this delicate task, I would principally urge the advantage of a sympathetic comprehension of the child's family background and his heritage of racial and religious cultures, devotions, and animosities, with their outcropping potencies for good or evil. Even the most saliently different individual is after all as Anatole France says, "Already so old when he is born."

THE USE OF VOLUNTEERS IN RURAL SOCIAL WORK Josephine Brown, General Secretary, Dakota County Welfare Association, Minnesota

Dakota County covers 600 square miles and lies directly south of St. Paul, Minnesota. The cities of South and West St. Paul, so tiny that they would probably pass as villages in the East, contain together 9,000 of the 29,000 persons in the county. The remaining 20,000 are divided among even smaller towns, villages of less than 500, and farms averaging 120 acres.

Outside of South St. Paul which has grown up around two enormous packing plants and which presents with its twenty-five or more different nationalities and its twin evils of moonshine and immorality the critical problems of a one-industry city, the county is a typical Middle Western community. Its population is composed of second and third generation Germans and Scandinavians. Farming is diversified and the towns and villages with their few factories and flour mills are largely trading centers for the farmer. In spite of a diversion of interest which comes from close proximity to St. Paul and Minneapolis, the county possesses a consciousness of its own which was recognized and used when the social forces in the community were organized on their present basis.

Prior to February, 1919, when the United Charities of St. Paul opened a district office in South St. Paul, social work in the county was limited to a Red Cross Public Health Nurse and an ineffective humane society which later died a natural death. The United Charities district office with one trained worker confined its activities to South St. Paul until June, 1920, when the Dakota County Child Welfare Board was organized by the Children's Bureau of the State Board of Control, and part of the time of the secretary was loaned to the new board. After that time the activities of the district office covered the county, a visitor and later a Ford car were added to the staff, and the number of cases grew in a year from 30 to 150 per month. Many of these were rural family cases which had come to the secretary's attention in the course of her work for the Child Welfare Board. This meant that the district office was already doing rural family work through the county when the time came in September, 1921, for a long anticipated reorganization which should place the South St. Paul office on an independent basis. It was therefore not surprising that the steering committee of the new association felt strongly their responsibility to the county as a whole and made their plans with this in view. In March, 1921, the American Red Cross had opened a health center in South St. Paul with the understanding that local people would take over its support at the end of a year. Assuming this responsibility also the new Dakota County Welfare Association was organized to do both family and health work on a county wide basis. This included responsibility for the county nurse and for the rural clinics of the Minnesota Public Health Association.

This picture would not be complete, in fact it never would have existed had it not been for the service given by volunteers. To them too much credit cannot be given

for their patience, insight, and hard work. They have created the organization, it belongs to them, on them depends its future, and it is from experience gained in working with these people that the following points regarding the use of volunteers in rural social work are offered for discussion.

In an attempt to analyze the part volunteers have played so far in this field, one is struck with what seems at first a startling difference between the rural situation and that in a large city.

The city worker today enters a field where case-work precedent is already established. Her work is carefully defined and she follows well-marked lines of procedure in selecting and putting to work volunteers whether on committees or in more personal kinds of service. With varying degrees of success the volunteer fits into the office of the case-working agency, gives certain hours to the work and receives a more or less definite course of instruction. The trained worker who has been accustomed to working with volunteers in this fashion will do well when she enters the rural field to dispossess her mind of all preconceived ideas on the subject. If she does not know before she begins her county work she will soon learn that her status here is quite different from that of the case worker in town. There the volunteer while desirable was optional. In the country the volunteer is a necessity. In town the volunteer is on trial. In the country it is the social worker who is in that equivocal position. The city volunteer usually works in a district far from her own home and learns both method and facts regarding her case from the trained worker and the case record, but in the country the same trained worker may find that the volunteer has been a neighbor of her client for thirty years and knows more about his family history and present situation than the average social worker could unearth about a city family in a month. Often this information is accompanied by a definite theory of treatment which the neighborhood may have employed for years on that particular family, and at this point the social worker needs an open mind, a degree of humility heretofore unknown, and tact in abundance. She must realize that the case by right of long acquaintance and treatment belongs to the volunteer, not to her. She is welcomed as an adviser, not as a dictator, and it is her privilege to sift the salient points from the mass of information, tactfully suggest other lines of investigation, and later direct the discussion of the case to the point where the volunteer will herself make a reasonable diagnosis and possibly plan the very treatment the social worker had in mind.

Such a volunteer may become either a great help or a decided hindrance, depending largely on the skill of the social worker in handling each situation as it arises. If she is a true apostle of the family case-work method, she will be ready to apply this method to the individual volunteer, to abandon in emergencies her most precious theories and to have great patience with the farmer's slowly moving mind, for she will see that the volunteer is bound to serve in the country as she should in the city, as the leaven of her community, and if carefully taught will prove the means by which a firm foundation for future work will be laid. One antagonized volunteer, however, can do untold damage, so closely knit is the rural population in business, in politics, and by intermarriage.

Valuable, however, as this education is to the volunteers themselves and to the community as a whole, the rural social worker soon realizes that the contribution made thereby to her own education is the most surprising part of the whole process. While she has probably come to her rural work with some understanding of life on a farm, with more or less definite information about crops, live stock, markets, the effects of

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ather on the farmer's income, and the political structure of a rural community, the ore detailed information regarding local people and conditions which is so necessary every step in rural community organization and case work alike must come to her om her volunteers.

The training of volunteers is necessarily of the most informal kind. A first call in he company of the social worker is useful as a demonstration, but she will be surprised to find that the volunteers will often outstrip her in understanding the situation. The most untechnical terms are necessary as is also deference to the volunteer's opinion whenever possible. By far the most important part of this informal training has been through personal interviews for the volunteers have largely been key people with social vision who would naturally be sought out in the course of a general educational campaign. They have included teachers, the county superintendent of schools, judges, members of federated clubs, church and sunshine societies, parent-teachers associations, welfare association board members, two county commissioners, bank cashiers, farmers, housewives, neighbors, and even relatives of clients, and nearly all of these are men and women of middle age.

Boards and committees have a very important place in rural work. As in the city the board charged with financial responsibility is inclined to put case work in second place, but it has been interesting to note that the more rural the community from which a board member comes, the more interest he shows in family work, and especially does he want to know how much of it is being done in his own locality.

One of the strongest arguments in favor of the individual approach to the rural volunteer is found in the situation created when several of them are somewhat artificially and entirely officially brought together as a case committee. A sense of official responsibility seems sufficiently oppressive to inhibit spontaneous participation with the result that when faced with a case problem the committee turns to the secretary and says in chorus "You know-do whatever you think best." Almost every effort made to put the members of a case conference to work on the cases which come before their conference and with which they have no close point of contact has been a flat failure. These same members, however, have done excellent and enthusiastic work on cases in which they have had some special interest, for example, because they were neighbors, employers, or teachers of those they are helping. And from this fact the alert social worker learns one more application of the case-work method to the volunteer, namely that when a real point of contact is found and a normal impulse stirred, the interest aroused invariably results in action and a far higher grade of work. As the committee members gain confidence in themselves and a better understanding of the ends toward which they are working, the feeling of inhibition in the committee meeting wears off and much difficulty of this kind may always be avoided if the members have been tried out on individual case work before they are put on the committee. Care has been taken not to add to the constraint existing in such a gathering by withholding names of clients. Confidences are closely kept and that bane of the rural community-gossiphas been scrupulously avoided.

Many times the person referring a case has been turned into a volunteer by the right kind of suggestion as to possible lines of investigation before the case is actuall taken up by the social worker herself, especially where the suspicious attitude towar an outsider, so often encountered in rural communities, requires that the way of the social worker be paved by the volunteer. Or the possible antagonism of an entire

community may be forestalled by the strategic use of a key person in such an investigation.

There is always the volunteer who is afraid to interfere or who for various reasons does not want the client "to know that she knows." Denominational jealousy, also, suddenly thrusts itself upon the innocent social worker's attention.

Volunteers have not yet been asked to make original investigations. A board member may telephone late in the afternoon from a town twenty miles away to report a new family who are destitute. He is asked to find out the number and ages of the members of the family, their immediate needs, and their religion, and to secure from the proper church society or from the county commissioner emergency relief until the social worker can get there. On the other hand such definite tasks as finding employment for the girl with delinquent tendencies, befriending her in a neighborly fashion, and placing children in temporary homes have been performed with great success, or an employer or other person of some standing in the community will often be willing to use his influence, step in at the psychological moment and admonish the neglectful father of a delinquent girl and encourage a man who is trying to stop drinking moonshine.

Each volunteer will serve as a nucleus in his locality for committee work of whatever kind is needed. That keen interest has been aroused seems certain and where interest is real and actual work has been done by the volunteer, financial support ought to follow. It is earnestly hoped that through this use of the volunteer in its rural districts, Dakota County will learn the value and methods of case work and come to regard its Welfare Association as chiefly concerned with those all important adjustments which have as their objects the welfare of both the individual and the community. base

RURAL SOCIAL WORK IN SCIOTO COUNTY, OHIO Virginia Wing, Director of Public Information, American Red Cross, Washington (Formerly of the Lake Division)

Scioto County, Ohio, has been selected for consideration in this paper because th rural social work being done there through the Red Cross is rather distinctive. Scio is one of the hilly, rural counties located in southern Ohio. This county is fair representative of large sections of our country. The soil varies in fertility from the highly productive river bottoms and rich lowlands to the extremely poor shale soil in the hilly sections. Certain portions of the county are blessed with paved ds, while in many parts of it one is compelled to ford the creeks lengthwise in point to point.

It is always noticeable that the quality of the people in rural distric with the quality of the soil. The less thrifty tend to gravitate to the desirable land from the better soil in neighboring sections because they sion of small tracts with little effort and can live among neighbors wi with few advantages and little exertion. Likewise, those who are born in and find themselves endowed with more ambition than the average tend to leaving the thriftless ones as a residue. To a large degree, therefore, it that as is the soil so are the people.

Besides having this natural condition to contend with, Scioto County has an addional force operating which tends to increase the number of improvident families, mely, the constant stream of people without industrial or general education coming from the mountain counties of adjacent states. Although many of these people seek ork in Portsmouth which is a manufacturing center, most of them prefer to dwell in e rural sections even though they work in the city.

The individualism characteristic of rural people is specially pronounced in these ountain folks who have been spoken of as super-rural. Added to this the fact that ey are more or less transient, they become very difficult to assimilate. In most stances, they dwell in small shacks and eke out a very miserable existence. Shut in hills with very limited means of transportation and communication and often imssable creeks to contend with, it is not surprising that illiteracy and disease should 1 rampant. The amount of illiteracy in the county is somewhat indicated by the et that more than 6 per cent of the men and 5 per cent of the women who apply for rriage license cannot so much as sign their name. Little systematic attempt had en made to render any real social service to rural people of Scioto County before this k was undertaken by the Red Cross in 1918. The country churches, for the most t, are served by non-resident pastors. The schools were found to be far below the ndards of the city of Portsmouth. The poor-relief officers and regular county offis made no special contact with families except in cases of delinquency.

The Red Cross Chapter through its soldier work began to visit many rural families ause of their connection with the war, rather than because of any delinquent tendy. It was inevitable that many needy civilian cases fell under the observation of local worker. These visits soon revealed indications of widespread social disorder ong large groups of country people. So pronounced was this that the chapter underk a rather careful study of living conditions throughout the county. To make this sible, it was found necessary to organize groups of carefully selected volunteers in h of the seventeen townships. That the right people might be enlisted, prominent iticians of both parties were consulted and asked to mention the name of the leadcitizen in each township. They frequently mentioned the same person. These people were then approached and asked to give the name of a leading doctor, ister, school principal, business man, and an influential woman in their communities. ese people were then induced to become a local committee of volunteers, ready to ertake a variety of service in their township. Securing these committees and illing into them the ideals of service, together with the necessary technique was no task, but, finally, after weeks of tireless labor, the feat was accomplished, and the mittee of five or more responsible people was organized to assist in the social work ach township. After repeated conferences and extensive coaching, the committees e ready to begin operations under the direction of the energetic secretary of the chapwho had had some training and experience in social work. The first task assigned hese committees was a stupendous one. They were to secure visitors to every home heir respective territories who were to tactfully suggest that the work of the Red ss did not cease with the signing of the Armistice, and that its peace program in to County would include a special war on two "i's" and two "t's," namely, illiterillegitimacy, trachoma, and tuberculosis. The interest and support of each family sought in this undertaking. Incidentally, each visitor was asked to jot down on