dependency is a factor, the Jewish Welfare Society takes the initiative, makes an investigation, and makes the decision as to whether it is a family which should be kept together. If so, provision is made for needed assistance on an adequate basis. If it is a widowed family, the assistance and supervision is undertaken by the Orphans' Guardian Society.

If the family must be broken up for some reason other than poverty, the Jewish Children's Bureau reviews the case, attends to establishing the status of the child as a public charge, and decides which of the various resources for the care of the child had best be used. Inasmuch as the Jewish community is equipped with the Juvenile Aid Society, which maintains very high standards for foster home care of children, with an agency for the supervision of unmarried mothers, with a maternity home and hospital, and with two large children's institutions which cooperate in this plan, there is available a fairly wide range of choice of methods of care. By having the decision rest, however, with the Bureau of Jewish Children, the element of competition is completely eliminated. Agencies or institutions take the children who, on competent outside judgment, are most eligible for what they have to offer. A recent study of Jewish social work for children has shown that a reduction of about one-third to one-half of the institution capacity in the coordinated scheme can and should be made.

To a less degree the Catholic Children's Bureau functions as a clearing house for the various Catholic facilities available for the care of children away from their families. The great problem in Philadelphia, however, concerns itself, both in Catholic and in Protestant groups, with the provision for family assistance. Children are being taken away and will continue to be taken away from their families by reason of poverty just so long as we put the bulk of our money and interest into methods of care which presuppose separation.

In the Jewish group we find the proportion of money spent for the three kinds of care in about these proportions: $275,000 for family work, $210,000 for foster homes, $135,000 for institutions. That is, the expenditure of $5.00 is in the proportion of about $2.20 for family work, $1.70 for foster homes, and $1.10 for institutions. In the community at large, you will recall, the proportion is, roughly, $1.50 for family assistance, $1.00 for foster care, $2.50 for institutional care. Were we able, overnight, to realign the resources of the whole community in the same proportions as prevail in the Jewish community, instead of $1,500,000 for family work, we should be spending $2,350,000; instead of $1,000,000 for foster home care, we should be spending $1,800,000; and instead of $2,800,000 for institutional care, we should be spending about $1,150,000. It is not without significance that the total bill for the family and child care service of the Jewish community may be roughly estimated at $2.53 per capita, while for the non-Jewish community it is near $3.00 per person in the population. Inasmuch as the Jews are very scrupulous about the adequacy of relief, the standards of foster home care, and are anxious to send as many children through

high school as can profit by education, the conclusion seems inevitable that in the larger community we are spending more than enough money but without commensurate results. The endowed institutions are the big leak.

In the child welfare field we have had a deep appreciation that the child of today will be the man of tomorrow, but we seem to forget that he is also the child of yesterday, when he was not a spectacular or appealing problem, and when he looked just like many thousands of others. In no field of social work is it so necessary, however, to see yesterday, today, and tomorrow. To do this is to begin to know the problem, root and all, and all in all, but who is permitted to know what God and man is!

E

THE COUNTY AS A UNIT FOR THE ADMINISTRATION OF
LOCAL PUBLIC SOCIAL SERVICE

Wesley Johnson, Chairman, Board of Supervisors,
Webster County, Iowa

Consolidation and cooperation are the order of the day. In a number of business enterprises we find that consolidation has been the means of saving organizations from financial ruin by reducing the overhead expense and eliminating duplication and overlapping of work. President Coolidge and Secretary Hoover have both told the agricultural interests that what they lack most is cooperation in their work and in their business activities, and that in order to make their endeavors more successful they must cooperate more fully.

What holds true in business and agricultural pursuits also holds true in other lines of human activity. Consolidation of welfare work under one management and getting full cooperation of the different units within the boundaries of a county, and thus making the whole county a unit, is no longer an experiment with us in Webster County, Iowa. We have been doing this for a number of years, and in order that you may judge more fully how well we have succeeded, I will tell you briefly about our organization, its work, and the results.

Webster County is 24 miles wide, 30 miles long, and has a population of 40,000, the largest town being Fort Dodge, with 25,000. We have twelve small, incorporated towns. Fort Dodge is a manufacturing town, whereas the balance of the county is devoted to agriculture.

To begin at the beginning, the people of Fort Dodge had given food to the poor and had found it thrown in the gutters. They had given clothing and it did not seem to help much. They had given money and it had gone to the saloon, to the movies, or for luxuries. In fact, they were helping to make paupers by unsystematic giving.

We noticed that persons who were sick, or who were threatened with sickness, were taken to a doctor for expert attention and realized that the matter of poverty and distress needs expert attention just as much as does sickness. So we decided to get together in the belief that a group of people in a town could do more than single individuals. We said: "Let's put all we have into one fund. Let's give together and have someone take care of it who knows how to do it better than we do." So the Associated Charities was organized and a trained worker was employed.

The board of supervisors gave an office room on the first floor of the court

12

house, and there is no place in Fort Dodge that has been more useful. Up to this point we were in the same position that most of the counties are today.

From the very first the work of the secretary commended itself to the board of supervisors. The system used in making investigations and in keeping records that could be referred to, and in giving detailed information appealed to them, so they asked the secretary to report to them now and then about conditions which she found. The worker went about her duties and reported the facts about cases in which the county was interested to the supervisors. The first winter she told them about the kind of coal the county charges were receiving. The contract for coal had been given, year after year, to the same man. She found that the people to whom this man was sending coal were receiving the poorest kind of coal, mostly dirt, instead of the best kind of coal from the local mines, that for which the county was paying. A number of other cases where merchants and landlords were taking advantage of the poor and of the county were brought to the attention of the supervisors and corrected.

These friendly relations and this cooperation went on between the supervisors and the Associated Charities until presently the supervisors made up their minds that there was a chance to get better service for less money by consolidation. So they appointed the secretary of the Associated Charities their overseer of the poor. There were two reasons for doing this: one was an attempt to shift the responsibility; the other was that the meanest, most disagreeable duty a supervisor has to perform is that of looking after paupers. We find the most unreasonable, ignorant, and unprincipled people among them, but also there are some very good people who are poor and need assistance.

Now that we have the two systems together, public and private relief, I will show you how it works. With us it had been the same old story. The county, through its distribution of the poor fund, had been undoing some of the things that the Associated Charities was trying to do, and in some cases had even been a detriment to the family that was receiving aid, instead of an assistance in getting the family back on its feet.

It is just as necessary to have special training to disburse charity rightly and to carry on the work properly as it is to have special education for the practice of law or medicine. We have examples of misguided judgment and wrong methods in almost every county in every state in the Union. In Iowa we have one county whose board of supervisors decided that it would be able to reduce the expenditure of its poor fund by publishing a list of the names of those who were given poor relief, and so a list was published quarterly in the official county papers. The result, which was to be expected, was that the grafters, unworthy, lazy, shiftless people who cared nothing for public opinion made very free with their demands for public aid and received it. That county was educating professional paupers. You may be able to imagine the job that a trained worker would have in trying to re-establish and build up a family that had been publicly advertised as paupers. It was also found that the direct result of such

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.