street car signs take us through the whole gamut of life and death: a dollar down and a dollar forever. A placard bearing a Wrigley stork carrying a toothless baby informs us that every five seconds during the year is born another new customer for chewing gum. Another card tells us we can clothe the baby on credit: "Dress well and pay nothing." We turn our heads and see we can buy our lady love a diamond for nothing: "Why pay cash?" An auto is a necessity now, and a five-dollar payment will start us rolling downhill. The next card advertises a cheap funeral. We are thus helped to decide, at every turn in life, what we need, and the facilities for gratifying that need. I do not believe our profession wants any wholesale publicity methods any more than the legal and medical professions. The lawyer uses the method of trying to build up his client's confidence in his knowledge and in using that knowledge to help in a particular crisis. The teacher uses the method of imparting knowledge and of showing the pupil how to use it for his own growth. In each case the method involves the active participation of both the layman and the professional. Should the social worker not take a lesson from the methods of each of these professions, who at their best are already becoming socialized?

"Present methods": One of the committees in our American Association has been studying content. A definition of method is "a special form of procedure, especially in any branch of mental activity." Workers in eight states. have been trying to analyze content. In Minnesota an analysis was applied containing four steps-what was done, objective sought, device used, and underlying philosophy. Here is an illustration applied to the record of a young couple who were separated, incompatible, they said. The little children were with the reluctant wife, and were supported partly by her and her relatives' efforts, partly by the husband's efforts. An interview was held with the rebelling man at his place of employment. The objective was to arouse a father's protecting instinct. The device used was to ask him what he thought was happening to his children. The underlying philosophy was that people should be motivated. Next he was told that his family would have to leave their present shelter with the wife's relatives. The objective sought was to force him to join in planmaking and to arouse his emotions. The device was to give the relatives' ultimatum. The underlying philosophy was "As a man thinks." Next we asked permission to write his relatives. The objective sought was to get his reaction to the request, which would give a better understanding of what led up to the family break. The device used was questioning him regarding living with his own family. The underlying philosophy-we all have something we are proud of in our past which helps us build a better future after a crisis. By this time the children were in a temporary shelter. It was suggested that the father see them at this home. The objective sought was the hope that seeing his children might re-establish the bond of affection. The device used was the offer of making necessary arrangements during his working hours. The underlying philosophy, belief in the power of a man to "come back." But the first steps are hard.

Contact had shown that a thorough understanding of the woman's character was necessary. She was, therefore, given chances for a long talk. The objective sought was to help her analyze herself and to get her reactions to the present status of a broken family. The underlying philosophy was "Know thyself," a first step in rebuilding. Next, an opportunity was given for the couple to see each other. The objective sought was to have matters talked over and joint planning begun. The underlying philosophy was that discussion hurries conflict to conclusion. Next, the children were carefully watched. The objective sought was an intelligent understanding of them during this period of parental conflict. The underlying philosophy was that children must not be made to suffer for inadequate parental care. Again, health care for all members of the family was arranged. The objective sought was that better health might improve mental outlook. The device used was making the necessary dispensary and hospital appointments and arranging transportation. The underlying philosophy was that people must be shown how to use the medical resources of a community. Later they were urged to make subsequent health arrangements themselves. The objective sought, self-dependence; the device used, keeping the volunteer from giving motor aid; the underlying philosophy, that help given must not hinder the will-power of clients. This is a typical service case as distinguished from a relief case. The father earns a real American living wage. The problem: a broken home to mend. Factors: parents caught in the present-day whirl of wanting a good time, each in his own way.

Why not each of us try some such schedule on our next hundred consecutive cases? Might it not be a searching test? I say "hundred consecutive cases," remembering that to make application to the American College of Surgeons a doctor must submit a full case history of one hundred consecutive operations. Might we not set up some such standard for those who want to qualify as case workers? We might even attempt such an analysis of some of the case histories of ten years ago, which have the well-known epitaph: "Case closed. Family uncooperative." Here we would find a veritable cemetery. Here would be the record in which every step in the theory of investigation had been followed out only to find the worker did not have the vision or the courage, the wisdom or the ability, to accomplish anything positive except meticulous recording of reliefwhich the bookkeeper does anyway. Or, having some of the qualities, she used no judgment as to which families gave promise of responding to service treatment. She imagined the family could be readjusted, but in reality the wish was the only fact involved. From such records we rationalize and deceive ourselves, hating to challenge our own wasteful methods. These records are the corollary of the hospital bulletin of ten years ago: "The operation was successful but the patient died." Case closed. A critical something, however, about the patient had not been discovered. All family case workers today should be eager to have their case records analyzed. We should expect, also, the same willingness in all those whose jobs call for case work processes. And records which do not show

case work method and an educationally communicable technique should not be called case work.

"The test of reality": This year we witnessed a superb eclipse. It was appreciated by us as no other human beings have ever understood it. It was a reality not to be feared. Many tests were made, but all started from the knowledge that it was our own earth's shadow which darkened the sun. It was we who moved across the face of that other system and lessened its power to give us light and heat. Yet, seeing the sun set that night, we still expressed ourselves in Lanier's lines, "Thou descending immortal, immortal to rise again." Can we say this of our method, "It is a system which can give mortals light and generating power? And is it we, perhaps, who eclipse its power?" We have the test of reality which should not be feared. We have a better opportunity than ever before to try to understand ourselves and it. Just as so many young people are challenging life's shams, so the junior visitors are coming out of our colleges and challenging their own work and our work. In some cities these junior visitors are having case competitions. They look for underlying social problemsdrink, desertion, and unemployment. They try to make adjustments between the individuals and their environment. Just as these youngsters are different and do challenge the world they live in, what patterns of life are they weaving for the families they influence? And what lights and shadows do they see? Do they believe that men are still bent on enslaving one another? How do they interpret the significance of women as bread-winners? Can they picture what it means in terms of future families as the long line of fourteen- and sixteenyear-olds, undereducated and unprepared, are fed out each month in the year as productive units in the world's workshop? As they fling off old restraints in their own living, what kind of restraints (if any) do they consider necessary, and to whom do they advise the practicing these restraints? Do they sense the effacing process due to the affectionate selfishness of parents, and the perpetual surrender or rebellion to old authorities? How do they react to the sorry picture shown each day in the thwarting of personal tastes and legitimate ambitions to the so-called "head" of the family? Someone has said the notion of a head to a family is truly comic; the "comics" reflect it. These students may admit, after an undergraduate course on "the family as a social and educational institution," that the primitive family may have been the so-called educational institution, but they challenge its educational value today. They admit it is only a biologic and economic grouping. They claim that we are not able, as family workers, to deduct as we should be able from our records the elements in a successful marriage or in successful family life. Their own personal criteria are different from those of the college youth of even ten years ago, and they claim that marital happiness is not identical with the welfare of offspring. Certainly the apartment house advertisements, you may have noticed, do not urge Wrigley's stork to stop every five seconds on our American doorsteps. The ignorant mother who tried to find the baby welfare association and asked for the "baby

farewell association" really used the slogan of that powerful enemy of family life the kitchenette architect. Those architects must believe we live to eat, but they provide the skeleton in the closet-the Murphy bed. The world of reality is the world of unstable homes right now-divorce, desertion, non-support, child marriages, childless marriages. There are new predicaments in life today, new forces to re-create us. There are new tyrannies. Our case work methods must meet the test of reality.

It has been said "a technique can be mastered." That is a first step. But there must always be those who blaze the way to still more advanced positions. "A method has indefinite possibilities of extension depending on advance in science on the one hand, and on the other, the education of human nature to demand and maintain better institutions." We put emphasis on improving our technique, and that is necessary, but after all that is only the "mode of artistic execution, or the mechanical skill in art." We need also to turn our minds and imaginations to the indefinite possibilities of extension which lie in the case work method. Method is a form of procedure. Let us proceed!

I have tried to put before you some of the challenges I have had to face as a case worker. We and our methods are being judged every day. Just as we see that the law does not always work out for the justice or happiness of the individual, so we have to face the fact that in our field adjustments will sometimes be painful, advice misunderstood. But let us be on our guard against adding to the sheer unhappiness in the world.

We started out with the familiar phrase, Once upon a time, speaking of some clients. Is it too much to ask that in the future the biggest test of case work methods should be, And did they live happily ever after?

AUTOMOBILE MIGRANTS1

Adaline A. Buffington, General Secretary, Charity Organization Society,
Salt Lake City

The homeless man is as old as history. There have been times when whole nations took to tramping, from love of adventure, patriotism, or economic necessity. The same pioneer spirit settled the United States and the West.

Only after the Civil War, however, did the word "tramp" appear on the

I The writer acknowledges indebtedness to fifty-two agencies, representing Mississippi and all states west of that river except North and South Dakota, namely, thirty-seven family societies in Helena, Arkansas; Phoenix and Tucson, Arizona; Oakland, Pasadena, San Diego, San Francisco, and Stockton, California; Boulder, Colorado Springs, and Denver, Colorado; Cedar Rapids, Des Moines, Fort Dodge, Ottumwa, Sioux City, and Waterloo, Iowa; Wichita, Kansas; New Orleans, Louisiana; Minneapolis and St. Paul, Minnesota; Jackson, Mississippi; Columbia, Independence, St. Louis, and Kansas City, Missouri; Lincoln and Omaha, Nebraska; Muskogee, Oklahoma; Portland, Oregon; El Paso and Fort Worth, Texas; Salt Lake City, Utah; Seattle, Spokane, and Tacoma, Washington; Casper, Wyoming; twelve Red Cross chapters in Prescott,

statute books of any of our states. Now, at the end of another war, we are writing the word "auto" before the "tramp." We call them "flivver hobos," "flivver bums," "flivver Magellans," "peripatetics on wheels," "tin-can tourists," "gasoline gypsies." A recent press report says, "The hobo has merely changed his vehicle. It used to be the blind baggage or the bumpers. Today it is the flivver. And he takes his wife and kids along too." We might add, all his possessions, including cats, dogs, and canaries.

The question of the automobile migrant is part of the whole transient movement and is national in scope, but for obvious reasons this paper will be confined to western auto migration. Watching this stream of people from a highway in Arizona, Robert W. Atwood, in the Saturday Evening Post, September 15, 1923, calls them "a new phase of a westward-sweeping army, the successors of the ox cart and covered wagon."

It is difficult to estimate the size of this westward-moving army. Overland auto traffic began in 1912, when two hundred cars went across the continent, but the real tide of travel began in 1919. In 1922 20,000 cars went overland. The Salt Lake Auto Association estimates 22,400 cars passed through the city in

1924.

It is still more difficult to estimate the number of those who "go broke" in their travels. Atwood says that from 30 per cent to 60 per cent of the entire traveling army ask help on the way, but the family societies do not find that these auto migrants form a large percentage of their case load, as few in proportion come to them, and then only when the generous American public fails.

Only ten out of forty agencies gave me figures on the subject, and only three of these in terms of percentage to the case load: Pueblo, 9 per cent in 1924; Seattle, 75 in 1924, or 3 per cent; Salt Lake City, 24 in 1924, or 5 per cent; Tucson, Arizona, 1 to 4 a day; Colorado Springs, 29 from October, 1923, to September, 1924; Denver, 40 in February, 1924, equal to six months in 1923; Ottumwa, Iowa, 26 in 1924; Portland, 180 in the last few months of 1924; El Paso, 60 in a year; Independence, Missouri, every week annually. Others say these people constitute a tremendous and a growing problem. Only eight agencies report very few cases, namely, San Diego and San Francisco, California; Des Moines, Fort Dodge, Waterloo, and Sioux City, Iowa; Minneapolis and South St. Paul, Minnesota; Helena, Montana.

The times of year the agencies are bothered vary according to their location. Denver and Colorado Springs have made detailed studies of the problem, having had it longest, due to the reputation of the climate. The cities that are not

Arizona; Pueblo and Trinidad, Colorado; Boise, Pocatello, and Twin Falls, Idaho; Helena, Montana; Reno, Nevada; Albuquerque and Santa Fe, New Mexico; Pendleton, Oregon; Walla Walla, Washington; three public departments in Los Angeles, California; Steamboat Springs, Colorado; Missoula, Montana.

'Solenburger, One Thousand Homeless Men, pp. 1, 2.

Robert W. Atwood.