judgment frequently crop out in unexpected places. Conviction may be the result of an extended study of a community's needs and resources, together with a check-up and an application of the experience of other communities, more or less comparable with it. It may center around a well-planned program. The survey method of evaluating the work of existing activities and of revealing the need for new must not be discussed here. It is desirable, rational, and effective behavior, however.

etc.

Conviction may be only the acceptance of an idea without any definite method about its transmutation into social helpfulness. For example, a publication of the record of accidents in a given community shows a percentage in industry, a percentage in public buildings, a percentage in track transportation, a percentage in automobiles, An enumeration of automobile accidents shows a distressingly large number of school children killed or injured on the way to and from school. Someone says: "If we could teach school children to be careful on the streets, accidents would be fewer. Somehow we must teach the home and the schools to labor with the children on this point. We must educate our educators." Here is an idea. A kindred few will put it over. They organize. Their program develops. Collateral lines of activity appear. Logic forces effort in other directions. An activity is born. It may be a most splendid vision with far-reaching accomplishment, actually putting a bit of real everyday life into a school room.

On the other hand, a kindred few may have an idea such as the one which was seriously propounded in my office some time ago. "We want to start a working girls home," said the pleader. "We have our eye on just the right property-house with big two story garage. 'Normal' working girls would live in the house at a minimum rate. We plan to fix over the second story of the garage for 'erring' girls. The 'normal' girls wouldn't and shouldn't live with the 'erring' girls. The arrangement would be economical, for we could feed the 'garage' girls in a separate dining-room, but from the same kitchen, and not close enough to contaminate the 'house' girls; furthermore, only one matron would be needed and overhead would be greatly reduced." Needless to say, that idea was the victim of murder then and there. There was, however, considerable of a group who thought the idea was splendid. It is often hard and frequently impossible to prevent the inception of undesirable activities. This is especially so if the proponents of the idea are the right people. Intelligent conviction is prerequisite to any action affecting the development of social service activities.

The Personal Elements.-Some of the confusion in the field of social work can be traced to the friendships and interests of different groups centering around the personal equation in the directorate and management of those activities. Many organizations are built up on interesting personalities. For example, a colored man in a large city conducted a children's institution. It was an abomination. He supported it by personal solicitation of business men. He was an ignorant but interesting character. Some of his benefactors told me they knew his institution was useless. "But George has been coming around once or twice a year for 10 years, and I give him only $10 at a time. He means all right. He never stays long. He always shows his white teeth in a peculiar grin while he tells a good story-and it is always a new story. I never never heard George tell the same story twice." George knew how to card index his stories, though he never catalogued his children.

Many a good movement has been inaugurated or saved in a crisis by the influence of a small group of socially prominent people. Contrariwise, good names have spon

d harmful activities. "Get So-and-So behind it, and it will go." "If Mr. or Mrs. Miss So-and-So opposes it, you will never get it across." Such statements have now then been heard in many communities. The man or woman who lends his name movement about which he knows nothing sells out his conscience, ignores his inteland surrenders society to chance. A decent federation or council, considering efully the need for organization or repression, will take advantage of the personal or, or will oppose it, as the situation may require. Financing of social service ncies, federated or unfederated, is not above the trick of securing subscriptions ough maximum use of the approach to prospects based on personal considerations. ›re and more, however, mild extortion, refined intimidation, social pressure of one d or another, are discountenanced in federated financing, and scientific publicity is Joked to sell the program.

Public Opinion, generally speaking, must be with a movement in order to secure >ney for support. It must be with a movement in order that its field of usefulness ay be broad. Unpopular activities have difficulty in functioning. For example, the take of a charity organization society is much affected by what people are supposed think about it as expressed in newspapers, neighborhood clubs, parent-teachers' sociations, etc. Should a federation be guided wholly by public opinion in admitng new agencies to membership, and in taking steps to define the word "unnecessary" ›r the sake of discouraging agencies so characterized?

It is admittedly hard to determine what is public opinion. An obvious comment is: Take your publicity such that the whole program will be sold to the community. Not frequently is the case of selling in inverse ratio to the desirability of the social service ctivity. If the federated group carries intelligent conviction about the worth-whileess of a newly organized movement it should seriously undertake the support of that organization. To put it on probation and force it to sell itself, while the federated group Cooks on with more or less complacency, is not heroic action by the federation. By such behavior, the federation loses an opportunity to render splendid service. The community, as well as the new project itself, has the right to expect the federated group of agencies to know the situation and to come out for or against. Intelligent conviction of the need of the work is the only good reason for starting an activity, either as a separate organization or as a department of an existing organization. Buoyant enthusiasm, the popularity and influence of the sponsors-these should never be criteria in judging the need of a new movement, but they sometimes are.

How shall we determine when existing agencies are to be discontinued? It seems pretty reasonable to say that the people who give their money ought to have something to say about where it shall go. The people who give the money are, for all practical purposes, quite a substantial factor in public opinion. What part the contributors should play in retarding or suppressing existing agencies determined the technique of a recent annual campaign for funds in Grand Rapids, Michigan. The experiment conducted there showed to the satisfaction of some, though not all, people that an effective designation scheme does not tend to increase amounts of individual subscriptions; that it emphasizes the personal element in soliciting designations to agencies; that a substantial proportion of subscribers prefer to give to a general or discretionary fund; that a considerable measure of agency responsibility in a federation campaign is secured; that it is dangerous from the standpoint of conserving social values, to rest the continuance of agencies upon a vote of subscribers; that agencies are aroused to

the need of continuous publicity; and that it puts a wholesome emphasis upo democracy.

Some enthusiastic believers in the vox populi vox Dei theory urged that permission be secured to place the names of all the agencies upon a ballot with a “yes” or “no” for continuance, said ballot to be voted upon at municipal election, the result to be a guide to the directors of the Welfare Union. Another suggested a modification of that scheme by prefacing a referendum with a well-organized campaign of publicity for all the agencies and by making the vote center around an expression of opinion about the appeal of the publicity of the respective agencies. There is neither time nor space to enumerate all the notions, crazy and otherwise, which have clustered around the most commendable desire to appraise public opinion. Of course, an enlightened public opinion is the goal of all of us. But it is also the goal of those who fundamentally differ from us. There seems to be no universally satisfactory definition of "enlightenment."

Summary. As concerns the encouragement and discouragement of activities, a federation must be sure that it is right, i.e., that its convictions are well founded; that the appeal has struck home to a majority of the social workers in the group and to a considerable group of laymen, after making as much favorable use of the personal element involved as a keen ethical sense readily permits; that public opinion will ultimately be favorable but that it is fatal to the cause of good social service to lag behind the procession of public opinion. If a federation, composing social workers and lay citizens, does not keep ahead of the procession in social thought and action, it is losing its big opportunity.

O

f

DIRECT SERVICE ACTIVITIES OF A FEDERATION

Sherman Conrad, Community Welfare Federation,
Wilkes-Barre

For the purposes of this paper I have considered the direct service activities of a federation or council of social agencies to be those tasks of social service usually performed by a constituent agency which are carried on directly from the central office. Rather than present the glorious achievements of any one city, I have sought to reveal the national situation; to ascertain the present practice in regard to direct service; to determine, if possible, whether central administration where used has increased social effectiveness; and to discover the present attitude of federation executives toward direct service and analyze the reasons for that attitude.

For this purpose I used the questionnaire method rather fully supplemented by additional personal inquiries. The responses were quite general and fully representative. Of the fifty-three usable replies, forty-four are from federations and nine from councils of social agencies. They include all of the larger and some of the very smallest organizations. Geographically, they are distributed from New England to the Pacific Coast.

In general, there is extremely little direct service being done, even under the broadest interpretation of our definition. Five federations conduct central buildings. One of these rents certain floors of an office building and sublets to the agencies. At the

other extreme is a federation which rents an entire building, houses the agencies rent free, and sets up the entire building expense as a separate budget. Three federations and one council directly promote social service training or study classes, and one federation is including as a constitutent agency a school of social work. One federation operates a joint hospital social service department for its hospitals, and two conduct summer outings and distribute Christmas baskets. Four federations are conducting child helping bureaus. One of these states that the bureau is "semi-independent" and is to be created as an independent agency as soon as it has passed the experimental stage. In a second case, the federation's advisory committee of management has recently recommended that the bureau be organized independently. One federation maintained for several months a case worker who handled cases referred to the central office and those in which large contributors were interested. This service has recently been discontinued.

Fifteen federations and four councils operate social service or confidential exchanges. As this type of activity was the one which the central office has most generally attempted, and which was most frequently advanced as its legitimate field, it seemed worth while to attempt to determine the relative efficiency of the federationcontrolled exchanges. The difficulties of such an appraisal by the questionnaire method are obvious. Nothing further was attempted than to secure certain information which would indicate the relative importance of the exchange in the social service program of its community. To this end questionnaires were addressed to all exchanges listed by the American Association of Social Service Exchanges. One hundred and five replies were received, of which eighty-one were usable.

Of the eighty-one exchanges, six were operated as independent agencies, nineteen by federations or councils, forty-three by associated charities or similar societies under various names, five by public departments, and nine by miscellaneous groups ranging from a chamber of commerce to a city mission. For the purposes of this paper, they were grouped as independent, general, and federation. On this basis the replies to the questions asked were as follows:

(It is probable that in this connection the three not reporting could have been listed as meeting on call.)

5. What was the previous experience of the registrar or person in charge?

7. Does the registrar promote case conferences? Does the registrar participate in conferences called by other agencies?