize that its adoption would not mean the throwing
up of economic bulwarks for all our wage-earners. If such a
system is to succeed, if it is to be a benefit instead of a
burden, if it is to be kept away from the entanglements of
dole features, it must prove a going enterprise. Likewise —
and equally important — politics must be kept from enter-
ing into its definition of benefits and its administration.
Properly safeguarded, unemployment insurance would
constitute a certain definite measure of security for many
workers and their families. If they held such insurance,
loss of jobs through no fault of their own would not leave
them destitute and almost immediately the objects of pub-
lic or private charity, as has been so often the case in re-
cent years.
True, the payments they would receive would of neces-
sity be below their average incomes when working, but
even if such sums amounted to only ten dollars a week
there would be an easing of the hardship and the worry
that prevail in times of severe depression. Furthermore,
relief funds, whether public or private, would go much
further in supplementing insurance benefits than in being
used in an effort to relieve the distress of the great mass of
unemployed.
In order to get a sound and workable plan of unemploy-
ment insurance, free from criticism of possible political or
business entanglements, I would suggest that a group of our
industrial states might set up an Insurance Authority
along the lines of the Port Authority of New York and New
Jersey. Such a group, vested with the power to underwrite
insurance in the states participating, could administer one
fund with savings in overhead. Such an authority, its
members appointed for long terms, would not change
with every new state administration and political influences
in the different states would carry little weight. It would be
a public body and yet possess all the advantages of a cor-
porate organization. The experience of New York and New
Jersey with their Port Authority, a non-partisan group,
indicates such bodies can function free of politics and
strictly on sound business lines to the mutual advantage
of states.
New York, New Jersey, Massachusetts, Connecticut,
275
276
THE SURVEY
August 1933
Pennsylvania and Ohio, all with large industrial interests
in common, have been interested in unemployment insur-
ance problems for several years. Perhaps in studying the
question they may come to the conclusion that it would be
advantageous to initiate an insurance authority for an
experimental period at least. If it worked out, as I believe
it would, they would be taking one of the most constructive
and significant steps in our industrial history and point the
way for other states to follow. Eventually such a system,
if found practicable, would minimize the evils growing
out of widespread unemployment. But whatever is done
to establish a system will benefit the great army of
workers. The end, rather than the means, is the main
thing.
Wisconsin, the first state to pass unemployment insur-
ance legislation, has a system which is still in the experi-
mental stage. I realize that whatever is done in this field
is bound to be in the nature of an experiment at the outset.
Whatever we do, if we are to succeed, should be based on
known quantities.
SURVEYS I have made here and abroad, convince
me that to begin with there must be a sound actuarial
principle and that all benefits be strictly limited. We have
no reliable figures, however, upon which to base rates for
various industries. The technique of the prevention of un-
employment, as laid down in the National Recovery Act,
is a long stride in the direction of stabilizing conditions.
But if state insurance reserves are set up, it may be in co-
operation with the terms of the recovery codes. This is a
social as well as an industrial problem and the cost should
be spread just as widely as possible.
The fund should be collected from fair but not excessive
premiums, and should be safeguarded so that it will be
adequate for the heavy drains of a widespread period of
unemployment. For this reason, I believe that it would be
wise to require a long waiting period, certainly as long as a
month, before benefits can be paid. This could serve the
insurance fund for emergencies which no degree of fore-
thought or thrift on the part of the individual worker
could provide for.
Next, I would recommend that the number of weeks of
benefit be limited and that the benefits bear a definite
relationship to the amount of contributions made or the
premium paid. Premiums may be paid wholly by the em-
ployer, or by the employer and employe contributing,
or by government participation where states desire it, but
the cost should be assessed as one of the industrial hazards
for which industry itself must provide. Employers build up
reserves for payment of dividends to tide industry over
lean years, and they should be looked to to provide for
supplemental compensation to be paid to workers out of
jobs through no fault of their own in the future.
I believe that an insurance authority, such as I have
suggested, would furnish a practicable method of over-
coming the complication of competition among the indus-
tries in different states, subject to different schedules of
benefits under an unemployment insurance system and also
as a method of keeping what is commonly called politics
from entering into the legislative extension of the benefits
and into the administration of the law.
England's experience with unemployment insurance is
frequently cited as an illustration of its failure to work.
But it should be remembered that the dole, — the payment
of relief funds to all the unemployed — was dumped on
England's unemployment insurance fund with benefits
going to those who paid no premiums. The draft on the
insurance fund for the dole and the heavy tax on the British
treasury to bolster the fund so as to take care of thousands
of the jobless for whom it had not been intended to provide,
have done much to discredit unemployment insurance in
this country.
Great Britain has had a system of unemployment insur-
ance since 1911. The insurance fund was built up by con-
tributions in relatively equal amounts by the employers,
the employes and the government and in 1920 it was en-
tirely solvent and had a large reserve. But the scheme, lim-
ited at the outset, was extended to all manual workers
with certain exceptions, and to non-manual workers earn-
ing not more than $1000 a year. Later the act was amended
to permit payment of benefits in advance to unemployed
persons. This extension of the benefits from time to time
can truthfully be called a dole.
I made a personal investigation of the British system less
than two years ago [see Unemployment Insurance, by
Frances Perkins, Survey Graphic, November 1931]. I
visited local employment exchanges and insurance offices
all over the country. I sat in at the table, in the sessions of
the referees, and observed the procedure in Umpire's Court.
I talked with employers and workers as well, in the mining,
textile and shipbuilding trades, and I talked with those
who are working as managers and as laborers in some of the
new industries. I have had a fair knowledge of English
social conditions in the past, and have known the slums
and working-class sections of London and other great
cities for many years.
There seemed to me no doubt that the compulsory insur-
ance against the ordinary hazard of industrial unemploy-
ment has proved to be sound in principle in England, and
that it, together with the social services which the govern-
ment and county councils have been responsible for, are
the base of the tremendous improvement in health, stand-
ard of living and morale of the English working people
since the time of my last visit just before the War. The
insurance law has removed devastating fear as an element
in the situation and that in itself, combined with the
absence of actual physical hunger, has done more than
anything else to maintain the morale of the English people
during these years of fear and depression.
Such blunders as those made in connection with unem-
ployment insurance have been political in my judgment.
From them the United States should be able to learn a
valuable lesson when we set up some form of compulsory
reserves against unemployment.
I favor a compulsory system because I believe it would
provide an incentive for the stabilization of employment.
The managers of industry would be exerting themselves!
to reduce their premiums just as they became interested
in safety devices to cut their premiums under various state I
workmen's compensation laws.
Let us build up a system on an actuarial basis, make it
compulsory and keep out politics and I believe we shall
have a reserve fund of real aid to workers and their de-
pendents in times when industry slows up, wages stop and
jobs are not so plentiful.
Unemployment insurance is in no sense a cure for un-
employment. It is, however, a technique of extending a
well-known principle, to offer some protection for theh
individual against the hazard of unemployment, which as;
an individual he can in no way foresee or prevent.
When Families Won't Behave
By GERTRUDE SPRINGER
I
T'S the little Rossi boy,
Miss Bailey, one of
Miss Wilson's fami-
lies, and he says that his father
will whip him if he doesn't
see you."
Miss Bailey impaled a fig-
ure firmly with the point of
her pencil and blinked up at
her young secretary.
"Rossi? Rossi? Oh yes, it
was the little girl he was go-
ing to whip last week, wasn't
it? Well, I suppose we'd better write him a note." Regret-
fully she pushed aside the report that had to be finished by
noon and thumbed the card-file. "Here we are. 'Rossi.
Casual laborer. Eight children. Known to social agencies
since 1917. See Confidential Exchange report.' Um-m.
How well I know the Rossis. Take this please:
Dear Mr. Rossi: We have already explained to you the reason
why we cannot discuss your affairs with your children. Miss Wil-
son will call on you at the usual time this week. If you are in a
difficulty that will not wait either you or Mrs. Rossi should come
here. Please do not send the children. It is useless.
"Type that right away please and give it to the child."
"Do you think he really will whip the little boy?" The
secretary, who was new on the job, lingered a moment.
'I honestly don't know, Miss Floyd, and even if I did I
wouldn't know what to do about it. He's probably been
whipping his children every day since they could walk and
twice on Sundays, and I suspect that the social workers who
have known him since 1917 haven't been able to do much
about it either. Just sign my name, please, put the carbon
on Miss Wilson's desk and get the child out of the office."
"And that," she added to herself as she hunted for the
lost figure, "is what they mean by hard-boiled social
worker."
But the Rossis persisted in slipping in behind Miss
Bailey's concentration. She remembered the family now.
She had gone over the record with Miss Wilson the week
before when a glib-tongued, shrewd-eyed girl of fourteen
had tried her best to stage a scene in the office. Always on
the ragged edge of dependency, frequently slipping over,
the Rossis had shopped the social resources of the city for
sixteen years and then resisted them. Settlements, churches,
clinics, family societies had been in and out of the Rossi
tenement and were no longer interested.
"And then I expect little Miss Wilson to make a model
relief family out of them." Miss Bailey snapped off the
point of her pencil and didn't care. "Miss Wilson, who
never heard of case work till last winter, and never set foot
in a school of social work. But I expect her to pick up the
pieces that our gilt-edged social agencies have dropped.
And she is just the kind of a girl who will wear herself out
trying — Lord love her."
Reaching for a memo pad she wrote hastily:
Dear Miss Wilson: Don't worry about the Rossis. It's of no real
importance if the children come to the office. We can always send
What can an unskilled borne visitor do
when she finds that in families where re-
lief is as adequate as conditions permit:
Children, under threat of parental whipping,
are coming to the office to make special pleas?
Children and grown-ups too are making a
practice of begging?
Children are being permitted, even sent, to hang
around restaurants and explore garbage-cans?
them home again. Be sure you
take them their food order on
the tick, let them talk as much
as you possibly have time for,
and make the children's lives
more bearable in any way you
can. I know you'll be kind, but
don't worry about them. A. R. B.
"Oh, Miss Floyd, please pin
this memo to the Rossi note
on Miss Wilson's desk— and
try to give me a clear half-
hour on this report."
There is no doubt that the emergency relief organizations
have inherited from the private family societies a good
many cases that, alas, are not emergency and never have
been, families that have been "on the charities" for years,
that have baffled case committees ever since those excellent
institutions were conceived. Family societies would be little
less than human if in times like these, with "hopeful" cases
crowding their doorsteps, they did not shift over to the
broad shoulders of emergency relief some of those problems
which have denied their best efforts.
"I have no quarrel with the agencies that transfer their
chronic dependents to us," said the head of a city depart-
ment. "I'm not saying that the patient, painstaking meth-
ods of skilled case work might not win out at long last, but
as a practical person as well as an old case worker I feel
that at this time we simply cannot afford to expend that
kind of service on what we must admit are unpromising
prospects. I do not propose that this department should be
made a dumping ground for other people's failures, but
when about all anyone can do is to pity and to feed, prob-
ably it is our job.
"My quarrel is with thoughtless people who get hold of
a story or two of charity-scarred rounders and generalize
volubly about the ingratitude of the unemployed. For
every family that is demanding, and what my mother used
to call do-less, we have a hundred who are responsive and
resourceful, incredibly patient with our poor fumbling ef-
forts, and much too grateful for the little we can do for
them. But it is the handful of old-timers that the public
hears most about. It is they who write letters to the mayor,
or better to President Roosevelt, who pour their grievances
into the ears of the newspaper sob-sisteis and who dry up
the milk of human kindness in the new investigator who
hasn't much experience in the infinite manifestations of
human nature.
" npAKE begging for instance. One of my good young
A workers came in yesterday ready to quit her job be-
cause two little boys in one of her families were making a
business of begging on the street, and she strongly suspects
the mother of a similar side-line with the added scenery of a
babe-in-arms. She had argued, cajoled, threatened and
extorted Bible promises. But the minute her back was
turned they were at it again. And she didn't know what to
do about it.
277
278
THE SURVEY
August 1933\
"Well, neither did I. Every case worker has known such
families. In the old days when community resources were
less overtaxed than now, other agencies would have been
able to help, but far be it from me to claim that we would
have been a hundred percent successful. The best advice I
could give this girl was to keep on doing her best, get all the
help she could from other agencies, and not to give up. She
found this family encrusted with habits which her brief
contacts could not possibly change. The best thing she
could do, it seemed to me, was to face the thing clearly but
unrancorously with the family, to try to find out what they
thought about themselves and their situation, and to be
everlastingly opportunist in seizing on any opening to exert
her influence. To withdraw relief would only make bigger
and better beggars of them all and kill a contact which
some time may count for something. To strike back at a
family that resists us is to be as stupid as the man who
kicks his car because it won't start."
The worker who depends on threats and scoldings to stop
the exploiting of children by their parents is, supervisors
agree, wasting her breath. "If you do that again I'll have
the policeman arrest you," just makes the business more
exciting. "We can't expect the police to do our bullying for
us." To tell parents that "the society" will take their
children away from them if they don't behave is to set up a
defiance that will frustrate future efforts. There are times
when the law must be used, sharply and decisively — the
supervisors know when and how — "but a threat of the law
which we have no real intention of following up, as our
clients probably know as well as we do, only belittles us
and weakens our hand."
"We have acquired a philosophy — maybe it's a protec-
tive crust — about begging," says the supervisor of a mid-
west city district. "Honestly there is very little we can do
about it except to keep on trying. As a matter of fact our
most humiliating trouble is not begging but garbage-
picking from the dozens of cheap restaurants round about.
Here my immediate concern is less with garbage-picking
per se than with our inexperienced workers whose disgust
and discouragement with one garbage-picking family is
liable to harden their attitude toward all their other fami-
' / ^HIS is the sixth of a series of articles
J- drawn from the day-by-day experience
of newly recruited emergency relief workers
and their supervisors. The questions are bona
fide. The discussion is by supervisors who
must, under the pressure of heavy case-loads,
keep up the spirits of the workers and develop
in them the capacity to deal discriminatingly
with difficult human situations. Previous ar-
ticles have been: When Your Client Has a Car
(The Midmonthly Survey, March /pjj), Are
Relief Workers Policemen? (April), What
Price the Power of the Food Order? (May),
How We Behave in Other People's Houses
(June), I Think I'd Better Call the Nurse
(July). Others will follow.
lies. These people have no right to be classed as unemployed.
They are the stubborn sediment of our city life, the peren-
nial despair of social workers. To label them as 'the un-
employed' and to mix them up even in our minds with the
great mass of upright, cruelly hurt people whom we are
trying to keep going is to do a serious injustice. I certainly
won't let these people starve, but I won't spend too much
time on them nor let them wear down the spirits of my
workers.
"Of course, the relief we are giving these families is thin
enough, but the fact remains that for everyone that is using
its thinness as an excuse for begging and garbage-picking,
hundreds are managing with such decency and self-respect
that I bow my head before them. Perhaps if we could give
more adequate food allowances — perhaps if we could make
these families the special charge of our most skilled workers
— I'm sure I don't know. Our past record with this problem
is not very brilliant."
IN another district which reluctantly admits to a quota ol
beggars and garbage-pickers, the supervisor urges the
workers to keep on trying to do something about it. "Per-
haps a little fresh imagination will get us somewhere," she
says cheerfully. "One of our visitors is sure that if she takes
the line that the parents hate begging and garbage-picking
as much as she does, and keeps steadfastly on their side,
trying to help them find a way to avoid it, that she'll bring
them around. And maybe she will. Another always drops
casually into every interview a colorful story of someone
poisoned by spoiled food, or of some sodden old beggar
being dragged off by the police — 'Just think, he was once a
nice little chap like your Johnny.' A third is trying to work
out a sort of visiting-housekeeper arrangement among her
families, getting a woman who manages particularly well on
the grocery order to neighbor with the one who can't
manage at all, and to show her how to do it. It might work.
It's worth trying.
"These approaches seem to me much more hopeful than
attempts to treat begging children by 'running them in' or
by trying to stop garbage-picking by removing the garbage.
One of our visitors had a brief triumph when she persuaded
a restaurant keeper whose refuse barrels were highly popu-
lar, to sprinkle them with lime before putting them out.
But he was a soft-hearted soul who made a virtue of his
soft-heartedness. A week later, passing that way, she saw
him carefully topping a barrel of scraps with a wedge of
quite inviting pie and a couple of not-so-very-spotted
grapefruit. And just around the corner were a couple of
urchins waiting to pounce."
Social workers came through long and painful experience
to the realization that you can't change people's ways by
order, by threat or by bribe. But to guide, to lead, to sug-
gest incentives is a slow process which in the pressure of the
moment is a practical impossibility even if the patient skills
were available.
"We cannot keep people from exploiting their children in
dangerous demoralizing ways, but we can try to find out
why they do it and perhaps when we know why, we'll be
more helpful. We know it is not want alone that makes
them so poor in spirit, dire as that want may be. It is some-
thing more that we must search for, but while we search we
must keep perspective on our whole job of which this is
only a small part, we must keep ourselves from getting
either emotional or hard-boiled and most especially we
must not try to take the whole world on our shoulders."
Ebb-Tide of Employment
By MARGARET H. HOGG
Department of Statistics, Russell Sage Foundation
HE lower the ebb of employment, the more acutely
interesting analysis of unemployment becomes. If
in fact the tide has now turned, a survey begun
>n May i of this year should come close to recording
mployment at its lowest ebb.
When the work shortage in New Haven, Connecticut,
vas surveyed by the Russell Sage Foundation in May-
une 1931, the situation seemed acute indeed, and com-
parison was then hoped for with a subsequent survey under
nore normal conditions. But a re-survey in May-June of
:his year, after a lapse of exactly two years, found unem-
ployment just twice as severe, with one earner not working
Dut wanting work for every two earners actually working.
3oth surveys covered, by sample, the ordinary resident
copulation in private houses and rooming-houses, but
.•xcluded institutional and transient hotel population.
The earlier facts were collected by the Department of
statistics of the Russell Sage Foundation in an experimen-
:al field survey of New Haven families. This year, the Yale
Institute of Human Relations collected the facts as part of a
nore general survey of New Haven families; but the em-
ployment section was planned and supervised, as before,
by the present writer. The later survey covered the same
•"amilies as the earlier with the exception of families which
lad moved away and with addition of a due proportion of
. the families newly set up in New Haven. Nine tenths of the
. iiouseholding families scheduled in 1933 had been scheduled
also in 1931.
Among individual earners, 35 percent of the men and 28
. percent of the women were idle from lack of work, and only
. a very small minority of these were on short lay-off accord-
ng to shared-work plans. The unimportant effect of idle-
ness on recurrent weekly or daily lay-offs may be gauged
from the fact that among earners normally employed by
Dthers, even excluding recruits who had never yet acquired
a foothold, there were 30 percent of the men and 20 percent
of the women who had had no work for at least two weeks,
while by including the recruits the percentages are raised
to 34j/£ and 26^ respectively.
At the time of the survey, New Haven's public work-
relief program had been discontinued for three months.
Hence the proportions of earners who had had no work for
at least three months acquire special significance: the
percentages are 241^ percent for men and i4^/2 f°r women,
again excluding the new recruits to industry who had
almost all been searching for a much longer time, but who,
unless heads of families, were not eligible for work-relief.
Although most of the unemployment rates by age, by
occupation, and by industry, have about doubled during
the two-year interval, certain special changes are note-
worthy. Two years ago, the most favorable employment
age for men was the early thirties, but this year the early
forties appear to be slightly the best. Both men and women
in the executive and professional groups, which two years
ago were comparatively little affected, have since suffered
particularly sharp increases in unemployment. This year,
as also two years ago, the unemployment rate is higher for
unskilled than for skilled manual workers: again due wholly
to the incursion of skilled workers into the field of the un-
skilled, since the actual shortage of jobs was worse in both
years in the skilled occupations than in the unskilled.
Unemployment rates for manufacture and for trade have
more than doubled while that for transportation has
slightly less than doubled. However, these figures ap-
parently minimize the failure of manufacture and transport
and exaggerate the failure of trade to provide work for their
labor forces, since workers who two years ago claimed
manufacture or transport as their usual industry are ap-
parently now reporting themselves as attached to trade.
This shift of attachment is not surprising, since unemploy-
ment in trade, though severe, is considerably less than that
in the other two classifications.
TWO YEARS' CHANGE IN NEW HAVEN
EMPLOYMENT
Percent idlejrom
lack of work
May-June May-June
Among all earners fQJf !933
By sex:
Men 17 35
Women 14 28
Men, by age:
14-17 years 39^ 72
18-19 29 54
20-24
25-29
30-34 10 29
35-39 lo1/* -I1
40-44 1 1 27
45-54 J3>4 29
55-64 i?
65 years and over \<(1A
Both sexes, by industry:
Manufacturing l8>£
Construction 31
Transportation 12
Trade 8^
Domestic and personal serv-
ice
Professional and other serv-
ice 3>/2 H#
Among members of full-time-employment market excluding
new workers never established
By sex:
Men 1 8 35^
Women \\yi 24
Men, by occupation:
Professional lY*
Clerical and sales JO>4
Skilled manual 20^ 43
Semi-skilled 20 41
Unskilled
279
280
THE SURVEY
August 193.
Two years ago few employers and people working on
their own account were completely idle, though no doubt
their incomes were diminished, but in this year's study the
change for the worse since 1931 was found to be greater
proportionally among this group than among other
workers.
In 1931, unemployment rates were computed for earners
according to the number of earners in the family to which
they belonged, and these showed least unemployment
among workers who were the only earners in their families,
and increasing unemployment with larger numbers of
earners. The 1933 survey exhibits the same tendency but
with a diminished contrast, suggesting that some differen-
tial factor in favor of the earner alone responsible for a
family has been losing its power. Whether this factor was
preferential treatment by employers, or greater assiduity of
the earner, both or neither, cannot unfortunately be an-
swered from the data of the survey. Work-relief in 1931
may have been in part responsible for the contrast, but was
on too small a scale to account for all of it.
In 3 1/£ percent of the families which were covered in both
surveys, all earners were idle at each date, and in another
I2^£ percent at least one earner was idle at each date. Of
these families, studied in both years, as well as of the total
families scheduled, 14 percent had all their earners idle at
the later survey, twice as many as two years before. This
figure is conservative, for it excludes, even when enu-
merated on an idle day, earners who worked some days
and not others according to a consistent plan, and it ex
eludes also new recruits to the labor market who had no
yet found a foothold. In addition, a considerable number c
workers conducting their own small business were no
called idle although they really had nothing coming ir
because they were attending their places of business.
This year, of the population surveyed, one person i:
every seven was in a family with all earners idle. Of childre;
under 14 years of age, one child in every six was in a famil;
with all the earners idle: the proportion two years ago wa
one child in every twelve.
The serious situation shown by these figures, is, of course
not peculiar to New Haven, which probably ranks amon]
the less severely hit industrial cities. Recent local survey
in Philadelphia and in Buffalo indicate considerably mor
acute unemployment in those cities, and many cities wit
less variety of industry are probably worse off. More sue;
local surveys are greatly needed, and later surveys ar
much to be desired to show at what stage of the hoped-fo
recovery different groups of workers are affected by im
proving conditions.
A report containing analysis of this year's New Havei
survey will be published when further work on the materia
has been completed. The figures quoted in this article an
provisional but are unlikely to be appreciably modifiec
The results of the 1931 survey may be found in a repor
published by the Russell Sage Foundation under the title
Incidence of Work-Shortage.
The Barometer of Books
By BEATRICE SAWYER ROSSELL
American Library Association
S THE nation goes, so its reading. Demand for books
in public libraries is a good barometer of social
events and the popular attitude toward them.
The banking crisis in the spring swept the Chicago Public
Library clear of books on the principles of banking and
many would-be borrowers had to be turned away unsatis-
fied. Some weeks later renewed confidence was promptly
reflected in the comment of one librarian that "books on
Technocracy are 'dead' and might as well be removed
from the shelves."
Perhaps the most encouraging trend in recent reading
has been the tendency to ask questions about depressions —
why they occur and whether they can be avoided. In 1929
few libraries reported widespread interest in books on
economic and social questions. In 1932, many did. The
New York Public Library found that economics was the
subject most studied in the main reading room last year;
history was much in demand. "Possibly the greater demand
for books on history and economics may be attributed to
greater interest in social and historical questions, and a
realization of their importance in the present disturbed
condition of the entire world," comments Dr. E. H.
Anderson, the director.
In Des Moines, where the library has been cooperating
in an experimental series of Public Forums conducted by
the Board of Education, 29,00x3 persons attended the meet-
ings during the first two months they were held, and there
was a considerable increase in the demand for books on
the political, social and economic questions discussed. Ir
Missouri, where a study was made last year to discovei
who read the popular books in the field of sociology, such
titles as Angell's, Can Governments Cure Unemployment
and Beard's, America Faces the Future, attracted ministers
electricians, bankers, typists, insurance agents, housewives
a carpenter, a hairdresser, a baker, a book-binder, and a
wide variety of other readers.
The pressing problem of bread and butter has brought
millions of readers to hundreds of libraries since 1929.
Never before has the demand for vocational books been
so widespread or continuous. In Oakland, California, for
example, the librarian has added greatly to the library's
resources on trades, crafts, occupations, and business
generally and reports that the books have been read with
avidity. In Chicago, where book-buying has been discon-
tinued for two years due to a reduced budget resulting
from tax delinquencies, requests for reading courses on
engineering are no longer taken by the readers' adviser at
the main library because the books on engineering are
worn out. In Cleveland, reports from almost every depart-
ment of the public library show that unemployed men and
women are trying to fit themselves for positions. Innu-
merable libraries, large and small, note the unprecedented
demand for books on home industries such as poultry
farming, rabbit raising, mushroom growing, fur farming,
bee culture, costume design, commercial art, interior
decoration, landscape gardening, and cosmetics.
"August 1933
THE SURVEY
281
A valuable opportunity for study is seen by many people
n hours of enforced leisure. "Depression College" is the
itle of the latest Providence Public Library report which
;hows that 4,100 requests for individual guidance in reading
vere answered last year. The work of the New York Public
Jbrary readers' adviser increased 67 percent in 1932.
n Chicago 5,000 reading courses were followed. In Los
Angeles 10,000 books recommended in reading courses
vere borrowed, and 4,000 Reading With a Purpose courses
ssued by the American Library Association were sold.
Classes for the unemployed were started at the main
ibrary in St. Louis this spring, and will be organized in
)ranch libraries if the initial effort is successful. Courses
n business letter-writing, correct English, and minimum-
:ost meals are among those now in progress. In Homestead,
Pennsylvania, 500 men and women are taking free courses
n a variety of practical and cultural subjects.
In Oregon, reading courses for young people who because
)f financial conditions are unable to attend college and who
ire unemployed have recently been offered by the state
ibrary and 360 students are now enrolled for 116 courses,
'sychology, radio, short-story writing, interior decoration
md forestry are the subjects most in demand. Before the
mdertaking was started the head of the state library,
iarriet C. Long, called together representatives of various
•ducational agencies of the state and outlined her plans
vith their advice and cooperation.
The democracy that comes with reduced incomes and
memployment is reflected in many library departments.
Business men who formerly subscribed to technical peri-
>dicals now consult them at the library in the company of
he unemployed. Once wealthy men and women who used
o enjoy expensive pleasures now share their poorer
icighbors' efforts to "peg" their spirits with books. More
han one library reports that the public library today goes
nto as many homes as other public utilities such as water,
;as and electricity.
One significant omission in all these reports on reading
The Boom in Books
THE Missouri Library Association has been sending
out radio broadcasts and monthly releases to some
200 newspapers in the state telling of the boom in books
that there, as elsewhere, depression has brought to the
libraries. Book circulation in various cities has increased
from 10 to more than 50 percent with a heavy demand for
reading on economic and vocational topics. Missouri
estimates that some eighty million hours are spent in the
state during a year in reading library books and at public
cost of about a penny an hour. The widespread interest
in books is reflected in lists of readers of various volumes
kept by the librarians. For example:
Some Folks Won't Work, by Clinch Calkins. Read by
a rooming-house keeper, packer, 5 housewives, industrial
engineer, 4 teachers, 3 unemployed men, cashier, stenog-
rapher, 7 students, stock-man, insurance agent, 2 salesmen,
2 ministers, telephone operator, nurse, 2 clerks, electrician,
unemployed girl, 2 social workers, lawyer, insurance
supervisor, foreman, waiter, accountant, shoe-worker.
The Nemesis of American Business, by Stuart Chase.
Read by 2 ministers, 2 electricians, salesman, 3 bankers,
2 typists, 3 insurance agents, '4 teachers, 3 unemployed
men, 4 students, 2 cashiers, 4 clerks, 2 housewives, real-
estate agent, musician, stock-man, engineer, farmer,
carpenter, banker, press operator, hairdresser, physician,
steel-worker, bookkeeper, bookbinder.
A Planned Society, by George Soule. Read by a collector,
housewife, 2 teachers, minister, contractor, insurance agent,
stenographer, secretary, 2 club women, 4 salesmen, elec-
trician, cab-driver, 2 clerks, unemployed woman, chauffeur.
may be worthy of thoughtful consideration. Few, if any,
libraries have noted a constructive interest on the part of
their patrons in government. Perhaps it is time that
teachers and parents considered education for citizenship
something more necessary, more thorough and more in-
spiring than many of the perfunctory courses now offered.
New Standards for Unemployment Insurance
By ABRAHAM EPSTEIN
Executive Secretary American Association for Social Security
EVER before in the history of social legislation
have so many fundamentally different proposals
been submitted to legislatures as has been the
:ase with unemployment insurance bills this year. Alto-
gether 115 measures were introduced in 29 legislatures and
Congress. Representing a miscellany of types and differing
n many of their basic principles, the proposals ranged from
'tmocuous measures seeking the voluntary establishment
)f reserves by individual corporations to comprehensive
iystems of compulsory social insurance with governmental
:ontributions.
The majority of bills fell into the following categories:
12 bills called for investigating commissions; 32 provided
or unemployment insurance systems more or less along the
ines of the Ohio bill with a single state pool for all indus-
:ries; 31 bills followed the Wisconsin Act in setting up
segregated company or industry reserves. While most of
:he bills placed the contributions upon employers only, or
upon employers and employes, a few provided for state
contributions as well. There were similar differences in
other important features, such as the amount and duration
of benefits and waiting period: the maximum weekly
benefits varied from $10 to $25; the period for which bene-
fits are to be paid varied from 10 to 40 weeks; and the wait-
ing period before benefits begin ranged from none to eight
weeks.
Conscious of these vital disagreements and confusion of
ideas, and believing that it is possible to coordinate the
best ideas in a measure that will meet with the approval
of a majority of proponents of this legislation, the Amer-
ican Association for Social Security (formerly the American
Association for Old Age Security) called a conference of
students of the problem in July for the purpose of preparing
a set of essential standards for such a bill. Persons repre-
sentative of the differing points of view were invited to this
conference. Among those in attendance were Dorothy W.
282
THE SURVEY
August 1931
Douglas of Smith College; Grace E. Gosselin of the United
Neighborhood Houses, New York; Prof. Herman A. Gray
of New York University; Nicholas Kelley, and Walter
Frank, New York attorneys; Katharine D. Lumpkin of
Smith College; Dr. I. M. Rubinow; LeRoy E. Bowman;
Emil Frankel of the New Jersey Department of Institu-
tions and Agencies; Warren J. Vinton and the writer. Prof.
Paul Douglas, unable to attend, sent a list of suggestions,
and Prof. William M. Leiserson and Leifur Magnusson,
although prevented from attending, were instrumental in
sponsoring its work.
T7OLLOWING a study of the bills introduced, and after
JT debate of the problem, the group formulated the follow-
ing standards for a more adequate state unemployment
insurance bill under present conditions. The actuarial com-
putations were based on the studies made by Dr. Rubinow
for the Ohio Commission on Unemployment Insurance.
Insurance scheme. The system of unemployment in-
surance shall be on a state-wide basis with a pooled fund for
all industries. Premium rates for the several industries are
to be adjusted in accordance with the hazard of unem-
ployment.
Premiums. The financial burden can most easily be
borne if it is distributed as widely as possible. The cost of
unemployment insurance shall therefore be shared by
employers, employes, the state and federal governments.
Only by contributions from all parties can sufficient funds
be raised to assure adequate benefits.
State legislation shall provide the following premium
rates: Employers, 2 percent of total payrolls of insured
workers; insured employes, I percent of wages; state gov-
ernment, I percent of total payrolls of insured workers.
(In view of the financial difficulties in which some states
now find themselves, it may be suggested that the state
premiums, in the immediate future, be limited to such
amounts as may be saved by a reduction of relief expendi-
tures due to improved conditions, up to the full contribu-
tion of I percent.) The conference also advocates contribu-
tions by the federal government equal to those of the
various states. These should be used to increase benefits on
sound actuarial principles.
THE rate of employers' premiums shall be adjusted in
accordance with the hazards of unemployment. Since
an adjustment requires at least two years' experience, the
conference recommends that for the first two years the
employers' premiums be 2 percent of payrolls. Thereafter
the state commission administering the act shall establish
basic rates for the various industries, which rates may be
modified for the various establishments on the basis of
their employment experience. In making such ratings and
modifications the commission shall take into consideration
all factors relating to the hazards of unemployment, and to
the maintenance of the actuarial soundness of the insurance
fund. In no event shall the employers' rates be less than
I percent or greater than 4 percent.
Benefits for total unemployment. In order to prolong the
period during which benefits shall be paid and to conserve
the resources of the fund, the conference advocates a wait-
ing period of four weeks before the beginning of benefits.
The amount of benefit for a single employe without de-
pendent children shall be 40 percent of average full-time
wages, but in no case greater than $10 per week. A married
employe living with a dependent spouse shall be entitled to
an additional 10 percent, not to exceed $2.50 per week
An employe with one dependent child shall be entitled tc
an additional 5 percent, not to exceed $1.25 per week. Ar
employe with two or more dependent children shall b<
entitled to an additional 10 percent, not to exceed $2.jc
per week.
Where a husband and wife, living together, are both en
titled to unemployment benefits, the maximum benefit fo;
the total unemployment of both shall not exceed $17.51:
per week, plus $1.25 for one dependent child, or $2.50 foi
two or more dependent children.
The total benefits to which an employe shall be entitlec
in any one period of continuous unemployment and in anj
period of twelve consecutive months is limited to 26 weeks
Benefits for partial unemployment. In order to encourage
the acceptance of partial employment, benefits should be
arranged so that the total of earnings and benefit during
partial employment shall always exceed the benefit foi
total unemployment and shall increase as the percentage o:
employment increases. The conference worked out in detai
a schedule of benefits which begin when the difference
between average full-time wages and actual earnings
exceeds 20 percent and increase on a graduated scale foi
greater degrees of unemployment.
Qualifications for benefit. No employe shall be entitled tc
benefits unless he has paid premiums for not less than twen-
ty-six weeks within the twelve months preceding the date
of application for benefits, or for forty weeks during the
last two years. The usual qualifications as to capacity anci
availability for work, and as to strikes and lockouts, etc.:
are recommended.
Coverage. The insurance scheme shall cover all non-
manual workers whose regular rate of pay is less than
$3,000 per year and all manual workers. It shall apply to
all employers with three or more employes subject to
insurance. Certain employments, such as farm laborers,
domestic servants, governmental workers and teachere on
an annual salary basis, casual laborers and the like are
exempted from insurance.
Administration. The administrative system shall be in
charge of an independent state commission and shall func-
tion through a state-wide system of employment ex-
changes. The entire cost of administration shall be paid out
of the insurance fund.
Emergency provisions. In the event of general extended
unemployment, such that the resources of the fund are
reduced below a sound actuarial basis, the commission
shall have authority to declare an emergency and thereupon
to borrow funds from whatever source obtainable on the
security of the assets and future revenues of the fund.
When such borrowing is resorted to it shall be the duty of
the commission, in order to secure funds for the repayment
of such loans, to readjust the rates of contribution within
the limits set in the act.
Effective date. In order to accumulate sufficient reserves
the conference recommends that benefits begin one year
after contributions have begun.
THE above draft is now sent out to various inter-
ested individuals and organizations. It is planned to
reach final agreement at another conference during the
week-end of September 9-10. The American Association tor
Social Security, 22 East 17 Street, New York, will be glad
to receive any criticisms and suggestions of the proposed
draft.
A Community Learning How to Play
By RUTH A. LERRIGO
Field Staff of Survey Associates
A GENUINE community-wide recreation service,
compassing a well-balanced play ration for every
member of the family and for every family of the
community, is being developed under the wing of the public
education system of Newark, New Jersey. The Recreation
Department, under the direction of Lewis R. Barrett, is a
three-and-one-half-year-old member of the departmental
family of the city school system . With its sister departments
it shares modern theories of education, such as voluntary
participation and even the project method. With them,
also, it shares use of the plant and equipment of city
school buildings.
With the Child-Guidance Department, the Recreation
Department works out special problems relating to both.
The regular athletic, music and handicraft activities it
supplements, and from them develops further extra-cur-
ricular interests. But the newer department goes several
steps outside the province of the older departments in that
it makes direct social contact with all ages in the com-
munity and undertakes responsibility for its widespread
recreational needs. Furthermore, the department's direc-
tors and workers pursue a definite and carefully planned co-
operation with community social agencies.
Chronologically speaking, the activities of the Recreation
Department begin with plans for the pre-schoolers. Funda-
mental planning for this group included, first of all, the
careful grading and location of suitable playgrounds not
too far from home, and insofar as possible sacred to the
needs of its chosen patrons. The ultimate in recreation
workers' adroitness has been called into play to effect
transfers of loyal alumni from the playground of their
earliest years when advancing age dictates the desirability
of graduation to adolescent playfields. Nevertheless the
department follows consistently its original plan of graded
play centers, laid out in the original survey made by Mr.
Barrett in 1928 when John H. Logan, then superintendent
of schools, and the Board of Education decided that such
a community recreation plan should be established. The
goal of a playground within an eighth of a mile radius for
every small child in congested districts, and within a quar-
ter-mile radius of every child taking the city and the
children by and large, has been the yardstick in the
department's planning. For the older youth, the plan
includes also a playfield (distinguished as a setting for more
ambitious and active athletics) within a mile radius.
"Playgrounds are as different as people," says Mr.
Barrett. "We want each community center to develop so
as to fit the needs of its particular neighborhood." While
general policies and bulletins emanated from the office of
Mr. Barrett and his assistants, the director of each play-
ground has complete freedom in working out his program.
Determining the special needs of each community in
Newark, an industrial city with widely varying national
groups, is a difficult job, not left to guesswork. Each worker
is required to spend a minimum of ten hours each week in
making community contacts aside from those made at
the playground. He finds neighborhood groups ranging
through amazing international mixtures and social ex-
tremes. In general, however, they have shown surprising
mutual ability to adjust these differences.
The recreation leader's approach to the adult activities
of his neighborhood, as well as to the school age groups,
tends to develop around the "club" scheme. Loyalty to a
club and a sublimation of the gang spirit have wrought sur-
prisingly. One notable example was that of a gang of nearly
two dozen terrors in what was known as a "disintegrating
community," full of all manner of undesirable social
elements. The young men of the gang were of the age which
lends greatest growth to penal institutions, and were known
to be mostly longshoremen with a side-line of bootlegging.
The gang was offered hospitality, helped to organize itself,
and instead of fulfilling the dire prophecy that it would
"steal the place from under the director's nose," developed
a sternly self-disciplined club and clamored for the opening
of club headquarters after the summer holiday. The mem-
bers firmly drew up by-laws, including a provision that
" it is understood that you guys must pay your dues every
week or get busted out of the club." They excluded as
uncongenial and subversive elements two applicants for
membership who had gone to high school and might thus
feel themselves superior.
Club organization and activities range from predomi-
nantly athletic and social, among the younger groups, to
such purposeful groups among the adults as the mothers'
reducing classes and the cooking classes. In the latter the
usual nutrition classes have been supplemented lately
through the cooperation of the public welfare social service
department with demonstrations of how best to cook and
plan the meals on a $5 (or thereabouts) food order.
The Red Cross has worked with the school community
centers to develop sewing classes in connection with the
unemployment relief program. The Community Chest has
given generous cooperation in working out and developing
activities with the particular needs of adult unemployed in
mind, following the usual club and class plans of the
recreation centers. Classes for men have included carefully
allotted use of the gymnasium and "roughouse" rooms at
each center. Boxing and wrestling have been the usual
first contact in fixing the interest of the men of the com-
munity. Toy-making is an activity which has developed
particularly in the months of unemployed time.
Dancing classes, usually provided with refreshment
rooms as a side-line, provide a social touch. A real help to
the situation of adult recreation has come in the develop-
ment of the "baby-tending department." In facing this
very real problem, the director expresses himself as "torn
between the unquestioned fact that the youngsters should
be in bed, and the realistic truth that they aren't anyway,
and would therefore be better off cared for properly while
their parents enjoy themselves at the recreation centers."
To round out the picture, mention must be made of the
city-wide Harmonica Band, the choral and orchestral
groups; the network of clubs and classes. Blend with care-
ful supervision, planning, modern equipment and skilled,
never stereotyped, director and staff, and the net result is
a community learning how to play.
283
Two Months of the New Deal in
Federal Relief
By RUSSELL H. KURTZ
Russell Sage Foundation
iHINGS have been happening rapidly in the office
of the new Federal Emergency Relief Administra-
tion at Washington. As this is written on July 20,
a new organization has been set up in quarters across the
street from the old RFC emergency relief office; eighty
million dollars has been distributed among the states; poli-
cies have been formulated and promulgated; and important
precedents have been set. The New Deal in Federal Relief
(see Survey Graphic for July) is on.1
Relief workers the country over have had their eyes on
Washington, wondering to what extent the new adminis-
tration's big stick would be swung to bring about reforms in
certain state and local relief situations. There has been a
dramatic tension about the whole affair, occasioned by the
sweeping powers vested by the new relief act in the hands
of the administrator. On everyone's lips have been the
questions, "How will these powers be used? Will local judg-
ment as to relief adequacy and method be overridden by
federal mandate ? Will problems of personnel and caseload
maxima be cleared up, now that the FERA has the last
word? Will state governments actually be denied federal
aid until they have complied with the requirement that
state and local resources be fully tapped, and that proper
administrative machinery be set up?"
No one will question the adequacy of the big stick which
the law has put into the hands of the FERA, but as this is
written it begins to be apparent that considerable discretion
is going to be shown in its use. The act, it will be recalled,
uses the words "cooperate" and "cooperation" in several
vital spots: "the depression has created an emergency . . .
making it imperative that the federal government cooperate
more effectively with the several states ... in furnishing
relief to their needy and distressed people"; and "the ad-
ministrator may . . . assume control of the administra-
tion in any state or states where, in his judgment, more
effective and efficient cooperation between the state and
federal authorities may thereby be secured in carrying out
the purposes of this act." Focussing upon this word "coop-
eration," the Administration has begun its dealings with
the various states in a mood of reasonableness, seeking to
bring about a "meeting of minds" on problems shot
through with mutuality of interest and concern. The big
stick has stood in the corner, plainly visible but untouched
except for an occasional "hefting."
There has been little loss of time, however, in getting
down to cases on what is expected from the states as their
part of the cooperative arrangement. In speeches, confer-
ences, interviews and news releases the Administration has
rapidly enunciated its policies as they have developed from
' The issuing of a set of rules and regulations together with rapid developments in
relief-giving, administrative procedure and set-up by Administrator Harry L. Hop-
kins of the FERA have led Mr. Kurtz to prepare this article and summary in
place of the usual department, Unemployment and Community Action, which he
conducts with Miss Colcord. The department will be resumed in The September
Midmonthly Survey.
day to day. The following outline may serve as a summary
analysis of these policies to date.
Integration of Relief with Recovery
FUNDAMENTALLY, the Administration considers
relief a miserable business, necessary to tide people over
an emergency but not to be continued a moment longer
than the unemployment situation requires. Mr. Hopkins
made it clear in his talk before the National Conference of
Social Work that the "big show" at Washington is Na-
tional Recovery and that he hopes to have his act crowded
off the boards by the success of the main performance.
Until such happy event comes to pass, he wants relief to
get through to the people in prompt and adequate fashion.
There has been close liaison between the FERA and the
Civilian Conservation Corps. Equally close alliance is
being struck with the Public Works Administration and the
in-process-of-being-revamped Federal Employment Serv-
ice. A release of July 18 announces: "The FERA and the
U. S. Employment Service are working together to take
people off relief rolls and put them immediately on the pay-
rolls of public projects. . . . The re-employment execu-
tives of the USES provides the liaison between public
works projects and the state and local relief offices." The
"re-employment" offices, incidentally, are being manned
pretty largely through FERA cooperation.
As to the National Industrial Recovery Act, it is confi-
dently expected that many jobs will be opened up through
arbitrarily shortened work-weeks. The FERA wants the
state and local relief agencies to be right on the job when
this happens, seeing to it that relief is discontinued as men
get work; and avoiding any semblance of low-wage subsidy
by relief grants. Mr. Hopkins' comment at the NCSW will
be recalled: "There are a few parasitic industrial employers
who tend by competition to infect the whole industrial
body of our country with a split-penny wage policy. They
would like to see relief money pay their wage bill. But they
are doomed to disappointment."
Acceptable State Relief Administration
ONE of Mr. Hopkins' earliest statements of general
policy was that the state administrations should be
expected to have "wide responsibilities. It is impossible",
he said, "for a federal relief administrator to be acquainted
with the details and needs of thousands of communities in
this country." This implies a "competent and business-like
administration entirely free from partisan politics." And
later:
Obviously the governors of the states must delegate such coop-
eration to properly constituted commissions. To cooperate with
the Federal Administration, such a state body should represent
the state and oversee the details of administration on a non-
partisan basis.
284
August 1933
THE SURVEY
285
A state relief organization should consist of a full-time properly
qualified state director; an adequate force of field supervisors to
visit frequently the local relief units, and an auditing staff res-
ponsible for checking local relief expenditures and making sure
that every dollar of relief funds is properly accounted for.
Not all states had such representative and responsible
commissions on the job when the FERA began operations,
not to mention staffs of the type described. In four or five
cases, the state set-ups were fairly primitive and it became
an immediate problem of the Administration to persuade
the governors of these states to fall into line. In Georgia,
Florida and Michigan complete reorganizations have been
effected. Oklahoma, where Governor Murray has been in
the habit of identifying his name with each relief issue, has
offered a knottier problem but is "in process." A bitter
political fight has been waging here, with sections of the
press clamoring for a real show of the federal big stick. In
Tennessee, Indiana and Texas, among others, revisions
of the state administrations are being made.
"States Must Do Their Share"
IN ORDER to be eligible to receive any part of the $250-
million discretionary fund provided by the relief act, a
state must show, in the language of the act, that "the con-
tinued moneys which can be made available within the
state from all sources, supplemented by any moneys avail-
able under sub-section 'b' of this section [the one-to-three
matching fund] will fall below the estimated needs within
the state." The FERA has left no doubt about its interpre-
tation of this clause as is evidenced by the following ex-
cerpts from successive statements issuing from the ad-
ministrator's office:
June 4, in a telegram to the governor of Ohio: "It would seem
to me that the State of Ohio should provide approximately
$10,000,000 from state funds in addition to local appropriations
until the first of the year. It is the policy of this Administration to
insist that the states and local communities bear their full share
of the burden of relief. I think you should know that it is not my
present intention to make any further grants to Ohio other than
those funds available on a matching basis."
June 14. "Communities must cooperate in doing their share,
and it clearly appears that many states will have to call special
legislative sessions to provide funds for their share of their relief
needs."
June 27, in a communication to the governor of Texas: "I wish
to point out that it is going to be possible to carry only a part of
the cost of unemployment relief in the State of Texas out of fed-
eral funds. I understand that there is pending a proposal to amend
the state constitution so as to permit the legislature to bond the
state up to twenty million for relief of the unemployed. What I
wish to make clear is that funds must be made available by the
state and/or its political subdivisions by this or some other means,
if we are to continue to make grants from the federal funds."
July 10. "There are a few recalcitrant states that want to sit
down and let the federal government pay 100 percent of the cost of
unemployment relief within their borders.
"Apparently a few states did not believe the President recently
when he pointed out that it is essential for states and local units
of government to finance a reasonable share of their emergency
relief work.
"Some states are due for a rude shock in the very near future, if
they do not come through with action. There have got to be some
special sessions of state legislatures. The FERA means business,
and we are not going to string along with these situations. I am
beginning to doubt very much if there is a state in the country
which cannot do something in the way of funds for unemploy-
ment relief. We see numerous instances in which states have been
Local Relief Agencies
£1CAL relief agencies dispensing federal funds must be
"•public agencies": their workers "public agents." Here
are the FERA definitions of these terms.
"Public Agency." — A Public Welfare Department sup-
ported by tax funds and controlled by local government,
if approved by the State Emergency Relief Administration
to administer unemployment relief, is a "public agency."
Where a Public Welfare Department does not exist and a
local Unemployment Relief Administration is responsible
for unemployment relief, this local Unemployment Relief
Administration, in order to be recognized as a "Public
Agency," must have the following factors:
1. It must have the full sanction and recognition of the
State Emergency Relief Administration.
2. It must be vested with full authority and control in
the expenditure of state and federal public funds appropri-
ated for local relief purposes.
3. It must conform to the rulings of the SERA.
4. It must keep such records and forms as are required
by the SERA.
Note: This interpretation recognizes as a "public agency"
an agency created and sustained by executive action in the
absence of creative local legislation.
"Public Official" or "Public Agent"— "P\M\c official" or
"public agent" includes every person who is engaged in
carrying out the purposes of the public agency, and so
must be:
1. A member of the official staff of the public agency
responsible to the chief executive employed by the public
agency to administer the entire organization of unemploy-
ment relief. This relationship must be made official by
definite appointment and acceptance of such appointment.
2. The compensation of the "public official" or "public
agent" may or may not be paid from public funds.
Such official may be loaned by a private agency but when
so loaned must become a member of the official staff of
the public agency.
Use of Personnel Loaned by Private Agency. — The public
agency may make use of personnel of private agencies
provided:
1. Where such personnel is used for giving of unemploy-
ment relief it becomes for the time being an integral part
of the public agency. The public agency must assume full
responsibility over personnel loaned by the private agency.
2. That visible evidence of the integration into the public
agency is provided as follows:
a. The name of the public agency clearly set out on the
office door so that clients may know that they are applying
to a public agency for relief.
b. All order-forms must be those of the public agency;
receipts must be made out to the public agency; identifica-
tion cards of relief workers must be as staff members of
the public agency and relief workers at all times in han-
dling unemployment relief clients must report themselves
as public agents or officials.
c. All bills for direct relief, wages for work-relief, service
or administration costs must be paid directly by the public
agency; e.g., when grocery orders are issued by the relief
worker, the bills must be paid by the public agency directly
to the grocer and not through a private agency.
d. It is expected that on other matters than the deter-
mination of relief there will be cooperative relationships
established between public agencies and private agencies,
but the public agency shall not pay for supplemental
services so rendered by private agencies.
286
THE SURVEY
August 1933
Minimum Standards of Service
~r?ERA specifications of minimum standards for investiga-
JL tion and service in connection with work-relief and direct
relief.
To carry out the purposes of the Federal Emergency
Relief Act of 1933 the investigation of all applications for
direct and/or work relief is required. The following rules
are hereby established:
1. Each local relief administration should have at least
one trained and experienced investigator on its staff; if
additional investigators are to be employed to meet this
emergency, the first one employed should have had train-
ing and experience. In the larger public welfare districts,
where there are a number of investigators, there should be
not less than one supervisor, trained and experienced in the
essential elements of family case work and relief adminis-
tration, to supervise the work of not more than twenty-
investigating staff workers.
2. Registration records of all local applications for relief
should be kept at a central office. Where no such central
registration index now exists, one should be established by
the local relief administration. This is absolutely necessary
if duplication is to be avoided where there is more than one
agency, either public or private, administering relief.
3. The minimum investigation shall include a prompt
visit to the home; inquiry as to real property, bank ac-
counts and other financial resources of the family; and
interview with at least one recent employer; and determina-
tion of the ability and agreement of family, relatives,
friends and churches and other organizations to assist;
also the liability under public welfare laws of the several
states, of members of a family, or relatives, to assume such
support in order to prevent such member becoming a public
charge.
4. Investigation shall be made, not only of persons ap-
plying directly to the office, but also of those reported to it.
In this emergency, it is the duty of those responsible for
the administration of unemployment relief to seek out
persons in need, and to secure the cooperation of clergy-
men, school teachers, nurses and organizations that might
assist.
5. There must be contact with each family through
visits at least once a month, or oftener if necessary. The
local field worker should be in sufficiently close touch with
the family situation to avoid the necessity of applicants
reapplying to the office for each individual order.
6. Investigators should not be overloaded with cases.
While no exact standard is being set as to the number of
cases per worker, state emergency relief administrators
should see to it that a sufficient number of workers are
utilized in each local relief district to insure reasonable
investigation procedure.
7. Relief should be given only to persons in need of relief,
and on the basis of budgetary deficiency established after
careful investigation.
8. Duplication of relief must be avoided, and every
precaution should be taken to prevent overlapping of
relief agencies, both public and private.
9. Frequent and careful re-investigation should be un-
dertaken at regular intervals in order to establish the
continued need of those who are receiving relief in order
to determine whether or not some member of the family
may have obtained part- or full-time work which would
indicate the necessity for cutting down or cutting off of
relief. Where adequate staff for investigation is provided,
under able direction and supervision, these re-investiga-
tions may be carried out automatically, and the relief rolls
kept clear of those who do not qualify.
providing funds for roads and other purposes and are continuing
to do so. Yet they plead that they have no funds for their hungry
people.
"There is nothing sacred about some of these state taxes, gas-
oline taxes for instance, and no reason why in many cases these
revenues should not be applied to feeding the sufferers from unem-
ployment. It is not the intention of the FERA to carry 100 percent
of relief costs where state and local resources can still be tapped."
July if, in a telegram to the governor of Kentucky: "In con-
ference yesterday with your relief administration, it develops that
Kentucky has funds for the relief of unemployed only until about
middle of August. It also developed that no state funds have been
appropriated directly for unemployment during this crisis and
that while some of the cities have appropriated considerable
sums these are now exhausted so that all relief in Kentucky at
this date is financed from federal grants. I wish to make it per-
fectly clear to you that the FERA will not continue to finance
relief work beyond August 15. In view of difficult financial situa-
tion in many counties and cities it would seem imperative that
special session of legislature be called at once to provide substan-
tial funds so that Kentucky will pay for a reasonable share of the
cost of caring for its own destitute. I am sure you fully appreciate
reasonableness of this position."
This is the most violent shaking of the big stick that has
come to public notice to date.
On the other hand, several states have been commended
publicly for their attempts to do their part in the problem
of joint financing. Michigan was praised for the levying in
June of an emergency 3 percent sales tax which is calcu-
lated to yield $32 million for relief. Illinois likewise came in
for credit for her re-passage of an amended 2 percent sales
tax act devised to yield $30 million. Texas was commended
for preparing for a bond-enabling constitutional amend-
ment which the electorate will vote upon this month
(August). If approved, this eventually will yield $20 mil-
lion.
Other fiscal measures, not all of them traceable to FERA
warnings, have been or are being formulated in a number
of other states. California voters on June 27 approved by a
large majority a $2o-million relief bond issue. The governor
of Wisconsin is proposing the continuance of relief financing
through income surtaxes. Rhode Island recently voted a
$3-million state relief fund. Connecticut passed legislation
empowering the state to guarantee local relief bonds. Ari-
zona has a new sales tax.
Up to this date only two states have received grants from
the discretionary fund. One is Texas, which received
$808,429 on the strength of the pending bond election, and
the other Michigan, which was granted $1,271,030 to carry
her through until her new sales tax could become oper-
ative. Thus has the spirit of cooperation been exemplified.
Adequate Local Participation
IT appears that the FERA is inclined to let the governors
and their relief commissions make the first attempt to
find the answer to the question, what constitutes adequate
local participation in relief financing? But it is obviously
going to be ready to speak up when its turn comes. Quoting
from a communication to the state director of relief in
Minnesota, who had requested an opinion as to how far it
should go in requiring local political subdivisions to finance
their own relief needs:
It seems to me that you should have about the same attitude in
relation to local subdivisions as this office will have in making ap-
propriations to your state. Surely the whole intent of the Presi-
dent's statement was to insist upon reasonable local appropria-
August 1933
THE SURVEY
287
tions for unemployment relief. If, in the judgment of your Un-
employment Commission, cities and counties are not doing their
fair share, it is quite proper for you to hold up part or all of the
funds which would otherwise be allotted them. There is certainly
no reason whatever why cities and counties, which can well
afford to finance relief work, should be financed on a 100 percent
basis by your organization. Indeed, if we feel that you are giving
funds in excessive amounts to local communities, we shall have no
hesitancy whatever in taking this matter up with you. Your action
in these matters will undoubtedly control future appropriations to
Minnesota.
My own experience has been that the most satisfactory way to
get local money into the picture is to pay the local community a
certain percentage of the total relief expenditures. I would urge,
should the matter come to an issue, that the state make a reason-
able offer to the local community.
Local Administrative Units
ONE of the first questions posed to the FERA by anxious
local relief officials was that pertaining to the accept-
ability of the various forms of local set-up. The adminis-
trator, in an early statement, announced the general policy
that only public agencies should dispense federal funds.
There were reassuring qualifications, however:
This policy obviously must be interpreted on a realistic basis in
various parts of the United States. Hundreds of private agencies
scattered throughout the land have freely and generously offered
their services in the administration of public funds. It would be a
serious handicap to relief work if the abilities and interests of these
individuals were lost.
But I would ask for their cooperation to the extent that these
responsible individuals be made public officials working under the
control of public authority, serving in hundreds of cases without
pay, but if paid, paid in the same manner as any other public
servant.
And later:
Grants of FERA funds are to be administered by public agen-
cies after August l, 1933. This ruling prohibits the turning over
of FERA funds to a private agency. The unemployed must ap-
ply to a public agency for relief and this relief must be furnished
directly to the applicant by a public agent.
Sensing the need for greater clarification of this ruling,
the Administration on July 13 issued a bulletin defining the
various terms as quoted elsewhere (see Local Relief Agen-
cies, p. 285). In this interpretation it made clear the funda-
mental proposition that in future, the unemployed who
were to be helped by the use of federal funds in whole or in
part should be dealt with as applicants for governmental
aid, administered by governmental hands under govern-
mental policy. Public subsidy of private relief effort, con-
fusion of public and private control of policy in local
settings, evasion of public responsibility for dealing with a
public problem — all were declared "out" by this momentous
ruling of the Administration.
As this is written, not enough time has elapsed to get
complete reports from the communities affected as to how
they will meet these requirements. In Pittsburgh, where the
Family Welfare Association has been doing the big end of
the service job for the County Emergency Relief Board,
plans are afoot to transfer the supervisor of that agency
and a full corps of relief workers to the CERB payroll.
Cleveland, St. Louis, Memphis, Birmingham, Kansas
City, Portland, Ore., San Francisco, and Toledo all face
similar adjustments, for in these communities the unem-
ployment relief-service function has been resting entirely
on the shoulders of the private agencies. In Baltimore,
Types of Relief
r~T~(HE types of direct relief allowed by the FERA are as
J- follows:
Such relief shall be in the form of food, shelter, clothing,
light, fuel, necessary household supplies, medicine, medical
supplies and medical attendance, or the cash equivalent of
those to the person in his own home.
Direct relief does not include relief — where provision is
already made under existing laws — for widows or their
dependents, and/or aged persons. There is further disal-
lowed the payment of hospital bills or institutional care,
and the costs of the boarding out of children.
Any or all of the following types of relief may be granted.
1 . Food, in the form of a food order, determined by the
number, ages and needs of the individual members of the
family in general accordance with standard food schedules.
2. Orders for the payment of current rent, or its equiv-
alent, where necessary.
3. Orders for light, gas, fuel and water for current needs.
4. Necessary household supplies.
5. Clothing or orders for clothing, sufficient for emer-
gency needs.
6. Orders for medicine, medical supplies and/or medical
attendance to be furnished in the home.
A broad interpretation of direct relief may be followed
by the State Relief Administration where such is called
for in meeting the immediate needs of individuals or fam-
ilies, or in aiding such needy persons in providing the
necessities of life for themselves and/or their dependents.
Food for livestock cannot be allowed as a relief expendi-
ture except food for domestic livestock may be allowed as
a relief expenditure where such allowance makes it possible
for the distressed family to produce additional food for the
immediate family need.
Seed for gardens under the same reasoning may like-
wise be allowed as a relief measure.
Tax or mortgage-interest payments on feal property
(home and land) may be allowed in lieu of rent as a relief
measure, where such allowance is no greater than the nor-
mal minimum relief rent allowance, and when such pay-
ment of tax or mortgage-interest is vitally necessary in
preventing the loss of the home and the eviction of the
owner.
A liberal interpretation of direct relief as above indicated
must be controlled by the rule of reason and public policy.
Under no circumstances shall an allowance be made which
makes provision for other than the emergency needs of the
immediate family. State relief administrations are not
authorized to make allowances for food or seed to such an
extent that provision is made possible for more than the
individual family requirements. Likewise, tax or mortgage-
interest payments in lieu of rent shall be allowed only on
properties occupied and held title to by relief recipients.
In no event shall a relief grant be made which directly or
indirectly makes possible an increased capital investment
in private properties.
where a similar situation prevails, steps have already been
taken to make the emergency relief workers "public agents"
through appointment by a newly created public emergency
relief commission.
In view of the ruling that the "public agency" need not
be an established public welfare department but may, with
certain qualifications, be a relief group set up by local
288
THE SURVEY
August 1933
Rules for Work-Relief
A Wages. Work-relief wages in cash or in kind are to
Z±.» be interpreted as follows:
All work-relief wages shall be based upon the relief need
of the individual and/or his dependents.1
The rate of wage should be a fair rate of pay for the work
performed. Total compensation should meet the budgetary
requirement of the relief recipient.
Payment shall be by check, in cash, or in kind.
Allowance should be on the basis of days' wages, or the
equivalent, for hours worked.2
Where skilled personnel is required, skilled wages for
skilled work must be paid. Such personnel taken from the
work-relief lists should be staggered. Where such skilled
personnel is required full-time, it should be provided
otherwise than on a work-relief basis.
B. Selection of Workers. Work-relief should be allowed
only those who are employable.
There shall be no discrimination because of race, religion,
color, noncitizenship, political affiliation or because of
membership in any special or selected group.
C. Work-Relief Projects. Work-relief projects must be
projects undertaken on federal, state or local public prop-
erties. Work projects for private institutions or agencies,
nonprofit or otherwise, are therefore prohibited except as
such projects, undertaken by governmental units, may
benefit the public health or welfare as, for example, the
prosecution of a drainage project which may benefit
private interests but is withal of definite benefit to the
public health of the community.
It therefore follows that work-relief may not be used in
the improvement of hospitals, libraries, churches, parks,
cemeteries, etc., which are privately owned or incorporated,
except that if state or local public monies are regularly
contributed to the support of such institutions and such
public support creates a quasi-public institution which
may receive the benefit of work-relief.
Work-relief projects under this act must be for work
undertaken by a state or local relief administration in-
dependent of work under a contract or for which an annual
appropriation has been made. It must be, in general, apart
from normal governmental enterprises and not such as
would have been carried out in due course regardless of an
emergency.
The construction, as a work-relief project, of public
buildings, such as schools, firehouses, garages, etc., would
in general not be acceptable as a proper work-relief project,
such construction falling within the usual contract work
which would provide labor for those unemployed at large.
All local work-relief projects must be submitted for ap-
proval to the State Emergency Relief Administration.
D. Workmen's Compensation Insurance. Persons em-
ployed on work-relief projects are not federal employes
and the premiums for their compensation or accident in-
surance may not be paid from federal funds. If such insur-
ance is provided it, therefore, must be carried by state or
local monies. ,
Persons employed on work-relief projects by the states
and their subdivisions ought to be covered by compensa-
tion or accident insurance.
1 Allowances on work-relief may be made to cover food, shelter, clothing,
light, fuel, necessary household supplies, medical supplies and medical attend-
ance.
3 As we go to press, a ruling has been issued setting 30»f per hr. as the mini-
mum wage and 150 hrs. per month as the maximum work allowance, in keep-
ing with the general policies of the National Recovery Administration.
executive action for the emergency only, it is probable that
very little actual change, either in policy or personnel, will
occur in many of these localities simply because they will
bear the public label henceforth. On the other hand, in
those areas where conditions are ripe for the creation of
permanent public-welfare departments, changes of the first
magnitude may be forthcoming.
A great deal remains to be cleared up as to the place in
the new picture reserved for the Red Cross, the St. Vincent
de Paul Societies, county health units that are prepared to
render home-visitation service, and kindred agencies. It is
here that the policy will obviously need to "be interpreted
on a realistic basis."
Personnel and Service Standards
THE FERA has made it perfectly clear on a number of !
occasions that it is prepared, where necessary, to share
in meeting the salary rolls of both state and local relief ad-
ministrations, and that it wants a voice in the selection of
state boards and directors. It has not, up to this time, made
any commitments as to what constitutes qualified per-
sonnel in the "front-line trenches" — the local units. But it
has specified what it considers to be minimum standards
of investigation and service. These specifications appear
elsewhere in this article (see Minimum Standards of Serv-
ice, p. 286).
Obviously, the observance of these standards will require
capable and intelligent personnel m considerable numbers.
In declining to set maximum caseloads, the Administration
is again displaying its leaning towards realism, as much
depends upon local conditions in arriving at such maxima.
But, it will be observed, the staff must be adequate to
"make contacts with the families through visits at least
once a month or oftener"; "the local field workers should
be in sufficiently close touch with the family situation to
avoid the necessity of applicants' reapplying to the office
for each individual order"; and "investigators should not be
overloaded with cases." With these points of leverage, the
FERA may be expected to arrive at sound even though
varying solutions to personnel and caseload problems.
Who Shall Get Relief?'
THE Administrator sees the "needy unemployed" and
their dependents as the persons whom the relief act was
framed to help. There are no limitations except that the
need must be carefully verified and rechecked from time to
time, and that the relief allowances must be adjusted to
meet the actual needs within the family.
In view of earlier pronouncements that the FERA
would not be a party to the subsidization through relief of
low wage-scales, it is interesting to note a qualification
written into the instructions that have gone out to state
administrations: "Those whose employment or available
resources are inadequate to provide the necessities of life
for themselves and/or their dependents are included."
Another realistic concession to the exigencies of the situa-
tion.
Kinds and Amount of Relief
THE FERA has listed the types of relief which it con-
siders allowable so far as the use of federal funds is
concerned (see Types of Relief, p. 287). Note that the
phrasing seems to permit the states to exercise considerable
local discretion through the use of the phrase "any or all."
August 1933
THE SURVEY
289
Issuance of relief in the form of cash allowances equivalent
to the net budgeted needs is also left optional.
But while the actual itemization of approved types of
relief has been presented by the FERA to the states in
permissive rather than in mandatory form, the extent to
which relief must be provided is clearly indicated in another
paragraph:
This imposes an obligation on the State Emergency Relief
Administration and on all political subdivisions of the states
administering relief, insofar as lies within their power to see to it
that all such needy unemployed persons and/or their dependents
shall receive sufficient relief to prevent physical suffering and to
maintain minimum living standards.
The amount of relief to be given must be based on the
following:
1 . An estimate of the weekly needs of the individual or family,
including an allowance for food sufficient to maintain physical
well-being , for shelter, the provision of fuel for cooking and for
warmth when necessary, medical care and other necessities.
Taxes may be allowed in lieu of allowances for shelter, and not to
exceed the normal rent allowance — providing such tax allowance
is necessary in order to maintain the shelter or home of the relief
recipient.
2. An estimate of the weekly income of the family, including
wages or other cash income, produce of farm or garden, and all
other resources.
3. The relief granted should be sufficient to provide the esti-
mated weekly needs to the extent that the family is unable to do
so from its own resources.
Work-Relief
NO preference for either direct relief or work-relief as a
method has been expressed by the FERA up to this
time. Neither has any public comment been made upon the
practice followed in some states of requiring applicants to
"work out" such direct relief as is given them. Rather, the
approach has been one of assuming that all relief programs
which require a client to work for his aid fall in the category
of work relief and hence are to be governed by the policies
quoted in Rules for Work-Relief (p. 288).
Wages, it will be noted, may be paid either in cash or in
kind, but must be based upon budgeted need, insofar as the
weekly amount is concerned. Hourly or daily rates are to
be "fair for the work performed," a provision that strikes
at the abuse prevalent in some quarters of setting the daily
work-relief wage or allowance so low that it demoralizes
all other wage-scales in the community.
The "no discrimination" clause, if enforced, should cor-
rect another abuse: namely, the allowance of fewer work-
hours to Negroes or other groups because the community is
convinced that "they can get along on less." The Adminis-
tration's code throws this question into the area of "budge-
tary requirement of the relief recipient" where it can be
faced squarely.
Relief for Transients
THE Administration's program for the care of transients
and homeless is still in the formative stage. It has been
announced that there will be set up in the FERA a Depart-
ment on Transients which will cooperate with state relief
administrations in working out policies and standards.
States have been asked to submit programs and plans upon
which tentative decisions may be made. "If acceptable
plans are presented," the Administrator has stated, "grants
will be made over and above those for direct relief and work-
relief" as provided in Section 4 (c) of the Relief Act.
Barter Questionnaire
Questionnaire To Be Answered by Applicants for Self-help
and Barter-exchange Funds
1. How much money is needed?
2. How to be paid, instalment or lump sum?
3. What is money to be used for? (Give as full and de-
tailed information as possible on each project separately
for which federal aid is asked.)
4. Give sworn statement of assets and liabilities as of
July i, 1933 or as near that date as possible.
5. Administrative personnel? (List names, addresses,
past experience and business connections of principal
officers.)
6. How long organized?
7. How many active members?
8. How many actually sustained in system who other-
wise would be on relief? (Submit names and addresses of
same for independent check-up.)
9. How many persons have been taken from relief-rolls?
10. How many persons can be taken from'the relief-rolls
within the next six months?
11. What commodities are produced?
12. How is shelter handled?
13. Is scrip used? If so, submit samples.
14. What is behind the scrip?
15. When was scrip first issued?
1 6. Has it depreciated? How much?
17. Has unit traded with other units? If so, state value,
kind and quantity of goods exchanged with other units.
1 8. How far apart are various other units traded with?
19. To what extent is community behind movement?
Are merchants favorable or otherwise? Is organized labor
favorable or otherwise? Does the state, county or other
local relief organization cooperate with you? To what
extent?
20. Give dollar volume of business transacted for each
month since starting.
21. To what extent would this appropriation make the
system self-sustaining?
(Name of organization) —
(Name and title of officer)-
The FERA's definition of transients follows:
For the purposes of this act, settlement shall be defined as
residence within a state for a period of one continuous year or
longer. Hence, all persons in need of relief who have not resided
within the boundaries of a state for twelve consecutive months,
may be considered as proper claims on the FERA under the
above section.
Persons who have resided in a state for more than a year, as
defined above, but who may be termed "transient" in that they
may not have acquired legal state or local settlement, are to be
classified as coming within the usual meaning of relief under
Section 4-A, the reimbursement on the costs of relief to such
persons to be handled in the regular manner under that section.
Barter and Self-Help
THE Relief Act empowers the FERA "to aid in assisting
cooperative and self-help associations for the barter of
goods and services" with grants from the discretionary
fund. A number of applications have been received from
290
THE SURVEY
August 1933
various parts of the country for such appropriations.
As a general policy, the Administration is throwing back
upon the state the responsibility for passing upon these
applications before they come to the FERA's attention.
In a letter to the governors and state relief administrators,
the Administration said on July 7:
The State Relief Administration is not expected to take the full
responsibility for the success of any barter and self-help experi-
ment; but the Federal Administration would expect the State
Administration to assume responsibility for two of the factors
most essential to the success of a barter unit, namely the quality
of the administrative personnel, its integrity and its ability; and
the sympathy and cooperation of the community in which the
unit wishes to operate. These two factors can best be judged by
the state authorities. It is almost impossible for the Federal Ad-
ministration to make a fair judgment of them.
With the letter went a questionnaire form, reproduced
on page 289. States were directed to require applicants
for self-help appropriations to fill out this form as com-
pletely as possible. "The responsibility of the final judg-
ment as to whether the appropriation should be made will
rest with the FERA," says the Administrator. And further:
It is to be definitely understood that expenditures on any of
these units are to be considered as experimental ones, and until
such units prove that they either have actually reduced the relief
expense, and at the same time given adequate relief, or prevented
a rise in the relief expense they shall be considered in this experi-
mental light.
The State Relief Administration is advised to keep in as close
touch as possible with any unit that is set up under its recom-
mendation. It should require reports from the unit from time to
time on expenditures of funds and on the progress being made.
These reports should be on file with both the State Administration
and the Federal Administration. It is suggested that one of the
members of the State Administration should give such time to the
development of this project in either a supervisory or advisory
capacity as the State Administration deems necessary.
If any State Relief Administration wishes to make an experi-
ment of its own without using an already existing barter unit
such application will of course be given immediate consideration
upon the filing of the plan of organization with this office. Any
help that this office can give in an advisory or temporary super-
visory capacity for any unit will also be furnished.
Conclusion
TWO months is a short time for an organization to get
up power and to start moving with satisfactory speed
toward its destination. This one has not disappointed its
friends in that respect, nor has it given critics grounds for
protest. Action has been the rule in Washington in recent
months, and the FERA's tempo is apace with that of the
national administration of which it is a part.
But coupled with action have been both reasoning and
reasonableness in adequate measure to effect the formation
of a sound and cooperative relief plan between city, state
and nation.
Will the Codes Abolish Child Labor?
By GERTRUDE FOLKS ZIMAND
Director Research and Publicity, National Child Labor Committee
"HEN President Roosevelt on July 9 signed the
Code of Fair Competition for the Cotton-Tex-
tile Industry, which bars from employment
children under 1 6 years, he virtually removed from that
industry several thousand children who will be replaced
by adults. Had this action been taken in the spring of 1930,
before unemployment became so acute, the number dis-
placed would have been over 10,000.
If all of the clothing industries adopt a similar provision,
which is expected, another 8650 children will yield their
places to older workers. In this case, the Census figure is
probably fairly representative of the number of children
now at work, for with the sweatshops which have sprung
up since the depression, an actual increase in the number of
children employed was reported last year in several cities
which are strongholds of the garment trades.
One of the primary purposes of the National Industrial
Recovery Act is to increase employment opportunities.
For this reason, if for no other, a i6-year-age minimum
should be incorporated in every code. All of the important
child-labor industries that have definitely submitted codes
have done so, and President Roosevelt's blanket code,
which is operative only until December 31 and which de-
pends upon voluntary acceptance, specifies a 1 6-year age
minimum except for non-manufacturing industries where
children 14 to 16 years may work for 3 hours a day.
A real point of danger, however, lies in the agreements to
be submitted by the retail trade groups. Although more
than 25,000 children under 16 years were employed in
stores in 1930, and 15 percent of these were under 14 years,
the code originally drafted by the National Retail Dry
Goods Association, which it was said would probably be a
model for other retail groups, contained no age minimum.
Moreover, it specified a decidedly lower wage-rate for
junior workers under 18 years than for adult workers. In
such industries, where for many processes a very short
period of training is required, a wage differentiation based
on an arbitrary distinction of age is bound to result in the
employment of low-paid juvenile labor to replace more
highly paid adult labor, thus defeating one of the funda-
mental purposes of the Recovery Program. This industry is
now refraining its code, and the new text has not been
made public at this writing.
The Detroit Retail Merchants Association, it is interest-
ing to note, has already protested to General Johnson
against the blanket code in its application to mercantile
industry and has asked that lower wages for junior em-
ployes be considered.
The industrial codes can at one sweep temporarily abol-
ish child labor in most of the industries of this country.
Allowing for a 25 percent decrease since the 1930 Census
was taken, fully 100,000 children would be released for
school and their jobs made available for adults if a 1 6-year
age minimum were incorporated in all codes. The 400,000
children regularly employed on their home farms will not
be touched by the codes, and whether the 67,000 young
August 1933
THE SURVEY
291
wage-workers in commercialized agriculture, the 23,000
newsboys and bootblacks, and the 40,000 domestic workers
will be affected is likewise doubtful.
However, the mere inclusion of a i6-year age minimum
is not sufficient for all industries. Not only the 14- and 15-
year-old coal-mining operatives, of whom there were 722 in
1930, should relinquish their jobs to adults, but the 15,182
boys of 1 6 and 17 years as well. The code of the bituminous
coal industry, however, provides merely that children under
1 6 should not be employed "inside a mine." Undoubtedly
the 3,181 children under 16 should be taken out of the
sawmills, as the lumber code already submitted to the
National Recovery Administration stipulates — but every
one of the 15,736 workers who are under 18 years should
also be removed from this hazardous employment. The
general public, as well as the men who get their jobs, will
be relieved if the 15,219 "chauffeurs, truck and tractor
drivers" who are under 18 years surrender their drivers'
seats to older men. And the railroad tracks are no place
for the 5,665 boys under 18 who are working upon them
as "laborers." Nor is there any place in our blast-furnaces
and steel rolling-mills for the 4,973 boys under 18 who
were so employed in 1930.
If industrial codes are actually to mean the end of child
labor during the depression, the following basic principles
must govern their child labor provisions:
1. Age minimum. A 1 6-year age minimum should be included
in every industrial code and should apply to all types of employ-
ment in the industry; for industries, or specific processes in indus-
tries, where unemployment is especially severe or where the risks
of employment make advisable adult workers, an 1 8-year age
minimum should be specified.
2. Apprenticeship. The employment of learners or apprentices
should be strictly regulated as to the number permitted, wages,
and length of the "apprenticeship" period.
3. Wage-rates. Wage-rates for junior workers should be based
on the capacity of the worker relative to adult capacity, and not
on an arbitrary age basis.
If these principles are fully incorporated and the codes
are effectively enforced, child labor will be eliminated from
the major industries of the United States for the two-year
period of the emergency. But this does not mean that the
child-labor fight has been won. Considerable pressure was
brought to bear before industry "voluntarily" moved to
eliminate child labor, — not all industries have done so yet
— and this action cannot be too literally construed as
indicating a change of heart which will keep children out of
industry when the restrictions imposed by the codes cease
to operate. When employers are once more free to fix their
own wage scales and conditions of work, "cheap" child
labor may again become profitable.
Previous experience indicates that when a period of un-
employment begins to abate and industry picks up, the
number of children entering industry tends to increase.
And there is ample evidence that when federal control of
child labor has been exercised and is removed, its effect
likewise vanishes! When the first Federal Child Labor Law
was declared unconstitutional, there was a prompt restora-
tion of a longer working-day for children and an increase
in the number of such working children. Moreover, between
1920 (when the second Federal Child Labor Law was in
effect) and 1930, when there was no federal regulation of
child employment, the number of children employed in
textile establishments in South Carolina and Georgia ac-
tually increased by 23.7 and 11.9 percent respectively.
Child labor is an evil at any time. The depression has
brought to the fore the economic unsoundness of employing
children while adults are idle, but from the humanitarian
point of view, there will be need for child-labor control long
after the depression has passed. The National Child Labor
Committee is therefore working simultaneously for the
inclusion of a child-labor provision in every emergency
industrial code, and also for ratification by the states of the
Federal Child-Labor Amendment as the only method of
making permanent the improvement in child-labor stand-
ards which may result from the National Industrial Re-
covery program.
Fifteen states have now ratified the Amendment — nine
of them during 1933. Efforts for ratification cannot be
relaxed. We must press on toward the goal of ratification
in thirty-six states by 1935 so that a federal law can be
enacted as soon as the codes cease to operate and child
labor can be eliminated once and for all.
THESE TWO
(The ceaseless, inarticulate cry of a mother) while working)
BY HENRIETTA R. SMEDES
These two, O God, these two —
I hold them up to you.
'Ain' nothin' they don't need
To keep 'em fit and fine.
Take 'em, God. They're yours-
Not mine, not mine, not mine.
T ain' like I hadn't tried —
I've tried the best I could,
And oh! I do so want
That they should be good.
But it's more'n I can manage,
And now it's up to you,
For they're yours, Lord, yours,
And you must keep 'em true.
Don't matter, God, 'bout me,
Not the least little bit,
If only you'll just take 'em
And keep 'em fine and fit.
So this is what I'm wantin'
And aprayin' you to do —
To take 'em and to keep 'em,
Just these two.
THE COMMON WELFARE
In Memoriam Florence Kelley
THE serene shades of Florence Kelley must be looking
back triumphantly, perhaps a bit wistfully, at the
Blanket Code under the Recovery Act. For this volun-
tary code proposes to issue to manufacturers and shop-
keepers who agree to observe its provisions, a card or sign
showing that their goods are made under fair conditions,
that their employes are not working more than the maxi-
mum hours established for their trade and that they are
paying at least the established minimum wages; and a
great campaign to induce consumers to buy only of these
concerns is to be conducted, President Roosevelt himself
leading off on the radio.
Now that is precisely what the Consumers' League
White List proposed to do when Mrs. Kelley promulgated
it over thirty years ago. The original plan of the League
was not to boycott goods from sweatshops, but to issue a
White List of firms whose plants its own agents had inves-
tigated, and to persuade the League members to buy only
from approved dealers and thus be sure they were not
patronizing sweatshops. The membership of the League
was never large enough to make or break a business con-
cern. But its influence was felt and feared, especially as it
went continually and successfully into protective legis-
lative campaigns against child labor, night-work for women
and excessive working-hours, and for a legal minimum
wage. And Mrs. Kelley, stumping the country year after
year, waving her White List like a battle-flag, brought a
glowing vision of service to humanity to her audiences, par-
ticularly in the colleges. What she attempted to do by per-
suasion, by an ethical appeal, has now become one of the
major economic activities of the Recovery Administration
with the full force of the government behind it. The old
W'hite List and the new Blanket Recovery Code are
cousins under the skin. Perhaps the most surprising thing
about it is that a whole nation has been persuaded in less
than a generation that good economics calls for good
ethics. Few evangelists have worked so fast as Florence
Kelley.
Welcome Back, Whittier
A^TER more than two years of the hardest kind of work,
the Citizens Committee, of which Elmer R. Murphey
of Pasadena is chairman, has persuaded Governor Rolph of
California to remove the Whittier State School for Boys
from the maw of his political machine. Readers of The
Survey will recall (Survey Midmonthly, July 1931, p. 404)
that the governor's director of state institutions fired the
superintendent, Kenyon J. Scudder, who had a nation-wide
reputation as a worker with boys. In his place was put one
Smith, a former Texas sherifF, and as parole officer, Owens,
described as an ex-prizefighter. Both had worked for the
governor's election. Conditions got constantly worse at
the School and the work of the Citizens' Committee in-
creasingly difficult until, by good luck, Senator Inma'n's
Investigating Committee summoned Mr. Murphey to
testify at a public hearing. He went over the school situa-
tion at length and declared incidentally that "Owens had
endeavored to interest some of his assistants, as he said, in I
bumping me off, as I had been trying to get his job." That
made the first page of newspapers throughout the state
and created such a stir that the governor yielded to public
opinion and asked Mr. Murphey's committee to nominate
new officers and an advisory committee. This they did and
their nominations were accepted. The new superintendent
is E. J. Milne, formerly judge of the Juvenile Court in
Salt Lake City. His assistant is Robert V. Chandler of
Pasadena, a business man and enthusiastic boys' club
leader. The advisory committee is made up of people who
have the confidence of the community: William H. Cor-
mack, leader in boys' work of the Los Angeles Rotary
Club; Carrie Parsons Bryant, member of the Los Angeles
Board of Education; the Rev. E. E. Day, a Congregational
minister of Whittier; Father Thomas J. O'Dwyer of Los
Angeles; and Mr. Murphey. California is to be congratu-
lated, not only on the restoration of Whittier as an out-
standing school for boys but on the acquisition of a citizen
like Elmer Murphey, an eastern business man who had
retired for quiet and sunshine but plunged up to his neck
into a rough-and-tumble political fight for the things he
believes in.
Re-employment Service
" T T 7"HAT is this Re-employment Service that Frank
W Persons is running?" people have been asking in a
puzzled way. "Is it the old Federal Employment Service
under a new name, or what?"
The U. S. Employment Service under the direction of
W. Frank Persons is running two shows: one, the longtime
project of building up the permanent structure of free
employment services in this country; and the other this
emergency "transitory" system of registration and place-
ment centers through which the immediate induction of
men into public works, and perhaps into industry, may
be handled.
There was no direct legal mandate in any section of the
huge National Recovery Act directing the U. S. Employ-
ment Service to establish this chain of "re-employment"
offices, but the obligation to do so was found to be in-
escapable once the Special Board of Public Works swung
into action late in June. The labor policy adopted by the
Board included provisions for the equitable distribution of
jobs, both as to individuals and as to geographical allot-
ment; and it provides that "local labor required for such
projects . . . should so far as possible be selected from
lists of qualified workers submitted by local employment
agencies designated by the U. S. Employment Service.^
But there are 3000 counties in these United States and
only 135 local public employment agencies on record with
the U. S. Employment Service. Mr. Persons did some rapid
calculating and worked out a two-point program under
which the Public W7orks Administration agreed to supply
the funds and the federal relief administrator the personnel
to set up the new employment bureaus required.
A pattern quickly emerged: at Washington a National
292
August 1933
THE SURVEY
293
Re-employment Council composed of representatives of the
U. S. Employment Service, the Federal Emergency Relief
Administration and the Public Works Board; a replica of
this council at each state capitol, directing the work
through a full-time state director and staff; and in each
local unit where public works are to open up a re-employ-
ment labor market, a local committee putting the regis-
tration and placement job across with the aid of such
personnel, employed staff or otherwise, as is necessary.
Where a state employment service is functioning the
re-employment service will not be established. There is to
be no duplication of established employment services.
Selection and placement on jobs, it appears, are not to
be limited to the active relief cases of the communities,
although such persons will be given their fair share of
employment opportunities. Self-maintaining citizens just
"on the edge" are not to be penalized for their struggle to
keep off of relief, but will get a chance under this plan.
The only test is that "qualified workers" must be selected;
whether from dependent or other groups.
The U. S. Employment Service sees in this emergency
program an opportunity not only to do a necessary emer-
gency job, but a chance to drive in a good many wedges in
support of its main program.
Those Public Palisades
BY THE time these words are read the magnificent gift
by John D. Rockefeller, Jr., to the public through the
Interstate Palisades Park Commission of 254 acres of land
for a parkway on the crest of the Palisades will have been
acclaimed the country over, for the Palisades of the Hudson
are the heritage of all America. To preserve their skyline is
a national service. The Survey — as perhaps no other
periodical — rejoices in this gift. For it was an article in
The Graphic five years ago (Those Private Palisades, by
Loula D. Lasker, June 1928) that sounded the call to those
who would prevent the vandalism then being planned by
commercial building interests. As a result, public opinion
was aroused and a group of citizens was organized which
has been active ever since under the able chairmanship of
Walter Kidde of Montclair, New Jersey. Meanwhile Mr.
Rockefeller has been quietly accumulating 40 percent of
the land necessary for the parkway recommended by the
Regional Plan. Added to the 40 percent owned by the
Interstate Palisades Park Commission, it is now necessary
to acquire but 20 percent of the land to preserve the Pali-
sades in their unspoiled beauty.
The last chapter in the history of this struggle — a strug-
gle begun thirty years ago when the face of the cliffs was
rescued from the designs of the quarrymen, aroused by
Lyman Abbott, editor of The Outlook — is being written.
It is not finished, however, for Mr. Rockefeller's gift of
land is contingent on $3,500,000 being raised to build the
parkway. Application has been made to the Federal Public
Works Administration to finance the project. Just what the
federal authorities will decide is not known at this writing.
Whether any outright gift which the government can make
must be limited to a participation wit'h others in the cost
of the project is a moot question; whether the state of New
Jersey will find a way to meet the costs involved in what-
ever loan may be necessary from the federal authorities it
is too early to say; the costs of condemnation may also be a
difficulty. But one thing is sure. Mr. Rockefeller's gift
offers a unique opportunity to combine unemployment
relief with an improvement of lasting value. It offers an
eleventh-hour chance to save the Palisades and to build a
parkway comparable to the Amalfi Drive in Italy or the
Corniche Road via the Riviera. No stone should be left
unturned to persuade the Federal Public Works Admin-
istration to go to the limit of its authority and to persuade
the state of New Jersey to cooperate to the uttermost in
order that "the one transcendent and irreplaceable coign
of natural beauty within a hundred miles of the greatest
city in the world" may be increasingly enjoyed and held in
safekeeping for the future.
San Diego Mexicans
A NOTABLE contribution to the comparative study of
-L\. standards of living has recently been completed by
the Heller Committee for Research in Social Economics of
the University of California, on the basis of an investigation
made by the San Diego Neighborhood House under the
direction of Prof. Constantine Panunzio. This study of the
incomes and expenditures of one hundred Mexican families
is of special value because its data are presented in com-
parison with similar data from previous studies of American
workers. It should be read also in conjunction with Paul
Taylor's recent study of a Mexican community; for their
way of life as here illustrated helps to explain why, in spite
of serious hardships, many of the immigrants who have
returned to Mexico still look wistfully back upon the time
they spent in this country.
As Dr. Jessica B. Peixotto states in the foreword of the
report (How Mexicans Earn and Live, by Constantine
Panunzio, University of California Press, price $1.20 post-
paid of The Survey), the findings throw significant light on
national adjustment. They confirm, for example, the
tendency noted by other investigators that immigrants are
most conservative in regard to diet. They are adopting new
ways most readily in regard to housing, because this is
largely outside their control, but also in regard to clothing,
which represents the most conspicuous means by which
a low-income foreign group can express its desire for equal
social status with its native-born neighbors. The San Diego
Mexicans spend about one third of their family expenditure
on food; but while American workers who spend about the
same proportion on food often thrive fairly well on it, these
Mexicans — though by no means among the poorest — are as
a class decidedly undernourished. Like other immigrants,
Mexicans spend a relatively large proportion of their total
resources on the support of dependents. One-third of these
San Diego families contribute to the support of relatives,
usually in Mexico, as against only 6 percent, for example,
of a group of Oakland streetcar men studied in 1924. By
contrast, their expenditure on health, their provision for a
rainy day and their trade-union or fraternal contributions
are scanty.
The charge, then, that Mexican immigrants not only are
liable to accept lesser wages but are also spending less of
their income on the maintenance of a high level of well-
being is shown to be sound, so far as this sample is con-
cerned. Against this must be set their relatively high ex-
penditure on modern mechanical conveniences, such as
automobiles and radio receiving sets, which, though it has
not been very effective as yet in opening up a large market
for American industrial products in Mexico itself, can
hardly fail to do so increasingly and thus be of benefit to
American labor.
294
THE SURVEY
August 1933
Extra-Mural Old Age
IT'S a big old vine-covered house in a shady Boston street, and
they call it the Home for Aged Men, but through the flexibility
of its board of directors and the resourcefulness of its staff the
house itself has become just one link in a chain of care for its
beneficiaries. The Home takes its old men as it finds them and
gives each one the particular kind of care he needs. Some of them
are better off in the institution and there they are. Others are
better in the familiar surroundings of their own homes, so there
they remain with the social worker and the nurse ministering to
them. When they are actuely ill or require long nursing they are
cared for in hospitals or nursing homes. With changes in physical
conditions the indicated changes in care are made.
The Home's Department of Social Work and Outside Care,
Christine McLeod executive secretary, now has ninety-odd men
whom it looks after, twice as many as are resident in the institu-
tion and at almost exactly the same cost. To supplement the
amounts granted by the Home for its extra-mural charges Miss
McLeod uses all the skills of the good caseworker in tapping nat-
ural resources such as relatives, friends, churches and lodges.
Some ^4800 was thus secured last year and coordinated with
other funds into thoughtful budgets which included spending-
money and little extra comforts as well as necessities.
Problems of Women's Prisons
HOW to maintain standards on reduced budgets, how to meet
the growing difficulty of parole placements, how to define
more clearly the professional content of the job, were just a few of
the subjects tackled by the women superintendents of correc-
tional and penal institutions for women who met in New York
recently to thresh out in group discussion the problems which
beset them. Women prisoners are relatively small in number and
the discussion of their treatment, difficult and different as it is, is
sometimes lost in the shuffle of the big prison congresses. Hence
the close-in gatherings of women superintendents these last three
years, fostered by such stalwarts as Martha P. Falconer of New
York, Dr. Ellen C. Potter of New Jersey and Mary Dewees of
Delaware, chairman for 1934.
Seventeen institutions in nine eastern states were represented
at the New York meeting by the women who are charged with the
custody of 6800 individuals, 5107 of whom are juveniles. A similar
discussion meeting for superintendents from middle and western
states was held in Chicago.
Reconditioning the Discouraged
E'NG before the homeless unemployed became a major prob-
lem, Rev. W. E. Paul of the Minneapolis Union City Mis-
sion had it clear in his own mind that worklessness destroys the
habit of work. To demonstrate the converse of this he rented, six
years ago, an abandoned farm ten miles from town, "so poor it
wouldn't even raise a fuss," and went there with twenty-five men,
discouraged denizens of the Mission, to try with them the tonic
effect of hard work. The next year he bought i 35 acres and erected
buildings for 100 men. Today Mission Farm has 550 flourishing
acres, a herd of 220 Jersey cattle and hogs, sheep and poultry ad
lib. Some 500 men, technically homeless, live and work there
not only for themselves but to provide food for some 2500 others
at the Mission in the city.
The Union Mission, supported by the Community Fund and by
certain city payments, is the principal Minneapolis agency for the
care of the homeless. Men who show a willingness to help them-
selves may go to the farm where little by little the habits bred of
discouragement and idleness are overcome. All the buildings on
the farm, nearly forty, large and small, have been erected by the
men and an extensive program of road-building and forestation
has gone forward. Except for the general foreman, all the super-
vising staff is drawn from the group itself, which likewise supplies
its own discipline. The only pay is a small allowance, a quarter or
so a week. No men are forced out to look for jobs but in 1931 some
1300 of them found jobs for themselves in the neighborhood, jobs
that stuck too. Last year the number was only 800 but at that the
farm supplied most of the agricultural labor of the vicinity.
The neighbors were none too pleased when Mr. Paul and his
homeless men moved onto the unsightly old farm on Medicine
Lake. But what with a beautiful water-front, seven miles of new
road, a highly cultivated farm marked off with rustic fences and
improved with buildings in the rustic lodge style, they have defi-
nitely changed front. The men who spend even a few weeks at
Mission Farm are, the Minneapolis social workers say, fairly born
again, mentally and physically. "It's the tonic of work and decent
living," says Mr. Paul. "Plus Mr. Paul," say the social workers.
First Lines and Last Resorts
A CHILD'S first right is to his home, the federal Children's
Bureau reiterates in a new bulletin, The A B C of Foster-
Family Care, adapted for national use from a publication of the
Pennsylvania Department of Welfare. "The child-placing agency
should see itself in the light of a reserve to be called upon when all
else fails." The first lines of defense against unnecessary break-
ing-up of homes are the family and children's agencies; the mentaU
hygiene clinic that helps the child to fit the home and vice versa;
the hospital which returns the worker to his job; the juvenile
court and domestic-relations court which straighten out home
tangles. This handbook for workers who place children in family
homes details the circumstances under which children can and
should be kept with their own families and those which spell the
need for foster care in a family home or institution. Among prob-
lems still pressing for solution in the interests of keeping children
where they belong the Bureau enumerates better marriage laws,
education for parenthood and other measures to increase the
stability of family life, and, on the economic side, "efforts to lessen
unemployment, to raise the level of wages, and to improve living
conditions . . . more vital to the children of the future than any
amount of provision for the care of children away from their
homes."
Social Work as an Interpreter
IN Puerto Rico, where some three-fourths of the people are
country-dwellers with a low but not primitive standard of
living, social work is becoming an integral part of the public
school system. A social worker is attached to each of the thirty-
nine new type rural schools, called Second Units, to act as inter-
preter between school and community on the functions of the one
and the needs of the other. Required training for these workers in-
cludes four summers of study at the University of Puerto Rico
with courses in the general principles and techniques of social
work, the special health problems of the island, sociology and
economics in relation to rural and labor problems and analyses of
field experience as a method of building the social-work program.
The workers are Puerto Rico girls, university or normal graduates.
The activities of the social workers who function under the
Department of Education include: those directly connected with
the schools, such as following up absences and health examina-
August 1933
THE SURVEY
295
tions, home gardens, home economics and case conferences with
principals and teachers; those connecting school and community
such as family case-work, and promotion of clubs, committees and
parent-teacher associations; and those connecting school and
community with outside resources such as the insular departments
of health, agriculture, child-welfare and so on.
" The test of our program," says Dorothy Bourne, supervisor of
social work in the Department of Education, "is its flexibility to
meet the changing conditions of a pioneer field. We do not mini-
mize the usefulness of social work techniques but feel that our
special situation offers unusual opportunity to use that technique
in the interest of a kind of education in which we all believe —
education which will raise the standard of living, stimulate initia-
tive and increase the values of life."
The Crime Parade of 1933
YOUTH still leads the crime procession in this country, says
the Bureau of Investigation of the United States Department
of Justice, with boys of nineteen looming larger than any other
age-group. "Treading hard on the heels of those delinquents in the
last year of their "teens are persons under twenty-one years of age
who account for one of each five whose arrest-records were ex-
amined." Automobile theft still flourishes as the favorite crime of
youth with burglary second in order. Of 80,735 arrests made dur-
ing the first three months of this year almost one third were for dis-
orderly conduct, drunkenness and vagrancy. Women constituted
only 6.5 percent of the persons arrested but when the proportions
are computed they appear to have engaged in more serious offenses
than their brothers in misconduct.
As a backfire to the advance of juvenile crime, New York's new
police commissioner, J ames A. Bolan, has put forth the interesting
idea of a class to be organized next fall in the Police Academy to
instruct school teachers in the gentle art of combating juvenile
delinquency "from the police standpoint." If this project is a part
of the developing program of the Crime Prevention Bureau, which
during the past year has made quiet and consistent progress,
social workers and educators will view it with confidence; if not
they are bound to scrutinize it closely.
What Happens Between Meals
"XT7E DIDN'T bother much at first as to what they might do
* ' between meals," Robert B. Dixon, superintendent of the
Bureau of Recreation of Scranton, Pennsylvania, told the recent
meeting of the Pennsylvania Association of Planning Commis-
sioners. But when Mr. Dixon and other members of the Commit-
tee on Play Centers had finished reporting, it became evident that
a good many people have been bothering a good deal of late.
Adult swimming periods in that city are engaged two months
ahead; throughout the winter a basketball team of unemployed
men over 21 years of age spent active afternoons together; and at
one point the "play center" showed the tearful spectacle of a
group of unemployed men engaged in wrapping seven and one
half tons of onion sets in one-pound packages for the thrift gardens
of unemployed families! The use of Philadelphia's recreation cen-
ters is estimated to have reached more than two million men last
winter, of whom more than half were unemployed. Reporting for
that city, Charles H. English declared that the great majority of
the unemployed men preferred passive recreation to active,
but there was enough active sport to keep 28 baseball diamonds
and 39 swimming-pools busy. Chester, Pennsylvania, on the con-
trary, finds baseball the leading attraction of play centers; vacant
fields are cleaned up for diamonds by volunteers with the use of
highway department equipment. In Reading and in Allentown
school boards have been especially cooperative in offering the use
of school buildings and gymnasiums; in Johnstown jobless relief
labor has turned a white-elephant tract of land owned by the city
into a park with outdoor fireplaces, tennis courts, three baseball
diamonds and a football field — all at a cost of less than $3,000.
A silver lining of adversity is the remark of one member of the
committee — that recreation systems are realizing they must adapt
themselves to the interests of grownups as well as the children who
used to be considered their reason for being.
The Foods Clients Choose
AT the request of the Berkeley (Cal.) Welfare Society, the
±\. Heller Committee for Research in Social Economics and Dr.
Ruth Okey of the University of California studied the choice of
foods by dependent families who had relief orders on neighbor-
hood grocers with only very general restrictions. By either
minimum or adequate relief standards, many dietaries were
seriously deficient, especially in vitamins and calcium. Unre-
stricted food allowances, they conclude, must allow for bad
judgment; for these families they would have had to exceed cost
standards by an average of 19 percent, and for a large majority
of the families, by as much as a third. The study, Foods Chosen
by Dependent Families, is available in mimeograph from the
University, price 25 cents.
ONE world leadership consistently maintained by this country is
that in murder. The homicide rate in some 200 American cities
remained last year at 10.8 per 100,000 population, about twenty-
two times as high as the rate in England.
THE New York State Department of Social Welfare has published
a new edition of its compilation of settlement laws of all the states
revised as of April 1933. Copies of the pamphlet are available free
of charge to public and private social agencies upon request to the
Albany office of the department.
THE summer-school of the Pennsylvania State College is giving
this season a six-weeks course in Administration of Unemploy-
ment Relief which includes a daily seminar, lectures and discus-
sion led by practicing social workers, group projects and field
work. The course will end with an all-day conference in which lay
and professional people from surrounding counties will participate.
TAKING a cue from the success of its Sea Scout program for older
boys, the Boy Scouts of America are actively pushing a program
for boys of fifteen years and upwards which provides occupation
profitable in terms of morale and personal fitness if not in money.
The enrollment in the Sea Scouts increased last year by 42 per-
cent, while the enrollment of Cubs, boys between nine and eleven,
increased 13 percent.
Various and Sundry
SOCIAL CHANGES IN 1932. Edited by William F. Ogburn. Reprinted
from The American Journal of Sociology by the University of Chicago Press.
$1.
THIRTEEN articles by distinguished scholars reviewing
significant events in as many fields of human relations.
THE FORGOTTEN TENTH. Published by the National Urban League,
1133 Broadway, New York. 35 cents.
AN ANALYSIS of unemployment among Negroes and its
social costs, based on material gathered last year and this
in 125 American cities. Announced as Number i in The
Color-Line Series.
SOCIAL CASE WORK, by Mary S. Brisley and Viennie Barton. Woman's
Press, 600 Lexington Avenue, New York. 25 cents.
NOT an effort to make case-workers overnight, but rather
an attempt to inform YWCA secretaries and others on
the basic attitudes and methods of case work. One of a
current series on YWCA adjustments to new needs.
FOREIGN COOKERY. Compiled and published by the International Insti-
tute, 3833 Delmar Boulevard, St. Louis, Mo. 53 cents.
RECIPES for the famous dishes of some thirty-odd foreign
countries, gaily bound up and offered to the public with
the hope that from the sale will accrue sufficient funds to
help carry the Institute over a yawning gap in its budget.
296
THE SURVEY
August 1933
Toward Cancer Control
THAT health education brings tangible results is a hopeful
meaning to be read into an account of recent cancer history
in Massachusetts reported by Dr. George H. Bigelow, state
health officer, in the bulletin of the American Society for the
Control of Cancer. For the past six years that state has carried
on an active program of education, diagnosis and care of this
disease. The number of cancer patients cared for in general hos-
pitals— aside from those in the State Hospital at Pondville — has
increased twice as rapidly as in general hospitals outside the state.
Moreover, in contrast to the increase in cancer considered gen-
eral in other parts of the country, Massachusetts has shown
practically no rise in the cancer deathrate since 1926 when ad-
justments are made for age and sex of the population. Analysis of
the statistics shows that the most marked improvement in the
cancer deathrate is in those forms of the disease where existing
knowledge offers opportunity for prevention and cure, suggesting
that these years of a stationary deathrate — unprecedented in the
history of the state — are to be credited to medical aid rather than
general biological factors. There is not yet room for complacency,
Dr. Bigelow points out. "Were our knowledge fully put to use we
could double annually the cures." In the past years' record how-
ever there is ground for great encouragement and assurance that
present methods are proving effective.
Ragweed: Enemy of Public Health
AJGUST sneezers probably need no convincing as to the iniq-
uity of hay fever, but they may be cheered to know that the
New York Health Department is broadcasting discussion of that
affliction as a public health problem. In a recent address Dr.
Albert Vander Veer of New York City pointed out that some two
and a half million people in this country suffer from hay fever, and
that nearly a third of these, if untreated, develop asthma which
may prove permanently crippling. In the northeastern states rag-
weed is a chief villain in the piece. In cities, Dr. Vander Veer de-
clares, an effective way to deal with the problem is to organize a
hay-fever prevention committee to aid the health officer, con-
sisting preferably of at least one physician and a lawyer who
themselves have hay fever and one mother whose child has pollen
asthma. Treatment by injections will diminish the chances of
complicating asthma and sinus infections and the duration of dis-
comfort from the hay fever itself.
New Jersey Helps the Hospitals
UNDER an order which went into effect May i, the New
Jersey Emergency Relief Administration has authorized as
a legitimate relief expense, payments on account of indigent
patients admitted to general hospitals when made in accordance
with a specified procedure. Each hospital desiring such aid must
first submit a report of its services and financial condition, and a
schedule of rates to be paid is worked out on the basis of the Ad-
ministration's analysis of these data. Payments are made to ap-
proved institutions in accord with these rates for patients unable
to pay any part of the hospital charge, in harmony with the re-
quirements of existing poor law and county welfare acts. Local
relief authorities authorize the admission of the patient under
these provisions in advance, except in the case of an emergency
when the hospital may admit the patient, notify the authorities,
and apply for payment.
A semi-monthly report of hospital service is submitted by the
hospital to the municipality, showing the number of free patients,
the cost of treatment, and the charge at the agreed rate per
patient-day. Payments from other sources on behalf of particular
patients accepted as relief charges are credited against the ERA
account. Authorization of hospital care is given for a period not to
exceed twenty-one days, but may be renewed if longer care is re-
quired. The rate basis is subject to review and revision at periodic
intervals. Study of the first three months' working of the measure
is being made. At least until its results are known the plan is being
carried on despite the ruling that federal relief funds may not be
used for hospitalization. A committee of three physicians recom-
mended by the Medical Society of New Jersey has been appointed
as a medical advisory group and six hospital administrators as an
advisory committee on hospitalization; with a similar committee
on public-health nursing, these groups will form the health section
of the Advisory Council of the ERA.
A School for Midwives
FILLING a gap long felt by public-health workers and obste-
tricians, the Lobenstine Midwifery Clinic in New York City
has nearly concluded its first year as a training center for mid-
wives. It is estimated that midwives officiate at nearly 50,000
births in the United States during a year, and while nearly all
states have laws governing their licensing, only a few are carrying
on effective supervision or educational efforts. Funds for the
clinic were obtained by appeal to the friends and patients of the
late Dr. Ralph Lobenstine, who long had had the project at heart.
Seven students have been registered since last October, when
classes began, chiefly public-health nurses destined for the super-
visory work of health departments, for whom scholarships have
been provided by the Rockefeller Foundation. At the end of a
ten-months' course in residence they receive a certificate as
registered midwives issued by the University of the State of New
York. Eventually it is hoped to start "refresher" courses for mid-
wives now in private practice. Immediate practical instruction is
given by a resident physician and a registered midwife, supple-
mented by lectures by an attending staff of five physicians.
A
Baby Show, 1933 Model
NEW sort of a baby show opened on Fifth Avenue, New
York City on May Day: no one wriggled, no one cried, no
one was carried home exhausted. The occasion was an exhibit of
paintings, sculpture and photographs of children in a well-known
art gallery, arranged by the Children's Welfare Federation of New
York City with the dual purpose of fund-raising and making
people think about children. Fees were charged for entries and
admission was fifty cents. The commissioner of health and sev-
eral well-known baby doctors served as judges of the huskiness of
the babies who looked down from canvas, paper and clay, and a
former police commissioner awarded ribbons for character in the
pictured children between the ages of six and twelve. The paint-
ings ranged from a Van Dyck to the most modern Americans, but
the photographs were probably the most popular entries. There
was Thomas A. Edison as a little boy in a plaid muffler and the
Hon. Everett Colby riding a tricycle; Mrs. James Roosevelt, the
President's mother, as a little girl, and again with her great-
grandchildren. The Children's Welfare Federation, a clearing
house for 259 organizations which deal with the health of young
New Yorkers, has long joined with the Health Department in
frowning on baby shows because of the wear and tear on both
mothers and babies who enter them and the risks of contagion.
August 1933
THE SURVEY
297
This new variety, however, did away with those objections,
brought much needed funds, and aroused much new interest in
the Federation's work for real babies.
Eugenic Sterilization
NORTH CAROLINA fell out of the list of states with eugenic
sterilization laws last February when its 1929 statute was
held unconstitutional by the State Supreme Court on the ground
that it did not provide for notice to a hearing of the person to be
sterilized. Not long ago it returned to the fold with a new law
which makes these provisions and permits appeal from the Board
of Eugenics to the courts. The courts, however, may pass only on
questions of law; records of proceedings before the Board are con-
clusive and binding. More than half of the states have put steri-
lization laws on their books in the past twenty-five years since the
first legislation of this sort was enacted in Indiana, but except in
California the laws have been little used. There more than 7,000
operations have been performed under the law, among them
1500 on mentally defective persons who thereby could be paroled
from state institutions. A questionnaire sent out by the Associa-
tion for the Study of the Feebleminded showed its membership
almost unanimously in favor of selective sterilization. No reply
from any state which has a sterilization law advocated its aban-
donment.
The judicial history of sterilization laws has been mixed; in
eight cases they have been held unconstitutional by the higher
courts and in nine they have been upheld. The most notable of
these latter decisions was one given by Mr. Justice Holmes for the
United States Supreme Court on the Virginia law in the case of a
Ready References
A HANDBOOK ON STATISTICAL REPORTING IN THE FIELD OF
MEDICAL SOCIAL SERVICE. Prepared by a Joint Committee of the
American Association of Hospital Social Service Workers and the Advisory
Committee on Social Statistics in Child Welfare and Related Fields of the
U. S. Children's Bureau. Superintendent of Documents, Washington, D. C.
Price 5 cents.
GOOD POSTURE IN THE LITTLE CHILD. Publication No. 219, Chil-
dren's Bureau, U. S. Department of Labor. Superintendent of Documents,
Washington, D. C. Price 5 cents.
ATTRACTIVELY illustrated bulletin on good and bad posture
with practical descriptions of exercises, games and the like
to interest children in the former.
THE DUTIES OF OHIO PUBLIC-HEALTH COMMISSIONERS, by
W. W. Charters and Darwin A . Hindman. No. 17, Bureau of Educational
Research Monographs, Ohio State University, Columbus, Ohio. 70 pp.
Price $1.
DESCRIPTION, analysis and evaluation of current activities,
activated by the Ohio Public Health Association and sug-
gesting "that the public-health commissioner's duties have
to do primarily with administration, personal contacts and
education, and that there is no guaranty that a medical
training alone is a sufficient basis for the position."
ORGANIZATION AND ADMINISTRATION OF PUBLIC HEALTH,
by N. Sinai. Michigan Local Government Series. Detroit Bureau of Govern-
mental Research, 936 First National Bank Bldg., Detroit, Mich.
A REPORT to the Michigan Commission of Inquiry Into
County, Township and School District Government, find-
ing that "Michigan should look forward to a plan of re-
organization which, in its culmination, will make possible
a wider application of public-health practice, a reduction
in the number of official health departments and an im-
provement in the personnel engaged in public-health
work."
HEALTH THROUGH THE AGES, by C.-E. A. Winslow and Grace T.
Hallock. Metropolitan Life Insurance Company, New York City. On
request.
ILLUSTRATED booklet by leaders in the field of health edu-
cation, sketching progress from the Stone Age and the
code of the Hebrews to modern conquests of knowledge
and current applications.
feebleminded woman who was herself the daughter of a feeble-
minded inmate of an institution and the mother of a mentally
defective illegitimate child. "We have seen more than once," the
decision declared, "that the public welfare may call upon the best
citizens for their lives. It would be strange if it could not call upon
those who already sap the strength of the state for these lesser
sacrifices, often not felt to be such by those concerned, in order to
prevent our being swamped with incompetence. It is better for
all the world if, instead of waiting to execute degenerate offspring
for crime, or to let them starve for their imbecility, society can
prevent those who are manifestly unfit from continuing their
kind. The principle that sustains compulsory vaccination is broad
enough to cover cutting the Fallopian tubes. Three generations of
imbeciles are enough."
THE Brazilian League for Mental Hygiene, which celebrated its
tenth anniversary not long ago, has opened a mental-hygiene
clinic for children, the first of its kind in Latin America. Through
special committees the league is studying mental hygiene of
children, social legislation, social aid, prevention of delinquency
and the like. It holds an anti-alcohol week every year and carries
on other temperance work also.
THE Minneapolis Board of Education has ruled that all teachers
under its jurisdiction receive the Mantoux test for tuberculosis
before the opening of the schools in the autumn.
NOT just bad luck but "proneness" may be at fault when an acci-
dent occurs, the Illinois Health Messenger suggests, summarizing
studies of the Industrial Health Research Board of Great Britain.
Perhaps 25 percent of the population have what for want of a
better word is called "proneness to accident"; this group is re-
sponsible for 75 percent of all accidents. They may be intelligent
but just don't click in a jam. It is suggested that in industry the
accident-susceptible may be detected and placed where least
likely to do and incur harm.
IN 1931 and 1932, the New York State Health Department
points out, some communities spent more of public funds for
hospital care than for all items of home relief, — fuel, food, clothing
and so on. Costs can be cut when bedside nursing service is avail-
able, as in some New York communities, to care for indigent
people sick at home who otherwise would require hospital care.
Daily visits of a public-health nurse are far less expensive than
hospital costs, which range from $17.50 to $38.50, with the aver-
age well over $20 a week.
THE Silver Lake, New York, child-welfare clinic has instituted a
helpful short-cut. When a child within a year of school age comes
in, in addition to the routine of physical examination, vaccination
and toxin-antitoxin, an explanation is made to the mother of the
value of Schick-testing, tuberculin-testing and chest x-ray, and a
form is given to record her consent to these services when they are
offered in the schools. A gratifying number of consents are being
obtained and much later home visiting thereby is obviated.
THE Julius Rosenwald Fund, 4901 Ellis Avenue, Chicago, has
announced that it will obtain facts and maintain an information
service concerning efforts to reduce and distribute the costs of
medical care. Insofar as is possible the Fund will answer inquiries,
supply literature and furnish consultation service on the request
of physicians, professional organizations, hospitals, industrial or
welfare agencies.
FOR the many parts of the country where pellagra is a potential
specter, there is pertinence in the result of a study conducted by
the U. S. Public Health Service at the Milledgeville State Hos-
pital in Georgia showing that canned collards and kale are sat-
isfactory preventives "at least when used in relatively large
proportion," and canned green cabbage and mustard greens
practicable contributory sources for supplementing diets to
prevent pellagra.
298
THE SURVEY
August 1933
Psychiatry in Court
CRIMES AND CRIMINALS, by William A. White, M.D. Farrar &• Rinehart.
272 pp. Price $2.50 po>tfaid of The Survey.
TN his preface Dr. White explains that his points of view are
•1 not "personal to me" nor are they "unique or new." He be-
lieves, however, that "some of the most important knowledge we
possess is not available when most needed" and he has endeavored
to assemble it. While he recognizes and applauds the increasing
uses of psychiatry in the courts, he deplores the fact that scientific
use of psychiatric methods and research is seriously hampered
by old, legalistic machinery. Law and lawyers are still strongly
fettered by history and traditions and are unwilling or willing to
accept the contributions of modern psychiatric knowledge, de-
pending upon whether it jeopardizes or aids them in the case
under consideration.
While man has made notable advances in culture down through
the ages, we are still prone to consider the criminal as a thing or a
person apart from the herd and to deal with him in terms of the
menace he apparently implies for society. We disregard the in-
dividual, the actor, and penalize or punish him upon the basis of
the act he has committed. Dr. White believes that while the act
may define the degree of peril to which society may be exposed by
the criminal, in order to best protect society the individual should
be studied, and methods of treatment best calculated to influence
the future conduct of that individual be determined and applied.
While the reader cannot but be impressed with the fact that Dr.
White feels that the criminal, in fact each of us, is more or less
conditioned by events and circumstances occurring during cen-
turies of social development, he does not advocate the disregard
of social misconduct. He deplores present-day methods of pun-
ishment and even speaks of doing away with prisons, but he
would do away with them by substituting institutions organized
on the basis of treatment of the socially maladjusted and make
the rehabilitation of the offender through treatment and social
re-education the great objective.
Dr. White believes that anti-social conduct is misdirected
energy rather than evidence of a purely morbid condition. The
energy may be misdirected because no one has taken the pains to
educate or train it in social lines or, if expressed socially in certain
periods or hours of labor, it may become anti-social during periods
of leisure or idleness. The old adage that "Satan finds work for
idle hands" is literally true and if, in addition to idle hands, we
have easy or subnormal ethical levels and, as we have in a sub-
stantial percentage of the anti-social, subnormal or defective
intelligence as well, we have all the essentials necessary for the
formation of the criminal. Conceding this to be true, certainly
treatment in terms of punishment is unwise.
The punishment meted out by our modern penal law would
many times seem to justify the blindfold applied to the statue
symbolizing Justice. Our legislators are required to classify crime
in terms of its gravity and to prescribe terms of imprisonment
which, in their opinion, will adequately punish the offender,
thereby fondly hoping so to terrorize him as to make him shun
such activities in the future and to deter others from emulating
his example. Between the limits fixed by statute, the court is
required to guess how long a period will accomplish the result
and to fix two dates upon one of which the criminal may be re-
leased, the minimum expiration date because of good behavior,
and the other upon which he must be released, simply because
that date has rolled around on the calendar. In other words, the
court is required to prophesy on the basis of one act in a criminal's
career, how long a period of imprisonment should be inflicted in
order to accomplish the rehabilitation of the offender. This, re-
gardless of the fact, as Dr. White states, that many of these men
are more or less conditioned by generations of evolutionary proc-
esses since the days of barbarism.
A point which Dr. White does not bring out is that the criminal
can be punished only for what he succeeds in accomplishing.
The crime is petit larceny because the victim has not left sufficient
funds accessible to the thief to constitute grand larceny. Had
Mayor Cermak survived, Zangara could not have been convicted
of murder in the first degree, because, although he tried his best
to kill the president-elect, a woman diverted his aim. In other
words, he would have received credit for circumstances over
which he had no control. This brings us up to Dr. White's chapter
on Suggested Penological Principles.
Conduct disorders are even more inexplicable than physical
disorders. It is possible because of our knowledge of disease to
prophesy with reasonable accuracy the duration of a physical
malady and to more or less accurately predict the outcome.
Where anti-social conduct or crime is concerned it is manifestly
impossible to do so. So, as Dr. White suggests, the ideal procedure
in criminal cases would be to commit the offender, as a ward of
the state, to remain in custody until fit to return to society, but
the courts should restrict their efforts to a determination of the
guilt or innocence of the accused. When it has been determined
because of the guilt of the individual that it is necessary for so-
ciety to take some unusual means, i. e., segregation or confine-
ment, to protect itself from him, it should be possible to release
him when he shows every evidence that he has been corrected
insofar as his maladjustment is concerned and it should be equally
possible to continue his segregation for life, should he show no
evidence of readjustment or rehabilitation.
WALTER N. THAYER, JR., M.D.
Commissioner New York State Department of Correction
Public Employment Services
STATISTICAL PROCEDURE OF PUBLIC EMPLOYMENT OFFICES, by
Annabel M. Stewart and Bryce M. Stewart. Russell Sage Foundation. 327 pp. Price
12.50 postpaid oj The Survey.
PUBLIC employment offices must do more than bring workers
and jobs together: they must report on the demand for labor
and the supply of labor; they must include an analysis of the sex,
age and race groups involved and have data on the hours of work
and of the "prices" "bid" and "asked" in the labor market. On
such information must rest the program of public employment
work, the plans for vocational training and re-training, of every
form of vocational-guidance work. Such material is difficult to
gather and compile. Mr. and Mrs. Stewart have written a book,
the climax of which is a form for recording this information, a
method of compiling it and a scheme for its publication.
In 1929 the International Association of Public Employment
Services requested the Committee on Governmental Labor Sta-
tistics of the American Statistical Association to recommend
statistical procedure for public employment offices. No two more
appropriate persons than the authors could have been asked to
undertake the study. As a result of their inquiry in the United
States and abroad, they have reported on the terminology and
statistical method which center around the apparently simple
items: openings, applications for employment, referrals, and
placements. In Part I these findings are treated in summary form,
in Part II the methods current in each of seven countries are
described, and in Part III a plan for the United States is outlined
in detail.
The faithful reporting of the authors, without comment on their
part, makes clear that the variety of definition and statistical
nethod in this country renders useless present information on the
abor demand and supply as secured from public employment
offices. The final sentence of the book, " the plan here presented
Dresupposes an efficient, nationally organized service, designed to
rake an outstanding part in contact-making between employer
ind workers," indicates that the authors expect a further sim-
Dlification of the simple form they suggest. This will be necessary
during the period in which the newly reorganized United States
imployment Service is establishing two important points: that
adequate clerical assistance must be provided for professional
jmployment workers and that an increased number of applicants
ind employers must use the bureaus if public employment offices
ire to provide an adequate sample of conditions in the labor mar-
ket. Mr. and Mrs. Stewart have done invaluable service in pre-
senting a goal towards which to strive.
DOROTHEA DE SCHWEINITZ
State Employment Office, Philadelphia
Chimp and Child
THE APE AND THE CHILD, by W, A'. Kellogg and L. A. Kellogg. Whittlesley
House. McGraw-Hill. 327 pp. Price JJ postpaid of The Survey.
rHIS is a striking experiment in which a chimpanzee seven
and one half months old became the companion and play-
mate of a ten-months-old child, the son of the authors. They were
exposed to generally identical stimuli during a period of nine
months and Professor and Mrs. Kellogg studied them to ascertain
the relative effects of heredity and environment in bringing about
their development. With scientific objectivity and self-criticism
they noted and recorded the facts and kept their subjective inter-
pretations in the background as they compared the two through
the medium of definite and exact tests and experiments. Bearing
in mind the variations in heredity, they sought to ascertain the
degree to which the common environment favored likenesses and
differences between the two. The influences of the psychological
environment gave the chimpanzee opportunities that would not
have existed under primitive conditions. Hence the animal was
subjected to humanizing influences to which excellent responses
were made, clearly indicating the contrasts between the organiza-
tions and limitations of the chimpanzee and the child.
This is really not a book to review but rather one to read in
order to sense the thoroughness of the experiment, the patience,
thought, diligence and parental self-discipline of the experimenters
in the interest of an accurate technic and the clear exposition of
their scientific work. Honors were about even and there was suffi-
cient to redound to the credit of both ape and child. The end result
is an increased comprehension of the infantile reactivity to the
various stimuli which their world offers. There is greater under-
standing of the effects of environmental influences upon early
child behavior.
New York City IRA S. WILE, M.D.
Sex and Marriage
RADIANT MOTHERHOOD, by Marie Carmichael Slopes. Putnam. 252 pp.
Price $2 postpaid of The Surrey.
THE STORY OF SEX, by Helena Wright. Vanguard. 167 pp. Price $2 postpaid of
The Suney.
THE HYGIENE OF MARRIAGE, by Millard S. Everett. Vanguard. 256 pp. Price
$2.50 postpaid of The Survey.
THE SEX TECHNIQUE IN MARRIAGE, by Isabel Emslie Hullon. Emerson Books.
160 pp. Price $2 postpaid of The Suney.
PREPARATION FOR MARRIAGE. Edited by Kenneth M. Walker. Introduction
by Logan Clendening. Norton. 175 pp. Price $2 postpaid of The Suney.
IN OUR generation no department of science has gained such
sweeping victories as the field of sex. Until less than twenty-
five years ago theology, often written by unmarried men, dog-
matically dominated the thinking and actions of millions of peo-
ple. The very subject of sex was taboo and as late as twelve years
ago, New York police officials had the audacity to break up an
educational meeting which dealt with birth control. Science, with
unquestioned medical information, is taking its rightful place as
the guide for brides and bridegrooms. The obscenity-seekers have
been displaced by liberal courts, and the dogmatic censors both by
lectures spreading necessary sex information and clean books to
BOOKS THAT LIVE ON
FOR THE SOCIAL WORKER
The Dynamics of Therapy
IN A CONTROLLED RELATIONSHIP
By Jessie V. Taft, A.B., Ph.B., Ph.D.
The book is of interest to psychiatric social workers for sev-
eral reasons, chief of which is that the author's experience
includes that of an analyst and of a case supervisor in a so-
cial agency, and much of the book was written with social
workers' treatment problems in mind. To read it thought-
fully constitutes a growth of experience, whether or not
one agrees with its Rankian theory. — Amer. Assn. Psychi-
atric Social Workers-News Letter.
THE MACMILLAN CO.
New York
$2.50
"A decade hence there will be SocialiiU who will turn to It In awe««Ing the views of
the present period."
Socialist Planning and a
Socialist Program
A Symposium edited for the L. I. D.
by HARRY W. LAIDLER. Ph.D.
With an Introduction by Norman Thomas
$2.00
1 ' Seta up a concrete goal toward which an increasing number of Intelligent men and
women may strive." — The Call of Youth
"Interesting to all who are interested in Government. — Montgomery. Ala.,
A dvertiser
"A penetrating look at the present American economic tangle. — Columbia
Missourian
FALCON PRESS, Inc., 330 West 42nd St., New York, N. Y.
DIRECTORY OF SOCIAL AGENCIES
NEW YORK
39th ed. 1932-33
A consolidated, classified and descriptive directory of social
agencies serving the City of New York. The handbook of
social workers, teachers, doctors, lawyers, donors, and others
in need of information as to the social service resources of
New York. For fifty-one years one of the activities of the
Charity Organization Society.
850 pages Cloth $3.00
Published by the
CHARITY ORGANIZATION SOCIETY, 105 East 22nd St., New York
Studies in the
Practice of Social Work
No. 1. INTERVIEWS — A Study in the Methods of Analyz-
ing and Recording Social Casework Interviews. $1.00
No. II. SOCIAL CASEWORK — Generic and Specific. A
Report of the Milford Conference. $1.00
No III SOCIAL WORK ETHICS — Lula Jean Elliott.
$.50
AMERICAN ASSOCIATION OF SOCIAL WORKERS
1 30 East 22d Street, New York
(In answering advertisements phase mention THE SURVEY)
299
300
THE SURVEY
August 193$
guide our young. These five volumes tell how swiftly we have over-
thrown the rule of theology.
Marie Stopes, in Radiant Motherhood, has written an inspira-
tional rather than informational volume for those who are about
to enter the married state. She brushes aside the argument about
delicacy and substitutes loving relationship, based on scientific
knowledge, between husband and wife. The book offers a sane
outlook for bridal couples and is to be warmly commended.
The Story of Sex deals interestingly with the physiology of
human relations. First, the reproductive organs of plants are
clearly outlined, then those in animals and finally of human be-
ings. For students wishing a comparative study of the three
groups, this book will prove valuable because of its clear style and
detailed information. And it is needed if, as the author states,
"ninetenths of the educated and cultured women, anticipating
motherhood, are . . . grossly ignorant of the rudiments of
anatomy and physiology."
The Hygiene of Marriage deals admirably with a wide variety
of sex questions. That a YMCA leader should write this frank and
well-nigh cyclopaedic volume, only adds to its intrinsic value.
Brides and grooms who read these pages will become better wives
and husbands because they will obtain a deeper understanding of
life's physiological problems. The number of divorces resulting
from ignorance of sex matters is beyond belief. This book offers
practical knowledge to prevent life's tragedies.
In The Sex Technique in Marriage Dr. Button holds that a
proper understanding of the physiological and psychological
processes of marriage would prevent much of the unhappiness and
general ill health in married people that leads to domestic trage-
dies. This book reverently furnishes that information which
parents might be expected to offer their children just prior to
marriage. The entire sex problem, when properly understood after
reading these pages, tends to deepen love instead of causing
marital friction.
Preparation for Marriage is based upon studies made by the
British Social Hygiene Council and supported by the Lambeth
Conference of 1930, a church group which openly favored birth
control. It looks at society from the sociological angle. Marriage is
a necessary institution and those entering it are furnished wise
counsel by competent authors. Scientific information, judiciously
furnished and clearly expressed, is the dominating feature of this
book.
If every bride would devote a fraction of as much time to read-
ing sex books as she does to the preparation of her trousseau, and
every groom would seek scientific sex information as carefully as
he attends to the details of the honeymoon, the ratio of happy
marriages would tremendously increase. These books — five new
ones in an ever widening library — furnish much practical informa-
tion. RUDOLPH I. COFFEE
Minister First Hebrew Congregation, Oakland, California
Test-tube of Migration
SEA ISLAND TO CITY. by Clyde Vernon Riser. Columbia University Press. 272 pp.
Price $3.50 postpaid of The Survey.
ST. HELENA is one of the larger sea islands off the coast of
South Carolina, known to readers of Miss Cooley's articles
in Survey Graphic as the stage of the scheme of community edu-
cation carried out by Penn School, of which she is principal.
During the Civil War, the island was taken over by Federal
forces, the plantation system was left at loose ends, and the
Negro fieldhands suddenly set free and forced to earn their living
by their own initiative on land sold to them in small lots. Life on
the Island has been meager for them ever since. Nowadays usu-
ally at least one member of a family goes over to the mainland
each year to pick up a few dollars with which to pay taxes. But
the two most adverse conditions, race friction and farm tenancy,
have been absent. Because of this situation, Dr. Kiser chose St.
Helena as a test-tube in which to investigate the other causes of
the northern and urban movement of Negroes. What, then, has
caused the population to shrink from its highest point of 8285
in 190x3 to 4458, in 1930? He studied the migrants first in their
rural setting and then in their present homes in such centers as
Harlem, Boston and Philadelphia.
The underlying causes for departure were found to be "prac-
tically the same as those for the general drift of young people,
white and colored, from the farms of various sections of the
country": increased industrialization, the breakdown of rural
isolation, dissatisfaction with home conditions "intensified by
the knowledge that friends are 'making good' in the cities." Still
he finds "the immediate causes of migration are usually specific
and concrete incidents." In spite of the fact that St. Helena crops
have suffered from two hurricanes and the boll-weevil, the migra-
tions have not taken place immediately but after a period of
losing hope of improvement.
Dr. Kiser notes that, although the earlier migrants came by
stages, that is, from farms to village, to town, to city, to metrop-
olis, the more recent migrations have been predominantly direct
and the migrants have followed their predecessors to the estab-
lished destinations. In fairly recent years, Boston, Philadelphia
and Charleston have declined as such. Savannah and Harlem are
the two principal localities to which the Islanders move.
The author presents an interesting tally of the relative gains
and losses of the migrants. Whether they will be happier and
play a larger part in the activities of their communities in the city
or on the Island is an individual problem. "On the whole," he
holds, they "have not uniformly bettered their economic and
social status."
New York RICHARD P. KELLOGG
RUN OF THE SHELVES
A DESCRIPTIVE LIST OF THE NEW BOOKS
THE GIRL AND HER JOB, by Esther Ebersladt Brooke. Appleton. 137 pp. Price $1 it
postpaid of The Survey.
A COMPACT and sensible little vocational guidance handbook, i|
particularly helpful to a girl in quest of her first job.
SOCIAL PROBLEMS AND SOCIAL PROCESSES, edited by Emory S. Bogardus.
University of Chicago Press. 154 pp. Price $1.50 postpaid of The Survey.
SELECTED papers from the Proceedings of the American Sociologi- j
cal Society, 1932, by Emory S. Bogardus, H. A. Miller, J. L. !
Hypes, Susan M. Kingsbury, E. H. Sutherland, N. L. Sims, F. A. j
Ross, C. N. Reynolds, E. B. Reuter, Read Bain, Earle E. Eubank, I
F. Znaniecki, P. Sorokin and R. M. Maclver.
A MODEL CITY CHARTER, National Municipal League, 309 East 34 Street,
New York City. 96 pp. Price $1.
THE fourth revised edition of a standard guide. The chief modifi- '••
cations in the new model charter are sections relating to the de-j
partment of finance, complete revision of the sections on city
planning and zoning and the appearance of provisions for slum-
clearance and blighted areas.
THE GIRLS CAMP, by Abbie Graham. Woman's Press. 14S pp. Price $1.50 postpaid
of The Survey.
A USEFUL volume based on the author's experience with more
than four thousand girls in many kinds of camps. It is clear and
practical and sticks throughout to "the essence of the matter, that
is, what campers desire of a vacation and how their desires may
be attained."
BIBLIOGRAPHY OF PUBLIC ADMINISTRATION, by Sarah Creer. Institute of
Public Administration, Columbia University. 90 pp. Price $1.50 postpaid of The
Survey.
PART I— dealing with the general literature on the subject — of a
larger volume on the bibliography of public administration to
appear within a year. The complete work will be an expansion of
a similar bibliography compiled by Miss Greer in 1926 and will
include foreign titles not listed in the earlier edition.
HOW CITIES CAN CUT COSTS, by Clarence E. Ridley and Orin P. Nolting.
International City Managers Association, 923 East 60 Street, Chicago. 58 Pp.
Price $1.
IN THIS volume the editors of Public Management offer practical
August 1933
THE SURVEY
301
I suggestions as to how cities can cut operating costs through the
I elimination of waste, the adoption of approved governmental or-
Iganization and administrative practice by allocating the dollar
| where it will bring the greatest social return, i.e., through the
I application of the principle of constructive economy.
I CERTAIN SAMARITANS, by Esther Pohl Lovejoy, M.D. Macmillan. 644 pp.
Price $3.50 postpaid of The Survey.
• ANEW and enlarged edition brings the stirring story of the service
i of the American Women's Hospitals in the Near East. Dr. Love-
I joy, general director of the American Women's Hospitals at home
I and abroad for the past fourteen years, is a former president of
L the Medical Women's International Association and of the
Medical Women's National Association.
| PERSONNEL ADMINISTRATION: Its Principles and Practice, by Ordway Tead
I and Henry C. Metcalf. McGraw-Hill. 519 pp. Price $4 postpaid of The Survey.
A THIRD and thoroughly revised edition of the standard work on
i its subject. It reckons with the depression and centers its discus-
t sion on "the real problem" underlying personnel administration
I thus stated: "Under what conditions of personal attitude and of
I economic and corporate organization are people likely to be dis-
f posed to work happily and to best advantage together in creating
I the goods that we need?"
O
I CITY MANAGER YEAR BOOK, edited by Clarence E. Ridley and Orin F. Nolting.
[ City Managers Association. 352 pp. Price $2 postpaid of The Survey.
I IN ADDITION to the proceedings of the last annual conference of
the International City Managers Association, the Year Book as
; usual contains other pertinent information, including twenty
: short articles by experts in municipal administration which form a
j resume of significant developments in city government during
i 1932, and directories of city-manager cities and city managers.
j THE DISABLED MAN AND HIS VOCATIONAL ADJUSTMENT, by Roy
, N. Anderson. Institute for Crippled and Disabled, 400 First Ave., New York City.
102 pp. Price $1 postpaid of The Survey.
"THE PROBLEM of the handicapped man is not so much his in-
I ability to perform work as it is to get a job," Mr. Anderson de-
l clares, analyzing the records of more than 4000 men known to
the Employment Center for the Handicapped between 1917 and
t 1930. These men held 635 different types of jobs, that is, 70 per-
j cent of the occupations listed by the Census. A classification of
i jobs according to disabilities and a selected bibliography add
j immediate practical value to this detailed, discriminating and
t encouraging survey.
CAREERS AHEAD, by Joseph Cottier and Harold Brecht. Little Brown. 312 pp.
Price $2.50 postpaid of The Survey.
WELL written and versatile, this volume by two highschool
', teachers should help uncertain youngsters make up their minds
I at least as to the direction in which to turn toward a life-work,
f The chapter on The Social Worker seems particularly sound in its
I insistence on aptitude plus training: "The social worker must be
I born and made." The illustrations are from excellent photographs
I but the captions are not always accurate. It is not clear, for in-
I stance, whether the "Social Worker" is the lady in the fur tippet,
i the nurse in her uniform or the baby in the scales and, in the
I chapter on Printing, the "Typesetter" is obviously a make-up
I man.
I THE HOUSE OF THE PEOPLE, An Account of Mexico's New Schools of Action,
by Kalherine M. Cook. Superintendent of Documents, Washington. Price ten cents.
I IF THIS were issued by the U. S. S. R. we should all be hailing its
: interesting format, its delightful black and white decorations
I (borrowed from Mexican schoolbooks), the clear and pleasant
\ style in which it is written, the stimulating suggestions it offers to
\ teachers, parents and public-school officials. This paper-bound
^ book of 70 pages tells the story of the schools growing up in
Mexico, deeply rooted in the life and culture of the people. It out-
lines the part played by the local communities and by the central
4 government, and shows what the schools mean to the country and
i to the children themselves. From its pages emerges a picture of
• Dr. Moises Saenz as a great educator and leader. It is a stirring
I story, beautifully told. It is offered by our own Office of Educa-
I tion, not Soviet Russia's, and so it is unlikely it will have the
I reading and appreciation it deserves.
CO MM UNICA TIONS
Prohibition and Politics
To THE EDITOR: The merits of prohibition were all to the good of
the masses, prohibition, according to a wet survey, having re-
duced drink consumption 40 percent; according to a government
survey, 60 percent. Yet the fiat went forth to destroy it, first by
pitiless publicity; second by capturing both parties, and through
party-lash methods disfranchising vast dry districts, notably the
South.
Up to around 1928, prohibition was coming, not going. It had
against it liquor interests, city machines with their trail of under-
worlds, and that portion of the rich that always fights reform.
But against these forces the little white churches on the village
greens and the welfare workers of the city marts could hold their
own. But when a former partner in a big banking house suddenly
ran as a wet for the United States Senate, the drys feared that
they were going to have against them a new enemy, what we
loosely call Wall Street as against Main Street. Among themselves
they said, " Can the churches and welfare groups of the nation
stand against high finance allying itself with the city machines;
against an upper-underworld, eastern, wet coalition?"
What did prohibition do to high finance that made it deter-
mined to "remove it from politics"? It broke up that precious
thing to big business, political control; sent to legislatures and
Congress too many outsiders who would not play the game of big
business. Said a newspaper close to the financial interests, "Pro-
hibition must be repealed because it breaks up party solidarity
and sends blatherskites to high office." (A blatherskite, we take it,
is an outsider, not obedient to public utility and other barons.)
From 1928 on it was common talk that prohibition had become
of such "political moment" that it had got to be "got out of
politics." Never such an example, says the country editor, of the
power of money to impose its will on the people as this wet drive;
anti-prohibition sold precisely as a cigarette is sold, ceaseless ad-
vertising till you create a man in a fever; all he knows is that he is
designed by what he thinks is Heaven but what in reality is big
business to do the bidding of the latest front-page headline. The
tragic thing is that the South and West play the wet game, never
dreaming that the real political end of this wet game would be to
put them, the agricultural states, on the political shelf.
Prohibition will come back because in the end an economic idea
fights its way to the front. It will come out of the agony of women
and little children, now on its way to the city sidewalks through
the return of the saloon; out of the uprising of underworlds, for
make no mistake, repeal is added power to the gangster. Said the
king of the Chicago bootleggers, according to an Associated
Press dispatch, "Anyone who says I am dry is all wet. It would be
better if prohibition were out of the way. There would be more
profits." Better for the gangster, but for women and children,
tragic; for the South and West, political suicide! If the nation is
still virile, prohibition will revive as abolition revived in eight
years after both parties shelved it (1852). If, however, the United
States is no longer virile, — but this I do not concede.
ELIZABETH TILTON
Chairman Women s National Committee for Education Against
Alcohol
Denver to the Sea
To THE EDITOR: You may be interested to know that the Depart-
ment of Social Work of the Graduate School of the University of
Denver is now a member of the American Association of Schools
of Professional Social Work, formal action having been taken at
the meeting in Detroit in June. This department was organized in
January 1931 and now offers a two-year course leading to the
master of arts degree. This is the only recognized school of social
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WORKERS WANTED
Experienced Chest executive for rest of 1933, perma-
nent position possible. Campaign in November. State
age, training, experience, present salary and salary
expected. COMMUNITY CHEST, St. Joseph, Mo.
WANTED, a man to do boy's work in a Jewish insti-
tution, sixty miles from New York City, caring for
anemic and undernourished boys. Answer should give
training, experience and salary desired. 7155 SURVEY.
WANTED: Supervisor of case work for social service
department of a general hospital. Must be college
graduate with certificate from school of social work
and experienced. Salary $2400. 7156 SURVEY.
SITUATIONS WANTED
WANTED: Position as Executive Secretary. Eight
years present position. Experienced organizer.
Children's, Family and Girls' welfare work. 7148
SURVEY.
Woman with M.A. degree, three years' graduate
study, experience in teaching and social service,
wishes teaching or administrative work, preferably
with girls or young women. 7149 SURVEY.
Young woman, twenty-six, single, A.B. and two years
nurses' training. Experience includes traveling with
patient, department store and office work. South in
winter. Temporary or permanent. References. 7150
SURVEY.
SOCIAL WORKER now employed as Executive
Secretary, County Welfare, R. F. C., desires change
September 1st. References. 7151 SURVEY.
WOMAN (Jewish) experienced immigrant education
and physical welfare, desires position. 7135 SURVEY.
WANTED: Position in Family Welfare Work, child
placing or Traveler's Aid by experienced social worker.
Preferably South or West. 7157 SURVEY.
ADMINISTRATOR'S GUIDE
ENGRAVING
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SITUATIONS WANTED
Young man, married (A.B., M.A. degree), 10 years
experience as conservative and reformed congrega-
tion cantor. Hebrew teacher. Spiritual advisor in an
institution. 7 153 SURVEY.
College woman, 37. M.A. Possesses tact, adaptability,
social understanding. Best references as an editor,
college teacher and administrator. Wants work. 7154
SURVEY.
IS THERE AN ORGANIZATION with an opening
for a young man who has prepared himself for work in
the social-religious field (A.B., B.D.)? Social work
experience and executive ability. 7114 SURVEY.
WOMAN. American Hebrew, social work training and
experience, desires position institution, school or
camp. Thorough knowledge dietetics, purchasing
supplies, managing helpers. 7134 SURVEY.
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making.
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Lexington 2-6677
We are interested in placing those who have
a professional attitude towards their work.
Executive secretaries, stenographers, case work-
ers, hospital social service workers, settlement
directors: research, immigration, psychiatric,
personnel workers and others.
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which trained nurses are taking in the betterment
of the world. Put it in your library. $3.00 a year.
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by the National Committee for Mental Hygiene.
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work in the area between the Mississippi and the Pacific. Students
are given the basic preparation to equip them for any field of social
work. The curriculum includes courses in social case work, essen-
tials of medicine, law, public welfare administration, psychiatry,
community organization, history of social work, methods of social
investigation, child welfare and so on. Field work in family,
children's and psychiatric agencies is conducted under the super-
vision of members of the faculty of the university, who are ex-
perienced social workers, and each student secures some practice
in social research within the field of public welfare and social work.
G. ELEANOR KIMBLE
Director Department of Social Work
The Quakers Carry On
To THE EDITOR: I should like through your paper to express our
deep appreciation of the generous gifts of clothing and money
from church people all over the country to the Coal Areas Relief
Committee of the Federal Council of Churches. It will interest
you to know that we have received contributions from forty-seven
states and one contribution each from Siam, China, West Africa,
Panama and Cuba.
The Quakers are carrying on their work this summer as ex-
tensively as funds continue to be received. Subsistence gardens
are helping to relieve the immediate feeding program; but the
distribution of milk to nursing mothers and little children must
continue. The rehabilitation projects are not only continuing to
provide a means of self-support to some unemployed miners, but
are raising the morale of whole communities. Two special units,
each consisting of seven trained workers, are established in Boone
County in West Virginia and Letcher County in Kentucky, to
promote the social and religious life of the communities and to
experiment with adult education under the direction of a professor
(In answering advertisements
from the University of Syracuse. One of each unit is a medical
student, who will study the possibilities of carrying on a health
program in these isolated places.
With a complete realization that relief of a temporary nature
cannot continue indefinitely, the Quakers are establishing a more
constructive long-time program of rehabilitation for miners who
probably will never again be needed in the mines and with this
in mind are planning a significant program for next year. We shall
make an announcement of this program in the fall and feel sure
that our interested friends will want to continue their cooperation
with us and help us extend the interest to a larger group of people.
JAMES MYERS
Industrial Secretary, Federal Council of the Churches of Christ in
America
Humanology
To THE EDITOR: I have just read your June Survey and Surveyj
Graphic, and the contents of these magazines add a new coloring!
to a dismal picture of our present civilization. With more schools,
colleges and churches than ever before, bigger court-houses and
more lawyers and officers than in any time in the past, crime and
offenses against common honesty have increased possibly a thou-
sand percent in twenty-five years!
What is the cause of these signs of decay of those noble prin-
ciples which make great men? Why this falling down of morals?
Science has developed machines and instruments to multiply our|
wealth and pleasure to the »th degree, but what has it done toj
develop the desires, faculties and emotions which make noblei
men and women? What individual or organization is interested in
developing the science of humanology? There is a cause of all
conditions. Why not study the cause and remedy it? Why not
stop the leak in the dike? EUGENE LANK.FORD
Cisco, Texas
please mention THE SURVEY)
302
August 1933
THE SURVEY
GOSSIP:
of People
and Things
Calling the Roll
A CONTINUOUS trickle of good news comes
p* from Washington and the states in the
appointment of men to meet the emergency
whose skill and probity carry hopeful convic-
tion. The Home and Farm Mortgage Advisory
Committee, recently appointed by Governor
Lehman for New York State, is headed by
Lucius R. Eastman, president of Survey Asso-
ciates and former president of the Merchants'
Association of New York and includes in its
membership other names long familiar to Sur-
vey readers: George W. Alger, New York City;
Meyer Jacobstein, Rochester; Susan Brandeis,
Judge Franklin W. Hoyt, Morris Ernst, Ray-
mond V. Ingersoll and Dr. John Lovejoy
Elliott, leader of the Ethical Culture Society,
all of New York City.
From Washington comes word of the ap-
pointment by Secretary Perkins of Isador
Lubin, of the staff of the Brookings Institution,
to the important position of commissioner of
the Bureau of Labor Statistics. Prof. William
Leiserson of Antioch College, a past-master in
the art of industrial arbitration, is in Washing-
ton as a liaison officer between the labor board
of the National Industrial Recovery Adminis-
tration and its other branches. Our contributing
editor, Robert W. Bruere, heads the Stretch-
Out Committee of the Textile Branch of the
NIRA.
The past few weeks have seen practical
completion of the major personnel of the staff
of the Federal Emergency Relief Adminis-
tration. Since the announcement in the July
issue of Robert W. Kelso, Rowland Haynes and
Pierce Williams as field representatives, Harry
L. Hopkins, administrator, has appointed
.three additional field men. Sherrard Ewing,
formerly executive general director of the
National Association of Travelers Aid Socie-
ties, is covering Iowa, the Dakotas, Nebraska,
Minnesota, Kansas and Missouri. Alan John-
stone, who came to the staff from the director-
ship of the South Carolina Emergency Relief
Administration and has had long field experi-
ence with the Association of Community
Chests and Councils and the President's
Organization on Unemployment Relief, is
working in Maryland, Florida, Georgia, North
and South Carolina, Virginia, the District of
Columbia, Puerto Rico and the Virgin Islands.
Aubrey Williams, who had been working with
the American Public Welfare Association in
the establishment of state welfare departments,
is on deck in Alabama, Louisiana, Mississippi,
Arkansas, Oklahoma, Texas and New Mexico.
The secretary of the Administration is
Bruce McClure, formerly with the publishing
house of Harper and Brothers and for four
years managing editor of the Elks' Magazine.
Corrington Gill heads the statistical and re-
search staff. Mr. Gill came from the Federal
Employment Stabilization Board where he
established the statistical division that became
a national focal point for information on
public works and advanced planning of federal
construction projects.
Mr. Gill has as his assistants, Paul Webbink,
formerly research economist with Senator
Robert M. LaFollette, Jr., Emerson Ross, who
was assistant statistician for the Reconstruc-
tion Finance Corporation, and Charles F.
Beach, formerly with the U. S. Census Bureau.
Two special statisticians are assisting Mr. Gill
in the field: Charles L. Knight of the Depart-
ment of Economics, University of Pennsylvania,
and Robert B. Watson who is making special
administrative studies. Mr. Watson was
formerly with the Industrial Section of the
Chicago Tuberculosis Institute and before that
did research and field organization service with
the National Tuberculosis Association. Special
research studies are being carried on by Alfred
Briggs, formerly with the Community Council
of Philadelphia. Hugh R. O'Donnell, formerly
with the White Motor Company, is personnel
officer for the Administration.
Morton M. Milford is the director of public
relations. He previously was chief of the Wash-
ington bureau of The Louisville Courier-
Journal and The Louisville Times, and editor
and managing editor of The Miami (Florida)
Daily News. More recently Mr. Milford has
been in publicity and public relations work in
New York. Oliver Griswold is assistant director
of public relations. Mr. Griswold has handled
governmental public relations in unemploy-
ment relief during the entire period of the
depression. Before coming to Washington
three years ago, he was a public relations
counsel in New York.
Piety in New York
\ SOLID pillar-ess of the Presbyterian
•^*- church, visiting from Kansas, accom-
panied her New York son to inquire about a
new beach club.
"We take only Christians," specified the
manager.
"Now isn't that splendid," said the pillar-ess,
pleased and somewhat surprised at the piety
of New York beach clubs. "And do you have
services on Sunday?"
THE New York State Department of Social
Welfare has published a revised edition, as of
April 1933, of the Compilation of Settlement
Laws of all states in the union. Copies on re-
quest by public and private social agencies
from the office of the Department, Albany,
N. Y.
MRS. HOWARD S. GANS of New York has
resigned as president of the Child Study Asso-
ciation of America after thirty-seven years of
service during which the organization devel-
oped from a little group of earnest women into
an authoritative national organization in the
field of parent education. Mrs. Everett Dean
Martin, vice-president since 1925, succeeds
her.
THREE HUNDRED friends and fellow-workers
of Harry L. Hopkins in the New York Tuber-
culosis and Health Association, the state
Temporary Emergency Relief Administration
and a raft of other social agencies gave him a
grand send-off dinner as he began his work as
administrator of the Federal Relief Administra-
tion. Everybody was there from the office boy
(or more likely girl) of the NYTHA to Gov-
303
ernor Lehmann, who said things to make the
guest of honor's ears burn and once more bore
witness to this popular governor's abiding and
informed interest in social welfare. Call it
Freudian or funny, New York City's health
commissioner evoked an experimental buzzing
from the audience when he referred several
times to the Temporary Emergency Relief
Administration of the state as the TEAR.
The FRA got a brief but wide hearing for
its plans in a newsreel issued by Hearst Inter-
national. Looking big as life, or perhaps a little
bigger on the screen, Harry told his story ef-
fectively and was applauded in the neighbor-
hood movie-house where this Gossiper heard it.
Professional Candor
AUGUST by its other name of vacation does
** sound more sweet, and the Westchester
County (N. Y.) Department of Health comes
out with timely commonsense advice for
keeping the bloom on it. Granting that the
"somewhat formidable" lists of vacation don'ts
usually laid down by health officers are sound
and should be followed, the Department finds
nevertheless that some over-conscienticus
people attempting to obey them all become
"like babes in the woods, filled with dread of
their surroundings, or like the now famous Mr.
Milque-toast, afraid to take the slightest risk."
Of course one shouldn't leap from the desk
chair to the strenuous life as though this were
one's final chance to indulge in hiking, rowing,
swimming, golf and tennis. But on the other
hand, "No amount of warning, however au-
thoritative, as to the result of over-indulgence
in any of them will be of much avail." The
criteria of successful vacationing are "a
good appetite for food, restful sleep and a feel-
ing of well-being." In menus for attaining these,
one man's meat is another's poison. Common-
sense is the clue; advice "more or less value-
less."
JUST too late for inclusion in the list of those
who in June gathered in honorary degrees
from here and there, came word of the degree
conferred by Elmira College, Elmira, N. Y., on
Martha Platt Falconer, "feminist, pioneer in
social reconstruction, and international author-
ity in the field of juvenile dependency and
delinquency."
A PARENTS' war on radio horrors and crime
stories got a setback in Brooklyn recently when
a newspaper reporter sent out to interview a
United Parents Association mother who had
been voluble on the subject caught instead her
twelve-year-old son. "You bet I listen to the
perfect crimes," he said. "Gee, they're great."
The features which Mother had most bitterly
condemned were his prime favorites. "Say, I
wouldn't miss one of "em." All of which made
good newspaper reading for everyone but
Mother.
More Medals
' I kHE Saunders medal "for distinguished
•*• service in the cause of nursing has been
awarded this year to Clara Dutton Noyes,
director of the American Red Cross Nursing
Service and chairman of the National Com-
mittee on Red Cross Nursing, and a former
president of the American Nurses' Association
and of the National League of Nursing Edu-
cation. Medals are hardly a novelty to Miss
304
THE SURVEY
August 1933
Noyes, who already holds five decorations,
including those of the French and Bulgarian
governments and the International Red Cross.
"For notable service and achievement in the
field of child health" the Philadelphia Pedi-
atric Society has bestowed gold medals on Dr.
Samuel McClintock Hamill, long associated
with the work of the American Child Health
Association, and Dr. Howard Childs Car-
penter.
By Way of Progress
TIMES do change and little by little human
attitudes, as witness the story relayed to
The Survey by Dr. Walter N. Thayer, Jr.,
New York state commissioner of correction,
with assists by Leon C. Faulkner and Leonard
W. Mayo of The Children's Village.
Ten years ago Edmund Dwight, president
of the Village, invited a judge of the New York
Juvenile Court to address the boys "in resi-
dence" in the institution. As this judge was
responsible for the "residence" of most of the
boys whom he was to address he had some
slight misgivings, fully justified, it developed.
For when he rose to speak he was greeted with
a storm of hisses and catcalls which all but
drove him from the platform. It was plain
that to the boys Hizzoner represented a treat-
ment that they just didn't see.
Ten years later not one but many judges
were invited to the Village during the annual
conference of the Association of Juvenile Court
Judges. The children anticipated the occasion
and each was eager to know if "my judge" was
expected. On the day of the visit each young-
ster made a beeline for his own judge to escort
him around the grounds and play host gener-
ally. But for Gracie, aged eleven, the day was
a total loss. She had been assured that her
judge was coming, but the day wore on and he
did not appear. Came the evening, and the
operetta presented by the children with Gracie
in the cast. As the last curtain fell, down the
aisle darted Gracie to where the director sat
among his guests.
"Where's my judge?" she demanded, ex-
citement overcoming embarrassment. "He
said he would be here and Miss Brown said I
could come down to see him."
"Sorry, Gracie, but he telephoned he
couldn't make it. He said to tell you . . ."
But Gracie, dissolved in tears, had fled back
to Miss Brown wailing, "My judge didn't
come, my judge didn't come."
All of which may not be of vast importance
in the sum-total of the world's affairs, but it
indicates that to these children, at least, a
judge is today more a counselor and friend and
less a general enemy than he was ten years
and. And this, we submit, is progress.
ROMANCE came hard on the heels of the
National Conference in the announcement of
the marriage of Ellery F. Reed, director of the
research department of the Helen S. Troun-
stine Foundation in Cincinnati, and Ella
Weinfurther, executive secretary of the Na-
tional Committee on Transients and Homeless.
NEW YORKERS' applause will join with that
of Pennsylvanians in the announcement of
Governor Pinchot's appointment of Charlotte
E. Carr as secretary of labor and industry of
Pennsylvania. New Yorkers remember her as
acting director of the Women's Bureau of the
State Department of Labor, as a researcher in
industrial conditions for the New York Charity
Organization Society, and in the other positions
in industrial and labor fields which she has
filled with courage and independence; Pennsyl-
vania knew her as director of women and
children in the Labor Department during
Governor Pinchot's first administration; then,
in his second term, as deputy secretary of
labor and industry until the legislature abol-
ished that office, and most recently director of
the Bureau of Inspection of the Department.
Miss Carr takes the place of Dr. A. M. North-
rup, who had charged that she had fomented
labor troubles in handling strike situations.
Governor Pinchot is quoted by The New York
Times as having commented: "Statements
about Miss Carr such as Dr. Northrup's are in
the nature of a challenge, and any challenge
made against the rights of the working people
is a challenge that I cannot ignore. In my
public life I have not been in the habit of
taking dictation from anyone and I am not
going to start now." The governor made public
a telegram from Frances Perkins, secretary of
labor, congratulating him on Miss Carr's ap-
pointment and declaring, "In these days of
industrial problems which are caused by pres-
ent conditions and circumstances she will bring
to her new position ability, experience and
courage."
O Tempus !
THIS one came from Ann Arbor by way of
Neva R. Deardorff, who however pins it on
Smith College and not on her own Alma Mater.
Said one senior to another, observing the
old-girl grads gaily bent on reunion, "Must
have been a funny looking lot of girls here in
the old days."
"What makes you think so?"
"Haven't you noticed that every time two of
these old girls meet they both say, 'Why, you
haven't changed a bit. You look just exactly
as you did when you were in college.'"
DEPRESSION has not dimmed the fine educa-
tional urge of the New York State Department
of Mental Hygiene. In the spring of 1932 a six
weeks' institute was held for social workers in
the institutions under the department's aegis,
and this summer a new round appears in grants
of leave to assistant social workers to attend
summer courses at the Smith College or New
York Schools of Social Work. One assistant
worker from each school or hospital may go if
she can be spared; she has her salary while she
is taking the course and her vacation with pay
in addition. Practically all the institutions with
assistant social workers have managed to let
a representative attend.
From the same department comes news of a
new mental hygiene clinic in Rome, N. Y., es-
tablished by Dr. William B. Wright of the
Marcy State Hospital and conducted by Dr.
H. B. Lang of the hosptial staff. A psychologist
and a psychiatric social worker are included
on the staff. The clinic is intended primarily
for adults "with nervous symptoms" but will
also examine some children.
THE American Women's Association is re-
joicing in a grant of $5000 from the Carnegie
Foundation and $2000 from the Guggenheim
Foundation for further research in "the present
economic status and outlook for women,"
including an intensive study of the experience
of business and professional women during an
economic depression, of professional and
personal adjustments, changes in standards of
living and vocational trends. The study will
be made in cooperation with the National
Occupational Conference and Dr. Iva Lowther
Peters is serving as technical consultant on
plans. The research project will be carried out
under the direction of the General Service
Committee of the AWA of which Mrs. Mary
G. Schonberg is chairman and Harriet
Houghton director.
Eaves-Dropper
" V/XDU say I mustn't say 'damn' but my
•*• teacher says it all the time." Mother,
according to the League for the Hard of Hear-
ing, didn't pay much attention. Johnny was
hard of hearing and had probably misunder-
stood. But after the third or fourth complaint
she questioned some of Johnny's keener-
eared classmates. Oh no, they'd never heard
teacher use such a word, but she did seem to
sort of say things to herself, "not out loud
though." What she said was nobody's business
— but Johnny happened to be a lip-reader.
THE Massachusetts Institute of Technology
announces a two-year course in City Planning
to start in the fall under the Department of
Architecture. The course is founded on a
recognition of the close relation between
architecture and city planning and an essential
need for study of the social and economic
problems in relation to the latter. The course
will follow a preliminary study of architecture,
and will include vitally essential material in the
field of architecture and city planning, some
of which, though already handled in a number
of other courses, will assume added significance
in this proposed closely knit unit. Graduates
will receive the degree of Bachelor of Architec-
ture in City Planning.
"Or COURSE I'm only a welfare worker,"
timidly a young social worker prefaced her
remarks at the recent Maryland State Con-
ference, and her refrain sung itself through the
entire meeting.
More National Officers
THE National Tuberculosis Association at
its recent Toronto session elected the fol-
lowing officers: President, Dr. J. Stuart
Pritchard, Battle Creek, Mich.; vice-presi-
dents, George F. Canfield, New York, Dr.
H. R. M. Landis, Philadelphia; secretary, Dr.
Charles J. Hatfield, Philadelphia; treasurer,
Collier Platt, New York.
New officers of the Church Conference of
Social Work of the Federal Council of Churches
are: Chairman, Rev. John W. Elliott, Philadel-
phia; vice-chairman, Rev. Irvin E. Deer,
Kansas City, Mo.; executive chairman, Rev.
Worth M. Tippy, New York; secretary, A.
Amelia Wyckoff, New York.
New officers of the Episcopal Social Work
Conference are: President, Rev. C. Rankin
Barnes, New York; vice-presidents, Rev. Carl
Reed Taylor, St. Louis, and Eunice Robinson,
Tennessee; secretary, Rev. Claude W. Sprouse,
Kansas City, Mo.
American Psychiatric Association: President
Dr. George H. Kirby; vice-president, Dr. C. F.
Williams; secretary-treasurer, Dr. William C.
Sandy.
American Association for the Study of the
Feebleminded: President, Dr. Ransom A.
Greene; vice-president, Dr. Mary M. Wolfe;
secretary-treasurer, Dr. Groves B. Smith.
American Epidemiological Society: Presi-
dent, Dr. E. S. Godfrey, Jr., director of local
health administration, New York State
Department of Health.
Vol. LXIX. No. 9
MONTHLY
September 1933
CONTENTS
FR( JNTISPIECE .... Poster of the Mobilization for Human Needs 306
SOCIAL WORKERS: PIONEERS AGAIN Porter R. Lee 307
DESIGN FOR NURSING Anne Scott 313
WHERE THE RENT MONEY GOES Henry S. Churchill 315
FIDDLES AND FOOD Martha Cruikshank Ramsey 316
THANK YOU, OFFICER, WE CAN MANAGE
Gertrude Springer 317
FLOP HOUSES Poem by V. Valerie Gates 318
DEPENDENT CHILDREN IN NEW 'YORK. .James H. Foster 319
THE COMMON WELFARE 322
HEALTH 324
INDUSTRY 326
EDUCATION 3^7
UNEMPLOYMENT AND WAYS OUT 329
BOOKS 332
GOSSIP.. 335
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Publication Office, 10 Ferry Street, Concord, N. H.
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Lucius R. EASTMAN, president; JULIAN W. MACK, JOSEPH P. CHAM-
BERLAIN, JOHN PALMER GAVIT, nice-presidents; ANN REED BRENNER,
secretary; ARTHUR KELLOGG, treasurer.
PAUL U. KELLOGG, editor.
ARTHUR KELLOGG, managing editor; MARY Ross, BEULAH AMIDON,
LEON WHIPPLE, JOHN PALMER GAVIT, LOULA D. LASKER, FLORENCE
LOEB KELLOGG, GERTRUDE SPRINGER, associate editors.
EDWARD T. DEVINE, GRAHAM TAYLOR, JANE ADDAMS, JOSEPH K.
HART, HAVEN EMERSON, M.D., ROBERT W. BRUERE, JOANNA C. COL-
CORD, contributing editors.
MOLLIE CONDON, circulation manager; MARY R. ANDERSON, advertising
manager.
SO THEY SAY
Any worthwhile volunteer takes time. — Ruth Hill, American
Family Welfare Association.
If we do not pay for the schools we will pay for the jails. — Judge
Florence E. Allen, Cleveland.
. . . the quaint custom of the medical profession to speak only
when spoken to. — Ruth Seinfel in Collier's.
It has not yet been proved that reason is more important to
man than emotion. — Henry Goddard Leach in the Forum.
The recreation program is a lot of little starts optimistically
taken. — Eduard C. Lindeman, New Tork School of Social Work.
I shudder to think of what is ahead of us if we have too much
production ahead of purchasing power. — General Hugh S. "John-
son, NRA.
Education has always been heretofore the American substitute
for a national religion. — Robert M. Hutchins, president, University
of Chicago.
In our society we go along with one foot in an aeroplane and the
other in an ox-cart and expect the system to work. — Harry Elmer
Barnes, New Tork.
Our notion of a patriot is a man who reads every word of the
codes of the industries that he is not engaged in. — F. P. A. in New
Tork Herald Tribune.
If we are to promote causes in the name of social work we must
get social work into better shape to carry on such activity. — Neva
R. Deardorf, New Tork.
Every legislative proposal for the amelioration of social hard-
ship is likely to involve an invasion of somebody's rights of prop-
erty.— Judge Joseph N. Ulman, Baltimore.
There is not a single aspect of human life, either artistic or
economic that has yet thrown off the poison which the last war
spattered around the world. — N. T. Times editorial.
One of the troubles with all welfare agencies and social
workers seems to be that they cannot resist a desire to have every-
thing just so. — Elenore Kellogg in N. Y, World-Telegram.
The glamor and dramatic interest of the acutely ill patient
are as attractive to the majority of nurses as they are to physi-
cians.— Dr. Morris Hinenburg, Montefiore Hospital, New Tork.
I am not one of those who believe that a Travelers Aid booth
at the entrance of the Garden of Eden would have stopped mi-
gration.— Bertha McCall, National Association Travelers' Aid
Societies.
Only those who know a competent public-welfare commissioner
intimately can realize how difficult it is to be competent in such
an office. — James H. Williams in Human Aspects of Unemploy-
ment and Relief.
With all the mechanism and the technique and all the spinach
in the world you can't do much for children as long as we have
inadequate wages. — David C. Adie, New Tork State Commissioner
of Public Welfare.
Government is the one agency or organization to which we all
belong and of which we are all a part. It has become the common
instrument of our lives for better or for worse. — C. A. Dykstra,
city manager, Cincinnati.
We build huge prisons and pay for keeping them over-crowded,
for detaining men in them for long and costly years, and all because
of our unwillingness to face the fact that something can be done
about it. — Lewis Lawes, warden, Sing Sing Prison, New Tork.
By far the greatest social menace of this time is the pauper-
ization in spirit and in deed of millions of American citizens.
Nothing could be more socially devastating than cheerful ac-
quiescence in the permanent acceptance of charity. — Karl Borders,
Chicago.
MOBILIZE FOR HUMAN NEEDS!
National reenforcement for the fall campaigns of some 350 community chests has just been launched
at a Washington conference opened by President Roosevelt. The National Citizen's Committee
is headed by Newton D. Baker; the Women's Committee by Mrs. Franklin D. Roosevelt. The
official poster was drawn by Haddon Sundblom, originally for the Atlanta Community Chest
September
r933
Volume LXIX
No. 9
Social Workers: Pioneers Again
BY PORTER R. LEE
From an Address to the Alumni of the New Tork School of Social Work of Which the Author is the Director
'Y TOPIC seems to suggest that the age of pio-
neering in social work has been left behind in
the somewhat remote past; that we are to re-
sume 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 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 con-
spicuous, 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 com-
placent acceptance of the inevitability of human suffering
and of an over-emphasis 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 wilder-
ness because it existed in the midst of a civilization in
which some of the finest expressions of altruism and con-
cern for the under-privileged 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 humanity
in our charity, adequacy in our efforts to protect the weak.
The 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 no-
man'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 daunt-
less 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 pres-
sures with which our professional forbears had to reckon,
and 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 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 top-
pling 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
307
308
T H E SURVEY
September 1933
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 rea-
sonably well-charted territory has again assumed the
aspect of a wilderness in which new trails must be blazed.
Trail-blazing 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.
1. We face an indefinite continuation of greatly reduced re-
sources for social work outside the field of relief and with a dimin-
ishing 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 inevi-
table dependence upon community support. And this in a coun-
try 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 r61e of
philanthropy in a progressive human society, and this in a coun-
try 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 re-
examine 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 con-
trast 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 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, resist-
ing it at every step, yielding to it when it can no longer be
resisted, justifying our reluctance to cut budgets, to dis-
continue 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 re-
gard 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 concep-
tions, the old institutions. On the other hand, we can in-
terpret 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 perhaps also of the
uses to which we have put it. Circumstances may force us
to re-examine our objectives and our methods but we may
fairly ask in whose hands is such re-examination 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 over-institutionalized.
At this point I am moved to refer briefly to a query
which comes 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. To be sure it
has reduced its support of many forms of social work and
the increase is due entirely to the colossal expenditures for
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 than has
been true 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. To suggest that standards have been
September 1933
T H E SURVEY
309
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 compe-
ence represented by the whole body of social workers.
Standards in social work, conviction as to its possibilities
or human welfare do not reside in books, in laws or in the
irchives of social agencies. They are the spiritual and intel-
ectual possessions of a group of professional men and
women. The competence of the social worker is as acces-
ible to a society in need of its service as is the competence
of physicians, architects, engineers, lawyers or clergymen.
,ike the competence of these other professions it can have
no outlet except as society is conscious of a need for it.
In a message to professional social workers in 1921 an
American philosopher wrote as follows:
No profession can pretend to determine what the individual
hall be, or what society shall be; the person must take his own
ultimate responsibilities. And 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 nonethe-
ess this will which in the long run must choose its path, making
ts 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,
fou 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,
f you understand human nature and human maladies, social
structures and social functions, do much to make clear to indi-
viduals and communities the meaning of life, and the possible
ways of achieving some at least of its goods, and avoiding some at
east of its worst blunders. You may not assume to decide for
ociety whether it shall be capitalistic or socialistic, acquisitive or
cooperative, but you have the duty, if you have the proper scien-
tific equipment, to point out what all these various ideals will
mean, and how the well-considered choices of men, for decent
lomes, steadier work, richer leisure, juster laws, fairer distribu-
tion may be put into effect.
Social workers then can never be bureaucrats creating
obs for themselves, they can never demand that society
shall avail itself of their services but, unless history is
without significance, it is not likely that a time will come
when society will be unaware of its need for expert leader-
ship in the effort to promote its own well-being. The future
of social work, as we know it, does not hinge upon the
jublic willingness to support a social-welfare program. I
think rather it hinges only upon the ability of the pro-
essional social worker to disclose to the public his posses-
sion 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
:onfine my discussion to three problems about which funda-
mental thinking by social workers seems essential if we are
to play our responsible role in the period of reconstruction,
i. I believe the most important responsibility resting
apon social workers at the present time is that they shall
divest themselves so far as possible of what I can only
define as the vested interest attitude. I venture to quote at
:his point William James's phrasing of a truth which has
lad more acceptance than practical application. He states:
'Most human institutions, by the purely technical and
irofessional manner in which they come to be adminis-
tered, 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, "The tendency of every institution, of every
profession, of every impersonal group, is to become partial,
mechanical and rigid."
It is perhaps beyond reason to expect complete self-
effacement on the part of every individual with respect to
the essential nature of his own job, of every organization
with respect to the importance of its own function and of
every group with respect to the importance in the whole
constellation of social work of its own field. Nevertheless
social work has grown in efficiency by reason of its con-
centration upon responsibilities, functions and services
more and more clearly defined. The inevitable result has
been to develop a partial conception of social work rather
than a comprehensive one, to develop rigidity in special-
ization instead of flexibility in our total organization, to
over-emphasize 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, func-
tions and fields as we have known them.
Somehow or other we must break through this vested
interest 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 practi-
tioner who has spent years in training and experience to
develop competence in the use of professional craftsman-
ship which, given the opportunity, will enable him to
produce results of a high order may be pardoned for re-
senting 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 work-
ers, 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 returned. 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. The plea which
I am making for a change in the vested interest attitude is
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
310
THE SURVEY
September 1933
the soundness of her theology, "If you take away my total
depravity, you take away my religion." To 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.
If this were not in large measure true, there would have
been something essentially unsound in our whole profes-
sional development. Nevertheless, like any other form of
human effort which tends to become institutionalized,
social work at the present time, to quote William James
again, by the purely technical and professional manner in
which it has come to be administered, has become to some
extent an obstacle to the very purposes which its founders
had in view. This tendency to crystallize, to be inflexible
in the face of a need for change, is always a matter of per-
sonal attitudes. If we can break through the attitude of
vested interest towards job, function or field, we shall have
taken the first great step towards competence for the
supremely responsible tasks which lie ahead of us.
We cannot be content, however, with a philosophy how-
ever adequately it may meet the requirements of a re-
trenchment period which stops there. It would be tempera-
mentally 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 eco-
nomic security and the acceptance of governmental
activity in the field of social welfare as the foundation of
our whole social program.
The 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. The 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.
E',T 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. That hundreds, thou-
sands, 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 forma-
tion 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 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 encour-
aging 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 psycho-
logical preparation for the task than that we should recog-
nize 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. The 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. The 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.
The 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 national
effort to secure economic security? It calls first for an
understanding of the total effort which is to be coopera-
tively 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 work-
ability of the total program which evolves. Here again we
cannot be specialists in our philosophy.
The next step is to consider precisely what the profes-
sional competence of the social worker can contribute,
what it will mean practically to the effort to insure eco-
nomic security if the social worker performs adequately
his part in this cooperative enterprise. As I see it, socia
workers are in a position to present and interpret the data
which demonstrate the economic and human cost o:
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, demoral-
ization and suffering which follows when men can find nc
opportunity to meet their elementary economic needs.
SOCIAL workers have also something to contribute with
regard to the workability on the administrative side 01
specific measures such as unemployment-insurance anc
minimum-wage laws; and they can legitimately, because o:
September 1933
THE SURVEY
311
their authoritative knowledge of the need which must be
met, participate in the effort to secure the enactment of
such measures.
If I am right, however, in suggesting that the achieve-
ments 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 achiev-
ing 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 disquiet-
ing 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 qualifica-
tions to formulate a program of relief that would be ade-
quate 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
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. That task will require more penetrat-
ing thought, more concentrated effort than we have yet
put into it. It will be a long-time job and when, as a result
of thought and effort, we have evolved a sound relief pro-
gram, we shall have another long job of securing its accept-
ance by the American public.
This I submit is a task for social workers with the pio-
neer spirit. We 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. The true pioneer has always a vision. The
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 competence 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 ob-
tain 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.
This has been true in the field of social welfare as it has
been in other fields but we are still politically an inept na-
tion. To have secured a widespread conviction that govern-
mental 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 I
last there were not more than ten states, if that many, with
an adequate public-welfare law including an efficient state
department. The 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. We 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 tradi-
tionally been governed by political considerations of a low
order. It must be governed by political considerations be-
cause government is a political enterprise. To men and
women schooled in the atmosphere of party politics, public
administration presents no difficulties. The difficulties are
apparent only to one who tries to use non-political stand-
ards— such as professional standards — in a political setting.
The peculiar task, however, of combining professional com-
petence 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. To some extent this is only a tradition.
To some extent it is also an evidence of the vested interest
complex. In any event, we shall need to deal with this prob-
lem with the fundamental philosophy which recognizes the
• essential unity of human welfare and the equally essential
unity of our program to promote it. That program will in-
clude the public welfare department, other governmental
departments, such as schools and health, and private
agencies. The 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. We have a formidable task of readjusting our con-
ceptions of private social work but we have, on the whole,
a longer experience of successful experiment in the estab-
lishment 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 pro-
fession. Social workers are social workers whether their sup-
port and the support of their programs is paid for by the
general public in taxation or directly in philanthropic con-
tributions. 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.
The present situation in social work therefore calls for
a reexamination 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
312
THE SURVEY
September 1933
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 estab-
lishment 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 govern-
mental 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 determi-
nation to achieve economic security and governmental
efficiency in social welfare. The present development of
private philanthropy has been in many ways a distorted,
forced over-development. The extension and refinement
of over-organization and the high pressure methods to
which we have had to resort to raise money have robbed
private philanthropy of much of its spiritual character.
Public expenditures for social welfare may be forced up-
ward 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 rationali-
zation 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 Amer-
ican way, to use a term which came much later into our
jargon. Under this conception the public responsibility was
a vestigial 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 ap-
plies 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 un-
inspired administration restricts a relief program, leaving
many imperative needs unmet, I see a private agency sup-
plementing 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 pri-
vate agencies producing trained, mature personnel more
rapidly than public departments can develop them. This
adaptation of the private program to the immediate cur-
rent 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 pro-
gram 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 op-
portunistic 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 sug-
gested 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
well-established areas within which the government func-
tions 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 demon-
stration which we have been accustomed to assign to pri-
vate 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 impres-
sively 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 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 them conservatism
and service; and if we continue to assume that to think and
act cooperatively must involve a loss of sparkling indi-
viduality. It is the ideals, the wisdom, the knowledge and
the resources already in our possession that furnish the
ground-work of our faith in the future, and not the struc-
tures 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.
Design for Nursing
By ANNE SCOTT
S usual, our Women's Club had been violently dis-
cussing our personal financial difficulties and try-
ing to outdo each other in tales of economic woe.
The president called us to order sharply and the routine
business of the meeting proceeded. At length we came to
the inevitable question:
"Is there any new business to come before this meeting?"
A member of the board of our Memorial Hospital arose —
"Madam President, I would like to suggest that this club
take under consideration the plight of the private-duty
nurses in our city. Do our members know that many, many
well-trained graduate nurses have no work and have had
none for weeks — months in some cases. Our registry reports
many in actual need. I understand that the nurses them-
selves have a small relief fund which they are using and a
few who have had steady work are dropping off the registry
for a month to give the others a chance at calls, but I would
ike to suggest that this club ask the community chest or
the Mayor's committee on unemployment or some other
relief group to study their situation and offer help." She
sat down.
"I understand that this is a motion — is there a second?"
"I second it, Madam President." — Seconded by one of
our elderly members.
"Is there any discussion?"
"Yes, Madam President, there certainly is!" This ex-
plosive protest came from the wife of one of our big bank-
ers. "Of course, I am sorry for the unemployed nurses in
need, but what are they doing to help themselves? Have
they come down in their charges? No! Are they willing to
nurse for what they can get? No! Have the nurses in this
city issued any statement to the effect that they will work
by the hour? No! I am vigorously opposed to any such
motion as is now on the floor!"
"But Madam President!" This, as one might expect, was
a doctor's wife. "There are too many nurses. We all know
about that situation. We know the profession is doing its
best to cut down its numbers. Meanwhile, should the nurses
already in the field not be helped? Is it their fault that there
is not so much sickness this year? I say help them in every
way we can!"
"I'd like to say — " Timid voice and flushed face belonged
to one of our unmarried members who lives quietly, and
very carefully now that divi-
dends have shrunk, with her
mother in a rambling old
house on the avenue — "that
I agree with the first speaker.
Last week I tried to get a
graduate nurse from the regis-
try to stay with Mother for a
month while I went to visit
my married sister in New
York. Mother is not strong,
you know, but she is perfectly
well. It was just that I wanted
some one besides the maid to
/S the plight of the nurses their own "fault"
singly or as a profession? This article is the
report of an actual discussion by a group of
interested and sincere clubwomen, considering
nursing from the patients' and the community's
viewpoints. 'The author, herself a nurse, was
present at the meeting described. She writes
under a pen name to avoid identification of the
club members and the town in which they live.
be in the house to keep an eye on her and know what to do
in case of an emergency. I offered to pay a hundred dollars
a month with maintenance and laundry. That comes to
more than our public-health and school nurses get and
they've taken cuts, but no graduate nurse on the registry
would accept the position. I can't say I am eager to help
any one who does not help herself."
"And Madam President — ' This was the vice-president
of our club — "last month my son broke his leg. He came
back from the hospital after a week and we brought his
nurse with him. It happened that I was called out of town
for two days and one of the days was the maid's afternoon
off. The nurse refused to prepare dinner that day for my
husband, Jerry and herself. We let her go the next day and
got a practical nurse. Do you blame us?"
HEADS were shaken negatively all over the room.
Groups broke into sibilant whispering. Suddenly the
librarian of our public library rose to her feet:
"Madam President, I know I am no one to plead the
cause of the private-duty nurse. I am not one and I never
had one! But I do happen to know two of them rather well
and have heard them discussing this matter. In justice to
them I think I ought to state their situation as I under-
stand it.
"There is less sickness. There are too many nurses.
And there is great irregularity in their employment —
perhaps two days of strenuous work, six idle — meanwhile
overhead goes on just the same: rent, laundry, telephone,
meals. The average income of a fairly steady worker is less
than $1300 a year. Some nurses during this past year have
not made $600. How can they reduce their charge?"
"Well, I can make one suggestion," the wife of the editor
of our daily paper stated. "They might meet as a group,
decide on a sliding scale of charges and announce that
people unable to meet their full charge would be cared for
on the sliding scale on the basis of time. I mean six dollars
for twelve hours, four dollars for six hours or something
like that. Isn't steady work at a lower rate better than
no work at alf?"
"I think you'll find," the librarian defended, "that nurses
are always willing to take less pay if the patient really can-
not afford to meet the full charge for care. My nurse friends
have certainly told about cases
where they have accepted half
fees for their usual service."
"Well then, why don't they
publish that fact ?" An editor's
wife would say that! "How
can the doctors or people
know that they can get nurses
for less if they don't announce
it ! Cut prices in all other com-
modities are heralded from
the roof tops, why not in the
nurses' service? Then they'd
be busy!"
313
314
THE SURVEY
September 1933
"I guess they don't think publicity is ethical. There is
something else too: You see six dollars for twelve hours
nursing care is really not much for skilled service. I know
not one of us here would hesitate to spend fifty cents an
hour if the money meant life to one of our dear ones, and
sometimes that is just what nursing care does mean. The
nurses did not run up their charges during the prosperous
years, so now they figure their charges are just suited to the
lean years. It is very hard for them to see their wage stand-
ard lowered."
"But isn't it a case of lowering the charge or starving?
Is there any choice?"
"And should relief funds be used for a group that is em-
ployable, for which there is still a demand? I can't see that
there is any real need to draw on the community resources
for them yet."
"Well I'm sure I wish one of the nurses were here to
speak for herself and her group. I'm afraid I don't under-
stand their situation well enough to defend it any further."
The librarian sighed and sat down, adding, "But I don't
see what they are coming to!"
"Don't you?" The banker's wife was on her feet again.
"I can tell you. The untrained practical nurse is going to
take their place. Either they have got to scale their charges
downward or else do a household job in the homes of their
patients. Why, don't they realize the losses we have had?
The cost of living has fallen in everything but nursing.
Don't they know that some job is better than none? Better
for their morale as well as their pocketbooks. I fear I have
no patience with them!"
"Question!" Some one called feverishly from the back
of the room.
"Are you ready for the question?"
"Question" came the chorus.
"All those in favor of the motion to request our Com-
munity Chest, Mayor's Committee or some other relief
agency to study the situation of the unemployed private
duty nurses with a view to offering relief in some form,
please signify by saying, Aye."
There was dead silence.
"Those opposed, No."
"No," "no," "no." Vociferous noes from all over the
room.
Our president sighed. "Well, there is no doubt about how
you feel in this matter. However, I dislike to have a prob-
lem of so much community import pass by without some
constructive action from us. I don't know whether the
local nurses' association would welcome any ideas on this
subject from this club. Do you know if they would?"
The Librarian answered. "Yes, I think they might, but
I don't know. I'm all at sea on this."
"We can but try! Would any club member like to suggest
ideas for our secretary to list to be sent with an informal
letter to this group — what's its name, please?"
"The Graduate Nurses Association, District 3."
"Thank you. We can explain that this matter came up
for friendly discussion and we are passing on our thoughts
in the hope they will be helpful and as being fairly repre-
sentative of the feeling of the consuming public on this
community problem. We can assure them of our warm
interest and desire to help. How would that do?"
"Oh splendid! Madam President, I so move!"
"Second it!"
"All in favor?"
"Aye" as one voice.
"Opposed? The motion is carried. Very well then, if you
will now suggest ways and means to help the nurses out of
their dilemma, the secretary will list them. Please be
practical!"
"Madam President, I think we must be careful to say in
our letter that we know some of our suggestions will be
useless, but we offer them for what they are worth and we
would welcome a chance to meet with a committee of their
group to arrive at a better understanding of the whole
thing."
"Thank you, we will try to make that point in our letter.
And now for your ideas. One at a time, please!"
THERE was a long pause. Suppressed laughter and whis-
pers were heard as the silence grew prolonged.
"I guess we are not as bright as we thought we were!
What's the matter? Did I scare you by saying our ideas
must be practical?"
"Well, Madam President, since I was the first to protest
so violently, I think I ought to be the first to make a sug-
gestion. Why not suggest to the nurses' association that it
consider lowering the charge per day and also figure out a
sliding scale of prices for half days and hourly work."
"And publish their decision in the paper and send the
rates to all the doctors and hospitals!" The editor's wife
interjected.
"And say something to the effect that in case a patient
is unable to meet the full cost of service, an adjustment will
be made — at least tell the doctors that."
"And I'd like to add that if they could offer care by the
month on a salary basis for aged and chronic people, it
would help some of us a lot."
"Also Madam President, would there be any objection
to the registry's calling nurses in the strict order in which
their names are listed? I understand some nurses are called
for all the time, some never get a chance because they are
not asked for by name."
"But doesn't that mean they are incompetent? A good
nurse makes her own way, doesn't she?"
"I don't know. I wonder if a registry has any way ol
knowing a good nurse except by the number of times she is
asked for?"
"What! Don't they have any check on a nurse's work?
How awful!"
"In the Visiting Nurse Association they have super-
visors."
"Has the registry supervisors?"
"I don't know— I-
"Ladies!" The President's gavel rapped. "May I suggest
we stick to our subject? If you want to know more about
registries we will ask the registrar to talk to our group.
Meanwhile, have you any further ideas about unemploy-
ment among nurses?"
"Well, it's all one to my mind, but I have a suggestion
to make: I think the nursing group needs a community
information committee or a publicity committee if you
will, of nurses and lay people. May we suggest that? I'c
like to serve on it!"
"Has the registry a board of directors representing
doctors and us — the potential and actual consumers? ]
think such a committee or board might help find jobs anc
interpret the situation to the general public. The nurses
can't do that themselves."
"Good! I like that suggestion. Next?"
"Even if the nurses have no such committee, couldn't
September 1933
THE SURVEY
315
they meet with the doctors and us sometimes? See how little
we know about their problems, and I'm a doctor's wife!"
"And it seems to me ridiculous that a little chit of a new
graduate gets the same pay as an older, experienced nurse.
Why don't they charge according to experience and skill?"
"That calls for supervision again."
"And some of the older nurses are hopelessly out of date.
They ought not to receive as much compensation as the
alert younger nurse."
"Or couldn't they go to lectures or study to brush up,
especially now that there is so little work?"
"I think the most important thing is to make the private-
duty nurses realize that the world is changing and that
they must change with it or be left behind and see their
jlaces taken by a less skilled but more adaptable group.
Away with precedents and traditions and ethical hedges!
Dare we say that to them?"
"Let's say it anyway! After all our purpose is a genuine
desire to be helpful. We have no axes to grind. We want the
nursing profession to ride out this storm, maintain its high
standards and make the depression an opportunity for
wider usefulness to the community and better public under-
standing. We do want to help! That ought to be our 'open
sesame'."
"And Madam President, I think these suggestions are
really worth passing on to other communities where nurses
are struggling with the same problem. Couldn't we get these
ideas published somewhere? Using no names, of course."
"Has anyone any objections to this plan? No? Then we
will try it and hope other groups such as ours may be inter-
ested as well as the nurses. Our ideas may not be practical,
but they are sincere!"
"Is there any further business to come before this meet-
ing? If not a motion to adjourn is in order — "
Where the Rent Money Goes
By HENRY S. CHURCHILL
Member American Institute of Architects
facts about the slums are well known. New
York has the worst in the world. Remedial legisla-
tion has completely failed. In boom times landlords
plead there is a housing shortage, and there is no place for
the poor dear tenants to go; in depression times the scurvy
tenants move out and the landlord has no money. The
courts always listen. Consequently well over a million
people in New York live in buildings without an indoor
toilet, without a bath, with no decent privacy, no decent
light or air. Yet the rents of these slums have not fallen one
cent since 1928, although wages have slumped so that a
rent that then represented about 20 percent of income now
represents 45 percent.
In New York City there have been many schemes for
slum-clearance but none at all for real housing, because the
supposition has always been that the "blighted area"
must again be made to blossom its interest, taxes and
speculative profits. The only way this can be done is by
building potentially greater slums, which while decreasing
the ground area built upon, actually at the very least dou-
bles the population per acre !
The reason for this and for the impossibility of providing
real housing in place of the slums, even out in the Bronx
(the Hillside project is too expensive to meet a real need)
is that we have not dared to face the problem of subsidy at
its source, i.e., it is not subsidy of building that is necessary,
but subsidy of money. In other words, it is of no use what-
ever for the government to loan money at 5 percent and 2
percent with amortization, even if the advance covered the
entire financing. Money should be advanced at 3 percent
and amortized at I percent — and the problem would be
well on the way to solution.
In the typical "slum clearance" project about 65 cents of
every dollar of rent represents money costs. It is instructive
to see this confirmed by an analysis of the published figures
for Knickerbocker Village, to be financed largely by the
Reconstruction Finance Corporation — the only housing
loan made thus far by the RFC. The total cost of this
development in New York City is about $9,300,000, the
land costing about $3,170,000 — somewhere around $15 a
square foot! The 6030 rooms are to rent for $12.50, the
highest figure permissible under the New York law for
tax-subsidized housing. Of the $9,300,000, 85 percent is
financed by the RFC by one of those financial coups of
which we are so fond: only $6,334,000, or about 67 percent,
is being loaned at 5 percent, 2 percent amortization, while
an additional $1,666,000 is merely advanced against 5
percent debentures, to be retired — hopefully — in sixteen
years. The balance is equity stock to pay 6 percent.
Reduced to terms of the rent dollar, this means, using
the figures submitted to the RFC, that over a period of
fifteen years, in every one dollar of rent,
35.48 cents goes for operating, taxes and maintenance,
51.80 cents goes to the RFC as interest on loan and "advance,"
and to amortization of loan,
6.28 cents goes to the holders of equity stock as interest,
6.44 cents goes to the retirement of the debentures.
Additional income from stores, basement concessions and
submetering, instead of going to reduce rents goes towards
the "retirement of the debentures in 15.19 years."
Out of every dollar, 64.52 percent is paid for the use of
money, 85 percent of which is advanced by the government
towards a project utterly beyond the reach of well over
three quarters of the population, on land "blighted" to a
mere $15 per square foot, and at least doubling the popula-
tion of the area "cleared" ! Slum clearance for the benefit of
speculators and the well-to-do, yes . . . but not housing.
But take another set of figures. Assume $i land (there is
plenty of it near Manhattan), 3 percent interest and I per-
cent amortization, and it is possible to build four-story
walk-ups on 50 percent of the ground to rent for about
$6 per room. The i percent amortization is enough because
there is no complicated construction, no elevators, no
obsolescence worthy of the name, and if the project is
simply planned and well built, it surely should be good for
fifty years.
Or assume, going on the Knickerbocker Village figures,
that interest on $9,300,000 was 3 percent and amortization
316
THE SURVEY
September 1933
on the $6,130,000 building was left at 2 percent — rents
would drop to $9.92 per room per month. And this without
using the "extra income" of submetering and stores — a
reserve fund, or a further reduction, of $14.57 Per roorn Per
year ($1.21^ per room per month).
We will not, we cannot, have real housing as long as we
refuse to face the subsidy problem. The bankers take their
interest because the public takes no interest; the govern-
ment finances private enterprise without regard for public
pocketbooks, and the non-interest-taking public thinks it is
avoiding taxation for "socialistic subsidies." In reality it is
paying taxes on ever-mounting subsidies for police, jails
and courts, hospitals and clinics, insane asylums and a cost
in depravity and misery that is surely incalculable.
If we are to clear our bankers and speculators out of
their financial slums by 85 percent loans of government
money for potentially worse slums, it is just as well that
they should pay fancy prices for that money. But why call
it slum-clearance or housing? Is it clearing slums to double
the population of an area just because you "house" it
vertically instead of horizontally? On the other hand, if we
are to have housing — and it has nothing to do, except in-
directly, with slum clearance — let us have it through the
only form of subsidy that will do any good — subsidy of the
cost of money, the item that accounts, at prevailing rates,
for 65 cents out of the 100 in every dollar of rent.
Fiddles and Food
By MARTHA CRUIKSHANK RAMSEY
Director Cleveland Music School Settlement
*HY teach him to fiddle when he needs food?"
Numberless times, in numberless ways the
question is put to us. Of course the reasonable
mind says, "Food comes first." Only a fool would argue
otherwise. And yet out of the comings and goings at the
Cleveland Music School Settlement, out of the daily con-
versations with parents and children who come to the door,
emerges a conviction that confutes reason, a certainty that
the hungry themselves long for things other than bread.
The names are of course disguised, but the conversations
are transcribed as nearly verbatim as memory will allow.
Speaks Antonetta: "Honest, I can't pay for Tony's les-
sons now! My husband, he don't mek more than ten or
'leven dollar in whole month. He used to mek good living.
We had everything nice. I used to hev nice job too. I mek
Italian embroidery. I sell pillow-case to Marshall Company
for three dollar anda half. Marshall Company sell for
seven or eight dollar. I mek tablecloth and Marshall Com-
pany sell for twenty-four fifty. I hev to buy linen and
thread. It costa lot, but still I used to mek a few dollar.
Now I hev table-cloth half finish. It take sixty-five cent to
buy thread. I hevn't got sixty-five cent. My husband don't
mekka hardly nothing. I didn't want to go to Charities. I
do everything that we shouldn't do. I had nice embroidery
when I was marry — I never use, and I solda every piece,
everything. I hev grocery bill five hundred dollar. I borrow
from my friends. I didn't want to go to Charities, but
what can I do? So now I sew for Charities. Every Thursday
I bringa sewing. I couldn't come on street-car, only if my
sister let me wear her hat and shoes. But Tony's lessons!
He play so nice on the violeen. Every day he practisa long.
He lika the violeen, and he lika his teacher too. His teacher
say he do very good. I think and think, but I can't pay for
Tony's lessons. Not now, maybe someday! Honest, I tek
the bread out of my own mouth if it would give Tony
lesson. But what can I do?"
Speaks Simon: "I hev to esk dat maybe you vill vait a
little before Sarah should start her piano lessons. I say to
my vife dis morning, 'Vat shall ve do about Sarah's lesson?'
And my vife, she only begin to cry. And I spik to Sarah, and
she cry too. My God, I don' know vat to do! Sarah has been
seek all sommer — vas in hospital for operation, and I hev
to borrow money to pay hospital bills. I hev only two days
vork, sometimes not dat! And my Sarah hes not looked
goot to me since she vas in de hospital. De doctor, he say
she should hev Guernsey milk — a quart every day. Twenty
cents a quart is dat — I hev to figger how I can get dat milk
for Sarah. I bought some tings from a junk dealer — shock
absorbers for de car, — goot ones dat at retail store sell for
ten times vat I esk. But you can't gif nothing avay now.
Dis morning only, I start out early, thinking to sell to men
on de vay to fectory. One man, he say to me, 'Aw ve
don't need shock absorbers, ve need bread. Let de oP ma-
chine shake!' I try to sell men's ties, but my God, peoples
only shuts de door in my face. But I don't vant Sarah should
cry for her piano lessons. I try alvays to be a goot father.
I figger an' figger, and I says to myself, 'Dere must be
some vay to gif Sarah lessons.' She play beautiful, and she
like so much music. Eef it vasn't only for de quart of milk
every day, I could somehow menege, but my God, how cani
I both do?"
IN these days I am surer than ever that a child's ability
and desire to study are reason enough for his studying.!
What difference the economic state of the nation?
If this has been important in years gone by, it is doubly;
important now when the child, surrounded by an atmos-,
phere of insecurity has little enough opportunity for es-h
cape. Blessed is he who can have the assurance that after all,1
there are certain values in this world which are enduring!
For those agencies that believe in the visionings of par-
ents for their children, and in the artistic yearnings of the
child, these are trying days. With decreased earnings and
reduction of contributions, it is hard to say which task is
the more difficult: to turn away gifted children who cannot
afford to pay a minimum fee, or to accept even that mini-
mum from parents for whom the sacrifice is truly too great.
An unemployed musician painstakingly copied the
Scarlatti Pastorale from a library copy that his daughter
might have it to study. A highschool boy wanted to pay for
his lessons with the earnings of one day a week which were
to have paid for his lunches. A father whose family is sup-
ported by the Jewish Social Service Bureau was willing to
spend all of his time peddling a small article from door to
door, in order to provide a music education for his daughter.
For such desire and sacrifice, there must be some recogni-
tion. Must the child's cry to fiddle be entirely hushed be-
cause he must have food?
Thank You, Officer, We Can Manage
By GERTRUDE SPRINGER
'HANG!
Dull undertones
from the busy
outer office were shattered by
a crash and a shrill scream.
Miss Bailey, struggling
withanunbalanceable budget,
snapped to attention. She
knew exactly what had hap-
pened. Some poor soul, worn
out with the heat and over-
long waiting had " blown up."
Thank goodness it couldn't be
ink this time. After Mrs.
Sadowsky's disastrous "spell" last week inkstands had
been stowed out of reach. Silence now in the outer office,
then the click of a typewriter, and Miss Bailey dared tell
herself that this time the girls had kept their heads. Another
moment and her 'phone buzzed the signal from her secre-
tary. "Yes, Miss Floyd. Waiting for Miss Hunt you say?
What's the name? Mrs. Bruno? Certainly, bring her in
here."
Miss Bailey, calm and collected, met a flushed and shaken
Mrs. Bruno at the door. "I am sorry you were upset.
There's a little more air here by the window. This heat is
enough to upset anyone. Here, let me lend you a handker-
chief. Honestly, Mrs. Bruno, if I were you I would just cry
lit out." Returning to her desk Miss Bailey busied herself
with a heap of papers. Five minutes and the sobbing ceased.
"I go now, Miss." Mrs. Bruno, eyes cast down, deposited
I a damp wad of handkerchief on the corner of the desk.
"Feeling better? I'm sorry you had to wait so long. You
see Miss Hunt is out visiting families and no one can be sure
when she will be back. Don't you want to tell me what is
troubling you and I will give Miss Hunt the message?"
"And there," added Miss Bailey to herself, "there goes
my evening if that budget report is to be ready for the
[ :ommittee tomorrow."
The most demoralizing treatment of excitement is ex-
| :itement, say the supervisors of relief districts where excite-
ment of one kind or another is part of the day's work. After
• rhree years of strain and uncertainty frayed nerves are
raking such toll among the unemployed that it is the excep-
! :ional relief office that does not have to deal with occasional
Dutbursts.
"We have an ironclad rule for our staff when excitement
I breaks loose, " said the supervisor of a big city district. "It is
>imply this, ' Mind your own business and keep on working."
If a woman faints or becomes hysterical in the waiting room
t is the business of the reception clerk to see that she is
ooked after and removed as quickly as possible to a quiet
olace. If the clerk needs help she asks for it. Everyone else
joes on working. We used to have a good deal of squealing
ind jumping up — but not any more. We have finally
nanaged to impress on all our staff that squealing is just
not done in this office. I have never been as proud of any
:hing as I was of the staff the day some poor wretch threw a
What should relief workers do when:
A waiting client suddenly throws a paper weight
across the office and begins to scream?
A client disrupts the waiting room with loud
threats of what he proposes to do to the interviewer?
A delegation with banners and baby carriages
demonstrates noisily under the office windows?
A large and voluble committee, with police
hovering in the background, demands a hearing for
its protest against the relief system?
brick through the window and
not a typewriter in the room
stopped. The office manager
called someone to clean up
and everybody else kept on
working.
" When a client faints we give
her simple restoratives, get
her off by herself and persuade
her to go home, sending some-
one with her if this seems ad-
visable. If the hysteric calms
down and wants to tell her
story of course we let her, but
if she remains excited we get her home too. In both cases we
promise that a visitor will call that very day, a promise that
we keep religiously."
Familiar in many offices these days is the client, often a
man, who vents his insecurity by noisy talk and threats of
what he proposes to do. He's tired of the way he's been
treated. He's going to have his rent paid or somebody is
going to be hurt. Who are these women anyhow? Here's
what he's going to tell 'em. . . . and so on and on until the
whole waiting room is on edge.
TT1G talk is just another manifestation of strain," says a
-U supervisor whose experience has shown her human
nature in infinite variety. "We treat it as we try to treat
everything else, with patience and common sense. When-
ever the reception clerk feels that big talk is upsetting the
other clients in the waiting room she takes the talker out of
his turn and gets him in to the interviewer. Then she apolo-
gizes to the others, 'Sorry to have put Mr. So-and-so ahead
of you, but he is so nervous today that he is upsetting the
office. It won't be but a few minutes longer.' Almost never
does anyone object, in fact the patience, the docility, the
simple understanding of these people is a never ending
marvel to me.
"Once the voluble client gets into the interviewing room
much of his excitement disappears. The interviewer gives
him the floor and under no circumstances argues with him.
If he runs on too long she brings him back to the point. His
case of course is treated on its merits. Sometimes a client is
so disturbed that no amount of patience will calm him. But
only when he becomes actually violent and begins to smash
things, when the work of the office can no longer go on, do
we resort to calling the police to remove him. And we are
not a bit proud of ourselves when we have to take this
final step."
It is clearly a matter of professional pride with relief
workers to keep their heads under provocation and to do
their job without recourse to strong arm methods. Even in
turbulent city districts where violent protests against the
relief administration are a recognized phase of organized
political propaganda the supervisors keep a clear line be-
tween police business and relief business.
" Demonstrations in the street or even on the doorstep are
317
318
THE SURVEY
September 1933
AY-BY-DAY situations in busy relief
offices where over-taxed staffs and over-
strained clients complicate relationships and
procedures have been drawn on by The
Midmonthly Survey for a series of articles
of which this is the seventh. The situations
are bona fide. The discussion is by super-
visors for whom practicality is the essence.
Previous articles have been: When Your
Client Has a Car (March /pjj), Are Relief
Workers Policemen? (April), What Price the
Power of the Food Order? (May], How We
Behave in Other Peoples Houses (June), I
Think I'd Better Call the Nurse (July],
When Families Wont Behave (August).
Others will follow in successive issues.
police business and we keep out," says a supervisor whose
big populous district has been marked by agitators for spe-
cial attention. "Once a disturbance actually comes into the
office it becomes our business and we prefer to handle it our-
selves if it is humanly possible to do so. Just the sight of a
policeman, however admirable his attitude, is fuel on the
flames of excitement.
" TF a couple of hundred people with provocative placards
A choose to march up and down in front of our windows
it's none of our business. We go on with our work. Jumping
up and running to windows isn't done, and the girl who gets
jittery is promptly sent out of the room. If the paraders get
violent and begin to break windows it's still police business.
Happily the police handle these demonstrations not as riots
but as traffic problems. They were stumped one day how-
every when the paraders left behind them a squad of thirty
women with baby-carriages who took their stand in front of
the office and set up a sort of keening. The worried police-
man was ready to shoo them all into the building at once,
but since there was plainly no room for thirty baby-car-
riages we said, 'One at a time please.' The women refused
to be separated and we stood our ground. By this time such
a crowd had gathered that the women and baby-carriages
were moved along in the general business of opening up
traffic, and that was the end of it.
"When the demonstrators demand a hearing for their
representatives it becomes our business and we politely
request the police to let us handle it. We used to receive
whatever sized group the leaders sent in, rarely less than
twenty-five. The result was just a mass-meeting with every-
body out-talking everybody else. Specific charges or
grievances were completely lost in speech-making against
the general organization of society. Sometimes we'd have
half a dozen delegations in a day, keeping the office in a
turmoil. There just wasn't time to keep our work going and
sit in on all the speech-making. So we insisted that delega-
tions be limited to five, then to three, then to two — but
there was still too much oratory and not enough facts. We
now receive one, just one, representative of an organized
protest group and we are able to get somewhere. The police
didn't like the idea of a 'lady' closeted with a high-powered
agitator with fire in his eye, but we persuaded them that
lady or no lady we got on better without them. It isn't
nearly as exciting to make a denunciatory speech to one of
us as it is to a man in uniform.
"The worker who is defensive in her interviews withi
these representatives of organized groups makes a big mis-
take. In the first place there is plenty about this relief busi-
ness with its uncertain machinery that is indefensible. On
the general score that relief is inadequate, that evictions are
intolerable, that relief in kind is demoralizing, there can be
complete agreement. When it comes to charges of neglect,
delay and inhuman treatment the worker should still not
defend but should require specific facts. Sometimes these
trail off" into vague generalities and the worker ends the in-
terview quickly and good-naturedly. But when the charges
are definite and concrete, as they sometimes are, they
should have exactly the same treatment as though they
were made by a bishop or a bank president. If a family is
getting bad treatment it is up to us to correct it no matter
who reports the case. Let the agitators make a victory of it
if they want to. The welfare of our families is our one and
only concern.
"Workers who know only too well the clumsiness and the
inadequacy of mass relief marvel, not that clients make so
many protests but that they make so few. Close as we are
to it all no one can realize to what strain the anxieties of
long unemployment and the miserable business of mass re-
lief subjects these helpless people. There is little enough we
can do for the one who cracks up before our eyes or who
takes the outlet offered by specious promises. But we can at
least be patient and calm and give him a chance to tell his
story quietly, without an audience and without a quarrel.
If his demands cannot be met we must tell him so decisively
and not put him off with vague excuses or promises that we
know cannot be kept. If his grievance is well taken and the
fault is ours we should admit it and lose no time in setting it
right. There is a magic in promptness that in our hurried
crowded days we too often lose."
Flop-House
By V. VALERIE GATES
Here they sleep and here they eat,
And all night long their heavy feet
Come draggling in; a pallet bed
Knows no distaste for any head.
Mike, Angelo and Casimir
Side by side sleep soundly here,
And black and white men may partake
Of soup and beans. The bread they break
Is symbol of a common cause,
And when has hunger known race laws?
Among these men the tragedy
Is lessened since they do not see
The blinded power that is spent —
Adding to their bewilderment.
Dependent Children
in New York
By JAMES H. FOSTER
Assistant Commissioner,
State Department of Social Welfare
COUNTING its depend-
ent children to the star-
tling total of nearly 1 10,-
ooo, the State of New York
concludes that its public and
private social agencies consti-
tute the greatest mother of
them all. In the function of
provider, the agencies footed in
1931 a bill of $35,000,000 —
which gives them paternal as
well as maternal status.
The count, made at the end
of 1931, included children cared for apart from their parents
at the expense of social agencies or who were the benefi-
ciaries of mothers'-aid allowances. It did not take in chil-
dren in hospitals, day-nurseries, summer camps and the
like nor children in families on home relief. The full report
of the study (The Volume, Distribution and Cost of Child
Dependency in New York State for the Year Ending De-
cember 31, 1931, by James H. Foster and Robert Axel)
will presently be published by the State Department of
Social Welfare, Albany, N. Y. While certain annual sta-
tistics on child dependency have long been available this
study is the first serious attempt in New York, and so far
as is known in any other state, to collect and analyze
statistics showing the full number of dependent children,
county by county, the sources of their support, the methods
of their care and the division of responsibility for their
commitment.
While 1931 was a depression year, the picture of child
dependency presented by this study is not greatly distorted
by violent change from the conditions of former years, for
reports to the State Department show during 1931 little
change either in the number or grouping of children under
the care of institutions and agencies and only a moderate
increase in the number of those cared for in their homes by
mothers' allowances. There was, however, a considerable
addition to the group cared for in foster homes. But on the
whole the 1931 figures may be regarded as fairly repre-
sentative. The state has met its emergency relief needs
without institutionalizing its children or breaking up its
families.
Among the most significant of the facts is the extreme
variation throughout the state in the number of dependent
children in relation to population. Counties fairly compar-
able in social and economic status differ widely as to the
ratio to population not only of children cared for at county
expense but in the use of state institutions and of private
agencies or institutions. For example, Broome County
shows a ratio of 89.7 dependent children of all classes per
10,000 of population while Tioga next door has but 57.2;
LEG END
DEPENDENT CHILDREN
PER 10.000 POPULATION
The number of de-
pendent children
in counties of New
Tork State on
December Jf, iojf
per 10,000 0} total
county population
Rensselaer shows 115.6, Columbia next to the south 82.4,
and Washington to the north only 46.2; Albany has 73.5
and Schenectady 28.0; Genesee 88.8 and Livingston 71.8.
Of children supported at county (including city) expense,
compare Schenectady's 14.9 per 10,000 of population with
Rensselaer's 102.6; Essex with 108.0 and Clinton with
22.1.
On the accompanying map, four localities, Cortland,
Essex, Rensselaer and the City of New York are heavily
shaded to show ratios of more than one hundred dependent
children per 10,000 of population. The report does not at-
tempt to go behind the figures and analyze the underlying
reasons for the high rate. But they stand out so strikingly
and are so dissimilar in character, socially, industrially
and economically, that speculation is inevitable as to the
reasons why three counties widely separated and the great
city should so far exceed the rest of the state in the inci-
dence of child dependency. There is evidently no common
factor in the material conditions of life, but to one who
knows the social and relief work of the state, the reasons
are not obscure. Cortland County is largely rural with some
industrial development in the City of Cortland and the
larger villages. The high standards of its child-welfare work
are widely recognized, the state institutions are much used,
and the high ratio of child dependency must be regarded as
the result of the care and thoroughness with which its work
is done.
Essex County is largely in the Adirondack region,
sparsely settled, with poor agricultural resources and little
industrialization. The summer brings vacation visitors in
large numbers whose expenditures are an important factor
in the economics of the county. It has a high proportion of
aged people, which suggests that the more enterprising or
more restless of the younger generation seek fortune or
adventure in other places. The high incidence of child
dependency evidently arises from local social and economic
conditions.
Rensselaer County is geographically largely rural but
highly industrial in its centers of population, the cities of
319
320
THE SURVEY
September 1933
Troy and Rensselaer. Both the County Department of
Public Welfare and the Children's Court lack effective or-
ganization for the investigation and study of the cases of
children who are proposed for acceptance as public charges
and for the necessary follow-up work after acceptance.
This is not a new situation and the high ratio of child
dependency cannot be regarded as a result of the present
period of depression.
It seems superfluous to say that the City of New York
cannot be compared with any of the counties of the state
either as to its economical and industrial conditions or as
to the necessities of its child-caring work. Up to the very
end of 1931, when the Temporary Emergency Relief Ad-
ministration was established, the City Department of
Public Welfare was prohibited by statute from giving home
relief except to veterans and to the blind. The Board of
Child Welfare followed a liberal policy but could grant al-
lowances for the mothers of children in their own homes
only within the rather strict definitions of the statute. As a
result, the Department of Pub-
lic Welfare was compelled to
remove from their homes chil-
dren whose needs in other juris-
dictions might easily have been
met by grants of home relief.
These facts, in addition to the
well-known problems of this
purely urban community, seem
to account for the high incidence
of child dependency.
The state has made provision
for the institutional care of
children committed as delin-
quent and of the mentally de-
fective and epileptic but the
use made of the facilities pro-
vided by the state varies widely.
Leaving out of consideration
the Thomas Indian School be-
cause it cares for a single and
highly localized racial group, the
ratio of utilization of state in-
stitutions per 10,000 of popula-
tion varies from 19.9 in Cort-
land Cornty to 3.0 in Nassau
and 2.8 in New York City. From
a social worker's point of view there is no indication that
the extent to which the state institutions are used bears
any relation to the actual incidence of juvenile delinquency
or mental defect in the several counties.
Many people still think of the "orphan asylum" as
really the only answer to the question of what to do with
the child of the broken or poverty-stricken home. Social
workers know better than this but the chart reproduced
herewith, showing the distribution of almost 110,000 de-
pendent children by type of care, shows how widely other
means than institutionalization have come to be used.
For purposes of this classification reformatories include
the state institutions which receive only children committed
as delinquent and institutions under private control which
receive adults as well as children. The private institutions
whose intake is not limited to children committed as
delinquent are included among institutional homes for
children. Schools for the deaf and for the blind which
receive children for educational purposes rather than as
dependent, and hospitals caring for physically handicapped
children are not included.
The year 1932, with its amazing increase in the need for
relief, was not marked by any large growth of institutional
populations but it did show a considerable increase in the
number of children cared for through mothers' allowances
and in foster homes.
In the allocation of children to the several kinds of care,
wide variations again appear in the practices of the several
counties. Two counties, Albany and Rensselaer, care for
more than one half of their dependent children in institu-
tional homes; in twenty counties and in the City of New
York which includes five counties, more than one half of
the children are cared for in their own homes through the
boards of child welfare while in fourteen counties, of which
nine have no active boards of child welfare, over one half
are in foster homes.
The dependent children with whom this report is con-
cerned may be divided into four groups in relation to re-
sponsibility for their care, as
follows:
Maintained at private ex-
pense
Maintained by state. . . .
Maintained by mothers'
allowance 5°>999
Maintained by counties
apart from their fami-
lies 4V 54
9."4
6,325
LEGEND
III tloMES FOR. MElJm DEFECTIVE!
Ill UrO&MATOIUCS
ill HOMES rot. PHYSICALLY
III tlOMES KM. lEMKKMty CAU
Distribution by type of care of 108,592 dependent
children in New Tork State on December J/, 1931
Total 108,592
Responsibility for acceptance
or commitment of public charges
is divided between county or
city commissioners of public
welfare who may accept desti-
tute children, and children's
courts which have jurisdiction
over children alleged to be
delinquent, neglected or physi-
cally handicapped. In 1931
children cared for as county
charges numbered 42,154, of
whom 27,432 or 65.1 percent
were accepted by public-welfare
officers and 14,722 or 34.9 per-
cent were committed by children's courts.
The picture of the relative activities of courts and public
welfare departments in the several counties is confused and
perplexing. No reason can be found in the general condi-
tions of community life to explain why, among the rural
counties, the children's court in Franklin County handles
nearly 95 percent of the cases of children who become
public charges and the corresponding court in Orange
County little more than 10 percent, nor why in the coun-
ties having large cities, the Erie County Court (Buffalo) has
10 percent of the children's cases and the Monroe County
Court (Rochester) nearly 70 percent. The conclusion can-
not be avoided that there is no common understanding of
the responsibilities of children's courts and no common
policy in the administration of their work and that con-;
versely public-welfare officers also have adopted no com-
mon definition of their duties in relation to children and
follow no common practice in their actual work.
To study and analyze the cost of child dependency in a
September 1933
THE SURVEY
321
state like New York is an extremely difficult and compli-
cated task. The fiscal periods of the counties and of private
agencies vary widely, classifications of expenditures are not
uniform and the dutiesof public officers and employes cannot
be so analyzed as to show what part of the expense of public
administration can properly be charted to child depend-
ency. Major items which could be accurately determined
include the expenditures of boards of child welfare, pay-
ments made to private institutions and agencies and the
actual maintenance expenses of these institutions and agen-
cies as reported to the State Department of Social Welfare.
Public administrative expenses and payments for boarding-
home care by public agencies were approximated as closely
as possible. The entire expenditures thus ascertained or
estimated were:
Expenditures Percent
By state, including maintenance of
child-caring institutions and pro-
rated expenditures for children in in-
stitutions caring also for adults $3,256,535.00 9.3
By counties and cities, net, after
deducting reimbursements received
for care of children 24,990,889.74 71 .5
By private institutions and agen-
cies, net, after deducting payments
for care of children 6,686,614.00 19.2
The Case of Buffalo
Total.. $34,934,03 8. 74 100. o
While this study is purely quantitative and designed to
present the facts of child dependency rather than to inquire
into the causes, the figures which it offers can hardly fail to
arouse the curiosity of the social worker and student of
public affairs as to why comparable subdivisions of the
state exhibit such strong contrasts in the numbers of their
dependent children, the choice of methods in caring for
them, the relative use of children's courts and public-
welfare officers in the acceptance of children as public
charges, the utilization of the facilities afforded by the state
institutions and the like. These variations cannot be re-
garded as an index of social maladjustment or economic
conditions in the several counties but evidently arise from
varying standards of local social work and of interpretation
of facts. The distinctions which are apparently made be-
tween cases of juvenile delinquency or neglect requiring
court action and cases of destitution requiring relief, indi-
cate rather different points of view and different interpreta-
tions than different states of facts. It cannot be said that
children in one county are more prone to serious delin-
quency or parents more inclined to cruelty or neglect than
in another.
WHILE no correlation can be established between total
populations or density of population and the extent of
existing child dependency nor any normal dependency
rate established from which it can be argued that one
county is caring for too many children and another too few,
it seems fair to conclude that the variations in the number
of dependent children, the methods of handling their cases
and their allocation to different types of care can be ac-
counted for only by corresponding variations in local com-
munity-consciousness of the importance of adequate treat-
ment of child dependency and its relation to community
welfare.
T took a year and a half of time, a fighting chairman,
a stiff-backed executive and a good deal of adjustment
in public thinking to turn Buffalo's old-line city relief
department, set in its ways and borne down by a huge
case-load, into a modern socially-adequate relief organiza-
tion. The report of A. W. Swanson, associate director of the
Buffalo, New York, Department of Social Welfare to the
State Temporary Emergency Relief Administration is the
case-story of that rehabilitation.
The story began early last year when Mr. Swanson of
the Buffalo Charity Organization Society was appointed
associate director of the department with a free hand for
its reorganization and the loyal support of the chairman,
Henry W. Hutt, and of social workers and responsible city
officials. Mr. Swanson's first step was to develop a larger
and more adequate staff. Overwhelmed with applicants he
stood his ground and picked his workers one by one over a
period of months until the visiting staff numbered 225, as it
now does.
Along with the expansion of personnel went a reorgani-
zation of the whole functional and accounting layout.
Over-centralization of records and of supervision had long
handicapped the five district offices. This was corrected by
lodging all open case-records in district offices and by add-
ing case-work supervisors to the district staffs. Supervision
in the central office now heads up in Mr. Swanson and two
assistants, one dealing with the case-work staff, the other
with the clerical. To the application bureau were assigned
seven experienced visitors and five stenographers with
implicit instructions for the thorough and considerate
treatment of every application.
Specialized services have developed rapidly under the
new regime. The responsibility for the general family plan
remains with the visitor who may however call in special
agents equipped to render fact-finding and adjustment
service in such matters as property, life insurance, bank
accounts, gas bills, stove repairs and so on. The department
has also a home economist, a work-relief bureau and
divisions for problems of residence, court action and non-
support cases.
Relief in Buffalo is carefully budgeted. It includes the
following items adjusted to individual family needs: Food,
supplied through retail stores; Rent, $12 a month maxi-
mum for unfurnished, $15 for furnished rooms; Payment
on Home, allowed under certain conditions on same basis
as rent; Fuel; Clothing, an allowance equal to 40 percent
of the food allowance filled from the clothing warehouse;
Medical Care, provided by city physicians, hospitals and
clinics with arrangements for glasses and dental care.
In computing the income of a family 50 percent of
children's earnings if less than $10 a week and 60 percent if
more than $10 are considered a family resource. All men
whose families receive home relief are, if physically quali-
fied, eligible for work relief. When on work relief they are
paid in cash with an additional allowance for lighting bills
and for carfare.
Reasonable as these standards seem it was not altogether
simple to put them into effect. However it was the en-
largement of the staff that occasioned the most public
criticism. But on this point as on others Mr. Swanson
speaks frankly and firmly; "Our greatest weakness," he
says, "is the lack of sufficient supervision for our visiting
staff. Improvement of this condition is essential."
THE COMMON WELFARE
Recovery and Relief
BETWEEN April and June public-relief expenditures in
the United States fell by about six and a half million
dollars, the number of families receiving relief by about
six hundred thousand. There is every indication that the
figures for July and August will show further decreases.
How much of this drop in volume is seasonal no one knows.
But given the most optimistic forecasts the fact remains
that three million families, by the word of Harry L. Hop-
kins, Federal Relief Administrator, must go through the
coming winter on relief.
What will happen to these families when the rising price
of commodities, hailed as a sign of business recovery, hits
the purchasing power of the relief dollar?
The relief dollar buys no more than any other dollar,
and every housewife knows that a dollar buys less food
today than it did six months ago. Yet the average relief
allowance, per family, has shown a tendency, not to rise
to meet the increased cost of food, but to sag below the
dubious and uncertain standards of the past year or so.
In New York, for example, the average home-relief
allowance in July was $21.39 compared with $35. 87 in
March, a reduction of over 40 percent. Meantime the cost
of living rose by some 8 percent, so that the depleted allow-
ance was further reduced by the shrinkage in the purchas-
ing power of the dollar. Obviously the unemployed in
New York who have not yet felt the beneficent effects of
the new deal are getting it both ways.
At no time during the depression have standards of relief
anywhere risen above a doubtful subsistence minimum.
But now the rising prices of recovery threaten to drive them
down to new and dangerously low levels. Unless this gap
between relief and recovery is closed, unless the public
clearly understands the necessity for increased unit costs
of relief three millions families face a worse winter than
they did a year ago.
Public Medical Care
THAT "state medicine" no longer is to be considered a
skeleton in the closet but something as open and serv-
iceable and accepted as the bones demonstrated before
young medicoes seems the deduction to be drawn from the
analysis of public medical care presented before the last
annual meeting of the American Medical Association by
Dr. Thomas Parran, Jr., New York State's Commissioner
of Health. Many discussions of "state medicine" start with
the assumption that from a simon-pure system of indi-
vidualistic dealings between the patient and the private
physician we look out at impending changes wholly differ-
ent from what we now know. That such is far from the
actual case appears in Dr. Parran's moderate statement:
"With two thirds of the hospital beds in New York State
owned by the public and supported through taxes; with
15 percent of the population receiving all the necessities of
life from public funds, including medical care; with prac-
tically all cases of mental disease and a large proportion
of tuberculosis being hospitalized at public expense; with
one half of the burden of syphilis treatment a public re-
sponsibility; with the care of crippled children an actua
obligation, and the medical care of school children a lega
obligation of the public; and with blanket authority exist-
ing for any city or county to construct and operate public
general hospitals available to all citizens, it will be seer
that, to a considerable extent, medical care already haj
become a matter of public participation." Granting the
inconveniences or passing hardships that are the price o!
change, these facts give ground for optimism that the pres-
sure of the times is leading us not to ills of which we know
nothing, but toward fuller use of measures that we long
have tried, used, and found worthy of increased support
even in leaner days. Public medicine in New York State i<
meaning care to people who otherwise would have none
and as Dr. Parran declared, "payment to physicians frorr
public funds during the past year probably has meant the
difference between solvency and insolvency for a great
many doctors, particularly in rural areas."
Rough Spots in Our Road
THEY also serve the NRA and its purposes who refuse
to stand and wait. When Mary van Kleeck and Wil-
liam F. Ogburn resigned their respective posts as members
of the Advisory Council of the U. S. Employment Service
and the Consumers Advisory Board, with public statements
explaining their action, they called attention to two of the
dangerous trends inherent in the present conduct of the
tremendous experiment to which the country is committed.
Neither Miss van Kleeck nor Professor Ogburn was willing
to stand by and watch these possibilities develop to a
point where to check them would be difficult, perhaps im-
possible. Apparently unable to deal with them from within,
they chose the alternative of protest made audible by re-
fusal to "play ball" under rules that seem to them to im-
peril the great issues at stake.
Miss van Kleeck's chief concern is with the threat to the
collective bargaining provision of the NIRA in the stand
of its administration against strikes or "any aggressive
action [on the part of labor] during the recovery program."
This policy, if carried out, means, she feels, support for
"company unionism" and the weakening of the organized
labor movement in this country. Her long and distinguished
service as director of industrial studies for the Russell Sage
Foundation, in the course of which she has surveyed indus-
trial relations in both organized and unorganized industries,
gives singular weight to her testimony when she says, "Only
genuine collective bargaining through trade unions with the
right to strike preserved and not discouraged can insure
the self-government necessary to stabilize employment and
raise wages."
Professor Ogburn holds that consumers' interests are not
being adequately protected under the recovery program.
In his memorandum to General Hugh S. Johnson, he
points out the danger to the consumer under the centraliza-
tion of industry, and the need for adequate indexes of
prices and of purchasing power. He suggests that safe-
guarding of the consumer's stake in the recovery program
322
September 1933
THE SURVEY
323
can hardly be "relegated ... to a group inadequately
equipped to learn the facts of costs and prices." Finally, he
points out that:
The Consumers Board . . . has no supporting organization
as has the Labor Board with the underlying unions, and as has
the Industries Board with its powerful and wealthy associations.
There are 1 27,000,000 supporters of the Consumers Board, but
they have few organizations and can be reached only through the
press.
Here is warning by experts. The only adequate reply the
NRA can make to such wise and disinterested criticism is
to strengthen the weak spots in the recovery program indi-
cated by Miss van Kleeck and Professor Ogburn.
Hospital Work Up, Funds Down
THE fiscal jigsaw puzzle of the voluntary hospitals is
exemplified in the 1933 omens recently worked out in
Cleveland. Community Fund hospitals in that city estimate
earnings for 1933 as $2,112,000 in contrast to £3,623,000
taken in in 1929. Community Fund allocations are
figured at approximately $438,000, considerably less than
half the amount of the earlier year; income from endow-
ment, which rose steadily through 1931, shows a shrinkage
of more than £600,000 from its high point and is down 30
percent from 1929. The result is that if the hospitals are to
give in 1933 considerably less free care than they gave in
1929 and much less than they have given in subsequent
years, public subsidy to balance the books would have to
be six times as much as that granted a year ago: $926,000
instead of I932's $156,000. Whether or not that amount
can be obtained is dubious. The city hospital and tubercu-
losis sanitarium show somewhat increased expenses through
these years and greatly increased service: the total number
of days' care in these public institutions in 1933 is estimated
as a third greater than in 1929 while clinic visits probably
will be more than tripled. Voluntary hospitals in Cleve-
land now are accepting for free and part-pay care only the
cases of the most emergent nature. The figures suggest that
here as elsewhere hospital and dispensary care perforce are
being shifted from the private to the public agencies (see
Survey Graphic, June 1933, p. 364, Crisis in the Hospitals,
by Mary Ross). Moreover, as is pointed out by William I.
Lacy, assistant director of the Cleveland Welfare Federa-
tion, "The thing which cannot be measured statistically is
the extent to which persons needing hospital care are hav-
ing it refused."
Consult the Can!
WHEN a wholesaler and a retailer have dealings in
canned foods or a banker makes loans on them, the
transaction is carried out on the basis of the grade of
the product in those cans. But when a housewife goes to the
grocery, she has no means of knowing whether or not the
alluring adjectives on the label represent something more
than self-interested hopes or sheer sales talk. Congres-
sional action finally has carried through a measure long
urged by home economists and the Department of Agri-
culture, making it possible for producers to place on the
label the official grade for canned fruits and vegetables on
the basis of standards worked out by the government. Use
of the grades on labels is voluntary. The housewife who
gets graded products and reads the label will know that
"fancy" or "choice" or "standard" or "substandard"
means a definite rating backed by Uncle Sam. The step is
another inch on the long road toward opportunity for in-
telligent buying, and if buyers observe it, will push along
a little further the chance for intelligent production.
School Relief
A WORK-RELIEF project which will help save the day
for thousands of unemployed teachers and for hun-
dreds of thousands of children whose school terms have
been shortened (often to the vanishing point) by the de-
pression is announced by Harry L. Hopkins, head of the
FERA. Under the new scheme, state relief administrations
are authorized to use federal money to pay work-relief
wages to unemployed teachers, provided three rigid condi-
tions are observed: first, the teachers are to be assigned to
"appropriate educational authorities who will have entire
supervision over their activities"; second, they are to be
assigned only to elementary schools which prior to August
19, the date of the authorization, had been ordered closed
or partially closed for the coming school year for lack of
funds; third, they are to be assigned only to rural counties,
where the heaviest educational hardship has been felt.
Unemployed teachers competent "to teach adults unable
to read or write English" may be taken on in cities as well
as in country districts.
Mr. Hopkins states, in connection with the new plan,
that thirty-three states have reported eighty thousand un-
employed teachers, and "some fifteen states have definitely
reported shortened school terms."
That the scheme is not to be used as a means to shift
school responsibility from local shoulders to the FERA is
made clear by Mr. Hopkins, who also points out commu-
nity values in this move to aid destitute teachers.
Unemployment Insurance Proposals
PUT forward as "an American plan for unemployment-
reserve funds," the American Association for Labor
Legislation offers the revised draft of its bill as a basis for
state legislation. In an introduction to the proposed meas-
ure, the association points out that among advocates of
unemployment insurance there is difference of opinion on
two main questions: first, whether the legislation should
impose compulsory contributions on both employers and
employes; second, whether reserves should be pooled in a
state fund, pooled by industries, or held in segregated
funds for each establishment. On both points, the suggested
bill departs from the standards proposed by the conference
of the American Association for Social Security (see The
Survey, August 15, page 281). The law drawn by the
American Association for Labor Legislation would limit
compulsory contributions to the employer group, though
allowing voluntary contributions by employes. Its basic
plan is for "individual employer accounts in the state
fund"; but pooling by industry would be permitted, and
"required when the administrative authority . . . finds
that it is desirable in order to safeguard the reserves or to
carry out the purpose of the act." The measure provides
for benefits at the rate of 50 percent of wages, with a
maximum of $15 a week over a total period of sixteen
weeks in any one year. Domestic servants, agricultural
workers, public employes, and employes in "highly sea-
sonal industries which customarily operate not more than
seventeen weeks a year" are not covered.
324
THE SURVEY
September 1933
Blunting Adversity's Edge
SEVERAL months ago, for the usual sad economic reasons,
Allegany County, New York, had to discontinue public-
health nursing, which for several years past had carried preclinic
and follow-up work of the diagnostic chest clinics. The problem
was, who then would do it? A consultation between the county
medical society, the district state health officer and the chief of
the Division of Tuberculosis disclosed that the doctors wished to
have the clinics continued and gave assurance that they would
do all in their power to see that appropriate patients reached
them. Letters announcing the five clinics were mailed to all
physicians in the county and the district health officer and state
supervising nurse followed up with visits to the physicians. When
the clinic days came round, there were 178 patients, who had
been referred by 31 of the 37 doctors. The New York State Health
Department hails the result as evidence of growing appreciation
of public measures on the part of the medical profession, and
prefaces the account with quotation of the statement that the
public-health nurse "is the right arm of the health officer and the
left arm of the practicing physician."
Operating on a Health Budget
HOW one city operated on its health-department budget with
an eye to the interests of the patient — in other words, the
public — was related recently by two representatives of the Chi-
cago Board of Health speaking in a broadcast sponsored by the
American Public Health Association. The problem was the
drastic cut of half a million dollars from a budget of two million.
The principle was to safeguard five essentials: protection of child
life and motherhood; control of contagion; accurate recording of
births and deaths; support of public-health laboratories; sanitary
control of diseases spread from human waste and by vermin and
insects. It was found that some plumbing and building inspectors
could be eliminated without endangering conditions affecting
health and that inspection of lighting and ventilation could be
temporarily reduced, as could clerical forces. Such methods saved
more than the necessary half million, and it has been recom-
mended that the additional saving be applied to employing more
public-health nurses, "the best investment a health department
can make." Baby welfare stations and maternal consultation
service are maintained. For further details on the cuts and re-
organization consult the 1932 report of the Chicago Board of
Health which will be sent on request from the Board of the Ameri-
can Public Health Association, 450 Seventh Ave., New York
City.
The Master Detective
NEW HAVEN reports as most successful the X-ray plan of
case-finding used last winter when a third of the highschool
pupils in the city signed up for pictures on the new paper films
which are economical in time, convenience, and money. Twelve
hitherto undiagnosed cases of tuberculosis were discovered; 405
with less serious forms of the disease, 80 with other conditions,
and 463 considered "suspicious." The cost to the city was only
$137.50, but the Department of Health points out that the pro-
gram was lopsided since only those whose parents could pay were
X-rayed and many unable to do so should have had them. Paper
films have been used also in Verona, New Jersey, where 1300
public-school and several hundred parochial-school children were
X-rayed. Parents of about a third of the children paid the small
fee of 80 cents for the X-ray; the school paid for the rest.
Health and Schools
"\X7HAT the most active and interested secondary schools are
' doing for health is the subject of a new monograph by P.
Roy Brammell under the imprint of the federal Office of Educa-
tion. (Health Work and Physical Education. Bulletin, 1932, No.
17, National Survey of Secondary Education, Monograph No. 28.
Superintendent of Documents, Washington, D.C., price 10 cents.)
Mr. Brammell finds that health and physical education have
made "large gains, even while other more traditional subjects are
losing in prominence." Its largest shortcomings are tasks that
still lie ahead: effective programs of correction in physical educa-
tion and of proper follow-up, and progress in measuring effective-
ness of general programs in this field, methods of instruction and
materials used. The monograph, ninety-seven pages in length,
should prove especially useful to schools starting or developing
health programs and gives concrete plans and outlines.
The lack of evaluation to which Mr. Brammell points has called
forth a series of research monographs on school health published
by the American Child Health Association, of which No. V has
recently made its appearance: An Evaluation of School Health
Procedures, by Raymond Franzen. (144 pp. Price 90 cents in
paper, $1.15 in cloth of the Association, 450 Seventh Ave., New
Pertinent Publications
SOCIAL RESEARCH PROGRAM OF THE NATIONAL TUBERCU-
LOSIS ASSOCIATION, by Jessamine S. Whitney. National Tuberculosis
Association, 450 Seventh Aw., New York City.
POINT of view, scope and check list of important published
and unpublished studies in the social field instigated
through the N. T. A. since 1920.
WHAT TO MAKE WITH RED CROSS FLOUR.
EVAPORATED MILK. Both on request from the Evaporated Milk Associa-
tion, 203 N. Wabash Ate., Chicago, 111.
THE former a set of recipes published in cooperation with
the Baltimore Chapter of the American Red Cross; the
latter a set of principles and recipes whose statements about
evaporated milk have been accepted by the Committee on
Foods of the American Medical Association.
OUTLINE FOR THE PSYCHIATRIC CLASSIFICATION OF PROB-
LEM CHILDREN, by Sanger Brown II, M.D., Horatio M. Pollock and
Howard W. Potter, M.D. State Hospitals Press, Utica. N. ¥. Price 25 cents.
PRINCIPAL and supplemental classifications, with a defini-
tion of terms; approved by the Committee on Statistics of
the New York State Department of Mental Hygiene.
COMFORT STATIONS IN NEW YORK CITY. Women's City Club, 22
Park Ave., New York City.
SURVEY of the inadequacies of today and a plan for the
future.
A SELECTED bibliography, General Medical Care for In-
dustrial Employes, has been prepared in mimeograph by
Helen Baker, librarian, the Industrial Relations Section,
Princeton University.
FOR A LIST of titles and prices of pamphlets and reprints
on the prevention of blindness and conservation of eyesight
in home, school, industry, and through public-health and
social work, consult The National Society for the Preven-
tion of Blindness, 450 Seventh Ave., New York City.
York City.) Earlier monographs have considered Health Educa-
tion Tests, Physical Measures of Growth and Nutrition, Public
Health Aspects of Dental Decay in Children, and Influence of
Social and Economic Factors on the Health of the School Child.
Concerned, as were its predecessors, with the intricate techniques
of precise measurements, this monograph is addressed to the
serious student, though its implications are important to all the
professional groups dealing with school children. A summary
volume is to follow.
Our Submerged Fifth
THAT somewhere in the neighborhood of one fifth of the
preschool children in the country are showing the effects of
poor nutrition, inadequate housing, lack of medical care, "and in
many cases the effect of the anxiety and sense of insecurity that
prevails wherever there is no work," is the conclusion the federal
Children's Bureau draws from its own studies and data gathered
by the New York AICP. New York City's average of children
found malnourished in school examinations has jumped from 13
percent in 1927-29 to 21 percent in 1932, and similar evidence
comes from Detroit, Springfield, Philadelphia, the coal regions of
Kentucky and elsewhere.
From Germany comes the first of a series of reports of the
effects of unemployment on children, compiled by Dr. Richard A.
Bolt, director of the Cleveland, Ohio, Child Health Association.
(American Journal of Public Health, Vol. XXIII, No. 7, p. 744).
The views of health officers and others cited by Dr. Bolt stress
especially the damaging effect of long-continued unemployment
on children of all ages but the youngest, and the depletion or com-
plete consumption of the most important family reserve, "the
mother's physical and moral stamina." One German authority
quoted declared, "Increased neurosis is perhaps the most serious
danger to health caused by the present crisis. This increase is not
sufficiently taken into account because it is not easily recog-
nized."
A BIGGER bargain than ever, The Journal of the Outdoor Life
costs $i a year from the National Tuberculosis Association in-
stead of the previous j>2 and has a new format to boot. The
July issue, a special number on rehabilitation, is of particular
interest to social workers.
NEARLY zero hour for registration for extension courses in public-
health nursing under the joint supervision of New York Univer-
sity and the New York State Department of Health; matricula-
tion closes definitely September 15. Courses are open to registered
nurses and are conducted by the conference method, two hours
monthly under the direction of an experienced public-health
nurse, or by correspondence.
THE highest suicide rates in Illinois in 1930 and 1931 were found
among laborers, according to an analysis by the State Depart-
ment of Health. On the other hand "collectors, commercial
travellers, school teachers, clergymen and bookkeepers, in the
order listed, find a greater satisfaction and zest in life than people
in most other occupations if the suicide statistics shed any light
on the subject."
DEMONSTRATION of a Demonstration might be the title of the
current annual report from Bellevue-Yorkville (New York City)
which describes preschool clinics, chest consultation service and
other health services first tried there, then gradually extended,
after successful experiment, to branches of the Health Depart-
ment in other parts of the city. For a copy of the report consult
the Bellevue-Yorkville Health Demonstration, 325 East 38 St.,
New York City.
"THE greatest alleviation of the risks and sufferings of life that
Parliament has ever conferred upon any people," said ex-Premier
David Lloyd-George in a radio broadcast commemorating the
twenty-fifth anniversary of the British National Insurance Act.
YOU CAN BE SURE
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Baltimore, Md.
For those frequent discomforts
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For 50 years physicians have prescribed
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In 1911, Mr. Lloyd-George declared, he promised the plan would
give nine-pence for four-pence; actually today the insured re-
ceive ten-pence half-penny for four-pence, through a medical
service which has "direct personal interest and advantage in
preventing rather than curing the disease."
WINNING cities in their respective population classes in the annual
health conservation contest of the United States Chamber of
Commerce are Detroit; Cincinnati; Syracuse, N. Y. and New
Haven, Conn., tied; East Orange, N. J.; Brookline, Mass.; and
Lodi, Calif. For information on the fifth contest, now starting,
consult the Insurance Department, United States Chamber of
Commerce, Washington, D. C., or the American Public Health
Association, 450 Seventh Ave., New York City. The only require-
ment for entry is that a community's local chamber of com-
merce be affiliated with the National Chamber.
WEST VIRGINIA has joined the list of states that know they have
a heart — or more seriously, know that they have need of an
organization to protect and preserve the hearts of their citizens.
The West Virginia Heart Association was organized at a recent
meeting of the heart committee of the West Virginia Medical
Association: Dr. Oscar B. Biern of Huntington, is president;
Dr. George H. Barksdale, Charleston, vice-president; Dr. Raphael
J. Condry, Elkins, secretary. The objectives of the new associa-
tion are to gather and disseminate information on the prevention
and care of heart disease and develop and apply a uniform classi-
fication and study of heart disorders.
(In answering advertisements please mention THE SURVEY)
325
326
THE SURVEY
September 1933
An Anti-Sweatshop Weapon
THE anti-sweatshop campaign1 in Cleveland, Ohio, has pro-
duced an ingenious method of reinforcing the State Labor
Department in uncovering and prosecuting violations of the labor
law. At the instigation of Councilman Ejbl, who represents a
working-class neighborhood, the City Council reenacted the pro-
visions of the state labor law affecting the employment of women
and children. Because of cuts in the state budget, there is now
only one factory inspector for Cleveland. This is, of course, too
large a job even for an unusually energetic inspector. But as a
result of the council's action, the police-woman's bureau is now
charged with the responsibility of assisting in enforcing the labor
laws. This bureau can call upon women in the detective bureau
for help on difficult cases. There is the added advantage that
policewomen on night duty can be assigned to give prompt atten-
tion to night-work complaints. A Cleveland correspondent re-
ports that:
One further advantage, in addition to the added force for inspection, is
that workers who have complaints seem to know how to reach the police
department more easily than the state. Of course it is not going to supplant
the state inspection, but it is supplementing and strengthening it greatly.
One amusing aspect of the matter is that employers of a certain type do
not enjoy the publicity and the surroundings of the police court. This has
been very evident on several occasions; and we hope may be a further
deterrent.
Wage-Earning Mothers
FOR the purpose of calling attention to questions raised by the
employment of women outside the home, and to discuss pos-
sible remedies, the first international congress on working mothers
and their children was held in Paris this summer. More than
twenty countries, including the United States, were represented.
Reports were read on the condition of wage-earning women in
various lands. It has been found, these reports indicated, that a
married mother's work outside the home necessitates expenses
which amount on the average to half her earnings. The delegates
spoke against day nurseries for infants, day centers for older
children and other unsatisfactory but costly measures. These,
they held, should be replaced by allowances to mothers, coopera-
tive societies, mutual-aid funds and other arrangements for rein-
forcing the family income. Resolutions passed asked for the pay-
ment of a wage to meet the normal needs of a family with the
mother staying at home; for improved conditions for women in
employment; for agencies and measures reinforcing the home. The
congress also urged the establishment in all countries of commit-
tees, such as already exist in some countries, to press for the carry-
ing out of the resolutions.
Company Unions
\T7ITH widespread discussion of the NIRA provisions for
' collective bargaining and freedom of employes to organize,
the National Industrial Conference Board has stated the case for
the "company unions" in a new pamphlet, Collective Bargaining
Through Employe Representation (247 Park Avenue, New York.
Price, $1.50). Tracing the growth of the works' council or other
plant union, the study points out that one and a quarter million
employes were so organized in 1932. The functioning of the two
usual types of employe-representation plans are described in de-
tail. One, the joint-representation type, stresses cooperative action
of management and workers and provides for equal membership
and voting power on the council. The other, the employe-com-
mittee type, assumes that representatives of the workers can
function with greater freedom if there are no management mem-
bers on the council. The study holds that employe-representation
plans have two chief advantages: to provide a "safety valve" for
the workers; and to give management and labor opportunity to
"consider calmly, on the basis of accurate information rather
than rumor, their respective positions and problems." As between
company unions and labor unions, this research group holds that
"in a majority of cases the former offers a better opportunity for
amicable adjustment of disputed questions, while the latter is
equipped to bring greater pressure to bear on the employer." The
chief strength of the labor union — the fact that the workers in one
plant have behind them the strength of all the organized workers
in their craft or trade — is pointed to in this report as the factor
"which leads many employers and workers to prefer the plan of
employe representation."
More High-Priced Bargains
HIGH costs paid by workers to make possible the startlingly
low figures on the price tags of hand-embroidered baby
dresses, table linen and underwear are revealed in a recent report
of the Puerta Rican Labor Department. In the clothing factories,
which make up goods for the export trade, average full-time hours
were 47 a week, though the average actually worked was 37 a
week. Had all the employes been on full time their average weekly
earnings would have been $4.21. The average of the amounts
actually received was $3.31. Less than ten cents an hour was paid
to 'more than seven tenths of the workers, and less than seven
cents to about a half. According to the 1930 census figures, 97
percent of the 4700 workers in Puerto Rican clothing factories are
women.
Southern Workers' School
IN spite of unemployment, broken time and depression wages
twenty-eight students gathered at Weaver College, Weaver-
ville, North Carolina, for the seventh session of the Southern
Summer School for Women Workers in Industry June 2g-Aug-
ust 10. They represented cotton, silk and rayon textiles, tobacco,
garments, candy and other southern industries. The six-weeks
session included work in economics and current events, spoken
and written English, labor dramatics and health education.
There was plenty of opportunity in the school program for read-
ing, relaxation and "good times." All the students made con-
spicuous gains in general health and in posture, as well as in the
regular school work.
Employes as Stockholders
EXPERIENCE of employe stockholders during the depres-
sion, stated in the latest of the invaluable Princeton Studies,
is sharp warning against the widespread revival of such plans
under an expansion program. (Employe Stock Ownership and the
Depression, by Eleanor Davis, Assistant Director, Industrial
Relations Section, Princeton University). The study covers fifty
typical plans over the seven-year period, 1926-1932. It shows that
such investment failed miserably in providing security for the
savings of wage earners. How the stocks sold to employes fluctu-
ated is shown by an index of median quotations of thirty-five
leading issues on July I each year. With 1926 prices as 100, these
investments reached a peak of 1 15 in 1929, but fell to 72 by July
1931, and to 14 by July 1932. It must be borne in mind that the
September 1933
THE SURVEY
327
stocks were sold as savings for old age or for "a rainy day" to
workers whose wages left only a narrow margin for saving, and
that while they were purchased at the high prices of 1927-29,
they had to be sold in 1931-32 to help tide over unemployment
jeriods. Only two of the various types of safeguards for such
)lans have proved in any degree adequate: a company contribu-
:ion toward the cost of the stock of a fifth to a third of the total
cost; and a company guarantee of the return of the employe's
nvestment. The cost and risk involved in these two schemes are
so great that few companies have felt able to assume either,
fifteen of the fifty stock-ownership plans studied are now more or
less clearly limited to higher paid or executive groups who can
afford the risks of this type of investment more easily than can
the average wage earner.
Child Labor Moves Ahead
BEFORE the 1933 sessions of the state legislatures adjourned
two more states ratified the Child Labor Amendment,
winging the total to fifteen. Thirty-six state ratifications are
necessary to enact the amendment. The inadequacy of state
child-labor control is shown by the fact that only Wisconsin and
Jtah have followed the example set by Ohio twenty years ago
n adopting a minimum age of sixteen years. Efforts to tighten
child-labor provisions have failed in many states. In Pennsylvania
the legislature recently refused to reduce hours from fifty-four to
"orty-eight a week or bar night-work for children.
Making Minimum Wage Laws Work
AT the Washington conference, called by Secretary of Labor
Perkins during the summer to consider the administration of
minimum-wage legislation, the value of a common basis of forms,
reports, and records to give comparable material from the several
states was stressed. Other principles formulated by the con-
'erence were: minimum-wage rates should correspond to those in
the codes approved by the NRA; no differential in the minimum
wage for learners, since the minimum for an industry is based on
jnskilled labor; an hourly rate higher than the minimum for part-
rime workers; overtime at time-and-a-half.
\VHAT have the leading industrial groups of this country ac-
:omplished in the past year in control of accidents? What are the
nost important accident hazards today? What are individual
:ompanies doing to reduce these hazards, and what can industries
io, cooperatively, toward national accident prevention? These
ire questions to which answers will be sought at the Twenty-
second Annual Safety Congress and Exposition, to be held in
Chicago the first week in October.
\N active anti-company union campaign is announced by the
eft-wing Continental Congress of Farmers and Workers, which
las opened headquarters in the Moxley Building, Chicago, and
:aken on Dan R. Donovan, a New England trade unionist from
:he ranks of the machinists as field secretary.
CONNECTICUT'S factory registration law, which went into effect
luly i, is a useful weapon in the fight against the "runaway shop."
The law provides that no factory employing three or more workers
nay be opened or may change its address unless the employer
,ias first filed with the Commissioner of Labor such information
ibout the nature of the business, the number of employes, and so
>n, as the Commissioner may require.
\ HELPFUL guide through the mass of material on unemployment
mblished since 1931 is offered by the Industrial Relations Sec-
ion, Princeton University, in a selected bibliography: Unemploy-
nent Prevention, Compensation and Relief. It covers books,
>amphlets, magazine articles and public documents, listing only
he more important items on each phase of the problem. It was
:ompiled by Helen Baker, librarian of the Section.
More Than Bread
N the old hypothesis that "man does not live by bread alone,"
the Wisconsin State Legislature early in the summer ear-
marked $30,000 of relief money to pay the tuition of any unem-
ployed persons who choose to study in the extension courses
offered by the University of Wisconsin. Also, $ 170,000 was set
aside as a loan fund to aid hundreds of youths who have begun
their work in Wisconsin colleges, but cannot continue unless
credit is extended to them.
In Minnesota, a plan sponsored by Governor Floyd B. Olsen
is under consideration for providing education at public cost for
225,000 unemployed young men and women in the state.
Robert M. Hutchins, president of the University of Chicago,
is leader of a drive for the use of federal relief funds to send boys
of college age back to school, taking them out of the job market
as well as giving them a better equipment for adult life.
Earning and Learning
THE problem of the "idle" boy or girl, over fourteen years of
age, is kindling interest in many communities in a plan
originated some years ago in Springfield, Massachusetts, spon-
sored by Theodore Vail, Horace Moses and the late Senator
Murray Crane. Junior Achievement, as it is called, is not a club,
but a program available to existing groups or to new ones. It
organizes the groups into miniature business companies of
eight to fifteen members which make and market definite salable
wares — woodwork, leather or metal articles, food products,
needlecraft and so on. The groups which are financially independ-
ent raise their initial capital by "stock" at from ten to fifty
cents a share. The central organization supplies information
covering organization, patterns, business records and so on.
The purpose is to teach young people simple business principles,
including banking and accounting, skill in craftsmanship and
to give them a pleasant group experience and a chance to earn
their own spending money. Of the thirty-five companies in New
York City, many have managed so well that they have "declared
dividends" after paying off such overhead expenses as rent,
light, cost of materials and "wages" to the workers. The national
headquarters are at 33 Pearl Street, Springfield, Massachusetts.
Apprenticeship vs. Schooling
A THREE-YEAR experiment in the peripatetic training of
•**• vocational counselors ended with an institute in August
in the offices of the Vocational Service for Juniors, 122 East
25 Street, New York. The 1932-33 group of apprentices, just
returned from a program of study and work in selected schools,
government departments, mental-hygiene clinicsj business
organizations and research centers in various parts of the country,
spent two weeks in discussing things that counselors ought to
know.
About twenty young men and women have benefited by the
experiment, the money for which was furnished by the Rocke-
328
THE SURVEY
September 193:
feller Foundation. According to Dr. Hayes, director of the Voca-
tional Service, the plan has proved its superiority over the
theoretical training in occupational counseling that is provided
by schools and colleges.
Haven for Scholars
A UNIVERSITY in Exile is announced by the New School for
•**• Social Research in New York City, as a protest against "the
shallow and injurious tendency of political authorities to en-
slave the scholar to the political will." About fifteen professors,
proscribed by German universities because of race will come to
the School as a faculty in the political and social sciences. They
will elect their own dean, set up their own working rules and
organize a rounded program of research and instruction. The
project is under the auspices of an advisory committee that in-
cludes Dr. Wilbur L. Cross, Governor of Connecticut, John
Dewey of Columbia, Felix Frankfurter of Harvard Law School,
Robert M. Hutchins, president of the University of Chicago,
George A. Plimpton, publisher, Herbert Bayard Swope, journal-
ist. The experiment is set up for a two-year period.
Hill School
PATTERNED as closely as possible on the Danish Folk
School idea, the Highlander Folk School in the Cumberland
mountains near Monteagle, Tennessee begins the second year of
a successful adult education experiment. The nucleus of the
school is a thirty-five-acre farm, rented for the purpose where
the two teachers and the few "boarding pupils" live. The school
is supported by the farm, supplemented by small donations.
Most of the school work is done in night classes in psychology
(called "how to think straight" in the curriculum), geography,
literature, contemporary social and economic problems. There
is no tuition and no salaries are paid. The old ballads and "singin*
games" of the community are part of the school program. Some
of the classes meet at the school, others are organized in nearby
mining and agricultural communities. From twenty to twenty-
five students, ranging in age from eighteen to fifty are enrolled in
each class, and as many as a hundred men and women sometimes
attend the regular Saturday night meetings which are divided
between games and discussions of current events.
Office Workers at Oberlin
OR two weeks the thirty-three secretaries, stenographers,
clerks and machine operators who made up the first Summer
Institute for Office Workers at Oberlin studied the economic
crisis. They came from ten states, and their purpose was "to
understand something of the forces that are controlling our
working life and to recognize our relationship with industrial
workers in facing the problems that all workers have in common."
The program was carried out by reading and by small discussion
groups. The classes in economics were led by Theresa Wolfson.
of Brooklyn College, in social history and English by Clara
Kaiser of Western Reserve University, and in social ethics by
Orlie Pell of Hollins College. There were a number of outside
speakers. The students all planned to continue their work through
the winter in workers' education classes and study groups. It
is hoped that next summer the institute may be expanded into a
four weeks' summer school for office workers. The winter head-
quarters are at 302 East 35 Street, New York.
Fall River Cuts Costs
W!
rHEN the city of Fall River, Massachusetts, found, two
years ago, that it could no longer meet its obligations,
its financial affairs were put in the hands of the Fall River Board
of Finance, to function as would the receiver of a bankrupt
business. In its second annual report, this Board presents some
interesting school cost figures. With a population of 115,401 in
1912 and 115,301 in 1930, school costs per pupil had increased
from $34.57 to $107.28. This meant an increase in total revenu<
school costs in round numbers from $502,300 to $i,8K,ooo
Teachers' and administrators' salary totals had gone up frorr
$364,000 to $1,488,300. Salaries and pensions for janitors hac
increased from $53,900 to $155,100. Under the new regime, th(
cost per pupil has been cut to $74.59. The number of teachers
and administrators, which had risen from 500 to 713 betweer
1912 and 1930 was cut to 567. The average annual salaries foi
the three years were $728, $2087, $1641, representing an averagi
cut of 18 percent between 1930 and 1932. Janitors' salaries anc
pensions were cut 36 percent; other school costs, 11.7 percent
A reduction in school membership from 17,427 in 1930-31 tc
15,706 for the last school year was largely due to two changes
kindergartens were discontinued and the entrance age increasec
from five and a half to six years. The Board makes this comment
"The school system . . . has operated with no evident decrease
in efficiency, and to the apparent satisfaction of the pupils anc
their parents."
The Maryland Case
\X7HETHER or not a college or university can compel stu-
' dents conscientiously opposed to military training or
religious grounds to take the Reserve Officers Training Course is
soon to be carried to the U. S. Supreme Court for decision. In
mid-summer the Maryland Court of Appeals reversed the actior
of the Baltimore Superior Court which held last winter thai
Wayne L. Lees and Ennis H. Coale, University of Marylanc
students expelled because they refused to take military training
must be reinstated (see The Survey, December 15, 1932, page
693). The sincerity of the two boys has not been questioned
Lees is a Unitarian, Coale a Methodist who has taken seriousl)
the vigorous peace stand of his church. The two students plan tc
carry their case to the highest court without delay. They hav<
the support of the Committee against Militarism in Education
as well as of local church and civic groups.
THE report of the Committee on Social and Economic Problem:
of the Progressive Education Association is a challenge to all o
us, teachers and parents and citizens with a conscience, to faci
the facts and the possibilities of American life. It is published a:
one of the John Day Pamphlets (Price 25 cents postpaid o
The Survey) under the title, A Call to the Teachers of the Na
tion. George S. Counts of Teachers College, Columbia Univer
sity was chairman of the committee.
THE publishers of Scholastic, "the national highschool maga
zine" announce that it will become a weekly, instead of a semi
monthly, beginning with the issue of September 23. There will be
increased space for student-written departments.
A HEARTENING sign of the times is the announcement tha
Phillips Academy, Andover, one of the oldest and "soundest"
of the New England preparatory schools, has abandoned "re
quired Latin." A course in. elementary science and a further yea:
in biology, chemistry or physics, and courses in appreciation o
the arts have been made compulsory.
i
THE bill restoring compulsory military training in the University
of Wisconsin, passed by the legislature, was vetoed by Governo
A. G. Schmedeman.
SCHOOL and college administrators who are interested in helpinji
students choose their careers wisely and who wish information t<
assist them in planning programs of vocational guidance, may ge
such information without charge from the National Occupa
tional Conference, 522 Fifth Avenue, New York. The confereno
is continuing the field service formerly conducted by the Na
tional Vocational Guidance Association. It is supported by
foundation grant and administered through the Americai
Association for Adult Education. Franklin J. Keller is it
director.
September 1933
THE SURVEY
329
nemployment and Community Action
'This department is an emergency information
service to public officials and to members,
executives and supervisors of citizens' com-
mittees. News of interesting developments will
be gratefully received by the editors, Russell
Sage Foundation, ijo East 22 Street, New York
FERA Developments
IN last month's issue appeared a resume of the Federal Emer-
gency Relief Administration's news releases and statements
if policy from the beginning of its activities through July 20,
[933. During the past month (through August 20) the following
developments have occurred:
Transients: On July 26 a memorandum was addressed to the
governors and relief administrators of the several states, remind-
ng them that the development of a program for the care of the
Tansient and homeless "demands immediate attention. The
oroblem is serious now but will be acute this winter." It stressed
:he following points:
Every state contributes in a greater or lesser degree to the problem
)f transiency in every other state. Hence, the spirit of fair play as between
states should prompt all states to undertake to meet, on a level of decency
constructive social work, the problem now recognized as national in
ts implications and for which federal funds are now available. "These
insients are citizens of the United States."
A program to be considered adequate should make provision for meet-
ng in a suitable way the needs of transient men and boys; women and
jirls; and families. It should also provide for an adequate program of the
prevention of transiency. This latter function implies that the care of
•esident homeless and the relief for heads of families be adequate, for it is
from these groups that the transient army is continuously recruited.
Good shelter care for unattached males implies that casework service
ihall be available to all; that beds, bedding, balanced diet, medical
service, work and recreation, laundry, bathing, barbering and clothing
all be included; and that there shall be proper segregation of the men
iccording to age, and so on.
Shelter for families, unattached women and girls and boys should be
ndividualized according to need. In any consideration of the transient
'amily a very careful casework evaluation of present situation and future
alan should be made.
Since the Relief Act provides for special allotments of federal
funds to states making suitable provision for meeting the tran-
siency problem, it is incumbent upon the states to survey the
facilities and services already existing within their borders and
to submit reports and plans to the FERA. The latter suggests
that:
Each state administrator should designate an experienced person to
head up the general survey of need and subsequent planning in this field.
This person should avail himself of the advice and counsel of competent
persons who have handled this problem, and of other socially-minded
citizens who think in terms of state-wide social welfare.
The nature and size of the problem may be estimated either on the
basis of reports submitted by all agencies, public and private, now func-
tioning in the state; or on the basis of a one-day census taken by all
'agencies called upon to serve the transient in various communities
throughout the state. Plans to meet the need, when ascertained, should
be made either on a municipal, a county, a district or a state basis, the
smaller units being linked up closely with the state administration Plans
should utilize existing personnel and agencies whenever possible. There
should be a central state bureau to render advisory and supervisory
service, as part of the state office of emergency relief.
The allocation of funds by the federal administrator will be to the
states; the states will compensate the local unit on the basis of reimburse-
ment for monies spent in accordance with the agreed-upon plan.
Edited by JOANNA C. COLCORD
and RUSSELL H. KURTZ
For the purposes of the administration, "the transient" has
been defined as a person who has been within the state borders
less than twelve months. The administrator reminds the states
that there are two other groups of homeless not to be confused
with the transient; (a) local homeless residents and, (b) state
homeless who have resided within the borders of the state for
more than twelve months. These latter groups are to be "prop-
erly and humanely" provided for from local and state funds
supplemented by such federal aid as the state receives for general
relief purposes under subsections 4a and 4-b of the Relief Act. It
is only the transients, estimated to be 25 percent of all the home-
less, who are to be provided for by special federal grants under
the terms of this memorandum.
Wage Rules for Relief Work: For the purpose of harmonizing
work-relief wage rates with the rates paid on regular public
works, and in the spirit of the President's "reemployment
agreement", the FERA on July 21 issued rules governing wages
and hours on such state and local relief projects as are aided by
federal funds. These rules provide that the personnel on the
administrative forces in state and local relief offices shall be
limited to forty hours employment in any one week (except those
in a managerial capacity) and shall be paid a minimum wage
ranging from fourteen to fifteen dollars per week, depending
upon the size of the locality, provided the latter is a town of
2500 or more population. Employment of persons under sixteen
years of age is prohibited.
The rules governing the conditions of employment on work-
relief projects after August i are as follows:
I. State and local relief administrations may not employ any persons
under sixteen years of age on work-relief projects.
II. The local prevailing wage rate should be rigidly adhered to in each
locality in determining work-relief wages. If the budget deficit of the
work-relief case requires less than he would receive by working full time
at the prevailing rate, he should be given work only for that portion of
the week or month which will give him a cash income sufficient for his
budgetary needs. Grants made under the FERA can be used in paying
work-relief wages only at or above thirty cents an hour.
III. No one employed on a work-relief project shall be allowed to work
more than 8 hours in any one day, nor more than 35 hours in any one
week or 1 50 hours in any one month if the work involved is physical labor.
If the work-relief project is in an office (clerical employes, etcetera) no
one shall be allowed to work more than 8 hours in any one day nor more
than 40 hours in any one week.
Unemployment Relief to Strikers: In response to a request from
Pennsylvania for a statement of policy with regard to unemploy-
ment relief for strikers, the FERA made the following statement
on July 21 :
The FERA is concerned with administering relief to the needy unem-
ployed and their families. Each case applying for relief to the local
emergency relief agencies should be treated on its merits as a relief case
wholly apart from any controversy in which the wage earner may be
involved.
The FERA will not attempt to judge the merits of labor disputes.
State and federal agencies as well as courts exist which are duly qualified
to act as arbiters and adjusters in such disputes.
Unless it be determined by the Department of Labor that the basis for
the strike is unreasonable and unjustified, the FERA authorizes local
relief agencies to furnish relief to the families of striking wage earners
after careful investigation has shown that their resources are not sufficient
to meet emergency needs.
Self Help and Barter: The following grants have been made from
the discretionary fund "to facilitate the barter and exchange of
330
THE SURVEY
September 193'
goods and services on a self-help basis among the unemployed"
as contemplated in Section 4C of the Relief Act:
July 24. Ten thousand dollars to the California ERA "to help group8
of unemployed that are providing a large part of their support by ex-
changing labor for farm products."
July 24. Sixty-five hundred dollars to the Michigan ERA for the
Community Cooperative Industries, Inc. of Lansing which "enjoys ex-
cellent standing in Lansing and is guided by an active advisory committee
of business men" according to the report of the state relief administrator.
"About 350 families are being supported in whole or in part by the barter
activities of the unemployed themselves. Many of them previously re-
ceived aid from the city welfare department and it is believed that if
the project were abandoned a considerable number would be returned to
unemployment relief rolls."
Adult Education for the Unemployed: On July 26, the federal
relief administrator announced that he was prepared to back a
nation-wide program of adult education for the unemployed.
Alignment of state and federal agencies in both the vocational
education and relief fields was promised to effect the following
program :
First, on a work-relief basis, assistance in the form of wages will be
given to needy unemployed skilled workers with aptitudes as vocational
instructors in various occupations.
Second, the unemployed, whose skill may have become obsolescent
through changing conditions in their former occupations, will be kept
abreast of requirements, making them more readily reemployable.
Third, in addition, it is proposed to extend work-relief to the many
physically disabled men and women now on relief lists who are vocation-
ally handicapped, but who through training may be made employable on
a self-supporting basis.
ReliefTrends Established: Reports collected from forty-six states
and the District of Columbia for the second quarter reveal de-
clining relief expenditures and caseloads, so far as public agencies
(local, state and federal) are concerned as follows:
Total Obligations Resident Families
Incurred Given Relief
$72,651,929 4,445>338
7°,323,5°6 4,222,263
66,191,520 3,745,367
Month
April.
May.
June.
Pennsylvania heads the list as to number of families aided per
month, while New York leads in expenditures for the period.
Approximately 20 percent of the total public expenditures
reported were made in New York.
State and Local Participation: J. Roy Blough, an authority on
taxation and on the state and municipal bond market, was ap-
pointed in July to the staff of the research and statistical division
of the FERA. In announcing this appointment, the relief ad-
ministrator said:
Mr. Blough will work with the research and statistical division of the
relief administration on problems of state and local resources for unem-
ployment relief. Wherever states or their civil subdivisions report that
they are unable to finance a fair share of unemployment relief costs from
tax or bonding resources, he will represent the relief administration in a
detailed inquiry into the problem with a view to ascertaining whether all
state or local sources for public money have been exhusted.
The governors of Ohio and Kentucky have taken previous
FERA warnings to heart and have called special legislative
sessions to cope with the problem of relief financing within their
states. Colorado, Michigan, Texas and West Virginia have also
been urged to renew their efforts to provide funds of their own
as a condition of further federal aid.
In addition to the grants from the discretionary fund reported
last month, the following amounts have been paid out under
authority of subsection "C" of the Relief Act: $618,000 to Flor-
ida, $i, 540,000 to Alabama, $1,000,000 to Georgia, $500,000 to
Washington, $1,500,000 to Michigan, $2,377,820 to Texas,
$1,695,860 to Louisiana, and $995,220 to South Carolina.
Support oj NRA Codes: On August u the administrator noti-
fied the states:
On and after this date you are advised that purchases of supplies witl
federal funds shall be made only with stores that have complied with al
the provisions of an applicable approved code or, if there be no approve(
code of fair competition for such stores, then with the provisions of thi
President's Reemployment Agreement. The same regulation applies ti
all orders given relief cases.
News from Here and There
PLANS are afoot in the Northwest to establish camps for tran
sients on a regional basis. From Montana comes word that thi
relief authorities of that state have been in conference with simila
officials from Washington, Wyoming, Oregon and Idaho to develop
a transient-care program as a group, along the lines laid down b)
the FERA.
Planned last Spring on a basis of providing partial employ
ment to "several thousand" of the community's relief families
the St. Louis municipal work-relief program was terminated lati
in July after $150,000 had been spent. Approximately 850 met
shared in the program.
Los Angeles has joined the ranks of communities effecting a di
vision of caseload with the purpose of keeping the "temporar]
unemployment" cases out of the "charity" routine. The count]
welfare department hasj announced that thirty new district office:
are to be opened where all families whose difficulties are primarily
due to unemployment will be given relief and service by a distinc
staff. This staff will consist largely of men, on the theory tha
"jobless men are more ready to discuss their problems with met
than with women social workers."
News dispatches from various parts of the country indicate thf
growth of a new problem for relief executives, namely, the rising
cost of relief foodstuffs. In Los Angeles county the relief supervise
stated late in July that business houses have increased thei
prices from 30 to 60 percent in bids submitted for county supplies
adding that "many merchants have been unable to show that the)
have raised wages or put more men to work." From Akron, Ohio
comes the report that food costs are rising but that for the presen
the produce from the community gardens acts as an offset to somi
extent. Milwaukee recently liberalized its work-relief allowance:
because of the encroachment of higher prices upon relief wages
The Missouri State Relief Administration has promulgated thi
following rules regarding the cities' and counties' obligation t<
finance their own relief needs so far as possible before asking fo:
State or Federal aid:
1. If a city or county has unused bonding power, or taxing power
which might properly be used in creating public-works programs tha
would take care of relief needs of the community, and does not use it, thi
state commission will make no grants to such communities.
2. If the communities have this power and are utilizing it properly am
adequately, but are still unable to meet the relief demands, the state wil
allot one third of the needs.
3. If the local community does not have taxing or bonding power am
is utterly devoid of resources to meet its own relief needs, the State wil
take care of the situation fully and will appoint its own representative t<
come into the community and administer the relief.
New Orleans has had difficulties at various times in the past yeai
persuading its work-relief recipients that its relief wage was fair
It formerly paid two dollars per day but in May it cut this t<
$1.50 against the protests of a militant leadership which hac
arisen in the ranks of the unemployed. Now, as a result of th<
FERA ruling of July 21 in which minimum pay schedules wen
set for all work projects receiving financial support from federa
aid funds, the New Orleans schedule has been marked up as o
August i to the federal minimum of thirty cents per hour. Hereto
fore the maximum wage-relief possible was six dollars per week-
four days at $1.50 per day — and it had become necessary to sup
plement this in an increasing number of cases with direct relief
The new schedule provides a maximum of thirty-five hours pei
week or earnings up to $10.50 in cases of proven need. The new
"typical" wage is $7.20 per week.
The Louisiana ERA has served notice upon the local relie
units of the state that fu: ther grants of state and federal aid wil
September 1933
THE SURVEY
331
contingent upon the provision of workmen's compensation
nsurance coverage at local expense in connection with all work-
elief projects. Heretofore the insurance costs have been met from
tate ERA funds.
Private Agencies "Go Public"
FACED with the necessity of transferring their unemploy-
ment-relief programs to public auspices before August I in
order to comply with the FERA ruling (See August Survey, pp.
1185 and 287) a considerable group of cities, hitherto operating
hrough private relief administration, in July found themselves
.uddenly heading in the opposite direction.
Most of them had entered the depression with the conviction
:hat their private agencies, expanded somewhat and buttressed
•>y "emergency" funds, could successfully see the situation
through to the end. As the load increased they, in common with
ill communities, were obliged to seek municipal or county finan-
,:ial aid and a little later state and federal support. But while
itiany cities created or built up public departments to spend public
•elief funds during this period, these cities continued to operate
;hrough their private agencies. Such experiences as they had had
*ith public outdoor relief, oldstyle, had brought most of them to
he conclusion that they had better continue as they were.
The FERA dictum that they must make a change by August I
n order to be eligible for further federal aid caught some of these
rities unprepared for such an adjustment, although others were in
partial readiness as a result of having taken some conscious steps
n that direction during recent months.
Cleveland had been anticipating for some months the probability
of a shift to public auspices and had carefully segregated its un-
employment relief work within the private agencies in prepara-
tion for that eventuality. Compliance with the FERA ruling was
:ffected by setting up a county relief committee, designated by the
state relief commission as an acceptable public agency, and by
burning over to this body the entire "emergency" staff and case-
oad. Stockton Raymond, new general secretary of the AC, re-
signed that position to become relief director for the county com-
nittee. The AC, retaining a "normal" family agency caseload,
-emains active in the general family casework field.
In Baltimore the first public funds were brought into the picture
scarcely eighteen months ago, yet in that time there had occurred
i pronounced drift in the direction of eventual public control of
idministrative policy. Here the four large private agencies had
Coordinated their relief efforts under the direction of a Mayor's
rommittee; and it was an easy step to designate this coordinating
:>ody, after certain shifts of personnel, a public agency within the
neaning of the federal ruling. Three of the agencies have trans-
ferred their emergency staffs to the payroll of the newly created
Baltimore Emergency Relief Commission of which J. Warren
Belcher, manager of the Work Relief Bureau, has been made
.director. The Bureau of Catholic Charities has not entered into
the arrangement.
Much the same sort of procedure was followed in Pittsburgh
where eight private agencies had been administering relief for the
county emergency relief board. Nell Scott, associate secretary of
the FWA, has been named director of relief of the CERB and has
been engaged in recent weeks in bringing the twenty-two emer-
gency district offices of the eight agencies under the wing of the
Board. The process has been one of gradual absorption over a pe-
riod of about six weeks and is now practically completed.
Kansas City had functioned entirely on privately-raised funds
until the introduction of federal aid early this year. There had
been no city, county or state financial participation, and the
jump from a private to a public basis was a long one. However, it
has been achieved through the creation, by resolution of the Jack-
son County Court, of a County Emergency Relief Committee
with accepted status as a public agency. C. Whit PfeifFer, Kansas
City chest secretary, has been appointed secretary of this com-
mittee and C. J. Guild, secretary of the Kansas City Provident
Association, is director of relief for Kansas City proper. Most of
the members of the PA staff were transferred to the payroll of this
new public set-up on August I.
In Birmingham a board of public welfare has been created by
joint resolution of the city and county commissions to take over
the emergency burden of the Red Cross Family Service which had
been carried by that agency, with aid from Chest and public
funds, since the beginning of the depression. The Board consists
of seven representative citizens appointed for a one-year term.
Roberta Morgan, RCFS executive, has been retained in a super-
visory capacity, she and most of her staff being transferred to the
Board's payroll.
Memphis presents a somewhat different situation as the result
of a crisis which occurred there during the summer in local and
state organization. The FWA had been carrying the big end of the
relief load under county and state direction, but an impasse had
been reached both in financial and administrative support. FERA
intervention resulted in the strengthening of the state administra-
tion and the appointment of a special state supervisor for the four
largest counties of the state. This executive, Elizabeth J. Schei-
blich, named Jean Proutt, veteran Memphis social worker, as re-
lief director for Memphis and Shelby County, with status as a
"public agent." Miss Proutt has taken over the entire emergency
relief staff of the FWA to serve on the public payroll.
In Toledo the entire family division of the Social Service Federa-
tion, private agency, has been transformed into a Social Service
Department of the Lucas County Relief Commission, the latter
body being given status by the state relief commission as a "pub-
lic agency." Wendell Johnson, director of the SSF, becomes di-
rector of the new department. For the present, the SSF is left with
only the work of its Children's Bureau.
In St. Louis a Citizens' Committee on Relief and Employment
had functioned throughout the depression as an emergency co-
ordinating body, receiving its authority from the Mayor and
operating through a group of private agencies. This committee
had directed the expenditure of both public and private funds.
Securing a two-weeks stay of the FERA ruling in the hope of
preserving this set-up intact, the CCRE ultimately agreed to a
plan whereby it is being designated by the State ERA as a
public agency within the meaning of the FERA ruling. It is tak-
ing over from the private agencies the "unemployment" caseload
and the personnel to continue relief to that group.
Booklet Reviews
THE New York TERA has just issued a revised classification
of work-relief projects, by types, which are accepted by the
state administration for reimbursement. Besides work on high-
ways, sanitation, water supply, parks and playgrounds, and
public utilities and structures, a variety of jobs are classified for
white-collar workers in "extraordinary work" in municipal and
governmental offices, schools, libraries, hospitals, and museums.
There has been added a new classification, "Home Necessities";
including projects which have a direct bearing on home-relief
expenditures, and which effect economies in public relief, such as
the production and distribution of clothing, food, shoes and house-
hold articles, and the cultivation of subsistence gardens.
Supplementing its recent bulletin on The Growing, Conserva-
tion and Use of Vegetables, the Illinois Emergency Relief Com-
mission has issued a useful pamphlet on the Storing and Canning
of Subsistence Garden Produce. The organization and equipment
of canning centers are clearly discussed, together with the con-
struction of storage cellars and pits. Construction diagrams are
given. The Commission, 10 South LaSalle Street.
Land Settlement as a Relief Measure, a pamphlet by R. W.
Murchie, describes some recent experiments in this direction, such
as the Llano Cooperative Colony near Los Angeles, the Medicine
Lake Farm of the Union City Mission at Minneapolis, and the
various Canadian experiments. Various types of land settlement
are discussed, together with the limitations of the "back-to-the-
land" movement as a solution for unemployment. University of
Minnesota Press. Twenty-five cents.
332
THE SURVEY
September 192
Diagnose the Doctors
OUR NEUROTIC AGE; A CONSULTATION, edited by Samuel D. Schmalhausen.
Farrar If Rineharl. 531 pp. Price $4 postpaid of The Survey.
STEWART PATON spoke frequently in the years immediately
following the War of a "world psychosis." The contributors
to this book speak of our age as "neurotic." Just as Dr. Paton's
term seemed extreme to many people, so at first thought does it
seem extreme to speak of an age as being neurotic. The diagnosis
is based here, apparently, on the fact that there are many neurotic
or even more seriously psychically disturbed people in the world,
from maladjusted school-children to criminals, homosexuals,
hysterics and the like. It is doubtful if a diagnosis can be made
upon this basis. The "age" is not treated as an entity but as a
summation of its individual parts. It becomes, therefore, a prob-
lem in addition and it would be necessary to show not only that
these various individuals exist, but that at least a majority of the
individuals of the "age" were of the kind described.
There is another way of going about this, however, in which
the "age" can be used collectively. One of the outstanding
features in a neurosis is that the individual finds it impossible to
treat simple things simply With ifs and ands and buts, with
qualifications, opposites, possiblies and probablies, the neurotic
person makes even simple situations complex, and more complex
situations so complex that it is impossible for him to find his way
about. Neurotics, together, are likely not to see the nature of their
difficulty and to take seriously their hours upon hours of discus-
sion with each other. An outsider coming in upon one of these
tail-chasing episodes can often see how unnecessarily complex
everything is being made.
Until recently it has not been possible to see very clearly what
as a group we have been and are doing. As the social life was more
or less the same everywhere, there was nothing with which we
could compare our activity. Not until the effort to build a new
civilization began in Russia did any type of conduct exist with
which we could compare our own. Now that comparison cannot be
avoided. And the comparison throws a flood of light upon our
own conduct.
The point in the comparison that stands out strikingly is pre-
cisely the one we have been discussing. In Russia simple things
are treated simply, — and it is remarkable how many simple things
there are, or to put it another way, how simple most things are
when approached directly, rationally, unsentimentally. With us
nothing is simple. Everything is complex. The simplest human
problem or the simplest social problem is in our discussion so
weighed down with ifs, ands, buts, possiblies, probablies, this,
that and the other, that soon it has become infinitely complex
and the more or less complex things have become utterly bewil-
dering. Whether our "age" could be said to be "neurotic" on a
numerical basis or not I do not know, but returning from Russia
and looking again at our activities as a group, one cannot escape
seeing its striking similarity to the conduct of neurotics, making
things as difficult as possible for themselves and continually
falling over their own feet.
Returning to our book, it must be said that the bedside
manners of these consultants is extraordinary to say the least.
The chief offender, perhaps, is the chief consultant, Edit)
Schmalhausen, who in the presence of his patient becomes hy
terical, screams and stamps his feet. Consultant Briffault, wl
by his previous work has always appeared to be reliable, becom
so angry in considering the subject as to whether chastity is
virtue or a disease that he splutters and becomes almost inarti
ulate. Others of the consultants howl, jeer, mock, stick out the
tongues, thumb their noses, laugh scornfully, or walk haughti
away leaving the patient to the devil. Just what effect on the
patient these particular consultants hope to create it is difficu
to say. Although the unctuous bedside manner has largely bet
given up, this is a revival of a bedside manner not used since \
began to understand neurotic conduct.
However, some of the consultants seem to be emotionally u
disturbed by their patient. Lorine Pruette, even in the face
virgins (an upsetting group for many of the consultants), kee;
her poise and writes well of their revolt. Joseph Jastrow revie^
competently the various schools of thought in psychology. Be
jamin C. Gruenberg has an excellent chapter on Facing Deat
(It is unfortunate that we do not have more of Gruenberg to rea
He is one of the most thoughtful, ablest and sanest writers <
science in America today.) Dr. Ira S. Wile writes of children ar
parents and Dr. George K. Pratt of insane complexes in sal
minds. Ruth Burr has a comprehensive chapter on Suicide: I
Motives and Mechanisms, Phyliss Blanchard one on Homose
uality: Ancient and Modern. V. F. Calverton brings out impc
tant points in his Contemporary Literature: A Study in Pathc
ogy, and Frances and Mason Merrill write sanely, as one h
come to expect them to do, on the subject of nudity.
But there is a chapter in this book that demands reading, Tl
Concept of a Normal Mind, by Ernest Jones. This is the able
exposition of mental hygiene in English since the publication
1922 of Freud's Reflections (trans, by A. A. Brill and Alfred
Kuttner. Moffat, Yard). Appearing during the excitements f(
lowing the War, Freud's essay was overlooked not only by ti
public generally but by mental hygienists as well. It should nc
be got out and read or re-read along with Jones' chapter. The
two essays are fundamental in any understanding of ment
hygiene; in fact there can be no understanding of mental hygie:
until the material in these two essays is understood. They a
recommended especially to Editor Schmalhausen and a numb
of his consultants who seem to talk psychoanalytically but in
curious sort of way. What seems to be true is that they, like mat
others, have made themselves familiar with certain aspects
psychoanalytic material, but certain aspects only, and have thi
treated this part as though it were a whole. One is inclined to b
lieve they think it is. If Editor Schmalhausen and his colleagu
will thoroughly assimilate Jones' chapter in their own book thi
will be able to write critiques of their own chapters.
New York City FRANKWOOD E. WILLIAMS, M.l
Popular Psychology
THE ART OF FEELING, A Psychology of Our Human Adventure by Horace
Wyatt. Houghlon Mifflin. 289 pp. Price $2.50 postpaid of The Survey.
PEACE OF MIND AND BODY, by William S. Walsh, M.D. Duilon. 243 i
Price $2.50 postpaid of The Survey.
SELF-CONSCIOUSNESS AND ITS TREATMENT, by Dr. A. A. Roback. So-;
Publishers. 114 pp. Price fl.50 postpaid of The Survey.
THE Art of Feeling is a simply written non-technical expoi
tion of the relations of the emotions to thinking and livin
Emphasis is placed upon the art of governing feeling and thoug
so that they may have a common goal in promoting person
efficiency, success and happiness. The conditioning of humi
happiness upon human thinking, in the light of present-day em
tional storms, raises considerable doubt as to whether "the high
the intelligence and the more of it available, the better it can d
vise ways and means . . . for bettering both its social and nat
ral heritage." Intellectual defense may make for emotional pro
ress and obviously emotional control and the modification of i
instinctive basis should condition man beyond his own though
but will a new breed of man succeed in breeding out the rages ar
fears which impede his finest development? The author emph
zes the education of an emotion, as the art of getting full emo-
onal values out of life. He emphasizes sublimation as the art of
telligent living or the art of enjoyment. This can help man but
ill it help men?
Peace of Mind and Body is a popular psychological book sug-
sting the importance of learning how to manipulate our lives
nd to live intelligently. Dr. Walsh advocates the elimination of
latever in the environment is disturbing so that one may live
ndisturbed in the realization of tranquillity. The basis of attain-
J peace of mind and body involves the protection of both body
d mind, properly utilizing hours of work and hours of leisure in
e interest of personal satisfaction and social adequacy. The au-
or gives this advice for those rare ones who are sufficiently in-
ligent to accept it and offers sound doctrine for those who are
already indoctrinated with other ideas regarded as equally
und. Alas, the approach involves the application of definite
urage, unusual honesty and specialized knowledge in the process
growing up and of living in the home and on the job, under
essure and during hours of freedom, in terms of the desired
liability and equanimity.
Everyone has had some experience with self-consciousness, but
ew are penalized by their own ingrown feeling of inadequacy,
ck of faith in others and a tendency towards aloofness. Dr.
oback has presented a small book stressing the part that weak
lotional tone, poor will and lack of self-confidence play in reduc-
g self-credit while inflating the values of others. He does not
ect heredity as one factor in timidity and views its origins as
rtially arising from a weak instinct of self-assertion or a strong
tinct of self-abasement. It is doubtful whether a reading of the
>ok will destroy self-consciousness but it should be of help to
ose who are endeavoring to help others to escape from the bar-
r of introspective limitations leading to a life of discomfort
th wrong attitudes towards the world.
w York City IRA S. WILE, M.D.
Immigration
MIGRATION, by Lawrence Guy Brown. Longmans, Green. 419 pp. Price $3 post-
paid of The Survey.
MERICANIZATION has always been a specific accommoda-
^ tion to temporary and local circumstances. Comparisons
tween "old" and "new" immigration have often mistakenly ex-
lined with differences in race and national background varia-
ns in the character and speed of that accommodation which in
rt were due to the unremitting trend toward industrialization
d urbanization. The first measures to control immigration were
opted before, not after, the influx from southern and eastern
rope had superseded the influx from northern Europe. But so
g as both urban and rural communities remained relatively
all, the isolation of alien settlements provoked comparatively
le comment. Only with large-scale regimentation of labor, did
Terences in culture and social outlook produce serious frictions.
is true, the argument that "we are getting a worse type of im-
rants now" dates back to the fifties; but only the complica-
ns of a modern industrial society made evident the large-scale
organization of personality and the clash of social objectives
ich take place when the children of immigrants are forced to
d a bridge from the parental manner of life to the common
lerican traditions.
Jy singling out for full discussion the immigrants' experience of
ial interaction and adjustment in each period, the author
ows into relief the forces that have most definitely influenced
'lerican attitudes toward immigration. Differences in the intro-
:tion, composition, and distribution of immigrants at various
ics do not suffice to explain the psychological by-products; the
dent must also be helped, as he is in this book, to realize the
mging world into which newcomers found themselves pro-
led. Thus read, the history of American immigration suggests
t, even without a change in the national composition of the
nigrant stream, the problem of adjustment would have become
increasingly difficult one. BRUNO LASKER
(In answering advertisements
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334
•eptember 1933
THE SURVEY
GOSSIP:
of People
and Things
Pugsley Prize Winners
O Antoinette Cannon and Neva R. Dear-
dorff the editorial committee of the Na-
onal Conference of Social Work has awarded
le prize of $250 offered by Chester D. Pugsley
'Peekskill,N. Y.,for the best paper or papers
resented at the Detroit meeting which "shall
e adjudged to have made the most important
ontribution to the subject matter of social
ork." Miss Cannon is on the faculty of the
"ew York School of Social Work and Miss
'eardorff is the director of the Bureau of Re-
:arch of the New York Welfare Council. Both
•ize- winning papers were in the program of the
'ivision on Professional Standards and Educa-
on, Harry L. Lurie, chairman.
Says the committee in announcing the award:
The designation of two papers does not mean
lat the committee was unable to decide which
as better. These outstanding contributions
nerged from the group selected as most
gnificant, not as competitors but as so differ-
it that comparison was unfruitful. They seem
>the committee to answer the classic question,
> Social Work an Art or a Science? Miss Can-
on, in Recent Changes in the Philosophy of
ocial Workers, gives us a philosophy of social
ork, revealing an understanding of human
ature so penetrating as to be distinctly scien-
fic. Dr. Deardorff, writing with the skill of an
•list on Next Steps in Job Analysis, makes a
Jentific study of social-work objectives and
rogress, creative and challenging. The com-
ittee believes that each paper is inspiring and
iduring."
Because half of $250 is important money
icse days with all sorts of glamorous possibili-
es, Gossip queried both prize winners as to
hat kind of a treat they proposed to give
lemselves. The answers reach from utility to
:sthetics. Before the sun set on news of her
xxl luck Miss Deardorff fell on a heap of
italogues she had been "shopping" for months
id ordered her heart's desire, an electric pump
IT her Connecticut farm. Just to prove that
e is not wholly materialistic she proposes to
odel a plaque — modeling being her current
x>rt — which, mounted on the wall above her
easure, will perpetuate her appreciation to
i. Pugsley and to the National Conference
r this contribution to the amenities of life on
le farm. Miss Cannon has something of the
.me idea, though she hasn't a farm and is not
Idicted to modeling. She too will realize a hope
:ferred by having a fountain installed in her
tck-yard garden in Macdougall Street.
JUNE PURCELL GUILD, as part of the pre-
ription for recovery from a long and trying
ness, has resigned from all activities with the
ichmond Community Chest and Council of
jcial Agencies.
ARTHUR FINK of the Department of Sociol-
;y, University of Pennsylvania, has been
jpointed head- worker at University House,
biladelphia, succeeding Helen Hall.
THE Survey was not the only publication to
lebrare editorially the way Florence Kelley's
use has marched on into the New Deal. In
one of its midsummer issues Time gave better
than a page in its department National Affairs
to the story of Mrs. Kelley and her implacable
fight to set the children free.
To Charlotte H. Heilman, assistant director
of the public health nursing service of the
American Red Cross, has come the coveted
Florence Nightingale Medal for "great and
exceptional devotion to the sick and wounded
in peace and war." This medal was instituted
in 1912 by the Ninth International Red Cross
Conference held in Washington. Mrs. Heilman,
an alumna of the Johns Hopkins Training
School, has been in Red Cross service, at home
and abroad, for sixteen years and already has a
goodly collection of honors and medals and
things, notably for her service in Greece.
THE meeting of the American Public Health
Association in Indianapolis, October 9-12, will
be preceded, as last year, by a three-day public-
health-education institute conducted by Dr.
lago Galdston of New York. The theme is The
Psychology of Health Education.
The Washington Parade
f^HE expanding program for recovery and
*- relief continues to bring many well-known
characters onto the scenes. From Secretary
Ickes' office comes the good news of the forma-
tion of a special division in the federal Public
Works Administration to supervise expendi-
tures of public funds for housing projects.
Heading it is Robert D. Kohn of New York,
former president of the American Institute of
Architects. Among his consultants are: Henry
Wright, F. L. Ackerman and Harold D. Hynds
of New York, Edith Elmer Wood of New Jersey,
Jacob Crane, Jr. and Coleman Woodbury of
Chicago, Russell Black of Princeton and Tracy
Augur of Detroit. On a special committee to
coordinate housing activities throughout the
country are Alfred K. Stern of Chicago, Howard
Green of Cleveland and Mary K. Simkhovitch
of New York.
A national planning board to study the long-
range social and economic aspects of public
works includes Frederic A. Delano of Washing-
ton, chairman, Wesley C. Mitchell of Columbia
University, and Charles E. Merriam of the
University of Chicago. Charles W. Eliot of
Cambridge, Mass., is executive secretary.
From Secretary Ickes come also certain not-
able appointments to the Business Advisory
and Planning Council, among them Morris E.
Leeds of Philadelphia to the committee on
decentralization of industry; Joseph H. Willitts
of the Wharton School of Finance and Com-
merce, Philadelphia, to the subcommittee on
domestic commerce surveys and Prof. C. K.
Leith of the University of Wisconsin to the
subcommittee on reporting and publication
policy.
Good news from Secretary Perkins' office is
the appointment of Prof. W. H. Stead of the
University of Minnesota as associate director
of the Federal Employment Service. Professor
Stead was the executive secretary of the Em-
ployment Stabilization Institute of theU. ofM.
and director of the Tri-City Employment Serv-
335
ice (See Survey Graphic, February 1933, page
87).
The past month has brought many new faces
to the Federal Emergency Relief Administra-
tion, which by the way has a new address, the
Walker-Johnson Building, 1734 New York
Avenue. Jacob Baker of New York has been
appointed to review applications from self-help
and barter groups and also to maintain liaison
with the reemployment service under W. Frank
Persons. Hugh R. O'Donnell, formerly per-
sonnel officer of the FERA, is his assistant.
Corrington Gill, director of the Research and
Statistical Division, now has a staff of thirty-
five including specialists in state and local
finance, rural relief and statistical methods.
J. Roy Blough, associate professor of public
finance at the University of Cincinnati, assisted
by Margaret E. Neill, public-health statisti-
cian, is working in this division on problems of
state and local resources and Prof. E. L. Kirk-
patrick of the University of Wisconsin on
analyses of rural relief. Newly appointed field
statisticians are Lee G. Lauck, formerly with
the Bureau of Railway Economics, and F. H.
Crozier, business specialist with the Bureau of
Foreign and Domestic Commerce. Ellen Com-
mons of the New York School of Social Work is
research librarian.
In and out of the Washington scene within a
month was Dr. Ellen C. Potter who was loaned
to the FERA by the New Jersey Department
of Institutions and Agencies for special work in
framing policies for the relief of transients.
Withdrawn from the scene is Langdon W. Post,
assistant to Harry Hopkins, who resigned to
enter the municipal campaign in New York.
No successor has been appointed.
The state relief administrations are making
many shifts in personnel. In Georgia, Gay
Shepperson of the Department of Welfare has
been made director of State Relief Administra-
tion. In Florida Marcus Fagg has gone from the
superintendency of the Children's Home So-
ciety to direct the reorganized state relief work.
Fred Johnson, superintendent of the Children's
Aid Society of Michigan, is executive of that
state's relief organization. Walter Burr has re-
signed from the state relief job in Missouri to
go to Washington to the reemployment service.
Wallace Crossley has succeeded him. In Mary-
land Harry Greenstein is on leave from the As-
sociated Jewish Charities of Baltimore to direct
the state work. William Book, who has had
much to do with the work-relief program in
Indianapolis, has been called to the new In-
diana state relief set-up as director. Nadia
Deem, formerly case-supervisor of the In-
dianapolis Family Welfare Society, is his
DR. V. K. HARVEY has succeeded Dr. John
H. Hare as head of the Indiana State Health
Department with which he has been associated
as epidemiologist.
THE American Society for the Control of
Cancer has completed the organization of a
state branch in Oregon. Dr. J. Erie Else is
chairman and Mrs. George T. Gerlinger of
Portland executive secretary.
WITH pardonable pride the Wisconsin Con-
ference of Social Work announces the appoint-
ment of its new executive secretary, Fred M.
Wilcox of Madison, to succeed Aubrey W.
Williams, resigned. Mr. Wilcox has been for
twenty years a member of the Wisconsin Indus-
trial Commission, for the past twelve years its
336
chairman. He has long been a member of the
executive committee of the state conference
and has been influential in shaping its policies
in relation to public affairs. Mr. Williams, after
a year or so of being loaned to the American
Public Welfare Association, is now a regular
member of its staff, though at the moment
loaned to the Federal Emergency Relief Ad-
ministration.
On the heels of his appointment by the
Wisconsin conference Mr. Wilcox was drafted
by the National Labor Board to serve as
mediator between employers and employes in
determining bases for collective bargaining
under the terms of the NIRA.
THE American Birth Control League has
suspended publication of The Birth Control
Review in the form familiar for some sixteen
years. The name is however retained for a
monthly news bulletin which will probably
have its first issue in October.
DR. S. S. GOLDWATER, hospital consultant,
one-time director of Mt. Sinai Hospital, New
York, has been appointed consulting hospital
expert to the Russian government to collabo-
rate with Russian authorities and technicians
in the planning of hospitals in Leningrad,
Moscow and other cities.
Sorry
HpHE editors of the Survey were covered with
-*• chagrin when they discovered that by an
unforgivable oversight they had omitted the
name of the artist, Alfred J. Messner, from the
reproduction of the mural, Delinquency, used
to illustrate an article on the social service
exhibit at the Century of Progress, Chicago.
(See The Midmonthly Survey, July, 1933, page
251.) The Survey rather prides itself on its care
in giving, credit where credit is due, and sin-
cerely regrets this lapse. As Helen Cody Baker
says, "What can I say after I say I'm sorry?"
THE Children's Fund of Michigan has found
it necessary to suspend its contribution to the
support of the Grand Rapids Child Guidance
Clinic. Dr. Milton E. Kirkpatrick, director of
the clinic since it was opened in May 1931, has
gone to the juvenile court of Cleveland as
psychiatrist.
ERNST O. JACOB, who has behind him some
twenty-five years of Y.M.C.A. work at home
and abroad, has succeeded Charles O. Wright
as executive secretary of the West Side Y, New
York, where his responsibilities include the
balancing of an annual budget of $680,000.
DR. ISAIAH BOWMAN, director of the Ameri-
can Geographical Society, has been elected
chairman of the National Research Council,
succeeding Dr. Vernon Kellogg, resigned. Dr.
Bowman will divide his time between the two
organizations. The Council has recently created
the office of honorary vice-chairman the bet-
ter to honor Dr. William H. Welch of Johns
Hopkins.
AT THE Federal Industrial Institution for
Women, Alderson, W. Va., the buildings are
named in honor of women who have been con-
cerned with prison reform or who were directly
connected with the efforts which established
the prison. Thus the administration building
is Jane Addams Hall, the school and assembly
hall is Mabel Willebrandt Hall and the receiv-
THE SURVEY
ing and classification building is {Catherine
Bement Davis Hall. Recently four new cot-
tages have been named to memorialize women
who contributed to the development of rational
treatment for delinquent women: Elizabeth
Fry, Ellen Foster, Mina C. Van Winkle and
Caroline Bayard Wittpenn.
Aren't We All
\17"HEN Elizabeth Webster of the Chicago
* * Council of Social Agencies accepted the
chairmanship of the Great Lakes Institute for
next year she illustrated her becoming modesty
with a story. Mrs. Bigrich, very dowager, very
grande dame, was excessively proud of her un-
dergraduate grandson's achievements as a foot-
ball player and never tired of recounting his
exploits. But one day someone asked her what
position he played. With complete aplomb she
replied, "He can play any position, but usually
he's the draw-back."
THE Thomas W. Salmon Memorial Com-
mittee of the New York Academy of Medicine
has made a grant of $1000 to Dr. James L.
McCartney, psychiatrist of Elmira Reforma-
tory, New York, to permit him to continue his
research in the classification of prisoners and to
prepare a handbook on the subject for use in
prisons.
ELIZABETH P. RICE, for six years director of
social service at the Boston Dispensary, has
been appointed to a similar position at the New
Haven Hospital. Edith Canterbury succeeds
to the Boston post.
THE success of a recreation program recently
organized at Greenwich House, New York
City — one of the first instances of a specially
organized summer recreational program for
adults — refutes the argument of those who
contend that the "new leisure," will be trans-
lated merely into idleness by a large part of its
beneficiaries. Courses in art, dancing, dramat-
ics, gymnasium, music and miscellaneous
lectures were attended beyond most optimistic
expectations.
A PLUM of $10,000 has fallen to the Univer-
sity of Michigan from the Earhart Foundation
to continue, during the 1933-34 season, the
work in community leadership under the direc-
tion of Prof. R. D. McKenzie of the depart-
ment of sociology.
THE sixth national conference on the re-
habilitation of physically disabled persons will
be held at the Hotel Sherman, Chicago, Octo-
ber 8-13 under the auspices of the National
Rehabilitation Association.
Housing Activity
THE National Public Housing Conference
has been recently formed under the presidency
of Mary Kingsbury Simkhovitch of New York
to organize public opinion to the end that
low-cost housing projects made possible under
the NIRA shall multiply. The organization of
active committees is already under way in
New York, Chicago, Detroit and Cleveland.
Twelve vice-presidents of national promi-
nence include Edith Abbott, James C. Bon-
bright, William Hodson, Rabbi Edward L.
Israel, Harry W. Laidler, Bishop Francis J.
McConnell, Edward F. McGrady, John Nolen,
Rev. John O'Grady, Cornelia Bryce Pinchot,
September 193
Mary Harriman Rumsey and Edith Elrai
Wood. Headquarters are at 1 12 East ly Stree
New York. Helen Alfred is secretary.
To meet the rising interest in housing as
feature of national reconstruction Hem
Wright, Lewis Mumford, Albert Mayer an
others of equal authority in the field ai
sponsoring the Housing Study Guild which wi
serve as a clearing house for technical info
mation within its field, will render analytic,
services to housing practitioners and will stud
current technical and social problems relate
to the planning, production and operation <
housing and community planning enterprise
For information address Allan A. Twichel
the executive secretary, 400 Madison Avenu*
New York.
DR. RICHARD ELY, president of the Institul
of Economic Research, is to head a school c
land economics which will open in New Yor
City on October i. The institute has contril
uted so much to the progressive discovery an
formulation of the principles governing tl
development and utilization of land and tl
principles underlying the economic problems <
public utilities, that the announcement thi
its work is to be thus strengthened and broac
ened is welcomed by all interested in soun
planning. Though primarily for gradual
students who desire a broad training in Ian
economics and land policies, other qualifie
persons will be eligible. The three-year coun
of the school, which is a direct outgrowth of
round table recently organized by Dr. Ely f(
a limited number of students, will includ
special courses conducted by outstandin
leaders in the field of land economics, urba
land utilization, statistics, housing, planninj
real-estate law, architecture and public utilitie
Further information may be obtained from tli
Institute, 551 Fifth Avenue, New York.
A Matter of Record
TALKING about busy-work for boards an
the importance of the unimportant, nol
this solemn chronicle of an "accomplishment
which a certain grown-up social agency herald
in its annual report: "One of the accomplish
ments of the 1932-33 Board of Directors wa
its discovery of the fact that the associatio
had been a corporation since October 19, 191;
A certified copy of the said corporation ol
tained from the department of the Secretar
of State now adorns the walls of the office. Th
board originally anticipated an expense of $2
to incorporate and staged a raffle to raise thi
amount. Of this $4 was used for procuring an
framing the certified copy of the said chartei
$12.25 went toward the expense of conductin
the said raffle and the net profit of $8.75 wa
turned over to the Biblical school account."
"WE ARE NOT fooling ourselves and we at
not distorting the facts," says the annual re
port of Vocational Service for Juniors, Ne'
York, "but we are making the most of ever
hopeful sign that we see." And so, reversin
the usual signal system, they print the goo
news in red. Quite a little of it there is toe
cheerily standing at attention here and thei
on every page. Maintenance of standards, ir
creased efficiency, back-to-school scholarshi
progress, are all agreeably red. Only the la:
page, the financial statement, is unrelievedl
black. No amount of optimism can make
deficit look like good news.
Vol. LXIX. No. 10
MONTHLY
October
CONTENTS
FRONTISPIECE Social ir,,rk (;,*.< I,, the White llumr
THE CHESTS IN A RECOVERY YEAR. .. .Gertrude Springer
THE SILENT PARTNER SPEAKS UP Kurt Undress
THE NEW PHILOSOPHY OF C ilVINC ;. .H,m,ld .v. Ruttfuhfin,
ON THE GOVERNORS' DOORSTEPS Russ.'/l H. Kurtz
RELIEF IN A RISING MARKET. . ' /„«,> /-;. Geddes
\\\ I \Tr CLIENTS WITH BANK ACCOUNTS! G.S.
CHILD HEALTH RECOVERY draff -Ibhott
WHY MOTHERS DIE //,„•„/,/ R. s,,;fnion
UNCLE SAM AND MEDICAL RU.IEF
//. Jackson Davis, M.D.
I A ERY BED A SCHOOL. ... . Kculab Weldoii Bin-hoc
THE CARE OF CHRONIC SICK E. M . Bluestone, M.D.
THE COMMON WELFARE
SOCIAL PRACTICE
HEALTH
UNEMPLOYMENT AND COMMUNITY ACTION
BOOKS
COMMUNICATIONS.
GOSSIP
338
3.39
34"
34.1
344
345
347
35'
352
353
354
356
358
360
362
365
.367
Files of The Survey will be found in public and college libraries. All
issues are indexed in the Readers' Guide to Periodical Literature. Ask
the Librarian.
SURVEY ASSOCIATES, INC.
Publication Office, 10 Ferry Street, Concord, N. H.
(.'mitral Office, 1 1 2 East 1 9 Street, New York, to which all correspondence
should be addressed.
THE SURVEY— Monthly— $3.00 a Year
SURVEY GRAPHIC— Monthly— $3.00 a Year
Lucius R. EASTMAN, president; JULIAN \V. MACK, JOSEPH P. CHAM-
BERLAIN, JOHN PALMER GAVIT, vice-presidents; ANN REED BRENNER,
secretary; ARTHUR KELLOGG, treasurer.
PAUL U. KELLOGG, editor.
ARTHUR KELLOGG, managing editor; MARY Ross, BEULAH AMIDO.V,
LEON WHIPPLE, JOHN PALMER GAVIT, LOULA D. LASKER, FLORENCE
LOEB KELLOGG, GERTRUDE SPRINGER, associate editors.
EDWARD T. DEVINE, GRAHAM TAYLOR, JANE ADDAMS, JOSEPH K.
HART, HAVEN EMERSON, M.D., ROBERT W. BRUERE, JOANNA C. COL-
CORD, contributing editors.
MOLLIE CONDON, circulation manager; MARY R. ANDERSON, advertising
manager.
SO THEY SAY
Teachers must be educated as well as trai ned. Edgar //'. Knight,
University of North Carolina.
... a people [Americans] so expert in passive disobedience.- —
David Cusbman Coyle, New Turk, to National Conference of Social
Work.
For the welfare of the state its people should IK able to think.—
Travis Hoke in The Forum.
Unemployment is society out of control but not beyond con-
trol.— Bailey B. Burritt, New York AICP.
Enthusiasm and cynicism are both dangerous enemies to
thought. — Ewan Clague, Philadelphia Community Council.
We must tax unspent funds lest the devil find mischief for
them. — Joseph McGoldrick, Columbia University.
I don't believe that relief is adequate anywhere in the United
States. — Harry L. Hopkins, Federal Relief Administrator.
Public economy in normal times is perhaps the least popular of
American virtues. — Owen D. Young.
A planned society can exist only where disinterested men have
the confidence of the people.— Walter Lippmann, New York.
The mere experience of hunger is not sufficient to provide an
integrating philosophy and a spring of action.— Karl Borders,
Chicago.
To get the unemployed back on their feet we've got to build
from the bottom up, not just supply food from the top down. —
President Roosevelt.
The purpose of playgrounds is to provide something more than
places for children to play. — Lewis R. Barrett, Department of
Education, Newark, N. J.
No pacifist ever suggested that you could change human nature.
All the pacifist contends is that you can change human behavior. —
Reverley Nichols, England.
The preachment that character is strengthened by poverty is
good gospel for plush seats. — David C. Adie, New York State
Commissioner of Public Welfare.
When the little fellow that is actually in want can have faith in
his government, by golly the big ones should certainly carry on,
for they have never missed a meal so far. — Will Rogers.
Everyone who ever wrote a book review for The New Republic,
The Nation or The Survey, is down at Washington busily serving
the government. — Mifbael Gold in fhe Daily Worker.
No responsible person denies or doubts the necessity of providing
adequate medical care irrespective of the ability of the individual
to pay for it. — Sir Arthur Newsbolme in Medicine and the State.
Liberalism in social politics is the conviction that civil rights, if
constantly adjusted to social change, are a sufficient insurance
against social injustice. — Benjamin Stolberg in Vanity Fair.
No amount of statistics and no number of bulletins can take the
place [to a child] of a lamb chop and a glass of milk at the right
moment. — Secretary Frances Perkins in call for Children's Bureau
conference.
The rent policy followed by relief agencies in many cities has
taught thousands of families how to beat the landlord, — a lesson
they are not going to forget. — Frank C. Bane, American Public
Welfare Association.
All modern experts have been badly trained with respect to the
kind of situation we now confront. They are so highly specialized
that they are ineffective particularly where they have to function
with the people. — Eduard C. Lindeman, New York School of Social
Work.
Acme Photo
SOCIAL WORK GOES TO THE WHITE HOUSE
" This work is an essential part of the government's program,
the program of the people of the United States to bring us
back to where we have a right to be." — President Roosevelt.
October
J933
Volume LXIX
No. 10
The Chests in a Recovery Year
By GERTRUDE SPRINGER
F anyone had told the community chests, even two
years ago, that they would ever undertake a cam-
paign in which funds for relief had no part, would
nake an appeal stripped of the hunger /notif, they would
lave thanked their informant for nothing. Had he added
:hat they would do it confidently, with their goals close to
:hose of the prosperity years of 1928 and 1929, they would
lave touched knowing fingers to their several foreheads.
Yet that is exactly what has happened. With relief "gone
Dublic," the chests must make their fall campaigns on the
ront of their whole community service and must stand or
all on its validity. The day when all sorts of welfare serv-
ces within the chest rode, financially speaking, on the back
)f relief is over.
Some 350 community chests will put their fortunes to
:he test between October 15 and November 12. They will
igain be backed up by a campaign of national publicity,
lubbed Mobilization for Human Needs, for which Allen
T. Burns and his staff at Community Chests and Councils
nc., New York, have mustered the persuasive power of
mportant personalities and the facilities of radio, adver-
ising and other publicity media. The first moves in the
:ampaign, made in Washington in mid-September, offered
ibundant evidence of the prestige which private social
vork can gather to itself when it tries. Opened by President
loosevelt, assiduously and interestedly attended by Mrs.
loosevelt — five meetings in a day if you please — front-page
>ersonalities were as thick as roadside blackberries. "Mah
;oo'ness," said the Little Lady from South Carolina,
'Ah've heard about this social wu'k, but Ah suttinly didn't
:now it was goin' to be like this."
But behind what sophisticated folk called the "set-up"
vas a sincerity that similar gatherings have not always had.
Backing was even the least suggestion that the chests are
he saviors of all that is good and true; instead was a
natter-of-course attitude of partnership in community life
and recovery. President Roosevelt voiced it when he said:
"This work is an essential part of the government's pro-
gram, the program of the people of the United States to
bring us back to where we have a right to be." Newton D.
Baker, chairman of the National Citizens' Committee for
the Mobilization, said it another way: "Our working people
depend upon these agencies, just as they do upon their
wage envelops, to supply a part of the aggregate which we
call the American standard of living." John Stewart Bryan
of Richmond, affable new president of Community Chests
and Councils Inc., had the same thought: "Our part is to
see to it that the forgotten man who is remembered in
Washington is not forgotten in his own home town."
BEHIND the inspirational facade of the Washington
meeting went on a steady confab of community-chest
officers and executives on whom rests the immediate
responsibility for translating national inspiration into local
action, — in short for raising money. From their joined ex-
perience emerged a good many agreements which will un-
doubtedly color the local campaigns throughout the
country.
The chests generally will not, it appears, go to their
constituencies with detailed budgets, allocated agency by
agency. Goals will represent an estimate of what is required
to carry the whole community program with, naturally, an
eye to what the traffic will bear. Agency budgets will be
determined after the campaign is over. Unemployment
relief is definitely out of the private picture but no chest
proposes to reduce its goal by the amount it spent last year
for relief. Family- welfare societies will not be thrown out of
the boat but will be encouraged, within limited budgets, to
continue or to develop special or supplementary services.
Whether last year's cuts in the budgets of non-relief agen-
cies can be restored is still in the lap of the gods. Many
chest executives believe they can; many laymen are
339
340
THE SURVEY
October 1933
confident. At one little close-in Washington confab a man,
a stranger to most of the group, pressed his conviction that
the contributing public grasped the urgencies of the situa-
tion much better than "we" think they do. "I'd like to hear
from a layman and a contributor on that point," threw in a
cynic. "You have," replied the stranger.
It now seems likely that the chests will set as goals this
year about the amounts raised last year when relief was
still their big talking point. In the aggregate this corre-
sponds to the sum raised in 1928, $72,744,000, though the
increase in the number of chests since 1928 makes the
comparison only a rough and ready one. The strategy of
raising this sum in 350 communities of widely varying
psychological and financial climate is now the business of
the moment.
PRESIDENT ROOSEVELT assured the Washington
A meeting that "... by and large the country is in a
much more hopeful state of mind. People have more money
to spend. . . ." The chests hope he is right. Their fear is
that their cause has become too closely coupled in public
psychology with the depression — and for this they admit
their own past sins of interpretation. With the big guns of
NRA publicity directed on recovery, the chests are appre-
hensive of hard sledding unless they can identify their
cause with it. How to accomplish this bit of legerdemain is
the underlying problem of campaign strategy. Along with
it is the problem of overcoming resistance occasioned by
the fact that the NRA, at this stage, is costing money to
corporations and business men — already a sharp tendency
is noted among them to hold off on outside commitments
until they see how their own particular cat is going to
jump. The alibi on this of course is that tax funds are doing
the essential job. «
Chest men are talking candidly these days and most of
them admit that the success of the fall campaigns will rest
pretty largely on the past performance of each chest in its
own community. "National publicity will help, but when
you come right down to it we've got to show the goods."
Where chests have sunk real roots into public understand-
ing, have developed social thinking in their constituencies
as well as intelligent habits of giving, there is confidence.
"It will be hard, but it can be done." In others, where the
chest has been a convenience, the instrument of a facile
annual gesture, there is only gloom. This is without doubt a
test year. The chests that have been vigorous forces in
community social planning will survive; the ones that have
been mere collection agencies will fall by the wayside —
some of them have already.
What campaign strategy will prevail against the caution
of a hard-hit giving public is a burning question. Leroy
RamsdelPs plea at Dearborn last June, "Let's have smaller
and smarter campaigns," has had many echoes. So far as
reinforcement by national publicity is concerned there will
be broadcasts, billboard and magazine advertising and a
barrage of "released on receipts." But these, they say, will
all be different. Not so many easy-to-tune-out speakers —
anyone with less radio personality than President Roose-
velt is broadcasting small-fry these days — more effort to
reach the thought processes of the public and less to stir its
tear ducts; fewer pomposities and pep, and more candor
and logic.
A considerable part of the national driving force is going
into the stimulation of woman-power organized under the
slightly saccharine name of Women's Crusade after the
pattern to which Cincinnati attributed the success of its
last chest campaign. The Women's Crusade is going along
under its own steam and that of its chairman, Mrs. Roose-
velt, who, to everyone's faint surprise, turned out to be a
real chairman and not a letter-head dressing.
In planning local campaigns John Dawson of New Haven
set the pace by condemning to oblivion certain "old
offenders who never will be missed":
Stunts and engineered thrills. "Maybe a. turn-out of fire
apparatus has shaken a little money loose in the past — but noi
this year."
The dear old slogans such as Suppose Nobody Cared. "In view
of the tax-supported relief program it sounds a little flat, doesn'i
it?"
Emphasis on agencies' economies. "The life-blood is running
out of valuable agencies that have economized too much."
Appeals for loyalty to the chest as an institution. "It's eas)
ground to take but mighty slippery and insecure to hold."
Appeals based on the chest as an instrument in the preserva
tion of the social order. "Nowadays there seems quite some littli
question about the virtue of the social order as is — or should w<
say, as was?"
Not by overstatements or by wishful thinking will com
munity chests be replenished this year, says Mr. Dawson
but by candor on the limitations of social agencies and b)
valid evidence of their important and unique relation tc
the movement toward national recovery: "In that relatior
we shall find, unless I am very much mistaken, all th<
dramatic values, all the human interest and all the com
pelling power that we may have the wit to use."
A*JY discussion of what the chests will do with funds, i
and when they get them, seems pretty academic ai
this moment, yet it is a question constantly raised by peopli
who still believe that without relief there is no need fo:
social work. It takes no second-sight to foresee that into thi
apportioning of funds for 1934 will go considerably less log
rolling and considerably more hard thinking and hones
community planning than in the good old days. Agencie
that have demonstrated in these lean years the essentia
quality of their services may expect to have repaired sonv
of the damages inflicted by recent blood-letting economies
Agencies that have been held together by the influence o
their boards rather than by their contribution to the whol
community are not likely to get their old budgets back
Budget committees are going to be consistently hard-boile(
with a cold clear eye fixed on the community value o
services rather than on the maintenance of agencies fo
agencies' sakes. But in any case a good many things wi)
have to be weighed before full programs are restored, le
alone any new activities ventured. Income from endow
ments has fallen; agency earnings have dropped off sharply
repairs on buildings, skimped or passed over the last fe\
years, are at the now-or-never stage; the rising price c
commodities is already reflected in institutional deficits
All of these factors will enter into next year's budget
making.
So far as the restoration of cut salaries to their old lev<
is concerned the prospect seems slender for profession:
workers. There is a better outlook however for nor
professional employes in the lower pay-brackets. In spit
of the ruling which exempts "hospitals, charitable or soci;
welfare organizations in general, since they are not engage
in trade or industry" from compliance with permaner
NRA codes there is a strong feeling that compliance "i
October 1933
T H K S U R V E V
spirit," as requested by President Roosevelt will be an
empty gesture unless it brings some adjustments in hours
and pay that are below standard minimums. "If we have
sweatshop conditions in any of our institutions," says
Sherman Kingsley of Philadelphia, "let's bring them out
into the open. As long as we connive at them they'll never
he cleaned up. The NRA gives us a chance and I believe
341
the public will support us. We cannot afford to lag behind."
This fall's campaigns are the first clear-cut test of the
public's willingness to support the community social
program apart from relief. The chests are facing the issue
squarely. They have no illusions about the difficulties
ahead. The day of large easy claims is over. The day of
brass-tacks is here. The next month will tell the story.
The Silent Partner Speaks Up
By BART ANDRESS
Director of Finance and Extension, Brooklyn Bureau of Charities; Chairman, General Sessions, New* York Social
Work Publicity Council
IT'S a wise social-work executive who gets around
these days among his contributors. The one who
does is learning that interpretation of the contrib-
utor's mind to the social-work profession is at least as im-
portant at this moment as interpretation the other way
about. I venture these observations after a reconnoitering
expedition among twenty-five men who in the past have
given in varying degrees of munificence to welfare work
both in New York and in the national field. I wanted to
find out what was on their minds; what factors are going to
govern their checkbooks in the happy days that are said
ro be here again; what they plan to do now about the com-
plex social-work structure they helped to create. What I
earned was that the silent partner in the enterprise — the
fellow who previously gave without demanding too many
letails — is not only tightening up but speaking up. You
ind him forming questions to hurl at you from the statis-
:ical and financial statements in the back of the book while
,-ou are still talking about the nice pictures in the front.
Although I am not privileged to mention names, I may
;ay that I picked my people carefully, including some who
•.erve on governing boards, but concentrating upon those
vho have made it a practice to pass their checks in from
he outside. In this way I hoped to get a fairly accurate
Toss-section of prevailing opinion among business and
>rofessional people whose names appear in the higher
>rackets on standard lists of givers. If unanimity is proof,
think I succeeded; for I found virtual unanimity on most
if the major points. Moreover, each man quoted others in
us own circle, making it apparent that they have been
alking among themselves. Their principal misgivings, I
ound, checked with the tenor of letters received by various
Tganizations in response to appeals.
The thing that stands out in my mind is that the silent
•artner is not finding fault entirely in expected directions.
Ve find him accepting quite readily some of the principles
hat we are still insisting most vigorously that he should
ccept. This has made me fear that on some issues we are
i danger of putting him in Mark Twain's frame of mind
'hen he sulked in his pew, reducing his intended contribu-
ion steadily as the pastor plead. His criticisms touch
rimarily upon the economy rather than upon the philos-
phy of modern social service. When he complains about
ilaries, for example, he is not questioning the propriety
f paying social workers, or of paying them decently, for
lat matter: he is simply demanding to know what the
Kripient of the salary is doing in return for it; whether he
being paid more than he is worth; and particularly,
hether the community is being burdened with a greater
umber of administrative jobs than its aggregate in
philanthropic resources should be expected to carry. Some
of his opinions betray a lack of familiarity with the work
under discussion, and are illogical or even self-contradic-
tory. Others are too logical and well informed for comfort.
It has occurred to me that a resume of these conversa-
tions should be helpful in discovering common ground
from which both laymen and professionals might look at
the future realistically and together. For this purpose, I
shall repeat certain of the questions I raised and attempt
to summarize the discussion they evoked.
What effect do you think the rapid and extensive development
of relief through taxation will have upon private social work?
Opinion unanimous that work under private auspices
is both necessary and desirable, but its field must be more
closely circumscribed:
Anyone who assumes that private activity is to be displaced
simply doesn't know the American mind and spirit. Governments
will undoubtedly assume more and more social responsibility,
but private initiative in welfare and education isn't going to
disappear any more than it is in business or industry.
Quite general conviction that private philanthropy,
although less lavish and perhaps more thoughtful, should
be perpetuated as an expression of national idealism. But:
Private work should resume as soon as possible its pioneering
function— interpreting needs and developing new methods until
the public conscience is sufficiently aroused to have the work
taken over as a part of the daily task of the public authorities.
Many agencies organized to pioneer in certain lines get so wedded
to doing the work themselves that they are reluctant to let go.
They continue to seek private support, and givers grow im-
patient at what seems to them chiefly an effort to hold jobs.
General recognition, however, that the theory of gradual
transition of tested services from public to private auspices
has had little chance to operate during the depression,
and that most of the complicated tasks of social reconstruc-
tion will require the skill and experience of private agencies
in addition to continued public relief.
What general principles are going to govern the larger
giver in the immediate future?
With incomes reduced and taxes soaring, giving will be
on a highly selective basis. Budgets will be more carefully
scrutinized — more attention to where the money goes and
how it gets there. Loyalty to organizations most intimately
known— so long as their necessity is demonstrable -to be
a determining consideration:
With tax funds providing at least bare relief needs, campaigns
will have to be organized about the special social services alone,
and when these services thus exclusively occupy the field of ap-
peal, their justification will have to be very certain in order to
succeed. Of course, Joe will still occasionally give to something-
just because his friend John is a good fellow and a member of the
342
THE SURVEY
October 1933
board — but, at least, John will have to plead longer and louder
than he did before, and often he's going to be talked out of his
own cause.
General expectation that high taxes for relief, although
a legitimate excuse in some instances, will be seized by
many former givers as a convenient alibi for discontinuing.
Another factor:
Ten years ago, when people were making more money than
they were worth, their consciences were acute: they gave money
because they felt they owed it. Thus, both in education and in
social work, we were able to do things that today are beyond our
means. Today, the thoughtful giver is trying to determine not
what we can do, but what we cannot do without.
What elements in a specific appeal are likely to win
favorable consideration?
The backing of men and women whose judgment can be
trusted — that is, when these men and women are actively
interested, not merely members of letterhead committees.
Complimentary comment by friends and associates in
casual conversation.' The cumulative effect of publicity —
which sometimes hastens and sometimes retards the re-
sponse. One man, a writer of checks in four and five figures:
"As a protest against too many letters, I've made it a flat
rule never to give when they write me — even when I like
the work. I study the thing in my own way and give when
I please."
Various forms of subtle coercion exercised by sponsors
still work, it seems, although each gift thus made carries
with it a vow that it will be the last. The hope frequently
expressed that social workers would learn to talk about
projects first and money afterward. "It's noble and neces-
sary to cure — but show us how to prevent something if you
want real support."
Do you think there is too much overhead in social work?
Every answer affirmative — but the inquirer quickly
learns that the underlying objection is to "overheads," a
multiplicity of superstructures in social work rather than
to administrative costs in particular pieces of work. "Too
many buildings." "Too much machinery." "Too many
bosses." "Too much organization." No feeling that con-
structive work can be done without administrative expense
and trained personnel, but a growing conviction that our
forces are divided into too many separate units, each with
its own overhead to be supported. Said a business man of
the hard-headed type:
I do not need to be convinced that the workers who go out and
take care of the poor are not overhead. Of course they're not!
They do what a family agency is in business for, don't they?
They're not my kick. If you want to know what makes me boil,
just take a look at this — the size of it!
And, unexpectedly, he drew out of a drawer a copy of
the New York City Directory of Social Agencies, and
tossed it on his desk as a mute but eloquent peroration for
his argument. "Only now and then do I find excessive
overhead in any particular organization. There are just
too many organizations."
Do you recognize social work as a profession?
No negative answers. General agreement that the work
requires men and women especially trained, and that those
who possess the necessary skills and qualities of leadership
should rate professional status. As to whether the present
crop deserves this ranking, opinions invariably formed
-from personal contacts, sometimes fortunate, sometimes
not. Every evidence of increased respect for professional
social workers as a group as a result of emergency service;
frequent acknowledgment that the average community
during the depression would have been lost without them.
It is apparent that many contributors, especially those
not serving on boards, do not know the modern social
worker as a personality. The designation "social worker"
itself oftentimes a barrier, still calling up in their minds a
well-intentioned but untrained and often sanctimonious
or meddling sort of person. Caricatures of this type on
stage and screen widely accepted as true portraits. We
have not yet substituted for this hold-over impression
from other days an understanding of the modern social
worker as a trained, liberal and well-balanced type ol
public servant.
Do you approve of case work?
"Yes" — with some reservations, even from those who
serve on boards of case-work agencies. "I think so but I'm
not sure" about sums up the feeling of those depending
chiefly upon printed interpretations. General acceptance
of the underlying "case by case" principle, as distinguished
from impersonal mass relief, which all seemed to depre-
cate— except in emergencies — as degrading to the recipient
and self-perpetuating as a system. Widespread hope that
professional methods may be perfected without loss of the
essential element of human sympathy. Many intrigued b)
the modern method and its purposes, and receptive tc
further information, which they wonder why they do no)
get:
When a social worker talks to me, I gather that service to th(
family or individual is the main thing, and that material relief ii
incidental. I just about get into that point of view when tht
agency's publicity stuff comes along and I find material relie
played up and the service idea soft-pedaled.
Numerous questions as to why printed material o
case-work agencies either fails to explain case work at all
or is steeped in terminology which classifies it in the read
er's mind as esoterica.
Have you any comment to make upon our publicity am
money-raising methods? '
Have they! Everything from light ridicule to heav^
dramatics, coupled with specific suggestions laden wit
terror for agency leaders to whom the status quo is sac
rosanct.
Let's dismiss the word "method" as applied to money-raisin)
in New York and among national organizations. It's a costl;
and depressing hit-or-miss scramble— deadly competition i;
which the good agency suffers along with the futile or question
able ones.
Every man, apparently, has been mentally indulginj
in his own game of checkers with the entire organizationa
set-up, and is ready with proposals for mergers, revision
and eliminations that he thinks would bring about a mor
efficient and less expensive alignment of forces. A definit
consensus that money-raising methods cannot be improve'
until some such fundamental reorganization is achievec
"How can welfare agencies expect to perpetuate then-
selves on a strictly individualistic basis at a time whe
business, industry and finance are obliged to get togethe
in every conceivable way to meet a new economic order?
Unanimous approval of the leadership of the Welfar
Council of New York in the direction of better social-wor
planning, accompanied by hope — not always confident-
that its constituent member agencies will unselfishly adop
its stated objectives as their own.
October 1933
THE SURVEY
343
Sharp division was evident on the question of an all-
inclusive Community Chest for New York, with the
majority opinion convinced that it would not work. Favor-
able response to recent suggestions of "separate joint
appeals," which sounds like a contradiction in terms but
isn't, meaning joint appeals by groups of agencies in the
same fields of service. General insistence upon the setting
up of some source of disinterested information to which
the contributing public might turn for guidance, not only
as to the integrity of organizations, but as to their necessity
and importance in relation to the community's total needs.
Current publicity material was largely discounted as
reflecting a competitive rather than a cooperative spirit.
"Too much salesmanship— not enough effort to supply
sound and unbiased information." Even when done with
restraint and good taste publicity material by its very
mass and volume cited as visual confirmation of a wide-
spread impression that the agency field is over-populated.
What chances, in your opinion, will new projects have in
the immediate future?
This produced two interesting opinions from several
equally interesting sources: first, that new ideas for
promoting the better use of leisure time would be welcomed
by any philanthropist who had studied the social implica-
tions of the new economic order, as dramatized by the
NRA program; second, that many thoughtful givers in the
upper brackets would give immediate precedence to any
soundly-conceived cooperative program, either in New
York City or in the national field, through which the
number of separate appeals now before the public might
be reduced without the loss of essential or highly desirable
services.
HERE we have what I believe to be something of a
verbal photograph of the composite mind with which
we have to deal these days when we seek money in larger
sums. In this mind, as I have already said, are ideas,
opinions and preconceptions that do not hang together.
These I have analyzed and taken into account for my own
purposes, and any other executive can do the same.
However, I did not find a man, even among those whose
temperatures rose as they spoke, who did not exhibit
fundamentally a reasoning and reasonable attitude. I
found no disposition to desert the ship, but rather a desire
to step up to the bridge to find out what the navigating
officers were using for charts and instruments. Hence, the
inconsistencies are relatively easy to deal with. It's the
consistencies that worry me.
The New Philosophy of Giving
By HAROLD S. BUTTENHEIM
Editor The American City
RITICAL reappraisal of the puritanical virtue of
thrift is a major need of our era of potential surplus.
Self-denial and good intentions may otherwise con-
ribute to the very insecurity and suffering they seek to
Drevent. The depression of 1930-33 did not result from any
:xcessive spending on consumers' goods by either the rich
>r the poor. On the contrary, one of its primary causes was
he kind of thrift which diverted too large a percentage of
:urrent revenues into savings. These savings in turn went
oo largely into stock-market gambling, into land specula-
ion, or into capital investments in unneeded factories,
machinery, skyscrapers, filling stations, and other excess
acilities for competitive manufacture and trade. Expendi-
ures for current needs and enjoyment thus failed to keep
sace with capacity to produce. Disastrous "over-produc-
ion" and price-cutting and unemployment were the
nevitable results.
As we now strive to emerge from this period of poverty
n the midst of potential plenty, we shall make a tragic
slunder if we seek to restore buying power by restriction of
wise spending, either private or public. A depression which
esulted from failure to consume the abundance of a sur-
)lus economy can never be cured, or its repetition pre-
sented, by abstinence either from the bounties of factory
ind farm or from the benefits of recreation and culture.
But this does not mean, for any individual, that he must
limself consume all of the goods and pleasures which his
ncome would provide. The important thing for society
is a whole, is that our producible abundance shall some-
low be consumed. The ideal, of course, is such generous
ivage scales and such liberal use of prosperity-spreading
devices — public works, old-age pensions and other forms
social insurance, for example — as to provide ample
purchasing power and security for every human being.
The arrival of that happy time would be greatly speeded
were every American citizen to spend his income and even
part of his capital, to the full limit of prudence, on goods
and services which make for a life of comfort and beauty
and joy — not merely for himself and his immediate family,
but for his under-privileged neighbors of community, na-
tion or world. The purchase, for example, of shoes or radios
or books by a family that can afford such expenditures, will
help in the upward swing of business and in the substitution
of jobs for doles. But the buying of shoes for the barefoot, or
radios for the blind, or books for the public library, pro-
duces just as many jobs as if the same funds were spent for
the personal use of those already amply supplied.
Such giving — if wisdom be combined with generosity —
may bless, economically as well as spiritually, both him who
receives and him who gives. Similarly, contributions to wel-
fare and religious organizations, which make possible em-
ployment that contributes to physical, spiritual and cul-
tural well-being, are just as beneficial in providing jobs as
though the same funds were spent on non-essentials for the
spender's own benefit — and the community values are
vastly greater.
Here, then, we have the philosophy of giving for the era
of the New Deal. It considers thrift a virtue only to the
extent that thrift results in the wise spending of the funds
which it conserves. And it considers spending a virtue to the
extent that it is both liberal and intelligent, weighing in
honest balance the claims of one's immediate family and of
the greater family of mankind.
As Secretary of Labor Frances Perkins recently re-
marked, we have come to the time when we can afford to
treat ourselves to some civilization.
On the Governors' Doorsteps
By RUSSELL H. KURT/
Russell Sage Foundation
kHE Federal Emergency Relief Administration has
only fifty-three "clients" — the forty-eight states,
four territories and the District of Columbia — but
they are all "relief cases." Its efforts to get them to do their
part in solving their own relief problems have been not un-
like those of a family agency dealing with its applicants.
Determination of need, appraisal of resources, stimulation
to action, and aid by relief grant are the familiar steps.
It is not necessary to review here the swift changes in the
American relief system by which, as the load became pro-
gressively heavier, the financial responsibility shifted from
local to state and federal resources. The first federal relief
fund of $300 million, distributed to the states on the theo-
retical basis of loans, was administered with an effort to
develop local and state self-help, but its administrators
lacked real authority in that direction. The 1933 act not
only corrected this lack but focussed more definitely upon
the governor of each state the responsibility for welding his
state into a relief unit with which the Federal Emergency
Relief Administration could deal. In so doing, it said in
effect, "The states are relief households with the governors
as the family heads. It will be each governor's responsibility
to mobilize his household for the fullest measure of self-
support. This will mean continued use of both local and
state resources to the limit."
In translating this authority into results, the FERA has
obviously regarded direct State Aid as only one of several
possible forms of state action. State aid in earlier days of
federal participation had presumably meant provision of
funds by the state government, through appropriation, tax
levy or bond sale, to supplement or supplant inadequate
local funds. But confusion in the use of the term crept in
when it was applied to state-enabling legislation designed to
help local units raise additional funds for themselves,
through the removal of old taxing or bond-issuing restric-
tions. State action is what the FERA wants and it is not
"choosy" as to what form it takes, just so it is adequate.
Thus state action may be said to embrace the sum of all
the measures taken within state borders for provision of
relief resources. A large part of such action may be strictly
local in origin and effect, but if it fits into the state picture
of public relief effort, it is credited to the account of that
commonwealth in the Domesday Book of the FERA. On
the other hand, the lopsidedness of such a set-up is a matter
of federal concern when it results in inadequacy of the
total state effort. It is in such situations that the FERA has
used its authority for invoking state action of the state-aid
type as a condition to further federal support.
Fortunately the legislatures of forty-three states had met
in regular sessions in the early months of 1933 and enacted
a considerable volume of unemployment-relief legislation
of a basic character. But unfortunately most of them
stopped short of providing funds in any sense adequate to
the need. Too many of them adjourned without facing the
problem at all. As a result, special sessions have had to be
called in an increasing number of cases.
It is pertinent to note how the FERA fared in its effort to
bring about greater state action during the summer
months. To do this it will be necessary to go back a little.
During the first six months a number of changes in state
participation were begun which were only partially re-
flected in the figures for this period. Michigan broke a long
legislative deadlock in June and provided funds for helping
to meet the relief needs of its local subdivisions. California
and Texas decided to submit to popular vote proposals to
amend their state constitutions so as to allow relief bond
issues. Washington passed a $10 million bond issue,
with New Hampshire, Rhode Island, Nevada and Minne-
sota following a similar course though for lesser amounts.
Maryland financed the relief of the City of Baltimore by
special bonds, though making no specific provisions for the
rest of the state. Indiana and Oklahoma made appropria-
tions from general state revenues. Maine attempted to put
through a state bond issue but the voters rejected it.
When the FERA took up the reins late in May, the state
situations might roughly have been classified as follows:
(a) Those that were temporarily satisfactory because of exist-
ing provisions for local and state participation. In this group were
such states as New York, New Jersey, Connecticut, Massachu-
setts and Delaware where the past record was clear of any at-
tempt to "unload" on the federal government.
(b) Those that were unsatisfactory because the states had
made provisions that seemed inadequate in view of their total
potential resources. Kentucky, Ohio, Colorado, Texas, Michigan,
California, Missouri, Oregon, West Virginia, Tennessee, Louisi-
ana and Illinois were cases in point.
(c) Those that were unsatisfactory but beyond hope of im-
mediate change for the better.
/CONCENTRATING upon those states in the second
^^ classification, the FERA has been rewarded by the
action of Michigan described above; the ratification of the
proposed constitutional amendments allowing bond issues
in California and Texas; and the passage at special sessions
of the Ohio and Colorado legislatures of relief measures in
August. Michiganmadeapproximately$i6million available;
California $20 million; Texas $20 million; Ohio $24 million;
and Colorado $3 million for direct relief and $20 million
for emergency employment. Ohio resorted to nuisance
taxes and the extension of old "enabling legislation" into
1934. Colorado's $3 million is to be raised over a two-year
period by a tax on automobiles, and her work program is to
be financed by the sale of bonds.
Kentucky has been a tougher nut to crack. She received a
warning from the federal-relief administrator in July to the
effect that federal aid would not be continued unless the
state acted in its own behalf. The state-wide relief program
came to a standstill in August, and it was not until a week
later that the legislature finally convened in special session
at the governor's call. On September 10, it was still in ses-
sion, deadlocked after having repudiated the governor's
proposal for a sales tax. On that date, the administrator
wired the governor as follows:
The fact that the legislature has made no provision for the re-
lief of the unemployed is very disturbing. As you know the federal
344
October 1933
T HE SURVEY
34.S
government is prepared to make an appropriation to Kentucky on
ten minutes' notice if Kentucky will but provide a reasonable
share of the funds to care for its own unemployed. We are willing
to pay two thirds of the relief costs. The needs of the unemployed
far surpass all political considerations, and it is difficult to under-
stand the delay in making these modest appropriations when thou-
sands of citizens of Kentucky through no fault of their own will at
any moment be in dire need. I cannot urge too strongly the
importance of making the adjustments which will result in the
relief to which the unemployed are entitled.
At this date, September 20, the deadlock is still unbroken.
Illinois has agreed to another special session of the legis-
lature in October, to try to make up the twenty million
dollar relief deficit occasioned by a disappointing sales tax
passed earlier in the year. Missouri and Oregon are likewise
expected to call legislative sessions sometime this fall,
both having been warned by the FERA.
Tennessee's governor has recently agreed to have the
state provide $500,000 "from existing appropriations" to
help meet its own relief needs, "this amount to be aug-
mented by funds to be raised by local governments within
the state" according to FERA announcement.
West Virginia has been questioned as to her potential
ability to do more for herself and has been given an exten-
sion of time to analyze her situation. Louisiana's finances
were the object of a special study by federal tax experts
but no public report has been made of the conclusions.
However, the state has received a "non-matching" grant of
$216,000 since this study was made.
Within the past month, the "non-matching" or dis-
cretionary grants have greatly out-numbered those made
on a matching basis. In most instances they have been
made without public comment, except as they were de-
scribed as due to the fact that "the money available from
all sources in the state for unemployment relief includ-
ing the previous grants of federal money, is insufficient to
meet the relief needs." Among these recent grants were:
.V;, 805,403 to Ohio, to carry her until her new relief legislation
could become operative.
$3,400,000 to Illinois pending the promised legislative action in
October.
$1,250,000 to Florida, with the proviso that she raise her relief
program to a more adequate level.
And, made without public comment by the FERA:
$1,400,000 to Maryland.
$953,968 to Oklahoma.
$800,000 to South Carolina.
$400,000 to Arizona.
$216,000 to Louisiana.
$200,000 to Puerto Rico.
$165,000 to Arkansas.
$93,000 to Mississippi.
$25,000 to Virgin Islands.
$ 1 5,000 to New Mexico.
It probably may safely be assumed that in some of these
situations the FERA sees no immediate hope of greater
state participation. It has not made public utterance to
this effect, however, and is not likely to. There is nothing
static about its relationships with the states. Mr. Hopkins
is quoted as saying to the representatives of one impover-
ished commonwealth, "We won't let you down but we
don't expect you to let us down either." That seems to sum
up his attitude toward those situations that offer no pres-
ent hope of greater state action.
On the other hand, to the delegation from a state that he
felt was derelict in its duty, Mr. Hopkins is quoted as hurl-
ing this question, "Why should I lie awake nights worrying
about your problems when you have done nothing to solve
them yourselves?"
Between these limits of attitude and response the FERA
is pushing its individualized adjustments in the relief
affairs of its fifty-three clients.
Relief in a Rising Market
By ANNE E. GEDDES
Department of Statistics, Russell Sage Foundation
housewife with a market basket has come to
realize that the^New Deal is no longer merely a
slogan. Increasing commodity prices supply her
with concrete evidence of one element of the changing
order. If a member of her family has found work as a result
of the slowly rising tide of employment, or has already
benefited from advancing wage scales, higher prices may
not mean less food in the family larder; but for a large
proportion of those families now feeling the pinch of
poverty, still greater hardship is in store during the early
stages of the recovery. Many families who have been
crushed by the downswing of the business cycle will be
forced to pull in their belts another notch in the upturn.
In June we were told by the Federal Relief Administra-
tion that four million families, representing almost eighteen
million individuals, were then on relief. With public-works
programs speeding up, with industrial codes pouring into
Washington, with the short work week about to be
established, and with child labor abolished under the
mandates of NRA, a substantial share of these families
should shortly be restored to. independence. Under the
most auspicious circumstances, however, for some time to
come we shall continue to count our dependent families in
numbers of seven digits. What will the rising cost of living
mean to them? Can we hope that relief grants will be
revised to meet increasing prices, or will already pitiable
doles be expected to stretch even farther? Light on this
question is shed by the experience of the past, which shows
what has happened to relief standards during the de-
pression thus far.
In the spring of 1929 the Department of Statistics of the
Russell Sage Foundation began the systematic collection of
monthly statistics on the volume of relief operations in
seventy-six large cities in the United States. The combined
population of these cities is 38,500,000, or 31 percent of the
total population of the United States. The data collected
from relief agencies in the seventy-six cities do not give
precise information on relief standards, but do give a crude
measure of the amount of relief granted to families by
different types of agencies.
For the purpose of tracing trends, comparison has been
made currently for ten groups of organizations of the
amount of relief per family per month, and figures for the
first half of 1929 and of 1932 are reproduced in the ac-
346
THE SURVEY
October 1933
companying diagram. The first of these half-year periods
antedates the depression, and as compared with more
recent years, may be regarded as a fairly normal period of
relief-giving. Figures for the later period are from the
U. S. Children's Bureau, to which the Foundation's relief
statistics project was transferred in January 1932.
The solid portion of the bars in the diagram represents
the size of the median grants in the two periods. The 1932
bars are extended to indicate the possible effect on relief
grants of increased purchasing power resulting from the
fall of retail prices. According to the cost-of-living index of
the United States Department of Labor, which has been
used to measure the increase in purchasing power, living
costs declined 17 percent from the first half of 1929 to the
first half of 1932.
A glance at the diagram shows that the median grants of
only three types of agencies — public veterans' depart-
ments, public blind offices, and general public departments
— were larger in 1932 than in 1929. In actual amounts, the
median grants of the other types of agencies decreased
between the two periods, but only in the case of the
Jewish agencies was the purchasing power of the 1932
median grant less than that of the 1929 grant. It should be
observed, however, that even in 1932 the median payment
of the Jewish agencies was larger than the median grants of
most other types of agencies. Inasmuch as old-age relief
did not exist in any of the seventy-six cities in the first half
of 1929, the median old-age allowance is not shown for that
period.
Since the first half of 1932, further shrinkage has oc-
curred in the average amount of relief per family, but
living costs have likewise fallen since that period. The
Department of Labor index for June 1933, which has just
been released, shows decline of 25 percent in the cost of
living for the depression period to date, that is, from June
1929, to June 1933. During the four-year interval, food and
rents have fallen 36 percent or more, while the cost of
clothing and furniture has declined about 26 percent.
The diagram shows great variation in the size of the
median grants of the different types of agencies and raises
serious question concerning the adequacy of grants now
being given. Are they sufficient to maintain families on
anything like a minimum standard of decency? In the first
D o H a r «
20 30
40
50
Public mothers' aid
Public veterans
Jewish
Public old age
Public blind
General public
Nonsectarian
Catholic
Private veterans
Miscellaneous private
1929
1929
1929
1932
Actual amount-
Increased value
owing to decline
in cost of living
Median Amounts of Relief Per Family Per Month of Ten Types of Agencies
in First Half of 1929 and First Half of 1932
half of 1932, the median average payments ranged from
$38.98 for mothers' aid offices to 558.96 for the miscellaneous
private agencies. The grants of the general public depart-
ments and of the non-sectarian family-case-work agencies,
which bear the brunt of the relief burden, were but $17. 52
and 5514.68, respectively. It is worth noting that although
old-age allowances are granted to individual dependents
rather than to families, the median grant of the old-age
offices, amounting in the first half of 1932 to $23.89, was
larger than the median grants of the general public
departments, the non-sectarian family-case-work agencies,
the Catholic agencies, the private veterans' organizations,
or the miscellaneous agencies, all of which give relief to
family groups.
IT is not safe to assume that the median grants of relief
agencies are quite the same thing as the median amounts
of relief received by the families in question, since under
our present system of relief administration many families
are aided by more than one agency. While it is known that
there is considerable overlapping of effort it is believed
certain that the amount of supplemental relief is not
sufficient to increase greatly the averages already com-
puted. If this is true, we may accept these averages as at
least approximating the average amount of relief per
family per month from all sources. It is worthwhile, then,
to compare the median grants of the various types of
organizations aiding families with what the agencies think
is necessary to maintain minimum standards.
In May 1933, in its bulletin, Unemployment Relief
Experience, the Family Welfare Association of America
published information secured from twenty-five of its
member agencies in twenty-five cities located in various
sections of the country concerning minimum-standard
budgets for a family of five. The average of these twenty-
five budgets is $17.60 per week, or $76.26 per month. This
allows $18.63 Per month for rent, $29.68 for food, $7.41 for
fuel and light, $13.13 for clothing and $7.41 for incidentals.
It is plain that the grants of very few agencies remotely
approach this figure, or even a correspondingly lower figure
for a somewhat smaller size of family. The average number
of dependents per relief family is not known for the ten
different groups of agencies, but the New York Emergency
Relief Administration reports that in June 1933, the
average number of persons per relief family was 4.4 in
New York City, and 4.5 in upstate New York. This sug-
gests that an average of five persons may be only slightly
too high.
In the stress of the depression, relief agencies more and
more have adopted the policy of restricting relief to
families whose resources are exhausted. With relief grants
falling so far below the minimum budgets of the relief
agencies, how then have relief families been able to
subsist on the amounts of relief which they have received?
Undoubtedly, some families on relief have hidden resources,
not uncovered by investigators, but without question the
vast majority of families now receiving relief are living on
a sub-minimum standard. Unless relief grants can be
increased with rising prices, the present sub-minimum
standards are going to be forced to new and dangerously
low levels. Fortunately, the Federal Relief Administration,
which is pumping new blood into the arteries of local relief
organizations, is in a position to insist that relief standards
shall not fall still lower, and has announced this as an
effective policy.
What? Clients with Bank Accounts!
By G. S.
'ELL all I have to say is that it's a darned poor
rule."
The young relief worker, tense and a little
defiant, glared at Miss Bailey as though it were all her
fault. "Why it just doesn't make sense. Here's this Martin
family, nice as they can be, all ten of 'em, from Gramma
down to the baby. Three years there's been no regular
work — just the measliest sort of odd jobs. And some way
they got along till six months ago. And what they've done
with the ten dollars a week we've put in there! Mrs.
Martin is a wonder. Then because I, like a fool, get busy
and turn up that miserable little bank balance of $23.47,
this rule says we've got to cut off relief till it's used up.
Well, somebody else can tell them, not me."
Miss Bailey tapped her pencil meditatively on her desk
pad.
"You didn't think it was such a bad rule last month
when you discovered what old Bud Simmons had been
putting over on you. As I remember, you were all for send-
ing him to jail."
"But Miss Bailey, that was different. That was more
than $3000, and the whole family was out to do us and we
knew it. But the Martins aren't like that. This $23 is the
last scrap of nearly $2000 they had saved up when Mr.
Martin lost his job. Mrs. Martin says, 'I think it's kept
me from going crazy.' And what earthly good will it do
to make them eat it up! It'll only last two weeks, and we'll
be right back where we are now. Oh, I think relief does
terrible things to people."
"And you're just finding that out?" Miss Bailey's
twisted smile was testimony to long and weary experience.
"But why do we have to
have such iron-clad rules?
Old Simmons was a liar and
a cheat. Mr. Martin is a
square, self-respecting man.
Yet we have to treat them
both alike. Why can't we
treat each case the way it
deserves?"
"Why indeed!" replied
Miss Bailey. "But given
the rule, hadn't you and I
better be thinking of how
we can live with it instead
of getting all hot and
bothered?"
"Somebody else can tell
them, not me. It just isn't
fair!"
"Granted. But surely it
will be harder for the Mar-
tins to take this from a
stranger than from you
who know and respect
them. And after all you
don't have to do it with a
club. They got their food order yesterday, you say, so you
have nearly a week to turn around in. Surely you can put
it to the Martins that now is the time to invest that $23
in things the family needs that we can't possibly supply.
I'll bet at least three of those children need shoes. How are
their rubbers for the winter? Didn't you tell me that
Gramma had broken her glasses? If they spend their
money within a reasonable time on things like that I don't
see that we have any quarrel, do you ? Why don't you go to
the Martins and have a straight business talk with them —
and for Heaven's sake don't get emotional."
"And that I suppose," said Miss Bailey to herself as the
door closed behind her visitor, "is compounding a felony
or being accessory to the crime — or something. Yes, relief
does do terrible things to people, even to social workers."
T7*AMILIES with bank accounts, families with
J. cars, families never before touched by social
agencies, now figure large in the "relief popula-
tion" of these United States, How the new problems
they bring, rarely encountered by case workers of a
few years ago, are being treated, how workers with-
out extensive training are being prepared to meet
situations calling for quick and discriminating
judgment, are the subjects of a series of Survey
articles, of which this is the eighth, drawn from
day-by-day experience in busy relief offices. The
series to date is now being offered by The Survey
in pamphlet form (see inside front cover). Articles
to come, from month to month, in The Survey Mid-
monthly include: Big-Hearted Clients; Children
Must Live Their Own Lives; Nerves; When Hidden
Resources Turn Up; Publicity Where Is Thy
Sting?; When Clients Are Set In Their Ways.
347
is something about the idea of families on relief
J. having bank accounts, however vestigial, that the
public cannot apparently endure. The rare case of some
slick rascal who gets his family on relief while he still keeps
his own sizable hoard intact is always good for newspaper
headlines if not for a public scandal. It is this occasional
grafter who is responsible for the rigidity of rules which
"just don't make sense" and which, in the opinion of those
close-in to their administration, work unnecessary humilia-
tion on numbers of sincere, self-respecting people helpless
in the cogs of the great relief machine.
Take for instance the rule in an upstate New York city.
If a family has "fraudulently obtained aid," — and that,
literally construed, means concealing any bank account
whatsoever — the City Court will order
the head of the family to re-
imburse the Department for
whatever amount of relief the
family received, but the head
of the family may be given the
alternative of serving time in
the penitentiary. In either
event, after the head of the
family makes restitution in
cash, which exhausts his re-
sources, or if he goes to prison
leaving the family without
adequate support, the Depart-
ment is still liable for the
support of the family.
The application of this
rule to the Martin family
would have obliged Mr.
Martin to hand over his
residual $23.47 to the pub-
lic department or go to
jail, though in neither case
would it have made the
slightest difference to the
status of his family on the
relief roll. Its one accom-
plishment would have been
348
THE SURVEY
October 1933
to turn the knife in the wound of his humiliation and to
embitter him against the relief agency and all its works.
"We do not quarrel with the principle that families
should use their own resources before they ask for public
aid," said the supervisor of a big city district with twenty
years of case work behind her. "We believe that the prin-
ciple should stand and the application be a matter of ad-
justment to the individual case. If our families knew in the
beginning that this was a principle to be applied reasonably
and not as a rigid rule they would have much less incentive
to lie about the last remnant of their savings and we should
be able to establish a much better relationship with them.
But since we have the rule on the books, the best we can do
is to make the inquiry and the subsequent check-up on
bank accounts as routine and business-like as possible.
"T T 7"E try our best to have our investigators avoid pres-
VV sure and veiled threats where they suspect hidden
resources, while they explain that in the present situation
relief cannot be given while resources remain and that just
as an employer checks up on references or a store on its
charge accounts, we must check their statements. It's all
just as straight and simple and direct as we can make it,
and nine times out of ten the client meets us on that
ground.
"We check every application by virtue of a highly
confidential arrangement with the banks — and that, if
you please is an anomaly that I won't dwell on now — and,
though it goes against my grain I'm inclined to think that
in a relief operation as wholesale as this one it is a good
procedure.
"Of course, the overwhelming majority of the applicants
haven't and never have had a bank account, but this
routine check-up has uncovered two or three instances of
just plain intent to defraud, and a few more where the
bank balance was still substantial enough to keep the
family going a while longer. There have been enough of
these to indicate that the lists should be checked. The
puzzlers, however, are the tiny balances, anything from
two dollars up to fifty, according to the standard of the
family, that represent a last shred of security and that are
so blindly and often stubbornly clung to that to force them
out is to put a family into complete panic.
"The attitude of the worker is, of course, the key to deal-
ing with these situations. We had one girl who was cer-
tainly born to be a detective. The way she could run down
a three-dollar bank balance would have been a credit to a
bloodhound. So far as any constructive friendly service to
the families was concerned she might as well have gone
around with a gun on her hip. Of course, such a relationship
is just a battle of wits in which the worker is the foreor-
dained loser.
"r I AHEN we had another girl who got herself all mixed up
•*- emotionally with the families whenever she had to
deal with things like bank balances. I guess they all cried to-
gether. We had to let her go, too. She thought I was a hard-
boiled she-devil.
"The good worker in such situations is, of course, com-
pletely objective and business-like. Theoretically, sKe
should, in the first home-interview or two, so gain the
understanding of the family that the reticent little bank
account would come out of its own accord. But at a point
where our most skilled workers may easily fail, I don't
hold it against the unskilled if the bank account stays in
hiding. But I do hold it against them if they try to get it
out by bullying or big-sticking. Much better, let it come
out by the routine check with the banks and then proceed
without recriminations, but with a lot of common sense
and patience.
"People can be more hurt and their candor more com-
pletely quenched by a high-handed attitude toward an
insignificant bank account than by almost anything I
know. In the cases we are talking about the amount is
negligible in relation to the whole situation of the family,
rarely enough to carry them more than a week or two.
Yet there it is, and there is the rule. The fact that the
client has lied to us has nothing to do with the matter.
The need of the family and the best use of all available
resources is what concerns us. Our good workers simply
pass over the lie, assume that the few dollars left in the
bank are a family resource and in a perfectly matter-of-
fact way plan with the family to use them, so long as they
last, for small necessities that our help does not provide.
"Of course, it doesn't always work,— usually, but not
always. We get men to whom a bankbook is more than
their religion, hysterical women who would see their chil-
dren wither up and die before they would close out a ten-
dollar balance. I suppose sometimes we blink realities
when Mrs. Jones shows us her cancelled book and we know
perfectly well that that last $8.43 is under the paper in the
bureau drawer and likely to remain there. But we just
can't and don't keep arguing about it."
ONE of the curious aspects of the great mass unemploy-
ment-relief operation of the past three years, still eu-
phemistically called emergency, has been the unwillingness
of new relief organizations to profit from the experience ot
others. Social workers experienced in dealing with families
in trouble have long known the futility of trying to apply
rigid rules indiscriminately and have learned the high
human cost of broken self-respect. Yet as new direction has
come forward, state after state has laid down rules and
regulations that perhaps its very next-door neighbor had
tried and discarded. So the commissary came and went,
but not before many thousands of people suffered hardship
and humiliation while officials were learning that relief
didn't have to be given that way. State administrations
with a year or two of experience have modified their original
dictum that no one possessed of a car can get relief. Yet
Kansas only last month ruled that no one who drives a
car or goes to the movies is eligible for relief. Bank ac-
counts are still subject to rigid rules, though little by little
experience and common sense are modifying their enforce-
ment.
A social worker translated last year from a large private
agency into a still larger public department, summed up
the conclusions of many of equal experience when she
said:
Agencies, public or private, must have clearly established
policies in regard to all these matters of property, but they should
be general policies and not detailed rules. Within these policies
the individual worker must be free to operate to the best of her
ability. She must have a policy to guide her, but it must have ;i
certain degree of "give" in its application. And some way our
American public must come to realize that the great mass of
people now receiving help cannot and should not be regimented
by rules that have their source in the Elizabethan concept of
pauperism. It is inconceivable that in this day and age we should
insist on relief that degrades before it relieves.
Child Health Recovery
By GRACE ABBOTT
Chief, U. S. Children's Bureau
H 5 Child Health Recovery Conference called by
the Secretary of Labor Frances Perkins on October
6 in Washington, included representatives of
national health agencies, nearly all the directors of child
hygiene in the state departments of health, nutrition
experts, representatives of medical societies, the Federal
Relief Administration, the relief and social-service child-
welfare agencies, and the lay organizations whose help will
be necessary in any program for reducing malnutrition.
Ever since the depression began the Children's Bureau
has been trying to assemble such information as was
available in the various states on how the children were
faring in this period of widespread unemployment and of
hastily organized relief for their destitution. It will be
remembered that at the opening meeting of the White
House Conference in the fall of 1930, President Hoover,
quoting estimates of the number of handicapped children,
said there were six million undernourished children at
that time. This was, of course, an estimate, and may have
been far under or above the number who were suffering
from malnutrition at that time. During 1930 and 1931,
such information as came to the Children's Bureau con-
cerning examinations made by doctors in connection with
child-health clinics, school examinations, infant-welfare
societies, and the like, showed that except in certain
mining communities children were pretty well holding
their own, and that in some localities additional milk in the
family relief budget had resulted in a reduction in the
number of undernourished children during those first
years. But the effects of under-feeding are cumulative,
and in the winter of 1932-1933, although the downward
trend of the infant mortality rate continued, there was in
many places a complete reversal of the picture, and
information began to come in of a greatly increased number
of preschool and school children who were showing the
effects of inadequate food and housing, of lack of medical
care, and the anxiety and sense of insecurity that pre-
vailed wherever there was unemployment. In some
regions the proportion of below-par children reaches truly
appalling figures. The director of child health in the State
Department of Health of Pennsylvania has assembled in
diagrammatical form the figures for the school health
examinations by counties for the school years 1928-29 to
-33 (see accompanying charts.)
While Pennsylvania has had a very serious problem
with its highly industrialized communities, its bituminous
coal-mining towns, it is, of course, only one of the states in
which the resources have been inadequate to grapple with
the needs of the children. Evidence comes from many other
places.
At the National Conference of Social Work, Bailey B.
Burritt reported that the Mulberry Health Center in
New York City where children from 2 to 6 years of age
have been examined by physicians for a number of con-
secutive years, found that whereas 17.7 percent of the
children examined were undernourished from 1927 to 1929,
the average percentage was 36.7 for 1930 to 1932. The
percentage of malnutrition among school children in New
York City, as shown in the examinations made by the
City Health Department, mounted from 13.5 in 1927 to
21.1 in 1932. The Community Health Center of Phila-
delphia reported an increase in the percentage of mal-
nourished children from 30.5 percent of the children from
6 to 12 and 28.4 percent of the children from 13 to 16 who
were examined in 1928 to 41.5 and 42.5 percent respectively
of the children of these ages examined in 1932.
On the basis of such scattered information as has been
given it would appear that instead of approximately one
seventh of the children being undernourished, if one
accepts the 1930 figures to which I have referred, there are
as many as one fifth of the preschool and school children
who might now be said to be undernourished. I am very
loath to accept this figure. I hope that a nation-wide
effort to determine what is the nutritional condition of our
children will show a smaller percentage.
Lack of uniformity in the methods of study makes it
impossible to compare satisfactorily data from different
regions. There is an obvious need for some simple plan of
procedure by which the nutritional state of large numbers
of children in any given community can be evaluated.
With such an evaluation it ought to be possible to work out
some plan for supplementary feeding and medical care
where this is needed. Even if a well-balanced diet is now
being given, it will take additional food, especially milk, to
bring many of these children back to a good state of
nutrition. It is hoped that reexaminations may be made
after a period of time to check results.
The group assembled at the conference was invited to
B-1989 I32S-J330 1930-1931 1991-1932 1932-1933
I3?6-I329 1929-1930 1930-1931 1931-1932 I932-I933
|9»-I«» I9Z9-I930 1930-1931 I93I-I9SZ I93J-I933
349
350
THE SURVEY
October 1933
report such evidence as was available to them concerning
the condition of children in many communities.
There is a widespread belief among experts that in
addition to those who could be catalogued as malnourished,
there are a large number of children in the borderline state
of nutrition for whom the scales could be tipped either to
malnutrition, if present conditions continue, or good
nutrition with relatively little additional expenditure. We
hope very much that with the leading child-health experts,
pediatricians, and social agencies interested in this prob-
lem, a practical plan can be worked out for an appraisal of
large groups of children who are suspected of under-
nourishment and for the additional food and medical care
where these are found necessary.
With these aims in view, it was decided that the con-
ference should be an informal, working conference. Except
for the opening statement by Secretary Perkins the report
from the executive committee and the statement by the
director of the Federal Relief Administration, the program
provided for discussions of an entirely informal nature,
directed toward the problem of how to discover the extent
of the problem and what can be done about it.
Why Mothers Die
By HAROLD R. STEVENSON
Cleveland Community Fund, Publicity Division
BORTIONS plus "hurried, operative and bizarre
obstetrics" appear to be the new factors con-
tributing to the deaths of women in connection
with childbirth, according to a study recently completed
by Dr. Richard A. Bolt, director of the Cleveland Child
Health Association. The study, conducted in cooperation
with the Academy of Medicine, the Cleveland Division of
Health and the Visiting Nurse Association, included more
than sixteen thousand confinement cases in Cleveland in
1931. Finding that almost a third of the deaths among
these women followed abortions, Dr. Bolt believes that he
has determined a chief factor in the apparently increasing
maternal deathrate in the United States. How far the
findings of the study apply to other communities is un-
known, but since it may safely be assumed that social and
medical practices do not vary greatly in comparable com-
munities they probably apply at least to other large
industrial cities.
Death records of all women between the ages of 15 and
50 years were checked against the records of live and
stillbirths and every association between them suggested
by similarity of name, place of residence or birth, and time
of birth was followed up to find any possible relationship
between the death and pregnancy. Hospital records and
testimony of doctors, nurses, midwives and relatives were
consulted. So-called "criminal abortions" were included,
although these are recorded by the Division of Health as
homicides.
The official number of maternal deaths in Cleveland dur-
ing 1931 was 117. The study revealed 151 puerperal deaths,
including 12 following criminal abortion. The official
maternity mortality rate based upon 16,279 live births
was 7.2 deaths of mothers for each 1000 live births. The
study showed that if all deaths involving pregnancy were
included, the rate would be 9.3. In addition to the live
births, there were 592 stillbirths. Of the babies born alive,
496 died under two weeks of age and 527 under one month.
Fifty of the 151 deaths followed abortion, either criminal,
therapeutic or self-induced. Dr. Bolt declared:
Abortions make up one third of the total puerperal deaths. In
over 70 percent of these, sepsis was the primary cause of deaths.
In 42 of the abortion cases there was no prenatal care, in five the
care was inadequate, and in only three cases could it be considered
adequate. It is misleading, therefore, to make any comparison
of maternal mortality in the community at large, where all deaths
from abortion are included, with the mortality among maternity
cases under intensive care after the middle of pregnancy.
Abortion undoubtedly has been on the increase since the World
War. This condition may be one of the main factors in the sta-
tionary or increasing puerperal mortality rates in this country.
Among the 151 women who died, 135 were married, 12
single, 2 divorced and 2 widowed. There were 131 white wo-
men, 19 colored and one of doubtful color. While 8.6 percent
of the total births occurred to Negro women, 12.5 percent
of the deaths occurred among them. The chief occupation
of 130 of the women was housework.
Of the total live and stillbirths, 16,014 or 95 percent
were cared for by doctors. About half of the 1679 registered
physicians in the city handled one or more maternit
cases during the year. Forty-eight percent of doctors whc
cared for maternity cases attended five or less live births
67 percent attended ten or less, and 83 percent attended
twenty or less. Fewer than one fifth of the doctors who
handled maternity cases had twenty or more. One Cleve
land doctor delivered 945 babies during the year, on
delivered 878 and a third, 832.
The 151 puerperal deaths occurred in the practice of 109
physicians and nine midwives. Thirty-six percent of th
maternal deaths were handled by specialists, 58 percen
by general practitioners and others and 6 percent b
midwives.
Approximately 60 percent of the total live and still
births occurred in hospitals. Eighty-five percent of the
puerperal deaths occurred in these same hospitals. A
careful scrutiny revealed that, of the women who died in
hospitals, 76 percent were referred from the home because
of known pathologic conditions. Many of the cases had
been in the hands of more than one physician before enter-
ing the hospital. Practically all of the infected abortion
cases were sent to a hospital before death occurred. Death-
rates in the individual hospitals varied greatly. The mor-
tality rate for 6516 home cases was 3.5 per 1000 live births.
There were 98 registered midwives in Cleveland in 1931.
Of these, 87 attended 818 live births and 9 stillbirths,
Nine mothers cared for by midwives died. Five of these
deaths followed criminal abortion induced by midwives
but later turned over to physicians.
The primary causes of death were puerperal septicemia
19; various accidents of labor including instrumentatior
and surgical interference, version, and so on, 18; toxemias
12; puerperal hemorrhage, 8; emboli, 8; other accident!
of pregnancy, 6; lobar pneumonia, 4; pulmonary tuber-
culosis, 2; puerperal psychoses, 2; and one death each frorr
scarlet fever, influenza, cerebo-spinal meningitis, chronii
October 1933
THE SURVEY
351
nephritis and anesthetic shock. There were 33 deaths of the
151 which were subject to a diagnosis or interpretation
different from that recorded in the death certificate.
The youngest mother to die at childbirth was 16 and the
oldest was 45. However, the maternal deathrate is lowest
in the 20- to 25-year group and increases with each ad-
vancing age group. The rate for abortion cases is highest in
the 15- to id-year group. There were sixteen girls from 12
to 14 who gave birth to babies during the year; one mother
was only 12. Among 132 confinement cases of girls 16 or
under, there was only one death.
Seven general conclusions were reached by Dr. Bolt:
1. Factors entering into puerperal mortality are so interwoven
with the social, economic and cultural fabric of the community
that it is impossible to evaluate them without detailed study of
each individual case.
2. Comparison of maternal mortality rates for different com-
munities is misleading unless definition of terms, methods of
collecting data and interpretation of records are comparable.
3. Deaths following abortion should be separated from deaths
after twenty-eight weeks of uterogestation to gain a true picture
of the situation.
4. The midwife, aside from abortions, plays a relatively minor
role in contributing to the high maternal mortality rate.
5. Sepsis, toxemias and hemorrhage play the major tragic
roles, and these are associated largely with hurried, operative and
bizarre obstetrics.
6. Prenatal care and hospitalization are accessories to the
actual obstetric situation. They may not be associated with a low
maternal mortality, depending upon the type of medical, nursing
and hospital care afforded.
7. Not every maternal death is, at present, preventable.
Fundamental changes must take place in the socio-economic
order and more complete knowledge and skill be available in
order to approach this ideal.
Uncle Sam and Medical Relief
By H. JACKSON DAVIS, M.D.
Consultant in Medical Care, Federal Emergency Relief Administration
kHE'poverty of a patient . . . should command
the gratuitous services of a physician," declares
the ethical code of the American Medical Asso-
ciation. Elsewhere that code specifies that a physician
should always "respond to any request for his assistance in
an emergency or whenever temperate public opinion ex-
pects the service." When, however, an "emergency" in-
volves 3,500,000 families, who now look to relief funds for
the necessities of life, temperate opinion becomes aware
of a too heavy drain on the unpaid work of a profession,
with resulting hardship to doctors and unempolyed sick.
In many cities and some states, definite arrangements
have been worked out in the past few years to pay private
physicians for authorized care of patients on the com-
munity's relief rolls (see the Midmonthly Survey, February
1933, p. 66; April 1933, p. 155). With the recent issuance
of Rules and Regulations No. 7 of the Federal Emergency
Relief Administration, Uncle Sam has stepped into the
picture with a set of principles to be worked out explicitly
by states and local communities to govern their expendi-
tures for the care of the sick unemployed where Federal
relief funds are involved. In some places adequate medical
attention has been lacking; in others medical relief has
been too expensively handled; in some, physicians have
been unable to work out agreements under which they
received adequate and prompt pay for authorized services.
The new regulations provide the first nationwide principles
for establishing official liaisons between state emergency
relief administrations and the organized medical, nursing
and dental professions — state and local. The aim is "the
provision of good medical service at a low cost — to the
mutual benefit of indigent patient, physician, nurse, dentist
and taxpayer."
Medical programs formulated under these rules shall be
designed to supplement existing community medical
services. As was established by earlier orders, payment of
hospital bills and provision for institutional care are left
as the responsibility of state or local funds. The policy for
the use of federal funds is to recognize within "legal and
economic limitations, the traditional family and family-
physician relationship in the authorization of medical care
for indigent persons in their homes; the traditional physi-
cian-nurse relationship in the authorization of bedside
nursing care; the traditional dentist-patient relationship
in the authorization of emergency dental care." The phrase
"in their homes" includes visits at the physician's office for
patients who can be up and about, with the understanding
that such care shall not supplant existing clinic service.
The physician, nurse (or nursing organization) and dentist
are to agree to give where so authorized the same kind of
care to an indigent person as to a private patient, to the
minimum extent consistent with good professional judg-
ment. Payment is to be made at agreed flat rates appre-
ciably below the local prevailing minimum charges in due
recognition of the certainty and promptness of payment for
authorized services. The flat rate for authorized nursing
visits must not exceed the certified cost per visit in ac-
credited visiting nursing organizations in the community.
These limitations do not preclude the payment of addi-
tional amounts from local funds. Differentiations are care-
fully made between regulations governing the care of acute
and chronic illness, obstetrical care, special and accessory
services.
State emergency relief administrations are charged with
approving policies, fee schedules and detailed procedures
before they are put into effect and are urged in setting up
the plans to avail themselves of the advice and help of
advisory medical, nursing and dental committees, ap-
pointed by the state and local professional organizations,
to which all local programs are to be submitted for com-
ment before final approval is given. Participation is to be
open to all licensed members of the medical, nursing and
dental professions who accept its provisions.
With this order the federal government explicitly de-
clares its part in the responsibility for the medical care of
a substantial fraction of its citizens. The plan is built on
the traditional relationship between the family and its
medical attendants, which is to be preserved insofar as is
possible, but the amount of the fees and extent of the
services that involve federal funds are to be controlled,
by agreement, in accord with general principles governing
large-scale relief expenditures.
Every Bed a School
By BEULAH WELDON BURHOE
Secretary After-Care of the National Tuberculosis Association
article is a plea to provide educational facilities
in sanatoria for the tuberculous, not as a fad, a
luxury, a time-killer, but as an essential of treat-
ment. Because of the necessity for complete rest during
the early part of treatment the patient becomes practically
a pair of lungs. All his interests as a human-being are
subordinated to the processes in his chest. He is expected
to be unconcerned with all else. His work, his family are to
be laid aside. He is to approach as nearly as possible a state
of intellectual and emotional coma.
While this medical ideal can be approximated when the
patient is acutely ill, the time inevitably comes when such
isolation is no longer possible. The patient reasserts his
human qualities. He thinks and thinks. (If and when he
doesn't, he is either dead or incapable of thought.) He may
be a "good patient" outwardly, conforming strictly to
regulations about rest hours. He may be trying conscien-
tiously to devote his whole being to the healing process
but because he is not a vegetable, he wonders. His home,
his wife, the children, the rent, the office, the bank balance,
the future present themselves, and rare is the patient who
can contemplate these subjects without finding somewhere
a cause for worry.
That there is in the majority of cases at least one good
cause for worry is revealed by an analysis of the educa-
tional background of 5176 patients in thirty-two sanatoria
in fourteen states recently completed by the National
Tuberculosis Association. Sixty percent of this group have
gone no further than the eighth grade. Only 6 percent
have had any college training and less than one percent
are college graduates. Four percent have had no schooling
or less than one year and 13 percent have progressed no
further than the third grade. What these figures mean in
terms of worry about the future is that more than half of
all these patients have not one but two major handicaps,
the educational as well as the physical. Their physical
handicap will bar them from jobs for which they are
educationally fitted, and their educational handicap will
bar them from jobs for which they are physically fitted.
This dilemma is not a restful bedfellow.
The primary concern of most sanatoria has been the
physical handicap. Even when the seriousness of the edu-
cational handicap has been appreciated it has been thought
of as something to be accepted or to be dealt with else-
where after the patient has left the institution. An in-
creasing number of sanatorium superintendents are now
coming to believe, however, that the attempt to reduce
this educational handicap is a part of the job of the sana-
torium. The attitude is changing. Once they said "Let us
devote ourselves to combating the disease process in John
Smith's lungs." Now they are saying "While we are doing
our best to combat the disease process in John Smith's
lungs let us do all that we can to enrich the mind of John
Smith. Let us aim in the future to discharge him not only
with healed lungs but also with the ability to earn money
enough to maintain these lungs in their healed condition."
There is an old saying that the person who has had
tuberculosis should return to his old occupation. This is so
often an impossibility that as a general statement it has
little meaning. In the studies referred to above the percent
of those unable to return to their former occupations varied
from 25 percent to 50 percent in the various sanatoria. In
this group are not only those whose jobs are intrinsically
unfavorable but those whose work involves a menace to
the public health, such as contact with children and the
handling of cooked food. Still another type of patient who
should not return to his old job is the adolescent who has
been forced by financial pressure to leave school and to
enter a "blind alley" job such as errand boy or sales girl.
The mere circumstance of having held a job is no surety
of its fitness. It is a matter for case analysis in which the
problems of each patient are worked out individually.
The removal or reduction of the educational handicap of
tuberculous patients involves vocational analysis and
guidance as well as adult education. It requires an intimate
knowledge of the family background and a familiarity with
job opportunities in the community where the patient lives.
Since no one person can be expert in all these fields the
proper guidance of the patient can be best evolved by
conference. In several communities, notably Minneapolis,
such a procedure is being worked out very satisfactorily.
When the patient has passed through a period of observa-
tion and has received a favorable prognosis his case comes
up for consideration by a committee composed of the
physician, the nurse, the social worker, the occupational
therapist, the director of adult education from the public
schools, and the rehabilitation worker from the State
Bureau of Vocational Rehabilitation. A program is worked
out for the patient and he begins his course of study, of
course always under medical supervision. Even when the
plan made by the committee has to be subsequently
modified or completely changed the workers testify to the
therapeutic value of having the patient realize that plans
for his future are being put into operation.
IN fifty-nine sanatoria some attempt is being made to
provide for the educational needs of the adult patients.
These programs vary in the number of subjects offered,
the number of patients taught and in the thoroughness
with which each case is analyzed. In some instances only
the ambulant patients receive instruction, while one insti-
tution has gone so far as to teach typing at the bedside.
Several sanatoria carry on some of their work through the
radio. Others purchase correspondence courses and the
patients are tutored. The instruction is paid for by public
education funds in more than one third of the sanatoria.
In several instances the teaching is all done by volunteers
while in others such agencies as the tuberculosis associa-
tion, the American Legion, the service clubs, the woman's
club, pay the salaries of the teachers.
While a few sanatoria have been carrying on this type of
work for a period of years, it is in most cases a compara-
tively new development, and one which seems destined to
grow. Among its foremost advocates is Dr. David A.
Stewart, medical director of the Sanatorium Board of
Manitoba, Canada, who said in a recent article:
352
October 1933
THE SURVEY
353
There is nothing that can be adapted to hospitals of any kind
or size quite so easily as ordinary school education. Even if a
teacher cannot be employed, or if there can be one teacher only
when there should be a dozen, much can be accomplished. . . .
Of all occupations for sick people, especially sick people in bed, or
barely ambulant, or even on exercise, one of the very best, in our
experience, is study. It is the most universally useful, the most
varied, elastic and adaptable, the least monotonous, the easiest
to begin, the cheapest to get tools for, the most convenient— for
every bed can be a school.
The Case of the Chronic Sick
By E. M. BLUESTONE, M.D.
Director, Montefiore Hospital for Chronic Diseases, New York
CHRONIC patient, says someone or other, is a
patient in whom the doctor has lost interest.
This definition should arouse no cynical thoughts
in the uninformed. Other current definitions, most of them
elaborated by well-meaning physicians and social workers,
tiave a negative characteristic that is intriguing. Thus we
earn that a chronic patient is not an acute patient —
'short-term" in the language of the modern hospitals, —
nor is he an "incurable" patient — a judicial mark of
identification indicating that the patient has been sen-
tenced for life with no right of appeal. The scientific school
tells us that the chronic patient is the one that is suffering
from a long drawn out disease which requires great patience
and sympathy for its effective control. In the traditional
scientific spirit, there is a breath of optimism in this defi-
nition. Everyone knows that chronic patients may or
may not be bedridden — as a rule they are ambulatory,
semi-ambulatory and bedridden by turns — but most of
them may be made partially productive and, in some
instances, completely productive after a reasonable course
of scientific treatment.
Many beJieve that the chronic patient belongs in that
great middle-class which is medically and economically
uninteresting and unprofitable. The fact is that in New
York State there exists only one large hospital which
successfully deals with the chronic patient in the spirit
of the acute general hospital of which there are so many.
Communal efforts in this direction have been conspicuous
by their absence and we are indeed startled when some new
writer undertakes to face us with the facts.
In the volumes ' under review we have at last a valiant
effort to face the subject. With the exception of the pub-
lished work of Boas and the sporadic contributions, some
of them excellent, that one finds occasionally in hospital
literature, little seems to have been written, and less done
about the problem, though every social worker is familiar
with it from bitter experience. The medieval almshouse,
the home for "incurables," the home for the aged and other
institutional dumping grounds are still the only resort for
patients who will not yield quickly to treatment. Any ef-
fort, therefore, to state the case should be encouraged.
Both of these studies have features in common, aside
from the similarity of the subject. Each one deals with a
typical local problem and depends on local experiences for
the social philosophy that it radiates. In the one instance
it is New York City and, in the other, the State of Massa-
chusetts. The prevalence of chronic disease is much more
serious than the average reader thinks. It is quite the most
disabling kind of disease and is accountable for the majority
of deaths in any country- Certain phases of it, however,
i-CHRONIC ILLNESS IN NEW YORK CITY, in two volumes, by Mary C.
Jarrett. Columbia Univ. Press, 500 pp. Price $5, and CANCER AND OTHER
CHRONIC DISEASES IN MASSACHUSETTS, by George H. Bigelow and
Herbert L. Lombard, Houghton MifHin 358 pp.. Price $4, postpaid of The Survey.
require special treatment. In the case of cancer, Bigelow
and Lombard have made it their special theme, though by
no means neglecting other phases of chronic disease in
Massachusetts. Much might have been said about mental
disease as a subdivision of the chronic problem. We know,
for example, that of approximately 800,000 patients that
arc found in the hospitals of the United States one half
are mental patients. Then there is tuberculosis, which is
most often a chronic disease, with 100,000 patients. Only
300,000 patients remain who spend time in hospitals for
acute conditions. While these points are not specially
stressed, the problem of chronic disease generally being the
theme adopted in each case, these writers speak with
authority, the two volumes on chronic illness in New York
having been done under the auspices of the Welfare Coun-
cil, and the other under the auspices of the State Depart-
ment of Public Health of Massachusetts. The statistical
method is the basis of both and each one seems willing to
accept the hospital for chronic disease as the solution.
Perhaps it is, but there is another and a more advanced
point of view these days which rejects isolation and segre-
gation in any form as a cure for this social disease.
THE chronic patient cannot be thought of as an institu-
tional problem alone, for during the ambulatory and
semiambulatory stages he is located in his home. The social
treatment of the chronic patient must be continuous and
cannot be separated from the treatment of the acute
patient who is so often in the beginning of a medical con-
dition which may eventually become chronic. The method
tried, with characteristic indifference, of integrating all
hospital activities, is a contribution of the public official
working in the political sphere. The fact that it is not
convincing in its present form should not blind us to the
method of centralizing and integrating medical activities
on a voluntary basis so that the natural history of disease
could be studied in all of its phases, acute, chronic and
"incurable," from infancy to old age, in a group of buildings
where the patients could be separated physically and yet
secure whatever spiritual comfort is possible.
As source material these volumes will be used by social
workers for many years to come, even though in the case
of the New York study the facts were assembled before
the economic revolution of 1929. While it may be said that
the social worker is familiar with the chronic problem
because of his daily contact with it, and this includes the
conscientious physician who approaches his task with
open eyes, the appeal should go to the philanthropist
primarily who has the welfare of his community at heart.
The solicitude of the strong for the weak is being challenged
in a few sections of our civilized world these days, but as
long as there is compassion in human souls the chronic
patient will command the sympathy of the community.
THE COMMON WELFARE
Big Butter and Egg Man
A LOT of experience has piled up since the spring of 1932
when the social-work organizations of the country
found themselves confronted with the task of turning 85
million bushels of wheat and half a million bales of cotton,
deposited by Congress on the lap of the Red Cross, into
bread and clothing for the unemployed. But that under-
taking was only a curtain-raiser to this winter's job of
executing President Roosevelt's "double-edged program
to cut farm surpluses by aiding the hungry." Thus pork,
beef, eggs, butter, cotton-seed products and so on, to the
value of $75 million, now blocking the way to farm
recovery will be distributed to the destitute unemployed.
Later coal and clothing were both added to the list.
The lessons of the wheat and cotton distribution will not,
it is hoped, have to be learned over again in Uncle Sam's
new venture into the grocery business on a vast scale.
Moreover the Federal Emergency Relief Administration
with its legally buttressed "influence" over state and
county relief commissions, is in a better position than was
the Red Cross to direct such an undertaking — this with all
credit to the Red Cross which tackled its job with vigor.
Many people see in this distribution of food nothing
more than a mammoth commissary operated by the
United States government. Others see it as a realistic
cutting through of the economic paradox by which plenty
and starvation, side by side, paralyze the country. But no
one has heard the unemployed object to the proposal, and
if it keeps its promise and uses this surplus food to raise
relief standards, few will be disposed to quarrel with it.
Codes for Social Work
IN spite of the ruling that hospitals and social-welfare
organizations generally are not expected to comply
with permanent NRA codes "as they are not engaged in
trade or industry," there is apparent among these organi-
zations a strong sense of obligation to give the NRA
"voluntary cooperation wherever appropriate and so far
as possible, with a general program of reemployment at
shorter hours and higher wages." The YMCA is preparing
a code for itself which when signed by its fifteen hundred
local associations will have all the effect of. Blue Eagle
compliance. The Salvation Army, American Red Cross,
YWCA, have signed the blanket code, and recommended
similar action to their local branches. The American
Hospital Association found the differences in hospital
practices over the country too great to standardize working
conditions. It recommended voluntary compliance by
groups of hospitals in the same community operating under
comparable conditions. Prison industries are exempt from
code control but a committee has drafted a voluntary code
now before prison authorities in all the states which marks
a move toward uniform practice in prison industries.
A code for social work in general is a large order but one
which the National Social Work Council is tackling, not
with the idea of producing anything like the industrial
codes but of offering light and leading on compliance with
the NRA as it touches non-professional employes such as
clerical and domestic staff, and sheltered industries such as
laundries, printing shops, cafeterias operated by welfare
organizations. Finally it hopes to arrive at a classification
and standardization of social-work employment.
Organizations which depend on voluntary contributions
cannot, without strong public support, reduce the hours
and raise the wages of their employes. They have no way
of passing on the costs. But that the public will impose
on its social organizations standards of employment lower
than those accepted by industry does not seem likely.
Many of these organizations led in the long struggle for
better working conditions in industry. Their own standards
must not be casualties of the industrial armistice day.
Henry Suzzallo
SON of a Czechoslovakian seaman, Henry Suzzallo who
died in September, was recognized as one of the
foremost educational statesmen of the country. He had
his first teaching experience in the public schools of his
native California and later was associate professor of
education at Stanford University. He was president of the
University of Washington from 1915 to 1926, a period of
such rapid growth that at the end of his term three quarters
of the alumni had received their diplomas from his hand.
When he dared defy a political steam-roller and was
"retired" there was a storm of indignant protest through-
out the country (see The Survey, November 15, 1926, page
201). After serving as specialist in higher education for the
Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching, he
became president three years ago.
Though so much of his active life was devoted to prob-
lems of organization and administration, Dr. Suzzallo
never lost sight of the children, the teachers and the
community in his immediate concern with educational
institutions. He saw the public schools, from kindergarten
through college, as the best means "for an aspiring democ-
racy to approximate its full dream of a prosperous and
happy political cooperation." In recent months his voice
had been raised again and again in support of maintain-
ing school standards in the face of depression.
Without Benefit of Social Worker
A^ honest parent, looking at his own child, usually knows
that no other ever could be so wholly desirable. And
in the light of that, he would know what Peter Christopolus
was up against when he travelled east from an orphanage
in Omaha to a family whose dead son he was supposed to
resemble. Peter had spent all but three of his fourteen
years in the orphanage; he liked to wear overalls because
he was used to them though he "didn't mind" the shorts
on which the family insisted. But when the father told him
that he wasn't like the son who died and never would be,
he very naturally "didn't know what to say." He could be
only bewildered when they sent him back to the orphanage.
In a letter to The New York Times Dr. George K. Pratt, i
medical director of the Mental Hygiene Committee of the
State Charities Aid Association, remarks that so painful
an experience for everyone should never have been allowed
354
October 1933
THE SURVEY
355
to occur. "No merely human flesh-and-blood child" ever
could have measured up to the Strengs' memories of their
dead son. There is something especially pitiful in the
remark attributed to the child, "He seemed to have
expected a boy who had been raised up like home folks."
Under much less emotional circumstances, both the child
and the family would have needed time and help in
understanding each others' ways, and before ever they
tried, they should have had the benefit of the view of a
skilled and wise outsider to determine whether the chance
was likely to be worth the effort. As Dr. Pratt points out,
"Professional social work is still a fluid developing art, and
as such is not without its mistakes. But placing a youngster
for adoption in a family without adequate preliminary
study of the emotional atmosphere of the home and of the
differing personalities involved is seldom one of them."
Tune In on This
THE Crises in Municipal Finance is the general title of
the sixth You and your Government series of radio
programs sponsored by the National Advisory Council on
Radio in Education and the American Political Science
Association, this time in cooperation with the Citizens
Councils on Constructive Economy of the National
Municipal League. With more than a thousand munici-
palities in default and others in serious danger, these
programs are of immediate interest. Time and place,
nineteen successive Tuesday evenings, beginning October
3, 7:15 Eastern Standard Time, National Broadcasting
Company, WJZ, New York and affiliated stations,
coast to coast. Speakers: authorities as usual.
Housing Under the NRA
HOUSING history is slowly but surely being made.
Ohio has recently passed a law making it the seventh
state to authorize public housing and the first to provide
for setting up a definite housing authority— a law which
marks a new era. Under it the Cleveland Metropolitan
Authority District has been created. If plans now under
way materialize Cleveland will be among the first cities
to benefit by a 30 percent grant for public housing under
the NRA, though from present indications the city of
Detroit will be the first actually to receive a grant for pub-
lic housing. To Cleveland has already gone the laurels for
receiving the largest tentative loan made to a private
limited-dividend company, $i 1 million for a slum-clearance
project. At this writing in all some $36 million in loans
have been approved in eight states, including vast slum-
clearance projects, developments in outlying areas, large
and small apartment dwellings as well as single and
double, row and detached houses. Among these are five
tentative loans to limited corporations in the New York
Metropolitan Area (totalling almost $13,000,000), one
to a Philadelphia company ($845,000 to the American
Federation of Full Fashioned Hosiery Workers), and others
to companies in Boston ($3,500,000), Indianapolis
($4,460,000), Raleigh, N. C. ($168,000), St. Louis ($500,-
ooo), Euclid, O. ($1,000,000), Hutchinson, Kan. ($40,000).
Of special significance are the two last mentioned. The
Euclid loan, according to Robert D. Kohn, housing
administrator, is the first where money will be reloaned to
individual builders — salvaging lots left over from a sub-
division heretofore made. Three hundred houses in groups
of not less than fifty are to be built. The Hutchinson loan
is important as it is for twenty four- and five-room houses
on two-acre plots, a development which will have some of
the characteristics of subsistence homesteads.
Children in the News Code
'TpHOSE who are determined that the NRA shall wipe
A out child labor had better get out their old files and
hunt up the answers to the time-worn arguments which
would permit it, for if the code submitted by the American
Newspaper Publishers is adopted, the employment of
children — sixteen years and under, both boys and girls —
will be legalized. Without restriction as to age or hours,
children would be permitted to sell and deliver newspapers,
while children from fourteen to sixteen would be permitted
to engage in any capacity in the industry except manufac-
turing and mechanical processes. As the National Child
Labor Committee points out, "Neither from the stand-
point of the children who engage in such work nor the
standpoint of newspaper distribution is there any valid
reason for making this extraordinary concession which
practically exempts the newspaper industry from the
child-labor provisions which have been incorporated in
codes for other industries." In this year one of the NRA
there is less reason today than ever before to permit the
employment of children in a street trade dangerous from
the point of view of hours, of associations, of the possibility
of injury from traffic accidents. An army of older un-
employed boys and handicapped adults would welcome
this opportunity for employment. Survey readers need no
statistics as to the high delinquency rates among juveniles
employed in street trades. Nineteen states and the District
of Columbia have laws regulating such employment, thirty-
three cities have municipal ordinances. Many foreign
countries prescribe a higher minimum age for street trades
than for other employment. Is the NRA to do less ?
A Census in 1935?
THE New York City Department of Health is anxious
to know if deathrates in the metropolis really are as
favorable as they seem to be or if the estimates of popula-
tion on which the rates are based are so faulty that we have
no true picture of what depression is doing. It is futile,
they believe, to estimate population on the basis of the
increase in the past decade. The birthrate has fallen, from
more than 23 in 1920 to less than 15 now; foreign immigra-
tion has ceased, but there is no way of telling how many
people have left New York for the farm or the home-town
or how many have come seeking a job in the metropolis.
Normally there would be no census until 1940. "Mean-
while our vital statistics will become more and more
inaccurate and we shall have no correct picture of health
conditions in this city. This situation probably prevails
throughout the United States." That birthrates as well as
deathrates may be misleading because based on wrong
population estimates has been pointed out by the statisti-
cians of the Metropolitan Life Insurance Company. The
migrations of the depression have upset the basis for
calculation. As the Health Department adds, it is difficult
for governmental or social agencies of all kinds to gauge
the effects of depression, the extent of unemployment,
the burden on the public treasury, and the balance of farm
and town without knowing how many we are and where.
356
THE SURVEY
October 1933
Recreation Without Money
WHEN it became clear early in the summer that a recal-
citrant city budget would .keep the Seattle public play-
grounds locked and barred the Community Fund, through its
unemployed Young People's Committee, Chester E. Roberts,
chairman, stepped forward to see what it could do with practically
no money at all to go on. The record of the summer plainly shows
that imagination and enthusiasm are the best possible substitutes
for a budget. For, by means of volunteers, the intensive use of the
facilities of churches, parks, schools and social agencies, and a
general stirring up of citizen interest Seattle had more and in
many ways livelier and more varied recreation than ever before.
The wide range of free activities, with explicit instructions for
"joining up," was described in a leaflet, Why Walk the Streets
. . . which went out early in July to all the 1 5,000 families on re-
lief. Choices ran from ping-pong to class instruction in life-saving.
In addition to their regular activities the cooperating agencies
arranged special projects such as an all-city highschool swimming
meet, open-air dances, beach parties, all-day cruises and so on.
Through the University of Washington the committee secured
enough student volunteers for part-time opening of six of the
closed playgrounds.
The activities of the committee bore fruit not only in good
times for young people — young being generously defined as " under
thirty-five" — but in definite public understanding of the relation
of recreation to morale. "And in cold cash," says John F. Hall,
executive of the Community Fund, "the whole thing, from the
middle of June to the end of August cost iust exactly $47."
Prisoners at Work
TTOWEVER the NRA may affect the complications of prison
-^ -1 industries the survey of the extent and character of prison
labor, made under the direction of Herman B. Byer for the Bureau
of Labor Statistics, U. S. Department of Labor, will be a valuable
source of information for a long time to come. (Prison Labor in the
United States, 1932. 15 cents from the Superintendent of Docu-
ments, Washington, D. C.) The study covers twelve federal and
114 state prisons, and one county and one city prison housing
state prisoners. City and county jails were included but their im-
portance, as regards industries, was negligible.
Although the number of prisoners in these institutions rose by
87 percent during the nine years since the last comparable study
was made the proportion of prisoners productively employed con-
tinued the decline begun many years ago. Barely one half of the
158,947 prisoners were provided with what we are pleased to call
gainful labor. About a third of the total were engaged in various
prison duties, about 4 percent were reported sick and the re-
mainder, some 17,000, as idle.
The report reviews, backed up with detailed statistical tabula-
tions, the character of productive work in prisons, the character
and value of prison-labor products and the working conditions of
prison labor. In conclusion it presents the pros and cons of vari-
ous systems of prison industry as argued by the American Prison
Association, organized labor and prison officials.
The importance of this study is greatly increased by the fact
that the H awes-Cooper Act, which divests prison-made goods of
interstate character, becomes effective next year. This will estab-
lish state-use, willy-nilly, but how, under prevailing economic
conditions, it will affect the bulk of prison industries is still a.
serious question.
Research Takes a Cut
A I ''HE scythe swung by the California legislature on the budget
•*• of the State University threatened for a time to lop off com-
pletely the work of the Institute of Child Welfare, now six years
old. Happily an emergency grant from the General Education
Board will enable the Institute to carry on for at least a year with
the bare essentials of its program. The budget revision of more
than 50 percent entailed a reduction of staff and drastic salary
cuts, the postponement of the assembly and statistical treatment
of accumulated data and also of publication of completed studies
and the discontinuance of all research except that directly con-
nected with the three main lines of the Institute's investigations.
These are: an accumulative and intensive study of the growth of
60 infants, an accumulative study of the behavior of 250 children
and an accumulative study of 200 adolescents.
Who Are These Migrants?
/CONVINCED that the transient boy is a human being anil
^-^ not just a statistic, the Committee on Migrants of the
St. Louis Community Council assigned three hand-picked
work-relief men to go into the jungles and the freight-yards,
strike up acquaintance with their youthful denizens and get as far
behind the record as they could. The stories these men turned
in, even when stripped of the improbabilities with which the
youths had embellished them, constitute a vivid and, the com-
mittee believes, on the whole an accurate picture of the kinds
of boys who have taken to the road.
It is clear that the boys who strike St. Louis are not homeless
children. Practically • all were of working age — over sixteen —
and had homes of sorts. Not lack of homes, but unhappy home
conditions had driven them out.
The current of youth through the St. Louis jungles divides
itself roughly into three streams: the Commuters, boys from
Missouri farms and villages who periodically bum a trip to the
city; the Vacation Jaunters, boys with a little money and a
definite destination who choose the highway and the freight-
train largely for adventure; the Bad Eggs, work-shy boys with
records of delinquency and no qualms, and finally and in largest
numbers, the Pioneers, restless young men who since time
began have pushed out of their old environment to seek a new
setting. Once adrift they have no choice but to push on. Few
will face defeat and return home. These constitute the real
problem of the youthful transient.
The St. Louis committee is of the opinion that the stream of
young transients will not be checked or even controlled until
life in the cities and the rural communities provides worthwhile
social satisfactions, varied physical outlets and above all outlets
for recognition and ego-satisfactions. "We are convinced,"
says Bertha B. Howell of the committee, "that until American
life holds more opportunities in which real futures are possible,
until it finds a way to give youth a chance, we shall have a rapidly
growing and increasingly serious migrant problem."
Saving Essentials
FACED for two years at least with a strangulated budget, the
Pennsylvania Department of Welfare has been obliged to give
itself a general overhauling in order "to maintain at least a skele-
ton staff for all essential services." In the process various activi-
ties hitherto rating separate bureaus have been combined into the
new Bureau of Community Work, headed by Helen Glenn Tyson
and Mary Labaree and the Bureau of Institutional Management
October 1933
THE SURVEY
357
directly under the deputy secretary Clement W. Hunt. The Bu-
reau of Community Work will operate through four divisions:
Mothers' Assistance, with a staff of five supervising the care of
27,000 children in their own homes; Homes and Hospitals, with a
staff of four supervising and licensing some 330 state-aided hos-
pitals, maternity homes and homes for the aged; Family and
Child Welfare serving children's institutions and agencies, and
finally, the Council for the Blind.
The Bureau of Institutional Management will undertake to
coordinate the services of the staff officers who serve the twenty-
eight state institutions with a population of 28,000. These officers
are the agriculturist, architect, engineer, nursing consultant and
nutrition consultant. But with travel allowances cut to the bone
the services of these specialists can be little more than advisory.
The Bureau of Mental Health, Dr. William C. Sandy, director,
remains intact but has been obliged to discontinue all its clinics
and other community activities of its field representatives. It
proposes instead to develop, through a field psychiatrist and field
psychiatric social worker, a form of community service in all the
state institutions for mental health.
Although the whole service program of the Department of
Welfare has been skeletonized it still has vitality enough for a
stout stand. Says Alice F. Liveright, secretary of welfare:
We declare ourselves for the unification of welfare work within the
counties. . . for the maintenance of family life . . . for hospital licensing
of the highest standard . . . for state aid where and as it is most necessary
and based on rules and regulations established by the department . . . for
a preventive program in the field of mental health delinquency and
blindness.
Cookbooks and Courage
ANTIDOTES against the courage-depleting poison of "just
•**• sittin' "round" waiting for a job, are at a premium these
days. In its Resident Club for Girls, the Emanu-El Sisterhood of
San Francisco sensed the danger of over-protection to the girls,
long unemployed, whom it continued to care for after their re-
sources were exhausted. Occupation and interest were of course
the prescription for slipping courage, so Sisterhood House went in
for occupational therapy with the surprising by-product of a neat
little profit for its unemployment fund.
The first project was a cookbook, Soup to Nuts, containing
750 tried and true recipes, mimeographed and bound by the girls.
The first two editions of 500 each went like hot-cakes at $2.50 a
copy without benefit of advertising or of any special effort. A
steady demand, much more than local, warranted a larger third
edition, revised and improved, the production of which was
turned over entirely to the resident girls on a cooperative plan
which challenged individual effort. The Sisterhood Print Shop was
Useful and Free
NOT all new, but still authoritative, are the following gov-
ernment publications designed to help social workers in
aiding their clients to make the best use of low-cost food.
They may all be secured without cost from the Superin-
tendent of Documents, Washington, D. C. or from the
bureaus responsible for their preparation.
FAMILY FOOD BUDGETS FOR THE USE OF RELIEF AGENCIES;
HOW TO SPEND YOUR FOOD MONEY; EMERGENCY FOOD
RELIEF AND CHILD HEALTH. Prepared by the Children's Bureau,
Department of Labor and the Bureau of Home Economics, Department of
Agriculture.
GETTING THE MOST FOR YOUR FOOD1MONEY. Prepared by the
Bureau of Home Economics and the Extension Service, Department of
Agriculture.
THE FAMILY FOOD AT LOW COST. Prepared by the two bureaus men-
tioned above and the Nutrition Service, American Red Cross.
MIMEOGRAPHED documents, also free, prepared by the Bureau of Home
Economics, dealing in detail with the organization of certain relief activities,
are:
COMMUNITY SEWING IN RELIEF PROGRAMS.
COMMUNITY CANNING CENTERS, By Mabel C. Steinbarger and
Miriam Birdseye.
taken over with the girls working in shifts at a tide-over wage of
twenty-five cents an hour, luncheon thrown in. Ethel R. Feine-
man, resident head-worker at Sisterhood House, Page and Lagunu
Streets, will tell the details of organization to anyone interested.
A second project was the making and marketing of Sisterhood
Caramels, the sale of which is largely local. Then came the Learn
and Earn plan by which girls are taught expert mending, delicate
laundering and private waitress service after which they are on
call at fifty cents an hour and car fare.
Finally came the Sisterhood House tea-room, "tea for two or
two hundred," utilizing the glass-enclosed loggia, flower-bordered
patio and big library with no expense for equipment and witli
otherwise idle hands doing all the work. Orders for cocktail- ami
tea-sandwiches have been a profitable sideline.
"Of course it is all just tide-over work," says Miss Feineman,
"useful in the emergency but dangerous if it is permitted to jeo-
pardize the skills and training, the standards and salaries, that the
girls achieved before the trouble began."
Another Children's Code
THE publication by the University of Louisiana of the report
of the Louisiana Children's Code Committee and of a com-
pilation of statutes affecting child welfare, is the happy outcome
of the initiation by the State Conference of Social Betterment in
1930 of a project into which it drew the active participation of the
State Bar Association and the support of many state-wide or-
ganizations concerned with social legislation. The report, written
by Harriet Spiller Daggett, professor of law at the University and
chairman of the Children's Code Committee, goes now to the an-
nual meetings of the two sponsoring bodies from which, it is pre-
sumed, a program of action will emanate.
The method of the compilation, necessarily selective, puts "into
accessible form the laws bearing most directly upon the welfare ot
the family and in consequence upon children." The Code Com-
mittee confines its legislative recommendations pretty generally
to the establishment of a state department of public welfare and
of parish (county) boards, the licensing and regulation of mater-
nity hospitals, the supervision of child-placing and child-caring
organizations and the guardianship of dependent and neglected
children. The committee's emphasis on centralized administrative
agencies is explained by its conviction that "the efficacy of laws,
particularly for defenseless children, lies in their faithful adminis-
tration rather than in their appearance on the statute books."
ALTHOUGH the Red Cross has reached a post-war low of 150 in
its war-service staff it is still active in seventeen general army and
navy hospitals, one, St. Elizabeth's, hospital for mental cases,
208 army stations, 131 navy and marine corps stations ami
fifty-six offices of the Veterans' Administration.
BECAUSE of the great interest of the late Dr. Hastings H. Hart
in the cause of jail reform the Russell Sage Foundation, in
cooperation with the American Prison Association, has carried
out his intention of distributing the privately printed pamphlet,
Propagating Crime through the Jail and Other Institutions for
Short-Term Offenders, prepared for the National Crime Commis-
sion by the Sub-Committee on Pardons, Parole, Probation,
Penal Laws and Institutional Correction, Louis N. Robinson,
secretary. Copies are available from the Foundation, 130 East
22 Street, New York.
THE study of methods of statistical reporting of child dependency
made for the White House Conference by Emma O. Lund-
berg, but regrettably omitted from the published findings, has
been made available by the Child Welfare League of America,
130 East 22 Street, New York. The title is Child Dependency
in the United States and the price is $i in paper, $1.25 in cloth
covers. Miss Lundberg examines the statistical methods of
thirty-one states, their adequacies and inadequacies, and reports
a demonstration of the practicability of obtaining complete
data in states using various methods of collecting statistics.
358
THE SURVEY
October 1933
Hastening Diphtheria's Downfall
BIG news of the month for foot-weary nurses and clinic workers
is that extensive use has been started of the new diphtheria
immunization toxoid which usually does its beneficent work after
one injection instead of the two or three necessary with the older
toxoid or toxin-anti-toxin. The new precipitated and redissolved
toxoid was perfected by the late Dr. Leon C. Havens, director of
the state laboratories in Alabama and has been used successfully
in that state under the direction of Dr. J. N. Baker, state health
officer, and among a group of 600 children in Virginia, studied by
physicians of the Virginia State Board of Health and Dr. G. W.
McCoy, director of the National Institute of Health Labora-
tories. The single injection successfully immunized more than 90
percent of the children treated. Immunity develops after two
months, much more rapidly than was the case with the earlier
preparations. After still more tests, the New York City Health
Department hails the treatment as "a great boon" and has ready
in its laboratories enough of the toxoid to immunize 80,000 during
an intensive campaign in two boroughs. When parents cannot pay
a private physician, treatment is given without cost at the baby
health stations. The obvious saving in time, money and con-
venience to both parents and public-health workers must hasten
the complete downfall of diphtheria.
Doctors and Patients
T> Y a plan worked out by the Monroe County Medical Society,
J-* the Rochester (N. Y.) Hospital Council, and the Rochester
Health Bureau admissions to clinics in that city have come under
a uniform arrangement. The functions of a dispensary, the plan
declares, are adequate medical care for people who cannot afford
to pay a qualified physician; teaching facilities for physicians,
nurses, and dietitians; and research. Under the plan clinic appli-
cants are asked to submit a recommendation from their family
physician, if they have one; in an emergency, the physician is con-
sulted after admission. The patient's eligibility for clinic care is
gauged by a table setting maximum income from all sources at
from $12 a week for a "family" of one person to $25 for four and
$4 per capita per week for eight or more. This schedule is inter-
preted individually, considering types and probable duration of
illness and the like. Ineligible patients who have no family physi-
cian are referred to at least three members of the hospital's staff.
Private physicians agree to treat patients ineligible or eligible for
clinic care by reason of their financial standing for fees within the
patient's means. Maximum fees for clinic care are set at 50 cents
for first visits or revisits and cost for laboratory charges and
x-rays.
The Jefferson County, Alabama, Chapter of the American Red
Cross has been carrying on an extensive program of medical relief
by the payment of minimum fees to physicians who volunteered
for the service paid for authorized visits to patients unable to pay
a doctor. The chapter's own funds have been drawn from the
Community Chest drive and federal relief funds, and the schedule
of fees, submitted by the county medical society, has been $1 for a
home visit, $15 for obstetrical service, and #10-^25 for minor and
major surgery. Under the ruling that federal relief funds are not
available to private agencies, all relief, including medical relief,
has been taken over by the Public Relief Administration Board.
In Cleveland, Ohio, the benefits of an admitting officer have
been extended to the patients of private physicians through the
establishment of a' rating service" by the Academy of Medicine.
When a patient declares himself or herself unable to pay the
doctor's full charge for any medical or surgical service, the physi-
cian may refer the question of an equitable arrangement to the
social worker in charge of the service, Edna Shoup Hitchings.
Mrs. Hitchings is a former member of the staff of the Cleveland
Children's Bureau and the social-service department of Lakeside
Hospital, Cleveland. The patient pays 50 cents for the rating,
which is confidential and includes budgetary advice to families
both for the immediate emergency and for future ways of meet-
ing sickness bills.
Case-Finding at the Fair
TLTEALTH had a heyday this year at the Illinois State Fair
•*• -•• with mechanical devices, neon lights, transparent photog-
raphy, wax models, movies and special placards to point out the
ways to attain it. An important new project was free tuberculosis
tests for children between the ages of 5 and 18, supervised by the
State Health Department in cooperation with the Sangamon
County Medical Society and the Illinois Tuberculosis Association.
Children who volunteered for skin tests, with the written permis-
sion of their parents, got free tickets to return to the fair two days
later to have the tests read. All who tested positive were x-rayed
with a portable machine installed on the grounds. The x-ray
pictures, with a typewritten report, were sent to the family physi-
cian or to the tuberculosis society responsible for the taking of the
test. The project proved itself a success not only in discovering
existing or suspected disease but also in acquainting thousands of
persons with the scientific procedures for outwitting tuberculosis
Another project of the state health department, the Better Babies
Conference, indicated that very young Illinoisers are far better
protected against diphtheria and smallpox than was the case two
Pertinent Publications
PROCEDURE FOR THE DISCOVERY AND CARE OF TUBERCU-
LOUS CHILDREN. National Tuberculosis Association, 450 Seventh Are..
New York City.
Outline of a plan worked out by the Association's Commit-
tee on Protective Care of Tuberculous Children, under the
chairmanship of Margaret Witter Barnard, M.D.
MENTAL HYGIENE RESOURCES OF NEW YORK CITY. 1933-34
Edition. Price IS cents. Stale Charities Aid Association, 105 E. 22 St.,
New York City.
Clinics, hospitals and institutions for mental illness and
defect. Consult the S.C.A.A. also for a Mental Hygiene
Reading List for Nurses, compiled by the New York State
Committee on Mental Hygiene and available on request.
PROCEEDINGS OF THE SOUTHERN BRANCH, AMERICAN
PUBLIC HEALTH ASSOCIATION. Price 50 cents of the American
Public Health Association, 450 Seventh Ace., New York City.
Minutes and papers of the Birmingham meeting, Novem-
ber 1932.
GROWTH AND RETENTIONS OF CALCIUM, PHOSPHORUS AND
NITROGEN OF INFANTS FED EVAPORATED MILK, by Philip C.
Jeans, M.D., and Genevieve Stearns. Reprinted from the American Journal
of Diseases of Children, July 1933. On request from the Evaporated Milk
Association, 203 N. Wabash Ave., Chicago, 111.
For traveling loan libraries of books and pamphlets on
social hygiene topics, available to responsible groups on a
long-time basis, consult the American Social Hygiene
Association, 450 Seventh Ave., New York City.
years ago, but that there still is room for much improvement in
their mental-hygiene training. "Most of the children adjusted
themselves poorly to the environment of the examining quarters
and very few mothers asked pertinent questions about mental
hygiene."
So Do We All
COUTH BEND, Indiana, numbers among the enterprises of its
^ public schools an enthusiastic summer-school class in health
education. This year it included thirty highschool boys and girls
who supplemented textbooks with field trips, asked to have the
tuberculin test demonstrated on themselves personally, and made
a gratifying number of voluntary trips to doctor, dentist and
oculist. Seeking to measure the results in the pupils' habits of liv-
ing the teacher asked at the end what things they were doing dif-
ferently. One girl replied with patient hopefulness,"! try to stand
more erect. I am sure that this course will sink in and that next
year you will see more change in me." Another added, among
other remarks, "I've found the family to be better humored and
easier to get along with since I learned to accept the inevitable
and use self-control." And Lucille W., according to the Hoosier
Health Herald, found the good news so good that she wanted to
spread it: "Taking health I have learned to control my temper.
We know a lot of people who need Miss Cogswell's health
course."
Enlist the Chamber of Commerce
AN active public-health committee in every chamber of com-
(£*• merce is the suggestion recently put forward by Dr. Herbert
J. Samuels in the Weekly Bulletin of the California State Depart-
ment of Health. Such a committee, Dr. Samuels points out, should
represent business, professional and industrial groups, and may
well act as a sponsor and interpreter to the public for the work of
public and private health agencies. Among its activities might be
sarticipation in the National Inter-Chamber Health Conserva-
tion Contest, study and analysis of the support of local health
work, encouragement of " preemployment" physical examinations
n industrial and commercial establishments, study of local
lealth laws and their enforcement, and aid in obtaining educa-
tional publicity for public health in local newspapers.
'THIS report has been prepared in our own office to save the ex-
)ense of printing" says the title page, of Common Cents, 1932
chronicle of the New York Tuberculosis and Health Association.
When a depression can instigate anything as pleasant and pointed
is this piece of mimeograph it has something to sav for itself after
ill.
RENASCENCE of beer has produced an unexpected ramification
n the California State Department of Health. Because of its return
:here is "considerable activity in the digging of clams," adver-
:ised in many lunch places where beer is sold. Considerable
ligging means closer supervision to see that none coming from
luarantined areas reach the market.
)N the heels of such announcements as a recent report from the
'Jew York State Department of Health that there is a statewide
Ilecrease in the consumption of milk, there is special food for
:hought in a study of under nourished children in Philadelphia,
eported by Fred Lininger in the Journal of the American Public
lealth Association (Vol. XXIII, No. 6, p. 555). Not only did the
Wldren who had milk at home or at school show greater weight
ains than others but also the proportion of the milk-fed who
mproved in scholarship was nearly double that of the other group.
)NLY by a change in the state law can New York City hospitals
dopt a plan for group payment for hospital care, according to a
uling by the State Superintendent of Insurance, George Van
chaick. Mr. Van Schaick expressed his sympathy with the plan
ut felt himself unable to approve it unless hospitals were
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exempted from the existing provisions of the insurance law or
provisions incorporated to govern their participation under it.
Further study is being made of systems in this country and abroad
by the committee interested in the plan, with a view of introduc-
ing a bill at the next legislative session.
A NEW low for 1932 was registered in the infant death-rate of
58.6, according to the compilation of the American Child Health
Association, the lowest infant mortality rate ever recorded for the
Registration Area. Among cities with more than 250,0x20 popula-
tion, Portland, Oregon, fared best with a 34. St. Paul, Minn., came
next with 39, and San Francisco and Oakland, Calif., tied at 40.
In cities of 100,000-250,000, Long Beach, Calif., came first with
36; and in cities of 50,000-100,000, the banner went to Cleveland
Heights, Ohio, with o. The cities with the highest rates in these
various population groups ranged from Washington, D. C., with
73 to Columbia, S. C., with in.
IN Connecticut the state medical society has adopted a resolution
authorizing a state-wide campaign against tuberculosis, em-
phasizing the use of the new, economical paper x-rays and draw-
ing in state health department, local health officers and physicians
for work in communities that request their aid. The cost of the
x-rays is to be met by the persons who have them, the films will be
interpreted by the state tuberculosis commission, and a report
sent on to local authorities to be given to the patient.
(In answering advertisements please mention THE SURVEY)
359
UNEMPLOYMENT AND COMMUNITY ACTION
JOANNA C. COLCORD
This department is an emergency information
service to public officials and to members,
executives and supervisors of citizens' com-
mittees. News of interesting developments will
be gratefully received by the editors, Russell
Sage Foundation, 130 East 22 Street, New York
RUSSELL H. KURTZ
FERA Policies
IN the period from August 20 to September 20 the Federal
Emergency Relief Administration issued the following state-
ments of policy:
Work-relief employment of teachers was approved, as reported in
The Survey Midmonthly for September, page 323.
Aid to public-health units was declared to be outside the scope of
the Federal Relief Act, but approval was given for the use of
health workers on part-time as members of relief-administration
staffs in order that "the structure of these invaluable bodies may
be preserved."
Government meat distribution. Announcement was made that
processed meat made available by the Agricultural Adjustment
Administration's hog-purchase plan would be distributed through
state relief administrations to localities where relief standards
were known to be low. "This meat will be used to augment rather
than to supplant any item of relief that the unemployed are now
getting," the Administration stated. Between 200 and 300 million
pounds of processed meat will be so distributed.
Relief in deportation cases. By joint action with the commis-
sioner of immigration, the FERA has authorized state relief ad-
ministrations to expend federal funds in providing transportation
to members of families who wish to accompany deported aliens
back to their native lands. Heretofore no federal monies have been
available for this purpose and families have been broken when the
deportation procedure invaded them. The announcement says:
It is expected that the procedure will have three-fold results. The
family will be kept together, humanely providing the children with the
continued benefits of family life. Economic distress will be obviated by
keeping the breadwinner in contact with his dependents. Many families
who could otherwise be added to the relief rolls will be saved from public
dependency, forestalling additional relief costs to the communities in
which they would reside.
Medical services for the sick unemployed have been limited and
prescribed in a ruling which is set forth at length in other pages of
this issue.
Relief to veterans. The FERA was asked by one of the state ad-
ministrations to rule on the use of federal relief funds to supple-
ment relief to veterans adversely affected by recent readjustments
in service compensation. In its reply, after reviewing the pro-
visions for rendering aid to all the needy unemployed, the ad-
ministrator said:
Unemployed veterans in need of relief should be able to have their
needs met by the local emergency relief administrations on the basis ot
actual budgetary requirements. I am sure that proceeding through the
regular channels of relief unemployed veterans will receive the fullest
measure of assistance and will be in a position to profit most through co-
operative relationships entered into between the Emergency Relief Ad-
ministration, the Federal Reemployment Service, and the Public Works
Program. . . . We believe therefore that through the regularly estab-
lished state and local emergency relief administrations the unemployed
veterans will receive the best service the Federal Emergency Relief Ad-
ministration can offer to them.
Responsibility for care of migratory transients rests upon their
employers and upon the state in which they are stranded and not
upon the federal government, it was declared in explaining
FERA disapproval of the practice of "passing on" seasonal
migratory workers through the use of relief funds. "Proper control
of labor needs within the states will prevent surplus labor from
entering seasonal fields," the administrator stated. The Pacific
Coast area and the states of Texas, New Jersey, Maryland, New
Hampshire, Colorado, Michigan, Virginia and Illinois were
named as the districts where the migratory labor situation at
this time is a serious problem.
Cooperation •with the Red Cross in disaster relief was the subject
of a statement following the Florida and Texas hurricane dis-
asters. Federal relief funds may properly be spent in these area?
for food and work relief but not for rehabilitation purposes, it was
decreed. The latter responsibility — rebuilding homes and pro-
viding furniture, clothing and certain other necessities — has beer
undertaken by the Red Cross which is making public appeal foi
funds for this purpose. The FERA has urged full support of the
Red Cross appeal.
A New State Set-Up
REORGANIZATION of the Arkansas state relief administra-
*- *• tion has been completed as a result of intervention by tht
FERA in the state situation. A new committee of eleven wa.1
named by the governor with power to select a relief administrator
The latter takes over the supervision of relief which had pre
viously been vested in the state Labor Department.
The new committee will be known as the State Emergency Re
lief Commission. An executive committee chosen from its mem
bership will act in an advisory capacity to the new state director
In each county the local relief committees will henceforth servi
only as advisers to county relief directors appointed for direc
supervision of the work. Within the state administration, thre<
divisions have been set up: social service, accounting and audit
ing.
The new regulations provide that the state commission shal
interpret policies of the FERA "in terms that are applicable t<
situations in Arkansas with the understanding that in all matter
pertaining to the administration of these funds the decision of th
federal administration or its representative is final."
Barter in Relief Operations
^ I ''HE New York City Emergency Unemployment Relief Com
-*• mittee, popularly known as the Gibson Committee, has jus
issued a brief report covering the operations of its Food am
Clothing Division last winter. One device described therein is o
particular interest, namely, the conversion of government floui
by an exchange process, into standard food packages of twenty o
more items each.
The national policy of distributing packaged flour through th
Red Cross to the homes of the unemployed was peculiarly un
suited to New York, where few housewives have either the skill o
the facilities for baking bread. The alternative of paying com
mercial bakers with flour for the production of bread of equivalen
value was felt to fall short of meeting the need of food in wide
variety. Accordingly, approval was secured from the feders
government in July 1932 to exchange flour for more usable foo<
items.
The processing and trading agreements necessary to bring thi
about were intricate, according to the Committee, but they wer
successfully negotiated with the aid of the leading bakers, whole
sale grocers, and produce firms of the city. As a result, a total c
360
October 1933
THE SURVEY
361
i ,058,754 food packages valued at #2.75 each (retail) were secured
and distributed up to July I, 1933 in exchange for 788,473 barrels
of flour which the local Red Cross organization secured from the
government.
Packaging and distributing was done by relief labor, which was
also used, with the cooperation of manufacturers and labor lead-
ers, in the fabrication of garments from the five and one-half mil-
lion yards of Red Cross cotton which was the city's portion. In
these ways, employment at relief wages was provided for some
1600 persons, and in addition, foodstuffs and clothing to the value
of some seven and a half million dollars made available to relief
operations.
The Red Cross Courier is authority for the statement that the
nation-wide distribution of government wheat has constituted the
greatest peace-time operation of the American Red Cross, exceed-
ing by $25 million the relief in the Mississippi flood disaster of
1927. A total of 5,800,000 families were aided with government
flour.
"Indigent Tenants" Again
FACED by early exhaustion of funds while the legislature was
debating relief measures in August, the Ohio Relief Commis-
sion ordered local relief bodies to discontinue rent payments on
behalf of clients and to invoke the provisions of the Annat Act in-
stead. This act, passed by the legislature last spring, allows land-
lords with "indigent" tenants to secure remission of taxes on
property involved, plus 30 percent additional in cash for repairs
and upkeep. A storm of protest arose over the state and organiza-
tions of landlords sprang up which threatened wholesale evictions
unless more liberal consideration were afforded them. The pas-
sage of the state emergency relief financing act and the subsequent
FERA grant reported elsewhere in this department has allowed
the State Commission to modify its ruling sufficiently to avert a
crisis.
News from the Cities
1 I ''HE past two months have been a busy period of reorganiza-
*• tion in numerous relief districts over the country. Following
the FERA order to put the expenditure of federal funds in the
hands of public agencies, state administrations have been moving
in the direction of unification of effort through public county
units. In some states these are being revamped from previous
patterns; in others, entirely new organizations have been formed.
Houston, Texas, has merged its relief effort with the rest of
Harris County under the general direction of a county Welfare
and Employment Board, a group of five citizens reporting to the
state director of relief. Des Moines, Iowa, has joined the Polk
County authorities in establishing a county-wide administration
of unemployment relief in which public and private agency work-
ers coordinate their activities under the general direction of the
State Emergency Relief Board. Omaba, Nebraska, and Douglas
C ounty have effected a similar set-up following a brief period of
confusion which was resolved by a visit from an FERA represent-
ative. Little Rock, Arkansas, and Pulaski County have com-
pletely reorganized their relief programs under the county Emer-
gency Relief Committee.
In Minneapolis a new mayor has been instrumental in having
the public department decentralize its work by opening district
offices to serve its large caseload. A second proposal by the mayor,
to use the police in making investigations, has fortunately been
defeated. 'Toledo has just gone through an upheaval of relief or-
ganization in which the state intervened by the appointment of a
temporary "relief dictator" from outside the county. The city
commissary has come in for a considerable degree of criticism and
will probably be abandoned. Columbus, Ohio, has put its municipal
relief department under county direction on instructions from the
State Relief Commission.
San Francisco has placed its relief program under the direction
of a new city-county agency known as the Emergency Relief
Administration. The Citizens Emergency Relief Committee
which formerly acted in an advisory capacity only, has been
designated as the executive body. Portland, Oregon, has trans-
ferred its relief work from private-agency control to the jurisdic-
tion of the County Relief Committee established by action of the
last legislature. Grand Rapids, Michigan, and Kent County have
coordinated their relief activities under a new county administra-
tion headed by a three-man commission. Howard Hunter, local
chest executive, has been appointed temporary administrator and
has set up a completely new form of organization.
Who Are the Unemployed?
npHE Boston Council of Social Agencies has recently completed
-*• its third annual study of unemployed clients of the Depart-
ment of Public Welfare, to determine what shifts, if any, were oc-
curring in the sources of intake. From the new applications being
received by the department 364 cases were chosen at random and
carefully checked. The outstanding conclusions of the study are:
1. Contrary to popular impression there has been only a slight increase
in the number of "white-collar" persons applying for aid since 1931.
2. Only one third of the total group had worked at less skilled jobs
than their regular occupations since first being dislodged from steady em-
ployment. The other two thirds went from their normal vocations directly
into unemployment and eventual need for aid.
3. Over half the men had held their last regular jobs for more than
two years. •
4. Unemployment caused by personal difficulties (age, mental and
physical handicaps, or inadequate training) were considered as causes of
unemployment by 12 percent of the clients and by 31 percent of their
employers. The latter indicated that in a majority of all cases, the clients
were rated as satisfactory for re-employment when conditions improve.
In contrast to the last of these findings is the Detroit discovery
that something less than 40 percent of the clients of the Depart-
ment of Public Welfare of that city are on the "eligible for rehire"
lists of Detroit employers, and that many of these were rated as
satisfactory for use only in periods of peak production.
Is This Deterioration?
T TNEMPLOYMENT relief, like every other civic and govern-
*-' mental activity in Montreal, P. Q., is separately set up for
French-Canadian inhabitants and for those of British origin. The
Emergency Unemployment Relief Committee, which cares for the
needs of the latter group, finds that among the families recently
under its care, over 13 percent were able to secure no income in
addition to relief during the entire winter of 1932-33. Average
earnings exclusive of relief were studied in a group of 1500 fami-
lies. Among 500 which had received relief prior to October 1930,
40 percent had received relief every week during the winter; and
the average weekly earnings in the group during the period were
$1.91 a week, of which wives and children brought in over 40 per-
cent.
Another 500, all of whom had crime on relief since the beginning
of the depression, were able to earn an average of $2.11 weekly
toward their own support, while the latest 500 applying had an
average earning capacity of $2.90 weekly, of which only 29 per-
cent was earned by wives and children.
This study would seem to throw some light on the vexed ques-
tion whether the earning capacity of breadwinners decreases with
length of time out of employment.
Laws on Relief
* I ''HE Public Administration Service, 850 East 58 Street,
-*• Chicago, has just published a pamphlet, Federal and State
Legislation for Unemployment Relief and National Recovery by
Marietta Stevenson and Lucy Williams Brown of the American
Public Welfare Association. Price 25 cents. In addition to the
summaries, fully documented, on unemployment and recovery,
the manual includes a table of 1933 legislation by states and a
selected bibliography of government publications.
362
THE SURVEY
October 1933
The Therapeutic Relationship
THE DYNAMICS OF THERAPY IN A CONTROLLED RELATIONSHIP, by
Jessie Tafl. Macmillan. 296 pp. Price $2.50 postpaid of The Survey.
FOR two generations social work has been exploring the pos-
sibilities for human development that lie in the help which
one individual can be to another. Ever since Octavia Hill, the
therapeutic aspects of the relationship between helper and helped
have been recognized, but only recently has this relationship ex-
isted in so clearly defined a form that it could be described. Until
within the last fifteen years what one person could be to another
seemed inseparably intermingled with what he could do or carry
to him. The helper brought not only himself but also opportunity
of many kinds — material relief, employment, medical care and
other forms of aid. These services were so concrete and specific
that they obscured the personal elements in the relationship.
They prevented the development of an understanding of what an
association which offered nothing but itself could mean.
There exists now, however, a growing area in social work
where, just as in psychoanalysis and psychiatry, what the helper
is can be isolated from what he may do or bring. Illustrations of
this will be found in certain phases of the social case work at
child-guidance clinics, family and children's agencies and like
institutions. It is a form of practice in which whatever eventuates
for an individual depends entirely upon the quality of the inter-
change between himself and the person to whom he has turned for
help. Dr. Taft, having had in this field a long and profound ex-
perience, presents in The Dynamics of Therapy in a Controlled
Relationship a description and a discussion of what she calls the
therapeutic relationship.
Her method of doing this is to reproduce the records of her con-
tacts with two children. The first, a girl of seven, spent sixteen
visits of an hour each in Dr. Taft's office; the second, a boy, also
seven years old, paid thirty-one visits. The report of each hour is
for all practical purposes complete and verbatim. The records of
children rather than adults were chosen because " they are brief
enough and simple enough to serve as immediate experience for
the reader without entangling him in symptoms and interpreta-
tion." Preceding and following these records is a discussion of
their therapeutic implications. In addition, the second record is
accompanied by explanatory footnotes. The whole discussion is
introduced by a chapter on the Time Element in Therapy.
The book emphasizes the significance of the problems arising
from the conflict within every human being between the desire
for change and the desire for permanence, the struggle between
the urge toward growth and the wish to have everything remain
the same, and the related problem which each of us faces in
reconciling and integrating the two equally important factors of
independence and emotional association with others. This is the
background against which all our lives are lived. It is a condition
which people sometimes are unwilling or unable to meet. They
find their emotional pendulums swinging too violently or too far
in one direction or the other. When an individual seeks help out
of personal trouble this is the fundamental problem with which
the helper is confronted.
Help consists in using the relationship with the therapist to
reproduce, but in a controlled and intimate way, the conflict
that has been going on in the world outside. Instead, however, of
being diffuse this conflict centers about the therapist. In him the
client finds the emotional release and the security that comes
from the realization that here is some one who is interested in
him, who understands him and who accepts him for what he is.
But from the very start there is also limitation, the limitation
of time in that the periods of the relationship are restricted in
duration and ultimately must come to an end, and the limitation
that exists in the need to respect the integrity of the personality
of the therapist which ultimately becomes an acceptance by the
client of his own individuality. Thus he may not impose upon the
right of the therapist to his own life, he may not deposit his prob-
lems upon the therapist; they remain the client's own.
Dr. Taft shows how these very limitations can be used to
enable the client to meet his difficulties and gain the strength
that enables him at last to accept the final limitation, which is
separation from the therapist and the discontinuance of the rela-
tionship. Through this process, experienced in the microcosm of
the therapeutic relationship, the client prepares himself for
meeting on the larger stage in the macrocosm of life the facts of
change, growth, independence and relatedness.
All this which without illustration would seem abstract, be-
comes vivid through Dr. Taft's record of her experiences with the
two children. The recounting of what happened hour by hour is
absorbing in its dramatic interest and points the philosophy
which Dr. Taft's expounds. When at last the moment comes for
the child to leave the therapist one feels all the poignancy and
finality of separation. It is a convincing illustration of the
manner in which the hour reproduces the drama of life.
The Dynamics of Therapy is not only an exposition for the
therapist; for the great majority of us who are not equipped for
this type of practice it provides a background for appreciating
the important factors that are present in every relationship be-
tween case worker and client. The book is one of the most valu-
able introductions to the emotional life of childhood that the
literature of social work has produced. It will be read with profit
by those who in any way have to do with children. Above all,
The Dynamics of Therapy is a philosophy of life in which the
reader will find insight into human problems and a call to spiritual
adventure.
Pennsylvania School of Social Work KARL DESCHWEINITZ
Russian Health Services
A PHYSICIAN'S TOUR IN SOVIET RUSSIA, by Sir James Purees-Stewart.
Stokes. 175 pp. Price $1 postpaid of The Survey.
IN scientific approach and general attitude toward the Soviet
Union, in organization of subject matter and in literary qual-
ity, this book presents a striking contrast to a similar little volume
by another distinguished Englishman which appeared about a
year ago — A Scientist Among the Soviets, by Julian Huxley
(Chatto and Windus, London). Huxley saw the Soviet doughnut,
tasted it and rather liked it, although it was made like black
bread, a bit sour perhaps under the sugar. Sir James, on the other
hand, for the most part saw only the hole. Throughout he shows
marked bias against the Soviets and a grudging credit for certain
striking achievements. He tells us that "the Communist Party
admittedly finances subversive propaganda amongst the popula-
tions of foreign countries, e.g. England," evidently quite innocent
of the fact that the Soviet government, which is "admittedly"
directed by the Communist Party, has negotiated and signed
non-aggression pacts with all its neighbors, "declaring that every
state has an equal right to independence, security, defense of its
territory and free development of its state system. ' ' (Italics through-
out are by the reviewer.)
On Nevsky Prospect, the principal street of Leningrad, he finds
"in every doorway and on the pavements filthily clothed men and
women, and even a few children, lying closely packed . . . not in
scores but in hundreds, sometimes piled in pyramids, packed
like a football scrum. . . . From every club drunken men were
staggering out. . . . Numerous prostitutes plied in the streets."
Crowding there is in industrial centers throughout Russia, all
observers agree, but hardly to the extent he would have us be-
lieve. Accompanied by Sir Arthur Newsholme, certainly a compe-
tent observer, I was on Nevsky Prospect within a week of the
date of Sir James" visit, but we saw nothing remotely resembling
the picture he presents. Moreover, in a journey of nearly nine
thousand miles, visiting most of the principal cities in European
Russia, we identified only one street-walker and there was sur-
prisingly little evidence of drunkenness. Indeed, it is generally
agreed that the "liquidation" of prostitution is among the most
striking achievements of the Soviet regime.
The evident prejudice of Sir James makes his testimony con-
cerning the medical and public-health services, in which field he is
a competent observer, all the more valuable. Many references
could be given if space permitted to show that he completely
concurs in the view of Sir Arthur Newsholme "that indeed a
revolution has taken place in Russian medicine, the methods and
procedures of which the rest of the world needs to ascertain."
In his summary, after speaking of the colossal Dnieperstroy dam,
an achievement which cannot be gainsaid, Sir James goes on to say,
"Still more impressive is the elaborate organization of her public-
health services. Some of these are diametrically opposed to the
codes of social life in western countries. Others, however, consti-
tute a challenge to capitalist governments, a challenge which they
would do well to take up, and, if possible, to surpass."
While Sir James provides us with valuable expert testimony
concerning the medical services of the Soviet Union and gives us
some interesting though often inaccurate glimpses of Soviet life,
he displays almost complete innocence of the underlying princi-
ples of the Soviet system and, for a scientist, a strange lack of
understanding of the conditions under which this great social
experiment is developing.
Milbank Memorial Fund
JOHN A. KINGSBURY
Black Zionism
THE MIS-EDUCATION OF THE NEGRO, by Carter C. Woodson. Associated
Publishers. 207 pp. Price $2.15 postpaid of Ttu Survey.
AS the issues ot the American race problem become more and
•**• more intellectualized, as indeed they must, the crucial
dilemma will be that of a policy and program of assimilation
versus that of non-assimilation. Some paradox of racialism and
its implications as they conflict with those of imitative American-
ism will divide the Negro intellectuals and perhaps the rank and
file of the black masses. For the present, compromise and shifting
expediency have passed the emphasis of race policy back and
forth in a not too satisfactory fashion. Dr. Woodson, whose
attention has been given constructively for years to the promotion
of Negro history, comes forward with a challenging and un-
compromising defense of ultra-racialism in education and in
social objectives. He indicts the imitative pattern and style of
the whole race life; and particularly blames the intellectual class
for an ineffectual and distant relation to the masses because of
their " miseducation " in a type of formal education implying
assimilation and repudiation of what is distinctive and racial.
According to Dr. Woodson, the net effect of the activity of the
educated classes of the Negro has been a false leadership, which
might have been more serious had it not been, on the whole,
ineffective.
"There is need," he says, "for a program of uplift for the Negro
based upon a scientific study of the Negro from within, to develop
in him the power to do for himself what his oppressors will never
do to elevate him to the level of others." An educational program
based upon race history, specific study of the racial condition,
independent consideration of race programs, and special cultiva-
tion of racial morale, solidarity, and self-esteem is imperative for
mass advance and improvement; and toward this end, education
must bring the advance-guard closer to the interests and the
group thinking of the masses. In Dr. Woodson's book, the reader
will find the first really articulate and reasoned statement of that
black Zionism which some years ago was so fantastically and
pathetically expressed by Marcus Garvey. This time, it is an
BOOKS THAT LIVE ON
FOR THE SOCIAL WORKER
BEHAVIOUR ASPECTS OF CHILD CONDUCT
By Esther Loring Richards, B.A., M.D., D.Sc.
Cloth, 8 vo., 314pp., $2.50
41
THE DYNAMICS OF THERAPY
IN A CONTROLLED RELATIONSHIP
By Jessie Taft, A.B., Ph.D.
Cloth, 8 vo., 307 pp., $2.50
C
GROWING UP
By Karl de Schweinitz
Cloth, 12 mo., 111 pp., $1.75
<
GETTING READY TO BE A MOTHER
By Carolyn C. Van Blarcom, R.N.
Second Ed., Cloth, 12 mo., 289 pp., $1.75
THE MACMILLAN CO. — NEW YORK
"A decade hence there will be Socialists who will turn to It in assessing the views of
the present period."
Socialist Planning and a
Socialist Program
A Symposium edited for the L. I. D.
by HARRY W. LAIDLER, Ph.D.
With an Introduction by Norman Thomas
$2.00
" Sets up a concrete goal toward which an increasing number of intelligent men and
TOSS'S^ ^"l«£^iSS in Government." -Uonlto~e,y. AU...
"A^penelrating look at the present American economic tangle." — Columbia
Missourian
FALCON PRESS, Inc., 330 West 42nd St., New York, N. Y.
DIRECTORY OF SOCIAL AGENCIES
NEW YORK
40th ed. 1933-34
If A consolidated, classified and descriptive directory. If The
handbook of social workers, teachers, doctors, lawyers,
donors, and others in need of information as to the social
service resources of New York, f For over half a century one
of the activities of the Charity Organization Society.
800 pages Cloth $3.00
Published by the
CHARITY ORGANIZATION SOCIETY, 105 East 22nd St., New York
Studies in the
Practice of Social Work
No. 1. INTERVIEWS — A Study in the Methods of Analyz-
ing and Recording Social Casework Interviews. $1.00
No. II. SOCIAL CASEWORK — Generic and Specific. A
Report of the Milford Conference. $1.00
SOCIAL WORK ETHICS — Lula Jean
No.
Elliott.
$.50
AMERICAN ASSOCIATION OF SOCIAL WORKERS
1 30 East 22d Street, New York
(In answering advertisement} please mention THE SURVEY)
363
364
THE SURVEY
October 1933
important sharpening of one horn of a very real and very great
dilemma. ALAIN LOCKE
Howard University
Propaganda in the Schools
CITIZENS' ORGANIZATIONS AND THE CIVIC TRAINING OF YOUTH, by
Bessie Louise Pierce, Part III of Report of Commission on the Social Studies,
American Historical Association. Scribner's. 426 pp. Price $2 postpaid of The Sur-
RUN OF THE SHELVES
A DESCRIPTIVE LIST OF THE NEW BOOKS
vey.
T
HE announced purpose of this study is to describe the in-
fluence of patriotic, military, pacifist, fraternal, religious,
"racial," economic, and other organizations on the public schools
of America. Accounts of varied length are given of voluntary
agencies that exert an influence on school policies or teaching.
This activity ranges from definite programs to indirect and mar-
ginal influences. Many of the organizations included in the survey
probably affect the schools no more than scores of others that re-
main unmentioned. The scope of this study did not include
evaluation of the specific influences which these agencies exert;
nor is the reader supplied with data that would indicate their
relative importance — at least to the extent of disclosing the
criteria employed by the author herself in her selection, and allot-
ment of space. Even with such additional data, however, it would
be difficult to assess the damage done by outside propaganda to
the cause of real education. For this, there is needed a fuller ac-
count of the methods used, at least by the more active of these
organizations; with some hint as to the effectiveness of different
methods, and clues to the causes of their relative success.
In short, this study represents a compilation of data worth
while in itself because of their inaccessibility. Occasional in-
accuracies due to the impossibility of checking up on the informa-
tion supplied from so many sources do not greatly lessen the
value of such a first comprehensive survey of the movements that
impinge from without upon our school system. But it is to be
hoped that the Commission will follow up this attempt with a
more analytical study of such propaganda, so that we may know
to what extent the proffered materials and exhortation really be-
come part of what children learn. BRUNO LASKER
New Tork City
Why Wisconsin Leads
THE INDUSTRIAL COMMISSION OF WISCONSIN, A Case Study in Laboi
Law Administration, by A. J. Altmeyer. University of Wisconsin Studies in the So-
cial Sciences and History, A"o. 16. 324 pp. Price $1.50 postpaid of The Survey.
THE Wisconsin Industrial Commission has made an enviable
name for itself in the field of labor-law administration; the
author of this study is making an enviable reputation for himself
as a labor-law administrator. Serving as he has for over ten years
as statistician and secretary of the Wisconsin commission, he has
combined experience with scholarship in this account of the his-
tory and inner workings of that body. The study is a painstaking
piece of work, describing in detail the development of the differ-
ent activities of the commission, and the statistics of its operation.
One could wish that the author had not so rigorously excluded
from the study the personalities that have been so influential in
developing the commission's work and shaping its policies, such
as Dr. John R. Commons and E. E. Witte; for the superiority of
the Wisconsin commission can largely be explained in terms of
such personalities: their high qualifications, their vision and their
indifference to political considerations. Dr. Altmeyer does, how-
ever, bring out the other factors that have been so instrumental
in the success of the Wisconsin commission: the employment of a
highly qualified and well-trained personnel; the large use made of
advisory committees, with representatives of employers and
employes, in the development of rules and regulations; the close
cooperation with other state and local agencies such as vocational
schools; and the policy of educating rather than prosecuting the
employer as a means of reducing violations of law. An intimate in-
sight is given into the administration of the laws relating to
workmen's compensation, safety and sanitation, woman and
child labor, employment offices, apprenticeship, mediation and
arbitration, statistics, unemployment research, and so on.
University of Minnesota MERRILL G. MURRAY
AN EXPERIMENT IN RliCRliATION WITH THE MENTALLY RE-
TARDED, by Bertha Schlotter and Margaret Svendsen. Behavior Research Fund,
Chicago. 74 pp. Price g! cents fostpaid of The Surrey.
HERE the story is told of how the realization came to those
responsible for the Lincoln State School and Colony at Lincoln,
Illinois — where the emphasis had been on idleness and repression
— that with the mentally retarded as with the normal, "the
achievement of comfort, happiness and congeniality lay in the
happy performance of a congenial task and that therefore there
was need for an educational system which would prepare persons
to be able to so do the tasks at hand that they would enjoy doing
them." How the necessary instruction was accomplished through
recreation is described in a way that would be applicable to other
similar institutions.
STOP THAT SMOKE! by Henry Obermeyer, Harper's. 289 pp. Price$2.50 postpaid
of The Suney.
THIS, the first book to deal in a popular way with the dangers of
the smoke nuisance and the ways and means for its reduction, is
designed to serve civic organizations as well as those who are
directly responsible for the creation of smoke through industrial
and domestic uses. The author, who is assistant to the vice-
president of the Consolidated Gas Company of New York, con-
siders the danger of smoke and fumes from the angles of public
health, civic beauty, deterioration of property (New York City
alone pays more than $1,600,000 annually to keep its sky-
scrapers reasonably clean) and finally economy in the utilization
of fuels. Means to abate the smoke nuisance are set forth in
practical terms.
AMERICANS AT PLAY, by Jesse Frederick Steiner. Recent Social Trends Mono-
graphs. McGraw-Hill. 201 pp. Price $2.50 postpaid of The Survey.
No SECTION of the report of the President's Research Committee
on Recent Social Trends (see Survey Graphic, January 1933) was
more astonishing than the chapter in which Professor Steiner
brought together the facts of our multiplying interest in recrea-
tion in a period that saw the rise of automobile, movie and radio
and the development of camps, travel, country clubs and com-
mercialized sport on a scale never known before. This monograph
details the data on which that chapter was based. Obviously the
1929 bill of more than ten billions for recreation has suffered a
depression reversal. Professor Steiner suggests, "Perhaps during a
period of slower development there may be greater success in
building up a well-balanced recreational program more carefully
planned in the interests of the general welfare."
RED HILL — Neighborhood Life and Race Relations in a Rural Section, by Wil-
liam Lester Leap. Vol. X. Phelps-Stokes Fellowship papers. University of Virginia
Press. 165 pp. Price $1 postpaid of The Suney.
AN EXHAUSTIVE cross-section analysis of a typical Virginia rural
community, painstakingly done and documented, but with more
descriptive than diagnostic effect. To those who need a modern
scientific study of the old-fashioned bi-racial southern town, the
volume will be most useful; but those who are interested in the
forces that are today so rapidly disintegrating these hamlet towns,
so that they are no longer typical or important, will wish often
that the analysis had turned aside at many points to discuss
these changes and trace the factors involved. However, Mr. Leap
has sketched a careful static picture, with especially interesting
parallels between the white and the Negro community, which tor
all their unequal levels follow the same pattern. The author con-
cludes: "The culture of the Negroes is largely a reflection of that
part of white culture with which they come in contact. At the
present it is low, so low in fact that at times it appears to be some-
thing altogether different from white culture. But while Negroes
may not have the same standards as the white people do in many
respects, they are superior in certain respects, notably in family
solidarity and mutual aid. The Negro standards of living are
slowly rising."
October 1933
THE SURVEY
365
CO MM UN 1C A TIONS
Liquor Control
To THE EDITOR: In the August Survey Graphic Dr. Haven Emer-
son publishes an article, Can Wets and Drys Bear the Whole
Truth?
In the June Harpers I published an article, Science, Law and
Alcohol: Liquor Control after Prohibition. Both articles aim to
minimize the evils of alcohol. Yet our arguments are completely
contradictory.
Largely on my testimony Congress has declared light beer to be
non-intoxicating. I testified that it is less toxic than tobacco and a
pint of it no more so than a cup of coffee. In contrast, I classed all
forms of distilled spirits with such narcotic alkaloids as morphine
and cocaine, and I advocated a correspondingly strict control. I
am now making earnest efforts to persuade the state liquor com-
missions to separate whiskey, gin and the stronger cocktails from
the lighter alcoholic beverages, just as morphine and cocaine are
now separated from the tobacco alkaloid, nicotine. According to
Dr. Emerson this is fundamentally wrong. He says: "Intoxication
is as properly applied to the person who has taken a quart of 3 per-
cent beer . . . as it is to the drinker of a quart of whiskey. . . ."
Yet the one may show no appreciable disturbance of conduct
while the other is rendered completely unconcious or even killed.
Such a view is lexicologically as unsound as it would be to class
tea and coffee and even chocolate (all of which contain alkaloidal
drugs with euphoric effects) with morphine and cocaine. It de-
mands a degree of asceticism that inevitably defeats its own pur-
pose, as prohibition has. It negates any sane and effective liquor
control
Dr. Emerson's article reminds me of a remark of Christopher
Morley that, "The landing of the Puritans upon Plymouth Rock
was a great event. But how much greater an event it would have
been if Plymouth Rock had landed upon the Puritans."
YANDELL HENDERSON
Professor of Applied Physiology, Tale University
How Can Consumers Organize?
To THE EDITOR: Several weeks have elapsed since the Wellesley
Institute for Social Progress was held. I notice no mention of it in
either the August or September issue of your magazine. So out-
standing an experiment seems to me to warrant the special atten-
tion of your readers.
To my mind the two paramount questions in our social up-
heaval today are: first, "What is the basic cause of our world- wide
depression?" and, second, "How can consumers organize effec-
tively to help put the NIRA across?" We may raise wages and
prices and shorten hours all we will, but unless the products which
are now being produced under the NIRA will actually be pur-
chased by the consuming public, we find ourselves still in a vicious
circle, which leads us nowhere. These two questions were dis-
cussed in a most direct and dramatic way in the Wellesley In-
stitute.
This Institute was unique in many ways. First, perhaps, in that
its personnel was composed of 125 wide-awake members of the
consumer public, gathered from every conceivable walk of life;
secondly, in that our instruction in the essentials of economics,
which every adult individual should know, were expressed in the
simplest and most understandable way possible; and finally, and
most important, in that the Wellesley Institute included a series
of evening talks by prominent outside speakers which were chal-
lenging and instructive to the nth degree.
One such evening talk on The Psychological Effects of our
Economic Order was presented by Dr. Frankwood E. Williams,
one of your frequent contributors. In effect his talk was a chal-
lenge to cease thinking and talking about "symptoms" and to
delve down beneath these "symptoms" to the causes of our present
depression. According to Dr. Williams, one fundamental cause of
our crisis is an increasing fund of what he called "hatred," evi-
denced in the "symptom" of the "exploitation" (both of individ-
uals by individuals and groups by groups), which we see so clearly
all about us today.
Among the many other interesting evening talks I would men-
tion Planning for the Future by Mary van Kleeck, the director
of industrial studies, Russell Sage Foundation and vice-president
of the International Industrial Relations Association at the
Hague. Miss van Kleeck threw down the gauntlet to us in the per-
tinent questions: "Are we bold enough to force our present prob-
lems through to the finish?" and "Are we bold enough to think
them through for the benefit of civilization?" and in her clear-cut
statements: "Economic illiteracy is high in the United States."
"Enlightenment such as furnished by Wellesley is likely to mini-
mize violence."
No government has ever undertaken so vast a task in times ot
peace as our present administration in the NIRA. Admittedly,
national planning is a governmental function but only through an
active consumer self-education can we do our share toward mak-
ing the NIRA successful.
There should be more and more of such institutes throughout
the country as the one held at Wellesley. The plans for such study
groups would be available for those who would care to follow
exactly the subjects as presented there. I feel sure Dorothy P.
Hill, director of the Institute, would welcome inquiries.
It seems to me that if we are to avoid social eruptions, we could
only do so by admitting the issues and looking them squarely in
the face. Therefore, I appeal to you as editor of The Survey for
assistance in placing before your public, the consumers of this
country, this fundamental question of how to further this re-
markably fine beginning made this past summer at the Wellesley
Institute for Social Progress.
Baltimore, Maryland A. E. O. MUNSELL
Seven Answers
To THE EDITOR: After reading Dr. Kirkpatrick's " Seven Points"
in the July Midmonthly, one is inclined to wonder how any of us
urban dwellers can bear to continue our present mode of existence,
and why there is not an immediate rush to the farm. May we
not be allowed to take up these points separately in an attempt
to deny the idyllic nature of farming?
He says that "the farmer is never out of work"; is never
unemployed. Our urbanity suggests that employment implies
full monetary return; and can anyone say this is the farmers'
happy state? Busyness and employment are two different con-
cepts in the modern exchange economy.
Secondly, " the farm provides a better living than is enjoyed by
urban families on equivalent incomes, shelter and good wholesome
food at any rate." Can this be considered an optimistic situation?
The misfortunes of city-unemployed do not minimize those
of the farmers.
Thirdly, "the farm has many advantages in the rearing of
children." Granted, but there are disadvantages. Is "freedom
from dangers of traffic and the like" enough for one to pull out
of the bag to offset the lack of good schools, avocational oppor-
tunity, concerts and libraries, to mention only some of the city
child's advantages? I also doubt that there is "greater diversity
of tasks" on the farm, unless the uniqueness of each cow before
the milk pail is something more alarming than I had ever sup-
posed.
Fourthly, "members of the family are more likely to be pals
and partners on the farm than in the city. Farm conditions make
it necessary for members of the family to work together." But
does this forced association necessarily lead to congeniality?
It must be more than stated as a generalization before we can
believe it.
Fifthly, "the most satisfying community activities are those in
which as many persons as possible in a given area participate."
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management desires position in social
service. Combines education, breeding and
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Best of references. 7173 SURVEY.
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publicity, organization, secretarial. Go anywhere.
7171 SURVEY.
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successful teacher, seeks opening in children's work,
placement, adult education. 7174 SURVEY.
Case-work supervisor; experienced in family welfare,
child welfare, and other specialized fields. Liberal arts
college graduate; some work at New York School of
Social Work. Would prefer work in metropolitan area.
7175 SURVEY.
Student of New York School of Social Work will
prepare dinners for business women in return for
living. 7178 SURVEY.
BUSINESS OPPORTUNITY
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having contacts and interested in organizing a special-
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project, a country home and adjoining summer camp
are available. Beautifully located, healthful climate,
easily accessible. Completely and modernly furnished.
Equipped for numbers. Limitless possibilities. 7177
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The American Journal of Nursing shows the part
which trained nurses are taking in the betterment
of the world. Put it in your library. $3.00 a year.
450 Seventh Ave., New York, N. Y.
Mental Hygiene: quarterly: $3.00 a year; published
by the National Committee for Mental Hygiene,
450 Seventh Ave., New York.
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ENCYCLOPAEDIA OF THE SOCIAL SCIENCES
Edwin R. A. Seligman, Editor-in-Chief
To be published in fifteen volumes by THE MACMILLAN COMPANY.
The first eight volumes (List Price $7.50) perfect condition — $35.00.
Write orphans (Algonquin 4-7490)
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{Advertising Department)
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Your Own Agency
This is the counseling and placement agency
sponsored jointly by the American Association
of Social Workers and the National Organiza-
tion for Public Health Nursing. National.
Non-profit making.
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VOCATIONAL SERVICE AGENCY
18 EAST 41sx STREET, NEW YORK
Lexington 2-6677
We are interested in placing those who have
a professional attitude towards their work.
Executive secretaries, stenographers, case
workers, hospital social service workers, settle-
ment directors; research, immigration, psychi-
atric, personnel workers and others.
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MISCELLANEOUS ""
Believing some men and women are burdened, anxious,
needing help in meeting perplexing personal problems,
a retired physician offers friendly counsel for those
who desire it. No fees. 7168 SURVEY.
While hardly denying the beneficient influence of any trend
toward solidarity, one questions whether a mere numerical
criterion here is appropriate. The farmers' need of association,
furthermore, is far less a product of social feeling than of the
sterility of their long-vaunted independence.
Sixthly, " the farm affords more opportunity for leisure than
does the city generally, and more than is appreciated by farm
people at present. Any one who is as free as the American farmer
can, if he will, live a zestful and creative life." I am sure that no
modern social worker will lay the blame for dissatisfactions on
deficiency of "will power." That good old catch-all is out of date.
We must go deeper than calling the farmer a stubborn creature
if we want really to help him. The farmer is not a free man because
the determination of his income, and therefore of his cultural
enjoyments, is far from him. A union member in the dullest
factory routine has more freedom. And as to what leisure a farmer
possesses, surely dull winter days in the company of Sears Roe-
buck catalogues and a barren interior are as different from a
creative environment as the bare rooms of an unemployed family
are from the comfortable den of a professor. When will the
professors take inventory of their material "props?"
Seventhly, "farm life, dealing with nature, affords an oppor-
tunity to meditate and thus determine a wholesome philosophy of
life." It is true that some of us, at times, go out into the open
fields with questionings as to ultimate realities. We seek a philos-
ophy in quietude. But the answers to be found in mortgaged
fields, with their fullness of insecurity, will be of the nature of
escapes from reality. There might be much potency in a certain
such outdoor activity on the part of farmers. Let them go out
into their fields, not only to plow them under the broiling sun,
but to ask themselves what it is that the professors are trying
to put over on them, and why.
As Samuel Johnson once said, "You never find people labour-
ing to convince you that you may live very happily on a plentiful
fortune."
Madison, Wisconsin JEAN M. PATON
Mental Hygiene Courses
To THE EDITOR: I would like to call the attention of the readers
of The Survey to the fact that Dr. Frankwood E. Williams and
Dr. Caroline B. Zachry, well-known mental hygienists and edu-
cators, are jointly giving two courses at the New School of Social
Research which ought to be of great value to teachers interested
in the broader aspects of their profession. The two courses are:
Philosophic Aspects of Mental Hygiene: Their Application to
Education, held for fifteen sessions from 4:15 to 6:15 P. M. and a
Seminar; Mental Hygiene in Kducation, from 8 to 10 P. M. Both
courses begin on Monday, October 2.
'The 'Teachers Union Auxiliary IRMA RINGE
(In answering advertisements please mention THE SURVEY)
366
October 1933
THE SURVEY
367
GO Q Q T P • of Pe°Ple
V7 O O 1 JT . ana Things
Song for Everybody
Tax Tom, Dick and Harry —
Oh, tax 'em, all three —
Put on all they'll carry,
But never tax me.
H. I. Phillips in New Tork Sun
GUARANTEED to stir the wandering foot is
the new map of recreational areas in the
United States issued free by the National
Parks Service of the Department of the In-
terior, Washington, D. C. No vacation — and
this is a nice time to talk about that — should
be without it. Details, far from dull, about the
park areas, national and state, are printed on
the back.
THE Institute of Pacific Relations has
chosen Edward C. Carter of New York for its
newly created post of secretary-general with
headquarters in Honolulu. Mr. Carter has
been secretary of the American council of the
institute since 1927 and for the past two years
has been vice-chairman of the program com-
mittee.
EQUIPPED with an impressive queue of
degrees and with notable experience as chief of
the social-service staff of the psychiatric clinic
of the Detroit Juvenile Court, Adaline Johnesse
has gone to the New York Church Mission of
Help as case supervisor.
IT is good news to many people that Homer
Borst, long associated with Community Chests
and Councils Inc., has entirely recovered from
: his long illness and is now on the staff of the
New York TERA.
Institute Aftermath
'TpARDILY but whole-heartedly this depart-
A ment salutes the quality and quantity of
the special institutes which dotted this fair
land during the summer just past. At the Blue
Ridge Institute, veteran of the discussion
groups sponsored by Community Chests and
Councils Inc., the topic was Trends toward
Socialization of Community Forces, with
Arthur A. Guild of Richmond as chairman. At
the Great Lakes Institute at Lake Geneva,
Wis., the topic was Trends in Social Work with
Charles C. Stillman of Columbus as chairman.
The findings brought in by the various sections
and adopted by the institute bodies may be
had from Community Chests and Councils,
Graybar Building, New York, 50 cents for
Great Lakes, four sections; $i for Blue Ridge,
eight sections. Single sections 15 cents.
At East Radford, Va., the student section of
the American Country Life Association brought
together young people from forty-seven col-
legiate and non-collegiate rural life clubs in
some thirteen states who adopted a program to
take the form of a commemoration of the
Theodore Roosevelt Country Life Commission.
It will include state and local rural-life con-
ferences and the discussion in student clubs
of new objectives of rural betterment.
At the New York State Training School for
Girls, Hudson, N. Y., the Committee on the
Care and Training of Delinquent Women and
Girls of the National Committee on Prisons
and Prison Labor, always alert to raise the
standard of women personnel in correctional
institutions, brought together thirty-two col-
lege girls, hand-picked from the sociology
classes of fourteen colleges and universities,
for a six-weeks course of lectures and case-
work study.
The Wellesley College Institute for Social
Progress was a newcomer which offered a
galaxy of headline lecturers to its members of
whom there were 122 with more than fifty
vocations and an age range of at least fifty
years.
There were of course a whole flock of in-
stitutes for emergency relief workers. Notable
among them was that held in Raleigh, N. C.,
under the combined wings of the Governor's
Office of Relief, the State Board of Charities
and Public Welfare and the School of Public
Administration of the State University. Around
235 county workers registered for the four-
weeks course to prepare them for better, if not
bigger, public-relief administration. Says Lis-
beth Parrott of the State Board: "We were all
impressed by the earnestness of these people
and frequently struck by their practical knowl-
edge and experience, though one of them did
stop a lecturer in his tracks one day to ask him
what he meant by 'intelligence quotient." "
Souvenir
BY way of Cornell University comes a 1933
version of the old "hand that shook the
hand of Sullivan" story. When Mrs. Roosevelt
was at Cornell for some conference or other,
Professor Eddy's little girl was presented to the
First Lady and shook hands with her. At
luncheon that day the state of young daughter's
hands drew a maternal question. "No, Mother,
I haven't washed my hands and I don't think I
shall. You see 1 shook hands with Mrs. Roose-
velt." Mrs. Eddy pondered a moment. "I'll tell
you what to do, dear. Wash your hands and
save the water."
NELLIE M. PORTER, for the past two years
chief of the Bureau of Registration of Nurses
of the California Department of Public Health,
has retired. Succeeding her is Helen F. Hansen,
formerly an inspector in the bureau and re-
cently on the teaching staffs of hospitals in
New York and San Francisco.
A FEMININE hand is now at the helm of the
Pittsburgh Federation of Social Agencies,
Isabel P. Kennedy, formerly head of the Group
Work Division, having .succeeded Edward N.
Clopper as executive secretary. Mr. Clopper
has gone to a professorship in the department
of sociology of the University of Cincinnati
where his work will have to do particularly
with public relations in the field of social work.
THE sudden death, in mid-September, of
Sara C. Clapp, for twenty years a leader in
settlement work in New York, was a shock and
sorrow to a circle of friends of national propor-
tions. Only two weeks before her death Miss
Clapp had added to her duties as director of
the Kips Bay Neighborhood Association, the
direction of the Goddard Neighborhood Center
where she planned to develop a large nutri-
tional and recreational program.
THROUGH the appointment of the Rev. C. H.
Le Blond to the bishopric of the Catholic diocese
of St. Joseph, Mo., Cleveland has lost one of
its most vigorous and effective clerical social
workers. He was at one time director of the
Catholic Charities of Cleveland and is the
founder of St. Joseph's Home for Working
Boys and of the Children's Village, St. Vincent
de Paul, at Parmadale.
THE new North Dakota Public Health Ad-
visory Council, created by the last legislature,
has named Dr. Maysil M. Williams to succeed
Dr. Arthur A. Whittemore as state health
officer. She was formerly director of the Divi-
sion of Child Hygiene in the State Department
of Health.
As The Survey Seems . . .
TO Benjamin Stolberg writing in Vanity
Fair (September) on Liberal Journalism:
A House Divided:
The Survey and The Survey Graphic are the
house-organs of "scientific" social work. . . .
Even from The Survey for all its strange
dialect of frisky seriousness he [the Man in the
Moon] might learn how "scientific" social
workers are going about "Turning the Hard
Times into Whetstones for Keen Thinking."
To the compilers of The Women's Crusade:
Handbook of the National Women's Commit-
tee of the 1933 Mobilization for Human Needs,
Mrs. Franklin D. Roosevelt, chairman:
The Survey is an invaluable magazine for
those on the firing line of social work.
To one E. D. writing in Monde, the interna-
tional weekly edited by Henri Barbusse and
published in Paris:
This American review [The Survey] repre-
sents the left wing in social work. This move-
ment, peculiarly American, is radically different
from "good works" touched with Catholic
charity or Puritanism. It is characterized by its
pursuit of efficiency. . . . This left wing is
concerned with an effort to reform the penal
system on the soviet model, to reorganize the
schools in the light of child psychology, and so
on. The action it proposes is often of great
value. What is lacking, as its adherents some-
times realize, is a base, a social doctrine, that
will attack systematically the roots of the evil.
In the United States, where political life
does not exist, one finds grouped in such move-
ments liberals who are without any definite
political program but who are dissatisfied with
the present system and open to criticism and
new ideas. The Survey is one of the best ex-
pressions of this tendency and often contains
studies of remarkable objectivity.
THOSE who remember, and a lot of us do,
the yeoman service of Leslie M. Foy at the
time of the Philadelphia meeting of the Na-
tional Conference, will be sorry to hear that
budget retrenchments have obliged the Public
Charities Aid Association to "release" her
from her post as secretary of the Poor Relief
Division.
HORACE M. ALBRIGHT has resigned from the
National Park Service. His retirement, coming
so soon after that of Stephen Mather two years
ago, would be in the nature of a national
calamity, but for the fact that he and his
368
T HE SURVEY
October 1933
predecessor built on such firm foundations.
With a background of association with the
Service ever since its inception seventeen years
ago, Mr. Albright has had a large share in
safeguarding our natural wonder spots and
developing them as recreational and educa-
tional centers. He is succeeded as director by
another old timer in the service, Arno B.
Cammerer, who also has contributed much
toward the development of national parks,
having been associate director since 1919. In
his new capacity Mr. Cammerer will be direc-
tor of National Parks, Buildings and Reserva-
tions, an enlarged department created by
executive order.
FOUND on a New York tenement door by a
relief investigator whose veracity is vouched
for by the Bulletin of the AICP: "de bell he
do not ring, stroke door lustily with knuckles
of hand to announce honorable presence."
THE Vermont Children's Aid Society has lent
its executive, L. Josephine Webster, who
knows every rock and rill and most of the
families of the Green Mountain State, to act
as field supervisor of the State Unemployment
Relief Administration. Persis Holden is carry-
ing on in her place at the CAS.
THE Survey feels a keen sense of personal
loss in the death of Henry \V. Farnham, for
forty years professor of economics at Yale,
— since 1918 professor emeritus. He was one
of this publication's oldest friends, his interest
and support dating from 1906, three years
before The Survey was born of the old Chari-
ties and The Commons, and continuing until
his death last month. Though Professor Farn-
ham's major concerns were teaching and re-
search his activities ranged far beyond the
classroom and the study. He was among the
most vigorous advocates of the civil-service
movement and was a founder and the first
president of the American Association for
Labor Legislation. New Haven will long re-
member and be grateful for his influence on
its schools, its hospitals, its social and health
work and on a score of other aspects of com-
munity life.
ALFRED K. STERN of Chicago has been ap-
pointed by Governor Horner as chairman of
the recently formed Illinois State Housing
Board, a permanent body which succeeds the
temporary State Housing Commission of
which Mr. Stern was also chairman.
THEODORE O. YODER has joined the staff
of the National Society for the Prevention of
Blindness to do financial and membership
work. It was Mr. Yoder who, while on the
staff of the American University at Cairo,
Egypt, produced the motion picture on the care
of the eyes which is now being used in public-
health education in Egypt, India and Japan.
THE National Conference on Government,
sponsored as usual by the National Municipal
League, will be held in Atlantic City, Novem-
ber 9-11. The major emphasis of the confer-
ence will be on: "the serious emergencies in
educational, social and cultural functions of
government now faced by many municipalities
due to inability to collect taxes and on meth-
ods by which citizen groups can make them-
selves effective." Governmental control of
liquor is also on the agenda for discussion.
ROMANCE that budded aboard the freighter
in which Ruth M. Graves cruised the Mediter-
ranean and the Black Sea a year or so ago
flowered this past summer in the little Episcopal
Church in Foxboro, Mass., where Miss Graves,
business manager of The Family and its best
known "conference trotter," was married to
Edward Arthur Dodd, Jr., of New York, a
shipmate on that glamorous voyage. Miss
Graves, happily for The Family, is continuing
on the job.
Not Quite Jazz
TACKING entirely the sober earmarks of
-*— ' government publications are the three
engaging pamphlets offered by the U. S. De-
partment of Labor to visitors to the Century of
Progress in Chicago. All are popularly written,
lavishly illustrated and tricked out with strik-
ing covers. Labor Through the Century tells
the story of American labor, its progress and its
problems, with reproduction in miniature of the
forty large pictures which constitute part of the
department's Chicago exhibit. Women at
Work, with a splashy black and white cover,
reviews women's progress in American Indus-
try. It was written by Eleanor Nelson of the
Women's Bureau and illustrated by Jean W.
Hill. Children's Progress, prepared for the
Children's Bureau by Eleanor Taylor and de-
signed by Gerald Link, tells its story largely by
means of pictures. All three booklets are hap-
pily free of ballyhoo and all end with the re-
minder that whatever the gains of the past the
greatest goal of all, security, is yet to be won.
The booklets may be secured (5 cents apiece)
from the Superintendent of Documents, Wash-
ington, D. C.
AND speaking of government publicity, there
is Indians at Work on which someone has
exercised a talent for the mimeograph in the
manner recommended by the Social Work
Publicity Council. Issued from time to time by
the Bureau of Indian Affairs it tells the news of
the Indian Conservation Camps with a page
or two given over to recent general develop-
ments in the Indian situation. A foreword by
Commissioner John Collier interprets the
significance of all that is happening.
THE address by David Cushman Coyle,
Necessary Changes in Public Opinion in the
New Social Order, which lifted the National
Conference onto its collective toes last June in
Detroit, has been published as a pamphlet.
Ten cents from Mr. Coyle, 101 Park Ave., N. Y.
THE Social Work Publicity Council, 130
East 22 Street, New York, has reprinted the
one-act play, Breadline, by Philip L. Ketchum
from The Survey Graphic of August 1933.
Single copy, 15 cents, quantities of five or
more, 10 cents. Mr. Ketchum has waived his
royalty rights for production, but permission
must be obtained from the Council. The
Council's first request to produce came, inter-
estingly enough, from Honolulu where the
Social Work Publicity Council proposed to
use Mr. Ketchum's moving little play as a
radio broadcast.
How to "turn Paradise into something a
little more like Utopia" was, says James G.
Stone of Palama Settlement, Honolulu, the
central idea of Hawaii's thirteenth annual
Territorial Conference of Social Work. With
economic and social planning as its theme the
conference found itself chiefly concerned with
planning for the youth of the islands. This con-
ference has the stimulating custom of formu-
lating its concerns into clearly stated objectives
to which its major efforts during the year ahead
are directed. This year's objectives include:
more intelligent cooperation between social
agencies; regulation and control of employ-
ment; educational programs of vocational
guidance and adjustment for youth; more
recreation under trained leadership; more
emphasis on the prevention of juvenile delin-
quency and more participation of social work-
ers in the promotion of health legislation. New
officers of the conference are: president, E. L.
Damkroger; vice-presidents, E. A. Lilley,
Frank P. Baldwin, Anne McMasters and
Ralph G. Cole; secretary, H. A. Mountain.
THE New York Psychoanalytic Institute, 324
West 86 Street, is offering a course on The
Application of Psychoanalysis to Social Work
to a selected group of advanced social workers.
The course has three sub-divisions: Truancy,
Aggression and Unconscious Rivalry, Parental
Conflicts and Their Manifestations, and Family
Patterns of Social Behavior. The twelve semi-
nars will be conducted jointly by Dr. Gregory
/.ilboorg and Dr. J. T. Broadwin. Detailed
information from the Institute.
Big Business Goes Mousing
OUT of the sober pages of Factory Manage-
ment comes the tale of how a large food
factory reduced its overhead by putting its
mousing on a competitive basis. Cost account-
ing indicated that every mouse caught by the
professional exterminator cost the management
forty-three cents. "It seemed unnecessarily
expensive." So the boss fired the exterminator,
laid in a stock of traps and cheese and an-
nounced a monthly mousetrapping contest.
Any employe entering drew traps and cheese
and a "territory" in which to operate. Prizes
were candy and cigars. It was ruled that one
rat counted as five mice and that non-fur-bear
ing mice (newborns) didn't count at all. Any-
way more than 500 mice bit the cheese and the
per capita mouse-cost to Big Business was
brought down to five cents.
THE latest notable addition to the staff of
the FERA is Morris Lewis, loaned by the Na-
tional Association of Travelers' Aid Societies
to serve in Washington as Director of Tran-
sient Activities. He will review state programs
for transients for which special grants are asked.
Mr. Lewis has had some nineteen-years ex-
perience in social work both at home anc
abroad. Right after the war he was with tht
Joint Distribution Committee in Poland am
later in Roumania. From 1925 to 1927 ht
directed the settlement in Cuba of thousand;
of European refugees stranded there when oui
immigration laws forestalled their entry int<
the United States. Recently he has been fielc
representative of the National Committee or
Care of Transients and Homeless.
PAUL V. BETTERS of Chicago, director o
the American Municipal Association, and ;
valued contributor to The Survey, has beei
appointed by Secretary Ickes to act as liaisoi
officer between the Public Works Administra
tion in Washington and the various munici
palities.
NEW officers of the Massachusetts Con
ference of Social Work are: president, Free
Stephenson, Springfield; vice-presidents, Alfrei
F. Whitman, Boston, and Anna King, Pitts
field; secretary, Howard C. Raymond; treasnnt
Joseph H. Tillinghast, both of Boston.
5}
Vol. LXIX. No. ii
MONTHLY
November 1933
CONTENTS
FRONTISPIECE Photo of William H. Matthews 370
THE JOB-LINE THAT COST $28 MILLION
William H. Matthews 371
A HEALTH PLAN FOR THE NATION .... John A. Kingsbury 373
THE AF OF L AND THE NEW DEAL John A. Fitch 374
CHILDREN MUST LIVE THEIR O\VN LIVES
Gertrude Springer 376
THE REFORM OF THE SOCIAL ORDER G. S. 378
HOW THE OTHER HALF LIVES ON RELIEF
By a Henry Street Visiting Nurse 379
EATING THE SURPLUS R.H.K. 380
FHE COMMON WELFARE 381
SOCIAL PRACTICE 384
NDUSTRY 38j
EDUCATION 387
HEALTH 388
UNEMPLOYMENT AND COMMUNITY ACTION 390
fOTTINGS 393
BOOKS 394
:OMMUNICATIONS 397
3OSSIP 399
Files of The Survey will be found in public and college libraries. All
ssues are indexed in the Readers' Guide to Periodical Literature. Ask
he Librarian.
SURVEY ASSOCIATES, INC.
Publication Office, 10 Ferry Street, Concord, N. H.
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THE SURVEY— Monthly— 13.00 a Year
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Lucius R. EASTMAN, president; JULIAN W. MACK, JOSEPH P. CHAM-
ERLAIN, JOHN PALMER GAVIT, vice-presidents; ANN REED BRENNER,
ecretary; ARTHUR KELLOGG, treasurer.
PAUL U. KELLOGG, editor.
ARTHUR KELLOGG, managing editor; MARY Ross, BEULAH AMIDON,
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-OEB KELLOGG, GERTRUDE SPRINGER, associate editors.
EDWARD T. DEVINE, GRAHAM TAYLOR, JANE ADDAMS, JOSEPH K.
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ORD, contributing editors.
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tanager.
SO THEY SAY
. . . one of those deep, consecrated huddles that social workers
go into. — Frances Perkins, secretary of labor.
Not only must starvation be stopped but idleness also. — John
Lovejoy Elliott, Ethical Culture Society, New Tork.
All the pieces in the jig-saw puzzle called prosperity have been
here all the time. — General Hugh S. Johnson, NRA.
The one perfect way to bring down relief costs is to provide real
jobs for the unemployed. — Homer Folks, New Tork.
In my judgment we know precious little about the unemployed.
— Reti. John O'Grady, National Conference of Catholic Charities.
No system of education can manufacture leaders as a factory
does automobiles. — Harold Willis Dodd, president, Princeton Uni-
versity.
Leisure, even if paternalism provides it with healthy diversions!
can still be used for worrying about money. — William A. DeWitt,
Detroit.
Someone has said that you can't treat even an inferiority com-
plex on an empty stomach. — Edith M. Baker, St. Louis, in The
Family.
To become an expert criminal requires as much time and effort
as to become a doctor of philosophy. — J. Prentice Murphy, Phila-
delphia.
Scientifically and mechanically this is an age of wonders. But . . .
the arts are being driven into an arid wilderness. — Ignace Jan
Padereviski.
There is no use enacting statutes to promote social justice unless
you appropriate enough money to make them effective. — Alfred E.
Smith, New Tork.
It is not written in the constitution but there is an inherent duty
in the federal government to keep any citizen from starving. —
President Roosevelt.
One cannot make up to children the health loss caused through
no milk this year by feeding them cream next year. — Grace Abbott,
U. S. Children's Bureau.
The people taking the real beating in this depression are the
people on relief, and don't you forget it. — Harry L. Hopkins, fed-
eral emergency relief administrator.
The opportunist is happy when he is on the way while the realist
is happy only when he has thought through where he is going. —
Benjamin Stolberg in Vanity Fair.
Those who think that the long-meter doxology is the theme song
of heaven honestly think that syncopated time leads to the gate-
way of hell.— Charles Stelzle, New Tork.
When social work proves itself the surveying corps rather than
the wrecking crew it will have the public on its toes watching the
proceedings. — Harry Elmer Barnes, New Tork.
The engineers have made business so efficient that nothing but
a cultural advance will permit business to go on. — David C. Coyle,
New Tork, in National Catholic Charities Review.
The one solid excuse for liberty is that it encourages men to
think and experiment. But for that dictatorship would be a better
form of government. — M. E. Tracy in New Tork World-felegram.
It is one thing to hold that economics is subject to ethics in
general, and quite another thing to apply ethical principles to
particular economic practices. — Mgr. John A. Ryan, Catholic
University of America.
A dinner-table may be often as good an instrument of liberal
education as a conference room or a lecture-hall, and in my expe-
rience it is a good deal pleasanter than either. — James Bryant Co-
nant, president, Harvard University.
Because we have put too many of our eggs in an industrial bas-
ket, we have too much omelet in depression. There are not eggs
enough left for music, education, voluntary leisure and religion. —
Roscoe Lewis Ashley, Pasadena Junior College.
Hiram Myers
WILLIAM H. MATTHEWS
fbe man who found jobs for 95,228 men and women
November
'933
Volume LXIX
No. 11
The Job-Line That Cost $28 Million
By WILLIAM H. MATTHEWS
Director the Emergency Work Bureau, New York City; Director Department of Family Welfare AICP
PARLOR-GAME among social workers some
years ago was to discuss what they would do if
they had the disposition of $10 million. In the
past three years the Emergency Work Bureau has dis-
posed of almost $28 million and I am prepared to state
that it has not been a parlor-game but a heart-breaking
experience insupportable except as day-by-day we saw
life made less difficult for many people, their courage
renewed, their anxieties and sufferings allayed.
In the fall of 1930 the New York Emergency Unem-
ployment Committee headed by Seward Prosser raised
$9 million. The following year a similarly constituted
committee with Harvey D. Gibson as chairman raised
Jig million. In the fall of 1932 Mr. Gibson's committee
raised $15 million. The total $43 million is, so far as I
know, the largest relief fund ever raised by public sub-
scription in time of peace. More than half of this fund,
$2 8, 368 ,000 was allocated by the committee, a planning
as well as a fund-raising body, to the Emergency Work
Bureau to provide jobs for men and women who wanted
work. At the beginning of September 1933, when the
committee ended its work, the Bureau had provided work
and wages for 95,228 people. It was at this task that the
staff of the Bureau labored for three crowded years that
seem like ten.
It is an old story now how the Bureau put people to
work; first, largely on city-owned properties and later
into practically every non-profit agency in the city where
work that could not be done on regular budgets was
available. For three months before the Bureau opened
we had been engaged in lining-up jobs particularly where
large numbers of unskilled workers could be quickly and
easily used, and in canvassing the possibilities in non-
profit, community-serving agencies. At that time none of
us thought very much about the artists, wood-carvers,
musicians, all sorts of professional people who were later
by their talents to add so much of value to these agencies.
By the time the Bureau opened its doors public officials
were ready to accept 10,000 men and private agencies
were willing to try "the experiment" to the extent of
5000. Thus it will be seen that we did not start our ven-
ture without preparation for the beginning and for the
gradual extension of the program which later found its
way into some 3000 different community agencies. At
no time did we experience difficulty in placing all the
workers the budget allowed. The highest numb2r of per-
sons on the Bureau's payroll for any one day was 32,312,
this on December 30, 1931. The top payroll for any one
month was $1,875,000, this during the same month.
I shall never forget an incident of that first day and
the man who became to me a symbol of the Work Bureau
idea. The waiting line had gone in for interview. I had
remained at the door to send in any late comers. In half
an hour the first man who had gone in came out. As he
swung through the door an onlooker called out, "Did
you get a job?" Without stopping in his stride he waved
his placement card and fairly shouted, "You're damn
right I did. Going to work tomorrow." I shall never for-
get the sound, the triumph, of that man's voice.
The unhappy part of the program came when, through
lack of funds, for no number of millions could meet the
need, we were obliged to give a different answer, a tragic
"No," to weary and disappointed thousands who thronged
to our door.
Our policy was to treat all men alike. "Pull" availed
nothing. Letters from political leaders, ministers or social
workers, and about one man in ten was so armed, were
unread. Every day when the waiting-room was filled one
of us, mounted on a table, told the men that each would
have the same chance, letter or no letter. This announce-
371
372
THE SURVEY
November 1933
ment always brought a roar of approval. It was the Bu-
reau's policy from its first day to its last. It would, of course,
be utterly to our discredit had it been otherwise.
It was decided that the Bureau should, so far as possible,
use its funds for wages and not become known as another
relief-giving agency. A working agreement with the family-
welfare organizations of the city, which had received al-
lotments from the total funds raised by the committee,
provided that they would accept for care, from us, distress
situations that could not be met by work relief.
However we were obliged practically from the first day
to give emergency relief. Interviewers and investigators
constantly found instances where not even carfare was
available to get the man to and from work until his first
pay day. In homes they sometimes found little or no food
for that same week. They were given petty cash funds
which were accounted for and replenished each week to
meet these situations.
AS the months went by we encountered more and more
/X situations where the Bureau's emergency fund be-
came the little extra pull necessary to get a family started
up-hill. What were the kind of hitches given? Loans to
pay interest on mortgages where equities were large enough
to be worth saving, cash to enable families to get out of
living conditions that were unbearable, and to redeem
winter clothing put into pawnshops in May and still there
in January. Coal bins were filled and locks removed from
gas and electric-light meters. Some separated families
were brought together and many others saved from being
separated. These things were not done without knowing
the people. Yet they were done quickly once the ac-
quaintance and facts were established. They were done for
people who knew not and did not want to know the way
to relief organizations, who could safely be given cash
relief and left alone to spend it in their own best judg-
ment, people who had looked after themselves heretofore
and were capable of doing it still. To have compelled such
people to fit into the routine relief procedure that is usually
followed in the case of more or less chronic relief seekers
would have been a grave injustice. At least 65 percent of
those coming to the Bureau after the first few months
were people of this order. It was but proper to meet them
on their own high ground.
With the exception of perhaps a dozen persons the
staff, headed by Raymond M. Houston in charge of the
Men's Division and Ollie M. Randall in the Women's
Division, was recruited from the ranks of the unemployed.
Personnel directors, nurses, teachers, architects, engineers,
accountants, cashiers, bookkeepers, collectors, executives,
writers, became the Bureau's interviewers, investigators,
clerks, bookkeepers, supervisors, timekeepers, paymas-
ters.
Investigators and interviewers were instructed to get
facts in friendly fashion, not to harry people about non-
essentials or far distant relatives, to leave in the minds of
the more reticent and diffident that what the Bureau had
to offer was to them a right and not a favor. That there
was failure in this at times, I know. It could not be other-
wise when interviewers and investigators were rushed into
the work at the rate of fifty a day, with only two or three
days for instruction. Yet from the testimony that has come
from many sources I believe that, with few exceptions the
Bureau staff was controlled by the thought that courtesy
and kindness are often as valuable as money. What the
Bureau lacked in case-work technique was compensated
for in part, I hope, by a technique of human relations.
As time went on and the city, state and federal relief
program developed the Bureau found itself in the happy
position of being able to fill some of the gaps which inev-
itably occur in so large an undertaking. Thus the Bureau,
which for the first two years could not consider assisting
single unattached men, was able to register and place
1500 of them, and in cooperation with the YMCA and
YMHA to feed and lodge on a temporary basis a large
number unfitted for the routines of the mass shelters. So
too, in our second winter, we were able to make assistance
to women a part of our program. This division dealing
largely with single, "white collar" women for whom no
relief organization recognized any responsibility developed
a unique service in which we have all taken a special satis-
faction. For weeks and weeks anywhere from 500 to 700
women came to our door daily. During its three years the
Bureau had on its payroll a total of 25,065 women with
2028 more for whom it was responsible. This accounted for
some $6,661,328 of our fund.
Another satisfying part of our work was the partnership
accorded the Bureau in the programs of the public agen-
cies. For instance during the first five months of the city
work and relief bureaus we supplied their investigation,
clerical and maintenance staffs; for two years we furnished
a considerable part of the operating staff for the Mayor's
Official Relief Committee and for the school-lunch pro-
gram operated by the Board of Education in some twenty-
four schools. It was always our purpose to make the Bureau
helpful to other agencies engaged in work akin to our own.
We were companions in arms.
I must resist the temptation to enlarge here on certain
of the Bureau's activities which though relatively small
were of great satisfaction. There were, for instance, the
projects developed through the universities by which a
wide variety of scientific research, translations, and labo-
ratory experimentation served as work opportunities; there
were the 300 men and 206 women trained and placed as
recreation leaders in local agencies; the night school where
old skills were kept fresh and new ones acquired, and,
finally, the organization of unemployed musicians into
orchestras and a band giving free concerts in various parts
of the city.
THREE-YEARS experience taught us that the corner
stone of a work-relief program is well-planned projects
with work and material ready for the man when he reports
for work. If men idle about through lack of such prepara-
tion to receive them they will come to think of their jobs
as of no great importance. It seems to me that work relief
should not be thought of primarily as a test of the worthi-
ness of the applicant. It should be offered to him as a
straight out answer to his request for work. He will prove
his worthiness by his acceptance of and later his record on
the job.
Another essential is constant and intelligent supervision.
It should be of as high a quality as is given to any regular
work. Without it there will be daily "headache." The
agency receiving the workers may prefer and be able to
supply that supervision. If not, then the agency supplying
the workers must furnish it.
A third essential is timekeeping. Persons should be paid
only for hours worked. Also there should be prompt paying
of wages, preferably on the job. These functions, most
November 1933
THE SURVEY
373
certainly the latter, should be performed by men in the
employ and under the control of the Work Bureau. The
fact that our pay-cars traveled 700,272 miles during three
years gives some idea of the extent of this part of our job.
The wages paid by the Bureau were sometimes called
"carrying-on wages." They seemed more like "staggering
on." Yet they were wages, and in that fact lay their virtue.
I often wondered at the joy men showed when told they
could go to work on the morrow. I had heard the story of
their debts, rent owed, furniture and clothing in pawn,
credit stopped at the grocery store. I wondered how they
could carry on, even with the job assured. Yet so often
the answer was "Just don't you mind that. Give me a job
and I'll pull out of this myself someway."
This magic of a regular pay envelope, although small!
It differs from a dole of grocery tickets and secondhand
clothing, just as surely as the clear stream of water gush-
ing from the rock into the sunlight, differs from the scum-
covered pool that finds no outlet except as it sinks into
the mud beneath.
I would not be misunderstood. I have been engaged in
relief work for many years. The sick; the aged, the men-
tally incompetent do not belong in a work-relief program.
To these should go relief and service in fullest possible
measure. But to the able-bodied person, compelled to seek
relief because of unemployment, work for a wage and not
for a grocery ticket is the best answer.
We are still blundering our way along in relief with many
of our government officials and some of our prominent
social workers praying that we may be saved from the
"shame" of anything like the English dole. Well, we have
the American grocery-ticket dole which is certainly nothing
to brag about. We seem to think it is cheaper. I doubt if it
is cheaper in dollars and cents. I know that in what it
has cost men's souls, in the depressing and humiliating
burden it has laid on the spirits of our millions of unem-
ployed American citizens it is as expensive a device as our
vaunted American ingenuity has ever invented. In my
opinion, shaped by a life time in social work, it is a cloud
darkening the whole scene of American relief administra-
tion. That a man who has always managed his own life
out of his own pay envelope cannot, when that pay enve-
lope is withdrawn, be trusted with a five-dollar bill to
buy the groceries for his family, is a conclusion to which
I cannot and never will subscribe.
Of the nearly $28 million that went through the Emer-
gency Work Bureau, 95.3 percent was expended for wages
and 2.3 percent for direct relief including materials used
for manufacturing garments in our sewing shops. Insur-
ance, workmen's compensation and public liability added
1.2 percent. General expense of administration, of which
the largest item was the transportation of paymasters
and investigators, also came to 1.2 percent.
That is how we disposed of $28 million.
A Health Plan for the Nation
By JOHN A. KINGSBURY
Secretary Milbank Memorial Fund
"F, as President Roosevelt has said, "the state's para-
mount concern should be the health of its people,"
then, in our magnificent planning for an improved
social and economic order, we have neglected something
essential in the very basis of our future security — a well-
considered plan of health conservation on a nation-wide
scale. This failure should be faced honestly by leaders in
medicine and public health. The President and the Con-
gress should have placed before them a real plan of public
health, large in vision, comprehensive in scope, effective as
scientific knowledge and administrative experience can
make it, and worth a considerable expenditure of money. It
should include not merely the control of communicable
diseases but the full use of all facilities for prevention of
physical and mental impairments, medical and dental care,
and social relief.
These services- — preventive and curative — should be
made available to all classes of the population in all com-
munities, not merely to the rich and the indigent nor only in
some localities or some areas. By whatever means that are
most effective and acceptable, the services of private phy-
sicians and medical institutions should be coordinated with
those of public health and welfare agencies. The costs of
medical care should be defrayed from public funds when-
ever adequate service cannot be furnished by private facili-
ties and paid for by those who need it; and some method of
distributing the cost should be devised for the great mass of
the population. All who render medical and related services
should be adequately compensated. Effective integration
of local, state and federal health functions is necessary.
Federal aid to states on a considerable scale should be ac-
cepted as essential. The program must be national in scope.
Three steps suggest themselves for immediate action :
1. The integration and coordination of all federal health
activities under a single head in one department, to be
accomplished at once under the President's direction with
such advisers as he may choose.
2. The formulation, by the federal head of public-health
activities, with the counsel of leaders in medicine, public
health, and social welfare, of a national plan of public
health and medical care, for consideration by the President
and the Congress. Such a program should provide for:
(a) coordination of federal, state and local functions and
activities; (b) training of necessary administrative and
scientific personnel; (c) setting up standards of efficient ad-
ministration and evaluation of results; and (d) efficient use
of federal, state and local funds according to needs as deter-
mined by health, not political, conditions.
3. Federal appropriations to supplement state and local
funds for community health, for medical care of those un-
able to pay for it, for construction of necessary medical and
health facilities where needed, and for education of per-
sonnel.
No further great advance in the conservation of health
can be accomplished unless and until the concept of public
health is broad enough to include not merely a limited
number of protective measures such as the control of com-
municable diseases, but all preventive and curative medi-
cine and education in hygiene, as well as efforts to increase
the economic security of the people. No real success in
translating this concept into action for the country as a
whole is likely unless a national health plan is formulated.
The AF of L and the New Deal
BY JOHN A. FITCH
New Tork School of Social Work
IT was in Washington, in the Willard Hotel which calls
itself the "residence of Presidents," that the American
Federation of Labor met in October for its fifty-third
annual convention. Here, besides transacting much busi-
ness of importance, the convention listened to speeches by
distinguished civilians, NRA representatives, U. S. sena-
tors, and cabinet members. Once it left the hotel to find a
convention hall large enough to provide a fit setting for an
address by General Hugh S. Johnson, administrator of the
NRA and once the delegates assembled in a park where the
President of the United States addressed them as they
dedicated a monument to their departed leader, Samuel
Gompers.
There seemed to be some justification for this close
association with the seats of the mighty for the Federation
expects from now on to be a more powerful force than it
ever has been before. Membership is rising at an unprec-
edented rate. President William Green announced on the
eve of the convention that new members to the number of
nearly a million and a half had come into the unions since
the Federation books were closed for the fiscal year 1932-33
and that total membership is now close to four million, a
figure reached only once before in the Federation's history
— at the close of the post-war boom when the membership
count was 79,000 over the four million mark.
This amazing growth is due, of course, to the protection
thrown around organizing activity by the NRA. It creates
a situation full of unanswered questions. Is dependence
upon the NRA a continuing necessity? If so, how long will
the NRA last ? Will membership decline again if and when
its supporting arm is removed? Does the new membership
represent a hothouse growth anyway, bound to decline
shortly, just as membership fell away after the peak year
of 1920? Most important of all, assuming a permanent
increase in membership and strength, what will the
Federation do with it ?
For all these questions, answers are lacking. It may be,
however, that some inklings of an answer to the last
question can be found in the proceedings of the October
convention. What do those proceedings indicate as to
outlook and purpose ? An examination of the record reveals
no significant change in policy or method. The convention
re-elected its officers; it maintained its structure intact,
rejecting proposals to enlarge the executive council. It
proclaimed its continuing adherence to craft unionism
by ordering the Brewery Workers Union — traditionally
industrial in form — to give up its truckmen, engineers and
firemen to their respective craft unions. And although it
ended a controversy twenty years old by granting a charter
to the Amalgamated Clothing Workers, it exacted from
them a similar price, and the Amalgamated comes in as a
needle-trades organization practically undefiled by extra-
craft appendages.
On the surface then, the AF of L maintains the status
quo. It faces the great unknown with the same leadership,
the same philosophy, the same slogans as before. But
underneath the surface there are evidences of change.
The most important thing before the convention was the
NRA and its implications as to the New Deal, and there
was every indication that the leaders knew it. Between a
third and half of the report of the executive council was
devoted to this subject. Significant are some of the state-
ments in the report:
Industrial life is shifting from the practice of individualism
under which it has developed thus far, to group control in the
interest of all concerned.
Industry is a living thing and cannot have two year's experience
under any system without being definitely changed in its habits
and procedures. The National Recovery Act marks a new indus-
trial era in which we must deal with the problems of individual
and social progress under controlling agencies.
This convention, meeting at a crucial period in the history of
this country has the opportunity and the responsibility for shap-
ing policies of momentous importance.
Here is evidence of capacity to adapt to changed condi-
tions. The whole convention showed a willing spirit,
approaching eagerness, with respect to cooperation under
the NRA. To be sure there were criticisms: hours specified
in the codes are too long, minimum wages are too low; labor
is not adequately represented in code-making and demands
better representation. There were occasional belligerent
outbursts on the floor against specific action or lack of
action and once William Green, referring to the claim by
a group of employers that the closed shop is illegal under
the NRA spoke with an earnestness that was almost
defiant: "That right has been conceded and recognized by
the courts in all their decisions. We will not surrender that
right, we will contend vigorously for the recognition of that
right, and we will never yield in the acceptance of any
interpretation that denies us that right."
BUT resolutions criticizing NRA policy and action were
overwhelmingly voted down and the convention by a
similar vote adopted a report on the NRA offered by the
committee on resolutions which declared:
... it is the avowed intention of the American trade-union
movement as a whole to give unstinted support to the President
of the United States in his great effort to lead the American
people out of the pit of industrial depression into which they
have fallen up to the sunlit heights of a renewed national pros-
perity. The President may rest assured of the whole-hearted
support of the American Federation of Labor in his great un-
dertaking.
The present attitude toward, the NRA indicates a
turning away from old theories. Samuel Gompers would
have viewed the whole project with grave suspicion. He
was a realist and probably he would have conformed,
however reluctantly. But who can doubt what his reaction
would have been to the speech of General Hugh S. Johnson
at a regular session of the convention? The General told
the convention that strikes are wholly unnecessary under
the NRA and he intimated that they are illegal.
As to the relation of both employers' organizations and
trade unions to the Government, he said significantly:
374
1933
T HE S U R V E Y
375
A fully organized and unchecked industry could exploit and
• dominate a whole nation. A fully organized and unchecked labor
could do exactly the same. There must be responsibility in each
such organization. There must be a check on these great powers.
Our government is government of the whole people. Its principal
excuse for existence is protection of the whole people. These vast
organizations of industry and labor must each be responsible to
government and each must admit governmental participation
and control. No industrial combination must be permitted to
practice monopolistic oppression and exploitation. No labor
combination must be permitted to paralyze a whole industry by
the unchecked use of power. . . . The blue-print plan is thus
simple enough to state. Organized industry and organized labor
both responsible and both headed into governmental participation
and absolute veto power — thus to permit the widest possible
latitude of self-government, self-discipline, and complete coopera-
tion but to check instantly any abuse of power at its very in-
ception.
There could hardly be a statement of policy so completely
opposite to the views of Samuel Gompers, and equally
opposite to the traditional theory of the American Federa-
tion of Labor. But the convention took it in its stride.
President Green thanked General Johnson for his "inspir-
ing and instructive address." Two days later when the
resolutions committed reported "unstinted support" of
the NRA program, a delegate with some reputation for
insurgency arose and denounced these passages in General
Johnson's speech. Then the report of the committee was
unanimously adopted. And the convention adjourned
without a word of official action to indicate that it has not
changed its position on compulsory arbitration.
There were sub-surface indications at the convention
that many of the leaders are convinced that the future
progress of organized labor is tightly bound up with the
present trend toward governmental control of industry.
Some of them are so convinced of this that they would
not oppose a very large measure of governmental 'control
of unions, if thereby the success of the NRA were assured.
It may be that it is a temporary attitude, but that some
of the leaders at present are in no mood to resist the
entrance of the government into the unions, is apparent.
Another example of what the leaders of the Gompers
school would have called a "turning away from trade
unionism" is the new attitude toward legislative control of
hours of labor. The officially recorded attitude of the AF
of L on this subject, established by vote of the convention,
is one of opposition to the fixing of maximum working
hours by legal enactment. Nevertheless, the Federation
was active last winter in support of the Black jo-hour-week
bill, and in the recent convention, a resolution was introduced
asking for a jo-hour week by federal law — not through a
regulation of interstate commerce but as a direct, com-
pulsory measure. The committee handling this matter
reported that it was "completely in accord with the
principles" of the resolution but suggested that better
results may be obtained under the codes. If that recourse
should fail, the committee "strongly recommends that the
resolution shall then be complied with to the fullest extent
that is possible." This report was adopted unanimously.
Industrial unionism showed its head at this convention
as it was inevitable it should. The Federation has been
organizing workers in the basic industries into so-called
federal unions directly affiliated with the American Federa-
tion of Labor. These local unions are industrial in form,
taking in many different crafts and thus they cut across
the horizontal lines of the craft unions. Some of the big
international unions have been up in arms about it. The
Metal Trades Department in a convention held just before
that of the Federation denounced the practice and ordered
its delegates in the Federation convention to introduce a
resolution condemning it. Other resolutions favorable to
industrial unionism were introduced and the matter came
up also in connection with the dispute over the jurisdic-
tional rights of the brewery-workers union.
Curiously enough, despite all the opportunities for it,
there was very little discussion of this increasingly impor-
tant question. In the long debate over the right of the
brewery workers to organize truckmen, firemen and engi-
neers in breweries, the discussion did not get far beyond a
squabble over per capita tax. There were the makings of a
real debate when, in reporting on several resolutions deal-
ing with industrial unionism, the resolutions committee was
divided and majority and minority reports were presented.
Before there could be discussion, however, the convention
voted to refer the whole matter to the executive council
with the request that a conference of the "interested inter-
national unions" be called at the earliest possible moment
to consider the question involved.
IT would be easy to infer from this bare record of what
occurred, that the Federation has moved very little, if at
all, from its craft-union point of view. A closer examination
of all the facts leads to the discovery that the leaders are
aware that something must be done to meet the situation
in the mass production industries. They are not certain
just what should be done; they are very jealous of their
jurisdictional rights, and the result is some confusion and
apparent inconsistency. The metal-trades department, for
example, which introduced the strongest resolution against
the organization of industrial locals under direct Federa-
tion auspices has been on record for several years as favor-
ing that type of organization in the automobile industry-
waiving their jurisdictional claims. The majority report of
the resolutions committee in the recent convention, while
opposing any really significant change, recognized that
"recent developments in our industrial and political life
[the NIRA] with the great development of mass-production
plants have presented new problems that must be recog-
nized and dealt with." It is unlikely that the conference of
international unions to be called by the executive council
will do no more than ratify the policies of the eighties.
The bringing in of the Amalgamated Clothing Workers
after twenty years of exile must be put down on the credit
side of the account. It ends an unnecessary and deplorable
rift and adds to the counsels of the Federation some of
the wisest leaders and ablest strategists in the labor move-
ment. At the opposite end of the scale was the action
regarding racketeering in unions — a subject that the con-
vention treated with platitudes, the delegates relieving
their indignation over this matter by expunging from the
record a badly worded, somewhat intemperate but basically
truthful statement on the subject, offered in the form of
a resolution.
It was a curious and unusual convention in many ways.
The record is not all that could have been desired in the
present crisis. There was much indecision when positive
action might have been expected; lip service was rendered
to outworn ideas and slogans. On the other hand, there
were tentative gropings toward constructive statesmanship.
It is upon this last that the immediate future of organized
labor depends.
Children Must Live Their Own Lives
By GERTRUDE SPRINGER
UST the way the tele-
phone rang warned
Miss Bailey of bad
news. And yet, could such a
joyous '"Scuse me, Miss !" be a
forerunner? "It's Miz Muller,
an' I spend a whole nickel to
tell you the news. My big boy
Adolf gave us big surprise. A
wife! Ja, ja, a wife. A lofely
girl. She ain't got no job poor
thing, an" you know about my
Adolf, such bad luck, poor
boy. But, my Got how they
lof each other. An' now," in-
terlude of giggling, "maybe
some day I get to be gross-
mama."
By the time Miss Bailey had
noncommittally wished every-
body good luck she had found
the Muller's card. Husband deserted . . . five children
headed by Adolf aged twenty . . . relief off" and on for
three years,— mostly on, occasionally off when Adolf
picked up garage jobs, or Mrs. Muller got a little cleaning
work. No security, no anything. And now, a bride — and
everybody happy. What a world!
Before she could write herself a reminder to speak to the
Muller's home visitor in burst that young woman herself,
fire in her eye. " Wa-ait a minute," Miss Bailey stopped her.
"If it's about Adolf Muller I know it already and I think
it's just as unreasonable as you do."
"Well, I'm going over there this minute, and what I'm
going to tell that Adolf! I don't care if he has been a good
son. This is just too much. And if they think they're going
to get their grocery order increased for this hussy they've
another guess coming."
"Is she a hussy? Do you know her?" put in Miss Bailey
mildly.
"Never laid eyes on her. But it stands to reason, doesn't
it?"
"I don't know. So few things stand to reason these days.
Maybe she's just a girl who has grown up in the depression,
like Adolf. I remember what Jane Addams said, 'Young
people who have grown to thinking years since 1929 be-
lieve that things will go on as they are and they are hope-
less and bewildered.' I don't believe we can blame them
very much if they begin to snatch at life. Do you?"
"But Miss Bailey, would you really increase the grocery
order?"
"I don't know. I might. I'd find out more about it first.
Perhaps the girl's family is on relief in another district,
and one order can be reduced as the other is increased.
But let's get the facts first, and let's remember that while
the Muller's economic life has been out of joint their emo-
tional life has gone along naturally. Adolf has been brought
up to expect to marry at twenty or twenty-one. He's all
What shall the home visitor do about:
The unemployed son of the bouse who brings
home an unemployed bride?
The girl who holds out her slender earnings from
the family budget and takes title to a cheap fur coat
the day the family is dispossessed?
The able-bodied youth who refused to go to a
reforestation camp and who has since kept himself
in cigarettes by bartering the tidbits of the family
grocery order?
The mother who persistently and successfully
connives to swap essentials of the food order for
cream to satisfy the "weak stummick" of her 200-
pound son?
The mother who supports her stalwart eldest in
his refusal to take a job that requires him to get up
at six o'clock in the morning?
ready for it. His mother is all
set for a grandchild. It's rather
nice isn't it, that in such a
situation as this they can all
be so happy. There's some-
thing so normal about it, even
if it isn't sensible. Life just
does go on."
The younger woman turned
to go, but Miss Bailey had not
finished.
"I remember a young cou-
ple— it was my first year in
case work — they had been
married a year, no children.
He had no job and the only
way their families would help
was to take them back, but
separately. I used the power
I had to make them go — and
I was terribly wrong. Let's
not use our power now to spoil what may be the salvation
of Adolf, — just the incentive he needs — though I shouldn't
have prescribed it. And even if the girl is just a tiny bit
hussy, that's not our trouble. We don't have to live
with her."
People with fixed ideas on the duties of children are hav-
ing some rude shocks these days when every once in a
while a girl or boy weighted down by the hopelessness of
the home situation, reaches out and snatches at something
to make life more endurable to him. The wandering young
people of the road are recruited in part from those who
have escaped from family burdens too heavy for them.
More often the rebellion comes in the form of personal
indulgences which spell disillusion and irritation to those
who are always sure of "what I would do in his place."
""VTOUNG people are more and more restless as the de-
-l pression drags on," says the supervisor of a big city
district who for three years has watched the gradual emo-
tional ferment that relief as a way of life engenders. "The
sense of duty of girls and boys whose slender earnings are
swallowed up by their families' necessities is beginning to
wear down. 'What am I getting out of it?' they ask. 'Three
meals a day, if you want to call them that, and a dispossess
at the end of the month. I'm willing to work, and I'm sorry
for Pop and Mom, but gosh, is it going to be like this all
my life?'
"We are finding that we cannot put too much pressure
on young people to pool all their earnings in the family
budget. They just won't stand it. They either rebel or
else lose the incentive to work and quit. We had one girl
whose nine dollars a week was for three years the only
income of a family of five. We helped a little. Then a wid-
owed sister and her baby came along and we put in a small
regular grocery order. But the girl quit. We talked to her
as sympathetically as we knew how but she was completely
376
November 1933
THE SURVEY
377
beaten. All she would say was, "Oh, what's the use anyway ?"
"Then we had another girl whose earnings were supposed
to pay the rent, and everything but the food for a family
of six. We weren't just satisfied with the way things were
going — but you know how it is these days, the workers
have so many families to visit. Then, one cold day, word
came that the family was dispossessed. The worker came
back fairly boiling over. The girl, the one earner in the
family, had strolled in on the proceedings all done up in a
new fur coat.
"I had the girl in here that night, fur coat and all, to
talk it over. She was pretty sulky at first, but when she
found that we weren't disposed to eat her alive she finally
talked. It seems that her boy friend had invited her to a
football game. He was a very grand boy friend and she
was none too sure of him. The family had been dispossessed
before — that didn't represent very much to her. But the
boy friend, and the coat apparently would make her status
with him secure, was her only hope of escape from what
seemed to her a life sentence. Her story and her surprise
at our willingness to listen and not scold, showed us what
poor case work we had been doing. We had taken no ac-
count whatever of that girl as a human being. The upshot
of it was that we worked out with her a new budget for the
family which left her with responsibility but not an un-
endurable burden. The fur coat? Of course she kept it.
The payments were part of the budget. And what's more,
she got her man.
"We have a diamond-ring in one of our families, such a
little bit of a diamond, but it has a whole tenement-house
by the ears. It belongs to a young widow forced to return
to her family, none of them 'in work.' If that little ring has
been reported to us once it's been reported a dozen times.
It's gotten to be as big as the Kohinoor. The girl is bound to
keep it and the neighbors are bound she shall sell it. For-
tunately we have a worker on the case who realizes that the
ring, which the family would eat up in a week, is to the girl
the symbol of her whole emotional life, of the married
status and of an independence which she once had and may
have again. She still has her diamond, thank goodness, but
a tigress defending its young has nothing on her."
But the divine right of youth to some degree of self-ex-
pression becomes sullied sometimes by what bears the
marks of just plain selfishness. Doting mothers, as every
one knows, can ruin children whatever their walk in life,
T TOW relief workers relatively untrained
J~ J. and burdened with excessive case loads,
deal with new situations which mass relief
has brought, how supervisors guide them to just
and discriminating decisions, is the subject of
this series of articles drawn from the day-by-
day experience of workers close to the job. The
predicaments are all bona fide. For the dis-
cussion The Survey is indebted to experienced
supervisors all over the country. The eight
preceding articles are now available in a
pamphlet, Miss Bailey Says . . . (see inside
front cover). Other articles will follow. Next
month: When Hidden Resources Turn Up.
and when dotingness is mixed with relief the home visitor,
be she ever so objective, is apt to get into family situations
that strain her patience.
"Mother love is fearful and wonderful," said the super-
visor of a city district with a large foreign-speaking ele-
ment, "and it came out in its full glory when the boys were
recruited for the reforestation camps. We didn't blame the
boys who refused to go — it was the mothers who wouldn't
reason an inch, just wailed, 'My Abie can't stand wet feet,"
or, 'My Carlo don't want to leave his mama, do you Car-
lino ?' One of our workers came in the other day ready to
commit mayhem or something because she had discovered
that some Abie who couldn't leave his mama was keeping
himself in cigarettes by trading oflF the jam and oranges
from the food order, and that some mama had been for
weeks conniving with the grocer to swap parts of the food
order for cream for the 'weak stummick' of her 2co-pound
Carlo. Well there just wasn't anything we could do about
it. In our hurried contacts we can't make over the mamas
and the Abies and the Carlos of this world. Maybe Carlo
does have a 'weak stummick' — we haven't time to find out.
And probably Abie's cigarettes bring a peace to the house-
hold that is worth the tidbits they cost. Anyway the fami-
lies have to work these things out for themselves. We can't
do it for them."
SELFISH sons and doting manias would be a compar-
atively simple problem of relief discipline were it not
for others in the family.
"We have to consider the whole family and its needs, not
just one spoiled member," said a supervisor in a mid-
western city, "and we must remember the constant factor
of family loyalties. If a family thinks we're picking on one
of them, no matter how much they pick themselves, they
stand as a block against our every effort. I remember when .
we landed a job for Mrs. Arden's oldest, Wullie she called
him. It wasn't such a wonderful job, he had to get up at six
in the morning for it, but a lot better than nothing. And
would Wullie take it? He would not, nor would his mother
turn a hand to make him. Said Wullie always had a head-
ache if he got up before eight. We felt there was more back
of it than that, but the whole family turned on us and we
could never get an explanation. Of course if it had been just
Wullie and his mother we would have let them figure out a
way of living without us. But there was a half-blind father
and four younger children, and we couldn't punish them by
cutting off the food order, could we? Even to reduce it by
Wullie's share would have hurt them more than it hurt
Wullie. But some day a nine-to-five job will come along and
then we'll have something to say to Mr. Wullie. But I
wonder if there'll be anything we can really do about it
even then."
Social workers to whom mass relief has brought abun-
dant evidence of the infinite variability of human nature are
agreed that if there is one thing this old world needs more
than economic security it is grown-up emotions. The long
ordeals of unemployment and relief have revealed a world
of family solidarity and devotion but they have shown up
too many sins of undiscipline and unreason. "What we need
to do as soon as we get the depression attended to," say the
social workers, "is to train up a whole new generation of
parents who will neither exploit nor pamper their young.
But just now there is very little we can do about parent-
child relationships except to be as understanding as God
gives us to be and to let them alone."
The Reform of the Social Order
FROM behind the rare perfection of organization and
the ceremonies of great dignity and beauty which at-
tended the meeting of the National Conference of Catholic
Charities in New York, October 1-4, went out an impetus
to social action of such strength and virility as to leave no
doubt of the influence it will exert on large areas of Ameri-
can social thinking. All through the meeting, in every
session where the clergy, the religious, the laymen and the
professional social workers joined minds, there was evident
a forthright facing of the fundamentals of social justice, a
will to put first things first. To social workers its general
immediate significance lay in the evidence, abundantly
manifest to this observer, that the Catholic Church in the
United States is now prepared to yield its hesitations and to
practice, in the far-flung expression of its ancient philosophy
of Christian charity, the methodology of modern social
work.
It was incontestably a great meeting. In its registration,
numbering 4360, were counted most of the archbishops and
bishops who, with the four cardinals, constitute the Ameri-
can hierarchy, the -religious of many orders, laymen of
great position and influence in American life and the flower
of the growing body of Catholic clerical and professional
social workers. A solemn pontifical mass in St. Patrick's
Cathedral, a ceremony unsurpassed for brilliance in the
history of that edifice, in which six thousand persons
participated, opened the Conference. A dinner for thirty-
five hundred, where the President of the United States, a
Prince of the Catholic Church and scores of dignitaries of
church and state bowed together for the Papal benediction,
' closed it.
Between these two extremes of spiritual and mundane
pomp and pageantry lay three days of close and earnest
discussion of the immediate problems of social work and
the impact of changing conditions on its practice by Cath-
olic institutions. The limitations of this brief review pre-
clude quotations and summaries of papers and addresses
which would indicate the progressive and realistic flavor of
these discussions. A handful of titles must tell the story:
Mental Health Considerations in a Child Placement
Program; Getting Medical Information in Terms Meaning-
ful to the Social Worker; Distinctive Qualifications De-
manded for Child Care; Offsetting the Lure of the Road
for Unemployed Boys and Girls; The Real Use of Com-
munity Social Resources in Hospital Organization; Com-
munity Resources and Case Work Programs; Present
Economic Objectives of the Nursing Profession; Effects of
Depression on the Mental Health of the Family; National
Trends in Relief — and so on.
In these programs, as in those of the general sessions, the
participants were not limited to those of Catholic faith.
The program was built on the nature of the contribution
which the individual was qualified to make — be he Catho-
lic, Protestant or Jew. The underlying philosophy would
take care of itself, but for methodology the program-
makers reached out for the best wherever they could
find it.
An intensive all-day session of some one hundred diocesan
directors of Catholic charities was held in advance of the
formal opening of the Conference. Their deliberations,
close in to realities, centered around the administration of
Catholic agencies in the present situation of social work
and the stimulation of group thinking in the furtherance of
social legislation. From that session emanated many strong
currents that showed themselves in the general discussions
of the Conference. From it came a formal statement of
great significance, a charter of Catholic action if you like,
which, it may be presumed, has all the force of governing
policies. "Catholic Charities," it says, "cannot be satisfied
merely with the alleviation of human suffering and want,"
but must "assume leadership in working for a new indus-
trial order in which the rights of the wage-earner will be
more fully protected."
Resting on the premise that "all persons who are capable
of doing reasonably satisfactory work have a right to a
living wage ... to decent housing ... to protection
against the hazards of unemployment, accidents, sickness
and old age . . ." Catholic Charities pledges itself:
to join with other agencies, local, state and national, in pressing
upon government its responsibility to the victims of the unem-
ployment that has deprived individuals and families of the means
of livelihood. Government has a fundamental duty to prevent
human suffering. We must emphasize this responsibility not only
during the depression but also in periods of prosperity. . . .
We insist that government not only assume its responsibilities
toward those in distress but that it discharge them according to
the best modern standards. We need trained executives and
trained workers in public welfare as much as in any other form of
public work. . . .
Coincident with the meeting of the Conference, its
nineteenth by the way, occurred the celebration of the
centenary of the Society of St. Vincent de Paul, the works
of which have for a hundred years constituted the chari-
table expression of the Catholic layman. Various sessions,
all largely attended, were devoted to the concerns of the
Society with tributes to its founder, Frederic Ozanan,
reviews of its past and visionings of its future services.
THE organization of the Conference was so smooth and
subtle as to leave no awareness of organization, which,
this commentator submits, is the highest test of organization.
The schedule of meetings was simplified and the program
sharply focused. Meetings did not step on each other. The
divisional programs were fewer and better. The drive and
pressure which often takes the heart out of the stoutest
conference-goer was notably absent. Moreover the Confer-
ence delivered its program exactly as promised, — there
were no last minute failures of prominent speakers "un-
avoidably detained" elsewhere. Even the President of the
United States kept the promise made long before his in-
auguration. Besides that, it was a planned program that
stayed planned. Speakers assigned a subject within a topic
stuck to their assigned ground so that each discussion was
comprehensive without being repetitious. The organization
of the press service, quite apart from the news value of big
names and the implications of the influence of the Catholic
Church, was a golden example of how it can be done.
Behind the glamorous array of dignitaries and the
suavities of organization, yielding precedence always to
those of higher rank in the Church, moved constantly the
modest figure of Monsignor Robert F. Keegan, president
.378
November 1933
THE SURVEY
379
of the Conference and secretary for charities to Cardinal
Hayes. To his competence, rooted in spiritual conviction
and tested by long practical experience, the Conference
owed its quality. He will tell you that it could not have
happened without the Cardinal — and perhaps it couldn't —
and that behind it all lay the philosophy and the incentive
of the Papal encyclical, Ouadragesimo Anno, from which
the Conference took its text:
In order that what has been well begun may be rendered stable,
that what has not yet been accomplished may now be achieved,
and that still richer and brighter blessings may descend upon
mankind, two things are necessary: the reform of the social order
and the correction of morals.
In view of the interpretation of this pronouncement at
the New York meeting, in view of the urge that went from
that meeting to every Catholic diocese in the United States
and thence to every Catholic social agency, a rereading of
that significant and historic document by everyone con-
cerned with the implementation of social work for social
progress would seem to be timely and well advised. G. S.
How the Other Half Lives on Relief
By A HENRY STREET VISITING NURSE
RS. W is a young Jewish mother whose bursts
of generosity and ever-fresh interest are by
way of making life a burden to her. She be-
longs to more societies than she can attend — though still
hopeful of joining new ones. Just now she is busily collect-
ing a first-hand acquaintance with the hospital clinics of
the city; and, since she continues to have swollen feet and
an indefinite discomfort in the abdominal region, is in a
fair way of learning to know them all. So and so tells her
of some hospital which is the best yet, promptly she drops
her last appointment, and rushes to the new place — along
with a new address. Nor will hours upon hours of waiting
discourage her. Always hopeful, she awaits that tomorrow,
which will provide her husband with a steady job, make
fine people of her children, and return to her a once robust
physique. In the meantime, she proposes to hold herself
in readiness for whatever happening may come her way.
And plenty seems to be happening in a house which
belongs to that category of tenements where practically
every family is dependent upon the city for help and some
party is always on the point of moving in or in the process
of being thrown out.
"Sure Miss," the woman repeats heartily, thus permit-
ting herself to be drawn away from the subject of her own
state of health. "My children — may God bless them — I
want that they should grow up right. I ain't got no use for
them smart alecks; though one o' them stage guys come
here and says that I should let my Florie go an" he'd make
a dancer of her. She's got the eyes, he says. But I says no,
because of what you said about her not having no more
excitement when she had that spell, and that I should give
her a chance to grow up first. My father — may he rest in
peace — he said we ain't none of us perfect."
Here a wave of the hand seems to indicate the chair
in which her younger brother appears to be dozing by the
window, and the woman continues.
"He ain't quite right, you know. Sells papers. Married
a half-wit too. I hope they don't have no children! They
come here because" — and the nurse becomes suddenly
uncomfortably aware of a pair of eyes which stare fixedly
at her from the direction of the kitchen. "Yeah, that's her!"
The woman confirms the unvoiced question cheerily then
goes on, "They come here because my stepmother, she
can't stand 'em! They sleep in her house, and come here
in the daytime. What can I do?" She shrugs resignedly,
but almost at once brightens again to inquire rather eagerly:
''Isn't that a nice young lady that's staying with us? You
know, the one you sent to the clinic because she had that
pain in her side. Sure they operated. Took her appendick
out! They said she was lucky the nurse sent her in when
she did. Well, she come home las' night, so I sent for you."
The nurse enters the room indicated, then proceeds
with her routine visit on the patient, an attractive young
woman.
"Am I O. K.?" The girl smiles at the visitor, then at her
hostess. "Mrs. W" — here the patient begins to speak
breathlessly like a child — -"she's been a mother to me! She
makes a nice home for me. God will reward her! First I
had a job, was paying $5 per week, but now I ain't been
working for months. She keeps me just the same. God,"
the girl adds with a conviction which sounds almost akin
to swearing, "God will reward her!"
"Why shouldn't I?" Mrs. W's voice rings surprised,
then challenging, "Can you turn a girl out, times being
what they are? When she makes again, she will give me.
See them nice drapes and cushions? She made them. Has
a nice fellow too!" The older woman looks proud, but the
pale face on the pillow only continues to echo its own
words "... she's been a mother to me. God will reward
her — an' me an orphan ! There was three of us kids left.
My brother-in-law he says, 'y°u come to me an' I'll take
care of you,' and I says, 'if I'm to come, you gotta take
the other kids too.' He says, 'no, I want only you!' So we
had to go to strangers. Mrs. W took me. God will reward
her!"
Back in the outer room, the older woman permits her-
self some anxiety. The Emergency Home Relief is supply-
ing only enough for food these days— the husband is still
running around all day looking for work— the children
are jumpy and undernourished — the one approaching pu-
berty has had another spell. . . . The nurse notes this;
explains that; makes out refer slips; scolds the mother
for changing the clinics so often; suggests country air for
the biggish girl . . .
A neighbor bursts in shouting, "The dummy is beating
her mother again!" The women rush out. One hears faint
cries, vehement grunts and shouts— then quiet. Presently
they return, followed by the enraged deaf-mute who evi-
dently lives next door. This one is still shaking a powerful
fist, and glaring so threateningly that the nurse begins to
retreat involuntarily. "Don't mind her Miss." Mrs. W
tries to speak reassuringly although at the same time in-
dulging in some pretty pugnacious gesturing herself, then
yells, "Get out!" at the intruder. It develops that the
380
THE SURVEY
November 1933
whole house is afraid of "the dummy" — including the
landlord. All excepting Mrs. W. "I'm afraid too," she con-
fides behind-hand, "but we gotta get that old grandma
away from her before she kills her. Can't you do somethin'
nurse?" The nurse promises to call the Jewish Charities.
But now there arises a sound outside as of heavy ob-
jects being propelled down the stairway. This time the
women merely nod at one another knowingly. One jerks
her head towards the door, by way of enlightening the
astonished nurse and says casually, "Them's the Baalams
being thrown out again!"
"But, whatever will they do now?" the one in uniform
enquires earnestly.
"Oh, we ain't worryin* about them," comes the laconic
answer, "he belongs to the L. I. D." The nurse continues
to look blank, so further information is at once forthcom-
ing: "That's 'the League for Industrial Democracy'. The
C. P. will put them things right back again, you'll see."
"The C. P.?"
"Sure," the neighbor is becoming impatient. "Don't
you know? That's 'the Communist Party.' They stand
back of all that's enrolled with the I. L. D."
"The I. L. D.?" The nurse looks more mystified than
ever; so much so in fact, that while the other one con-
tinues her interpretation of the last initials as standing for
"the International Labor Defense," Mrs. W also feels called
upon to explain things. "You see, Miss," she gestures ex-
tenuatingly, "you can't blame poor people for trying to
help themselves."
At this moment the screech of a rapidly approaching
siren floats up through the open window.
"Them's the cops!" both women prepare hastily to dash
down the stairway. The nurse hurries down the stairs too,
but her eyes are anxiously fastened upon her watch now.
Instead of a police wagon, however, an ambulance is
seen arriving right into the midst of the yelling family,
with their evicted tables, chairs, bedding, scattered about
them. Someone grabs the nurse by the elbow, she turns
around to gaze into the old drawn face of a young woman.
"Come down to see my child, Miss! that ambulance is
here to get her. Oh, what shall I do?" They descend the
damp cellar steps. "She's got St. Vitus' Dance."
At last the nurse sees the child safely within the ambu-
lance. Ye gods, the time! She hurries down the street pur-
sued by Mrs. W's carrying voice: "When will you be back,
Miss?"
Eating the Surplus
"OW definitely the Federal Emergency Relief
Administration is geared to the national
recovery program has been emphasized in recent
weeks by its spectacular entrance into the field of direct
commodity distribution.
It started when the Agricultural Adjustment Adminis-
tration found itself with a large supply of pork which it
hesitated to dump into the rendering tanks while millions
of hungry unemployed were getting little or no meat (see
The Survey, October 1933, pp. 354 and 360). When FERA
agreed to the request to distribute this pork as supple-
mental relief a whole new vista of Recovery procedure was
opened. If one food surplus could thus be so neatly disposed
of, why not others? Surpluses hanging over the market
were preventing the much desired rise in farm prices to
which the administration is so ardently committed. In-
flationists from the West and Southwest were demanding
immediate results. The AAA machinery for financing
removal of surpluses through processing taxes and by
direct governmental purchase was standing ready for use.
The old anomaly of "criminal waste in the destruction of
commodities so badly needed by the unemployed" had
been eliminated. Almost as a by-product of the govern-
ment's price-sustaining activities the solution to the
paradox of "starving in the midst of plenty" had been
found.
Once the import of these circumstances had been
grasped, the government plunged with vigor into the task
of applying the principles on a broad front. State adminis-
trations were notified to stand by for developments and
were asked for their potential usage of dairy products,
meat, fruits, vegetables, cereals, cod-liver oil and coal.
Clothing distribution was suggested as another possibility.
The AAA could handle some but not all of these pur-
chases through its financing set-up. Broader instrumental-
ity was needed to buy the others and to work out the many
problems involved, so the Federal Surplus Relief Corpora-
tion was created. Harry L. Hopkins, federal relief adminis-
trator, is its president. FERA funds are being diverted to
its account to purchase those surpluses which the AAA
finds to be without its jurisdiction. By this joint financing,
it is anticipated that from $175 to $200 million will be
made available to the FSRC in the next few months.
If the beneficial effects on farm prices are to be attained,
all FSRC purchases must be for distribution supplemental
to and not in lieu of other local, state and federal relief.
Mr. Hopkins has repeatedly stressed this fundamental
requirement and insists that it be observed. Individual
FERA grants to states will not be reduced because of the
diversion of relief funds to the FSRC, in an amount
estimated at present at $75 million. The only effect of this
diversion will be to exhaust the total federal relief fund at
an earlier date than would otherwise have been the case.
» Until the new plan has been in operation for a while, it
will be impossible to know how greatly the level of relief
adequacy will be lifted through these supplemental grants.
It is conceivable that in some commodity classifications
the supplemental relief may be sufficient to force a modifi-
cation of the local relief orders, if individual surpluses are
not to be piled up on housewives' shelves. Such modifica-
tion would, it is believed, be in the direction of greater
use of cash in local relief.
Another question arises over the possible encouragement
which the new plan will give to the establishment of
commissaries. The FERA is recommending that localities
do not rush into commissaries, but instead make every
effort to prevail upon local retailers to serve as channels
for this supplemental distribution. To pave the way for
this, an agreement was reached in October with the
national association of grocers pledging cooperation on a
nonprofit basis. Beef, butter, apples and wheat were the
first commodities purchased under the new plan. — R. H. K.
THE COMMON WELFARE
The Price of Health
fallacy of averages cloaks the meaning of the fact
A when the American Public Health Association an-
nounces, as the result of a survey of representative states
and cities, that public-health appropriations in 193.3 have
dropped 17 percent from expenditures of 1931. In the first
place expenditures, by and large, of 1931 or 1929 or any
other year never have been sufficient to put into economic
effect our ability to save life and prevent disease by public-
health measures. In the second, some 1933 appropriations
exist only on paper, because the money isn't there to
translate them first to cash and then to work. In the third
place the average covers up the adversity of a state like
North Dakota, which has reduced its state health appro-
priation by 77 percent, or a city like Canton, Ohio, where
the cut was 47 percent. In general the states and cities
which have made the larger cuts have been those least able
to pare budgets already highly inadequate. Those with
previously good organizations seem to have learned the
value of public-health work and been able and willing to
hold on to the greater part of what they had.
Reporting these facts at the recent annual meeting of the
Association, the Committee on Stabilization of Health
Department Budgets urged that the first step, be an
effort to get back from the present average of about 70
cents per capita per year for public-health work to the $i
we used to have in 1930, and that thereafter every en-
couragement be given to the $2 standard set by the Asso-
ciation as the mark of capacity for efficient work. It is
urged in the meantime that the federal government be
asked to aid crippled state and local health services through
relief or other special appropriations so that health de-
partments can be kept in good working order. Finally the
ommittee urged that the Association work in every way
with other national organizations to maintain the health
work of the private agencies at their previous levels.
Reductions of public-health appropriations has thrown
enormous burdens on visiting-nurse associations, private-
health centers, clinics and the like. Through community
chests and other means, "these organizations merit public
support as they never have before."
Bread and Milk for the Children
SPEAKERS at the Child Health Recovery Conference
(see The Survey, October, p. 349) differed as to meth-
ods of spotting malnourished children and as to the mean-
ing to be read into reports of increased malnutrition, but
they were at one in the view voiced by Dr. Haven Emerson:
"We have an immediate and serious job — to see that bread,
milk and other good foods get to the children that have not
enough of them now." What was true of pre-depression
days is even more bitterly true in homes, groups and whole
communities where the blow has been heavy. At that con-
ference Dr. Samuel McC. Hamill spoke of the impression
among workers in Pennsylvania's child-health program
that children whose families are receiving relief may be
actually better off in nutrition than those whose families
are just on the borderline. Perhaps evidence to this effect
may be gathered from the prel-minary findings just re-
ported by the United States Public Health Service and the
Milbank Memorial Fund. Surveying nearly 4500 families
in Birmingham, Detroit, Pittsburgh, Syracuse and Green-
ville, S. C., this study found that the rate of disabling ill-
ness during the spring quarter of 1933 was 46 percent higher
among the families of the unemployed than among those
with full-time workers; it was 28 percent higher among
the families whose workers had part-time jobs than among
the full-time group. The highest sickness rate was found
among families who had been in reasonably comfortable
circumstances in 1929 but had fallen into poverty by 1932:
their rate was 55 percent higher than that of their more
fortunate neighbors who had been on a par with them eco-
nomically in the good days and had managed to escape
subsequent poverty. Those who were poor in 1929 had a
lower rate of illness than those who had been sliding down
the economic ladder. The findings were similar for the
families surveyed in each of these five industrial cities.
Facts such as these underscore the aim which the Chil-
dren's Bureau urges for concerted and immediate action —
that in one way and another food be gotten through to
families in sufficient measure to safeguard at least the
children.
To Chest or Not to Chest
NEITHER fish, flesh nor good red herring is the money-
raising situation in those three giants of noncommu-
nity-chest cities, Boston, Chicago and New York. Steadily
inhospitable to the plan of a community chest, they have
been jockeyed by circumstance into positions where they
have neither the game nor the name but a money-raising
hybrid with many of the worst features of both chest and
individual-agency solicitation.
Boston found it necessary last year to organize an emer-
gency campaign for $5 million to shore-up the sagging
budgets of 1 13 private agencies which later resumed solici-
tation among their own contributors with their "takings"
counted against their campaign quotas. Although only
$2,830, 1 43 was raised, the same citizens' committee is now
inviting the agencies to join another "emergency" cam-
paign in January.
Chicago was led up to a general joint campaign by its
early unemployment-relief campaigns before public funds
came on the scene. This year its citizens' organization,
calling itself the Community Fund for Allied Chicago
Charities, will attempt to raise $4 million for ninety-nine
agencies with total budgetary requirements of $i 1,420,000.
Meantime the agencies must maintain their earnings at
$4,590,000, their income from endowment at $840,000 and
must raise $1,990,000 from their regular contributors.
In New York eleven family-welfare societies and the
Salvation Army have joined in an effort to fill the aching
void left by the defunct Gibson Committee, which last
year allocated $4 million to their unemployment overload.
At the same time the Child Welfare League of America and
six local child-placing agencies are engaged in what they
call the Children's Crusade for $400,000, the Jewish Feder-
ation is out for $4,200,000 for its ninety-one constituent
381
382
THE SURVEY
November 1933
agencies, and the New York YWCA for £220,000 for its
ten and the Brooklyn YWCA for $90,000 for its seven
branches. Thus New York is being asked, these early
November days, for $8,910,000, with the United Hospital
Fund, the Red Cross roll-call and the Christmas-seal sale
making preliminary gestures and all the other precincts
yet to be heard from.
The action of the family societies and the children's
agencies looks like a step, perhaps unintentional, toward
the functional chest which some people offer as the answer
to New York's confusion and competition in money-raising.
But unrelated as it seems to be to the whole social program
it may bring more and not less confusion to the public and
a serious dilemma if not a crisis to agencies not aboard any
bandwagon. What, for instance, will happen to the fi-
nances of such vital community services as visiting nurses,
settlements and boys' clubs? Of course they can form little
chests of their own. No one will stop them. But if all this
barges along without unified and purposeful planning,
what price competition then?
No one holds that the community-chest plan is perfect
for the largest cities or discounts the difficulties of organi-
zation and operation in, for instance, New York where the
seven hundred agencies affiliated with the Welfare Council
represent little more than half of the number that appeal
to the public for funds. But where is the trial-and-error
method leading and what will these cities do when they
can no longer call it an emergency? Will they go back to
individual-agency solicitation and devil take the hindmost,
or will they come out with some sort of central collection
agency pulled together without benefit of the accumulated
years of community-chest experience ?
Public Housing at Last?
" TCKES Corporation to Rebuild Slums. Starting with
A large sum, probably $200 million, it plans wide pro-
gram. Will rent or sell homes. Proposes in next few months
to promote understanding of housing in twenty cities."
These recent headlines in a New York daily tell their own
exciting story. Up to date comparatively few cities as such
have made any move, perhaps because of lack of legal
power, to take advantage of federal financial aid possible
under the Recovery Act to clear slum areas or promote
low-cost housing projects. So the mountain is coming to
Mohammed.
To which end the Public Works Emergency Housing
Corporation has been incorporated, following upon the
experience of the last three months, which according to
Secretary Ickes, "indicates clearly that we may not depend
upon private enterprise or limited-dividend corporations to
initiate comprehensive low-cost housing and slum-clearance
projects."
The new corporation will function as a subsidiary of the
PWA "constructing, reconstructing, altering and repairing
of low-cost housing projects or slum-clearance projects,
apartment houses, homes and structures of every nature
and kind." It may even equip, furnish, operate, manage
and maintain houses and buildings of any nature. The plan
is to produce admirable but extremely simple housing at
rentals never before attained — planned purposely so as
not to compete with existing housing of good character.
Let not those who fear that the federal government is
going too far worry that the powers-that-be are anxious to
impose their power on smaller governmental units. Quite
the contrary. At a recent meeting in New York City,
Robert D. Kohn urged that in every municipality where
such a group does not already exist a movement to better
housing be launched by a body of citizens who realize that
action must eventually be guided by a state, county or
municipal authority, urging further that proper legislative
action be taken for the establishment of such authorities.
Created as a result of Mr. Kohn's inspiration such a civic
body is in the process of formation in New York. It is to be
hoped that it will make a real beginning in slum clearance
with the cooperation of the PWA, that by the time the leg-
islature meets in January not only will public opinion have
been so aroused that the public-housing bill will become
law, but that plans for specific housing projects will have
been worked out.
New York City — or state — is not unique. Mr. Kohn ex-
pects in the next few months to make a personal nation-
wide survey. After which — federal housing or municipal
housing with federal cooperation? It's up to the states and
cities. The PWA prefer the latter method — but on clearing
slums and improving housing by one method or the other
it is determined.
Relief for Refugees
HELP for German exiles— Jews and others who have
fled the Nazi regime — is offered by the League of
Nations under the plan put forward in the resolution of
October 11. The Council of the League has named James
G. McDonald, chairman of the Foreign Policy Association
of New York, high commissioner for German refugees.
Simultaneously comes the announcement that this country
will appoint a representative on the governing board under
which Mr. McDonald will act in his task of providing
employment and other aid for some fifty thousand German
nationals made homeless and destitute by the Hitler
program. In his letter of acceptance, Secretary of State
Hull said that:
the people of the United States have in times past invariably re-
garded with sympathetic interest all efforts to alleviate the plight
of unfortunate peoples who find themselves in destitute circum-
stances beyond their control.
Mr. McDonald spent most of the past summer in
Europe, studying the problem and establishing an inter-
national committee to aid refugees from Germany. He
has headed the Foreign Policy Association since its or-
ganization in 1919. He is also vice-president of the National
Council for the Prevention of War, a member of the execu-
tive committee of the National Commission on American-
Japanese Relations, and a member of the advisory council
of the League of Nations Association.
Is It a Devil's Island?
IT was unfortunate but inevitable that the sobriquet
"America's Devil's Island" should have been promptly
attached to Alcatraz Prison in San Francisco Bay when the
U. S. Department of Justice announced its purpose of
converting it into an institution for "vicious and irre-
deemable" criminals. As a matter of fact this rocky island,
only one mile offshore, has been a prison for seventy-five
years without arousing any public excitement. It is not
November 1933
T H E S U R V E Y
383
remote nor is it inaccessible to those contacts which dis-
courage abuses. The climate is — well, California, and the
)rison plant is reasonably modern with facilities for edu-
cational, recreational and industrial therapies which are
an accepted part of modern penology and which have been
extensively initiated in federal prisons by their present
director, Sanford Bates.
The whole Alcatraz project seems a logical extension of
the system of classification and distribution advocated by
>enologists, but prison authorities are by no means agreed
hat a segregated institution for desperate offenders is
either necessary or desirable. Commissioner William J.
^llisof New Jersey sees "grave danger . . . of cruelties and
repressive measures." Commissioner Walter N. Thayer,
r., of New York believes that "prison officials should be
ible to handle dangerous criminals by segregation within
heir own walls."
So long as the present enlightened administration of
iederal prisons prevails there seems small reason to fear, at
Alcatraz Island, such abuses as have made Devil's Island
an epithet. That its situation and topography make it
practically escape-proof seems scarcely a reason for ad-
vance condemnation of the undertaking.
The Next Trench
RATIFICATION of the federal child-labor amendment
as the surest safeguard for the gains made under the
codes is being widely urged. The secretary of labor has
oined in the plea for such action, as has also Mrs.
loosevelt.
The measure, passed by Congress in 1924 after two at-
empts to control child labor by federal legislation had been
declared unconstitutional, does not deal directly with the
>roblem. It is "enabling" legislation, permitting the enact-
ment of a national child-labor law. During the boom, the
amendment lay dormant. In eight years, only six states
ratified. The coming to life of the measure is one of the
accomplishments of the national recovery effort. In the
'933 legislative sessions, nine states ratified. In 1934, eight
states which have not yet acted favorably, hold regular
egislative sessions and others undoubtedly will hold special
sessions. The following year, all but a half dozen state
egislatures will meet. The National Child Labor Com-
mittee points out:
If the goal of thirty-six ratifications is reached in 1935 it will
make possible federal legislation in time to replace the child-labor
restrictions in industrial codes which will expire that year, accord-
ing to the terms of the Recovery Act. If it be not ratified— then we
must expect a return to old conditions of child exploitation. For
irevious experience indicates that when a period of unemploy-
ment begins to abate, the number of children entering industry
tends to increase.
Planning for Action
NATIONAL planning, is it part of the New Deal ? Yes,
said every speaker at the recent twenty-fifth Na-
tional Conference on City Planning held jointly with the
American Civic Association in Baltimore. But how to
reconcile the need for haste with the demands of time-
:onsuming basic planning? As to that it can hardly be said
that the answer was clear. A national planning board there
is in the Public Works Administration, an economist, a
political scientist, a respected leader in planning, with an
imaginative, trained city planner as secretary; but it occu-
pies one corner of a large field, other sectors of which seem
to have been staked out by unconnected planning agencies
attached to other federal departments. Yet in planning
as in so many other undertakings, the crucial need is coor-
dination.
From a long-range viewpoint, the most important new
note at this year's conference was the discussion of large-
scale regional and rural land planning. At last the two
streams of thought, the two sets of techniques, developed
by city planners and by agricultural economists and eco-
nomic geographers, seem to be coming together. For exam-
ple, within the year Oneida County, Wisconsin, has
borrowed a tool of the city planner and has zoned itself to
prohibit permanent settlement on lands fit only for forests
and recreation. The motivating impulse was the high cost
of providing community services in sparsely settled margi-
nal lands. More than one speaker at the conference found
it necessary to discuss the planning of large areas in terms
of reallocation of functions of local government and shifts
in the incidence of taxation. Here is a third stream of
thought which, merged with the other two, may produce
some powerful currents in American life and institutions.
Radio and Rouge
THE rise of advertising in print and on the air and the
cult of cosmetics are two of several reasons why Dr.
Harvey Wiley's famous food and drugs act of 1906 has
become as obsolete as a model T Ford. When that law was
framed manufacturers depended largely on the label to sell
their goods; the law controls the label, but legally the
unscrupulous seller is literally as free as the air when he
stands before the microphone or o.k.'s for print the bright
thoughts of bright young copy-writers. In the lean month
of July 1933 nearly $800,000 worth of drug-and-toilet-goods
advertising went on the air. Unless cosmetics claim to cure
disease, their labels do not come within the existing law,
even if the fancy jars themselves contain poison — as many
of them do. When it comes to foods, Uncle Sam at present
cannot help you if unknowingly you buy nice plump
canned oysters fattened with tap water, instead of their
wizened, unfattened brothers with many more to the can:
the law makes no provision, except in a few cases, for legal
standards for foods or federal supervision of food industries.
As a part of the consumers' New Deal there is a bill
framed by Rexford G. Tugwell, assistant secretary of the
Department of Agriculture. It brings under government
control cosmetics and curative devices of all kinds from
hair-dyes to sun-lamps and orthopedic shoes; prohibits
false and misleading advertising of foods, drugs and cos-
metics through any medium whatever; and requires that
the labels be not only truthful but definitely informative.
The bill gives the federal government authority to set up
standards of quality and identity for all food products and
to establish safe tolerances for poisons in foods. There are
more drastic penalties for violations and injunctions for
chronic offenders, who sometimes take the present light
fines as no more than a license fee. The bill is pending in
both the Senate and House of Representatives and hear-
ings are promised for early December. Consumers— which
means all of us — are urged to run, not walk, to its sup-
port.
384
THE SURVEY
November 1933
New Prison Methods Win
\ DEPLETED state treasury was the ill wind that has gained
•**• for the state of Illinois a reorganization of prison methods
and the establishment of a system of classification and segregation
long recommended by it penologists. With no money to build new
prisons, and with commitments rising, the doubting Thomases
among the authorities were forced to accept the alternative of new
methods. Rodney H. Brandon, recently director of the State De-
partment of Public Welfare, has been appointed by Governor
Homer to put the program into operation.
The old prison at Joliet from which all women have been re-
moved, is now primarily a diagnostic clearing house where all per-
sons sentenced for crime are received and from which, after study,
they are assigned to institutions by a special board which includes
psychiatrists and psychologists. The Statesville (new Joliet) and
Menard Penitentiaries and the Pontiac Reformatory have been
combined, for administrative purposes, into a single institution,
the Illinois State Penitentiary. Statesville will receive first of-
fenders; old Joliet, recidivists and Pontiac, juveniles, — all of nor-
mal mentality, while Menard will receive the feebleminded and
insane. Women offenders go to the State Reformatory at Dwight.
There is also available, though it is not within the prison system, a
walled institution for delinquent deficients who are not under
commitment as felons.
The new laws under which the reorganization operates specify
that no prisoner shall be eligible for parole until the state criminol-
ogist shall have certified his mental fitness to the parole board.
Stay-at-Home Camps
ATTER three years' experience in promoting the organization of
summer programs for city children who cannot go to outdoor
camps, the Jewish Welfare Board is now urging the home-camp
plan on a national scale. The idea of the stay-at-home camps
originated several years ago in the play-schools of the Child Study
Association of America. In its more comprehensive form the camp
plan brings together in a unified program for the all-day care of
children the educational and socializing objectives of the play-
school, the outdoor camp and the playground. During the past
summer some thirty-six home camps in almost as many cities,
were conducted under the auspices of Jewish centers. The pro-
grams included practically all the activities, indoors and out,
associated with camp life, with the added feature of educational
tours.
The Jewish Welfare Board, 71 West 47 Street, New York, has
prepared a bulletin on the organization and financing, the pro-
gram and other features of the home camp.
California Carries On
'"TPHF. project for a codification of the social -welfare laws of
-I California, first launched by the Department of Social Wel-
fare, has been taken over by the Conference of Social Work. Re-
sponsibility for the job has 1 een lodged with the Conference's
legislative committee, Albert A. Rosenshine, chairman, which has
accepted the offer of Louis Heilbron, young attorney formerly
with the State DSW, to bring the work to completion for the 1935
legislature. The conference proposes to continue its active legis-
lative work at the state capitol and has given its observer there
the title of conference representative.
The machinery for the certification of social workers by the
state conference is now well under way. A board of five examiners
headed by Martha A. Chickering of the University of California,
has been appointed with "complete and final responsibility for the
setting up of standards . . . for the giving of examinations and for
certifying applicants who wish to register." No examinations will,
however, be given until after May 1934 until which time
any case worker or executive or sub-executive employed on a salary by a
social agency of recognized standing, who has lived in California for a
period of three years, has graduated from a highschool or who has the
equivalent education thereof, and who has had at least two years of ex-
perience on salary in such a recognized agency in California, shall be certi-
fied by the Board of Examiners as a registered social worker.
The Plight of the Workless
/^CONFIRMATION of certain fears, not to say convictions, of
^— l social workers is distressingly present in the study, Social
Consequences of Prolonged Unemployment, by Jessie A. Blood-
good, published by the Employment Stabilization Institute of the
University of Minnesota, price fifty cents. A follow-up of 500
unemployed persons in the Twin Cities, whose vocational abilities
have been previously studied by the Institute, shows that less than
40 percent have secured even one month's work since contact with
the Institute and that those most successful in finding work were
not the ones who lost their jobs early in the depression but those
who had been idle less than a year. Only 39 percent of the job-
finders secured work in keeping with their training and experience,
and only an inconsiderable number through employment agencies.
The great majority placed themselves with their old employers,
by direct application to new employers or through the good offices
of friends.
Less than 5 percent of the 500 had been known to social agen-
cies prior to the depression, but since 1930 nearly 33 percent have
Various Pamphlets
CHILDREN, YOUNG PEOPLE AND UNEMPLOYMENT PART II.
The Save the Children International Union, Geneva.
REPORTS on the condition of children, physique, morale and
relief measures, in Great Britain, Austria and Poland.
LOCAL RELIEF TO DEPENDENTS, by Opal V. Malson. Prepared for
and published by the Michigan Commission of Inquiry into County. Town-
ship and School District Governments, Detroit, Mich.
AN examination into a confused and out-moded system
with recommendations for its reorganization on a county
basis.
THE PROGRESS OF PROBATION AND SOCIAL TREATMENT IN
THE COURTS, by Charles L. Chute. Reprinted from the Journal of Crimi-
nal Law and Criminology. Copies (postage) from the author, 451) Seventh
Ave., New York.
RETROSPECT and prospect of probation as a social imple-
ment with a critical examination of its weakness and
strength.
A STUDY OF WELFARE ACTIVITIES IN A GROUP OF VIRGINIA
COMMUNITIES. Prepared and published by the Slate Department of
Public Welfare, Richmond, Va.
THE development of social institutions in places as differ-
ent in their background as mellow old Alexandria and war-
born Hopewell.
FREE-TIME ACTIVITIES FOR UNEMPLOYED YOUNG MEN.
Association Press, 347 Madison Aienue, New York 70 pp. Price, 75 cents.
THE YMCA shows that it has not "let the depression
ride" nor neglected the welfare of unemployed young men.
It here summarizes special activities in a number of cities
such as community clubs, special schools, vocational con-
ferences, job-finding and so on.
November 1933
THE SURVEY
385
been obliged to seek relief. The report gives detailed analyses of
resources such as savings, insurance loans, help from relatives and
so on which had been used before relief was sought. Nearly 62
percent of those receiving relief had tided themselves over for a
year or more before applying. "The relief group had been unem-
ployed longer, had less family assistance and fewer short-time
jobs, and in consequence became dependent . . . sooner than the
non-relief group." Otherwise there seemed to be no outstanding
difference between the two.
What Makes Bad Boys
~^TEW YORK'S last word in the study and treatment of asocial
*•** youth was spoken with the recent formal opening of its
State Training School for boys at Warwick. This new institution
is a self-contained village set down on its own farm of 670 acres
with every equipment for industries, education, sport and recrea-
tion. There are forty buildings including sixteen cottages each de-
signed for a "family" of thirty-two boys. Each cottage, in addi-
tion to its common rooms, has a dormitory and sixteen single
rooms, these, with their keys, being rewards for good behavior.
But it is not its physical plant, complete as that is, that makes
Warwick unique, but its equipment for the scientific, case-by-case
study of the deep causes affecting the conduct of the 500 boys
under sixteen who come to it from the Children's Courts, at odds
with society. Through aft liation with the Columbia University-
Presbyterian Medical Center a medical board, including such
ranking psychiatrists as Dr. Frederic A. Tilney, Dr. B. C. Glueck
and Dr. M. R. Bradner, directs the studies and clinical research of
a technical staff of twenty. Integrated with the medical work is
the educational with a teaching staff of ninety which, in coopera-
tion with Teachers College, is developing special school programs
under the guidance of a committee made up of Profs. William H.
Kilpatrick, Goodman Watson and Eduard Lindeman.
A Venture in Propaganda
HpHE Indiana State Conference of Social Work has joined the
I ranks of those which, no longer content just to talk, propose
to do a little propagandizing for social causes. At its recent meet-
ing, by adopting the report of a committee on social insurance, C.
Oliver Holmes, chairman, it went on record as favoring:
The principle of social insurance as a superior means of providing for the
common exigencies of life as compared with the present method of poor-
relief and tax-supported institutional aid.
A system of social insurance the premiums of which are paid in certain
specified proportions by the employe, the employer and the state.
Compulsory membership in the social-insurance system for all persons
whose annual income is, if married, less than $2500 a year and if un-
married, $1000 a year.
To follow up its resolution the conference created a standing
committee charged with developing an educational program to
further social insurance, cooperating with other interested agencies
in the state and presenting a program on the subject at succeeding
annual meetings. The moving spirit in the undertaking is Prof. R.
Clyde White of Indiana University.
THE American Red Cross is distributing through its chapters a
manual. Introduction to Case Work and Administration of Relief,
especially designed for group study by volunteers and new work-
ers, but also useful for individuals.
GIRL Scouts Inc. is planning to have its new handbook transcribed
into Braille for the use of its troops in some eighteen schools for
the blind where scouting is carried on with an ingenuity and
imagination that defies handicaps.
THE Legal Aid Society, 11 Park Place, New York, has published
in a dozen useful little pages a statement of the scope of legal aid
in relation to social work, ending with a clutch of" Don'ts" aimed
at the prevention of legal troubles among the clients of social
agencies.
Tests for Jobs
TOW the new tools of mental and occupational testing can be
put to good use in public employment offices is indicated by
a report, Occupational Testing and Public Employment Service,
by John G. Darley, Donald G. Paterson, I. Emerick Peterson,
recently published by the Employment Stabilization Research
Institute of the University of Minnesota. (University of Minne-
sota Press. Price 10 cents.) The report covers a one-year demon-
stration of this special service as a feature of the free employment
offices, affiliated with the Institute, in Minneapolis, St. Paul and
Duluth. The purpose of the demonstration was not to gather
research data, but to give service to applicants and to employers,
and therefore the procedure was made as simple and as economical
"as was consistent with the adequacy of service stressed." A total
of 1 1,200 tests were administered to about 250x3 individuals, at a
cost to the demonstration of $2.95 per case. The testing unit was
found useful in helping untrained young adults, or those who had
repeatedly failed on the job, determine the lines for which they
were best fitted; in warning applicants against occupational plans
that ran counter to their abilities; in filling employer orders for
employes with specific skills; in defining the abilities required for
filling certain types of jobs.
The writers look forward to further development of testing
units in the federal-state public employment offices now being
organized under the Wagner-Peyser Act.
The New Act Acts
CjETTING minimum-wage rates for women and minors em-
^ ployed in laundries throughout New York State, the first
order under the Minimum Fair Wage Act, passed last winter,
went into effect last month. The rate established is 31 cents an
hour for New York City and 27^ cents for the rest of the state.
A bonus of 10 percent on the hourly rate must be added for
"short time," and time and a half for overtime beyond 45 hours
for those receiving the minimum. There are 20,000 women in the
laundry industry, one of the largest employers of women in the
state. The rates were recommended by a wage board, set up
under the Act, including representatives of laundry owners,
employes and the public, which held public hearings in four cities.
In approving the recommendations of the Wage Board, Elmer F.
Andrews, state industrial commissioner, pointed out that the
new rates mean an increase in wages for more than 80 percent of
the women employed in New York laundries.
Accidents to Children
"\X7"ITH children under sixteen removed from the labor
market by the codes, there is a tendency to consider the
child-labor victory won. How mistaken is this attitude is shown
by a pamphlet, When Children Are Injured in Industry, just
published by the National Child Labor Committee (41 9 'Fourth
Avenue, New York. Publication No. 367. Price, 50 cents). The
386
THE SURVEY
November 1933
report was prepared by Gertrude Folks Zimand, on the basis of a
follow-up study of 167 children permanently handicapped by
industrial accidents, made by Charles E. Gibbons and Chester T.
Stansbury. The cases were of children between the ages of 16 and
1 8 from Tennessee, Illinois and Wisconsin. The number of young
workers in this age group is still well over a million, and is likely
to be increased by the lower-wage rate provided in the codes for
"junior employes." The report sets forth how these young people,
all injured about five years ago, have fared since, how much
compensation they received, how it was used, whether they
have received suitable vocational training, how their careers and
their outlook on life have been affected. In Illinois and Tennessee,
injured children, it was found, are not receiving vocational re-
education, few had ever heard of the State Rehabilitation Service,
and only one thorough-going case of rehabilitation was found.
Even when children received a large award of money, it was
usually frittered away, often foolishly. In Wisconsin, the Indus-
trial Commission exercises rigid control over all but minor awards
to injured children. The report emphasizes the need for more
enlightened administration of compensation laws as they affect
young workers, for extra compensation for children illegally
employed, for laws prohibiting the employment of minors in
dangerous occupations, and for the rigid enforcement of such
laws.
Workers Education Under NIRA
THE importance of workers' education in the recovery program
is indicated in The Wisconsin Summer School and the Labor
Movement by Alice Shoemaker, in the October American Federa-
tionist. The Wisconsin school is an established part of the state
university. Teaching salaries for the six weeks' session, a part-time
salary for organization and administration throughout the year,
office expenses and a modest sum for travel within the state are
provided by taxpayers through the university budget. In the 1933
session, 43 percent of the students were union members, but all
were "committted to the idea of labor organization." The school
program turned itself into an intensive study of the NIRA, with
emphasis on the old issue of industrial vs. craft unions, the dan-
gers of company unionism, and "the urgent need for labor to
organize, formulate its own standards, secure its own advances."
Last year, summer-school students organized workers' educa-
tion classes in seven Wisconsin cities. The 1933 group felt the
need for greatly expanding this winter program, and for a full-
time traveling teacher to supervise the classes. Labor institutes,
similar to the one held annually at the summer-school would, it
The Pamphleteers
THE NATIONAL INDUSTRIAL RECOVERY ACT, by John Francis
Sullivan, Andrew J. Bimiller, Maynard C. Krueger. Issues of the Day.
No. 1. Socialist Parly of America, 549 Randolph St.,Chtcago. Price, 5 cents.
A KEEN and class-conscious look at the recovery plans.
THE PROMISE OF POWER, by Stuart Chase. The John Day Pamphlets.
No. 32. John Day Co., Inc.. 3S6 Fourth Ave., New York. Prut, 35 cents.
THE price system, not debt or profits, is the villain of this
brilliant story of the possibilities of electricity in the
machine-age.
WOMEN AT WORK, by Eleanor Nelson, illustrated by Jean W. Hill.
Superintendent of Documents, Washington. Price, 5 cents.
THE story of the changes that have taken place in women's
work during the last 100 years. A new deal in government
bulletins — delightful prose, pictures and printing.
AMERICAN LABOR AND THE NATION, edited by Spencer Miller, Jr.
University of Chicago Press. Price. $1.
A SERIES of radio addresses on the role of labor in American
life; one of the notable programs sponsored last year by the
National Advisory Council on Radio in Education.
was felt, bring together labor people and others interested in
labor problems in a useful way. Several are being planned. The
writer points out:
For the sake of the common good as well as for the advancement of
labor, it is essential that the best that can be offered in the educational
field should be put at labor's disposal, and that the ablest in the ranks of
the workers should be given the chance to develop their powers for the
greatest usefulness.
The Weirton Agreement
BOTH the method and the principles of the National Labor
Board were illustrated in the recent settlement of a strike
involving more than 5000 workers of the Weirton Steel Company,
Weirton, W. Va. Ernest T. Weir, head of the company, at first
refused to submit the dispute to arbitration. Senator Robert F.
Wagner, chairman of the NLB, presided over the public hearing
at which both sides were discussed. The settlement included five
points: that the strike be called off at once; that the striking
employes be re-employed "without prejudice, discrimination or
physical examination" ; that an election of employe representa-
tives be held the second week of December, under the supervision
of the NLB; that the employer agree to bargain collectively with
representatives so chosen; that any dispute arising in connection
with the agreement be submitted to the NLB for decision.
Mr. Weir, though he accepted the settlement, resented the
interference with "the settled policy of the company to maintain
the open shop and not to contract with the Amalgamated Asso-
ciation of Iron, Steel and Tin Workers." The strikers' committee
considered the agreement a victory for the workers and for the
NRA.
Workers for Public Works
N connection with agitation for a local public-works and
building program, a recent occupational study made by the
King County Welfare Board (Seattle, Wash.) indicates that
building construction "reaches deeper into economics than any
other single class of work." John F. Hall, executive of the
Community Fund, reports that of the men-with-families on
relief on the September day on which the survey was made, 40
percent were "of occupational groups which would be benefited
by a building program." Another 37 percent of these heads of
families were laborers who would also be used in building con-
struction. Of the 9204 men tabulated, the largest group, 4446,
were laborers. The two other groups of more than 1000 each were
truck-drivers and tractor-operators, 1359, and carpenters, 1051.
Other important groups were painters, 517, concrete-workers,
303, and electricians, 201.
RATIFY the Child Labor Amendment, a new leaflet prepared by
the National Child Labor Committee for use in the amendment
campaigns, will be supplied at fifty cents a hundred (single
copies free) by the Committee, 419 Fourth Avenue, New York.
A nine-state survey of conditions in the shirt industry, recently
completed by the Federal Department of Labor, covering about
20,000 payroll records, showed that half the workers earn less
than $7.40 in a busy week. Median earnings were highest in New
York ($9) and lowest in Delaware ($5.50). In one Pennsylvania
establishment, half the women earned less than $2 a week!
I
As part of the cost-of-living study of federal employes, now being
made in Washington, agents of the Bureau of Labor Statistics,
experts in family expenditures, are making a home canvass of
federal employes, selected by lot from the 55,000 individuals who
replied to a questionnaire circulated in September. The study is
under the direction of Isador Lubin, commissioner of labor
statistics.
November 1933
THE SURVEY
387
Creative Leisure in Des Moines
/COMMUNITY thinking on the state of the nation, on local and
^-^ on international affairs is being fostered by the public forums
of Des Moines, one of the most ambitious adult-education projects
in this country. More than a tenth of the city's adult population
took part last year, and the aggregate attendance was estimated
at 47,447. For 1933-4 the plan is being expanded. The season
will be 36 weeks instead of 23 for the neighborhood forums, held
bi-weekly in more than a score of public schools. There are also
weekly "central forums" in five locations and a citywide forum
each Monday evening. For the first twelve-week period the
subjects to be threshed out in the neighborhood forums are:
Plans for National Recovery, Proposed Solutions for Our Tax
Muddle, World View: East and West, Propaganda. The forum
leaders present available information on all sides of any question
discussed, define the issues involved, and give opposing points of
view a fair hearing. "In dealing with controversial issues, all
reasonable latitude is allowed." The experiment, which is under
the control of the local Board of Education and administered by
the Superintendent of Schools, has a five-year subsidy from the
Carnegie Corporation.
Play Schools
TLJELPING counteract the anxieties and hungers of the de-
*• -1 pression, sixteen play schools gave more than 2500 New
York City children a creative and wholesome summer experience.
The schools, affiliated with the Summer Play Schools Committee
of the Child Study Association (221 West 57 Street, New York)
had the cooperation of interested organizations and of the Board
of Education. They reached the parents as well as the children,
who were chosen because of their social and economic needs.
The school programs included a hot mid-day meal, a rest period,
a medical examination, shower baths, and projects that sprang
from the children's own interests. Music, rhythms, games, ex-
cursions and handcrafts were among the many activities. Parents
were invited to the schools to observe procedures, and meetings
for parents, organized during the summer, are to be carried on
throughout the year. Discussions revolve around the every-day
living situations which parents and children have to meet.
The School Crisis Continues
r^HAT the Recovery Program has not yet eased the crisis in
-*- the schools is indicated by scattering reports from various
sections. Several states, including North Carolina and Mississippi,
have adopted a "standard eight-month term," which shortens
the school year in many districts. Arkansas, Oklahoma and Louis-
iana are counting on liquor taxes to keep the schools going for at
least seven months of the present school year. In Michigan and
Indiana many rural schools opened several weeks ahead of the
usual date, so that they might close during the severe winter
weather and thus save fuel. In a recent radio address, the U. S.
commissioner of education cited one state in which half the 178
counties were unable to open their schools this fall. Dr. Zook said :
For this critical situation we educators are in part responsible. While
our record for economical administration will compare favorably with
any other public agency, and certainly with private business, we could
have reduced our budgets to suit changed economic conditions earlier
than we did. Moreover, we have not always made an enviable record in
the construction and use of school buildings. We could have pushed with
greater vigor the campaign for larger and more economical units in rural
areas. We could have effected more frequently than we have an integrated
program of elementary and highschool education which would save a
year's time for the student and considerable money for the taxpayer.
Arbitrary slashing is still the method of making "economies"
in some communities. In this way the junior highschool system of
Chicago was wiped out, and such "frills" as manual training,
household arts and orchestras greatly curtailed.
The board of managers of the National Congress of Parents and
Teachers (1201 16 Street N.W., Washington, D. C.) is promoting
a nation-wide study program, Modern Methods of Financing
Public Schools, in the belief that wider community understanding
of the problems of school support is the surest means to intelligent
community action.
The First State Program
PENNSYLVANIA is the first state to set in motion its new
*• emergency education relief program. It is estimated that
federal relief funds allocated to Pennsylvania will provide teach-
ing jobs for about 800 unemployed, qualified persons for the
next three or four months. The plan is being organized and ad-
ministered by county councils, made up of public-school authori-
ties and county relief boards, responsible to Eric H. Biddle,
executive director of the State Emergency Relief Board, and to
Dr. James N. Rule, superintendent of public instruction. Appli-
cants for teaching positions must be certified as qualified by local
school authorities and as in need of aid by the county relief
agency. Final appointment rests with the chairman of the County
Education Relief Council, a public-school official. Pay for relief-
work teachers is based on NRA made-work schedules. Teachers
in districts of more than 500,000 population are to receive £65 a
month; in districts of 250,000 to 500,000, $62.50; 2500 to 250,000,
?6o; less than 2500, $52.
Among the approved activities are English and citizenship
classes for the non-English-speaking, including home classes for
New Pamphlets
CITY COLLEGE AND WAR. Committee of Expelled and Suspended City
College Students, SS3 Sixth Avenue, New York. Price, 3 cents.
THE story of a student campaign against compulsory
military training. Sophomoric in tone, but the facts are
here.
A PRIMER OF THE NEW DEAL. American Education Press, Inc.
40 S. Third Street, Columbus, Ohio. Price, 25 cents.
AN intelligent attempt to interpret the recovery effort for
school and adult study groups. Copiously illustrated
with photos, charts, cartoons, etc. "Friendly but non-
partisan."
FREE TIME ACTIVITIES FOR UNEMPLOYED YOUNG MEN, by
E. C. Norman
VENTURES IN INFORMAL ADULT EDUCATION, by Thomas H.
Nelson. Association Press, 347 Madison Arenue, New York. Price, 15
cents each.
Two samplings of Y.M.C.A. experience in a number of
communities.
THE EDUCATION OF TEACHERS AND THE FINANCIAL CRISIS,
by Kalherine M. Cook. Circular No. 110, U. S. Office of Education, Wash-
ington, D. C.
ONE of a series on economies in education, this pamphlet
reports how teacher-training schools "are continuing to
function at or near normal efficiency, while operating
with reduced budgets."
388
THE SURVEY
November 1933
mothers; evening classes for illiterate adults; home economics for
homemakers; courses in gardening and poultry raising for both
men and women; vocational training primarily for the unem-
ployed; general education courses for unemployed men and
women who have had at least elementary schooling, for recent
highschool graduates, for industrial workers (employed and un-
employed) who wish to study labor history and industrial rela-
tions.
For Free Time
AS part of community effort on behalf of young people "with
•**• too much leisure and no money," Seattle experimented last
spring with a Free-Time School. The project was planned and
organized by the Community Fund through its Young People's
Committee, Chester E. Roberts, chairman (see The Survey,
October 15, page 356). The response was immediate and hearten-
ing. There were 489 registrants for the five-weeks session, and the
most popular courses enrolled over 100 pupils. John Hall,
executive of the Community Fund, writes,
Instructors who volunteered their services were business men, members
of the University of Washington faculty, former highschool teachers and
one physician. At the end of the sessions they reported that they were
delighted with . . . the interest of the students.
The experiment was so successful that a similar undertaking,
to run for twenty weeks, is under way this fall. As last year,
"young" is being elastically interpreted, though the largest
registration is from the "under 25" age group. Following the
suggestion of several of last term's teachers, more cultural sub-
jects are being offtred than in the original session. The list of
courses for the first ten weeks includes: economic problems, cur-
rent events, dietetics, music appreciation, salesmanship and per-
sonality, contemporary literature, American literature, twentieth
century history, international relations, brush-up dictation.
Looking at Highschools
TMPATIENCE with highschools which direct all their efforts
•"• toward college preparation, offering little or nothing to the
80 percent who go from highschool to job-hunting, is being widely
expressed. According to a study of secondary education, made
by the New York Highschool Teachers Association under the
direction of Charles M. Stebbins of Erasmus Hall Highschool,
Brooklyn, a purely college entrance program for public secondary
schools "cannot be justified on social, intellectual, vocational or
cultural grounds." The report further finds fault with the entire
examination system, holding that:
Any system that causes the fate of the pupil to depend in any high
degree on a week's cramming process is not educational. True education
is an orderly process of enfoldment, organization and control of human
powers and processes.
A cooperative study of standards and procedures for evaluating
the work of highschools throughout the United States was recom-
mended by representatives of regional associations called in
conference by George F. Zook, U.S. commissioner of education.
FOR the first time in many years, the enrollment at Hampton
Institute has fallen below 900. The direct cause is the depression,
which has been particularly hard on the old students who de-
pended largely upon summer jobs for school funds.
A GROUP of former faculty members of Rollins College, some of
whom were dismissed and others of whom resigned in protest,
have organized Black Mountain College, near Asheville, N. C.,
with an initial enrollment of about forty students. Frederick
Raymond. Georgia, formerly professor of chemistry at Rollins,
is president of the corporation and acting chairman of the faculty.
The college will have no president and will be organized with a
junior and senior college, similar to the Chicago University plan.
The campus is a i6oo-acre tract, leased from the YMCA.
Idleness and Health
* I AHAT idleness and sickness go hand in hand is the conclusion
•*• of a study of nearly 4500 families in the Mulberry district
just published by the New York Association for Improving the
Condition of the Poor. (Idleness and the Health of a Neighbor-
hood, by Gwendolyn Hughes Berry. Price ?i of the Association,
105 East 22 St., New York.) Reviewing neighborhood surveys in
April 1922, November 1930, and April 1932, the surveyors found
the percentage of wage-earners idle to be 11, 31, and 47 respec-
tively. In April 1932 more than three households out of five had
no worker with full-time employment. Crude sickness rates,
though less definite than employment records, seemed also to
show a substantial increase through the successive studies, which
may be due to seasonal variations in illness, to varying com-
pleteness or interpretations in reporting or to the effects of
economic depression. The rate for patients sick in bed at home
rose from 4.1 per 1000 of population in November 1930 to 5.9 in
April 1932. Rates for persons ill for more than a year also seemed
to indicate a substantial increase, as did also rates for short-time
illness and the percentages of persons receiving no medical care.
Whatever the comparability of figures between successive years,
however, the surveyors regard as conclusive evidence that the
unemployed population of Mulberry suffered more illness than
the employed, even when cases had been eliminated in which
illness was the cause of idleness. The outstanding exception in
which family unemployment was not associated with higher
illness rates was that of preschool children, whose health is
carefully supervised at the Mulberry Health Center. The
percentage of women for whom "maternity conditions" were
reported in April 1932 showed a substantial increase over the
records of two years previous: the rate rose from 5.9 per 1000 of
population to 10. In the face of a reduction in the number of
births registered in the district in successive years since 1930, the
Mulberry Health Center suggests the impression gathered by
its nurses that abortions and miscarriages are increasing in
number.
A Demonstration Concludes
AT ONCE a training agency, a research center and a child-
guidance clinic, The Institute for Child Guidance in New
York brings in a summary report the result of its six years*
demonstration. (The Institute for Child Guidance, 1927 1933,
by Lawson G. Lowrey, M.D. and Geddes Smith. The Common-
wealth Fund.) Though the methods described seemed essentially
right in its threefold effort of training psychiatrists, psycholo-
gists, and social workers, the Institute found from experience
that it was di^cult to train psychiatric social workers and
psychiatrists simultaneously. A better plan would be to provide
side by side, in a training agency, a permanent psychiatric staff
to work with student social workers and a permanent social-work
staff to work with student psychiatrists. Clinical work recorded
23 percent of the cases closed as satisfactorily adjusted and 53
percent as partially adjusted; the remaining 24 percent were
listed as unimproved. "General progress," the report declares,
"was made in the refinement of treatment techniques and the
enrichment of the thinking that lay behind them," but while
current thinking affected practice, it often failed to reach the
stage of definitive analysis and orderly confirmation at which the
term research becomes appropriate. The end of the demonstra-
tion left still unformulated conclusions as to the relative efficacy
of many approaches on which study was being made: intensive
treatment of parents, play techniques, investigations of blood
chemistry and the like. An appendix to the report lists pub-
lications by the staff of the Institute in which specific problems
and techniques have been described in detail.
A Medical Code for Industry
\ MEDICAL code for industrial employers has been presented
•**• in outline to the NRA by the Committee on Industrial
Medicine and Traumatic Surgery of the American College of
Surgeons. Its general principles include the proposal that all
industrial medical clinics be requested or required to conform to
specified standards; that all new employes should have pre-em-
ployment examinations and all employes annual health audits by
the physician and surgeon employed by the industry; that
industries establish individual or joint pathological and x-ray
laboratories; that defects revealed by examinations be cared for
by the industry insofar as they come within the scope of work-
men's compensation or other state laws, and otherwise be referred
to the family physician of the employe, who should be provided
with the records and facilities of the industrial laboratories at
minimum cost; that insofar as is possible the facilities of the
laboratories should be available to the family physician for the
care of the families of employes and the medical department of
the industry should correlate with him in making a diagnosis;
that industries should utilize hospitals which are properly
equipped and standardized, and that these hospitals should be
used as far as feasible as health centers where physical examina-
tions may be made. At the session of the American College of
Surgeons where this report was made Dr. E. W. Williamson
estimated that an effective health program would save industry
at least ? 1,000,000,000 a year. Of the industrial clinics inspected
by the college during the past year, 35 percent were eligible for
approval; 99 percent of the companies confined their medical
service to treatment of minor and emergent illness and care of
injuries required by law.
Buy Now!
BETWEEN 1920 and 1930 almost a whole
year was added to the average length of
life of Americans by the success of the
battle against tuberculosis. But though
tuberculosis happily has fallen to seventh
in the list of causes of death it still plays a
sinister role not to be measured by the
number of people it kills: its heaviest toll comes at early ages,
cutting short many years of work and fun. This month brings the
annual opportunity for the public to join in the fight by buying
the Christmas seals which support the whole year's work of the
local, state and national tuberculosis societies of the United
States. To carry a good fight further, buy now!
Silver Lining
DURING the depression years the deathrate from'pellagra
has been declining in southern states, on the average by
about 34 percent since a peak in 1927-8. Since pellagra is gen-
erally accepted as a disease due to dietary insufficiency, the
opposite would have been anticipated. Examining the facts in a
paper before the Florida State Public Health Association, Dr.
William DeKleine called attention to the extensive program for
gardening and canning, and the distribution of food for relief
and dried yeast for pellagra-prevention which have been under-
way in southern states with the aid of the American Red Cross
since the flood of 1927 and during the distress following the 1930
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Literature on recjuert
HYNSON, WESTCOTT & DUNNING, INC.
Baltimore, Md.
drought and the economic depression of recent years. "Intimate
association with this relief work for three or four years," Dr.
DeKleine declared, "has led us to believe that these projects,
especially gardening and the distribution of powdered yeast, have
played a far more significant part in this downward trend in
pellagra than is generally recognized. They may also have had
some influence on the general decline in deathrates."
COMPLETELY revised and ready to help communities plan well-
balanced and standardized nursing services, a brief outline
entitled The Public Health Nurse and the Work She Does is to
be obtained from the Division of Public Health Nursing, State
Department of Health, Albany, New York. The Department's
Bureau of Exhibits has added three films, The Life of a Healthy
Child, Conquest of Diphtheria, and Man Against Microbe.
Consult the Bureau for the terms under which they may be
borrowed and a free list of health motion pictures.
THE culmination of five years of study by motion-picture pro-
ducers in cooperation with the American Social Hygiene Asso-
ciation and the Canadian Social Hygiene Social Council, Dam-
aged Lives, a social-hygiene movie, made its American debut in
Boston a few weeks ago. It previously had gained professional
approval and large audiences in Canada and in London. It will
be shown in the United States under the joint auspices of the
Weldon Pictures Corporation and the American Social Hygiene
Association, 450 Seventh Ave., New York City, which will pro-
vide information and welcomes inquiries.
(/« answering advertisements please mention THE SURVEY)
389
UNEMPLOYMENT AND COMMUNITY ACTION
JOANNA C. COLCORD
This department is an emergency information
service to public officials and to members,
executives and supervisors of citizens' com-
mittees. News of interesting developments will
be gratefully received by the editors, Russell
Sage Foundation, 130 East 22 Street, New York
RUSSELL H. KURTZ
San Francisco Relief Survey
SAN FRANCISCO'S unemployment-relief machinery was
completely overhauled during August to comply with the
FERA ruling that federal relief must be dispensed only through
public agencies. Under the new order of things, the work will
be under public auspices, although the Citizens Emergency Relief
Committee remains as the controlling group operating under
delegated public powers, and workers from the private agencies
continue to render relief service, but as public workers. The change
was preceded by a period of popular dissatisfaction. Among the
complaints most frequently heard were:
Over-centralization of relief facilities.
"Discrimination" in food issues to various racial groups.
Over-dependence on a central "groceteria" or commissary.
Inadequate re-visitation service.
Over-staffing of clerical departments.
Lack of complaint and adjustment facilities.
Fortunately, the City and County Board of Supervisors, real-
izing early in the year that its constantly increasing appropria-
tions of public funds to the community relief administration im-
posed an obligation to have accurate knowledge as to how wisely
these funds were being spent, requested Dr. William P. Lucas of
the University of California, Mrs. Bernard Breeden, University of
San Francisco, and Dr. Alonzo Taylor of Stanford to make a sur-
vey of existing practices. The findings of this survey, completed in
August, were of considerable value in the reorganization process.
The report, issued as a supplement to the Journal of Proceed-
ings of the Board of Supervisors, presents a detailed account of
the old administration and its methods, each section being supple-
mented with specific recommendations for improvement of relief
procedure. In an introductory foreword the committee says:
We find that, always considering the emergency status, the administra-
tion of relief in San Francisco has been adequate, comparatively economi-
cal, and in view of the enormous problem and the necessarily hurried
set-up of administrative machinery, reasonably efficient. . . .
We find that practically all of the justified complaints . . . are due
directly or indirectly to the emergency condition. . . .
But in view of the fact that the status of emergency is no longer tenable
and that some form of relief administration must be in existence in San
Francisco for a long time to come, we believe that emergency methods are
no longer justified . . . and that certain fundamental changes must be
made.
The changes proposed are:
Administrative. Decentralization into districts. Simplification of
procedure. Greater delegation of authority to an expanded execu-
tive staff. Standardization of personnel. More centralized ac-
counting. Development of sub-committees and councils of lay-
men. Establishment of a public relations bureau. Creation of a
Bureau of Complaints "with open public meetings to which all
relief clients as well as other citizens can have easy access for a
full hearing."
Rules of Eligibility. Clarification of rules regarding residence
qualifications, income, property ownership, and responsible
relatives.
Relief Distribution. A uniform system of cash allowance for food
relief, with, as a "reluctant alternate," the grocery-order plan as
preferable to the distribution of food in kind. More accurate budg-
eting of food allowances. In clothing, continue use of salvaged
garments but provide new wherever needed. In rents, abandon
present "haphazard" system and formulate a more adequate
policy. In fuel, systematize conflicting procedures. In medical
care, decentralize by assigning physicians to each proposed dis-
trict office, and add departments of psychiatry and dental care at
main office.
Single Men. Extension of the group which provides its own
shelter and receives food for home consumption.
Single Women. Continuance of present central bureau, with
transfer of treatment function to proposed district offices.
Work and Rehabilitation. Closer cooperation with recreational
and vocational agencies. Continuance of work-for-relief policy
with modifications such as safety inspections on work projects,
credit on work accounts for attendance at vocational training
classes, better basis of assignment to various types of work proj-
ects and elimination from staff of unqualified $40 a month work-
relief clerks with qualified ones retained on fair and full pay.
An interesting comment is made on the subject of agency effort
to bring about re-employment of relief clients:
It was found that a definite prejudice exists against persons on relief in
the minds of the personnel men of many large commercial concerns. . . .
It is unlikely that any attempt at direct employment, through the relief
administration, will be very successful on a large scale. It is rather recom-
mended that every attempt be made to recondition and re-educate em-
ployable persons and then turn them over to existing public or private
employment agencies, where they can receive the same service as persons
not on relief.
The new relief set-up required by the FERA went into effect
September I. Among the changes made at that time were: the
centralization of accounting in the city controller's office; the
merging of workers from the private agency staffs into a family
relief division of the new agency; and first steps toward decen-
tralization into eleven new district offices. Food distribution "in
kind" is being temporarily continued, with all families, regardless
of race or religion, being given the same standard food issue.
Omnibus of Relief
THE Kentucky legislature finally moved in September to pro-
vide a small state relief fund through a warehouse tax on
whiskey and an excise tax on beer. The receipts from these two
sources will, it is anticipated, provide only one fourth of the $3
million fund which the FERA had asked the state to make avail-
able as a base for ?8 million in promised federal aid. As a result,
the FERA has declared itself willing to go along with Ken-
tucky only on a month-to-month basis until the sum provided is
used up, which will probably be in three or four months. "If the
taxes prove to be inadequate," Administrator Hopkins said, "the
situation will revert to the status of some weeks ago."
Cleveland and Cuyahoga County have not been seeing eye-to-
eye on the application of local funds to relief purposes. The new
unemployment relief administration, set up in August as a public
county-wide department under the direction of a citizens' com-
mittee approved by the county commissioners, has been depend-
ent almost entirely upon state and federal funds, the commis-
sioners failing to provide even a basic budget for operating
purposes. Meanwhile the city administration has elected to apply
its relief revenues (mainly gasoline tax diversions) to work relief and
expansion of hospital facilities, without regard to the direct relief
390
November 1933
THE SURVEY
391
and operating needs of the public committee. The item of rent for
the headquarters and district offices of the county administration
has caused the most dissension. Chairman Cannon of the county
committee, failing to get a local public appropriation for this pur-
pose, has paid it from his own pocket for two months in succession.
Pittsburgh and Allegheny County relief officials succeeded in
September in persuading the State Emergency Relief Board to
increase the county's food appropriation from state funds to a
level based on $1.10 per person per week. The old base was ninety
cents. Rising food costs had it is said made this allowance increas-
ingly inadequate.
Dispatches from North Carolina report the establishment of a
close check-up between the state relief administration and the
county farm agents in charge of the federal "acreage reduction"
program, to prevent duplication in the receipt of benefits from
these two sources by needy cotton growers. Nearly $3 million will
be paid to 50,000 growers under the acreage-reduction plan. It is
held that since many of these growers have hitherto been de-
pendent upon unemployment relief funds they should now be re-
moved from the rolls.
This state has given relief through work almost exclusively. In
some quarters it has been felt, according to press reports, the
federal minimum work-relief rate of 30 cents per hour is too high
in view of local conditions: "Relief workers getting 30 cents an
hour have served to arouse the jealousies of hundreds of em-
ployed people whose hourly rate of pay is about 10 cents per hour,
with the result that relief workers can make as much money by
two or three days work as the xo-cent-an-hour workers can by
working six days."
From Tulsa Oklahoma comes word that a new "federal relief
agency" is being set up to take over from the United Relief and
Service Agency of the Community Fund the task of providing un-
employment relief in that city and the surrounding county. The
new public agency will operate the confidential exchange with
agreement to return it to the Fund "at the close of the federal re-
lief jurisdiction here." The Fund has accepted the responsibility
for meeting some of the operating expense of the new agency.
Work relief will continue to be the favored method of meeting
relief needs in this locality.
Mississippi has been assured that the FERA"will see the state
through" on the relief job without the necessity of the state or its
subdivisions matching relief funds, according to a statement made
recently by the state welfare director to the county boards. This
assurance carries with it the implication of greater federal con-
trol of policy, he added, making it advisable for county boards to
"leave the handling of individual relief cases to the [county] wel-
fare worker and her organization," the latter being under direct
state and federal supervision. The county boards have been urged,
however, to continue their interest in planning aad setting up
the work projects through which unemployment relief is dis-
pensed. Their approval also continues to be required on requisi-
tions for county allocations from the state-federal relief fund.
Baltimore's work-relief program, one of the largest in the coun-
try, came to a halt for two weeks in September as a result of a
local dispute over the provision of trucks and supervision. The
issue was first brought to a head by a FERA ruling that federal
funds could not be used for these purposes, and was heightened by
newspaper charges of irregularities on the part of the city in mak-
ing such provisions in the past. During the period of suspension,
the twelve thousand families affected were cared for by direct re-
lief, or "vacation with pay," as the press put it. As reorganized,
the work program depends more upon manual handling of mate-
rials with a greater amount of supervision selected from the ranks
of the unemployed themselves.
The Texas legislature, meeting to authorize the release of a part
of the $20 million bond issue approved by the voters in August,
became diverted from its purpose by charges of a political nature
against the state Rehabilitation and Relief Commission, and
asked for a "complete investigation" of the Commission's scope
and operating costs. The FERA stood by the Commission and
repeated its insistence that adequate investigation by a com-
petent staff is essential to continued federal aid. After two weeks
of inquiry, the legislature accepted this point of view.
The Louisiana Emergency Relief Administration is undergoing
a reorganization. For some time the full cost of unemployment re-
lief has been met from federal funds, with FERA officials in-
creasingly active in the direction of the program. News dispatches
from New Orleans quote a FERA field representative as saying
that "after a careful examination of the finances of the state and
of the larger municipalities we find that under present conditions
it is impossible to expect Louisiana to pay any considerable share
toward the cost of the relief of the destitute unemployed in the
state, and in order to meet the needs of those now requiring relief,
have agreed to continue to defray such costs from federal funds."
Chairman Stair of the state administration resigned on October I
to be superseded by William J. Guste. Harry J. Early, chest
executive of Birmingham, Ala., has been selected by the FERA to
take over executive direction.
Seattle and King County, Wash., have established a public
unemployment-relief service under the direction of the County
Welfare Board. Seven private agencies had been handling the
relief work before the federal ruling of last June. In order to con-
tinue the use of the facilities of these agencies, it was necessary to
give them a quasi-public status. Their functions, staffs and boards
continue as before, except that they now disburse such funds
as come from the FERA under the direction of the County
Board.
The Milwaukee County Outdoor Relief Department has sub-
mitted its budget for 1934, placing the estimate of needs at
$8,058,000 as against $9,748,000 for 1933. In so doing, it pointed
out that another million dollars could have been clipped orF, had it
not been for certain increases "required by new federal regula-
tions," chiefly in the clothing and medical-care categories. The
caseload has apparently been dropping substantially in recent
months.
Reports from Colorado indicate that that state is having diffi-
culty collecting its tax on automobiles, recently levied to provide
funds for unemployment relief; and that the $20 million work
program is meeting with taxpayer opposition which has deterred
the governor from putting it into effect.
The Nebraska state relief committee's recent ruling that men on
work relief may be paid in food orders only has caused the
abandonment of a number of work plans in that state. Local of-
ficials in Omaha have objected strenuously to this proposal that
relief recipients be required to "work out" their grocery orders.
Fera Developments
FLUCTUATIONS in Relief. The published report of the
FERA for August showed a decline of 9 percent in relief
obligations incurred from June to July by all public agencies
spending federal funds. The number of families receiving help
declined 7 percent in this period. A later release showed that in
forty states obligations increased I percent from July to August
while families aided decreased 4 percent. From the peak in March,
when the number of families on relief totalled 4,560,000, there was
a decline of 23 percent to the July total of 3,510,000. The August
figure for forty states is 3,480,000.
Sources of Funds. Incomplete data for June and July show that
during the two months the amounts raised by state governments
represented approximately 10 percent of the total spent for un-
employment relief, while the amounts raised by local governments
declined from 31.4 to 29.3 percent and the federal contribution in-
creased from 57.5 to 60.5 percent. These data account for only
two thirds of the entire relief expenditure in these months. It is
pointed out that the proportions will probably shift somewhat
when figures for the missing states are added. In the first quarter
of 1933, federal funds provided 58.4 percent of all public relief,
while in the second quarter they amounted to 65.7 percent.
Rise in Food Prices. An 18 percent rise in food prices from
March 15 to August 15 created a vital relief problem and resulted
in August food costs being $7 million higher than they otherwise
392
THE SURVEY
November 1933
would have been. The FERA urged the state administrators
to increase food allowances to offset rising prices.
Child Labor Families. Families in destitute circumstances, de-
pendent upon the earnings of boys and girls who, through the ap-
plication of the minimum-age limit under NRA codes, find their
income cut off may now look to the FERA for special considera-
tion. "The FERA feels," Mr. Hopkins has stated, "that prompt
attention should be given to such cases before the point of destitu-
tion has arrived. May I urge the state and local emergency relief
administrations to secure at once cooperative arrangements with
the school systems whereby such cases may be brought to the
attention of the relief administrations."
Feeding Children in School. Authorization to use federal funds
for corrective feeding at school of children from relief families is
contained in a bulletin dated October 5:
This is to authorize State Emergency Relief Administrations to insti-
tute a program of child feeding in the schools for the children of families
now on relief lists who are attending school, where examination indicates
under-feeding and malnutrition. The authorization is limited to the chil-
dren of families on the relief lists and is still further limited to one meal per
day.
The child-feeding program is to be entirely under the direction of the
Local Emergency Relief Committee, or its authorized agents. Relief com-
mittees, however, should not relax their efforts to provide in the homes
sufficient nourishing food, especially milk, so that pre-school, as well as
school children may be properly fed. With probably six million children in
the homes of the unemployed now on our relief lists, and with the diffi-
culty of providing adequate and proper food for children in the homes, I
am anxious that safeguards be established to the fullest extent possible
against malnutrition among children.
' Statistical Interpretation. A stimulating questionnaire has gone
to the states calling for information to be used in interpreting
statistical data furnished each month. Among the questions were:
What does the term family mean in your reports?
What distinctions do you make between direct relief and work relief?
To what extent is relief given (a) in cash; (b) in kind?
Give location of all commissaries operated in your state.
Have extensive subsistence-garden programs been carried on in your
state?
Have you any data showing the number of women included among the
single resident persons reported?
Do you keep records showing why families leave the relief rolls?
To what extent are you eliminating duplications between direct-relief
and work-relief cases reported?
How much of the emergency unemployment relief load is carried by
private funds in your state?
Unemployment Relief Census. The first nation-wide census of
unemployment-relief families ever undertaken was being made in
October under the direction of the Division of Research and
Statistics. Individual forms for each family on relief in that month
were sent out to the state administrations, with instructions for
their use. Information was sought on color, residence, family
composition, and age and sex of each member. "This census is
designed," the states were told, "to provide certain information
essential for administrative purposes. The data asked for will
meet a growing public demand for information and will furnish a
useful background for projected sample studies on a more inten-
sive scale." Howard Myers, formerly with the Illinois State
Department of Labor, is in charge of the census.
W ork Relief for Women. "Very little has been done to develop a
program of work relief for women" the administration recently
reminded the state administrations in announcing the appoint-
ment of Ellen S. Woodward to the staff as director of women's
work. "We feel that a properly qualified person should be added
in each state to give full time to this work."
Federal Record of Local Personnel. The administrator has re-
quired from all states a record of the relief personnel on both
state and local staffs, covering:
Name, title, position, basis of employment (monthly, weekly, daily,
hourly) of each employe.
Salary paid.
Sources of each salary paid (federal, state, local public or private funds.)
States have also been reminded that the approval of the ad-
ministration must be secured —
Of the qualifications and salary of all persons employed by the state
administrations who are paid from federal funds. This must be understood
to include any salary increases granted to persons now so employed. The
field representative of this administration whose territory includes your
state is authorized to extend or withhold this approval.
Garnishment of Work Relief Wages. States have been notified of
the FERA ruling that, "No attachments may be made to the
wages of any persons on work relief where these wages originate in
or are offset by a grant of federal relief funds."
Busy Days in Atlanta
T TOW long ago seems the time when the winter was the high
•1 -1 point of activity for relief agencies! Atlanta reports that
the late summer months showed the peak-of-production in this
field. Applications to the Special Relief Committee increased
markedly, some being due to the displacement of colored em-
ployes by white after the adoption of the new codes. Some was
felt to be due to an exaggerated concept of the amount of federal-
relief subsidies to be anticipated. As a result, during August the
same number of families were receiving relief as in mid-January.
Subsidies and grants to private agencies were discontinued
during August, part of their personnel together with roughly
three quarters of the case load, being transferred to the public
agency. The remaining quarter, made up of families whose need
was the result of other factors than unemployment, was adjudged
to be a continuing obligation on local rather than federal funds.
Work-relief wages, which had been paid in groceries, have been
paid in cash since July, the change necessitating sweeping altera-
tions in the set-up. Instead of a uniform two-days-a-week, the
men are assigned work periods which vary with the size and need
of their families. These changes affected a working force of about
4500, engaged on about forty projects, chiefly the beautifying of
parks and playgrounds.
During the same period, production from community gardens
was at its height with twelve depots open to handle it. Some 215
tons of vegetables, to the retail value of about $18 thousand were
added to the relief resources of the community.
A Suburban County
XT d& 'SAU COUNTY, N. T., is neither agricultural nor indus-
•*• ' trial. Its population is composed of large estate-owners,
"white-collar." commuters, and those who furnish locally the
services and supplies required by such a home-owning, semi-urban
region. When unemployment strikes such a community, it is more
complete and devastating even than in the city. There is literally
no local employment to be found.
Dr. Edward T. Devine, director of the county's Emergency
Work Bureau, describes in his report for the past year the system
of volunteer committees developed in each of the numerous vil-
lages and towns to help in the selection of men and planning of
projects. A Central Index for the county has been developed by
the Bureau, through which the social and relief agencies clear
their families. Over 18 percent of the population is on work relief,
persons representing over fourteen thousand families having re-
ceived in wages 13,282,003. They have been employed on one
hundred separate projects, including many public improvements
to parks, beaches, waterworks and highways, and the renovation
of public buildings and their grounds; but including also much
clerical and office assistance to county and town governments, a
farm-labor survey, a system of real-estate index maps, a traffic-
accident survey, subsistence garden and canning projects, and
sewing rooms for women. Twenty-one teachers on work relief have
conducted a county Collegiate Center for adult education; while
sixty trained men and women have been recruited from the un-
employed to serve as playground and recreation directors.
November 1933
THE SURVEY
393
Jottings
THE first 10,000 men discharged from the Civilian Conserva-
tion Corps had gained, says the War Department, an average
of twelve pounds since their enrollment. Sixty tons, we make it,
of good American muscle.
ADULT education is closing in on New York policemen through
Dity College which has assigned professors to lecture them out
of such colorful locutions as "mugged," "squeal," "dip," and
'stool-pigeon."
A RECENT legal decision in Massachusetts invokes the "dominant
Durpose rule" and holds that no portion of the YMCA property
n Springfield is subject to taxation even though part of it is used
commercially as a dormitory.
JNEMPLOYMENT relief is responsible for the lifting of a fourteen-
year ban on clamming in the Rock River, Wisconsin. Shell "on
:he bank" brings 835 a ton, about forty bushels. Five or six
sushels a day is counted a good catch.
ACCORDING to Ralph G. Hurlin, statistician of the Russell Sage
Foundation, relief expenditures for the first half of 1933 probably
equalled the entire amount spent in 1932, more than $500 million.
The total figure for 1933 will, he believes, greatly exceed a billion
dollars.
As a result of increasing recognition of the importance of city
and regional planning in all forms of modern construction, a
course in city planning is now required at the School of Architec-
ture, Harvard University. Prof. Howard K. Menhinick is in
charge.
CREDITED to Thomas H. Beck of the Connecticut Fisheries and
jame Commission is the picturesque proposal to colonize "the
indigent over fifty" on lands where they would raise Christmas
trees and laurel "and aid in restoring game fisheries, thus paying
for their keep."
THE Yale Institute of Human Relations is now in the third and
final year of its inquiry into the causative factors relating to
juvenile delinquency, studies for which have gone forward in
Detroit, Boston and New Haven. Dr. William Healy of Boston
will correlate the findings for the final report.
SINCE it was at Hull-House that the Immigrant Protective
League of Chicago was born, it was particularly fitting that Jane
Addams should have been the speaker who, at the celebration of
its twenty-fifth anniversary, reviewed its contribution in the field
of immigrant aid and education.
THE Committee on Citizens Councils for Constructive Economy
promoted by the National Municipal League is publishing a
bulletin to advise groups in some 350 communities where the idea
lias taken hold on good organization practice and to caution them
against those that are not so good.
THE Harrisburg, Pa., Community Chest by analyzing the per-
sonnel of the boards of its member agencies has discovered that
17.8 percent of the board members made last year no contribu-
tion whatsoever to the chest, 45.6 percent gave less than $25 and
67.8 took no part in the campaign.
EARLY reports from community-chest campaigns are encouraging
though still too scattering to be conclusive. The few cities where
campaigns have been completed are about equally divided be-
tween those comfortably over and slightly under their goals.
Goals are generally at the same level as last year.
ON a hill overlooking Brownsville, Pa., in the heart of the soft-
coal region, unemployed miners have set up housekeeping in a
row of abandoned hive-like coke ovens which once glowed with
the fires of industrial activity. They call it the Coke Oven Cooper-
ative Colony and "no hoboes or other transients" need apply.
MORRIS HILLQUIT, lawyer, author, humanitarian and Socialist
leader, died in New York City last month at the age of sixty-four.
His labor activities included the guidance of the garment strike in
1909, which led to the famous protocol in 1910. His History of
Socialism in the United States is the classic work on this subject.
THE re-trial of the sensational "Scottsboro cases" ordered by the
U. S. Supreme Court, has been set for November 27 at a special
term of the Morgan County (Alabama) Circuit Court. Since the
original trial, at which the nine Negro boys were convicted and
sentenced to death, one of the alleged victims has changed her
story, denying that she was molested.
A NURSERY school for small children of thirty-odd evicted families
living in a tent colony not far from the mining town of Ward,
West Virginia, has been started by Pioneer Youth (69 Bank
Street, New York). The teacher is a young graduate of Mount
Holyoke. Tuition is " in terms of work since no money is avail-
able."
A STUDY of slums and blighted areas, their causes, prevention,
elimination and conversion for proper housing and other uses, is
announced by the Phelps-Stokes Fund, under the direction of
James Ford, 101 Park Avenue, New York. While the study will
bear particularly on New York the experience of other cities,
American and foreign, will be considered and analyzed.
THE National Conference of Jews and Christians, Newton D.
Baker chairman, has organized a discussion group to tour the
country and conduct seminars and round tables in the interest of
racial and religious understanding and tolerance. The unit in-
cludes Father John Elliott Ross of the University of Virginia,
Rabbi Morris S. Lazeron of Baltimore and the Rev. Everett R.
Clinchy, Presbyterian minister.
THE twenty or so agencies now living amicably together as the
National Health Council at 450 Seventh Avenue, New York, are
preparing a spring moving out of the cloak and suit district into
the salubrious heights of Rockefeller City. Reduced rent will be
an immediate gain with the prospect that as more agencies come
in a real center of scientific, social, and health organizations, shar-
ing common services, will develop.
LESS than 9000 quota numbers, 5.24 percent of the 153,831 avail-
able, were issued by the State Department during the last
immigration year against 8.22 percent in 1932. Since not all visas
were actually used it is obvious that the number of recently
arrived aliens is negligible. During the five years from 1925 to
1929 inclusive, 97.56 percent of the total quota number of 803,-
210 were used.
WAR-TIME radium poisoning claimed its twenty-second victim
when Grace Fryer died in a New Jersey hospital last month. Miss
Fryer was one of the young workers who contracted this incurable
industrial disease by following the instructions to use the lips to
point brushes used in painting luminous watch faces and instru-
ment dials. Survey readers will remember the poignant plea for
industrial disease compensation made by Katherine Schaub, an
earlier victim, in the issue of May I, 1932.
394
THE SURVEY
November 1933
Education for Life
THE NEW LEISURE CHALLENGES THE SCHOOLS. Shall Recreation Enrich
or Impoverish Life?, by Eugene T. Lies. National Education Association. 326 pp.
Distributed by the National Recreation Association. 326 pp. Price, cloth $2, paper
$1.50 postpaid of The Survey.
'VT'OU people of the horse-and-buggy age, do you realize what
•* is happening to the public school ? Remember that personage
of severe mien who used to ladle the three R's out to you? Can
you imagine her pumping up vim for her daily task by tap dancing,
as grade teachers do today in at least three cities! What would
you think of setting up a library in the first grade, of asking the
sixth-grade children to model in clay a 6o-piece symphony orches-
tra, or of using public facilities so that highschool students could
learn how to give holiday parties for their parents? Fancy a city
educational system in which every school possesses an art room,
or one in which every school boasts a chorus and an orchestra.
Fortunately the view that education should prepare for life-
all aspects of life — began to refashion the American educational
process some years ago otherwise the New Leisure, with its ex-
pansion of opportunity for living, would have come before we
were at all ready for it. Just how far, and in what ways, public
schooling is discharging this enlarged responsibility is the story
that Mr. Lies' compact volume tells. In gathering material, he
visited thirty-six school systems and obtained data from 418
other cities. Among the heads under which he marslialls his
findings are: physical education, reading and literature, dra-
matics, music, art and handcrafts, nature study, social training
and extra-curricular affairs, as well as the whole range of ac-
tivities being carried on after school hours.
The story of the gradual extension of school facilities to non-
pupils has already been told but Mr. Lies' survey of this field
both freshens and adds to our knowledge. The book is replete
with practical suggestions and will be found useful by both
technicians and laymen in the educational and recreational fields.
CLARENCE ARTHUR PERRY
Recreation Department, Russell Sage Foundation
The National Minimum
INSECURITY: A Challenge to America, ty Abraham Epstein. Smith and Haas.
680 pp. Price $4 postpaid of The Survey.
* I ''HE hazards threatening the economic security of the average
•*• member of a capitalist society have seldom been so ruthlessly
and unanswerably demonstrated as in this book. Epstein con-
fesses himself a partisan, but he is a partisan who commands
respect, for the logical building up of his indictment and the
marshalling of his evidence are little short of masterly. And his
impatience with the complacency of his fellowcountrymen, and
his passion for social justice give his book a colour and vitality,
the more welcome because so rare in these days of alleged academic
impartiality.
Considering in turn unemployment, sickness, old age, in-
validity, liability to accident, and family responsibility, Epstein
shows how precarious is the economic security of the individual.
Particularly valuable are those sections of his book dealing with
unemployment, where he makes excellent use of the rich material
in the as yet scarcely tapped Senate Hearings on Unemployment
to demonstrate the utter breakdown of the American relief
system and the limitations of proposed measures for eliminating
unemployment. As a practical reformer he invariably lays greater
stress on the present possibilities of the American situation than
on the theoretical potentialities of alternative remedies.
And yet, admirable and convincing as is his demonstration of
the need for reform, I cannot altogether agree with Epstein's
view that social insurance is the panacea. To call the broad
guarantee for which he pleads insurance is inappropriate — and
unfortunate — in many ways. It introduces the bogey of insol-
vency, a concept which has no meaning in regard to an inclusive
national scheme necessarily so largely financed out of general
taxation. It suggests the idea of a quid pro quo and of a pre-
determined benefit in proportion to the magnitude (not neces-
sarily duration) of contributions, a contractual relationship
practically impossible of fulfilment in these days of shifting price
levels and violent changes in national economic wellbeing. It
implies that the risk insured against is one to which all the in-
sured in any class are subject and which none can control, clearly
an unjustifiable assumption in regard to the evil for which family
allowances are offered as a remedy.
Epstein is in fact making a plea for the National Minimum
financed out of taxation collected on the basis of ability to pay
along the lines made familiar by Sydney and Beatrice Webi>
many years ago. There is of course no reason why, superimposed
upon such a national minimum, there should not be systems of
social insurance providing for various groups assured payments
for a limited time in defined contingencies, which could be as
solvent and as carefully adjusted to each type of risk as are any
private insurance schemes today. But the fact remains that
Epstein's "social insurance" is tantamount to the conferring of a
right to an economic minimum, and rights involve duties. It is the
absence of a detailed analysis of these duties, of the conditions
which society must lay down for its own economic protection in
return for the right to the minimum that constitutes the most
serious weakness of Epstein's stimulating book. E. M. BURNS
Columbia University
The New York Region
FROM PLAN TO REALITY. Regional Plan Association. 142 pp. Price $2 postpaid
of The Survey.
AT THE time the Regional Plan of New York and its Environs
**• was formulated in 1929, after eight years of study and re-
search and at a cost of one million dollars, it announced that in
forty years its recommendations could be carried out. Today,
only four years later, according to another survey made to dis-
cover to what extent the region has developed along the lines sug-
gested, one tenth of the plan has become reality. That this is no
idle boast is apparent after the reading of this the first volume
published by the Regional Plan Association, which was organized
to act as an advisory agency to the hundreds of local govern-
mental units in the region.
Although there are perhaps insurgents who question the ortho-
dox philosophy underlying accepted methods of regional planning,
it is difficult to see how anyone could fail to welcome the specific
achievements outlined in this volume. Five hundred and fifty-five
miles of major highways — one fifth of those shown on the plan-
have been built, rebuilt or placed under construction; three quar-
ters of the express highways proposed in the plan have been com-
pleted. One hundred and thirty-six miles of new parkways and
boulevards have been completed or are being built, and another
130 miles planned — 28 percent of the plan's specification. From
1928 to 1932 the park acreage had increased from 94,534 to 116,-
200 acres, continuing the remarkable increase of the previous half
dozen years. These are some of the outstanding practical accom-
plishments, in addition to which it should be mentioned that laws
permitting planning to be conducted locally throughout the
Region are now general. Three out of five municipalities have
zoning ordinances; 109 have official municipal planning boards —
an increase of almost 45 percent in the last four years; while eight
counties have official planning boards.
In the section devoted to present opportunities early action is
recommended on more than fifty specific projects, not only be-
cause of their own importance, but because without them the full
benefit of previous expenditures cannot be achieved. Obviously,
too, with the undertaking of public works on an immense scale as
a means toward economic recovery, time, money and mistakes
can be saved by following a sound public-works program already
formulated. This is the outstanding volume of planning literature,
containing careful and reliable data as to the extent in which an
accepted plan is actually being followed.
LOULA D. LASKER
The New Hawaiians
HAWAII AND ITS RACE PROBLEM, by William Alherton Du Pay. U. S. Gov-
ernment Printing Office. 131 pp. Price $1.
Tj^ULLY illustrated and beautifully printed, this astonishing
••• government "document" starts out almost like a tourist cir-
cular, with accounts of the history, present condition, and scenic
interests of the Hawaiian Islands. But these general chapters
only furnish the setting for a discussion of the race situation in
Hawaii and the unique experiment in self-government that has
arisen from it. "Race prejudice," says the author, "is a mad, in-
tense, and unreasoning thing, and arousing it where it does not
exist is an act as malicious as introduction of the plague." The
tiarmonious cooperation of the Occidental and Oriental groups
that compose the population of the territory is described in detail.
Their Americanization has been complete and inevitable, even
though they have retained many cultural traits and tastes. There
is practically no racial friction except when introduced from with-
out. Intermarriage is gradually fusing the Japanese, Filipinos,
Portuguese, Hawaiians, Chinese, Puerto Ricans, Koreans, and
Anglo-Saxons into a single stock in no way inferior to the parent
stocks, though dominated by the Euro-American culture. Con-
trary to an impression studiously diffused by enemies of Hawaiian
self-government, the crime rate of the territory is not excessive,
considering the social and occupational composition of the people.
The chief problem of the islands is that many years of pros-
perity and a school system too closely modelled on that of in-
dustrialized mainland states, have produced a discrepancy be-
tween the educational attainments of the Hawaiian-born and
their vocational opportunities. This problem — which involves not
Dnly the introduction of new trades and industries but a gradual
•eplacement of the plantation system with a farm economy more
n keeping with western social ideals — is on the way of being in-
telligently worked out. But more than any other part of the
United States, perhaps, Hawaii is dependent in its economic de-
velopment on world conditions; and the task of absorbing a highly
ntelligent people in agricultural pursuits will not be an easy one.
Incidentally, this attractive little book shows one way in which
lepartments of government might more frequently contribute
.upplementary reading for dull highschool courses in social
studies. BRUNO LASKER
BOOKS THAT LIVE ON
FOR THE SOCIAL WORKER
BEHAVIOUR ASPECTS OF CHILD CONDUCT
By Esther Loring Richards, B.A., M.D., D.5e.
Cloth, 8 vo., 314pp., $2.50
«
THE DYNAMICS OF THERAPY
IN A CONTROLLED RELATIONSHIP
By Jessie Ta/f, A.B., Ph.D.
Clolh, 8 vo., 307 pp., $2.50
«.
GROWING UP
By Karl de Schweinitz
Cloth, 12 mo., 111 pp., $1.75
<
GETTING READY TO BE A MOTHER
By Carolyn C. Van Blarcom, R.N.
Second Ed., Cloth, 12 mo., 289 pp., $1.75
THE MACMILLAN CO. — NEW YORK
"A decade hence there will be Socialists who wilt turn to It In assessing the views of
the present period."
Socialist Planning and a
Socialist Program
A Symposium edited for the L. I. D.
by HARRY W. LA IDLER, Ph.D.
With an Introduction by Norman Thomas
$2.00
"Sets up a concrete goal toward which an increasing number of intelligent men and
women may strive." — The Coll of Youth
"Interesting to all who are interested in Government." — Montgomery, Ala,,
A dvertiser
"A penetrating look at the present American economic tangle." — Columbia
Afissourian
FALCON PRESS, Inc., 330 West 42nd St., New York, N. Y.
DIRECTORY OF SOCIAL AGENCIES
NEW YORK
40th ed. 1933-34
Tf A consolidated, classified and descriptive directory, ^f The
handbook of social workers, teachers, doctors, lawyers,
donors, and others in need of information as to the social
service resources of New York. 1f For over half a century one
of the activities of the Charity Organization Society.
800 pages Cloth $3.00
Published by the
CHARITY ORGANIZATION SOCIETY, 105 East 22nd St., New York
Studies in the
Social Trends : Health, Population Practice of Social Work
1EALTH AND ENVIRONMENT, by Edgar Sydenstricker. Recent Social Trends
Monographs. McGraw-Hill. 217 pp. Price tZ.50 postpaid of The Survey.
"OPULATION TRENDS IN THE UNITED STATES, by Warren S. Thompson
and P. K. Whelpton. Recent Social Trends Monographs. McGraw-Hill. 40S pp.
Price $4 postpaid of The Survey.
FT WAS Raymond Pearl, I think, who, discussing the hereditary
L nature of longevity, used the simile of clocks: some people —
he eight-day clocks — apparently draw from their forbears the
apacity to live to a ripe old age; others, like the clocks that run
nly for a day or three days or five, die relatively young, though
he circumstances of their lives may have been favorable. Any-
*ne, of course, can be cut off by accident or undue infection before
No. 1 . INTERVIEWS — A Study in the Methods of Analyz-
ing and Recording Social Casework Interviews. $1.00
No. II. SOCIAL CASEWORK — Generic and Specific. A
Report of the Milford Conference. $1.00
No. III. SOCIAL WORK ETHICS — Lula Jean Elliott.
$.50
AMERICAN ASSOCIATION OF SOCIAL WORKERS
1 30 East 22d Street, New York
(In answering advertisements please mention THE SURVEY)
395
396
THE SURVEY
November 1933
his "natural" span, just as the eight-day clock can be jolted out
of its appointed rhythm.
In the monograph which amplifies and complements his chap-
ter in the report of the Research Committee on Recent Social
Trends, Mr. Sydenstricker accepts the evidence that longevity is
hereditary. What he finds overpoweringly significant, however, is
the importance of environment as a factor which can be controlled
far better than we yet have done in the interests of making life
happier and more vigorous, if not longer, and of preventing the
many disabilities, illnesses and fatalities which clearly are due
not to the individual's inherited powers but to the conditions
under which he lives. He believes that what data we now possess
assure us "that the prevention of that mortality and that ill
health which are demonstrably due to unfavorable environment
will not weaken the race." Our average length of life has been
greatly increased in recent decades, due largely to changing atti-
tudes and conditions which have resulted in a great decline in the
deathrate of children and adults under the age of forty or fifty; so
far there is no evidence that environmental changes have made
life longer or surer for those past that age, and in spite of the
lowering deathrate, longevity is not increasing. The author's
clear and critical discussion of our facts on life and death consti-
tute not only an invaluable source of reference but also encourag-
ing proof of past efforts and stimulus to future ones.
Recent news that Manhattan's school enrolment had declined
by 38,000 in the past five years illustrates concretely the current
traced through the monograph by Warren S. Thompson and P. K.
Whelpton. With a birthrate declining more rapidly than its
deathrate, the United States is becoming an older people — fewer
children, more elders — and is progressing more rapidly than
population students would have dared to predict a few years ago
to the status of a stationary population. They believe that our
decline in population growth since 1923 may have been a factor
contributing to the present economic depression and must be
most seriously considered in economic and social planning for the
future.
The most immediate practical consequences of slower popula-
tion growth, they point out, will be those required by kinds of
business that depend on increasing numbers of consumers for a
growing market, such, for example, as real estate or agriculture.
On the bright side is the possibility that with slower growth
"communities will be forced to find something else than mere size
to be proud of. ... There is probably little hazard in predicting
that the quality of living will secure greater attention than
heretofore." MARY Ross
RUN OF THE SHELVES
A DESCRIPTIVE LIST OF THE NEW BOOKS
FREEDOM FOR MOTHERS, by John O'Kclly Smith. Dorrance, 212 pp. Price
$1.75 postpaid of The Survey.
STATE compensation of motherhood, the single tax, "war and
relative values."
FETAL, NEWBORN. AND MATERNAL MORBIDITY AND MORTALITY.
Report of the subcommittee on Factors and Causes of Fetal, Newborn, and Maternal
Morbidity and Mortality. Hugo Ehrenfesl, M.D., chairman. Appleton-Century.
486 pp. Price $3 postpaid of The Survey.
THE most recent volume in the series of the White House Con-
ference on Child Health and Protection.
AS OTHERS SEE CHICAGO; Impressions of Visitors, 1673-1933, compiled and
edited by Bessie Louise Pierce, assisted by Joe L. Norris. University of Chicago
Press. 54O pp. Price $3 postpaid of The Survey.,
JACQUES MARQUETTE, who came to the Chicago Portage by
canoe in 1673, helped write this book. So did Harriet Martineau,
Rudyard Kipling, Lady DufFus Hardy, William T. Stead, Paul
Bourget, G. K. Chesterton, among many others. The book in-
cludes letters and journals of early residents, with brief biographi-
cal paragraphs. The result is a book of real flavor and human
interest. It gives, too, the amazing story of how American cities
"grew up" beyond the older seaboard in the crowded decades of
The Century of Progress.
SAFER CITIES— Published by National Safety Council, 20 North Wacker Drive,
Chicago. Price $1.
A USEFUL pamphlet reproducing publications and data sheets
submitted by some twenty cities which participated in the 1932
traffic safety contest conducted by the National Safety Council.
That safety work brings results is proved by the fact that while
motor-vehicle deaths decreased 9 percent in 1932 from the pre-
vious three-year average, the decrease in all cities reporting in
the contest was 16 percent and in the twenty-one winning cities
27 percent.
RACES AND ETHNIC GROUPS IN AMERICAN LIFE, by T. J. Woofter, Jr.
Recent Social Trends Monographs. McGraw-Hill, 247 pp. Price $2.50 postpaid of
The Survey.
CHAPTERS on The Ethnic Pattern, on immigration, agriculture
and urban occupations, health, education, social problems, race
discrimination, intermarriage, assimilation of racial groups within
this country, and constructive possibilities of racial adjustments
bring to this monograph a wealth of well-ordered facts substan-
tiating and enlarging the chapter on this subject contributed by
the author to the report of the Committee on Recent Social
Trends.
HEALTH STUDIES: HOME AND COMMUNITY, by F. M. Gregg and Hugh
Grant Rowett. World Book Company. 25S pp. Price 76 cents postpaid of The Surrey.
HEALTH STUDIES: PERSONAL HEALTH, by P. M. Gregg and Hugh Grant
Rowell. World Book Company. 314 pp. Price 84 cents postpaid of The Survey.
THE POINT of view of the authors of these attractive illustrated
texts is given in the preface affixed to each of them: "This is a
book in which you are to do your own work." Each chapter is a
specific study with problems to be worked out in the classroom or
at home, relating the facts of science to practical living. "What-
ever you get by your own action, by your observation and prac-
tice, means more to you than anything acquired by studying a
book." The two volumes together present a course in health edu-
cation which was tried successfully in actual classrooms before
publication in book form.
PLANNING FOR THE SMALL AMERICAN CITY, by Russell Van Nest Black,
Public Administration Service, No. 32. 99 pp. Price $1.
MUNICIPAL DEBT DEFAULTS, Their Prevention and Adjustment, edited by
Carl H. Chatters, Public Administration Service, No. 33. 55 pp. Price 50t.
BOTH of these publications are written to offer practical sugges-
tions for solving pressing current problems. In the monograph or.
planning, Mr. Black deals primarily with the city of less than 50
thousand population, though many of the principles of adminis-
tration and design which he discusses are applicable to largei
cities. While outlining the technique for making a plan the authoi
also shows the number of ways in which a plan may go wrong
and how to avoid unnecessary mistakes and misconceptions
The editor of this book is right when he intimates that this pub-
lication is especially timely now, for with the planning of industry
and public works going forward on a national scale, unles;
municipalities put increasing emphasis on local planning, na-
tional planning can not hope to succeed.
The second publication is a report by the executive director o:
the Municipal Finance Officers' Association in collaborator
with A. M. Millhouse, Simeon E. Leland, Cushman McGee anc
C. E. Rightor. Pul lie officials must indeed take the lead in thi
solution of any equitable debt readjustment, but in doing so the;
should be mindful to weigh the cost of default in terms of mone;
and morale against the social cost of curtailment of essentia
activities, involving life, health, property and education. T<
guide perplexed office-holders along these lines is the aim of thi
work. Those who are most pessimistic may perhaps take nev
heart in estimates herein given that of the gross municipa
bonded indebtedness of $18,500,000,000 at the beginning of 1933
the relatively small amount of $1,200,000,000 of principal am
interest, (including the large defaults of Detroit, Michigan, am
the special districts of Cook County, Illinois) was in default ii
the summer of 1933.
November 1933
THE SURVEY
397
CO MM UN 1C A TIONS
Design for Nursing
'o THE EDITOR: I have read with considerable interest the article
n September Midmonthly Survey by Anne Scott on the subject
)esign for Nursing. I have had years of intimate knowledge of
ursing so believe that I am entitled to be considered acquainted
with nurses and nursing. I regret that a publication with the
eputation that has usually been accorded the Survey printed this
rticle, because I find there are nurses who are reacting much the
ame as I react. If the content of this article is indicative of the
alue of the content of other articles in the Survey one can but
uestion the worth of any article found in the Survey and so hes-
:ate to recommend it to prospective readers.
Cleveland, Ohio V. LOTA LORIMER, R. N.
'o THE EDITOR: In reply to Miss Lorimer's letter, I would like to
ay that I am in the dark as to why she objects to the publication
f Design for Nursing. It is a true account of a club conversation,
s it too truthful to be borne or does Miss Lorimer resent the in-
rusion of the general public at the moment of a professional
Crisis?
It is my honest belief as a nurse that if we do not let the general
mblic into our complete confidence now, we will lose their sup-
>ort forever. Who are better fitted to help us out of our dilemma
lan the intelligent, alert club women of America?
Or perhaps Miss Lorimer feels that the ladies belittled our
>ersonal service and skill by reducing them to dollars and cents.
Vly only answer is that this is rather a typical attitude among
my non-nurse friends today and I think we nurses must face it.
'eople are a little tired of hearing about the sacrifices nurses
make; they would like to see us a little more intelligent in the
landling of our own problems. ANNE SCOTT
Young People Under the Codes
'o THE EDITOR: The figures given by Margaret H. Hogg in the
August Survey Midmonthly show that unemployment is greatest
mong persons under the age of 25, even greater than among
those over 65. Formerly these young people had considerable
:hoice. They could enter unskilled labor, where their health and
strength would be exploited for the highest immediate returns. If
social prestige was considered of greater value than money, they
:ould enter white-collar jobs. Here they might find better op-
Dortunities for advancement, but often the exploitation in blind-
dley jobs was greater than in common labor. Or if ambitious
:hey might enter some form of apprenticeship or select a position
where the major part of the compensation consisted of instruction
ind the opportunity to advance to higher positions.
Today, under the codes, this last opportunity has been closed.
While some forms of apprenticeship may continue on a small scale,
is for example the preparation of college graduates for positions
"is salesmen, in general the codes have abolished apprenticeship,
n the electrical manufacturers' code for example the minimum
wage is 40 cents per hour, with certain exceptions that are not
ikely to be available for apprentices. Can anyone imagine that an
>rdinary employer will pay 40 cents per hour to a totally in-
ixperienced beginner, and at the same time offer him the opportu-
[lities of apprenticeship at considerable cost to himself? He cer-
tainly will not. At the hearings on this code, the claim was made
*:hat there were enough experienced men so no learners were
Deeded. But the one who made this claim did not say what was to
done with the young people who were to be deprived of the
thance to learn. The codes close these opportunities, and to a
greater extent than ever destine the young people to exploitation,
?r if they do not find a job on which their youth can be exploited,
o unemployment.
I have suggested the following clause to the National Recovery
Administration. It is not perfect, and if anyone has a better sug-
gestion I would like to support it instead. But it does seem that, if
there is any organization interested in getting a fair deal for the
young people, it should insist that some provision should be made
for them. They should either adopt this clause or a better one:
"The provisions of minimum age and wage shall not apply to
any person taking a combined course of study and practice which
is intended primarily as a preparation for positions paying $50 per
week or more, whether the course is under the control of a school,
or an employer, or under joint control. If the public officials hav-
ing general charge of vocational education in the community in
which the industry is located determine that the course is not
suitable preparation for positions paying $50 per week, or if the
employer refuses to permit access to the public officials to all
desired data about the course, no exemptions from minimum age
or wage shall be permitted."
Worcester, Mass. A. W. FORBES
Can Wets and Drys Agree?
To THE EDITOR: Professor Henderson in the October Midmonthly
cannot resist Christopher Morley's remark about how much
greater for Plymouth Rock to land on the Puritans than vice
versa. The Puritans did not land on Plymouth Rock. A prosaic
fact. And what is the connection between the Rock landing on
the Puritan who was not there, and a physiological discussion?
Perhaps a rock descending on Dr. Emerson would meet the de-
mands of logic and fact! The trouble with some of us is we see
people getting drunk on beer and it takes a powerful lot of argu-
ing to convince us that we don't. FRANKIE G. MERSON
Instructor in Social Science, Keuka College
New School for Workers
To THE EDITOR: On October 16 a new experiment in workers
education was launched in High Point, N. C., center of southern
labor activity. The Carolina School for Workers is the name of
this new educational project whose object is the development of
native leadership among industrial and rural workers, which is
so greatly needed at this time. Courses and discussion groups
will be offered in economics, labor history, trade union tactics,
social psychology and kindred subjects. The curriculum will be
expanded as rapidly as possible to offer a wider range of subjects
and activities. The ultimate aim of the school will be to develop
a labor culture which will lead to the establishment of a coopera-
tive society. The method of study and general procedure will be
along the lines of the Highlander Folk School in Tennessee. Of
course, we are greatly in need of the liberal magazines, news-
papers, and books on the above-mentioned subjects. Any con-
tributions may be sent direct to the undersigned.
ALTON LAWRENCE, JACK FIES, LAWRENCE HOGAN, DIRECTORS
High Point, N. C.
Appraisal
To THE EDITOR: In your arresting comment on the work of the
Survey Associates, you referred to "shuttles of information, ex-
perience and appraisal." This word "appraisal" caught my at-
tention and I hope that you will expand the idea which it signifies.
We do not distinguish clearly enough between measurement
and appraisal. There is something fascinating about the definite-
ness of figures, even when they mean relatively little. Hence, to
many of us, both professional workers and laymen, a statistical
report seems to measure something and we rest too confidently
upon an array of digits as though these represented stability. The
"rubber dollar" is demonstrated in the budgets of social institu-
tions; $50,000 spent by one institution may equate with very im-
portant changes in persons, whereas the same amount spent by
another institution may result in trivial adjustments.
We measure where the factors are significant and not merely
definite. Take membership, for example: this is about as univer-
sally used as any one factor. But membership is a measure, if at
all, of opportunity, not of results.
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WORKER WANTED
WANTED: Thoroughly trained and experienced case
worker for the social service department of a children's
institution in the middle west. Modern, progressive
child caring program. 7188 SURVEY.
SITUATIONS WANTED
Man thoroughly trained in publicity, edi-
torial work, money raising and business
management desires position in social
service. Combines education, breeding and
experience. Salary requirements moderate.
Best of references. 7173 SURVEY.
YOUNG MAN, Jewish. Social outlook. 5 years of
practical experience in adult and boy's work. Uni-
versity trained. 7184 SURVEY.
Business girl, afternoons, evenings; institution office
or children; light housework, prepare dinner; main-
tenance, small fee. 7185 SURVEY.
Young man, A.B. degree, trained case worker, seeks
opening in child welfare agency, emergency relief, or
transient work. Good personality. Capable. 7186
SURVEY.
Young woman, college graduate, with healthy well-
behaved daughter 2, wishes housekeeping job. Expe-
rienced in care of motherless home. Especially good
with children. 7187 SURVEY.
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which trained nurses are taking In the betterment
of the world. Put it in your library. $3.00 a year.
450 Seventh Ave., New York, N. Y.
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by the National Committee for Mental Hygiene,
450 Seventh Ave., New York.
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For Sale
ENCYCLOPAEDIA OF THE SOCIAL SCIENCES
Edwin R. A. Seligman, Editor-in-Chief
Tobe published in fifteen volumesby THE MACMILLAN COMPANY.
The first eight volumes (List Price $7.50) perfect condition — $35.00.
Write or phone (Algonquin 4-7490)
SURVEY GRAPHIC
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Your Own Agency
<( This is the counseling and placement agency
f sponsored jointly by the American Association
of Social Workers and the National Organiza-
tion for Public Health Nursing. National.
Non-profit making.
GERTRUDE R. STEIN, Inc.
VOCATIONAL SERVICE AGENCY
18 EAST 41sT STREET, NEW YORK
Lexington 2-6677
We are interested in placing those who have
a professional attitude towards their work.
Executive secretaries, stenographers, case
workers, hospital social service workers, settle-
ment directors; research, immigration, psychi-
atric, personnel workers and others.
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Appraisal might be generally used to indicate a comparison be-
tween a group of factors taken as an integrated whole and a simi-
lar group of factors also taken as a whole. The appraiser would
then be able to j udge the relative significance of the stated factors.
In social institutions, we may have to edge away from too great
dependence on the precise — at least until we know more about
what these apparently definite factors mean.
Just now when budgets force their way into the center of atten-
tion almost to the exclusion of other factors, the results which the
expenditure of a given sum of money produce are arrived at chief-
ly by appraisal and are of vast importance.
President, George Williams College, Chicago EDWARD C. JENKINS
Basic Elements of Rural Life
To THE EDITOR: Miss Paton's retort to the "7 points" in the
July Midmonthly Survey seems to be based on the notion that
I had set up a straw man for college students who are concerned
with rural life. My only intention in submitting the article to
the Survey Associates was to try to inform thinking readers of
the deliberations of approximately three hundred students who
had conducted their own conference at Bethany College the
preceding October. It avails nothing to argue the question of
which is worse, to be unemployed in the city or to be underpaid
on the farm. Likewise, it is futile to argue rather than to discuss
the question of whether the level of living of the city's unem-
ployed is lower or higher than that of the open country's under-
paid. Since the July Midmonthly came out, I have had the op-
portunity of working with the Federal Emergency Relief Admin
istration and I am convinced-that both of these levels are muc
lower than they should be. I pass, therefore, to the larger aspec
of the whole issue.
In August 1933 rural-minded students from a score or more i
our leading colleges met in another four-day conference sessio
at East Radford, Virginia, to re-discuss the basic elements o)
rural life in relation to national life. They reiterated their empha
sis on points like the "7" referred to above and asked seriously
"Why have we in college been taught to see everything wron
and little or nothing right with rural life — the farm, the hom<
town, and the rural communities? There are good points — desir
able things — about farm life as well as city life; and we propos<
to help thinking students see them."
Furthermore, during the time intervening between the tw<
Conferences I visited about thirty-five colleges and universitie:
in which I reported to ten thousand students in assembly group
and classes the findings of the former Conference, namely, th'
"7 points" and asked for reactions to them. The only outstandin
adverse response came from a mature student who rose to inquir
emphatically, "Now what are you going to do about the price o
eggs for the farmer? You know he is getting only ten cents
dozen, don't you?"
Seemingly, to me, serious-minded college students of rural lif
are appreciating, as never before, at least in their generation
that country life has some things which are worth saving.
E. L. KIRK.PATRIC:
Rural Relief Advisor, FERA, Washington, D. C.
(In answering advertisements please mention THE SURVEY)
398
November 1933
THE SURVEY
399
r\ o o T p . of Pe°Ple
W D Q onH Triincrs
and Things
Cause for Thanksgiving
TT'S still "tentative" and "confidential" and
•*• "not for publication" and all that, but from
the counsel chamber of the program committee
of the National Conference of Social Work The
Survey's long-eared little bird has brought the
glad word of a forthright tackling of the job of
simplifying the program for the Kansas City
meeting, the dates of which, by the way are
May 20-26. Mass meals, says the little bird,
are practically out, with no luncheons sched-
uled except on Wednesday, and no dinners ex-
cept on Thursday. The program committee
itself will take responsibility for the 9 A.M.
meetings which will be limited to three daily,
each with a different approach to the same gen-
eral topic. Division chairmen will apparently be
responsible for only three meetings during the
week instead of the usual five. The afternoons
remain the happy hunting-ground of the asso-
ciate and special groups, but even they, recall-
ing the breathlessness of Philadelphia and
Detroit, are showing an inclination to cut down
I their output of meetings.
NEWCOMER to the staff of the FERA in
Washington is Howard B. Myers of Chicago,
since 1929 chief of the division of research and
statistics of the Illinois Department of Labor.
He will act as assistant to Corrington Gill who
heads the FERA's statistical department. Mr.
Myers, or Dr. Myers as his PhD. from Chi-
cago University entitles him to be called,
helped organize the Illinois Relief Commission
and to set up its statistical department.
CHANGES in the personnel of the FERA bring
T. J. Edmonds of Des Moines and Howard O.
Hunter of Grand Rapids to its field staff and
occasion some rearrangement of territory. Mr.
Edmonds, loaned by the Iowa Tuberculosis As-
sociation, succeeds Sherrard Ewing, resigned, in
the territory including Missouri, Minnesota,
Kansas, Iowa, and the two Dakotas. Mr.
Hunter, long identified with community-chest
work, will cover Indiana, Ohio, Michigan, Il-
linois, Kentucky and West Virginia. He suc-
ceeds Rowland Haines who has been detailed to
special assignments first with the Nebraska
relief administration.
RICHARD L. CAREY of Philadelphia, in
charge of the international secretariat of the
Society of Friends, died recently in Berlin.
THE flag over the great bronze doors of the
Russell Sage Foundation building in New York
was at half mast the other day and more than
one passerby felt a twinge of apprehension.
One of the trustees? One of the staff? Some
pretty important people belonged behind those
impressive doors. But it was neither trustee nor
social expert whose passing was marked by the
half-masted flag. It was another valued worker,
Amelia Taylor, for sixteen years the cleaning
woman on the tenth floor.
EMIL G. STEGER has resigned from the di-
rectorship of the St. Louis Citizens Committee
on Relief and Employment to devote full time
to the Community Fund and Council and to
United Relief, Inc. Peter Kasius, general
manager of the Provident Association, replaces
him. Harry Wallace, chairman of last year's
Committee of 600, replaces Robert L. Lund as
chairman of the CCRE.
To her already notable collection of honors,
foreign and domestic, Clara D. Noyes, na-
tional director of the Red Cross nursing
service, has added La Medaille de Reconnais-
sance Franchise, conferred on her last summer
by the French government when she, as chair-
man of the American Nurses' Memorial Com-
mittee, visited the Florence Nightingale School
of Nursing in Bordeaux. The International
Council of Nurses, the meeting of which took
Miss Noyes to France, will hold its next Con-
gress in 1937 in England.
AND speaking of honors to our favorite
nurses, Dean Annie D. Goodrich of the Yale
School of Nursing, who already holds the
Medaille d'Hygiene Publique of the French
Government, has received a silver medal from
the same source in recognition of her service to
public health.
The Scouts Move In
THE long-cherished hope of the Boy Scouts
of America for an adequate and appropri-
ate country headquarters for their training
courses was realized with the recent dedication
of the Mortimer L. Schiff Scout Reservation
at Mendham, N. J. The estate of some 480
acres, fully improved, was the gift, with a
fund for its maintenance, of the late Mrs.
Jacob H. Schiff as a memorial to her son who
was president of the Boy Scouts at the time of
his death two years ago. The property is ad-
mirably adapted to Scout purposes including
as it does hills and fields, woodland pierced
with winding trails, water courses, fine buildings
and a sixteen acre lake. The Reservation will
house the Training School for Professional
Leaders and will be the center for all sorts of
projects for training volunteers and develop-
ing new Scout techniques. At the dedication
ceremonies John M. Schiff, son of Mortimer L.
Schiff, presented the keys to the property to
Walter W. Head, president of Boy Scouts.
The dedication address was made by Dr.
John H. Finley of The New York Times.
MARY P. WHEELER, formerly New Jersey
ERA Relief Service Department manager, has
gone to Florida to head up a similar department
under Marcus Fagg, state director.
THE National Federation of Settlements,
thanks to the hospitality of Christodora House,
has a new address, 147 Avenue B, New York.
The music division remains for the present at
the old address, 101 West 58 Street.
HYMAN KAPLAN of the San Francisco Fed-
eration of Jewish Charities has been made head
of the new family-relief division of the reorgan-
ized local relief administration, now under
public auspices.
THE National Society for the Prevention of
Blindness has stepped up Eleanor P. Brown
from the position of secretary to that of asso-
ciate director. Regina E. Schneider becomes
secretary. Miss Brown will have administra-
tive charge of the training, placement and
supervision of medical social workers in eye
clinics and hospitals.
MARY M. DEWSON, former president of the
Consumers' League of New York, has been ap-
pointed director of the Women's Division of the
National Democratic Committee.
ALTHOUGH well on the way to recovery from
an illness of last spring Helen Kempton has
put health first and has resigned from the
faculty of the New York School of Social Work
with which she has been associated for ten
years.
BURIED away in recent news from Washing-
ton was the gratifying word of the appointment
by Secretary Roper of Eugene Kinckle Jones
as economic adviser on Negro affairs in the
Department of Commerce. It is good news too
to hear that this new work will not necessitate
Mr. Jones' withdrawal from the National Urban
League of which he has been executive secre-
tary for twenty-three years.
SAMUEL I.EVINE, director of the Jewish
Centers Association, Detroit, has been ap-
pointed headworker at Bronx House, New
York, succeeding Mary Caplan. Bronx House
was founded in 1911 by Mr. and Mrs. Henry
Morgenthau who still maintain an active inter-
est in its affairs.
ELSIE H. LAWRENCE of the staff of the Public
Charities Association of Pennsylvania, and
identified with the development of the ten-year
program of child welfare in that state, died sud-
denly last month while on duty with the
Montgomery County ERB.
How Bright Is a Reader?
'"T*HE mistake was mine, but it got by you
A too," gently chides Bart Andress. " In my
article (see The Silent Partner Speaks Up, The
Survey, October, Page 341) I say under the
first question '. . . the theory of gradual transi-
tion of tested services from public to private
auspices.' I meant 'from private to public,' but
alliteration twisted my typewriter. A correc-
tion isn't important for of course Survey read-
ers are so bright that they would know exactly
what I meant even if I did say the opposite."
MARGARET WOLL has been borrowed for
several months from the St. Paul United
Charities to do field work for the Family Wel-
fare Association of America. Alvin Guyler,
formerly with the FWAA, is now on the field
staff of the Pennsylvania State Emergency
Relief Board.
WITH the governor's promise of complete
freedom from political interference and with a
board picked for its capacity and not its poli-
tics, Ruth W. Atkinson has accepted the ap-
pointment of commissioner of the State Board
of Public Welfare of Florida. Mrs. Atkinson
has been active in social work in her state ever
since war times. She was director of the Tampa
Welfare League and Community Chest for
several years, is a past-president of the Florida
State Conference and has served on many com-
mittees of national organizations. Most re-
cently she has been associate director in charge
400
THE SURVEY
November 1935
of social service of the Florida Emergency
Relief Administration. She proposes, she says,
"to make a special effort to integrate the per-
manent work with the emergency relief and
develop a program that will be sound for the
future."
WHETHER by heredity or environment the
second generation of the Lawes family seems to
be taking to crime. Crystal I.awes, daughter of
the famous warden of Sing Sing Prison, is at the
New York School of Social Work this winter
polishing off the special studies begun at the
University of Vermont and later at Sing Sing
where she worked in the classification clinic
and in connection with parole.
FROM Detroit comes word that Welfare
Superintendent John F. Ballenger has been ad-
vanced ro the post of welfare administrator for
all of Wayne County where he will be responsi-
ble for the allocation of some $15 million a
month of federal and state relief funds among
the nine cities, including Detroit, and eighteen
townships in the county.
THE New York TERA has established a
state-wide Transient Bureau with Walter
Kruesi in charge. Lena Parrott is chief case-
work advisor. The Bureau will be financed en-
tirely by federal funds.
THE trend of Jewish population from Man-
hattan to Brooklyn with the resulting over-
load on Brooklyn social agencies was the
determining factor in the recent merger of the
Jewish Social Service Bureau of Brooklyn and
the Jewish Board of Guardians of New York.
The name of the latter is retained, and John
Slawson of the Board remains as executive
director. Additions to the staff made necessary
by the reorganized program include: Dr.
Evelyn Alpern and Herbert Aptekar of Phila-
delphia, Rose Brisken of Cincinnati, Rae Carp
of Detroit, Grace Grossman of Cleveland, and,
from in and about New York, Celia Benney,
Joseph Galkin, Edith Hollander, Celia Levine,
Deborah Rosenblum, Samuel Sibulkin, Abra-
ham Simon, Sylvia Stanton and Fanny Weiser.
THE New York AICP reports that beans
were OUT in the dietary of their fresh-air
camps the past summer. So many of the chil-
dren had been subsisting for months on grocery
orders that they couldn't — and wouldn't — look
a bean in the face.
IN the death, in early October, of Helen B.
Patterson, the younger social workers of Penn-
sylvania lost a bright hope and the children of
Erie, where Mrs. Patterson was head of the
Juvenile Detention Home, a friend to whose
gay understanding they could appeal for com-
fort and advice. Coming from the family-wel-
fare field, Mrs. Patterson took over the manage-
ment of the Home at its lowest ebb, abolished
the punishment philosophy of her predecessor
and, with deft application of the art of helping
people out of trouble, made herself a beloved
champion of battered children and the Home an
exponent of modern child-caring methods.
IN its October issue Opportunity, the Jour-
nal of Negro Life, "commends to social-work
executives throughout the nation" the experi-
ence of the Minneapolis Family Welfare Asso-
ciation in the steps, initiated by Joanna C.
Colcord and furthered by Pearl C. Salsberry,
which have now led to the promotion of Andre
McCullough, a colored worker, to the full title
of district secretary in a district where commit-
tee, staff, students in training and clients are all
white. Mrs. McCullough, a graduate of the
University of Nebraska, joined the staff of the
Association in 1926, and has been for two
years acting secretary of her district.
ONE of our Washington scouts tells us that
there was a great scurrying around in Harry
Hopkins' office one day recently when someone
called for the correspondence relative to the
New York TERA camp for unemployed
women, one of Mrs. Roosevelt's pet projects.
The files were combed in vain until they got
down to the V's, and there, believe it or not,
was the missing folder, filed under Virgin
Islands.
Distinguished Guests
A MERICAN social workers will have the
•** opportunity this winter to confer with a
number of their German colleagues who have
made distinguished professional contributions
in their homeland and whose reputations have
long preceded them to this country. Dr. Hertha
Kraus, recently director of public welfare in
Cologne, is here as the guest of the Family
Welfare Association of America, 130 East 22
Street, New York, and of the Russell Sage
Foundation. Dr. Frieda Wiinderlich, formerly
associated with the University of Berlin and an
authority on social insurance, is with the
"German University in Exile" at the New
School for Social Research, 66 West 12 Street,
New York. Dr. Kathe Radke, who spent the
summer in England as the guest of the British
Federation of Settlements, is now here, the
guest of the National Federation of Settle-
ments, 147 Avenue B, New York. She was
associated with Dr. Kraus in the Cologne De-
partment of Public Welfare as supervisor of
neighborhood and community activities, her
special contribution being the development of
community programs in the new housing areas
of the city.
All three visitors may be reached at the ad-
dresses given. They are available for confer-
ences and lectures on non-political subjects.
THAT doughty collector of degrees, Alfred E.
Smith, former governor of New York, has a
new one, LL.D., honoris causa, of the Univer-
sity of the State of New York. His first degree,
as he will tell you himself, was FFM, Fulton
Fish Market. The last, till this one, was Har-
vard's LL.D. James Byrne, New York attor-
ney, has been elected chancellor of the Univer-
sity, succeeding the late Chester S. Lord.
VIVIAN DRENCKHAHN, one of last year's
National Tuberculosis Association scholars at
the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, is
now with the Buffalo Tuberculosis Association
as consultant in health teaching. This associa.
tion recently had a windfall in the form of a
check for $4500 from The Coterie, a local
women's club, the most of which it will use to
establish a model child-health library.
"WASHINGTON'S trail-blazer in social work
has submitted his resignation," writes Ray H.
Everett, from the national capital. "I feel con-
fident that Walter S. Utford's good compan-
ions throughout the country — all of whom of
course read The Survey — -will share the hope
of his associates here that his retirement from
active duty will not mean the loss of his guid-
ance and inspiration in the field he has honored
by his work for so many years." To which The
Survey adds its heartiest "Hear, hear." The
story of Mr. Ufford's twenty-five years in
Washington is really the history of modern
social work in that city. He inaugurated the
health program in the District schools, helped
organize child-welfare agencies, the Children's
Council, the Council of Social Agencies and the
Community Chest, and participated in every
movement to broaden and strengthen the scope
of social work. His resignation as general sec-
retary of the Associated Charities will be effec-
tive on March I, 1934, at the completion of his
quarter century in the capital.
FENIMORE D. BEAGLE, for nearly forty years
a member of the staff of the New York State
Department of Health, lately in the capacity
of secretary, died recently.
RAYMOND W. HOUSTON, who for three years
has been at the right hand of William H. Mat-
thews in the Emergency Work Bureau of the
New York Emergency Unemployment Relief
Committee, is now with the Lenox Hill
Neighborhood Association in charge of certain
of the settlement activities.
ELWOOD STREET has a new quirk for his
class in social-work administration at George
Washington University. The class has trans-
formed itself, for discussion purposes, into the
board of a social agency and at each weekly
meeting goes to the mat on matters of policy,
personnel, procedure and so on.
Many New Officers
RATIONAL Conference of Catholic Chari-
-^ ' ties: President, Very Rev. Msgr. R. Mar-
cellus Wagner, C\nc\nna.t\;vice-prcsidents, Mary
Duffy, Newark, N. J.; James Fitzgerald, De-
troit; Dr. Francis E. Fronczak, Buffalo; Wil-
liam Harahan, Richmond, and the Rev.
Edwin L. Leonard, Baltimore.
Indiana State Conference of Social Work:
President, Mrs. Edmund Burke Ball, Muncie;
vice-president, Joseph A. Andrew, Lafayette;
Louise S. Swain, Pendleton; Frank J. Sheehan,
Gary; Dr. Hazel I. Hansford, Madison; treas-
urer, William A. Hacker, Indianapolis; secre-
tary, William H. Book; assistant, Laura Greely,
both of Indianapolis.
American Prison Association: President,
Calvin Derrick, New Jersey; vice-presidents,
Stanley P. Ashe, Pennsylvania; Dr. B. C.
Branham, New York; R. E. Davis, Utah;
Florence Monahan, Illinois; and Harold E.
Donnell, Maryland. E. R. Cass of New York
continues as general secretary. The National
Conference of Juvenile Agencies, which met
under the wing of the prison congress, elected
J. T. Fulton of Minnesota as president.
Ohio Welfare Conference: President, Judge
Henry J. Robison, Ravenna; vice-presidents,
Perry P. Denune, Columbus, and Anna Budd
Ware, Cincinnati; treasurer, H. H. Shirer, Co-
lumbus; acting secretary. Perry P. Denune.
Wisconsin Conference of Social Work: Presi-
dent, Judge A. H. Reid, Wausau.
American Public Health Association: Presi-
dent, Dr. Haven Emerson, New York; president
elect, Dr. E. L. Bishop, Knoxville. Tenn., treas-
urer, Dr. Louis I. Dubl-n: chairman of the board,
Dr. Thomas Parran, Albany, N. Y.
Alumni Association, Graduate School of
Sociology and Social Service. Fordham Uni-
versity: President, Thomas E. Connolly, Flush-
ing N. Y.; viit '-president, Mary Prial, Brooklyn;
treasurer, Elizabeth McHugh, N'ew York;
secretary, Frances Culliton, Yonkers.
Vol. LXIX. No. 12
MONTHLY
December 1933
CONTENTS
FRONTISPIECE 401
RELIEF FROM RELIEF Russell H. Kurtz 403
ORGANIZING FOR LEISURE L. L. 405
WHEN HIDDEN RESOURCES TURN UP. .Gertrude Springer 406
SOCIAL WORK AND THE PHILISTINES . .Frederic E. Greene 408
AFTER PRISON Wintbrop D. Lane 410
MUSTERING OUT THE MIGRANTS . . . Ellen C. Potter, M.D. 41 1
COMMUNITY REORGANIZATION Ellery F. Reed 412
COMMON WELFARE 413
SOCIAL PRACTICE 416
INDUSTRY 417
EDUCATION 419
HEALTH 420
UNEMPLOYMENT AND COMMUNITY ACTION 422
JOTTINGS 425
BOOKS.
426
COMMUNICATIONS 430
GOSSIP 431
Files of The Survey will be found in public and college libraries. All
issues are indexed in the Readers' Guide to Periodical Literature. Ask
the Librarian.
SURVEY ASSOCIATES, INC.
Publication Office, 10 Ferry Street, Concord, N. H.
General Office, 112 East 19 Street, New York, to which all correspondence
should be addressed.
THE SURVEY— Monthly— $3.00 a Year
SURVEY GRAPHIC— Monthly— $3.00 a Year
Lucius R. EASTMAN, president; JULIAN W. MACK, JOSEPH P. CHAM-
BERLAIN, JOHN PALMER GAVIT, vice-presidents; ANN REED BRENNER,
secretary; ARTHUR KELLOGG, treasurer.
PAUL U. KELLOGG, editor.
ARTHUR KELLOOG, managing editor; MARY Ross, BEULAH AMIDON,
LEON WHIPPLE, JOHN PALMER GAVIT, LOULA D. LASKER, FLORENCE
LOEB KELLOGG, GERTRUDE SPRINGER, associate editors.
EDWARD T. DEVINE, GRAHAM TAYLOR, JANE ADDAMS, JOSEPH K.
HART, HAVEN EMERSON, M.D., ROBERT W. BRUERE, JOANNA C. COL-
CORD, contributing editors.
MOLLIE CONDON, circulation manager; MARY R. ANDERSON, advertising
manager.
SO THEY SAY
Ours is the age of no escape. — Ivor Brown, Boston.
The only difference between a rut and the grave is the depth. —
A. S. D., Elliott, Maine.
Thanks be to God most men do want to do the right thing. — Ex-
Goo. Alfred E. Smith, New Tork.
No one need worry lest we have too few prejudices. — James
Bryant Conant, president, Harvard University.
All necessary steps should be taken at once to repeal the boot-
legger.— David Lawrence in United States News.
Education is the vaccination and the spinach and the cod-liver
oil of the body politic. — Dr. Hans Zinsser, Boston.
The pistol is comparatively useless to the criminal unless he also
has an automobile. — Lieut.-Col. Calvin Goddard, Chicago.
All wars carry the same lesson for each generation which the
next generation forgets. — Frederick Palmer, war correspondent.
The controlling principle of our time is that the peoples of the
world will not let nature take its course. — Walter Lippmann, New
Tork.
The social worker is paid by people who do not use his services,
— he's really just another donation. — Frances Perkins, secretary of
labor.
I look toward the time when relief workers will be absorbed by
industry. — Robert J. Dunham, chairman, Illinois Emergency Relief
Commission.
We've got to get an answer on this rent business and we've got to
get it pretty darned quick. — Harry L. Hopkins, federal emergency
relief administrator.
Key men of the NRA have all along been fighting to save indus-
tries from their own panic-born impulse to throw themselves into
the arms of government. — Business Week.
There is always a chance that there might be someone . . . who
would mistake the yells of a disgruntled wolf of Wall Street for the
sermon of a Patrick Henry. — Cornelius Vandcrbilt, Jr., New York.
Major periods of history do not announce themselves loudly.
They take their beginnings in a succession of events no one of
which may seem extraordinary. — Howard F. Barker in American
Mercury.
Liberalism (in the 'twenties) entrenched itself in the universi-
ties, in foundations of " social research," in highfalutin' " scientific "
social work and in an increasing "social vision" in the churches. —
Benjamin Stolberg in Vanity Fair.
Ninety-five percent of the citizens of the United States think the
problem today is relief, when the real problem is to achieve such
liberal planning that we never again will have to pay relief. — Col.
Henry M. Watte, public works administration.
The strike as a first resort is not prohibited by law; it is banned
by common sense. The crucial point is that a strike is never more
than a protest. It creates hundreds of new problems but cannot
solve a single one. — Senator Robert F. Wagner, National Labor
Board.
As long as our (economic) system remains in its present form
very considerable numbers of families will find their children
handicapped in life because there are too many of them. — Warren
S. Thompson, Scripps Foundation for Research in Population
Problems.
Fitzpatrick in the St. Louis Post-Dispatch
LIFTING AMERICA OUT OF THE SOUP
December
'933
Volume LXIX
No. 12
Relief from Relief
By RUSSELL H. KURTZ
Russell Sage Foundation
official launching party for the new Civil
Works Administration, held in Washington in
mid-November, gave abundant evidence that the
fifteen hundred governors, mayors, engineers and relief
administrators present were going back home determined
to make the scheme work. Its central thought was a
realization of their fondest dreams — jobs, not doles!
In practically all of their communities they had tried, at
various times since 1930, to achieve the same end through
work relief. Too often the result had been a poor compro-
mise, consisting of neither true work nor true relief.
Always, the added costs had been an obstacle to conduct-
ing the program along right lines. Work relief was ad-
mittedly preferable to direct relief — but try to make it
stand up in the face of fourth winter budgets!
Public works, on the other hand, as promised by the
three billion dollar Public Works Administration were
failing to make deliveries in the form of real jobs. This was
inevitable, perhaps; but the country was growing im-
patient. Winter was at hand, with over three million
families on relief (at $16 per month each on the average)
and with probably five to six million others unemployed
and overhanging the relief market. National Recovery
had toned up the picture somewhat since March, but it
was still too dark for comfort. The announcement of the
CWA plan came as a dramatic promise of delivery from
this slough of despond.
The plan is simplicity itself. "Let us take all the actual
and potential public- work relief jobs in the country," said
its sponsors, "and weave them together into a huge em-
ployment program under federal control. To finance them,
we will divert $400 million from the unexpended balances
of the Public Works' Administration, $100 million from
the Federal Emergency Relief Fund and seek to enlist
$200 million or so more from state and local public funds.
To avoid confusion with the operations of the PWA and
because of their different nature, we will call these projects
Civil Works. To share in PWA funds, they must be under
federal control, but in the interest of speed, diversity and
local participation they should be prosecuted by local
bodies. The way to achieve that is to put the whole show
in the hands of the Emergency Relief Administrations,
federal, state and local.
"But we must a void the mistakes made in our local work-
relief experience. Wages must be adequate to provide
sufficient income to take these people entirely off" the
relief rolls. In fact, we will have to pay them the PWA
scale of wages or the whole set-up will fail to qualify for
a PWA appropriation. Furthermore, we will be wise to
make the program large enough to include as many as
possible of the unemployed who are not on relief, for they
are the real forgotten men of this situation."
The idea "clicked" and received the enthusiastic en-
dorsement of President Roosevelt, who announced it on
November 8. A week later officials were called to Wash-
ington for formal instructions and within forty-eight hours,
state capitols were buzzing with similar gatherings. It
is doubtful whether any national enterprise was ever given
the speedy send-off which this one received. "The two
million to be transferred from relief to Civil Works must
be at work by December i," were the orders, "and the
second two million, to be hired from the unemployed at
large, must join them by December 15." As this is written,
late in November, the press is reporting progress toward
these goals.
What are some of the implications of this major change
in our American program of caring for the unemployed?
First off, it appears that the administration has a real
determination to relieve unemployment through employ-
ment, even though that involves having the government
put men on its own payroll until someone else wants them.
This course had been suggested frequently in recent
403
404
THE SURVEY
December 1933
months, but few seriously anticipated that it would be
followed. The cost appeared prohibitive. Now we see the
government actually embarked upon such a course.
True, the program is financed only to February and with
funds already set aside for a kindred purpose. But Con-
gress will assemble in January, in ample time to approve
an extension of the scheme if it is convinced that National
Recovery and Public Works are not ready to absorb
the Civil Workers. The problem of finding the money may
worry it a little, but not as much as the alternative —
throwing 4 million men back on relief.
THE chore of finding a sufficient number of "socially
and economically desirable" projects without poaching
upon the Public Works preserves and the domains of
year-round municipal employment, has made skeptics
of some observers. They point out that of the three million
families on relief, only a third have been on work relief
and since rotation on the job is a widespread practice, the
actual number of jobs ready to transfer to Civil Works
totals, they think, probably less than three quarters of
a million. The CWA program calls for four million full-time
jobs within thirty days. Can these be found?
Washington is confident that they can if those involved
go to work with a will, using their imaginations and stop-
ping at no obstacles. The Government itself has agreed
to fill one million of the jobs on direct federal projects in
the National Parks, Coast and Geodetic Survey, Public
Health Service, and so on. It is prepared to suggest projects
to unimaginative states and localities.
Other skeptics are inclined to grant that projects of a
sort can be found, but that they will be short-lived, and
that when they have been finished, we will be worse off
than we were before, with our work opportunities and
our money both gone. In answer to which another group
prophesies that we will then turn to industry and place
our surplus labor at government-subsidized employment,
as Germany has done.
Relief executives generally have been less concerned
with these long-range possibilities than with the immediate
task of getting the relief program trimmed down and the
Civil Works program built up, as ordered from Washington.
Probably the most difficult adjustment which they have
been called upon to make is in their own thinking about the
new status of their able-bodied clients. At one stroke, these
men and women — two million of them — cease being
"relief cases" and become wage-earning employes with
cash in their pockets, to spend as they see fit. Investiga-
tions, budget counsel, grants of relief are out, except as the
families may request special aid in unusual circumstances.
For the present, it is proposed to allow them to share in the
distribution of the surpluses which the FERA passes out,
but this is an anomaly that one should not take too seri-
ously.
In thinking about the second two million — those who will
be selected by the National Reemployment Service from
the ranks of the five or six million unemployed not on
relief, with preferences as set forth in the Recovery Act —
relief officials encounter another difficulty. Is it possible,
they ask, that the NRS will select these persons without
regard to their relative needs for the jobs; and that several
persons may conceivably be hired from one family while
others, heads of large families, may be passed by ? Precisely
so — at least in theory; for this is presented as an employ-
ment and not a relief program. The same rules apply
here as in the employment of men for Public Works. Fit-
ness for the job is the determining factor. Of course, the
taxpayers may insist that it is only as a relief measure that
the whole expenditure can be justified, and that therefore
the local NRS officer had better apply common sense in
making his placements. He will be likely to do this in most
cases without being reminded; but were he to admit openly
that relative need was the basis for placement, he would
have to be prepared to make social and economic investi-
gations of all applicants, a task for which he is given
neither facilities nor authority.
But what of the needy unemployed who register for one
of these jobs, only to be rejected? Will this not be the last
straw needed to break their spirits, sending them into the
home-relief load to take the places of those just trans-
ferred out to Civil Works? If the history of local-work
registrations in the last four years is any guide, such an
event is likely to occur on a rather large scale. But the
classic answer applies here, as locally; if they are found to
to be in real need of help, it is a social gain to face that fact
and grant what is needed, even though in the process the
home-relief lists lengthen out toward their old dimensions.
Brief mention has been made of the taxpayer who is
looking on somewhat breathlessly at these developments.
There is still another group which may be expected to use
its lungs vociferously in protest, namely, the employers
whose toes are going to be stepped on by the minimum-
rate scales which Civil Works must observe. The southern
planter has not liked the thirty-cent work-relief rate which
the FERA ordered last summer, and in a number of lo-
calities his influence has been great enough to cause an
abandonment of work relief in his community on the
grounds that local labor was being ruined by these "high"
wages. Now comes Civil Works with a forty-cent minimum.
BUT the South is not alone in this protest. It is being
heard all over, in the northern zone where the new
minimum for unskilled labor is fifty cents, and in the central
zone where it is forty-five. The smaller cities and the rural
districts have felt right along that there should be differ-
entials between urban and rural districts in the PWA
scale and they are reiterating that belief in the case of Civil
Works. To all of which the CWA gives categorical answer
that since CWA is spending PWA money, the latter's
schedule of hours and rates must be followed, regardless
of local preferences. Besides, the way to recovery is through
spending; and fifteen dollars per week is nothing to get
excited about. Stop thinking of this as a relief program!
The problem of money for materials and tools was one
that headed the list when the proposal was under discus-
sion. Unless federal funds could be applied to these items,
it was useless to plan further. An arbitrary rule that these
were proper charges upon the local communities, in view
of the huge federal allocations for labor, would not have
worked, with hundreds of cities and counties virtually
bankrupt. Thus the prompt decision to place no restrictions
on the uses to which the federal funds could be put, within
the limits of the approved projects. Local money is wanted,
in as large measure as possible, and the plea has been made
by Administrator Hopkins to local authorities that full
cooperation on their part is essential to the success of the
whole undertaking. " Do not look upon this," he has urged,
"as a case of the federal government doing something
for you. Rather, it is a project in which the nation as a
whole is cooperating constructively."
December 1933
THE SURVEY
405
It is recognized that there will be a disposition in some
quarters not only to ignore this plea, but to attempt to
unload budgeted local services upon Civil Works in the
interest of local tax economy. As a safeguard against this,
it is provided that all local projects must win the approval
of the state Civil Works administrations before they may
be undertaken. This raises the question of the qualifica-
tions of the state administrations to discharge this func-
tion. It will be recalled that the state relief administrations
have been given the job of serving as Civil Works ad-
ministrations, and that many of them have had no previous
experience with work relief. Their ability effectively to
administer Civil Works, with all its engineering and finan-
cial complications, may come to depend upon their
prompt reorganization to include competent technicians.
If the Civil Works program goes through as scheduled,
what will happen to the vast network of home-relief
organizations which has been developed in the past few
years? We have witnessed a marked advance, since the
FERA took charge in May, in the standards of relief
organization and procedure throughout the length and
breadth of the land. Will these standards be maintained
and advanced still further for the million who are not
scheduled to share in the transferral to Civil Works, and
for the many others who will be added for the first time
this winter? Will the FERA continue to exercise the leader-
ship it has shown in this field to date, despite its huge new
responsibility to direct the Civil Works program? It is
unthinkable that it will not do so. The cause of public-
welfare administration, so effectively promoted by the
FERA ruling of last June that only public agencies would
be permitted to dispense federal relief, is likewise involved.
Will there be local reactions, now that "jobs are supplant-
ing doles," to a continuance of adequate investigation and
service to the families that are left behind on the relief
rolls? If so, how will this reaction be met? Social workers
must concern themselves with these questions, at the risk
of having their motives questioned by an impatient public.
IS work relief dead ? Civil Works are neither public works
nor work relief, but an experimental compromise of the
two. Is there still a place in our relief scheme for local work
relief, supported by local funds ? It would seem that there
might be, for two reasons: first, only public-work projects
may be included in the Civil W'orks program, and there are
still many quasi-public projects, such as institutional
renovation, which offer work opportunities where private
funds for work relief are available; and, second, there will
be many persons left on the direct relief rolls as "unem-
ployables" who could profitably be assigned to such
projects on a basis of therapeutic employment. It is likely
that the private family agencies will be the first to see the
possibilities in this field.
The federal administrator has indicated that a wide
diversity of work projects will be included in the CWA
plan so that it will be unnecessary to assign tailors, mu-
sicians, and other skilled persons to common labor tasks.
Suitable occupations will be provided for women if plans
now being formulated are carried out. But will the local
administrations stand firm against the temptation to
unload their problem cases by transferral to Civil Works,
without regard to their physical fitness for the available
jobs? It is reported that workmen's compensation is to be
provided. Will medical examination be required as an
added safeguard?
These are a few of the questions that are being raised
and discussed by friends of the Civil Works plan who see
in it a long step forward in our treatment of the mitigation
of unemployment.
If press comment over the country is any indication the
public generally is ready to give the plan what it charac-
teristically calls "a good whirl." Whether or not they
realize all its social and economic implications, its boldness
appeals to a people whose appetite has been whetted by the
taste they have had of national administrative action.
They are tired of being bogged down. In the field of un-
employment relief they are particularly tired of it. Any
plan that promises to substitute jobs for "charity" wins
their enthusiasm and the whole-hearted cooperation of the
social-work profession.
Organizing for Leisure
THE time has finally come when the epithet, step-chil-
dren of the emergency, cannot longer be hurled at the
character-building agencies, for they are coming again into
their own. The problem today is not the lack of realization
of the need to maintain and extend leisure and educational
opportunities, but to fit them into the new social structure.
To discuss the most important implications of "the new
leisure"— when for the first time in history the whole peo-
ple of a great nation must face the question of what to do
with their spare time — the New York Committee for the
Use of Leisure of the NRA, under the chairmanship of
Raymond B. Fosdick, recently held four public hearings.
The testimony of some thirty-five individuals, some testi-
fying as individuals, others representing outstanding social
agencies was considered to the end that a program might
be evolved geared to current needs.
Though they see the question as twofold, concerned with
children as well as with adults, all the experts agreed with
Professor Harry Overstreet that the problem of the future
will be lessened if attention is focused upon helping youth
to form habits in the use of leisure that will carry over into
their mature years. Where does education end; where does
recreation begin ? The answer, according to these experts, is
that they merge; both must offer facilities whereby the
individual may develop means for self-expression for his
own sake as well as for the sake of better citizenship.
Are present facilities adequate in kind and quality?
Before a final judgment is reached a more careful analysis
of the groups to be served must be made. The current short-
sighted policy of cutting budgets — whether of the museum
library, school, settlement, department of parks or other
agencies— was decried by all present as action which in the
end will probably cost the community many times the
supposed savings in increased expenses for prisons, hospi-
tals and so on. Here is an opportunity for local Civil Works
commissions to meet a twofold dilemma — by putting some
of the unemployed back to work while extending oppor-
tunities for the use of leisure time. Finally the need for
central promotion and clearing-house agency was stressed.
These hearings were a first step in placing the need
squarely before the public. Newton D. Baker, Nicholas
Murray Butler, John H. Finley were among those who
"testified." Space prevents an enumeration of all the
authorities who offered helpful advice and suggestions. The
Committee findings should constitute a valuable guide to
the country at large, modified though its program may have
to be to fit local needs, — L. L.
When Hidden Resources Turn Up
By GERTRUDE SPRINGER
'E was a very impos-
ing gentleman and
around him, even in
Miss Bailey's shabby little
office, was a faint suggestion of
limousines and protective
secretaries.
"I think that's all," he
summed up as he rose, "I was
sure you would want to know
about it. It was just an acci-
dent that took me into that
Italian colony the other side
of the tracks. Most extraor-
dinary thing I ever saw.
Three truckloads of grapes
and all these people singing
and laughing. Quite like a festival of some sort. Yet I'm
told that practically the whole lot of them is on relief. Well,
we have to watch these people, don't we? But I'm sure we
can leave it in your competent hands."
Only rigid control saved Miss Bailey from a derisive "Oh
Yeah?" as the door closed on him. The card-file bulged with
Rossis and Brunos and Angelottis and the rest of the plausi-
ble, likeable tribe. Sure as fate they were in on the festival
of the grapes and were at this moment elbow deep in wine-
making. And how on earth could you expect substantial
citizens in limousines to reconcile the purchase of a ton or
so of grapes with the complete destitution connoted by
being "on relief."
It wasn't reasonable and Miss Bailey knew it, and sud-
denly she decided to take a hand herself. She'd go to the
Ferraris. Only yesterday Mrs. Ferrari had made the office
ring with the high tragedy of the general unblanketed con-
dition of her family. If after all that the Ferraris were mak-
ing wine — Well!
Booted and spurred with righteous indignation Miss
Bailey descended on the Casa Ferrari with its hard-beaten
little yard and scrabbly arbor.
Wild excitement ". . . the Mees, you come see 'bout the
blankets. Queeck, Tonino, a chair for the Mees . . ."
Spaghetti boiling on the stove, tomato sauce bubbling,
dark-eyed children staring. "My Orlando? Oh, povero,
povero ! No work to do. Queeck, Ricco, call the papa."
Orlando, the papa, appears, and now Miss Bailey puts it
to him.
"I hear you are making wine."
"Sure, Mees, it is the season of the vino. My vino very
special like my father teacha me in La Puglia."
"But grapes cost money, Mr. Ferrari, and your wife says
you have no blankets."
"But Mees, I maka de mon' myself. All summer I cutta
de grass. I save the soldi. My zio, my oncla, he put in more.
I make for him too. Grapes very cheap. My frien's we buy
big lot together, very cheap."
"But it is almost winter and your family needs blankets."
"An" the vino very good in winter. My child feel bad I
What can the relief worker do when:
Practically every relief family in a foreign-
speaking neighborhood finds the price of a ton of
grapes for its year's supply of wine?
A family steadfastly refuses to give any informa-
tion about a relative who regularly pays their rent
and sends them occasional boxes of luxurious
clothes?
The family of five which is suddenly augmented
by three half-grown children who, it is calmly ex-
plained, have been visiting their "auntie," hitherto
unheard of?
maka the vino warm for him
like my father teacha me. My
children very strong, Mees."
Strong or no strong Miss
Bailey insists that blankets
would have been a wiser use of
the summer earnings. With
obvious reservations the Fer-
raris admit that possibility
then draw a red herring across
the trail by renewed enco-
miums on the excellence of the
family vino. "My father very
smart man."
Out in the street again Miss
Bailey sought to rally her
indignation.
"It's outrageous — but Italian! To them wine is an article
of diet, fixed by every tradition of race and family habit.
We think of it as a luxury, unnecessary and, since they're
poor, just a shade sinful, and we give it a meaning that it
doesn't possess for them.
"After all we gave Mr. Ferrari grocery orders but no
occupation. He found his own grass-cutting, saved his soldi
and spent it on what was to him a necessity. We urge the
unemployed to find odd jobs to supply the things we can't
give them and then we pick on them for what they buy.
Honestly now, Louisa Bailey, if the Ferraris had bought
tomatoes and canned them under the home economist's
direction, would you have been so excited? You know you
wouldn't. They've made one of those choices you're always
preaching about and you're upset because their choice
doesn't fit your pattern.
" JUST the same I think we'll hold off awhile on those
J blankets. And who is this 'oncla' that seems to have
grape-money up his sleeve. Maybe there are blankets there
too. Well, thank goodness, we've lost a lot of our Ferraris to
the Civilian Works, and they spend their own money their
own way. Their wine and their blankets and their 'onclas'
just ar'n't any of our affair. There's too much detecting in
this relief business to suit me."
If there is anything social workers hate more than mass
relief it is the role of detective into which rigid rules and
regulations have thrust them. With one hand they must
make sure that the family that continues on relief does not
rise above a state of destitution, while with the other they
must fortify the self-respect of the unemployed and en-
courage their initiative. So rigid have been the practices in
many offices that families on relief fear that any windfall,
however small and casual, may jeopardize their place on
the relief rolls. Small wonder that they are close mouthed.
"I need no proof," said the supervisor of a big city dis-
trict, "that we help people most intelligently when we have
all the cards on the table, theirs and ours. But how can we
expect them to expose their last trump while we hold onto
the ace, the power of the food order. We give these people
406
December 1933
THE SURVEY
407
grocery orders budgeted to their minimum needs, and then
we watch for chances to shave that order. I'd like to know
what they would have done these last years without the
hidden resources that enabled them to get the essentials
we did not supply. How many agencies budget thread and
needles and safety-pins, hair-cuts and shoe-repairs? They
do get these things, but our methods have often been such
that they do not dare confide to us how or where.
"Often what seems like a resource isn't one at all, but a
casual benefaction that will fade out under the least pres-
sure. I know people who make little presents of money to
families but whose response to investigation is to say that
their gifts are for extras and if the effect is to reduce the
help given by the city they will certainly be discontinued.
There are situations too where help comes from a source so
complicated that the family feels it dare not confide it to
the understanding of the visitor.
"I recall a family, nice people and no question of their
need, who had a cousin who paid their rent but about whom
they refused a single crumb of information. She might have
been Mrs. Astorbilt for all we knew and we rather suspected
she was. We were sure of it when one day the worker found
them unpacking a box of perfectly extravagant clothes,
chiffons and velvets and so on, all as good as new. When
they stubbornly refused all information about them the
worker lost her temper, said they could just try eating the
clothes for awhile, and withheld their food and fuel order.
"I stood by the worker, but I wasn't satisfied. In every
other particular the family had been candid with us. After
two weeks I stopped in myself to see what was happening.
I saw all right. The rooms were stripped bare, the children
huddled in bed for warmth, the woman looked like a ghost.
My receptivity must have been high that day for presently
the story came. The cousin worked for a temperamental
actress and out of her wages helped regularly three fami-
lies of kinsfolk. Occasionally the actress gave her clothes,
absurdly inappropriate, with the dire threat of firing her if
she sold them or told where they came from. The cousin in
turn threatened to stop the rent money if an investigator
called on her. So here was the family literally starving with
a closetful of glamorous clothes that had all but destroyed
them. What did we do about the clothes? Nothing. We
renewed the food order, got the most necessary things out
of pawn and let the family wrestle with the finery in their
T ~TEAVT case loads, inadequate staffs, the
J. J. effort to deal justly and discriminat-
ingly with troubled human beings under the
pressure of mass-relief methods, have brought
to relief workers everywhere problems calling
for the utmost understanding and patience.
Out of the day -by-day experience of supervisors
and workers The Survey has drawn a series of
articles of which this is the tenth. "The predica-
ments are bona fide. Experienced supervisors
from all over the country have contributed to
the discussion. Eight articles are now available
in a pamphlet, Miss Bailey Says . . . (see inside
back cover). Next month, Big-Hearted Clients.
own way. It was certainly their problem, not ours."
No one will ever know how great a resource relatives
have been to the unemployed in these troubled years. But
now, say the supervisors, the situation has come to such a
pass that not one relative in a hundred is in a position to
give assistance that can take the place of regular relief. Yet
hidden relatives remain a resource which must be explained.
"When we do discover fairly substantial kin these days,"
said a supervisor of long and varied experience, "we also
discover substantial reasons why the families have kept
them under cover. Often the concealment sprang from some
deep-hidden family sore that they dreaded to expose.
"One of our workers came in not long ago wild-eyed be-
cause the Sullivan family had produced three children over-
night, well-dressed, half-grown youngsters who had been,
if you please 'away for the summer.' Five Sullivans had
been on relief since May and no one suspected the existence
of any others. We checked with school records and they
were Sullivans all right. They weren't 'borrowed' to get the
food order increased. Oh yes, we have that too.
"The Sullivans admitted nothing. The children had been
with their 'auntie,' and that was that.
"Well, we didn't increase the food order, suggesting in-
stead that the children go back to 'auntie.' They didn't go
back and the Sullivans didn't starve — not quite. Then
their priest came to see us. He didn't tell us much, just
enough to let us piece the story together. There was every-
thing in it, religion, mixed marriage, children born in and
out of wedlock, and a dying mother's curse, which, curi-
ously, was not laid on these three particular children.
Therefore a fanatical old aunt took them to her down-state
farm every summer and tended them like her own. But
not so much as a potato for the rest of the tribe.
""VTOW what in the world could we do with a situation
-i- ^1 like that but go along with it. In theory the aunt
was a positive resource; in reality she wasn't good for a
nickel more than she was doing. For the Sullivans to have
told us about her, knowing that we would write to her,
would have been to stir up a family scandal that they had
quite successfully lived down. Of course they should have
told us about the children but they hoped to have a job and
be on their own before the children came home. Then of
course it would have been none of our business. Do you
blame them so much?"
Supervisors are clearly of the opinion that a complete
check on the possible resources of families applying for relief
is necessary and important, a proper protection to the
public and its funds. But they hold that if the first in-
vestigation is sound and a good relationship is established
between family and visitor the later revelation of a small
concealment or two should not affect the family's relief
status. Each revelation, they say, should be weighed for its
material importance and for its indication of the family's
attitude. Naturally if revelations come too thick and fast a
frank reinvestigation must be made.
"Judgement should be based not on what the family
does, but on why it does it. The visitor must try to under-
stand why the Italians would rather buy grapes than
blankets, why some families would rather go hungry than
reveal the name of a casual benefactor or an inimical rela-
tive. Sometimes we cannot accept their reasoning, but we
can never be just without an understanding of the human
motivation behind the facts. And we must learn to accept
many situations merely as the way human beings operate."
Social Work and the Philistines
By FREDERIC E. GREENE
Department of Public Welfare, Scbenectady, N. T.
.HERE was no difficulty in reaching the austere
presence of the great political boss, master of two
cities, ten villages and twenty-one towns. As I
entered the spacious court-house office with its ill-assorted
furniture, an elderly clerk looked up merely to point to an
inner door. A few steps, and I stood in the presence of
power.
He received my simple inquiry with heavy indifference,
then turned away with a gesture of petulance and hostility.
Presently he spoke, this son of a distinguished family, him-
self a successful attorney holding a lucrative appointment
from the President of the United States. To quote his exact
words now is impossible. He gave me to understand that I
was another of those parasites who increase taxes, who
interfere with affairs about which they know nothing.
Hearing him, I could understand at once why certain
things had happened and had not happened in that county
with reference to the unemployed and the hungry.
He spoke first about the extravagance of road-building.
The county had built too many roads already. Charity
cost too much. There were too many salaries. Who was go-
ing to pay them ? What did it all mean anyhow ? The new
tuberculosis hospital had cost too much. How many of
these men who said they were out of work needed jobs,
wanted jobs, would take work if they could get it? There
was too much talk about unemployment. When he was a
young fellow there were road jobs in the summer for such
men, and they had a cow and a garden patch, and perhaps a
pig. Why didn't they have a pig now? Where were the
gardens ? We were doing too much for these folks. Give 'em
a slab of salt pork and some beans, and tell 'em to find a
job. This wasn't any petting party.
I did not argue with him. I recited a few facts, not be-
cause I thought they would mean anything to him, but be-
cause I had to maintain my own self-respect. I could not be
browbeaten by any contemporary ancestor who happened
to hold a bit of power. I was appalled at the thought that
this man of place and influence was so far removed from
the present scene that he could not or would not hear the
murmurs of men out of work, hungry women and children.
That experience jolted me. I did not belong to that
county, but I knew that it had several good pieces of social
work that merited the recognition and understanding of
this leading citizen. And as I fell to wondering why he
didn't understand, I began to think of other men and other
places. Then the moment came when I sensed the impres-
sion that in our devotion to the business of feeding people
we social workers were overlooking the necessity of making
our methods and our aspirations known, that we were over-
looking our need for a backing of lay opinion.
The matter seems to resolve itself into several considera-
tions. What has our attitude been toward the Philistine?
What kinds or types of men are we dealing with, or seeking
to influence? Do any of them present qualities that make
them a fair target for arrows of interpretation ? Are they
vulnerable? How persistently have we sought to build a
bridge of understanding? Have we now a sufficient bridge
of educated opinion to carry us over the next months when
critical changes are bound to occur ?
Eduard C. Lindeman has said that the profession of so-
cial work is rooted in lay soil, that it either goes along with
the layman or it fails. Now we see the day coming when the
lightning of state or federal relief funds will no longer leap
from our eyes, when we are just social workers without
golden governmental haloes, once more dependent largely
on lay opinion. We see too that the time is not far away
when a large public will demand a cessation of relief, be-
cause relief is not in keeping with the return of prosperity
— a public only too ready to blink the fact that inevitably
many thousands of unemployed will still be with us when
the "emergency" is past and the depression is officially
rung off the boards. Unquestionably we see all this, and un-
questionably we know that only an informed public opinion
will pierce the shadows which these black years will cast
for many years to come. But we are in danger of forgetting
it or at least of brushing it aside. For many months now and
in various places I have watched our workers calmly facing
surge after surge of criticism, bitterness, ridicule, wilful
misunderstanding. I have seen some of their best effort,
which should have gone into different channels, used in
meeting the storm. There has been little time and strength
left to discover the solid earth that lies behind the clamor.
They have fed the hungry and fought the critics.
c-
•I
THE longer I traffic at first hand with the bosses, great
and small, with politicians and with the people for whom
they antic and gesture, the more deeply I find myself con-
vinced that, while we have been giving relief, we have en-
joyed the kind of publicity that takes us for granted, and
that has made us assume that we were understood.
I am painfully conscious of this when, after all these
months, I sit down with an alderman to discuss what seems
to be the simplest of our methods in caring for a family, or
when I analyze the requests of men in need, real or fancied,
whom the aldermen bring to us. I sense it again when I talk
with Mr. Citizen. He sees relief as a simple problem of
arithmetic. One hungry man plus one loaf of bread makes
one full stomach. The rest is red tape. The methods that are
not directly obvious and simple must be shady; they may
be dangerous. Only the other day one of our clients insinu-
ated that any cut in her allowance meant a corresponding
bulge in the visitor's pocketbook. So I end with the feeling
that with all these folk I have to go back to something more
elementary, if I am to make myself understood.
But assuming that I am conscious of a need of an in-
telligent audience, to whom shall I address myself? The
masses who are receiving relief are little concerned with all
the planning that must go on behind the lines. They are
little interested in the economy which a legislature and a
city council and a taxpayers' association constantly preach
to departments of public welfare. They become able ex-
ponents of the policy of rugged individualism, which their
betters have so ably taught them — get all you can and the
devil take the hindmost. I do not see how we can very well
408
December 1933
THE SURVEY
409
blame them for such a philosophy when we look at the
present distribution of wealth. How often we hear, "I need
help. I am a citizen. I have lived here ten years. I have al-
ways paid my taxes. Until two years ago I had no bills."
One young man told me quite frankly that he, although at
the moment he was drawing a fair salary, was asking for
help for his mother and sister — his only dependents — on
the basis that he had always up to that time taken care of
himself and them, and therefore the state owed him special
consideration.
For the crowd generally, our methods offer a threat to its
smugness, its love of security, its dislike of change. Our
ways require a mental analysis which it is generally loath to
make. It must recognize certain conditions which would re-
flect unfavorably on its own ways of living. It would be
impressed too sharply with the inadequacies of its own
planning. Try this out on your own mass mind: Do you
like to think of having your own small bank balance care-
fully checked? Of giving up your license plates? Of having
your wife's aunt interviewed? Of knowing that your earn-
ings would be scanned with an appraising eye? Your health
inspected? Haven't you lost prestige already, in your own
eyes?
Over the confused thinking of the crowd looms the pro-
fessional politician who sees in the modern methods of re-
lief-giving something that he cannot or will not understand,
but also something which is a constant threat to his power.
I do not wish to differentiate here between good and bad
politicians. They are not all good, not all bad. But how can
any politician, good or bad, build up a machine of relief
clients, if the social workers refuse to give him a list? How
can he win a vote when the public-welfare department re-
fuses a grant to the aspiring client whom he leads to city
hall? How can he get good party workers on the welfare
payroll when men are chosen for their intelligence and
capacity and not for their political allegiance? How can he
get work-relief jobs for his followers when jobs are assigned
on budgetary needs? Modern relief administration has
been a bewildering business to the old-line politicians,
steeped in the tradition that to the victor belong the spoils.
Even in his most dispassionate moment, when, perhaps,
he acknowledges that a good job has been done, he still re-
sents the fact that he has had no part in it, except to regis-
ter a feeble outward consent to something he scarcely under-
stood, and distrusted as a thrust at his prestige.
Your inference would be that I do not see the possibilities
of an intelligent minority in this group. However, I am
bound to say that I- have known a few professional politi-
cians who have stood with us, shoulder to shoulder,
through all this sorry proceeding. I know that we must
somehow plan to take these folks more and more into our
confidence, tell them more and more what it is all about.
Some of them, a few, will understand. The majority
of them will cry abundance when abundance has not
come.
Such, in the large, is our load — the vast inertia, if not
hostility which we must seek to overcome. And, somehow,
our message must carry to the public we finally seek as our
own informed public, the sense of this dead weight which
rests on our effort. Our job has to be expressed not only
in terms of what we would do, but also of what we must
overcome before we begin to do.
Now, if there be any green isles in this deep wide sea of
misery, let us find them. Since October 1929 one layer of
American life has become acutely sensitive to every touch,
however light. In other words, it is so highly inflamed that
it screams on being approached. It has felt the weight of
taxes, the scarcity of money. It has recognized the shallow-
ness of our so-called prosperity. The men and women in
this layer have begun to question everything, to place
values. They face the fact that things which they held as
durable as rock have wasted away before their eyes. They
were the thinkers before. They are still the thinkers. They
have had to think in order to survive. Some of them have
thought and have failed to survive. They are open to new
ideas, to ideas generally that hold any promise of a better
future. I mean our middle class which is largely dependent
on individual initiative — -small business men, engineers,
some of our farmers, a few highly skilled operatives, law-
yers, doctors, some teachers.
WE might analyze one of these groups— the small busi-
ness men. By small I do not mean peanut vendors, hole-
in-the-wall stuff. I mean those outside the great chains, the
great corporations. These fellows must be acutely sensitive
to a hundred winds — the trend of the market, the attitude
of the banks, the whims of the buying public, the state of
credit, the mood of the wholesaler, the methods of the
chains, the state of their employes. Now I believe this
necessity for sensitiveness makes them far more open
minded than your bureaucrat settled comfortably in a
salaried job, than your politician who loves "the good old
ways," than your great corporations, hypnotized by their
own vastness.
The last decade has seen the rapid rise and expansion of
the so-called service clubs. I suspect the service clubs really
represent a coming together unconsciously of small business
and professional men for defensive purposes. There is a sens-
ing of danger in the presence of the great corporations and
mergers. A great deal of sarcasm has been showered on
the service clubs, some of it unquestionably deserved. How-
ever, I am convinced that these groups and the business
levels from which they are drawn contain many of our
most forward-looking men, and that in them lies our hope
of an informed lay opinion. I know that we have been after
this support. I do not think we have gone about it in a
whole-hearted way. We have expected that our deeds
would somehow make themselves known, forgetting the
competition for attention of chewing-gum, movies, horse
races, kidnappers, economic conferences and what not.
Publicity is not and will never be an automatic by-product
of our job.
I believe we must go about the building-up of a sound lay
opinion as purposefully as we go about determining our
policy. It is not as though we had no material. We have
the most wonderful material in the world. If man is to be
the measure of all things, as against money or land or motor
cars or factory chimneys, we have the story of man, man in
crisis, in our records — the mean things he has done, the
heroic things he has done, his selfishness, his generosity, his
loves, his hates. And we must stop thinking that this mate-
rial cannot be used because of violation of confidence. It is
a poor publicist, indeed, who cannot use his material
artistically to create an effect or build up an opinion and at
the same time protect the individual from exploitation.
We need fewer statisticians to chase the panting figure
through time and space, to pore over library tomes produc-
ing analyses that have no meaning to the man on the street.
We need more historians, reporters, story-tellers, what you
will. We need a better public opinion, and we must go after it.
After Prison
By WINTHROP D. LANE
Division of Parole, New Jersey Department of Institutions and Agencies
ARISON, to most people, is a place to enter. Seldom
is it thought of as a place to leave.
And yet that is exactly what it is. Nearly every-
body who enters prison comes out. The only ones who don't
come out are those who die there— from the swift descent
of capital punishment or from lingering and natural
causes.
At any given moment the number of people leaving
prison is substantially as great as the number entering.
Every time a judge thunders "I sentence you to prison,"
the door of a prison opens somewhere and a man walks forth
to freedom.
This means two things: that the treatment given a man
in prison is important, and that the circumstances sur-
rounding his release are equally important. If he comes
forth into an environment or a situation in which he is not
likely to succeed, society has gained little by his incarcera-
tion.
In other words, the methods and standards of parole are
important. Parole is in somewhat low repute in the United
States at the present time. A majority of people doubtless
think of it as a sort of clemency; a reward for being a good
prisoner or giving the warden little trouble; letting the
offender off easy; shortening a prisoner's term.
Intelligent parole officers and administrators regard it
as something altogether different. What they think of it
should be interesting to persons concerned with the policies
and technique of social case work, because they regard it
as a branch of social case work.
This has been made clear in the Declaration of Principles
of the American Parole Association, a new organization.
That organization, composed of individuals concerned with
parole, was started a year ago and held its second annual
meeting at Atlantic City in October. It is affiliated with the
American Prison Association.
One of the important statements in this Declaration is
that every one who leaves a penal or correctional institution
should leave by the method of parole. The argument runs
as follows: Parole is, in essence, supervision in the com-
munity after release. Such supervision is desirable both for
the welfare of the offender and the protection of society.
Competent parole officers help offenders to reestablish
themselves and are in a position to return the offenders to
the institution if the offenders require further institutional
training or commit additional offenses. Therefore, there
should be no such thing as the release of an offender (unless
his innocence has been established) except in accordance
with the policies and conditions of parole.
This will be a revolutionary conception in many places.
Most people, and even many paroling boards, keep the
view that parole is a form of release to be reserved for
particular individuals; that there will always be persons
leaving institutions without parole as well as persons leav-
ing institutions with parole.
Here is the conception of parole stated in the Principles:
Parole is a carefully considered part of the whole process of
treatment begun when the offender enters the institution, or
earlier. It is an extension of the authority and effort of the state
beyond the doors of the institution and beyond the time of in-
stitutional residence. A period spent on parole is a period of super-
vision and readjustment from the extraordinary and artificial
life of the institution to normal life in the community.
In other words, it is an integral part of an entire process
of treatment.
It is easy to see, therefore, why the Principles argue that
it makes no difference what kind of person an offender may
be; if be is to be released from the institution, he should come
out under the conditions of parole. The Principles do not
go into the question of permanent custodial care. They
admit that there are offenders who perhaps ought never
to leave institutions. But the point made in them is that if
the offender is to leave the institution and resume ordinary
life, society ought to have the protection, and the offender
the benefit, of supervision for a time. The principles say:
It makes no difference whether a person has a long criminal
record or a short one, whether he is an experienced law-breaker
or an inexperienced one, whether his most recent conviction was
for a serious or a light crime, whether he has an unstable or a
stable personality — these, together with his record in the institu-
tion, are not important in answering the question: Shall he be
held under supervision after he leaves the institution ?
Selection of prisoners for parole, therefore, according to
the Principles, becomes a matter of choosing the lime at
which release of each offender is most advantageous or
beneficial. It is not a matter of saying that prisoner A shall
be released by the method of parole and that prisoner B
shall not. It is a matter of deciding when it is most ad-
vantageous to release both prisoners A and B on parole.
The Principles then go on to state what supervision
ought to be. They describe it as a form of positive as-
sistance to the offender, amounting in method and purpose
to social case work. Of course, they do not forget the legal
obligations upon the parole officer and the legal aspects of
his relationship to the person on parole. Notice these words :
The supervising agency or officer should regard the family of
the offender as its charge or client, as well as the offender himself.
Supervision of offenders on parole is a branch of social case work
and in general should use the same methods and be bound by the
same professional standards as the better class of family-welfare
societies.
Carried into practice, that would enormously improve
the work done by parole organizations in most parts of
the country.
Preparation for parole should begin the moment the
offender reaches the institution. The field parole officer
should have a professional point of view and professional
attainments in social case work, including a knowledge of
ways of influencing human behavior and the type of per-
sonality enabling him (or her) to use that knowledge.
Meetings of boards or groups at which the release of
particular offenders on parole is considered should be
confidential and private. The offender should be protected
410
December 1933
THE SURVEY
411
from exploitation. Oral pleas from interested persons, such
as attorneys, friends, politicians, and so on, should be ex-
cluded. There should be no newspaper publicity in connec-
tion with such hearings.
The following detailed statement concerning the manner
of carrying on supervision is interesting:
The primary object of supervision is the restoration of the
offender to society as a participating and law-abiding member,
. . . Competent supervision involves two main aspects: (i) the
personal guidance and influence over the offender by the officer;
and (2) the use or manipulation of social agencies and community
forces in the interest of the offender's rehabilitation and the wel-
fare of his family.
This requires careful planning and the offender should take
part in such planning. The parole officer should be active in help-
ing the offender to find work, in straightening out difficulties
within his family and in other relationships, in encouraging him
in the wholesome use of his leisure time and in other respects. He
and his superiors should be thoroughly familiar with the com-
munities in which the offenders live. They should be acquainted
with, and when possible should draw upon, the services and re-
sources of private and public organizations capable of being
helpful to the offender. These include health agencies and clinics,
character-building organizations, educational institutions, social-
service agencies, organizations providing means for the spending
of leisure time, various types of clubs, religious organizations and
others. The services of local, state and federal governmental
organizations and institutions are often useful. The function of
the parole officer, or the supervising authority, in this connection,
is to enlist and coordinate the services of these agencies, and such
agencies ought at all times to be willing to cooperate.
On the committee drafting this declaration of principles
were: Judge Andrew Bruce of Chicago, chairman; Dean
Justin Miller of Duke University; Prof. Edwin H. Suther-
land, of the University of Chicago; Frederic A. Moran,
Executive Director, Division of Parole, New York; Rachel
Hopper Powell, director, Women's Prison Association,
New York; Ray L. Huff, Parole Executive, U. S. Bureau
of Prisons, Wash., D. C., St. Alban Kite, assistant director,
Division of Parole, New Jersey; and the writer. It is hoped
that this statement of principles will help to guide the
development of parole in the United States until a better
declaration is formulated.
Mustering Out the Migrants
By ELLEN C. POTTER, M.D.
State Department of Institutions and Agencies, New Jersey
'HATEVER may be the outcome of all the re-
sponsibilities assumed by the federal government
in this time of distress one at least seems likely
to remain a continuing obligation. Unless all signs fail,
the transient, the homeless destitute American citizen of
nowhere will henceforth to the extent that he persists be
the concern of his Uncle Sam.
The transient, 1933 model, is not only the creation of the
depression but of the poor-laws and laws of legal settlement
which came over in the Mayflower along with our spinning
wheels, highboys and ancestors. He and his family have
been damaged almost beyond repair by those ancient
vagrancy laws and their crude or cruel administration.
The depression has filled the highways with hitch-hikers
and with families in flivvers, moving purposefully or aim-
lessly, seeking opportunity, work, adventure — at any event
escape from hopeless conditions. The freights have swarmed
with adventurous young manhood, and sometimes girlhood
on the same quest. Estimates of the numbers on the road
last winter ranged from 200,000 to 1,500,000.
At the same time every state, city, town and village was
building its defenses to exclude these wanderers, most of
them American citizens, who in their long quest for work
had become, in legal terms, "unsettled persons" without
any right to expect relief, or even work opportunity, at the
hands of their fellows.
The gravity of this problem resulted in the acceptance
by the federal government of responsibility for the wan-
derers. In midsummer the Federal Emergency Relief
Administrator laid down the broad outlines of a plan, the
major objectives of which were immediate assistance to
transients; and ultimately the prevention of such situations.
Briefly the plan accepts the transient as a federal re-
sponsibility and defines him as a person who has been
within a given state less than twelve months. It establishes
a Division of Transient Activities and instructs each state
to set up in its emergency relief office a similar division
staffed by a qualified director and aids who, cooperating
with agencies familiar with the problem, shall develop a
state plan adequate to meet the needs of the unsettled
person while also safeguarding local social welfare. This
plan, when approved by the federal administrator, becomes
the operating plan for the state and is financed 100 percent
(except for hospital care) out of federal funds. Regional
planning as between states is recognized as necessary. The
state plan to be acceptable must provide for regional regis-
tration and service centers, located at strategic points on
the great arteries of travel and must be comprehensive
enough to provide suitably for men and women, families,
and young people.
Federal leadership requires that these service centers
shall be staffed by trained people who know how to provide
"treatment" in the form of case work, shelter, food, cloth-
ing, medical and health service, transportation where
indicated, either "back home" or forward to some real
opportunity elsewhere. In addition there must be work
opportunities, recreation, education and the possibility of
integrating the individual or family into the local com-
munity as self-sustaining citizens. Uniform records are
required of all service centers which ultimately will be
subject to analysis in the hope that social planning and
suitable legislation may provide a permanent solution for
this acute problem. Because there is great need of imagina-
tion in the treatment of transients, the greatest possible
latitude is given in the development of local programs.
A tentative allocation of $15,000,000 has been set aside
out of federal funds for the undertaking, the expenditures
to be, in so far as possible, entirely in the hands of public
agencies. By late November, the plans of thirty-five states
had been approved; involving an initial expenditure of
$3,532,500.
The federal program does not however stop at providing
412
THE SURVEY
December 1933
service for those transients who want it, but it proposes at
some point, as yet not fixed, to halt and deal with the
chronic vagrant who has no wish to be saved from his
vagrancy, and who does not propose to carry any part of
his own social load if he can avoid it.
This will involve, after due notice, the invoking of police
powers; the enforcement of vagrancy laws (poor as they
are); with revisions if possible; the closing of the highways
to hitch-hikers; the strict prevention of access to freight
trains by venturesome youth. All of which implies the
availability of custodial control and supervised compulsory
work projects for those who will not voluntarily cooperate.
What chance has such a program for success?
It has every chance for success provided that Mr. John
Citizen and his wife take the matter seriously and do their
bit directly and indirectly to assist in the stabilization of
the transient and the prevention of transiency. And this
applies equally to the tender-hearted social worker, who
cannot resist the boy who asks for a lift or a dime.
John Citizen must inform himself as to where the tran-
sient service centers are located in his territory. He, and his
wife, can pass a New Year's resolution which will include
no more hitch-hikes to strangers; no more scattering of tens
and twenty-fives in return for appealing looks. Particularly
must Mrs. Citizen not dispense hand-outs at the kitchen
door, but instead there must be specific information as to
where to go and how to get to the service center where all
real need can be met at Uncle Sam's expense.
Both Mr. and Mrs. Citizen must promote an adequate
program of relief, work and morale-building in their home
town, so that there will be no excuse for the home-town
boy or man to take to the road, following the will-o'-the-
wisp of a job somewhere else. If they are on the boards of
local social agencies they must patiently and tactfully
promote the integration of their activities with those of the
transient bureau in any way in which the state or federal
authorities may be able to use them, even to giving or lend-
ing their trained personnel to the service.
They must shake off that provincialism which catalogues
the needy stranger as an "undesirable citizen," and begin
to think in terms of national responsibility for all our
fellows, giving our law-making bodies time to crystallize
in the statutes our broader concept of our national life. If
they sit on the town-council or in the state legislature they
must work for inter-county and inter-state compacts or
agreements which will mitigate and simplify the present
problems created by the settlement laws.
When the zero hour strikes for closing the highways and
railroads to the irresponsible wanderer, there must be no
lamentation and cross-purpose between the good citizen
and the law-enforcement service of the local, state and
railroad police and highway patrol. Mr. and Mrs. Citizen
must, however, insist that proper facilities be made avail-
able for this "mopping up" process and that the undertak-
ing be humanely and constructively handled.
The critical point in the total program is undoubtedly
in the timing of the enforcement of restrictions on irre-
sponsible wandering. If enforcement comes too soon the
constructive service proposed and the good will in process
of development will be wrecked. A troublesome problem
yet to be satisfactorily settled is the matter of hospitaliza-
tion for the transient.
Granting that by December 15 a network of adequately
staffed transient service centers will have been spread over
the United States and will be successfully functioning;
granting that the Civil Works program will be well under
way by the first of the year; and that the Public Works
Administration will have full steam up by spring; and that
jobs will be available to men and women in the old home
town, it is fair to assume that the majority of the migrating
army will have been mustered out. Granting that, under
federal pressure better standards of general relief have been
widely applied throughout the country there should be a
great reduction in recruiting into the ranks of the transient.
With these steps in the program firmly taken the liquida-
tion of the chronic wanderer becomes inevitable. Such
stubborn residue of the problem as may persist will, those
closest to it now believe, continue as a responsibility of
some arm of the federal government.
Community Reorganization
By ELLERY F. REED
IN the fall of 1932 there was organized in Cincinnati an
Agencies Study Committee to study the effects of the
reduced budgets which had been made necessary by
curtailment of Community Chest funds and also to re-
appraise the entire community program with a view not
only to economy but to the improvement of standards of
work, in so far as that was possible with curtailed funds.
This committee, organized by the Community Chest and
Council of Social Agencies, has twelve members about
equally representative of the Chest board and the different
fields of social work. A social worker on the committee acts
as secretary while the director of the Research Department
of the Community Chest acts as research secretary. A
member of the Community Chest board is chairman.
Seventeen agencies have been studied, and the purpose is
eventually to include all agencies where the purposes of the
committee seem to justify such effort.
After a study has been completed, it is considered by a
sub-committee of laymen and social workers, which in turn
makes its report to the larger committee. The larger com-
mittee makes such changes and endorsements as it sees fit,
and returns the study to the sub-committee to take up with
a committee appointed by the board of the agency. The
factual findings are presented to this board committee in
advance and when the meeting convenes certain questions
are raised for discussion. There is no attempt arbitrarily to
impose recommendations upon the agency, the object being
rather to work out in harmony with the agency such rec-
ommendations as seem best in light of the facts available.
In no case has any agency been forced to follow the rec-
ommendations but much has been accomplished by
patient discussion and follow-up work. The committee is
endeavoring to keep in touch with developments which
come about as a result of its study and has voted to include
within its functions the use of its influence to assist in carry-
ing out recommendations where such assistance can be
effective in preventing the breakdown or in promoting the
success of new adjustments.
The persistent follow-up work, directed by the secretary
of the committee subsequent to each study, has been es-
sential in thus far bringing about savings of approximately
$25,000 a year without serious injury to any service and
with decided improvements in some. Probably not all of the
adjustments that need to be made can be brought about by
the methods thus far pursued by the committee, but at any
rate it has avoided arbitrary and "big stick" methods.
THE COMMON WELFARE
The Beast Is Loose
"A FINE lesson to the nation," the Governor of California
•i\ called the lynching of two kidnapers in that state.
It was one of three such lessons in Thanksgiving week.
In the San Jose instance, a shocking crime had been
solved by unusually effective police work; two confessed
murderers were in jail, awaiting early trial. There was every
reason to expect that law and justice would be prompt and
adequate. Governor Rolph, approving the subsequent and
sickening mob murder, praised "the good people" who sub-
stituted jungle law for civilization, broke down the jail
doors, savagely tortured and then killed their victims. The
leader of the "good people" proves to have been an
eighteen-year-old boy who boasts:
I went all over town in my flivver roadster and passed out the
word, "We're going to have a lynching at the jail at eleven
o'clock tonight." . . . Mostly I went to the speakeasies and
rounded up the gang there. That's why so many of the mob were
drunk.
The attitude of the Governor of California is an ex-
ample— and we have had so many! — of the high cost of
permitting "the machine" to place a cheap politician in a
position of trust and authority. Such a public servant can-
not be counted on to respect his solemn oath of office, nor to
show courage and resourcefulness at a critical time. If he is
correctly quoted by the Associated Press, Governor Rolph
postponed his participation in the conference of Governors
in Idaho to facilitate violation of the laws he was pledged
to uphold: "If I had gone away someone would have called
out the troops on me, and I promised in Los Angeles I
would not do that."
When St. Joseph, Missouri, offered the Nation "a lesson,"
sixty-five National Guardsmen with armored tanks were
sent to "protect" a prisoner. "No serious casualties were
reported on either side," after the "battle" that followed.
The Negro prisoner was beaten, hung and burned.
Maryland's was probably the most striking lesson of the
three. Perhaps only in these United States could the thing
have happened that occurred next day near Baltimore.
State authorities stepped in where local officials had refused
to take action against persons believed to have been ring-
leaders in a recent lynching, and the sober New York Times
reports: "Between 2 and 3 A.M., three hundred steel-
helmeted and fully armed members of the Fifth Regiment
of the Maryland National Guard swooped into Salisbury in
a fleet of eleven buses." Four arrests were made and, holding
a crowd at bay with fixed bayonets, the troops removed the
prisoners to a Baltimore jail. It was, of course, an absurd
and humiliating resort to force. But in the shameful chroni-
cles of Thanksgiving week, the one redeeming fact is that
Governor Ritchie correctly gauged the situation, and
that his courage and steadfastness were equal to the
emergency.
There is obvious peril in letting loose the mob spirit in a
time of national tension and uncertainty. An immediate
practical possibility is a federal anti-lynching law, taking
the problem out of the hands of inadequate local officials
and giving the national government authority to deal with
this crime as it is so effectively dealing with the crime of
kidnaping. Improvement of police methods, and of pro-
cedure in the criminal courts is possible and desirable.
But law enforcement, as we have also learned to our cost,
cannot outrun public opinion. The commendation of
Governor Rolph, the criticism of Governor Ritchie, while
by no means universal, indicate the deep sources of the mob
spirit that the California executive condones, the Maryland
executive seeks to restrain. Faced with the gravest issues
in our national history, are we capable of patience, clear
thinking, courage? Can we choose between competent
leaders and noisy demagogues ? Can we in sober good faith
maintain civilized law and order? Or is the irresponsible
boy in his flivver, a drunken mob at his back, the real sym-
bol of our citizenship?
Steel Asks for More
ONE wonders whether "the steel men" are not as sur-
prised as is the general public by the announcement
that the industry likes its code and wants some more.
Originally established for a ninety-day trial period, the
industry has requested that its code be continued until
May 31, 1934. Further, there is reason to believe that steel
hopes to go on with this or a similar plan after the emer-
gency legislation has expired. The gain to the industry is
the relaxation of the anti-trust laws, making possible the
control of price-cutting, secret price concessions and other
"sharp practices." Reports of the industry under the code
supply a yardstick for these gains. In a period when the
rate of operations fell from 53 percent to 27.1 percent of
total ingot capacity, code wage rates and hours of work in-
creased employment 21 percent and total wages 22 per-
cent. These gains for labor, it is indicated, represent a total
additional cost to the industry of some $30 million a year.
And yet steel likes its code! Here is vivid illustration of
the high cost of "rugged individualism" and "cutthroat
competition," and of the savings to both labor and capital
in a more civilized way of doing business.
Relief Rents As a Policy
NOT a complete solution of relief rents but at least a
policy toward them has finally been adopted in
both Chicago and New York so that the charge of "eva-
sion and eviction" no longer stands. Of the two, Chicago
has been the greater sinner since its lack of a definite
policy has persisted longer. Until last spring New York
paid rents with some regularity and as a matter of practice
Chicago's bark has been worse than its bite for when work
relief was in the program it was allotted with a definite
view to rents, thereby greatly easing the situation.
The Illinois Emergency Relief Commission now au-
thorizes rent payments when a family "cannot remain on
the premises unless some payment is made." Rent, paid
for one month, and no back rents, "shall not exceed one
half the regular monthly rental value of the dwelling
place, nor exceed $10 a month." A maximum of $25 is set
for shelter, food and furniture. The policy was framed by a
committee of social workers and executives aware of the
many factors in the complicated situation. Landlords
413
414
THE SURVEY
December 1933
I
complain, it is said, about back rents and the low maxi-
mum, but social workers seem to feel that the worst of
evictions among the Cook County unemployed is over.
The New York policy specifies that rent will be a regular
item in relief budgets "as long as clients' need for it con-
tinues." Rents begin at $10 a month with a top of $25
when the landlord supplies heat and the apartment has a
private bath.
No one claims, least of all the people who framed them,
that these policies leave nothing to be desired or that they
will resolve all hardships. They do however recognize the
principle that shelter is a definite and proper charge on
public funds, which in itself is a long step forward. There
will be many cases where adjustments must be made by
both tenant and landlord, and many others where the rules
simply will not fit the facts. But just to know where they
stand is an enormous help to tenant, landlord and relief
worker. Greater flexibility must be the next step.
Relief Merry-Go-Round
F the relief administrator in the common or garden city
feels himself in the middle of a three-ring circus as rush
orders roll in from Washington, let him cast an eye on the
Washington scene, on the FERA in action. There, if you
please, the number of rings makes the old historic days, when
the FERA was merely allotting relief millions to states,
look like a dog and pony show.
Take, for instance, just a few run-of-the-mill items from
a week's agenda: Plans for the purchase of some 25,0x30
low-grade beef cattle and the establishment of canning
plants in sixteen Texas cities. . . . Arrangements to dis-
tribute 5,500,000 bushels of wheat to save livestock. . . .
Contracts to process 100,000 head of surplus sheep from
the over-grazed Navajo Indian range. . . . Steps to fore-
stall the possibility that local shortages of small tools might
delay civil-works projects. ... A contract for 400,000
pounds of canned fresh roast beef for the needy un-
employed of Arizona. . . . Eighteen bids for converting 7
million pounds of tub-butter into one-pound rolls. . . .
Bids asked on 5 million pounds of dried beans. . . . Men
put to work on tick control and sweet-potato-weevil
control. . . . Approval of eighty civil-works projects
ranging from water-works (forty-one towns, 554 men) to
toilets (two towns, thirty-four men).
Who said merry-go-round, — or was it madhouse?
New York Dollars Go Venturing
BECAUSE they are interested in cooperative credit
unions and because Leon Henderson of the Russell
Sage Foundation, New York, asked them to, some sixty
New York people are sending a dollar or so a month to the
Savings and Loan Association of Brasstown, N. C., to
help build up the capital of the credit union which is a
part of that interesting experiment in rural community
cooperation, the John C. Campbell Folk School.
The dollar a month of the New Yorkers is in no sense a
donation to an organization but is a savings deposit on
which 3 percent interest is paid and which may be with-
drawn at any time. For the New Yorkers it represents an
accumulation of capital. But for the Brasstown school,
which is at the borrowing end of the Savings and Loan
Association, it represents operating capital for its coopera-
tive enterprises. The school operates these enterprises on
about one fifth of the capital counted necessary by business
concerns. It makes up the deficiency by cooperative meth-
ods and rapid turnover.
At this time the school creamery, which pays local
farmers $300 a week for their cream, is in need of an ice-
machine to enable it to operate in the summer. This will be
financed by the New Yorkers' deposits. By summer time
every capitalistic New York dollar will enable the school
to pay a cooperative twenty-five cents a week to a North
Carolina farmer. Incidentally Mr. Henderson invites the
participation of more capitalistic dollars in a cooperative
adventure so simple and understandable that it affords
him, he says, his greatest release from the contemplation
of the intricacies of recovery billions.
What Is Timely?
"T TNTIMELY" is the reiterated refrain of the protests
*^ which drug and cosmetic manufacturers are pour-
ing into the mails in opposition to S. 1944, the so-called
Tugwell bill to extend and strengthen the federal Food
and Drug Act. (See Survey Midmonthly, October 1933,
p. 383: Radio and Rouge.) In the midst of discourses on
constitutionality and "the right and duty of self-medica-
tion" these plaints murmur repeatedly that business is in
no position to stand revision. The same adjective, this
time as "an untimely announcement," bobs up in a quoted
statement by the New York Association of Private Hos-
pitals, deploring the report by the Academy of Medicine
on maternal deaths, to which reference is made elsewhere
in these pages. Hearings on S. 1944 are scheduled to start
December 7 before the Senate Sub-committee on Com-
merce. Consumers — which means all of us — will be well-
advised to obtain a copy of the bill itself from the federal
Food and Drug Administration and watch the papers and
our Senators during a lively fight. In the process, one may
ponder the philosophy of timeliness. We have the old adage
that it is never too late to mend. But is it ever too early,
when, as the Department of Agriculture has shown, Ameri-
cans are misled into spending millions of dollars for prod-
ucts that are inadequate or useless for their advertised
purposes and sometimes poisonous, even deadly; or when,
in the considered opinion of the Academy of Medicine,
women are dying needlessly ? Untimely for whom ?
Kicking at Its Code
FROM many directions comes the lament that code
standards are "breaking the back of business." It is the
more heartening therefore to have a successful business
enterprise protest the labor standards set by the temporary
code of its industry, insisting that if due attention is given
labor problems, decent standards of wages and hours can
be maintained. The enterprise is Consumers' Cooperative
Services, Inc., which for thirteen years has successfully
operated cafeterias in New York City. The standards held
indefensibly low are those set up by the Temporary
Restaurant Code, permitting a 54-hour week for men, a
48-hour week for women, and a wage of 28 cents an hour,
with deductions not to exceed three dollars a week for
meals. This works out to a weekly wage of $12.12 for men,
$10.44 f°r women on full time. The CCS, according to a
detailed statement in the Cooperative Crier, maintained
an $18 weekly minimum wage from April 1924, to April
1933. For five of these years the minimum was $20. This
was a cash wage, in addition to meals, based not on a
December 1933
THE SURVEY
415
54- but on a 48-hour week. Over these years net earnings,
"what- a profit business would call net profit," ranged from
3.9 to 6.5 percent of gross income. In considering its
responsibility to the NRA program, the CCS decided on
a 4O-hour work week, with a minimum cash wage of $15,
permitting the addition often full-time workers. The board
of directors of CCS has submitted a brief to NRA, outlining
the organization's financial history, and recommending
as minimum standards for the industry a maximum 48-
hour week; a minimum weekly wage of $18 (with deduction
for meals up to $3) and a minimum cash wage of 40 cents
an hour for all part-time employes.
Why Mothers Die
THE New York Academy of Medicine puts squarely on
the shoulders of the medical profession responsibility
for the majority of preventable deaths of women in child-
birth during three years covered by a most careful study.
(Maternal Mortality in New York City. The Common-
wealth Fund. Price $2.) The facts confront the doctors with
a grave and urgent task of self-education and self-regula-
tion. But the full force of this and other important inves-
tigations of maternal mortality that have been recently
completed (See The Survey, October 1933, p. 320 and this
issue, p. 420, Mothers Who Died) will have been lost if
public dismay fritters out in arraignment of the doctors.
Through their tables runs a stark story of ignorance and
lack of opportunity which could be wiped out only by
united social effort, especially the story of thousands of
women who dared death — and lost — rather than bring
another child into the circumstances of their lives. More
than a third of the preventable deaths in New York City
were ascribed to the patient's responsibility, among them
cases in which the patient failed to get medical advice or to
follow it when obtained. "This element in the situation
is one of education entirely," declares the Academy's
report, adding that education is the field of the medical
profession. Yet elsewhere that report points out that "in
many, if not most, instances where the patient has been
held responsible, we must recognize that she is, in fact,
helpless by reason of circumstances which are not of her
making and lie outside her control." Perhaps some such
factor lies in the New York record of deaths following
abortion. From 1930 to 1932 the percentage of all ma-
ternal deaths increased from 13.5 to 21.1. Surely there
is wisdom in the view of the Children's Bureau that here is
a social and economic tragedy in the solution of which the
doctors must have help.
More About Public Housing
has at last been a country-wide awakening to
A the problem of slum clearance the like of which could
not have been anticipated. This time I believe something is
going to happen." Thus spoke Robert D. Kohn, head of the
housing division of the PWA at a meeting to discuss the
need for public housing called in New York City by the
National Public Housing Conference.
Sir Raymond Unwin, who had so large a share in develop-
ing and executing the English housing program, pointed
out that in promoting public housing the United States is
but following the course of European countries which long
ago discovered that public works are one of the most ef-
fective means of combating unemployment and that hous-
ing particularly has outstanding advantages.
At this meeting Mayor-elect LaGuardia made his first
public statement since his election — declaring himself un-
reservedly in favor of the utmost speed in starting low-rent
and slum-clearance projects, and promising his whole-
hearted and active support. Parenthetically it may be said
that the Public Housing Conference well deserved the honor
of having the mayor-elect make this encouraging declara-
tion before its membership and friends, for this organization
started the home fires burning at the altar of public housing
long before federal money was available.
New York is not one of the five states which have passed
legislation enabling cities to take advantage of federal
grants. Though Governor Lehman stands squarely behind
public housing, the hands of the mayor of New York are
tied until Albany acts. As Lieutenant Governor Bray
pointed out, the answer will come in January when the
Legislature meets in regular session. And in the meanwhile
the Public Housing Conference and all friends of good
housing must do all in their power to effect a compromise
as to "controversial details" between the powers-that-be.
(Readers the country over should note that enabling legis-
lation is still lacking in some forty-odd states, and that al-
though the percentage of population increase in the United
States in the decade 1920-30 was but 16 percent, the num-
ber of families increased by 23 percent.)
Education Under FERA
DEFINING and dealing with a multitude of problems,
foreseen and unforeseen, the vast emergency educa-
tion program under FERA takes shape and moves ahead
(see The Survey, November 15, page 367). In addressing
the New York Adult Education Council, two days before
Thanksgiving, Dr. George F. Zook, U. S. Commissioner
of Education, was able to report that forty-two state plans
have been filed with the administration and that a dozen
are beginning to function. The projects have grouped
themselves in six main categories: classes for the adult illit-
erate, for those in need of vocational training, "general
culture" courses, opportunity for various types of rehabili-
tation, support for elementary rural schools that would
otherwise have to close, and nursery schools. The type of
program approved bears out the announcement that the
relief administration seeks to supplement local school funds,
not replace them.
Since they are paid with relief money, candidates for
teaching positions must be certified to school officials
through the local emergency relief offices. Here, while the
machinery can in many instances be made to function
more smoothly, the ruling must stand. In other directions,
procedure can be (and is being) modified by experience.
Thus it is no longer required that the teachers be held to a
"relief basis." In the interest of "a decent standard of liv-
ing," teachers under the new set-up may be compensated
at the rate that prevails in the community for the type of
service they are called on to perform. Nor are the positions
open only to certified teachers. They may be filled by "any
qualified person," making it possible for the commercial
artist to "take on" a group of boys with a "knack for
drawing," and the trained nurse to instruct classes in home
nursing and first aid.
It is obviously too early to "appraise" the new under-
taking. But to believers in adult education and to the un-
employed— teachers and pupils — it opens up vistas of new
interest and hope.
416
THE SURVEY
December 1933
A Plan for a Welfare Plan
O supply a needed center for state-wide planning, fact-finding
and educational and legislative service in the complicated
field of family welfare and relief the Public Charities Association
of Pennsylvania, George R. Bedinger, director, has organized a
new division, its object, "to formulate and promote a sound state
program of family welfare, public relief and provision for security
against dependency."
As an immediate program, determined by relative urgency and
by limitations of staff and budget, the new division will deal with
activities related to unemployment relief as administered by the
SERB and its local arms; poor relief as administered by directors
of the poor; the creation of county-welfare boards and directors
and, finally, the development and coordination of family-welfare
services by public and private agencies. An inventory of the pres-
ent relief and welfare services in the state will be undertaken.
The new division has as its chairman Spencer Ervin, president
of the Family Society of Philadelphia and vice-president of the
Family Welfare Association of America. Arthur Dunham will
serve as its secretary while continuing his duties as secretary of
the Association's child-welfare division.
Facts are Coming
UESS-WORK on the present volume of institutional and
foster-home care of dependent and neglected children should
give place in a few months to reliable facts and figures. The
United States Bureau of the Census is now forwarding to all
agencies providing continued care the schedules for its decennial
census of institutions. The forms are due back in Washington on
February I. Two schedules are being used: the first calls for in-
formation about the agency and the form of its care of children
during 1933, the second for information about the children and
their family situation on admission and as of December 31, 1933.
The Children's Bureau has cooperated extensively in develop-
ing the schedules in verifying lists and in securing the assistance
of national organizations and state and local agencies to ensure
prompt and complete returns.
No Money for Rent
' I ''HE hardest nut in the relief situation, rents, has been not
•*• exactly cracked by Philadelphia researchers but at least
opened up for examination as to its proportions and content. In
No Money for Rent the whole miserable business of unpaid relief
rents in a big city is bared and all its corollaries of human in-
security and economic loss are exposed.
The study which this pamphlet of eighty pages (price 10 cents)
reports was directed by Ewan Clague for the joint committee on
research of the Community Council and the Pennsylvania School
of Social Work, 311 South Juniper Street, Philadelphia. Its facts
are presented with an objectivity which damns the situation they
expose. Since most large cities fail to pay relief rents a situation
comparable to that in Philadelphia undoubtedly exists in many
of them. The study has, therefore, more than local significance
and its conclusions should give solid backing to social workers
and others struggling for an equitable policy toward relief rents.
The study covers three samples, in all 9500 families, taken from
Philadelphia's relief rolls and affords a good cross-section picture
of the housing situation among the whole 70,000 families on
relief, of their slow demoralization when, after their first forced
move, they gradually become rent casuals, unwelcome every-
where, constantly moving on under increasing harassment.
Between 80 and 90 percent of all renting relief families are in
arrears — the longer on relief the greater the arrears "It has been
calculated," says Mr. Clague, "that the 70,000 families receiving
relief in the spring of 1933 owed their landlords more than $5
million in back rent and this takes no account of arrearages to
previous landlords." The landlords, it is clear, have" held the bag,"
many of them with extraordinary patience.
The report urges that housing relief should be recognized as an
essential item in unemployment relief and proposes bases for
establishing minimum standards of shelter with relief grants in
cash sufficient to meet rent either on full or by part-payments.
Down With the Poorhouse
T 7"ERY proud of itself is Delaware which, only two years after
' the establishment of its old-age pension system, has closed up
its three county poorhouses and transferred to its new State
Welfare Home such of the residents as require institutional care.
The state is now paying pensions amounting to about $15,500
monthly to 1571 aged persons. The home is caring for 338 with
100 more on the waiting-list.
Meantime a neighbor state, Maryland, has been given a look at
the deficiencies and gaps in its permissive system of old-age relief.
Under a grant from the Christian Social Justice Fund of Balti-
more, Earl S. Bellman, of the University of Maryland, has made
an exhaustive study of conditions in three typical counties, com-
ing out of it, he says, a sadder and a wiser man. His findings,
published by the fund in a pamphlet, A Study of the Care of the
Needy Aged in Maryland Counties, lead him to the conclusion
that the problem can be met only by a coordinated program based
on an enlightened public opinion which would carry the best
methods of social work into the most backward areas. He recom-
mends a system of old-age pensions adequately financed and
skilfully administered with hospital homes for the chronically ill
and state hospital care for the mentally afflicted. "That anti-
quated human waste-basket called the almshouse . . . should
completely disappear."
What Work Relief Can Do
WHAT price in cold dollars could be put on the civic im-
provements brought to Greenville, Pa., a steel-town of
ten thousand people, by the labor, ingenuity and goodwill of its
unemployed citizens on relief is hard to compute, but certainly it
would amount to many thousands. A dam impounding the ugly
meandering Shenango River has created a beauty spot in the
town, a swimming pool for the people and a guaranteed water
supply for industry. A nearby tract of some forty-five acres of
swampy over-grown land has been cleaned, drained, laid out and
replanted as a park. Finally the town eyesore, a long deep ravine
back of the Greenville Hospital, one end of it a dump, the other a
jungle for hoboes, was attacked. As the cleaning progressed un-
suspected natural beauties revealed themselves as well as a ledge
of shale yielding hundreds of tons of flagstones. The hospital now
has a flagged terrace for its convalescents from which flagged
walks lead down to the bottom of the ravine where a little stream
wanders through planted and beautified banks. The hospital
ravine is now the show place of the town.
Each project of the Citizen's Emergency Relief Association was
turned over to a chairman and an engineer with workers called
from the relief list and paid with public funds. There was no
dearth of skills of every kind and never was the plan so rigid that
it denied the workers the expression of their own initiative. Some
December 1933
THE SURVEY
417
of the prettiest spots in the park and the ravine are there because
the workers, keenly interested, conceived a new idea while the job
was going on.
Where Calories Count
FAMILIES on the food-order system of relief, when the orders
are calculated by nutrition experts to provide an adequate
and well-balanced as well as a cheap diet, are not it appears as
badly off in terms of energy-producing foods as families on cash
incomes which fall below $4 per week per person. In the course of
a nation-wide inquiry conducted by the Milbank Memorial Fund
and the United States Public Health Service into the health of
families affected by the depression, Dorothy G. Wiehl of the
Fund's research staff made a careful study of 270 relief and low-
income families in an East Side district of New York. Taking
3000 calories per adult male per day as the recommended mini-
mum of energy value, families on home relief were found to be
getting about 10 percent below the standard, while families with
an income, perhaps derived from work relief, of less than $4 per
person per week were 20 percent below.
Although, as Miss Wiehl points out, there is no one standard
for a balanced diet, comparisons of the content of the food sup-
plies of the families in various income classes showed that with
$6 per week per person the average family had a fairly adequate
and balanced diet, but " as income declined the consumption of
each type of food was reduced with the greatest reductions in the
use of milk, meat, fish, eggs, vegetables and fruit."
Pro-Rata Case Work
ALTHOUGH the forty-six children's institutions in the two
•**- Carolinas which receive assistance from the Duke Endow-
ment are fully converted to the doctrine of social case work half
of them are unable to practice it because of budget troubles which
preclude the employment of a full-time case worker. In its report
for 1932, just published, the Endowment outlines a plan which it
thinks might supply the service now lacking. Briefly, it proposes
a central clearing bureau where all applications for admission to
participating institutions, all of them small, would be referred.
The two states would be divided into districts each with a full-
time case worker to handle all cases in her area referred by the
clearing bureau both before and after admission. The service
would be financed by each institution paying for its own cases.
The Duke Endowment is quick to see objections to the plan
but believes that these can be met if workers with the necessary
training and background can be secured. If the plan is put into
operation it will, it is said, be the first effort to provide coordinate
case-work service for scattered institutions in a rural territory.
Various Volunteers
' I HHE St. Louis Community Council has organized a permanent
*• division of volunteer service as a part of its program of com-
munity planning. The Junior League training course and a course
at the Washington University School of Social Work will be open
to the Council for its newly recruited workers.
The New York Junior League has undertaken to carry on the
Clothing Information Service maintained experimentally last
year by a committee of the Welfare Council. It will also organize
as its own project a visiting housekeeper service similar to services
that have proved extremely useful in Boston and elsewhere.
The Committee on Volunteers of the Chicago Council of Social
Agencies is exploring, through a sub-committee, the greater use of
case-aids in family agencies, a field in which, in Chicago, non-
professional folk have not penetrated. A volunteer who until her
marriage was a professional heads the group.
The New York State Division of Parole, Bernard J. Pagan,
commissioner, has enlisted a number of experienced laymen and
volunteers for a Bureau of Social Service to supplement going
efforts to strengthen the chain of service between the prison cell
and the home.
Labels Under the Code
WHAT the NRA label means is defined in the last news
letter of the U. S. Women's Bureau. The label must now be
placed on every garment manufactured and distributed under the
coat and suit industry code. It is designed to serve as a certificate
to the consumer that the garment was made in a factory where
the work week of 35 hours and 5 days was in force for both men
and women in manufacturing processes, with no overtime except
on permission of the administrator. The label means that in
New York and Philadelphia employes in certain listed occupations
must receive minimum weekly rates of $29 to $47, and piece-work
operators must be guaranteed minimum wages ranging from $21
to $45 for a 35-hour week. Such operators in all other places in the
East receive 10 percent less for each kind of work, with weekly
rates in the West of $22 to $41, and piece rates of $.53 to $.85 an
hour. The code also forbids the employment of children under 1 8
on manufacturing processes, and under 16 in any capacity, and
the manufacture of goods in homes, tenements, basements, or
buildings insanitary or unsafe on account of fire risks. It is esti-
mated that 85 percent of the industry's manufacture is done in
New York, employing about 33,000 workers. The industry's
annual output is valued at about $400,000,000, wholesale. About
five million labels had been distributed to employers by Novem-
ber I. Labor spokesmen point out that the success of the label, as
of all code provisions, rests on the extent to which NRA vigilance
and the pressure of public opinion can prevent "chiselling" by the
incurably "sub-standard" employer.
Hard-Times Budgets
BUDGETS of women wage earners during the depression — the
changes in income and in spending — were studied by the
National Board of the YWCA through its research division. The
basis for the study were detailed accounts kept by 500 girls and
women over the two years 1931-2. A report on the survey was
made at an all-day conference recently held in New York City.
The girls studied ranged in age from 20 to 30 years. In 1931, 32
percent earned less than £20 a week. In the corresponding weeks
of 1932, 41 percent were earning less than $20 a week. The cuts
fell heaviest on the lower-paid groups. Sixty-three percent of the
$15-20 group were cut 27 percent; but 83 percent of the $10-15
group were cut 62 percent. Those in the lowest-paid group covered
($5-10) were cut 27 percent. In budgeting these cut wages, all but
the lowest-paid group reduced the amount spent for clothing. The
total amount spent for clothing in 1932 was about half the sum
spent in 1931, "indicating the close relation between low wages
and small purchasing power." "Lunch money" also decreased.
In the $5-10 group there was a drop from 94 cents a week in 1931
to 47 cents in 1932; in the $20 to $25 group, a drop from $1.68 to
$1.19. In all groups the budgetary item of "help to others" dou-
bled and trebled. The amount spent for health, including den-
tistry, declined. One item that showed no cut was personal care.
The girls reported that they could not hope to get or keep a job
unless their nails, hair and skin were well-groomed. In spite of
418
THE SURVEY
December 1933
wage cuts, fear had forced many girls to increase their savings
and also to spend more for education.
Workers' Education Moves West
THE initial session of the first summer school for workers on
the Pacific Coast resulted in a permanent organization, and
plans are already being laid for a broadened program in 1934.
The school was the outgrowth of a club of industrial workers
organized by the Los Angeles YWCA in 1926. The group has met
weekly for study and discussion, and from it students have been
sent each year to the Bryn Mawr summer school. In its plans for a
Pacific Coast school, the group had the cooperation of the Cali-
fornia Association for Adult Education and of Scripps and Occi-
dental Colleges, as well as of the YWCA and other organizations.
The four weeks' session was held on the Occidental campus. On
petition of a group of men, the original plan for a summer school
for women workers was modified and the venture made coeduca-
tional. The subjects studied included American history, English
literature, labor economics, composition and speech, history of
the American labor movement. "Although the last moment plans
were upset to some extent," one of the prime movers writes us,
"as the adoption of the NRA gave jobs to half a dozen or more
prospective students ... a total of 29 students were enrolled."
The students formed an alumni group which meets once a month
for study and social activities. A longer session and a larger en-
rollment are the hopes for 1934.
Technology and the Public
HOW the advances of the Machine Age profit the public at the
expense of the worker is illustrated in a report of a U. S.
Women's Bureau study, Change from Manual to Dial Operation
in the Telephone Industry, by Ethel L. Best (Government Print-
ing Office, Price 5 cents). This survey shows that, even with care-
ful planning, technical improvement means loss of work to wage
earners. Of 534 operators on the books of the telephone company
in an industrial city of 200,000 inhabitants just before a change to
dial operation in 1930, 260 were retained, 131 transferred, 27
resigned and 116 were laid off. As the change had been foreseen
nearly three years ahead, all vacancies for some time had been
filled by " temporary" workers. Of the group laid off, only 4 were
classed as "regulars." The study covers the efforts at job-finding
made by these workers and by the company on their behalf.
Their situation was complicated by the deepening depression.
Of the displaced workers who were able to secure employment,
only 21 reported a full year's work for the year following the
change, and 3 had been able to secure no work at all during that
period. The group contained few "older workers." Nearly 70
percent were under 25 years of age, more than 40 percent under
20. The study concludes:
The best effort of industry cannot prevent temporary unemployment
from technological causes, but the public that benefits by more efficient
methods should be aware of its responsibility and not allow the worker to
bear the entire burden of change and progress.
Taxing the Machine
PROPOSING that the machine be forced to provide for the
worker it displaces, the Cigar Makers' International Union of
America seeks to make such a provision a part of the industry's
code. The cigar makers' proposal, put forward at the code hear-
ings, is to lay a tax on all cigar-making machines sufficient to pay
$10 a week to each worker displaced until such time as the worker
is absorbed elsewhere. The suggested "contribution" of the ma-
chines would be on the basis of each 1000 cigars produced, in-
creasing in proportion to productivity. The spokesman for the
workers who put forward the plan pointed out that since 1929
employment in the industry has decreased 35.7 percent and weekly
earnings 62.8 percent, due chiefly to increased mechanization.
"Such a contribution," he added, "would place the responsibility
for technological unemployment squarely on the shoulders where
it belongs."
The textile industry recently accepted a ruling of the NRA that
new productive machinery might be installed only with federal
license, unless it replaced equipment of equal capacity.
Child Labor Day
FOLLOWING its custom of nearly thirty years, the National
Child Labor Committee has designated the last week-end in
January for the observance of Child Labor Day — -January 27 in
the synagogues, January 28 in the churches and Sunday schools
and January 29 in schools, clubs and other organizations. It is
planned this year to emphasize the fact that while the codes have
meant notable child-labor victories, hundreds of thousands of
children in agriculture, domestic service, certain forms of indus-
trial home work and street trades are unprotected. Publications
and posters for use in child-labor-day programs are offered with-
out charge by the committee, 419 Fourth Avenue, New York.
How to start and how to develop " programs for the girl not yet
employed" are discussed from practical points of view in three
new bulletins published by the laboratory division of the National
Board of the YWCA (600 Lexington Avenue, New York. Price,
20 cents each).
A CONVENIENT summary of existing minimum-wage legislation in
this country, with informed opinion on both sides of the question,
is offered by the Industrial Relations Section of Princeton Uni-
versity. Similar reports on regulation of hours and on collective
bargaining will follow.
FOR those who try to keep things straight, the National Industrial
Conference Board offers Economic Reconstruction Legislation of
1933 (214 pages. Price $2.50) which reprints the principle acts,
summarizes others, and provides a concise topical index. There is
no attempt at appraisal.
ONE-ACT dramatic sketches, suitable for clubs or discussion
groups of amateurs interested in labor problems, are offered by
the Southern Summer School for Women Workers in Industry
(Arnold, Maryland). The sketches were written by Hollace
Ransdell, a teacher in the school, who has directed "labor dra-
matics" projects in many communities.
BY a vote of 877 to 273, the workers in the six mines of the Col-
orado Fuel and Iron Company turned down the company union
in favor of a union affiliated with the United Mine Workers of
America. Although union members have frequently worked in the
mines, the company, one of the Rockefeller interests, has always
refused to recognize the union in employer-employe negotiations.
A LABOR Action School, a new project in workers' education, is
announced by the Conference for Progressive Labor Action, of
which A. J. Muste is chairman (128 East 16 St., New York City).
From this school, an educational program is being carried out
through the branches of the organization. Labor economics,
trade-union developments, Marxian political science are the
subjects emphasized.
How change in process and improved management increase the
productivity of human labor in the machine age is shown in a
recent study of the automobile tire industry by Boris Stern
(Bureau of U. S. Labor Statistics Bulletin No. 585. Government
Printing Office. Price 10 cents). The report is hard going for any
but the expert, but here are revealing facts on the high price the
worker pays, in "speeded" processes and broken employment for
our industrial advances.
December 1933
THE SURVEY
419
Pennies and Nickels
SCHOOL "thrift" plans have suffered under the depression in
amounts saved, in facilities for saving, but not in interest,
according to a recent report by the savings division of the Ameri-
can Bankers Association. Last year, 3,080,685 school children
participated in 10,890 school savings plans. These figures repre-
sent a drop of about eighteen hundred in the number of schools,
but only about twenty-six thousand in the number of children.
The volume of savings amounted to $10,332,569, a decrease of
?7>347>795 as compared with the year before, and with the high of
more than twenty-nine millions three years ago. Withdrawals
exceeded deposits by more than two millions. In many instances
this means the use of the money for the purpose for which it was
saved, but all too often it stands for extreme family need. In per-
centages, the number of schools offering savings facilities was
down 14 percent, the volume of savings fell 42 percent, but the
number of children participating was decreased by only .8 percent.
Learning About Movies
CAN Mary and Johnny learn to discriminate between good
movies and poor ones? Can their own taste be made a safe-
guard against some of the unwholesome influences defined by the
recent Payne Fund motion picture research studies? At a recent
conference called by Dr. George F. Zook, U. S. commissioner of
education, plans were launched for an experiment in educating
girls and boys in motion-picture appreciation. Representative
highschools in several states will "try out" a new course in mo-
tion-picture art which will in general follow the lines of highschool
courses in music and art appreciation. The text used will be How
to Appreciate Moving Pictures by Edgar Dale (Macmillan). Five
state departments of education were represented at the conference
as well as a number of welfare groups, including the national
boards of the YMCA and YWCA, the National Catholic Welfare
Council, the International Council of Religious Education and the
Congress of Parents and Teachers.
Emergency Facts
PRELIMINARY reports of a study of "the entire public-school
L situation" made by the Joint Commission on the Emergency in
Education (1201 16 St., Washington, D. C.) include data on
closed schools, short terms and subcode teachers in rural areas. A
more complete report will follow. The preliminary report is based
on 1886 replies to an inquiry sent to 3520 county superintendents
or equivalent officers. The replies indicate that 2016 rural schools
failed to open this fall for lack of funds, affecting more than
1 10,000 children — "more children than there are enrolled in the
entire public-school system of a city as large as Minneapolis or in
the public schools of the entire state of Arizona." Some 715 schools
with about thirty-five thousand pupils opened for a term of less
than three months, and 5278 (nearly a third of the total number of
rural schools) for less than six months.
The yardstick used in this study for measuring teachers' salaries
was the $14 a week wage set as a minimum for factory workers
under the President's Reemployment Agreement. This wage
would give an annual income of about $750 (allowing for the oc-
casional 40-hour weeks permitted) for a full year's work of 52
weeks, and of $450 for nine months' work, the traditional school
term. The questionnaire returns indicate that more than 209,500
rural teachers are this year receiving less than $750, more than
84,000 less than $450. The report concludes: "It may safely be
said that of the entire public-school teaching force of the nation
at least one in four is receiving annual wages below the minimum
provided for factory hands under the Blanket Code."
Freeing the Highschools
OECONDARY schools have been increasingly criticized because
^ they were too narrowly limited to "college preparation," with
inelastic curricula and methods. The defense of the secondary
schools has been that they were hampered at every turn by rigid
"college entrance requirements." Under a Commission on the
Relation of School and College, set up by the Progressive Educa-
tion Association, a five-year experiment has been initiated to
"enable both the schools and the colleges to find out whether
students prepared in accordance with progressive ideas will do
better or worse in college than those students who meet the exist-
ing requirements." Under the plan, students from participating
secondary schools will be considered for admission by any of the
cooperating colleges not on the basis of "required units" and
examinations, but of two "experimental criteria": recommenda-
tion from the principal that the graduating student is intellec-
tually "college material," that he has "serious interests and pur-
poses," and has demonstrated his ability to work in fields in which
the college offers instruction. Further, the secondary school is to
supply a "carefully recorded history of the student's school life
and activities," including scores in "scholastic aptitude, achieve-
ment and other diagnostic tests." There are twenty-seven partic-
ipating schools, both public and private. More than two hundred
colleges in all sections of the country are cooperating, including all
the New England men's colleges except Yale and Harvard, and all
the eastern colleges for women except Radcliffe.
Cuba as Classroom
"PRINCIPLES and practices of progressive education and of
A adult education are combined in the seminars arranged by The
Committee on Cultural Relations with Latin America (112 East
19 Street, New York). This group announces a third Caribbean
seminar to be held in Cuba March 7-14, which will begin with
shipboard lectures en route to Havana. Hubert C. Herring,
executive director, points out that "in view of recent develop-
ments it is of increasing importance that a growing number of
Americans should have insight into the problems, culture and
lives of the Cuban people. This seminar. . . is designed to bring
its members into contact with the plans, projects and beliefs of
the leaders of all sectors of opinion in the country." The program
in Cuba will include lectures, roundtable discussions, and field
trips into the interior.
Preparation for Politics
DESIGNED as training for practical politicians "whose life
creed will be intelligent public leadership," the University
of Wisconsin announces an experimental four-year course, open to
a few qualified students. The course, which is under the classics
department, is an attempt to apply to American conditions the
successful experience of European universities. It is based on
study of Greek and Roman civilization, and includes training in
language, literature, art, philosophy, history, economics, politics
and religion. The aim of the course is to provide the student with
"an indirect attack on the problems of modern American life" by
introducing him to "the most significant creations of the human
spirit and the most significant problems of society and human
420
THE SURVEY
December 1933
intercourse." The tutorial system of instruction is being used.
The establishment of the new course is an attempt to make use
of the educational values of the five-year Experimental College,
directed by Alexander Meikeljohn, and of the results of a faculty
study made three years ago.
Using Free Time
AS a basis for "intelligent leisure-time programs," the national
•*"*• board of the YWCA recently made a study of the rec-
reational preferences and practices of a group of women wage-
earners. The findings of the study, which was directed by Grace
Coyle, head of the board's research staff, were reported at an all-
day conference in New York City. On the whole, it was found that
business girls want their recreation planned for them — football
games, movies, radio, and so on, while the professional workers
showed a marked preference for participating in such amusements
as hiking, nature lore, amateur dramatics. Reading was found to
be the chief leisure-time interest of both business and professional
women, with thoughtful current novels the favorite books. In the
conference discussion the fact was brought out that listed pref-
erences did not always determine actual practice. Thus clay
modelling was set down by a number of girls as the thing they
would "like best to do." Yet when, at a YWCA summer camp,
these same girls had ready access to clay and modelling tools, with
or without informal instruction, not one of them engaged in this
activity.
The approximate leisure time of the young employed woman
was found to be: week day, four and a half hours; Saturday, six
and a half hours; Sunday, ten hours. "Personal care," "transpor-
tation to and from work," and "home responsibilities" were, like
eating and sleeping, included in "necessary activities," not
"leisure."
AN Adult Center for Social Studies has been organized in San
Francisco, headed by Alexander Meikeljohn, formerly in charge
of the Experimental College at the University of Wisconsin.
GROWING Up from a One Room Cabin is the title of a little folder
recently published by Penn School, St. Helena Island, S. C. In
three pages it tells an amazing story of a pioneer effort in Negro
education, and how it has re-made an entire community.
THE secretary of the interior has issued an order transferring the
Federal Board for Vocational Education to the Office of Educa-
tion. The secretary stated that "This transfer is not to be inter-
preted as any curtailment of the activities of the federal govern-
ment in the field of vocational education."
A SERIES of regional conferences is being held by the Joint Com-
mission on the Emergency in Education to discuss the material
gathered by the Commission, the special problems of the states in
the area, and to exchange opinion as to the contributions that can
be made by different state and national organizations. No votes
are taken at these conferences and no resolutions offered. The
first was held in Detroit in October, the second in Hartford, Conn.,
last month.
URGING that parents give long and thoughtful consideration to
the selection of summer camps for girls and boys, the Child De-
velopment Institute offers Summer Camps: A Guide for Parents,
edited by Beulah Clark Van Wagenen (Teachers College, Colum-
bia University. Price, 25 cents). This admirable little handbook
includes sections on Camping for Children, Creative Ideas in
Children's Camps, Some Suggestions for Personality Growth,
Basic Considerations for the Camp, and a bibliography.
Not a Life Sentence
DECLARING that the recovery rate in the Boston State
Hospital is "more than twice that of some of our best gen-
eral hospitals," Dr. James V. May, Massachusetts commissioner
of mental diseases, points out that a commitment to a state hos-
pital is far from being a life sentence, as many people suppose, and
hails as a new approach to the mental-health problem the Psy-
chiatric Clinic opened by the hospital not long ago. The purpose
of the Clinic is to provide agreeable surroundings and intensive
treatment for the recoverable cases whom the staffhopes to return
to their homes after six months or less of hospital residence. These
patients will be kept from any contact with the more hopeless and
distressing cases of mental illness. Analysis of all admissions to
the Boston State Hospital during ten years, excluding transfers,
showed that 19 percent had a hospital residence of less than thirty
days; 45 percent, of six months or less. Dr. May believes it reason-
able to hope that the new building will further speed recovery.
From New York City comes good news in the announcement
by city officials at the recent dedication of the Bellevue Psychi-
atric Hospital, that funds may be available early in 1934 to staff
the institution and complete its equipment. The eight-story
building, with an eventual capacity of 600 patients, was opened
last spring with equipment for 375.
Mothers Who Died
THAT deaths of women from causes associated with childbirth
are largely preventable is underscored once more in a study
by the New York Academy of Medicine Committee on Public
Health Relations (Maternal Mortality in New York City. The
Commonwealth Fund, 41 East 57 St., New York City. Price $2)
and two other important studies by the New York State Depart-
ment of Health and the federal Children's Bureau, for which
preliminary reports have been released. In New York City there
were 2041 puerperal deaths in the three years covered by the
study; "conservative" judgment listed two thirds of these as
preventable. The Committee considered that physicians should
be held responsible for 61 percent of these needless deaths ("lack
of judgment, lack of skill, or careless inattention to the demands
of the case"); for a percent, responsibility was laid to midwives;
and for 36.7 percent to the patient herself, often for reasons be-
yond her control. Less than 40 percent of these women had
adequate prenatal care. For the other two studies that lack was
even more startling. In that covering all maternal deaths in New
York State outside New York City in 1932, only 27 percent had
adequate prenatal care; 45 percent had inadequate care, and 27
percent none at all. Among 7380 maternal deaths in fifteen states
investigated by the Children's Bureau, 54 percent of the women
for whom a prenatal report could be obtained and who could
reasonably have been expected to have such care had had no
prenatal examination by a physician; only I percent had care
"up to the standard that it is the right of every patient to have
and to demand."
The federal study lists as its most outstanding finding the fact
that a quarter of all the deaths followed abortions, a factor also
December 1933
THE SURVEY
421
emphasized in the recent Cleveland investigation (see The Survey,
October 1933, p. 350.) Abortions constitute "a widespread so-
ciological and economic problem which the medical profession
must have help in solving." The New York City study found
abortion the cause of 17.5 percent of the deaths arising from the
childbearing function; the largest percentages of abortion deaths
— 23.4 percent and 29.4 percent respectively — were among
deaths of women undergoing their sixth and seventh pregnancies.
A Health Club Plan
IN many junior and senior highschools, the Indiana Tubercu-
losis Association points out, definite time in the weekly sched-
ule is allowed for "extra-curricular" activities. Why not then a
health club, perhaps with the teacher of health education as
sponsor? The county tuberculosis association could take an active
part in promoting the club: give membership buttons as an evi-
dence of interest, arrange excursions to see the local health office,
tuberculosis clinics, laboratories and other health agencies, ar-
range speakers for club programs. The Association has prepared a
definite plan, The Junior Health Club Plan, which it offers to
Indiana teachers and county tuberculosis associations interested
in health clubs.
A NEW Ohio law protects the hospitals for care given to indigent
victims of automobile accidents by providing reimbursement
from the motor-vehicle tax funds on the basis used for com-
pensating hospitals for the care of persons injured in industrial
accidents.
LAST June South Dakota was admitted to the Birth Registration
Area and this autumn Texas has been accepted for both Birth
and Death Registration Areas. Now for the first time the United
States will be able to report birthrates and deathrates for its
whole people.
•
RECOGNIZING that heredity may predispose to diabetes can aid
in the prevention of the disease, the Illinois State Health Depart-
ment declares, by focussing attention on people whose family
have a diabetic history and urging them to be on the watch
against rapid or too great increases of weight.
FROM Cleveland comes word of a class for "expectant fathers"
conducted by the Cleveland Child Health Association. The first
class started this autumn with an enthusiastic enrollment of
thirty-five, for fifteen sessions, including discussions of maternal
and child health, child guidance, behavior problems and the like.
Pertinent Publications
AMERICAN RED CROSS TEXTBOOK ON HOME HYGIENE AND
CARE OF THE SICK, by Jane A. Delano, R.N. Fourth Edition, Revised
and Rewritten Under Supervision of Public Health Nursing and Home
Hygiene Service, American Red Cross. Price 75 cents paper, $1,40 doth, of
the American Red Cross, Washington, D. C., or branch offices or local Red
Cross Chapters.
AN index, appendices and bibliography make easily usable
this old friend, now brought up-to-date. The ARC gladly
furnishes information on the organization and financing of
classes in home hygiene and the care of the sick.
THE INTELLIGENCE OF THE PROSPECTIVE IMMIGRANT, by
J. D. Reichard, Surgeon, United States Public Health Service. Public Health
Bulletin No. 206. Price 5 cents. Superintendent of Documents, Washington,
D.C.
A STUDY of applicants for immigrant visas at Warsaw,
Poland, with interesting observations on the use of lan-
guage and non-language tests.
LEAD POISONING LEGISLATION AND STATISTICS, by Frederick L.
Hoffman, Consulting Statistician, The Prudential Life Insurance Company
of America, Newark, N. J.
RECORDS of experience in this country and abroad.
No charge is made and any man is welcomed. The Association
hopes to extend the program in the future.
CONNECTICUT law makes it incumbent on the landlord to supply
water to tenants even if they fail to pay the rent. Though differ-
ences have been usually ironed out by conferences with landlords,
the New Haven Department of Health reports an added stress on
its Bureau of Inspection from "depression complaints" — the
attempt to shut off water as one means among others of getting
rid of non-paying tenants.
DEFLATING nurses might be the title of the table in which The
Frontier Nursing Service (Kentucky) reports achievements made
possible by staff devotion in the past fiscal year. Seventy-five of
the preceding year's staff carried 90 percent of the deliveries and
99 percent of the cases of the past year and 65 percent more
inoculations. The Service, hoping such stress never will be re-
peated, considers it as the kind of a crisis that commands service
in war or catastrophe.
"UNDOUBTEDLY," declares the Mental Hygiene Society of Mary-
land in a recent five-year report, "the need for mental-health
work in relation to case work and other agencies dealing with
individuals was never greater than it is at the present time. The
economic depression is rapidly lowering the morale of an increas-
ing number of people, many of these people ordinarily function
socially without a great deal of trouble. Their emotional thwart-
ings are being increasingly reflected in their families and their
other social relations. If they are not helped now it is obvious
that the future cost to society will be great."
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422
THE SURVEY
December 1933
UNEMPLOYMENT AND COMMUNITY ACTION
JOANNA C. COLCORD
This department is an emergency information
service to public officials and to members,
executives and supervisors of citizens' com-
mittees. News of interesting developments will
be gratefully received by the editors, Russell
Sage Foundation, 130 East 22 Street, New York
RUSSELL H. KURTZ
State Developments
DECLARING that the FERA was "unwilling to allow the
unemployed to suffer because of neglect on the part of state
authorities" Relief Administrator Hopkins took over the Ken-
tucky Relief administration on November 8. This is the sixth state
in which the FERA has assumed full responsibility for unemploy-
ment relief, although it is the first where the step was taken
because of outright "neglect." The other five are Florida, Ar-
kansas, Louisiana, Mississippi and South Carolina.
In explanation of the necessity for this move, the Administra-
tor said that partisan politics had developed in the special relief
session of the legislature, blocking effective action and resulting
in the Governor's admission of the state's failure to provide for
the winter's needs. Kentucky has had $2,850,000 in federal aid
since May and, according to the statement of Mr. Hopkins, had,
as a state, contributed only $77 toward the relief of its own
citizens until October, when the Legislature voted an inadequate
tax on alcoholic beverages. The yield from this source was only
$250,000.
In taking over the state's relief program, a complete change
in administrative personnel was made and a new relief commis-
sion was set up. Thornton Wilcox, Director of Public Welfare of
Louisville, replaces Harper Gatton as state administrator.
The Colorado Supreme Court recently ruled that the unemploy-
ment relief tax levied on automobile owners in that state is un-
constitutional. The tax was in the form of an additional registra-
tion fee, payment of which was evidenced by an auxiliary set of
license plates of a "UR" series. The fee ranged from $2 to ?6o per
vehicle. Collapse of this means of state relief financing resulted in
a call for a special session of the legislature on December 4.
The American Automobile Association has taken this oppor-
tunity to point out that the automobile owners of the country,
through gasoline-tax diversions for relief purposes and emergency
measures such as that attempted in Colorado, have been bearing
an unfair share of the relief burden. Recently, too, the National
Highway Users Conference filed a protest with the President
against a statement made by Mr. Hopkins which it construed to
be too strong a suggestion to the states for the continuance of
these forms of relief financing.
The Governor has reorganized the Official Colorado State Re-
lief Committee, appointing Esther Lough as executive officer in
the place of Jessie F. Lummis, resigned.
Two states, New York and Illinois, together accounted for 28
percent of the total public-relief expenditures in the country in
July and August, according to FERA figures. Local, state and
federal public funds expended for relief in these two common-
wealths totalled over $34 million in this two-month period. Of
this, New York spent approximately $23 million and Illinois ?ii
million. The relief administrations of both states have just
released reports covering their activities in recent months and
summarizing their expenditures over longer priods.
The New York report shows that from November i, 1931 to
September I, 1933, the state distributed $90 million of its own
and federal funds to local communities in supplementation of
local expenditures. Much of this came from the two state relief
appropriations which totalled $55 million. Federal aid was shown
to be meeting about one third of the total relief expenditures
within the state at the time the report was issued. For the entire
twenty-two months $167 million was spent for public relief in the
state, of which a little over half went for work relief. The voters
have overwhelmingly approved another relief bond issue for 1934
in the amount of ?6o million.
The Illinois report covers the period from February 1932
through August 1933, and accounts for a distribution of $92 mil-
lion in state and federal funds. The state provided $19 million of
this through a bond issue. In August 97 percent of the relief ex-
penditures within the state had come from federal funds. For the
first six months of 1933, local municipal and county treasuries
added $4 million to the $38 million of state and federal funds
spent for relief in that period. Work relief at cash wages has.
accounted for approximately 1 1 percent of the total relief expendi-
tures during the life of the present Illinois relief administration.
A proposal to issue $30 million of relief bonds was passed at a
special session of the legislature in November 1933. These bonds
are to be retired by using the counties' share of the state gasoline
tax.
Indiana is going forward, against great political opposition,
in a program of modernization of its unemployment relief meas-
ures. The Governor's Commission on Unemployment Relief has
taken its cue from the FERA and is ordering widespread reforms
in local relief procedure. Township relief trustees are being
brought under close supervision of the state staff, both as to
standards and expenditures. Trained social workers are being
assigned to township units with backing from the state capitol.
Political explosions over the "intrusion" of these "spinsters" has
been ignored by the Governor's commission which is determined
to make FERA standards effective.
The State Supreme Court of Washington has ruled that funds
remaining from the state's ten million dollar bond issue may be
used for home relief, although the legislature specified that they
were to be used for "construction work for unemployment relief."
At the November election, the voters of Pennsylvania approved
a constitutional amendment which, by virtue of a legislative act
passed last May, will make available $20 million for relief pur-
poses. This amount is to be provided by a bond issue, and is to be
used for both direct relief and work relief on state highways.
A $5 million relief bond issue was approved by the voters of
New Jersey at the November election.
News from the Cities
MILWAUKEE'S relief load has dropped 38 percent since
early last summer and because of this the staff of the
County Outdoor Relief Department has been reduced by ap-
proximately one hundred workers. There are now about 475
employes in the department.
'Toledo's relief warehouse established by the city administration
in 1932 in the belief that large economies were possible through
this means of food distribution, has been ordered discontinued by
the Ohio Relief Commission because of alleged irregularities in
purchasing and accounting procedures.
Indianapolis and Center Township have abandoned the
"basket plan" of relief on order of the Governor's Commission on
Unemployment Relief. This plan had long been the object of
bitter local criticism, as it gave a virtual monopoly to a few large
grocers selected by the township relief officer. Charges of unduly
high prices, political manipulation and failure to consider the best
December 1933
THE SURVEY
423
interests of the relief recipients caused the FERA to urge
upon the Governor's Commission the action recently taken.
Under the new plan, clients are given food orders on any grocer
and are allowed a degree of selection within the limits of the
order.
San Francisco, following the reorganization of its relief ma-
chinery reported last month, has made a start toward substituting
cash relief grants for relief orders. The advocates of cash relief
have realized that it will prove more expensive than relief in kind
and are now finding themselves in the position of urging that the
transition be made gradually in order to avoid confusion in
administration.
The Baltimore Emergency Relief Commission has accepted the
recommendations of a committee from the Council of Social
Agencies for more adequate relief schedules. The new standard is
"substantially higher" and includes provision for such personal
expenses as haircuts, shoe repairs, incidental school supplies,
newspapers and carfare.
Educational Work Relief
IN a recent report, the FERA described its "five-pointed"
educational work-relief program as an activity "which will
permit the employment, on a work-relief basis within their pro-
fession, of unemployed teachers and of other needy persons
capable of teaching, and at the same time benefit groups in need of
general or specialized instruction." The five points of the program
include the employment of instructors to be assigned:
1. To rural schools closed or partially closed as the result of a lack of
funds.
2. To classes in written and spoken English for illiterates and foreigners.
3. To classes in vocational training.
4. To classes for the education of the physically handicapped.
5. To classes for the education of adults with little previous schooling.
In comment on point 2, Dr. L. R. Alderman, Director of Edu-
cational Work Relief, states that:
we have in this country four and a quarter millions of people who cannot
read or write in any language and twice as many more who cannot read
and write well enough so that they do read and write. We have the meth-
ods now of teaching adult illiterates to be functionally literate in one
hundred hours of instruction.
Commenting on the adult programs of educational work relief
now being organized in all parts of the United States, he says:
These programs give opportunity for large numbers of volunteers to
help in the matter of recruiting, in organization and in making these
schools more effective. The aim, of course, is to use this opportunity to
develop our human resources upon which all other values depend.
A sixth point has been added in recent weeks, namely, the
development of nursery schools supported by federal relief funds.
They are envisaged as institutions which can aid "as nothing else
can in combating the physical and mental handicaps being im-
posed upon the young children" in the homes of the unemployed.
Food supplies are to be provided from the school feeding funds
authorized by the FERA, and instruction is to be given on a
work-relief basis. Plans shall be subject to the approval of local
superintendents of public schools and relief administrators, with
national agencies in the field of childhood education giving ad-
visory assistance.
New Special Bureaus
IN accordance with its policy of developing special services, the
Cook County (Chicago) Relief Administration has undertaken
two new activities of interest.
i. Due to the increase in applications for assistance from in-
dependent vendors and proprietors of small businesses, and the
difficulty of determining their eligibility for relief, an advisory
case-committee of lawyers, bankers and business men has been
formed, to study these cases and give individual advice. The
object is to prevent bankruptcies and to rehabilitate small pro-
prietors, where this can be done, and so prevent their coming on
the relief rolls.
2. Under the law in Illinois, persons advancing fraudulent
claims resulting in the granting of relief may be prosecuted. A
number of cases had accumulated where technical false state-
ments were involved. It was felt that wholesale prosecutions
without further study would work hardship and injustice. A
Temporary Committee on Fraud Cases was appointed in Septem-
ber, and a group of three hundred cases selected at random for
study. Of these, only seventeen were found to show deliberate
fraud; and of the seventeen, only four disclosed resources which
indicated the possibility of a suit for restitution. The committee
has been continued, and authorized to study all cases of reported
misstatement. Pending its decision on individual cases, the dis-
tricts are authorized to continue relief to families believed to be
in urgent need, or to reinstate for the same reason those which
may have been closed because false statements were made in the
affidavit. Distinctions are made in the orders sent to district
offices in the interpretation of fraudulence. Discrepancies regarded
as fraudulent, to be sent to the Committee on Fraud, include:
A. Those in which legal action may be recommended:
Fraud may be considered to exist, and legal action taken looking to
prosecution or restitution, where the client willfully omitted or dis-
torted information covering resources, which information was of
such nature that relief plans would have been unnecessary or sub-
stantially altered had the truth been known to the agency.
B. Those in which mitigating circumstances may be considered:
Where the family has been kept below the estimated budget, pro-
vided that the earnings or income amounted to no more than the
difference between the estimated budget and the relief granted.
Where prior to adoption of a definite rent policy in June 1933 the
client was expected to supplement relief with earnings to cover rent,
or other essential items not granted in the family budget.
Where the budget and use of income ha ve not been explained to the
client.
Where the income not disclosed is of such a nature and amount that
it could not have covered any substantial portion of the budget.
Where the client has no understanding of the significance of the
affidavit because of no reading knowledge of English; because in-
adequate explanation of the affidavit was given him; or because
client has been unable to comprehend the meaning of the affidavit.
Discrepancies not regarded as fraudulent and not to be sent
to the Committee on Fraud include:
A. Financial errors and omissions which would not effect the relief
plan.
B. Discrepancies in the social information (such as variation in report-
ing on relatives, and so on), which have no economic significance.
The special Public Relations Service to handle complaints
on individual cases continues to function, dealing with about a
hundred complaints a week.
Relief Food Choices
THE Berkeley, Cal., Welfare Society, using both public and
private funds, has operated on the plan of issuing food orders
on grocers, each for a specified cash amount, but with only gen-
eral specifications as to the items which the housewife might
choose. This is tantamount, of course, to cash relief, except that
the order must be used to purchase food alone.
At the request of the Society, the Department of Household
Science at the University of California made a careful analysis of
the food purchases made by twenty-five of the families during
one month. In comparison with the so called "Jaffa Food Budget"
previously worked out at the University and adopted quite
generally by the relief agencies in California as the minimum
standard, these twenty-five families, with a wide opportunity for
choice within the limited cost figure, bought foods fairly adequate
424
THE SURVEY
December 1933
in energy and protein content, but deficient in mineral content,
and in vitamins. This was due to the general failure to include
enough milk in the dietary, and the tendency to purchase "filling"
root vegetables at the expense of leafy vegetables, tomatoes and
carrots. Almost twice as much fruit was purchased as was neces-
sary. Fats, sugar and eggs were also used to excess. "It is ap-
parent," the report states, "that if indigent persons are to be
adequately fed under such a relief scheme . . . the amounts al-
lowed must be large enough to compensate for poor judgment in
the selection of foods."
The report carefully refrains from advising recourse to the
commissary system, or indeed any other changes; though it is
suggested that better nourishment could be furnished these fam-
ilies through food orders in which articles and amounts were
specified.
Questions which the report does not answer are: "What waste,
and mal-nourishment would result from the attempt to force
families to consume foods that they do not like;" and "Is it
reasonable to expect relief families to outpoint the general average
of the community in the scientific planning of menus?" Until the
American public can be brought, by educational methods, to
substitute for the foods it consumes with enthusiasm those which
will nourish it best at least expense, it seems somewhat rigorous
to single out the unemployed for coercion in this matter.
From Melrose, Mass., suburb of Boston, comes a little pamphlet
entitled Melrose Public Welfare Plan of Food Relief which is a
model of concise treatment. In twelve small pages, the depart-
ment's nutritionist explains the procedure by which the relief
worker computes the amount of the food allowances for the fam-
ilies; lists the food classifications making up a balanced diet; and
details the steps for securing grocer cooperation.
All food allowances are given in the form of "divided orders"
which specify the total value of the food to be provided, but at the
same time limit the selection by the client to the following
schedule:
One sixth of the amount of the total order is allowed for bread, cereals
and so on.
Fifteen percent is allowed for staples.
Milk, one and one half cups per adult and three cups per child daily. One
half pound cheese per family of five weekly.
One half of the remainder of the total order is allowed for fruits and
vegetables.
The other half of the remainder is allowed for meat, fish and eggs.
Each grocer and client has been given an approved food list
from which selections may be made. The department feels that
by this plan "the weekly order is well balanced and supplies the
essentials of an adequate diet with as much choice as is possible
with the amount of money to be expended."
Work Relief for Professionals
TT/HEN Philadelphia discontinued its huge work-relief pro-
* * gram, carried on under the Lloyd Committee in 1930-31,
the need of one especial group — the business and professional
women — was so keenly felt that a special Service Committee,
composed of professional and leisured women, undertook to raise
funds to carry on a restricted program. Approximately $32,000
was secured. Out of a total registration of 1550, of whom over six
hundred had dependents, it has been possible to give about 9700
days' work to 167 of the most urgent cases. Forty percent have
found or been helped to secure full or part-time jobs. The women
were placed in hospitals, educational institutions, and social
agencies, the special skills which they possessed being utilized
where possible, as for instance, in making housing studies un-
der the Philadelphia Housing Association, and unemployment
studies under the Wharton School of the University of Penn-
sylvania.
The engineering societies of the city organized early in 1932 a
Technical Service Committee which carried on an employment
bureau for technically trained men, and in addition placed some
of the most needy in "useful work" with non-profit making in-
stitutions at work-relief wages. About a hundred were so em-
ployed during a period of nine months, about $27,000 being paid
them in wages. They made drawings and designs for the Franklin
Institute, a scientific organization, worked in the "Renovize
Philadelphia" campaign, made a topographical survey for the
Park Department, tabulated information for the Housing Asso-
ciation, and did a great deal of technical work for the municipal
building inspection, electrical and traffic bureaus.
Homemakers' Clubs
EN the Pierce County (Tacoma) Wash. Welfare Board
was organized last April, the workers found the morale of
the unemployed at low ebb. The housewives, particularly, had
given up all contacts outside their homes, and made little response
to the workers' attempts to interest them in a new program.
This inertia of despair was combated by the organization of
homemakers' clubs, of ten to twenty in membership, meeting at
convenient centers or even in the homes of the members. Varied
programs were arranged, including facilities for making over
clothing, rug and quilt-making, cooking classes, recipe exchanges,
and talks on budgeting and home management. Gradually, the
mothers participated more actively. A group of them helped a
group of single men can and dry the vegetables they had grown.
Raffling of quilts, and barter among themselves of garments,
materials and services were instituted by the women. Window-
boxes were made and the dingy tenements brightened with
flowers. Participation in other, school and church groups, from
which they had dropped out, became once more easy for them.
An exhibit of their goods was arranged at the County Fair. An
arts-and-crafts course has been asked for and arranged. The hus-
bands have begun, a little sheepishly, to participate, and take up
home hobbies and occupations of their own.
Of the project the supervisor, Margaret S. Dustan, says:
No cash expenditures have been made. The activities represent much
in the way of time and energy, and seem to be paying dividends in the
form of rehabilitation. To those of us who felt the hopelessness of the
people we had come to help . . . it is a symbol of self-respect regained, of
morale in the rebuilding.
The Mill ville Project
A YEAR ago, Millville, Mass, was numbered among the thou-
sands of forgotten small towns on the welfare map. But
in January, it was spotted by the students at Wellesley College,
who undertook to provide it with some of the social services
enjoyed by its larger neighbors. A report of the results is at
hand:
An emergency program was mapped out by which the State Employes'
Fund was to bear the administrative expenses and the College to make
donations for relief. ... A former Red Cross worker was engaged to
give two days a week in a temporary headquarters in the town hall. The
town agreed to keep the place clean and warm. The school nurse, serving
one day a week in Millville, was engaged for two extra days a week.
Wellesley preferred that her money should not be given for food, except
in emergency, and wanted a health program, especially among the chil-
dren, stressed.
The health services rendered comprise a long list, glasses,
tonsillectomies, adenoidectomies, emergency dental work, correc-
tive appliances, social disease treatment, X-rays, nursing service,
transportation to clinics, institutional treatment, special baby
food, and so on. Milk, clothing, shoes and fuel was provided in
some instances.
There truly has been cooperation with the state program in this small
town. The selectmen, board of public welfare, town accountant, town
treasurer, schools, and several local women's groups have cooperated
splendidly. More community spirit has been awakened or revivified than
was known to exist.
In addition to the Millville health project, Wellesley also
promoted garden and food conservation programs in three Massa-
chusetts communities during the summer.
December 1933
THE SURVEY
425
Jottings
OPEAKING of adult education, as many people are these days,
^ the University of Wisconsin will offer in January its second
annual short course for sewage-plant operators.
AN old-age pension bill was approved in Ohio at the last election
by an overwhelming popular vote. The campaign was conducted
through the joint effort of the Fraternal Order of Eagles and
the State Federation of Labor.
As a demonstration of one thing that is the matter with America
the women of Cloverdale, New Mexico, corralled a Mexican steer
that no one would buy, cooked him and canned him, and thereby
gave him a wholesale value of £67. 50.
LEO KRYZYCKI of Milwaukee has been elected national chairman
of the Socialist party to succeed the late Morris Hillquit of New
York. Election was by the national executive committee to hold
until the party convention in Detroit next May.
SUPERSEDING the Federation of Jewish Philanthropies in Harris-
burg, Pa., is a new organization, the United Jewish Community,
which proposes to consolidate support for the entire Jewish
communal program, social, cultural and educational.
COUNTING up the elders among the thousand organizations listed
in its Directory of Social Agencies the New York Welfare Council
finds twenty-one more than a hundred years old, 150 that are
fifty or past and more than 500 that have been in operation more
than a quarter century.
THE New School for Social Research, New York, is offering, under
Dr. Werner Hegemann, former editor of Stadteban and inter-
national authority on town planning, two new courses, Social and
Economic Problems in Town Planning and Civic Art, and Modern
Tendencies in Architecture.
THE social-work exhibit at the Century of Progress closed up
shop without a deficit. It was planned, financed and manned by
ninety Chicago and seven national social agencies. Best guessers
say that 360,000 people looked at the exhibit long enough to ask
intelligent questions about it.
THE first low-cost housing project to be constructed from the |ioo
million allotment to the Federal Emergency Housing Corporation
by the Public Works Administration will be in Detroit. Land and
buildings will cost between $3 million and ?4 million. Monthly
rentals will be about 16.30 per room.
FIGURES from St. Dunstan's, England, show a slow but steady
increase in the number of new cases of men whom complete
blindness has overtaken as a result of war injuries. At the end
of the war there were fifteen hundred cases connected with the
institution. There are now two thousand.
RESPONSIBILITY for St. Louis' recent sleeping-sickness epidemic
is variously pinned by ready letter writers, says the Community
Courier, on beer, drouth, aluminum cooking utensils, kissing-
bugs, sewers, the malice of foreign nations or of the spirit world,
visitors from Africa and the animals in the zoo.
DURING the past ten years insurance companies have greatly
liberalized their attitude toward the sightless, says the American
Foundation for the Blind. Sixty-eight percent more companies
than in 1923 are now accepting blind persons as risks though
most companies continue to charge them extra premiums.
EXCITING intellectual exploration lies in the title of Philosophy
of Science, a new quarterly starting with 1934. Its editorial
advisers include among other diversely distinguished names H. S.
Jennings, W. P. Montague, Harlow Shapley and A. N. White-
head. Publishers, Wilkins and Wilkins Company, Baltimore, Md.
DURING the five months preceding April i, 1934, cash allotments
by members of the Civilian Conservation Corps to their depend-
ents will total more than $35 million. The winter program of the
CCC, including Indian camps, calls for an aggregate of 316,900
men. About two thirds of the first recruits re-enrolled for the
winter.
NEIGHBORHOOD House, Louisville Ky., has discovered that the
depression has turned its neighbors, hitherto a fairly stable group,
into nomads. The turn-over in its clientele the past year has
been close to 60 percent. "Families move in looking for jobs, move
out still looking for jobs, and sometimes move back again, still
looking."
CONTRIBUTIONS to Protestant churches in 1932 added up, in
round numbers, to $378 million, a drop of 40 percent from the
$58 1 million reported in 1929. But at that, the Federal Council of
Churches points out, the churches more than held their own in
the face of the 54 percent drop in national income during the same
period.
BECAUSE Major William A. Welch, general manager of the
Palisades Interstate Park, thought well of the homeless men from
New York's municipal lodging house who were encamped in the
park last winter, he has offered the State Temporary Emergency
Relief Administration sites for four of the ten camps for transients
which it will operate.
ROLLER-SKATING as a Social Problem was the subject of the first
fall meeting of the East Side Community Council, New York.
The fad has assumed such proportions that the National Bureau
of Casualty and Surety Underwriters has taken it up in a serious
way and after a "roller-skating survey" in twenty cities has
offered a "code" to "curb the dangerous practice."
BY a new French law, applying at the outset only to certain key
industries, dependent children of workmen become a charge on
the payroll of the employer. Subsidies vary but generally begin
with thirty francs a month for the first child and increases for
each additional child without maximum limitations. It is esti-
mated that the measure will add upwards of 3 percent to present
payrolls.
As fast as Indians can qualify they will be placed in charge of
the forty Indian Emergency Conservation Camps in which 14,400
are now at work. Many camps are already under Indian manage-
ment. The Office of Indian Affairs proposes to organize "leader
camps" where men will be instructed and trained by field prac-
tice in erosion control, range management, forestry and miscel-
laneous subjects.
ACADEMIC application of the "radical" suggestion that unoccupied
space in boom-built skyscrapers be used to house the unemployed
is reported from Ohio State University where the athletic stadium
has been requisitioned for needy students. A dormitory unit in
one tower accommodates seventy-five students organized as the
Tower Club. They pay a dollar a quarter for room and about
$2.50 a week for board.
SECRETARY of Labor Frances Perkins has declared herself "out
of sympathy" with the dictum of the U. S. Civil Service Commis-
sion that in certain examinations for clerical workers forty is to
be the maximum-age limit for candidates. The head of the com-
mission, rallying briskly to criticism, declares that the policy does
not mean that "people are through at forty, but merely that they
are beginning at not over forty."
THE right of the University of Maryland to compel its students
to take military training was in effect upheld by the U. S. Supreme
Court last month. The court refused to review an appeal chal-
lenging the constitutionality of the state law, previously upheld
by the Maryland courts. The proceedings were brought in behalf
of Ennis H. Coale, a Methodist freshman suspended because, as
a conscientious objector, he refused to attend ROTC drill (see
The Survey, March 1933, page 121).
426
THE SURVEY
December 1933
Technocultural Unemployment
DISPLACEMENT OF MEN BY MACHINES, by Elizabeth Faulkner Baker.
Columbia University Press. 271 pp. Price $3.50 postpaid of The Survey.
TN these days of a vast nationally directed effort to shorten the
-*• hours of labor in order to hasten the absorption of millions of
unemployed, this book comes as one of the most significant
contributions that has recently been made in the field of labor
economics. Professor Baker has made a detailed analysis of the
effects of technological changes in the commercial printing
industry upon the workers, and her conclusions are of vital im-
port for those engaged in formulating a social and economic
program for the future. Miss Baker's findings are especially in-
teresting, since they parallel in many respects the work of
Professor Barnett about thirty years ago. Once before, in the late
go's, the printing industry underwent a technological revolution
similar to that which Professor Baker discovered during the war
and post-war periods. In both cases, a tremendous advance in
machinery and in labor productivity was followed by a counter-
balancing expansion of demand for the product. Hence, although
there was much labor displacement, there was little permanent
unemployment. Students of labor organization should study
carefully the second part of the book, in which Professor Baker
analyzes the effect of these industrial developments upon organ-
ized labor. Her findings on this point have certain implications
with respect to the much-debated question of craft versus
industrial unionism. But the outstanding conclusion of this book
is that " unemployment [of this kind] is sociological and economic,
as well as technological. It might even be called technocultural
unemployment." Society itself must accept the responsibility for
devising a method of absorbing workers displaced by machinery
"in self-respecting occupations without serious or protracted
periods of unemployment."
Community Council of Philadelphia EWAN CLAGUE
A County Plan
SOCIAL PLANNING AND ADULT EDUCATION, by John W. Herring. Mac-
millan. 135 pp. Price $1.25 postpaid of The Survey.
OTREETS and offices buzz with talk of planning. There is
^ therefore special pertinence in this description of an endeavor
at community planning in Chester County, Pennsylvania. Mr.
Herring was first connected with the Chester County Health and
Welfare Council as head of a department of adult education, and
later as director.
Since there are indications of a tendency to regard the county
as a useful planning unit, there is significance in the description of
the county, the analysis of the problem, the development of
program, and the evolution of an adequate organization structure.
The necessity for a "crow's-nest vision" and conscious planning
rather than haphazard activity is emphasized, but there is honest
discussion of the practical difficulties in "selling" and adminis-
tering the coordinating and planning functions. The most sig-
nificant conclusion reached is that there is no more thoroughly
educational process than planning, and that the most effective
result in adult education was attained thus, rather than under a
program specifically labeled "adult education."
An appendix gives a "Citizens' Plan." With interest one notes
the divisions which this county believes essential. They are:
public health, mental health, social service, education, recreation,
physical planning, economic planning, political and govern-
mental planning.
New York Adult Education Council WINIFRED FISHER
Little Theatres
THE WORK OF THE LITTLE THEATRES, by Clarence Arthur Perry. Russell
Sage Foundation. 22S pp. Price $1.50 postpaid of The Survey.
\ MERICAN taste in the theater is not, Mr. Perry says, best
•**• reflected in the plays of the professional stage, but in those
chosen and produced by the little theater groups throughout the
country. His extensive and painstaking survey of one thousand of
these groups includes their methods of organization, their geo-
graphical distribution, their favorite playwrights, their dramatic
contests, and a comprehensive bibliography of the 1087 plays
staged in 3383 productions as listed in the Billboard of the Drama
magazine from October 1925 to May 1929. A classified list of
handbooks used and the names and addresses of all the important
play publishers complete a volume which should prove to the
amateur producer a very useful handbook in itself.
The work of the highschools, colleges and independent little
theater groups is the author's chief concern. The wide spread of the
field precludes any attempt to judge the quality of this work or its
contribution to the drama. One regrets that in an otherwise ad-
mirable yardstick of the theatrical temper of our fellow country-
men, the real pioneers of the little theater movement — the settle-
ment dramatic groups — should be relegated to the role of
"dramatics for children" and summarily dismissed. The first of
them all— the Hull-House Players, and many such followers as
the Neighborhood Playhouse, are still making important and
interesting contributions to the movement.
Headworker Union Settlement New York HELEN M. HARRIS
New School for a New Age
TRAINING YOUTH FOR THE NEW SOCIAL ORDER, by Rudolph R. Reeder.
Antioch Press, Yellow Springs, Ohio. 248 pp. Price $2 postpaid of The Survey.
THE essence of Dr. Reeder's philosophy and much of the
charm and warmth of his personality permeate the pages of this
book. When over twenty years ago he wrote How Two Hundred
Children Live and Learn, Dr. Reeder did much to establish the
child-caring institution of that era on a definite educational
rather than mere custodial basis. In this new book even the word
"institution" is discarded in favor of "school" and many of the
educational methods and objectives discussed constitute a
challenge to the general run of public and private schools as well
as to the traditional institution.
There may be some question as to whether those less gifted
could make practical application of the various methods out-
lined, but it is true nevertheless that we all can absorb something
from the underlying philosophy. One may think of institution
treatment in terms of "general" and "specific." "General" in-
cludes such factors as the creation of favorable morale and a
spirit of cooperation, the origin of ingenious plans of motivation,
the development of student government and constructive staff
contacts and the like. "Specific" treatment on the other hand is
composed of individual procedures based on well-organized
social records. On this basis it is evident that Dr. Reeder has
confined the book almost entirely to a discussion of "general"
rather than ".specific" treatment. Even from this point of view
perhaps he has not sufficiently considered individual differences
nor the problems of various personality frustrations, drives and
conflicts which determine individual adjustment. The author
sharpens the perplexing question as to just how far an institution
of any kind can go in recognizing and acting upon specific indi-
vidual needs. I believe that discussion concerning the book will
December 1933
THE SURVEY
427
center largely around the author's approach to treatment of
stealing and lying. For example, the author describes the use of
what he calls " the theft book," on the pages of which are written
the names of children in the institution who have been found
guilty of stealing, together with a list of the articles or article
stolen. When improvement is noted in any child or a cure has
been established, the name is erased with due ceremony and
satisfaction on the part of all concerned. I can hear violent
objections to this procedure on the grounds that it increases
guilt feeling, adds to insecurity and inferiority, results in a
complete rejection of the adult by the child and fails to cure the
stealing because the causes have not been removed! All of which
may or may not be true in every instance. Is it ever justifiable to
treat symptoms? To put it another way, is it always possible to
treat causes and if not, what methods of symptomatic treatment
can we work out with a minimum of harm to the group and the
individual?
Regardless of what we think of the " theft book" as a specific
technique I believe Dr. Reeder has sharpened the whole problem
of group treatment and treatment based on symptoms and
•causes. Superintendents of child-caring institutions will find this
book an excellent guide in staff training projects, and in its
broader application^ it concerns as well all those in the child wel-
fare field.
New York School of Social Work. LEONARD W. MAYO
No Town, No Country
TOWN AND COUNTRYSIDE: Some Aspects of Urban and Rural Development.
by Thomas Sharp. Oxford Urthersity Press. 227 pp. Price $4 JO postpaid of Iht
Survey.
IMAGINE a letter to The Times — classic catharsis for British
indignation — • stretched to the magnificent length of 224 pages
and you have some measure of the wrath of Thomas Sharp at
current developments in English town-planning, from Ebenezer
Howard down through all the recent acts of Parliament. This is
his thesis: "Rural influences neutralize the town. Urban influences
neutralize the country. In a few years all will be neutrality. The
strong, masculine virility of the town; the softer beauty, the rich-
ness, the fruitfulness of that mother of men, the countryside, will
be debased into one sterile, hermaphroditic beastliness." The
argument leaves the American reader lukewarm, however, because
its premises seem too narrowly esthetic, and its dogmatism too
little leavened by recognition of the fact that tastes differ. Put
beside Henry Wright's solid, factual analysis of housing alterna-
tives, Mr. Sharp's plea for row-housing and traditional town
forms seems hollow. Yet the American reader will find in the book
a rewarding chapter on the genetic history of the English country-
side and will share Mr. Sharp's enthusiasm for the dignity and
charm of the several towns which are presented in photograph and
plan. Esthetic nostalgia in the face of modern improvements is a
feeling most of us can share, even as we nerve ourselves to face
and manipulate "reality."
"The Commonwealth Fund GEDDES SMITH
Learning in School
PSYCHOLOGY AND THE NEW EDUCATION, by S. L. Pressey, Harpers.
585 pp. Price $2.75 postpaid of The Survey.
EDUCATION is far from static. The dynamics of educational
psychology, however, have not been clearly evidenced as it
has developed rather loosely. In this field as elsewhere there have
been those who stress intelligence quotients and hereditary fac-
tors to the exclusion of environment, and those who emphasize
the significance and importance of environmental factors that
are bound up in educational organization. Dr. Pressey believes
that a school can make a child or break him, bringing happiness
or misery; and his approach to both education and psychology
are motivated by this concept.
The book is divided into two major divisions. The first part
deals with problems of growth, health, interest, incentives, social
psychology, emotional stress and intellectual efficiency, insofar
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Second Ed., Cloth, 12 no., 289 pp., $1.75
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A Symposium edited for the L. I. D.
bj HARRY W. LAIDLER. Ph.D.
With an Introduction by Norman Thomas
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FALCON PRESS, Inc., 330 West 42nd St., New York, N. Y.
DIRECTORY OF SOCIAL AGENCIES
NEW YORK
40th ed. 1933-34
If A consolidated, classified and descriptive directory, \ The
handbook of social workers, teachers, doctors, lawyers,
donors, and others in need of information as to the social
service resources of New York, f For over half a century one
of the activities of the Charity Organization Society.
800 pays Cloth $3.00
Published by the
CHARITY ORGANIZATION SOCIETY, 105 East 22nd St., New York
llth PRINTING
The SEX TECHNIQUE
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authoritative and con-
servative exposition of the practical factors involved 'in making
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— DR. MORRIS.TISHBEIN
Acclaimed by the medical press everywhere
Price $2.00
I. M. GRAHAM, 112 East 19th Street, N. Y. C.
428
1 HE SURVEY
December 1933
as they enter into the development of an individual child during
the period of schooling. The second part is, perhaps, much more
significant for all those who teach, because it is a stimulating and
challenging presentation of the problems of learning in school.
There are some sad moments for the reader when he analyzes
the results of efforts at formal education. He can gain a little
encouragement when he sees the possibilities of transfer of train-
ing, based upon a more intelligent appreciation of curriculum-
making, educational methods and a recognition of individual
potentials.
Carefully prepared, authoritatively documented, splendidly
developed in terms of case reference, Dr. Pressey has organized
his psychological content in terms of humanized education. The
volume merits the attention and thought of all teachers whether
in the kindergarten field or in an institution devoted to post-
graduate studies. IRA S. WILE, M.D.
New York City.
Swap and Dicker
MEN WITHOUT MONEY, by Wayne Weishaar and Wayne B. Parrish. Putnam's
111 pp. Price $1 postpaid of The Survey.
TICT'HEN and if the depression becomes an old wives' tale the
' rise of barter as a way to a living will be one of its colorful
episodes. Half a dozen groups of people caught in the stalled
industrial machine and turning back to primitive trade to meet
their essential needs, have inspired two New York newspaper
sophisticates to unusual enthusiasm in this swift journalistic
narrative. They do not quite say that barter and scrip will break
down "the paradox of great plenty and great want existing
side by side," but it is plain that they are wide open to conviction.
The authors detail the history and varied methods of four
barter organizations that have survived their youthful indiscre-
tions and have taken on a fairly stable pattern. They are: the
Hawarden (Iowa) Plan, operating on city scrip in the heart of
the farm-strike country; the Emergency Exchange Association
of New York City, " about the most unfruitful place for barter
that the world has ever seen "; the Natural Development Associa-
tion of Salt Lake City, "one of the most significant cooperative
enterprises in the country," with back of it "a whole minor
philosophy of government and economics"; and the Dayton
Cooperative Production Units, "one of the finest pieces of original
and constructive social work in the present bitter crisis." Briefer
accounts are given of various barter organizations in California,
Seattle, Minneapolis and Yellow Springs, Ohio.
Men Without Money makes no pretense to being a manual by
which a barter unit could be set up. Beyond a general caution or
two it takes no account of the many griefs that attend the birth
and growth of a successful exchange. It is not an economic dis-
cussion but the lively, optimistic, highly readable story of the
efforts of brave men to dig themselves out of the economic slough.
GERTRUDE SPRINGER
The Jewish Student's Religion
THE ATTITUDE OF THE JEWISH STUDENT TOWARDS HIS RELIGION,
by Marvin Nathan. Block Publishing Co. 264 pp. Price $2 postpaid of The Survey
R^BBI NATHAN writes with insight whenever he relies upon
his learnings from first-hand contacts with Jewish students
in American colleges and universities. He follows in the steps of
the late Joel Blau and other leaders in the revolt against a system
of religious education that succeeds neither in maintaining a great
tradition of piety nor in helping youth to find spiritual guidance
through the confusions of our time. Essentially, it is the same
revolt that is breaking through also in the Christian Churches.
Unfortunately, the requirements of a thesis for the degree of
doctor of philosophy are such that neither the writer's knowledge
nor his thought concerning principles of reform can be fully
developed. An ill-advised quantitative procedure introduces
fictions, and sidetracks discussion. The writer is tempted to
assume, without warrant, that the sample is sufficient — that is,
that students who are worried and who are not, who are concerned
in Judaism and who are not — are answering the questionnaire in
about equal proportions. Then he is forced to proceed on the
assumption that students with different mental make-ups can
and do give an accurate rendering of their experiences and their
feelings in about equal proportions. When utterances, not neces-
sarily evenly distributed as to their occurrence, are further
reduced to key ideas for tabulation and to percentage statements
of what students with different religious affiliations, and without
affiliation, say about their religious life, incomprehensible co-
ordinations turn up which the harassed research worker must
then use his wits to explain as best he can.
The punching machine has done its work of objective state-
ment; the Ph.D. degree should be conferred upon it once and for
all; but when its meaningless product is taken seriously as a basis
of fact, critical realism cannot come into play. The worker may
arrange the data in all sorts of intriguing ways; but he is in no
position to disentangle significant truth. Hence, the major portion
of this work as of so many theses of recent times, remains uncon-
vincing, however admirably the author manages, with the aid
of ample quotations from the student papers themselves, to make
one feel that the trends he notes exist. That his own ideas of
what constitutes religious education are none too clear, cannot
be held against him — for none are more perplexed than those who
have most seriously studied the need of our time for a new ap-
proach to it. BRUNO LASKER
Cross-Section of an RN
I GO NURSING, by Corinne Johnson Kern. Dutton. 256 pp. Price $2.50 postpaid
of The Survey.
WHETHER one should commend or condemn the increasing
interest that has been displayed in the last few years in
physiological and pathological details is a debatable question.
There is no doubt, however, that I Go Nursing by Corinne John-
son Kern will appeal to that part of the general public that gets a
certain satisfaction, healthful or morbid, in such details. I Go
Nursing is a series of stories by a private-duty nurse, describing
in autobiographical form, the cases she is called to look after in
all kinds of homes and in all kinds of places, from the mazes of
Chinatown to a lonely ranch and a snowbound lumber settlement.
By and large, it is probably a fair cross-section of the work of a
private-duty nurse in the early years of the twentieth century,
the time in which the stories are laid.
It is only fair to Mrs. Kern to say that her stories hold one's
interest almost absorbingly, and that there is a certain forceful-
ness in her crude but clear-cut descriptions. Nor are the more sub-
tle elements of emotion and feeling neglected; in more than one
case the nurse accomplishes an excellent piece of mental adjust-
ment.
One wonders if Mrs. Kern is herself a nurse, or whether through
some close association and her dramatic sense, she has been able
to reconstruct a series of pictures that are convincing and un-
doubtedly true to life. DOROTHY J. CARTER
Assistant Editor, Public Health Nursing
The Lie-Detector
LYING AND ITS DETECTION, by John A. Larson. Behavior Research Fund.
University of Chicago Prest. 453 pp. Price $5 postpaid of The Survey.
sensational publicity incident to the use of Dr. Larson's
cardio-pneumo-psychograph or lie-detector during and since
his experiments as a member of August Vollmer's police staff in
Berkeley has been responsible for a variety of "armchair criti-
cism" that should be allayed by the scientific objectivity of his
book. Professor Vollmer in his introduction stresses the pioneer
nature of Larson's research and pleads that "decision regarding
the merits of deception technique should be withheld until it is
positively proved that deception cannot be detected with the aid
of scientific apparatus"; and Ernest W. Burgess in his editor's
foreword predicts that where administered by a competent
T!
December 1933
THE SURVEY
429
criminological psychologist the lie-detector will supersede the
third degree. With practice in general medicine, endocrinology
and psychiatry added to his study of law and his experience as
patrolman and identification expert, Larson's competence seems
beyond question. After devoting 250 pages to earlier methods of
detecting deception, in the latter third of his book he gives a
detailed description of his apparatus, defines the technique of
"securing a continuous blood-pressure curve taken synchronously
with a respiratory and a timing curve" and cites sixty-odd experi-
ments with actual suspects from the Berkeley Police Department,
the state penitentiaries of California and Illinois and the Institute
for Juvenile Research in Chicago. In order to guard against
unscientific enthusiasm on the part of his readers he selects cases
presenting "problems which are not clear-cut" and points out
those few that were wrongly interpreted; yet the accompanying
transcriptions of records indicate even to a layman the tell-tale
disturbances of blood-pressure and breathing during questions
touching the painful deception complex. Dr. Larson does not
advocate courtroom use of the lie-detector and repeatedly states
that at present it is valuable chiefly in early stages of police in-
vestigation, eliminating the innocent and running down clues on
positive reactors. ANNE ROLLER ISSLER
RUN OF THE SHELVES
A DESCRIPTIVE LIST OF THE NEW BOOKS
BALANCED EMPLOYMENT, by Lee Sherman Chadwick, Macmillan. 234 Pp.
Price $2 postpaid of The Survey.
A greatly over-simplified analysis of the Machine Age and what
would make its wheels go round again, with the shorter work-day
as its coming-out place.
GROWTH AND DEVELOPMENT OF THE CHILD. PART II. ANATOMY
AND PHYSIOLOGY. Report of the Committee on Growth and Development of the
White House Conference cm Child Health and Protection. Kenneth D. Blackfan, M.D.,
chairman. Century. 629 pp. Price $4 postpaid of The Survey.
THIS study, the second volume in a series of four dealing with
growth and development of the child, treats the anatomical and
physiological aspects of growth.
GENERAL INDEX TO THE FINAL REPORTS OF THE PRESIDENT'S
CONFERENCE ON HOME BUILDING AND HOME OWNERSHIP. Pre-
pared under the direction of Dan W. Wheeler. President's Conference on Home
Building and Home Ownership. 114 pp. Price $1.15 postpaid of The Survey.
EXACTLY what its name indicates, a volume which combines and
amplifies the indices contained in the eleven volumes covering the
thirty-one committee reports — and as such an invaluable addi-
tion to the volumes previously published.
HOW FAR TO THE NEAREST DOCTOR, by Edward M. Dodd. M.D. Friendship
Press, 163 pp. Price $1 cloth, 75 cents paper, postpaid of The Survey.
STORIES of medical missions around the world by the medical
secretary of the Board of Foreign Missions of the Presbyterian
Church, written " to bring before American young people a living
reality — the medical work of the Christian church in many
lands."
SCHOOL BROADCASTING. Intellectual Cooperation Series of the League of Na-
tions. World Peace Foundation. 210 pp. Price $2 postpaid of The Survey.
THIS study covers the use of the radio in primary and secondary
schools and in colleges in twenty-five countries. There are many
suggestions for the use of radio in schools to give information on
the aims and activities of the League of Nations and " to promote
the international spirit."
NERVOUS BREAKDOWN: ITS CAUSE AND CURE, by W. Reran Wolfe, M.D.
Farrar and Rinehart. 240 pp. Price $2.50.
REGARDING a nervous breakdown as a "personality knock-out,"
Dr. Wolfe analyzes various factors entering into it, basing his
view entirely upon an Adlerian concept of inferiority feeling,
with well-being and superiority as the goal of life. The nervous
breakdown is regarded as an inevitable product of a muddled
strategy of life and its relief depends upon the ability to put one's
life in order. Creative self-realization, in terms of courage, per-
sonal understanding and objectivity, becomes the mode of
restoration to a normal life.
A SOCIOLOGIC SCORE SYSTEM FOR THE CARE AND TRAINING OF
CHILDREN, by G. Hardy Clark, M.D. Seaside Printing Co. Long Beach, Cali-
fornia. 78 pp. Price $1 postpaid of The Suney.
A MANUAL for scoring the development of a child, together with
a resume of the fundamentals of character development. The
basis is an estimation of values in terms of care of the person, care
of the family, and social relationships.
WHY ARE THERE RICH AND POOR? by Abel J. Gregg. Association Press. 347
Madison Avenue, New York. 48 pp. Price 25 cents.
URGENT economic and social questions are here posed for young
people in a way that makes their immediacy clear and challenging.
This discussion outline and bibliography in handy pamphlet form
was prepared with boys and girls of highschool age in mind but
teachers and club leaders will find many uses for it in both older
and younger groups.
HOW TO REDUCE MUNICIPAL EXPENDITURES, by Clarence E. Ridley and
Or in F. Nailing. Published by the International City Managers Association, 923 East
60th St., Chicago. 15f a copy.
IN the belief that indiscriminate slashing of expenditures without
regard to consequences will simply shift the burden from the tax
dollar to the private dollar the authors bring together the more
constructive methods used by over one hundred cities in effect-
ing reductions in municipal expenditures together with other
practical suggestions. In all a check list of 295 very specific con-
structive economies is offered.
TRANSITION ZONING (Harvard City Planning Studies), by Arthur C. Comey.
Harvard University Press. 150 pp. Price $2 JO postpaid of The Survey.
WITH the zoning principle definitely established in the United
States, we have now reached another stage — the need for special
regulations governing the treatment of contiguous property in
two zoning districts. The many city officials who are constantly
dealing with knotty zoning problems arising from mutually
inimical developments along district edges as well as city planners
and zoning experts who are endeavoring to develop zoning maps
and ordinances which will stand the test of operation will find
invaluable material in this, the fifth volume in the Harvard City
Planning Studies. The profuse illustrations add much to the
value of this volume.
YOUR HEARING: How to Preserve It, by Wendell C. Phillips, M.D. and Hugh
Grant Rowell, M, D. Appleton. 232 pp. Price $2 postpaid of The Suney.
ONE author of this book is a specialist in the medical field it cov-
ers and founder of the American Federation of Organizations for
the Hard of Hearing, the agency working specifically to prevent
deafness, conserve partial hearing, and teach persons with im-
paired hearing to make the most of their abilities. The other author
is a specialist in the field of health education. With this ideal
combination of qualities, their book appears as a clear, authori-
tative, and practical guide for readers concerned with its field —
the prevention of deafness and the aid of the deafened — people
with some measure of hearing as contrasted with the deaf, who
cannot hear at all.
COMMUNICATION AGENCIES AND SOCIAL LIFE, by Malcolm M. Willey and
Stuart A. Rice. Recent Social Trends Monographs. McGraw-Hill. 229 pp. Price $2.50
postpaid of The Survey.
HERE in a substantial bound volume are the facts and figures
underlying the striking chapter under the same title contributed
by these authors to the report of the Research Committee on
Recent Social Trends (see Survey Graphic, January 1933). Both
local and distant contacts between people have enlarged at a
dizzy rate since the turn of the century, aided by postal service,
telephone, telegraph, automobile, radio and the like and the new
habits that new resources make possible. "The entire horizon of
man has expanded, and if there is not a new heaven, at least there
is a new earth." The present volume is one of thirteen which are
being published to illuminate further respective chapters of the
report — compilations of existing /acts and researches into little
known areas which will be invaluable to readers specifically in-
terested in these fields.
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WORKER WANTED
EXECUTIVE SECRETARY, college graduate, age
25 to 35, with executive and organizing ability, for
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experience, community affiliations, interests, informa-
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office methods, accounts, etc. 7193 SURVEY.
SITUATIONS WANTED
AMERICAN WOMAN — Continental college back-
ground, mature judgement — adaptable personality —
seeks position. Four years complete social service ex-
perience. 7192 SURVEY.
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Pratt Institute Domestic Science; institution experi-
ence. Special diets; desires position, school or institu-
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less home. 7191 SURVEY.
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which trained nurses are taking in the betterment
of the world. Put it in your library. $3.00 a year.
450 Seventh Ave., New York, N. Y.
Mental Hygiene: quarterly: $3.00 a year; published
by the National Committee for Mental Hygiene,
450 Seventh Ave., New York.
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sponsored jointly by the American Association
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tion for Public Health Nursing. National.
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CO MM UN 1C A TIONS
Preparedness
To THE EDITOR: Somebody seems to have quoted me as saying
that war would create prosperity. I should like to clarify that
point. There is no use in opposing preparedness on the ground
that it is expensive, because some kind of nonproduction expendi-
ture on a large scale is essential to recovery. The real argument
against preparedness is that it is apt to lead to war. There is an
illusion that because the last war produced prosperity the next
one would do the same. But times have changed. A full sized
modern war would probably kill the tenants without knocking
down the tenements, thus tending to produce depression.
The only known way to avoid being destroyed in the next war
is to keep out, and not being prepared is one of the best ways of
keeping out. But we shall confuse ourselves if we base our pacifi-
cism on grounds of economy. Some non-military form of public
spending on a vast scale is essential to recovery.
New Tork City DAVID CUSHMAN COYLE
Eugenics and Depression
To THE EDITOR: One family in every three in the State of Florida
is on the federal relief rolls trying desperately to keep alive and in
good health on a meager allowance of about ten dollars per month
per family. To add to the wretchedness and ill health of these un-
employed and ofttimes unemployable people, and to future
generations, the pregnancy rate is greatly increasing.
As yet we have had no encouragement from the authorities of
the Federal Relief Administration in our efforts to give these un-
employed eugenic birth regulation, which after food and shelter
is their most desperate need. Privately some of the relief au-
thorities admit the great necessity. Publicly they sidestep the
issue. This unnecessary human suffering goes on therefore un-
(In answering advertisements please mention THE SURVEY)
430
abated while the increase in children in the unemployed and often
unemployable families still further raises the cost of relief, and
greatly complicates any program of eventual rehabilitation.
These unemployed who now constitute one third of the popula-
tion of necessity contain virtually all the unemployables and non-
rehabilitables. They are increasing their families at a rate of not
less than twice the rate of the tax-paying families who can obtain
scientific birth-control information from their private doctors. It
is therefore only a question of several generations, if the present
trends are allowed to continue, when the numbers of the self-
supporting families and those who must be supported will be
equal, or in other words every tax-paying family will be support-
ing one family of unemployed. Economically speaking that would
be bad enough. But the more serious feature of it is that the aver-
age intelligence now estimated at about eleven years will be
proportionately lowered by the great increase of numbers of
feebleminded, insane, and otherwise defective persons now num-
bered among the unemployed.
The Mothers Health Club, Inc., is attacking this tremendous
and vital problem from the public-health approach by giving
therapeutic and eugenic birth regulation to women who are poor
maternity risks. A poor maternity risk for this purpose is defined
as a woman who cannot bear a child with safety to the life and
health of mother and baby. If the number of poor maternity
risks is decreased through intelligent birth regulation and eu-
genical operations, then the high maternal mortality rate of the
United States and especially of Florida is bound to be lowered.
It is by this public-health approach that the Mothers Health
Clubs hope to enlist the cooperation of the official health and wel-
fare agencies, and eventually to induce them to add eugenic and
therapeutic birth regulation to their programs.
The Mothers Health Clubs conduct a clinic for Dade County,
Florida. It is chartered not for profit and is supported entirely by
voluntary subscriptions. Literature and information as to how to
inaugurate similar projects elsewhere, or projects best suited to
local needs, will be supplied to any interested health or social
worker provided postage is included with the request.
Director of Clinic, Miami, Fla. LYDIA ALLEN DEVILBISS, M.D.
December 1933
THE SURVEY
431
GOSSIP:
of People
and Things
On the Washington Scene
JUST crook a finger toward Washington
these days and you discover a new flock of
old friends serving the New Deal in one capac-
ity or another. FRANK. BANE of the American
Public Welfare Association is now commuting
between Chicago and the capital giving large
part-time to the FERA in an advising and
consulting capacity. ... As director of
women's work, which promises to loom larger
presently, the FERA has called ELLEN S.
WOODWARD, recently executive secretary of the
Mississippi Board of Development, and one-
time secretary of the State Conference of Social
Work. Her assistant is CHLOE OWINGS, known
for her work with the American Social Hygiene
Association. . . . It's fairly old but still good
news that the FERA has named as supervisor of
work relief in education HILDA SMITH, director
of the Affiliated Summer Schools and one of the
founders of the Bryn Mawr Summer School
for Workers in Industry.
Looking a bit further in Washington one
sees WILLIAM C. KOPLOVITZ, co-author with
Joanna C. Colcord and Russell Kurtz of the
book, Emergency Work Relief, in the law
division of the Public Works Administration.
DAVID CUSHMAN COYLE of New York is a
member of the technical advisory committee of
the PWA. ... On the staff of the Committee
on Government Statistics is EWAN CLAGUE,
three-quarter timing from his job with the
Philadelphia Community Council. This com-
mittee of the American Statistical Association
and the Social Science Research Council is
surveying the statistical work of several gov-
ernment departments, recommending desirable
changes when indicated.
Also called to Washington is MORRIS
LLEWELLYAN COOKE of Philadelphia, now
chairman of the Mississippi Valley Committee,
of the PWA, the object of which is to correlate
and coordinate the various projects recom-
mended for the development of the Mississippi
Valley and its tributaries. . . . Not in Wash-
ington, but very much in the New Deal is
JACOB BILLIKOPF who, by direction of Presi-
dent Roosevelt, has been appointed impartial
chairman of the Regional Labor Board for
Philadelphia to represent the general public in
the mediation of labor controversies. Among
his associates on the board are MORRIS E.
LEEDS and LESSING ROSENWALD.
SOPHONISBA P. BRECKENRJDGE of the School
of Social Service Administration, University of
Chicago, is a member of the official American
delegation to the seventh Pan-American Con-
ference, in session in Montevideo, Uruguay,
as these words are written.
THE Polish government has taken cogni-
zance of the service of Marion Blackwell,
executive of the Buffalo International Institute,
and has conferred on her the Golden Cross of
Merit in appreciation of her constructive work
among citizens of Polish extraction.
DR. JOHN H. FINLEY of the New York Times,
valued friend and contributor to The Survey,
celebrated his seventieth birthday recently
with a party participated in by all of City
College with the growth and development of
which he has been closely associated. The
party included a faculty luncheon, an academic
procession of the faculty and student body and
the presentation to the college of a bronze bust
of the guest of honor, the gift of his friends.
THE University of Toledo has elected Philip
C. Nash as president to succeed the late Henry
J. Doermann. An engineer by profession Mr.
Nash was for eight years dean of Antioch
College and has been since 1929 director of the
League of Nations Association.
VIOLET H. HODGDON has resigned as assist-
ant director of the National Organization for
Public Health Nursing to become director of
Public Health Nursing in the Department of
Health, Westchester County, N. Y.
Well, What DID You Do?
1T\URING her first week as a. county relief
*^* worker in Sauk Rapids, Minn., Mary G.
Starr, who says "I know I shall derive great
benefit from your magazine" (and as far as we
are concerned that makes it unanimous), gath-
ered in this tidbit, a note left by a volunteer
worker: "Mr. Zelphon came in to say they are
all out of groceries and what are you going to do
about his hernia?"
THE Massachusetts Health Department has
reached over into New York and taken Ada
Boone Coffey for its chief nursing supervisor.
She has been for four years extension secretary
of public-health nurses in the New York State
Health Department and was previously asso-
ciated with the division of maternity infancy
and child hygiene.
THE National Committee on Federal Legis-
lation for Birth Control, Margaret Sanger,
president, will hold a conference on Birth Con-
trol and National Recovery at the Mayflower
Hotel, Washington, D. C. January 15-17.
Other organizations are invited to cooperate.
Information from the conference headquarters,
1343 H Street, N. W., Washington.
THOMAS DEVINE, who for the past year has
been "on the road" for the Family Welfare
Association of America, and before that with
community chests in the South, has been ap-
pointed to direct the Grand Rapids chest
succeeding Howard O. Hunter, now with the
FERA.
"WITHIN three weeks of the start of regis-
tering social workers we had received over
eighty applications," postscripts Anita Eldridgc
of the California Conference of Social Work.
"The board of examiners is at work and be-
lieve me it is going to be a big job. A lot of
grief is probably in store for us but we are
going at it gaily."
THE discussion, with charts, of the number
and distribution of social workers in the United
States given by Ralph G. Hurlin at the Detroit
meeting of the National Conference last June
has been preprinted by the Russell Sage Foun-
dation, 130 East 22 Street, New York, from
the forthcoming Conference Proceedings.
Price 10 cents from the Foundation.
ALLEN R. CARPENTER, formerly case-work
adviser to the Salvation Army in Chicago has
been appointed director of the Clearing House
for Men of the Shelter Division of the Illinois
Emergency Relief Commission. He succeeds
Robert W. Beasley who has joined the faculty
of the School of Social Service Administration
of the University of Chicago.
THE bad news comes from Germany that
Betty Hirsch is no longer director of the Silex
School in Berlin. This school was established
during the war for the reeducation of blinded
soldiers. The methods it developed, under Miss
Hirsch's leadership, attracted international
attention and have been widely followed.
IN Geneva at this time are Professor Joseph
P. Chamberlain of Columbia University,
Florence W. Hutsinpillar of the U. S. Children's
Bureau and George L. Warren of the Inter-
national Migration Service as delegates ap-
pointed by President Roosevelt to represent the
United States on a special committee of the
League of Nations to study the whole question
of assistance to aliens. Twelve governments are
represented on the committee one of the chief
problems of which is the plight of economic
refugees who because of the depression are
returning in increasing numbers to countries of
origin.
Professor Chamberlain, who by the way is a
vice-president of Survey Associates, has a
dual responsibility in Geneva having been
designated by the Department of State as the
American representative on the governing
board of the Commission on German Refugees
of which James G. McDonald of New York is
high commissioner.
THE New York School of Social Work now
claims the full time of Leonard Mayo who until
recently has been part-timing with the Chil-
dren's Village, Dobbs Ferry.
SARA T. DISSOSWAY, for seven years head of
the work for the crippled under the Brooklyn
Bureau of Charities, has resigned to become
general secretary of the Community Welfare
Association of Meriden, Conn.
Whereas . . .
ITXTRACT from a resolution received, with
'-•l request for endorsement, by the Van-
couver, B. C., Welfare Federation from the
Tuberculous Veterans' Section of the Canadian
Legion:
Therefore this branch of the Canadian Legion
desires to protest vigorously the recent scaling
down or lopping off altogether of the Mothers'
Pensions formerly given to the wives of TB
veterans who have young children by the com-
mittee in charge of Mothers' Pensions.
JUNE PURCELL GUILD, whose illness last
spring obliged her to burn her professional
social-work bridges in Richmond, is at George
Washington University this winter, back at
her old love, the study of law. "If I have luck,"
she says, "I'll get my Master's in law in June.
Am carrying part of my teaching at Virginia
Union University, commuting to Richmond
for it, and if I have any time left I want to
finish my book on the legal status of the Vir-
ginia Negro, the research and assembling of
432
THE SURVEY
December 1933
topics for which is already done." Meantime,
Mrs. Guild had an article in The Christian
Register of October 5, A True Confession of a
Social Worker, in which she pleads for closer
kinship between law, politics, economics and
social work.
NORTH DAKOTA has borrowed Pearl Sals-
berry from the Minneapolis Family Welfare
Association to direct its state relief work.
Assisting her are Paul Bliss, lately of St. Louis
and Jessica Lowry of Minot, N. D.
ALICE STENHOLM who was among the shock-
troops of the battle to make public relief
effective in Mississippi has resigned to join
the staff of the Wisconsin State Training
School. Margaret Leach succeeds her in
Mississippi.
Ah, Beauty!
FROM the Consumers' League of Eastern
Pennsylvania, relayed by A. Estelle Lauder,
comes the tale of the disabled worker for whom
the League successfully fought through a com-
pensation case involving $700. With this
fortune the worker proposed to take his family
back to Spain and establish them in a life of
ease in his native hamlet. The family had con-
siderable leeway in the amount of personal bag-
gage allowed on their steamer tickets and pro-
ceeded to pack up an extraordinary collection
of household goods. But when the League
worker found them crating a large buff and
green gas-stove she questioned the logic of it,
involving as it would a considerable expense for
trucking and the likelihood, not to say cer-
tainty, that in a remote Spanish hamlet an
American gas-stove would resemble nothing so
much as a white elephant. "But lady," bristled
the man of the house, "Is it that we should not
have a thing of beauty in our lives?"
LJSBETH PARROTT has resigned her five-
year-old job with the North Carolina State
Board of Charities and has gone to Baltimore to
the publicity staff of the Maryland Children's
Aid Society.
THE Independent Journal of Columbia Uni-
versity is a new semimonthly publication under
the wing of the School of Journalism. In each
issue one of the scholars of the University "will
contribute his observations upon the passing
scene." The first was by President Nicholas
Murray Butler.
WHUE Eugene Kinckle Jones is in Washing-
ton as economic adviser on Negro affairs to the
Department of Commerce the work of the
National Urban League will go on under the
direction of T. Arnold Hill, the director of its
Department of Industrial Relations.
A CHEERFUL note in the unemployment situa-
tion is sounded by the New York School of
Social Work which reports that, so far as its
sixty-three 1932-33 graduates are concerned,
there isn't any. At the time of writing the last
to be placed was on the brink of decision.
Seventeen went into public welfare, thirty,
five into case work, and the rest scattered into
various lines. One, set down as "Married and
not working," the School counts as a placement.
Fair enough.
PLANS are already on foot for the 1934 session
of the Wellesley Summer Institute, the '33
session of which so excited everyone who
shared in it. For information query Dorothy P.
Hill, 420 Jackson Building, Buffalo, N. Y. For
an account of the '33 institute and its reading
list, reprinted from the Wellesley Magazine,
send a three-cent stamp to A. E. O. Munsell,
Id East Franklin Street, Baltimore, Md.
RUTH BLAK.SLEE of the New York COS has
been called to Baltimore as state field super-
visor of the Maryland Emergency Relief Ad-
ministration.
THE Yonkers Charity Organization has added
Mira Talbot to its staff as case-work super-
visor. Although the accumulation of experience
has carried Miss Talbot as far west as Seattle
she comes now from the Department of Public
Welfare, Syracuse, N. Y.
CARDINAL HAYES, New York, has appointed
Msgr. Robert F. Keegan, his secretary for
charities, to the pastorate of the Church of the
Blessed Sacrament, at Broadway and Seven-
tieth Street. Monsignor Keegan, who closed
his presidency of the National Conference of
Catholic Charities in a blaze of glory in early
October, will continue as director of the Catholic
Charities of New York.
"SOMETHING about this conference reminds
me of our own Graphic-Midmonthly plan,"
postscripts Dora M. Barnes, Survey scout at the
Conference of Juvenile Agencies held in con-
nection with American Prison Congress in At-
lantic City. "Each session had a 'background
paper" (that would be Graphic), after which
the audience divided into discussion groups
(Midmonthly). It worked admirably."
Oh Say, Can You See?
TV/TAYBE it's the open-eyed baby on the
•L^-l letterhead peering over a songbook
captioned with a bar from the national anthem,
maybe the quotation below from a mother
whose child's sight had been saved, but there
was a pull even for hardened readers in an ap-
peal letter sent out not long ago by the Na-
tional Society for the Prevention of Blindness.
The quotation read: "Last night my infant
daughter noticed her hands for the first time
and smiled with pleasure. It seems intolerably
cruel that there should be babies unable to do
this. I am sending a small contribution to you.
If it were a hundred times the amount, it
could not express my gratitude."
HELEN HART, long identified with the settle-
ments in New York and elsewhere, is now on
the supervisory staff of the Connecticut Emer-
gency Relief Commission.
EVEN bureaus of vital statistics have their
moments. The Pennsylvania Bureau reports
an enquiry about the death certificate of one
Five Dollar Willie, aged eighty-two. Then
there was the woman who wanted a birth
certificate and who when asked for information
to aid the search of the records replied, "The
house I was born in is torn down."
NEW YORK settlements, twenty-six of them,
are joining in the publication of a monthly
newspaper, The Neighbor. Rube Ellenberg and
Henry Tannebaum are the editors.
TARDILY but whole-heartedly The Survey
adds its congratulations to those of the many
friends of Eva Whiting White on the rounding
out, in October, of twenty-five years as head
worker of Elizabeth Peabody House, Boston.
One of the speakers at the two-day celebration
was Lucy Wheelock, one of the original incor-
porators of the house in 1896. At the present
time Mrs. White is serving on three public
boards: the Public Welfare Department of
Boston, the Immigration Division of the Mas-
sachusetts Department of Education and the
New England Executive Board of the NRA.
THAT friend and critic of social work, Viola
Paradise, novelist and short-story writer, whose
paper, Creative Writing for Social Work, was a
high spot of the Philadelphia National Confer-
ence, is putting herself to the practical test of
the job. She has joined the staff of the Jewish
Social Service Association, New York, to inter-
pret its work, its program and its philosophy
without any relation to money-raising propa-
ganda. It was Miss Paradise's story, Wild West,
later published in Pictorial Review that won
the prize offered several years ago by the Social
Work Publicity Council. She got her baptism
in social work with the Immigrant Protective
League in Chicago, under Grace Abbott, and
was for a number of years with the U. S.
Children's Bureau.
THE belle of this past season at Nurses'
House on Long Island was a seventy-year
oldster who is the nurse at a boys' boarding
school and who as a sideline teaches the kids
ice-skating. She enlivened the House by or-
ganizing bicycling, roller-skating and horse-
back riding parties, and at odd moments
learned to dive.
AT the recent completion of its fifth year of
existence the Anti-Opium Bureau in Geneva
"rendered public thanks to all who have as-
sisted in its work." During the coming year the
Bureau will continue to maintain its free in-
formation service though a straitened budget
may compel it to curtail its publications.
THE School of Sociology and Social Service
of Fordham University, New York, has ap-
pointed Mabel Mattingly, recently of Cleve-
land, as director of field work to succeed Rose
McHugh, who is at the moment in Buffalo
making a special study of protective agencies.
Mrs. Mattingly has been identified with social
work in Cleveland for twenty years. She helped
organize and has been a member of the board
of the Cuyahoga County Child Welfare Organi-
zation, and resigned the post of assistant pro-
fessor of child welfare at the School of Applied
Social Sciences at Western Reserve University
in order to accept the Fordham appointment.
New Officers
American Library Association: President,
Gratia A. Countryman, Minneapolis; vice-
presidents, Louis Round Wilson, University of
Chicago; Ralph Munn, Pittsburgh; treasurer,
Matthew S. Dudgeon, Milwaukee.
Illinois State Conference of Social Work:
President, Jacob Kepecs, Chicago; vice-presi-
dents, Judge Harry Reck, Ottawa; Edward L.
Ryerson, Jr., Chicago; Mrs. V. M. Bristol,
East St. Louis; secretary-treasurer, Mrs. Henry
P. Chandler, Chicago.
New York State Conference of Social Work:
President, Victor Ridder, New York; vice-
presidents, Mrs. Francis Kernan, Utica; Eugene
Warner, Buffalo; Neva R.Deardorf, New York.
Utah State Conference of Social Work:
President, Dr. Lowry Nelson, Provo; vice-
presidents, Prof. John C. Swenson, Provo, and
B. H. Robinson and Dr. Dorothy Nyswander,
Salt Lake City; secretary-treasurer, Marguerite
Woodin, Salt Lake City.
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