nomic advantage, social prestige-these and other motives lead to the formation of families. It must be apparent that some of these motives have little reference to the function of the family, and some of them are directly antagonistic. As pointed out above, in the preindustrial era, when communities were smaller, homogeneous in membership, and simpler in organization, other controlling forces were effective in compelling a certain rough conformity between function and behavior, by superimposing apparently accidental controls, fear of public opinion, custom, taboos, ostracism, and even poverty. Monogamous families continued, not because men and women were more constant in their affection than they are now, and realized the tremendously important function they were assuming, but because the man and woman concerned did not dare do otherwise.

Now that those external restraints are being removed, the men and women dare do otherwise, that is, now that the conflict between function and motive in the institution of the family is no longer inhibited, it comes out in all sorts of weaknesses which are appearing in the family structure. Take, for illustration, one of the motives-passion. There is nothing in it as a motive to insure the formation of a stable family. Released from the restraints of custom, it is finding its satisfaction-as it always has whenever released-in various forms of heterosexual relationships, relationships that are analogous to successive polygamy in divorce and to promiscuity in prostitution. I am not here arguing for or against divorce (although I have no such scruples with regard to prostitution); I am merely pointing out an illustration of the way the function of a social institution may be defeated when its motive does not coincide with its function.

As I see it, therefore, family social work has as its main task, first, a clearer understanding of the function of the family, of each member of the family, of how it is promoted and how retarded, of how its sources may be tested; then a clear analysis of the area in which function and motive may come into conflict, and most important of all, a careful scientific study of the ways by which the two may be harmonized when motive leads its member or members to violate its functions.

May I briefly point out some considerations which follow from this point of view:

Family social case work necessarily deals heavily with economic factors, and there was a time when economic considerations controlled. Standard of living, a minimum wage, regularity of employment, compensation for accidents, readjustment of economic resources-these are economic ideals which add much to the enrichment of family case work. Its workers must keep themselves abreast of the best findings of economic research and be thoroughly trained in the science of economics. But the best of economics is not social case work. It is but one aspect of social life; and family success is not measured primarily in its terms. Relief as an artificial distribution of goods-has a certain economic aspect; but in family case work its economic aspect is secondary to its social.

The primary question is: Does it promote the function of the family? Obviously, in the majority of instances it does. But just as obviously, also in a majority of instances, the affirmative is not unqualified. Low standards of living-real doing without things-under certain circumstances may further the function of the family, if voluntarily assumed; less often, perhaps, it might produce such ends if forced upon a family. Of course, this is only repeating what was said so eloquently centuries ago, that "man doth not live by bread alone," it is a restatement of the too common observation that life's things may be purchased at too high a price.

The tremendous development of relief in the last ten years should raise in all family workers such questions as the foregoing. It has been justified on the need for maintaining a new standard of living. That it has really won many families to new ideals, stimulated them to new efforts by which these ideals could be realized, there is no doubt in the minds of case workers on the job. I think it can be asserted with equal confidence that it has been used too indiscriminately; that it is looked upon, in fact if not in theory, as an end, and that the economic aspect of family life, rather than the function of the family, has obsessed our thinking, resulting in failure of our work and no real progress in family rebuilding in far too many cases.

The same sort of argument could be used with respect to the two other great disciplines which have added great resources to family case work and which also have dominated it: medicine and psychiatry. We cannot do without them; every one of their findings is a new tool in our hands, or, to change the figure, a new resource at our command. There is no essential or necessary conflict between them and us, any more than there is between them and sociology; only they have one sanction, we another. Workers in those fields, however, are often quite as keen in seeing this as we. How often a physician will deplore the fact that a tuberculous man has been cured but his manhood wrecked by the pampering effect of long hospitalization. And Adolph Meyer has told us and his fellow-psychiatrists many times that psychiatry is but an avenue for understanding a man, who is, after all, greater than any classification.

The next deduction I should like to point out is that while all of these disciplines make their contributions to our understanding of those who compose families, and our job is to use them in interpreting their function, our knowledge is as yet imperfect and fragmentary compared with them. The family as composed of physical beings is a fact, objectively demonstrable. The family as we are interested in it, the social institution, is a concept, a synthesis of inferences, not objectively demonstrable at all. This greatly increases the difficulty of our subject-matter, makes progress less certain, and renders absolute demonstration impossible. We can merely say that it is our conviction, based on a large number of observations, especially by others than ourselves, that the function of the family is to act as a vehicle for the transference of social heritages. But the evidence is circumstantial, cumulative, indirect. In no one

instance can it be demonstrated, nor is any one aspect true of all instances. I am here only pointing out one of the difficulties of method in social science.

The other side of this picture is that this is a field in which everyone believes he is an expert-or, to put it in another way, in which everyone believes he knows by intuition, whatever that may mean, all that needs to be known of the mechanism of social organization. What each has is, of course, his own philosophy of life. He must make it, and he does, in order to explain to himself the meaning of living. For the most part, it is acquired by taking it unconsciously from others, as part of his social heritage, to which each one adds but little; it is part of his psycho-social environment, and it acts as an automatic social control.

Between the certainty of the man on the street, on one side, who easily carries his ancestral philosophy, and the consciously exact sciences on the other, social case work-the conscious process of trying to understand the "how," and to a certain extent, the "why," of social institutions and of those who compose them-is in constant danger of being crushed between the upper and the nether millstone. The former, in his proud sense of success, and utterly unconscious of the tremendous changes in social structure, fails to understand that these new forces which he has so profitably employed may destroy as well as bless; the latter, trained to objective and quantitative data, looks with suspicion on a discipline whose very data are conceptual.

But that is the position of family social case work. It stands at the place where the automatic sanctions of behavior are being transferred into the consciously accepted, or the externally enforced. It must interpret the meaning of social function, explaining the place of motive and the reason for conformity to function; it must help to transform a society which has controlled its behavior by tradition into one which controls it by intelligent choice, And our peculiar task is with that primary institution of society, the family, carefully studying the forces which create it human motives-the demand made upon it in our ever increasing complex social organization, and the success with which it meets its functional requirements; that its members, especially its children, shall meet life well-born and physically well, but also bravely, honestly, eager to do their share of the world's work, equipped with the best in content and method of the knowledge of this generation. This is the real test of family case work.

THE COST OF MAINTAINING GOOD CASE WORK
IN A PUBLIC AGENCY

Gertrude Vaile, Secretary, Department of Charities and Correction, Denver

In speaking of the cost of maintaining good case work in public departments I do not intend to bring before you any array of statistics. Rather I would present for your consideration some thoughts as to the nature of the cost, who

bears it, and how, and what then. Good social work under public administration is possible, I believe, only as three groups of people are willing to pay a heavy price for it.

First, there is the broad inclusive group of the taxpayers in general. The taxpayer is already heavily burdened, and his taxes constantly rise. This is probably inevitable as our more highly organized society naturally undertakes more and more projects in common for the common good. These joint undertakings may be the best possible investment for the community, but they do cost a great deal. Probably most legislatures receive twice the budget requests that they can meet. But it must never be forgotten that, after a public department has once assumed a responsibility, inadequacy of budget, and especially of staff, is likely to be particularly disastrous to the quality of its work. This is more true of a public department than of a private society, because a public department can less easily limit the quantity of work it must assume.

If good social work is to be established, or maintained after it has been established, in a public department, the taxpayer must pay a heavy and generally increasing financial cost. He will be justified in paying it only if he is deeply convinced of the value and importance of the work.

This means education-not only the brilliant periodic campaign at special times of critical action, but the daily plodding of ceaseless educational work. The constituency to be convinced is very large, and acquires deep and lasting convictions slowly.

Such educational work will require the generous and constant efforts of my second group, who must pay a heavy personal cost if good work is to be maintained in the public department. This is the group of disinterested, well-informed citizens who know and care about the work of the department. Only they can truly and convincingly and widely interpret it. Only their watchful help can protect and develop it. At the center of such a group should stand, I believe, a well-chosen board for the department. Even if there is a board, that and the staff together are yet inadequate to the whole task of making the department widely understood and properly valued. At best the department needs to be surrounded by a whole guardian company of disinterested citizens who can speak for it, promote it, sense its every danger, and instantly and intelligently rise to its defense. It is they who must bring influence to secure to the department the right kind of a board, if any, and the right kind of staff. This guardian company must be recruited mainly from social workers and board members of private societies. Few other people are close enough to the work to understand just what is involved. If good work is to be held in public departments, this guardian company of socially informed citizens must pay the price of eternal vigilance, of sympathetic support in season and out, and of constant readiness to serve, not only in time of crisis, but along the way. This service is needed not only from good citizens near at hand, but it may be needed from many at a distance. To you case workers here gathered let me say that part of the cost of maintaining good case work

in a public department is the generous willingness of case workers in private agencies in other cities to answer case inquiries.

There is yet another price the guardian company-speaking now of the group immediately around the department-must pay. That is willingness to renounce all special favors to their own particular interests. I refer to public subsidies or special partnerships of any sort between public authority and private agencies. It seems to be clear that in the intricate political maze no one can work freely and effectively for a variety of public interests who has a personal and primary responsibility for one of them.

This raises some very serious practical and philosophical questions affecting that guardian company of interested citizens around the public department. Especially is this true in chest cities, where practically the whole social work force of the community is knit into one. If a community chest enters a partnership with the city for partial support of some chest agency—a legal aid society, for example-the chest's influence with the city must thenceforth be constantly turned first of all to securing the means to carry forward that particular work, lest its own administration of it fail. At once the chest is crippled in any effort to fight for a better health department, for more adequate support for the public case work agency, for the needed policewoman or probation officer, or anything else that may be needed for the public administration itself.

This is a very grave problem which it is to be hoped the chests will ponder well. Subsidies and partnership plans between public and private agencies have been argued from many angles and need now to be re-examined. We are here unconcerned about any aspect except the effect upon the problem of holding good work in the public agency. It seems to me that any such policy in a chest city cuts at one stroke the power of the entire guardian group to help the public departments, while the strength of this guardian group is, as it seems to me, the very crux of the problem of developing and holding good social work in the public departments.

The third group who must bear the cost of maintaining good work in the public departments consists of the social workers who are doing it. My own. observation has been that, with a few exceptions, salaries are considerably lower in public departments than in private societies. This impression is borne out by a study made by Mr. Philip Klein and by some inquiries that I have made from other people who are in a position to have reliable impressions. The salaries of executives especially are noted as being lower in public than in private agencies. Salaries in subordinate positions apparently range about the same, though field supervisors in public departments seem to be paid less than supervisors in private agencies.

I am convinced that for a long time to come salaries in public welfare departments, especially in the more responsible positions, will be comparatively low, and that any capable social worker who enters into the public service must do so with expectation of financial sacrifice. But the question of salary, beyond