leaders are still unagreed as to whether to encourage or impede unionizing of negroes. They remember unfortunate experiences with unions and distrust their invitation to extend equal privileges to members of the colored working fraternity. While little practical progress has been achieved, we note with relief a more friendly feeling on the part of white workers organized and unorganized—a feeling which will make improbable widespread discord such as was anticipated.

Of recent months the problem of industry for all has been that of unemployment. The practical and human question is how did negroes fare during the winter of unemployment just passed. Chicago increased its negro population from 44,000 in 1900 to 110,000 in 1920. How did the new increment of 148 per cent manage when work became scarce and factories shut down? Unemployment among negroes has been a problem. Negroes, the last to be hired, were, because of an industrial practice which gives preference to seniority in service, the first to be discharged. Moreover, because of their newness and consequent inadaptability to all varying conditions, numbers were failures and put on the toboggan as soon as depression set in. Others were poor workers and, of course, a way was found for their dismissal. Chicago at one time had approximately 20,000 colored people out of work. Many of these were roomers, for Chicago's population before the exodus was 30 per cent lodgers. Soon they found themselves on the streets of Chicago with no place to go. But their exodus from below the Mason and Dixon line, though occasioned by the opportunity to labor in the North, had other and far-reaching causes. Negroes would have left the South long ago if they could have found work, and they would not have left in 1915 in such large numbers for work, had not intolerable conditions in the South urged them on. Thus, though unemployment faced them in the North, they turned their backs on the South, refused transportation home, and openly avowed their preference for streets and alleys rather than return to friends and family in their native habitat. In Chicago, hundreds were found sleeping in doorways, halls, and poolrooms. Police stations, no longer able to accommodate them, turned them back into the street. Manufacturers and railroads brought them to Chicago but now offered them no aid.

But, strange as it might appear, unemployment did not deter their entrance into Chicago. The Chicago Urban League sent articles to southern negro papers, advising about the hard times and urging that for the present no more negroes come to Chicago. But this was of no avail; they came just the same. in Chicago three days was asked why he came. "To try to get work," he said. "Did One young fellow who had been you not know there was no work in Chicago?" "Yes," he said, "I also know that there is no work in Mississippi and I had rather be out of work in Chicago than out of work in Mississippi." Another who had been in town over night only said, "There is no use staying in Georgia. All of my last year's crop is still in the barn. Why stay down there and raise more, when I cannot sell what I harvested last year?"

Alarmed by the increase in unemployment, the Chicago Urban League organized ministers, social agencies, and club women into a special committee which undertook the feeding and sleeping of unemployed negroes, but not until public and private agencies had refused aid. Mostly single men were cared for by this committee, for the United Charities found itself unable to provide for them. Churches prepared and served meals for awhile, at their own expense and from a fund given to the league by the colored citizens for this purpose. Some clubs furnished lodging, and others, unable to feed or sleep, gave money.

In order to avoid duplication and to weed out undesirables, the Urban League was allowed to receive and record the meals and beds of all persons who were thus helped. Exception to this rule was permitted church members who could go to their pastor and receive aid without clearance. Donations of meats and vegetables in generous quantities were given daily by the packers, and a large baking company gave bread. Local merchants assisted. Colored people gave liberally and proceeds from entertainments were put into the common fund.

During the six months from January 1 to June 23, 41,074 meals were furnished and for 16,902 separate times men were given shelter. The extent of unemployment is seen from the fact that only 631 men were placed during this entire field of six months. Prior to this the league placed 1,200 a month, or twice as many monthly as were placed in six months during the period of unemployment.

Women returned to domestic service from the factories and their placements were double those of the men for the same period.

It should be borne in mind that the Salvation Army, the Young Men's Christian Association Hotel' the Dawes Hotel, the Christian Industrial League, and some other institutions which run lodging houses, deny negro men the privilege of sleeping in them.

In commenting upon the work for the unemployed, the president of the United Charities wrote the Urban League thus: "As the report showed such excellent work being done by the Urban League in organizing the activities of the various agencies on the South Side, the directors of the United Charities requested me to write to you expressing their thanks and commendation for the excellent and efficient services which the Urban League has been rendering during the past few months."

But the significant development in this matter of unemployment is the fact that negroes have retained their ratio in all the large factories and industries now opened. If the plants suspended operations, or curtailed force, of course the negro suffered along with others. Except in the case of a few small shops, no replacement of negroes by whites is noted. In fact, the negro has not only kept his own job but the jobs of others who would be glad to get them now when choice of occupation is no longer possible.

The answer to the often asked query "Will negroes retain their gains in industry?" is found in their retention now when idle white labor is seeking jobs on every hand. If colored workers who occupied positions that were vacated by whites during the war can retain these places now, when many of these same white workers are looking for employment, it is fair to assume that they have made very definite progress toward permanency in industry. Of course, immigration will be a factor, but the exact effect of foreign workers on negro labor is debatable. It will depend upon whether the immigrant comes to remain or to make money and acquire American experience with which to build up Europe; whether he brings with him anarchistic tendencies; or whether, tired of drudgery and wastage of war, he comes not for work but for ease and contentment. The advance made by southern n orers has exceeded expectations. Employers acknowledge their satisfaction a ring them.

DIVISION VII-THE LOCAL COMMUNITY

STANDARDS IN LOCAL COMMUNITY WORK

Robert A. Woods, Head Resident, South End House, Boston

The possibility of clearly defining the best values in social work differs great according to the nature of particular types of activity. It is clear that great gats are to be made by the setting of standards, and by using those standards as a meas of measuring progress; but in a field so varied, so complex, and in many ways subtle as that of local community organization, the most we can hope for in the begining is to get a more penetrating and conclusive knowledge of the vital ends in vie in connection with each of the many branches of service included under that head It is also important that we should find the essential differences of purpose and method which exist between the different types of local social agency.

School and community centers can accomplish a great deal by providing on broad scale the specific forms of education that are needed preparatory to American citizenshlp. They can bring into the crowded districts large-scale opportunities in headquarters as a base for all citizens in matters of local civic action, when the citizens local public are ready for such action.

The settlement finds, however, that all these efforts must be prepared for, sustained and followed up, at least in the less resourceful districts, by a great variety of penetrating and permeating acquaintance and influence.

There is of course a very promising field for the application of higher standards in connection with most of the "indoor" work of our local agencies-their clubs and classes, their dramatics and dancing, their lectures and discussion, their discipline and general administration. Here we can learn much from the work of progressive educators; and we need to have, as soon as possible, in all our working groups, specialists who can help us in setting right technical standards and in getting cumulative results by means of them. Such experts, however, will have to be much affected by experts in the neighborhood point of view; and I wish to emphasize particularly the meaning of that point of view in terms of its particular standards.

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A special caution is necessary about the use of mere numbers as a measure of efficiency. Too many of our local centers stake nearly everything on the go-tomeeting habit. This habit seems to be on the decline. It is not only the churches that are finding this to be true. to get people to go to indoor political meetings. The irregularity of attendance at Practical politicians say that it is increasingly difficult the large classes of the school centers is very marked; and the turnover of their membership is a large one. circles, through hospitality, on the street corners, in their homes-find them where The settlements reach people in small friendly they are and approach them on the basis of a variety of interests.

What is the value of large statistics if you are not really building a social center, but are relying simply on certain forms of crude gregariousness? This whole question

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of what is a local social center, and what kind of a center does appeal to people locally, is one that needs careful thought. We have been told, for instance, that the saloon was a social center, that the saloon was the workingmen's club. One of the recent phases of that thought was strongly expressed after prohibition was voted in and before it came into effect, when many organizations were making nation-wide financial drives in order to provide social substitutes for the saloon. We saw great armies of men driven out of the saloons, and demanding new places of resort. Settlement people were inclined to sit rather easy because they had a theory that the saloon was distinctly not a social center. It was a place where certain people ranged themselves on account of the appetite for a certain drug. The settlement theory was that without the alcohol, they would reclassify themselves on the basis of real interests. Has anybody heard anything since prohibition has come in about substitutes for the saloon? The best substitute for the saloon, indeed, is the home; and to a very surprising degree it has developed that when a man gets the alcohol out of his system, he rediscovers that he is a domestic being. In many cases, men must be reconsidered by our social agencies from that point of view.

The question as to what is the right sort of local social centers is one that has not been determined and cannot be determined by any sort of brief experiment. We hope that the school may serve in some degree. But there is an important field for study and experiment here, in which the settlement has rendered good service in the past and will be needed, as much or even more, in the future.

And the vital test of neighborhood organization is whether, in one way or another, persons actually on the ground, and preferably local citizens, are closely and constantly involved. It is increasingly clear that every effort, public or voluntary, to build up a local agency for community betterment must imply a large amount of continuous and thoroughgoing local re-enforcement. Usually such things have to be brought into existence through local effort. Local co-operation is necessary to their best working; and when this begins to fail, the end of the enterprise is usually in sight.

Settlement people have learned these truths by bitter experience. When they' first got through legislation in regard to public playgrounds, gymnasiums, etc., they were told by more experienced friends that these enterprises would have to be persistently followed up; but they thought that in these matters that affected the people so much, the people would see that they were carried through to continuous success. We have lived long enough to see that that is not so. We have very fine playgrounds, but very poor administration of those playgrounds. After you get your school centers going, you have to get the local groups responsibly interested. Their interest must be kept at such a level as to secure good standards and a continuous response. Even if you have the most perfect equipment, you must have responsible groups representing local interest; and where responsible citizenship has been drained off, there has got to be some sort of process for having people go into the neighborhood in order that they may deliberately and continuously provide such constant reenforcement.

The state of neighborhood sentiment, difficult as it is to sense, should be one of the ultimate measures of neighborhood work. Consider that it is of the inevitable nature of the case that every ill-favored neighborhood is not so in a merely passive sense is not merely "neglected." It is a veritable complex of propaganda, some of them natural and wholesome, but not a few of them tending toward physical, industrial,

political, and moral chaos, all of these evil tendencies combining and re-enforcing one another. One of the wisest conclusions of recent years is that the I.W.W. is in the main the inevitable crop that must grow out of a certain type of industrial and living conditions-that it is the conditions that are un-American even more certainly than the kind of human being that they produce. The nesting-places of physical, economic, civic, and ethical morbidity in our cities must be thoroughly and continuously irradiated and disintegrated unless resourceful citizens are content, not only to have the inevitable result, but themselves to be responsible for it.

It was, indeed, a very wise man of old who said, "If I could but write the songs of a nation, I care not who should make its laws." If I could but shape the gossip of a neighborhood, I care not who should have its social centers. Carlyle in his French Revolution tells about the king fleeing from Paris in his coach, crossing the country, and coming to a frontier village in the early twilight, where as he was about to leave his dominions behind, he heard the murmur of the village, an "unnotable hum of sweet human gossip." To make the gossip of the neighborhood sweet, and gradually to freight it with the words of life, physical and spiritual, with all that is pure and lovely and of good report, and to do this in increasing fulness of knowledge and experience this is the most distinctive privilege of the settlement, a privilege which on the average, the five hundred settlements throughout the country are exercising in a very considerable degree.

In the field of neighborhood recreation, different types of neighborhood agencies follow quite different methods, and their results must be estimated from different points of view. Mr. Whiting Williams has lately emphasized the importance of a consideration which is constantly kept before the mind of the settlement resident-the deep significance to the workman of maintaining the social standing and dignity of his family. At first we are inclined to smile at all the little snobberies that are no less conspicuous on the way down the scale than on the way up. The social worker is inclined to feel that he or she has got beyond all that sort of thing-a feeling which in reality never bears analysis. After awhile we begin to see that whether the attitude of social superiority has reality in it in the higher levels, it certainly has in the humbler ones. The individual spurns the rungs of the ladder that he has laboriously come over that he may the more surely hold the one he has attained and reach upward to those beyond. Under such circumstances, the very effort to secure a broad alignment of local people is likely to fail under such a program of direct action as is almost necessarily associated with the community center. The settlement is able to come into relation with various local types and groups, taking each at first in its own humor and on its own terms, and to lead each to the point where, without losing its own proper identity, it can join with all the others in general community loyalties. The creation of a high-toned, delicately adjusted type of society, as a medium of sound recreation and as a proper scheme and setting for the vitally important issues of courtship, is as truly important in the less favored neighborhoods as in the more, and it requires as careful and detailed consideration of psychological fact.

In not a few instances, a measure of the value of neighborhood work, sometimes in statistical form, has come from the police and the courts, especially the juvenile court. It is clear enough that an agency like the settlement is necessary in order to meet the problem of degeneracy. It sometimes seems as if the pleasant forms of work