the difficulty of getting any adequate picture of the immigrant as an individual and a member of a family. To advise him wisely it is essential to know about his heredity, his past successes and failures, the bent he has shown, his weaknesses. The immigrant's personal and family history is not really so inaccessible, so shut off from reach by the Atlantic, as many too hastily assume. In his national group are probably to be found fellow-countrymen who do know much about the family. Few case workers, unfortunately, have such an acquaintance with any immigrant group as to make it possible for them to use these sources of information and help. They too often regard the immigrant family as isolated both in time and space, as just here and now, rather than as the product of heredity and environmental influences. As a result, the family agency often advises its foreign-born clients on a quite insufficient basis of knowledge, and the immigrant family suffers accordingly from the lack of vision and courage and initiative on the part of the family society. Let us acknowledge quite frankly that in many case work problems the ignorance of the immigrant would not be so serious were it not for equal and much less pardonable ignorance on the part of the native-born case worker.

Another problem comes up as soon as the case worker tries to picture the social connections of an immigrant family. No family can be understood as a unit. It must be seen against its racial and national background. With nativeborn Americans this is a fairly simple problem. We know something about the social training of negroes from the cotton belt, of families from small New Hampshire villages or from western prairie towns. To picture an immigrant in his social setting is more difficult. We have no such definite knowledge of his former environment. Yet an understanding of the group to which a family belongsits traditions, its talents, its successes and its failures-is essential for the evaluation of any individual of the group.

To understand this social setting it is necessary to keep in mind more than the old-world experience of the immigrant. Quite as important is an understanding of what happens to him during his first years in America. This is particularly true, because the recent arrival is seldom the client of a family society. Very few who have been here less than five years ask for assistance, and the greatest number of applicants have been here from five to ten years or more. Before the immigrant ever comes to a family society he has, therefore, lived for several years in America.

As a newcomer, the immigrant turns for help first of all to those from his own land who have been here longer than he. However satisfactory in theory such guidance may be, in practice its disadvantages soon become clear. Through bitter experience the immigrant often learns that the help he gets from his mentors is far from solving his problem satisfactorily. His advisors may be as ignorant as he; or they may be interested chiefly in profiting from his misfortune. In any case the immigrant is disillusioned as to the ability or willingness of his fellow-countrymen to help him out of some of his difficulties.

The actual inadequacy of relationships within his own group is not the only reason for the immigrant's growing dissatisfaction with what it offers. The contacts which he has had with America play their part in his desire to try new ways out of trouble. Into the everyday life of the most self-sufficient foreign colony new influences from without are penetrating little by little. Conditions of employment are new and compel readjustment. Conditions of living bring unaccustomed experiences as to new household methods, to strangers in adjoining rooms, to landlords and inspectors of various kinds, who impose new requirements. Most of all, the American school carries to the home, through the children, ideas of new, astonishing, and even revolutionary, character.

Such, in general, is the history of an immigrant of five or more years' standing. When he comes to a family welfare society, upon what social background should he be pictured? Paradoxical as it seems, he cannot be said to belong to any stable group. He did have a well-defined social status when he arrived in America, and in the first months here he still felt himself of the old home. But little by little the new conditions of living, which compelled some change in doing, modified old trends of thought and brought in new ideas as well. These new ideas may not have supplanted traditional norms; indeed, they are more likely for a time to exist alongside the old, utterly incompatible though the two may be.

This period during which the immigrant usually makes his first contact with the family agency, is a time of much perplexity. What was, no longer is; what will be, still is not. In some hours the immigrant feels himself of the new world-when he succeeds in his job and is promoted, when he takes out citizenship papers, when he buys a plot of land that is to be a new home. At other moments his heart reaches out to his mother country-when a letter comes from his old parents, when he takes part in a home town festival, most of all, perhaps, when the honey of hope has turned to wormwood, and he knows the bitterness of failure in work or health or home. The inconsistencies of such an immigrant often puzzle the case worker. He seems so reasonable at times, so "Americanized," if you like. Then again he seems so inaccessible to argument, so under the spell of old-world lore.

In the home this conflict between old and new is an especially difficult problem. Relations within the family group are the first of which a child becomes conscious; they become vitally a part of what the individual feels is his very self. Many an immigrant would wish to close the door on changes in traditional relationships within the home. Yet here the bitterest struggle of all may take place. Of course many immigrants, perhaps most of them, meet the problems which the self-assertive second generation brings, and work it out with their children without too much heartache on either side. But the foreign families who come to a case work society almost always have as one of their difficulties, and often as their chief problem, a lack of understanding in the home.

In such situations the case worker has the problem of first understanding the old ways; she must learn to see in them an attempt to express an ideal. She must be able to point out old virtues under new guises. She must be patient, and realize that a radical change in point of view takes time. All the tact and insight and imagination the case worker possesses will be called upon in interpreting the parents and children to each other, and American ideals to both.

Establishing harmonious and mutually helpful relations within the family group is a necessary stepping-stone to complete adjustment in all group relations. In the refashioning of the home pattern, the immigrant probably feels more emotional strain; but in the adjustment to new groups, industrial, social, and civic, he finds himself quite as much bewildered. Community contacts are more difficult to guide wisely for the foreign-born than for the native-born, both because the immigrant's environment is so complex, and because his relations to it are unstable and contradictory. His situation is complicated by relationships both with his own national group, which has its own folkways, and with the community at large, which has quite other norms. While the immigrant's experience with American institutions tends to give him a new point of view, if he has known only the most sordid aspects of life in America, he cannot be expected to conclude that our institutions are necessarily to be respected. The case worker is often puzzled about how to make possible really significant contact between the immigrant and the better side of America. The need of such contacts is an integral part of group adjustment. No immigrant can have vital relationships with the community unless he understands its customs in the light of the ideals which they strive to express.

If real understanding of America comes, it means dropping some of the traditional ways of thinking and doing. Certain old world ideas and customs can be kept intact; some can be modified; others have to be discarded. Belief in witchcraft, for instance, has to go. An immigrant who rejects proper medical care because he believes his bodily ills are due to a curse cannot act intelligently until he is freed from that hampering superstition. Yet it is asking a good deal to expect him in a few hours to transfer his allegiance from the black arts to scientific medicine-a journey which has kept us on the road for centuries, with the goal not yet attained. Basic changes cannot come overnight. One problem for the case worker is to help foreign-born families to make changes with understanding, and slowly enough so that the immigrant may accept the new way as his own child, and not as an unwelcome changeling.

But the immigrant is not the only one who ought to change his ways. America ought to change her ways. It is not too much to say that a case worker has as much responsibility toward the education of the American public as of immigrant families. She sees every day how defects in our organization, social, economic, and political, make difficult, and sometimes impossible, the development of good American citizens from good immigrant stock.

The day-by-day case work problems which foreign-born clients bring before

a family society call attention in compelling fashion to phases of national problems of which the average native-born citizen is quite unaware. They show also how closely our fortunes as a nation are linked with those of other lands. To understand and help to meet these problems a family society needs a worldwide horizon and international understanding and sympathies.

IN THE COURTS

Joseph P. Murphy, Chief Probation Officer, Erie County
Courts, Buffalo

The immigrant is a frequent and serious factor in the social case work of our juvenile and criminal courts. Particularly is this true in our great industrial centers, where large groups of immigrants have colonized, making the process of assimilation difficult and in many instances long delayed. The barriers of language, the desire to, and sometimes the necessity of, continuing old-world customs and habits, along with a lack of knowledge of our laws and methods of government on the part of immigrants, create problems in the administration of criminal justice which are difficult to solve, and occasionally defy the efforts of our most able and sincere court workers.

The situation in my own locality is typical of many other communities throughout the country. Buffalo, located in Erie County, New York, is an industrially diversified city. Furthermore, many of our industries are seasonal in character. They need many unskilled and semiskilled workers. Hence we have a serious immigrant problem. The population of our county is 700,000. Of this number approximately 200,000 are of foreign birth, and practically the same number are native-born of immigrant parents. Fifty-three different nationalities go to make up this population, indicating the complexity of our problem.

Inevitably, with this great intermingling of races, the enforcement of law and the administration of our courts creates many real problems, and no doubt injustice frequently occurs. The work of the judiciary and law enforcement officers must always be concentrated on an effort to protect the alien against fraud and deception, and at the same time to interpret to him the meaning of our laws and the ideals of government under which we live. Very often his first and only contact with our government, after he has passed through our gates and settled down, is with our courts. His conception of official America is usually formed on the basis of this experience. Our legal procedure, therefore, should be as humane and socialized as it is possible for us to shape it, and the attitude of those who are charged with the administration of our laws, as full of sympathy and understanding as the conditions necessitate.

It is to be expected that many immigrants, or their children, unaccustomed to our habits and methods, suddenly transferred from the atmosphere of old

world rural communities to our complex industrial centers, should come in conflict with our laws, and find themselves in court. Many of our own citizens, reared and educated in this country, are unable to make adjustments to their environmental requirements, and find themselves in the same dilemma. It should not surprise us, therefore, to find among our delinquents those with less advantages in the way of a common language, education, established home, and social relationships. These things must be constantly kept in mind by court workers as they come in contact with immigrants or their children.

Distribution of nationalities.-The records of my department show that during the past ten years we have established contact with both juvenile and adult delinquents among thirty-three different nationalities. These nationalities are distributed throughout the whole world, although the majority are found in continental Europe. It would be impossible, in the time limited to this address, to analyze the social data ascertained from our statistics. Let me say, however, that numerically the nationalities represented in the various groups conform quite evenly as to relative proportion with the total number of their group represented in the population of the county. Among the several nationalities producing a larger number of delinquents, natives of foreign-born parents exceed in numbers, the ratio being 3 to 1.

Character of crimes.-As to the character of the crimes committed, there seems to be very little outstanding difference among the nationalities. By that I mean that there does not appear to be any noticeable difference so far as crimes against the person or against property are concerned. However, among the Italians, both immigrants and native-born, there is a tendency to commit more serious crimes against the person than against property. There is a similar tendency among the Poles, especially those of Russian birth. Immigrant Jews and Irish of foreign-born parents manifest slightly greater tendencies toward crimes against property. I cannot state definitely, however, on the basis of our statistics, that any particular nationality was inclined to the commission of certain specific crimes, or that they are more dangerous to the community than any other nationality by reason of the type of offense committed.

The court and the immigrant.-During the past twenty years our courts have developed a method by which the problems of the immigrant may be individualized, and in that way justice rendered on the basis of individual responsibility. Before the court can mete out justice it must have knowledge of the facts, and this is now obtained through the medium of the social investigation submitted by probation officers. We are in a very strategic position so far as discovering the causes leading immigrants into criminal conduct are concerned. Probation officers are able also, by cooperating with other agencies, to bring about the solution of the immigrant's problem and the correction of provocative social conditions. We have a twofold function, to investigate and supervise. Through our investigations all of the significant social data regarding the life and conduct of the offender is ascertained. Through our field supervision we are able to