methods was to make the poor who had a spark of pride in them refuse to accept public aid; needy families and widows with little children would freeze and starve before they would permit their names to be published in the pauper list. Another example is that of an Iowa county that secured the services of a former chief of police to act as overseer of the poor. The supervisors in that particular county seemed to be of the opinion that to be poor and in need was criminal, and that someone versed in the handling of criminals was necessary to deal with those who found themselves in this situation, and again we found cases of worthy poor suffering want rather than submit to the inquisition set up by the official who had charge of the funds which the taxpayers had contributed for the care of the weak and needy. In this county it seems to have been the big idea to go after the poor with a big stick. It is not the big stick we need so much as the measuring stick to ascertain the needs of the poor and dependent in order that we may give intelligent service.

By appointing the secretary of the Associated Charities as overseer of the poor we eliminated the overlapping and duplication that had been going on when each was acting separately. By having the public aid disbursed through the Associated Charities, or by them, we also eliminated the feeling of dishonor or shame that is sometimes felt by people who have to ask for aid from the county. We have raised public relief to a higher plane, and no stigma attaches to the public aid given in our county. We are building up families and homes; if I had the time I could tell you some interesting stories of families that were county charges, or about to be, but are now independent and even prosperous.

There is the case of the widow who lived near the gypsum plant. Her husband had been accidentally killed in the mine; she had four children, the oldest a girl of thirteen. When she came to our attention there was nothing left in the house, which was fairly good. The secretary gave her temporary assistance and started an investigation. She knew that some of the men who worked in the gypsum mills would welcome a place to get their meals. The woman in question knew how to cook and was willing to work, but she had nothing to start with. We helped her start a boarding house by supplying a stove and various other necessities at an expenditure of some eighty or ninety dollars. Today that woman is supporting herself and her family, her children are in school, and she has reached the point where she is able to look forward to saving a little money. This is the result of intelligent aid and advice at the right time.

One more case: The family was down on the records as a bad case. Having always been paupers, they looked forward to always being paupers, as their ancestors had been. The secretary got them to cultivate a few vacant lots and raise vegetables, some of which they used, and some they sold. The next year they cultivated more vacant lots and sold more vegetables. Then they bought a horse and some simple implements. They found that they could do something, and they became self-supporting. Now the report is that they have moved into the country, on a farm, and that they are quite well-to-do.

The work had grown so that it extended beyond the limits of the city of Fort Dodge. Calls came from the country round about. We were no longer a town organization, so we changed the name to the Webster County Welfare Association, and under that name and under the guidance of our social welfare worker we have been carrying on the work for nine years. Since making it a county-wide organization, the township trustees, who, under the laws of Iowa, are the overseers of the poor in the rural communities, have made it a point to have frequent conferences with the secretary and to depend upon her for advice and assistance.

Because of the records that were kept and the information that they contained the judges in our courts began to call on the secretary for evidence, especially in juvenile cases and in mothers' pensions. The judges asked the secretary to make investigations of applications for mothers' pensions, and reported to the supervisors that the assistance rendered was of great value, saving the time of the court and reducing its expenses. At the request of the supervisors the secretary was made juvenile probation officer, which practically amounts to being a deputy sheriff. Then the school officials of Fort Dodge appointed one of our workers truant officer.

We have now four workers in our office in the courthouse at Fort Dodgethe secretary of the Webster County Welfare Association, the overseer of the poor, and juvenile probation officer, and the truant officer. We have the full cooperation of the Farm Bureau, the Chamber of Commerce, the home demonstration agent, the county health nurse, the doctors, the lawyers, the schools, the court, and the supervisors, and we cooperate with other institutions such as the churches, lodges, and clubs.

Now, something as to the results we get. From a supervisor's standpoint I am interested in the cost, in the reduction of expense. The first year we had a trained worker as overseer of the poor we spent $1,500 less out of the poor fund than we did the year before she came. The second year we saved over $2,000 more than we did the first year, and we were giving better service to the worthy poor. All this was at a time when the cost of living was advancing steadily. Coal had gone from $3.50 a ton to $8.00; flour, from $1.75 to $3.50; and other items in the same proportion. In 1924 we paid out $1,800 less than in 1923. We have come to the place where we are looking about to see where we can give more and better service, and then at the end of the year look up the records to see how much we have reduced the tax burden.

Three years ago I checked over the records of at least twenty people that had been taken off the county poor list. Here is a little sum in mental arithmetic. In Iowa the poor are allowed $2.00 per week per person for groceries. Medical aid, rent, and fuel are extras. The grocery allowance for twenty persons amounts to a saving of $2,080 a year.

There is another side to this. To me the greatest and most important thing is not the saving so many dollars and cents, but that through this service we

are able to help dependent persons to become independent, making them over into useful citizens, converting them from a liability to an asset. This is worth more to us and to future generations than can be estimated.

Public relief, as it is disbursed by the average county official, becomes the prey of unscrupulous persons, and not the aid to the needy that it is intended to be. It is not uncommon to find it used as a political plum by peanut politicians and for entirely selfish purposes by cheap officeholders. It is time that this misappropriation of public funds was stopped and that public aid be put on its proper footing and be properly handled.

Some people question the feasibility of combining private relief with public aid. We have been doing it for nine years in Webster County. We find that instead of lessening the high standard and respect accorded private relief, we have raised public relief to a higher plane and given it the dignity that it is entitled to. With us it is no longer considered a disgrace to receive aid from the public funds provided by the people for that purpose, and no stigma attaches to the aid we give.

We have been able to change public opinion regarding relief of the poor, the needy, and the afflicted by eliminating the grafters, the undeserving, and the lazy shiftless. We have raised public relief to a more approved status by having it properly administered by a person with judgment and training, who can distinguish between the worthy and the unworthy. To make a county as a unit successful in welfare work the public aid must be made subject to the administration of organized private relief under the direction and care of a trained worker. Public officials should never be permitted to direct or superintend the distribution of private relief in their official capacity.

Let me impress this on your minds, that you can never, in any way, make this consolidation a success unless the distribution of funds is left entirely in the hands of the trained worker. In our county the supervisors do not pretend to give any aid without first consulting the trained worker, and as a rule we turn the entire matter over to her. All we ask is for regular reports of the conditions that she finds. We are always ready to listen to her suggestions and to advise her as best we can, but the responsibility is hers, the work is all done under her direction, and when she takes action in a case there is no use of trying to go over her head to the board of supervisors; that has been tried, but we have refused to meddle with her work.

If I am able to interest you people in making the administration of public aid the servant of the private relief organizations; if I can in some way get you to see the necessity of making it an object of private relief organizations to get hold of the public relief funds and to handle them so that they will not be undoing the important work that you are doing; if we can establish cooperation between public and private relief in the full sense of the word, I shall feel that my trip to Denver has not been in vain.

PSYCHIATRY AND THE OFFENDER IN THE
COMMUNITY

THE JUVENILE OFFENDER

Ethel Goldsmith, Psychologist, Juvenile Court of Hamilton
County, Cincinnati

What do you think of mental examinations anyhow? If I could get your answers to that question it would help me construct the work of the court clinic for the next ten years. As practical probation officers working in the field, do you, in your innermost, secret soul, look upon psychology as a diversion for highbrow professors who live miles away from a real courtroom and have never seen the hang-out of little Johnny Jones? And do you think of mental tests as a conglomeration of silly school questions that don't at all tell what a boy can really do, and that the mental age we get from a test is pretty apt to call a boy feebleminded when he isn't? Are you one of the people who, if I produced a test and asked you to take it, would say: "You'd never get me to be tested. I'd rate just about six years." Or is psychology a real honest-to-goodness help to you in your practical probation work?

If you have happened on an examiner who thinks he knows it all after seeing the child in the laboratory, I don't blame you if you have your private reservations about the expert. Human beings are infinitely complex, and we can't get to know all about our little Johnnies in the artificial atmosphere of the office.

In an afternoon's examination, the definitely feebleminded, the definitely epileptic, or the definitely insane can be diagnosed and labeled "For Permanent Segregation"; here, of course, the examination is of the most immediate use. But most of the children who pass through our juvenile courts cannot be pigeonholed in these well-defined groups.

It is for this reason that the examiner's diagnosis is only a part of the picture. When a child is non-social there must be adequate reasons, but these reasons need not be mental, and an examiner's diagnosis should never be regarded as a substitute for social investigation or social treatment. If there is any one thing that psychology does teach us it is that there is no one cause for delinquency and no patent medicine cure. Feeblemindedness isn't the whole cause. Abnormality is not the whole cause. Environment is not the whole cause. If you have five thousand different children, you probably will have at least two thousand different causes for the delinquency. Abnormal psychology is only an effort to be of service to the probation officer in getting at these causes, a common-sense way of finding out why Mary was promiscuous and of discovering why Johnny ran away from home.

Systems of education that have not yet seen the importance of differentiating between the bright, the dull, and the feebleminded are the direct cause of truancy and other types of misbehavior. And even in enlightened school

systems, individual teachers who are old-fashioned and who feel that the same mental pabulum suits all children are manufacturing problems for the court examiner and the court probation officer to untangle. These teachers are helping keep us in our positions-but we don't thank them. Many inferiors can get along happily if no outrageous demands are made of their stunted brains. Simple directions, one demand at a time, immediate rewards for good behavior, and constant drill until one habit is formed must be the probation diet for the little Johnnies and Marys with mental ages of ten or eleven. This, plus the provision of suitable environment-because the inferior can't shape himself to fit conditions; conditions must be shaped so that they fit him. Neither parents, nor teacher, nor probation officer will get very far in an attempt to teach abstract morals to little Johnny with a mental age of ten.

Knowing whether Johnny is inferior, then, is a necessity. The examiner, of course, has special machinery for picking out the inferiors. It is rather complicated machinery and the handling of it needs a carefully trained person, but there is a list of common-sense questions of general information, memory, and judgment, issued by the Ohio Bureau of Juvenile Research, that I think you will find of use if you have to be your own psychologist. You can get the list of questions by writing Dr. Emerick. The answers will give you a hint of whether Johnny is stranded in this sphere or whether he knows something about his surroundings. Some of the inferior look so bright, and some of them cover their stupidity with loquacity in such an uncanny way, that it is wise to have something like this on hand to make a hole in their defense.

I find that having the children answer these questions at the time I take the preliminary history helps in adapting the interview to little Johnny's mental stature so that I'm sure he knows what I'm talking about. The stupid children are not the only ones who go through our mill. The court is the city slop-can and the bright as well as the dull are thrown on our dump heap, either because parents or teachers have made a sad mess of their job, or because the child's own temperament has forced him into behavior not approved of by his neighbors.

Many average or superior children are utterly unable to get along. When the examiners find that Johnny is not dull or feebleminded they look around to see if there is anything else wrong, and sometimes they find that while Johnny is not subnormal or below the normal, the thing that makes him bad is that he is queer or abnormal. His emotions and his will make-up may be so peculiar that he is regarded as queer, or even as insane. One child may be average in both respects. Another child may rate average on intelligence-that is, he may be as bright as the ordinary child—but in personality he may not rate average. He may be either too emotional or too indifferent; he may be weak-willed or he may be stubborn; he may be too suspicious or too impulsive, and so on. There are a thousand different personality difficulties that may cause his misconduct.

Fortunately, courts all over the country find that in the juvenile division