can stimulate this interest and bring to the executive helpful suggestions. Some hold that to make these contacts, and otherwise to make the exchange function, the secretary must have case work training; some believe that business training is more important. We will all agree that a successful exchange executive must have enough social training to get the point of view of the constituent agencies, to appreciate their limitations, to understand their functions, and to be able to meet the workers on their own ground. If, with case work training in addition to general social knowledge, she is able to maintain a neutral position, to avoid indifference on one hand and unwise interference or partisanship on the other, then we have an ideal social equipment. But unless the exchange is large enough so there is an assistant with business training, this important side of a secretary's equipment must not be overlooked. She should have knowledge of business methods and of filing, with ability to adapt the best methods from the business world, bearing in mind that methods applicable to a concern dealing in automobiles may not work when dealing with social maladjustments.

The executive should be painstaking, accurate, patient, fond of detail, and, in the large exchanges, have the ability to keep her staff up to the mark, conscious that they are playing an important part in the community's social program. Such a staff should be adequately paid according to standards prevailing in that community, for turnover in an exchange office is even more expensive than in the business world, due to peculiar training necessary to fit a clerk to her task.

However small the office, an exchange needs two people on the staff. They may have other duties outside the exchange, but there must always be someone in the office available to serve an inquirer intelligently, and there must be someone free to visit agencies in their own offices to see how the exchange service fits, to advise with them on records and routine questions, free also to attend various meetings where she will meet and mingle with representatives of the different groups, though the subject under discussion may not bear directly on the exchange. She must be ready, also, to meet workers in training from various agencies, that they may early get the right point of view.

In one city not much progress had been made with the children's homes until the exchange secretary became a member of a conference which met regularly among the children's agencies. Here she became personally acquainted with superintendents and board members, visited the institutions as one interested in them, attended luncheons, bazaars, and teas, though it took an afternoon from the office, or an evening from home. In that city now the superintendents of these homes often bring their problems to the exchange secretary. They realize that information in the hands of the exchange is as safe as in their own offices; they see why such indexing is necessary.

But granted we have a well-manned and well-equipped exchange and an adequate number of agencies participating, is our exchange anything more than a mechanical overhead?

Problem

To use Miss Richmond's illustration, it is at this point that a secretary finds herself in the position of the driver who could bring his horse to water, but could not make him drink.

An exchange can progress no faster than its constituent agencies. Organically, the agencies are responsible for the exchange, not the exchange for its creators. Practically every agency dealing with individuals requires some investigation into the circumstances of their client, and usually the first step is inquiry of the exchange. But too often this is a perfunctory routine without idea of the value of the report received, or a proper conception of how to use it. Too often the agency is content to learn that there is no apparent duplication of relief or service, and fails to realize that information of others may be of value to them. I have in mind a situation where a worker never looked up a Legal Aid Society report because she thought she knew the legal question involved. When a new worker took hold, she learned from the Legal Aid Society that the woman had come to them the day after she was discharged from the state hospital for the insane. This threw a different light on the situation, for there had been no indication of mental difficulty.

Our case supervisors and teachers of social work must realize that there is no more fruitful expenditure of time than in sustained effort to get the young worker to see the potential possibilities of consultation with other agencies.

A society dealing with delinquent girls wrote a family society in another state, asking that a visit be made to throw light on a puzzling situation in one of their maternity homes. They mentioned another baby in Cleveland, of whom the mother claimed to have lost track. The reference visited told the worker that the child was with a Mrs. A, where the mother had placed her to board, but had been unable to keep up payments. Mrs. A was visited, and said she was fond of the baby and willing to keep her until the mother could pay. The visitor was quite satisfied. In the beginning she had duly learned through the exchange that no agency knew either the girl or the reference mentioned. She quite overlooked the possibility of anyone knowing Mrs. A. When this was called to her attention, she found that Mrs. A was known to many agencies, from whom came information that not only was Mrs. A unfit to care for children, but the situation had recently been reported to a children's agency by a visiting nurse, cause of the baby in the home who belonged to none of the family and was being neglected. Through information thus brought to light, not only was an innocent baby given proper protection, but a potential burden on a private agency in one state was transferred to a public agency in another, as the mother was definitely feebleminded, and guardianship belonged with the other state.

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In contrast with this visitor's first attitude, may I cite another instance where the children's worker realized the possibility of even a card file in helping to solve her problem. Her office received a request by telephone to place a week-old baby during the mother's funeral. The mother's name was Mary Morgan, and the man calling was her brother-in-law, named Smith. Upon being

asked a few questions he became annoyed and withdrew his request. The exchange had no report. Worried over the fate of the baby, the visitor tried to locate the family at address given, but failed. The morning's paper contained the death notice of a Mary Morganstein, on the same street, but at different number than given for Mary Morgan. With this information and the list of relatives from the paper, the exchange reports brought to light a history of immorality and crime which made it advisable to remove the child through court action.

An old German man, destitute, in an attic room, was reported to a family society by the landlord. He refused to give his name, saying he wanted to be left alone to die. He might have been referred to the city authorities for admission to the infirmary, but the visitor had a sense of responsibility and a knowledge of community resources. She obtained the man's name from a German newspaper in the mailbox, and through the exchange learned that the bureau of domestic relations had inquired five months previously. After calling the district doctor and nurse and sending in food, she consulted the bureau of domestic relations and was told that the wife and son had been there applying for a divorce because of the man's drinking, following an injury in the shop. Calling at the address furnished by the bureau, it was found that the man had left home after being reprimanded by the son for drinking. After persuasion on the part of the visitor, the son accompanied her to the father's room, and in less than twenty-four hours the old man was back in his own home. The injury was reported to the industrial compensation bureau, and he is now receiving proper compensation.

All cooperation is primarily an act of faith, implying vision, trust, and a common goal. I have been impressed recently by an apparent lack of trust between agencies, both public and private, in some communities. It should not be necessary for four different agencies to write to the same city to verify the same information, and yet this happened recently when a probation officer, a hospital, a state department, and a city department all wrote a private agency in Cleveland asking for previous history and verification of a family's legal residence. A check-up with the exchange in the other city showed that two of the agencies were users of the exchange. The secretary may use this instance in an endeavor to impress upon the other two the advantages of its use, but she can accomplish little if there remains in that community a lack of confidence in each other, lack of understanding, overlapping of function and effort that such duplication implies. These are lacks which rest primarily with the several organizations, and not with the exchange. The exchange is no more responsible for these duplications than a bank which has striven to induce savings is responsible for the loss of money stolen from the old family teapot, or the physician, when the patient declines to follow his directions.

But even with these illustrations of lack of appreciation of the principles of cooperation, I am confident that there are far fewer self-sufficient workers and

agencies in most communities than there were five years ago. The lone-hand worker is out of date. There is more sitting down together of the family case worker, the probation officer, the settlement worker, and the medical social worker, in order to pool their experiences, to get each other's slant on the problem, and together to create a workable plan of procedure, with responsibility definitely placed.

We have been encouraged by the findings of a study recently made in Cleveland, by a member of the Associated Charities staff, to determine how successfully families are being served when the treatment involves the services of the Associated Charities and several child caring agencies during the same period.

Twenty-five records were studied, in conjunction with twenty-one from the juvenile court, nineteen from one children's agency, and fourteen from another, on the same families. One of the questions noted was the use of exchange reports. One agency missed but one report out of fourteen, and the largest was but five out of twenty-five. This student feels that any weakness in cooperation or apparent duplication comes, not from failure to use exchange reports, or lack of knowledge of function, but from a lack of cooperative planning. She suggests more frequent case conferences, with a definite formal decision uniformly recorded by each agency.

There is a difference of opinion as to the wisdom of the exchange's being the medium through which a case conference is called. My personal opinion is that while the exchange may properly serve as secretary of such conferences, the initiative in each instance must come from one of the agencies.

With increasing willingness on the part of the worker to give and take-to subordinate her own individuality to the good of the client and the community without considering the credit coming to a particular organization, with an increasing willingness to withdraw gracefully from a situation and relinquish a natural proprietary interest in the client when it seems best to turn it to another agency-is developing a new idea of cooperation, a cooperation based on mutual understanding of motive and purpose.

Does it not indicate an appreciation of the possibilities of the exchange when we noted in our office, at one time recently, representatives from the children's bureau, the associated charities, community fund, and an interested individual, and at the same time on the telephone were the Red Cross, the Jewish social service bureau, and the day nursery association? Each was seeking to know, not only if some other agency was already adequately handling a situation which had been referred to them, but also to learn if there was material with any other agency which might assist them in understanding the situation. Are we wrong in assuming that in four minutes our office, by an apparently mechanical method, furnished in seven situations stimulation not only to more fruitful expenditure of community resources, but to a possible readjustment of human ills?

May I leave with the exchange workers present a little tale which, when we were somewhat discouraged, was brought to our staff by a field worker who had learned to use our service to its full capacity? It has to do with the humble weavers of certain famous tapestries. They work on, day after day, following the pattern of an artist they have never seen, trying to match the threads of different colors on the wrong side of the cloth. It is only when all is completed and they turn the cloth right side around that they can see and admire the beauty of the picture.

SOCIAL SERVICE RATIOS: HOW HAVE OUR GOVERNMENT AND PRIVATE AGENCIES WORKED OUT THEIR RELATIVE RESPONSIBILITIES FOR ACCOMPLISHMENT AND SUPPORT OF

SOCIAL WORK?1

Sherman C. Kingsley, Executive Secretary, Welfare Federation,

Philadelphia

Carloadings in the United States, several times within the last few weeks, have successively broken all previous records. This is one of the significant indications of the progress and prosperity of our country and the world. In importance to the human race, this record probably has never been exceeded but once in history, namely, when, on account of a prophetic sense of coming events, Noah selectively loaded the ark.

Important as the above matters are, I want to urge upon the conference and its friends another record to be added to this galaxy, and that is the annual loadings of the ship of state. I do this because I know we are all concerned both with the gross tonnage and its safe convoy. I am interested especially because I know that social workers are having a good deal to do with increasing the number of projects, and the tax appropriations which are concerned on their account that annually go aboard the ship of state, national, state, and local.

The President of the United States, in laying down observations and principles that should govern the preparation of the forthcoming national budget, said that the annual bill for taxation projects for all purposes, shortly after the war, rose to around $10,000,000,000, or about 15 per cent of the national income.

I submit that there are two or three reasons why every citizen is concerned in this matter: first, he has to help pay the bill; second, he needs to be as intelligent as may be in the exercise of his franchise and his citizen influence; third, he should be able to trust, because of their competency, those who are guiding this heavily freighted ship of state.

We are rather fond of saying, in a good many of our voluntary activities, that one of our tasks is to explore, discover, and initiate, and then to turn * I am indebted for the cooperation of the Bureau of Municipal Research of Philadelphia and to Mr. J. Howard Branson of that office for generous help in the gathering and display of the material in this article.