In no field of social or educational work do we find more basic difficulties than in this broad field of work with immigrants. The individuals and institutions in the community who are concerned with it go back not only to widely different, but frequently definitely antagonistic, religious, racial, and economic roots. The opportunities for prejudice and bias to dominate or entirely negate a constructive program in any community are enormous. The human problems are vast. Both the sentimentalist and the unscrupulous can make out of them a colorful appeal which may grip the imagination and be equally destructive to permanent accomplishment. The crying need is for standards of work and measurement, for methods which will stand the test of experimentation, for objectives and ends which are sufficiently definite to make realization practical and observable. It is a field which needs, in short, the acid tests of modern social work, and it is, I am optimistic enough to believe, beginning to get it.

THE IMMIGRANT IN INDUSTRY

Samuel Levin, Joint Board, Amalgamated Clothing Workers
of America, Chicago

A realistic estimate of the rôle the immigrant plays in industry is not possible unless we establish the exact status of the immigrant in American industry. It may feed our sentimental and emotional parts to go on speaking about the immigrant as an incidental element in American industry and therefore deserving of special care. Unfortunately, facts have a capacity for disregarding emotions and intention.

From 1820 to 1924, in the course of a century, 35,344,703 people came into the United States. In 1820 the total population of the United States was about ten million. Today it is 113,000,000. The increase in population in the course of the century was very largely the result of immigration. One must remember that immigration almost exclusively consists of adults. We see that what we consider the people of the United States are really foreigners, by and large. The original Yankee seems to be an imported product, made "somewhere in Europe."

In the last twenty-four years, from 1901 to 1924, nearly 17,000,000 people came to the United States. All these people, after they left Ellis Island or other ports, landed in industry. American industry is manned very largely by immigrants.

The United States Census for 1920 shows the following percentage of workers foreign-born or of foreign or mixed parentage in the leading industries and manufactures: in all manufacturing and mechanical industries, 50.9 per cent; in iron and steel, 56.7 per cent; in other metals, 65.3 per cent; in textiles, 59.1 per cent; in clothing, 69.1 per cent; in cigar and tobacco, 51.3 per cent; in chemical and allied industries, 51.6 per cent; in food, 50.1 per cent; in coal mining, 50.6 per cent; in iron mining, 76.4 per cent.

The immigrants constitute the larger half of wage-earning Americans. This is the case in the most important industries. To speak of immigrants in industry, therefore, really amounts to speaking of workers in industry, so that my problem of analyzing the what-to-do's and how-to-do's with reference to the industrial workers of foreign origin becomes in essence a problem of discussing the industrial worker generally. To be sure, there is still almost one-half of the total number of industrial workers who are natives. But this does not change matters. The immigrants and the natives constitute about equal parts of the category which we call "worker," and no policy calculated to take care of one particular half of the working population is likely to prove anything but fallacious. The totality of the working force in industry must be considered. They are neither Americans nor immigrants. They are working people.

If we, then, substitute the worker for the immigrant, our problem at large really amounts to a problem concerning itself about the status of the worker in industry, the worker who is largely either a foreigner or of foreign or mixed parentage or a native. My personal experience with workers has been almost exclusively with foreigners. But I fail to see that problems of industry change their nature because confronted with workers born elsewhere, outside of the United States. If you meet the problem of the worker in industry successfully you have met also the problem of the immigrant in industry.

What is the problem of the worker in industry from the larger viewpoint of industry as a part of the total of national economy? It is the status of the worker in industry, his relationship to his job, his feeling of citizenship or of subjection in the industry he is engaged in. The open-shop drivers may consider themselves first-rate Americans, and it is possible that a number of them will trace their ancestry way back to the Mayflower. If Americanism should really imply what it ought to, namely, a policy of serving the interests of the nation as a whole and industry, which is the backbone of a nation, then open-shoppism is the most un-American procedure.

We are concerned about industrial development, industrial efficiency, the elimination of waste, and managerial incompetence. A management well supplied with cheap labor is the kind of management you will always find lacking in foresight, in constructiveness, and in ability to forge ahead. When labor is well paid and working under conditions of healthy normalcy, management is bound to turn to mechanical improvement, to improvement of salesmanship and marketing methods. A non-organized industry is a backward industry. A well-organized industry is an industry with an eye to the last device of scientific management.

We speak of promoting a higher citizenship, and we turn to the immigrant as the object of our special cares, but we find many backward groups in the population of the United States who are not of the highest quality of citizenship, but they are natives. They are not organized. They are what the heart of the open-shopper desires.

The clothing industry is an immigrant-manned industry. Will anybody question the veracity of my statement that our working people have shown the utmost care for the welfare of the industry? The workers of the clothing industry practically eliminated sweat shops and the contracting evil. They have not only created this industry in the United States, but have brought it to the front of American industrial progress.

This is not a matter of displaying a preference for the foreign worker, not an immigrant-superiority complex. I merely wish to emphasize the fact that the origin of the worker has got little to do with the solution of the status of the worker in industry. The status of the worker in industry, not his grandfather, ought to be our prime concern.

If you ask me, as manager of a large labor union and as one who has had considerable experience with industry, both from the angle of the worker and of industry as a whole, what is the most important point to be considered in a study of personnel, management, and human relations in the industry, I should answer: unless industry abandons old traditions and habits of feudalism and paternalism, unless industry becomes a truly democratic republic, healthy growth will be retarded.

Labor unions have been concerning themselves with questions of hours and wages only. Few of them care to bother about management. Only a few unions have expressed a desire to take a responsible part in the solution of the general problems that come before industry. Management, obsessed with feudalistic traditions, resists the inevitable shift in that direction. Of course, industry has prospered none the less. But if you study the rate of progress made by specific industries, you find that the way of industrial progress is becoming an ever increasingly difficult uphill journey. In a world of keen competition, national and international, no industry can survive which will not take cognizance of the necessity of cooperation. The condition of separation between owners and producers and the divorce between the producing and the managing end exclude a healthy, harmonious relationship which is the foundation of all family building, the industrial family included.

Labor unions, not company unions-free, unhampered, and enlightened labor unions-must have open sway if we wish to assure the industrial progress to which our country, with its rich resources and keen and alert industrial working force, is justly entitled.

Miss Julia Lathrop, formerly of the children's bureau of the Department of Labor, in a recent speech, said:

There are 5,500,000 illiterates in the United States. Fifty-eight per cent are white, and 28 per cent are native-born. If we continue to reduce illiteracy at the same ratio attained between 1910 and 1920, it will take forty years to eliminate it. Foreign-born parents have reduced illiteracy among their children to eight-tenths of 1 per cent. If we reduce illiteracy among our children at the same rate attained between 1910 and 1920, it will take us thirty years to reduce it as low as already attained by foreign-born parents.

XI. PROFESSIONAL STANDARDS AND EDUCATION

IS SOCIAL WORK PROFESSIONAL? A RE-EXAMINATION
OF THE QUESTION

William Hodson, President, American Association
of Social Workers, New York

At the Baltimore Conference, in 1915, Abraham Flexmer presented a paper which answered the question, "Is Social Work a Profession?" in the negative. Not an arbitrary and final negative, but a tentative one based upon his conception of the state of social work at that time and with recognition of the possibility, perhaps the probability, of an emerging professional status. Ten years have elapsed since this interesting discussion took place, and the question naturally arises whether the trend of events in social work during the interval tends to modify Mr. Flexner's premises or conclusions. It is quite true that a decade is a brief span in the history of any human institution, and certainly no ten-year period in the development of the recognized professions would definitely mark the emergence of any of them from inchoate content and service to professional grade. In each instance there has been a long, slow growth, as would be expected when that growth was dependent upon the advancement of the sciences themselves.

Mr. Flexner suggests seven tests of professional status, which he states somewhat as follows:

First, the service of one engaged in a profession must be of an intellectual character rather than routine physical acts. The use of the brain, rather than the well-trained hand, to secure the desired results is essential. But along with mental effort must go a wholly personal and individual responsibility for achieving those results. The physician must not only know the scientific principles which concern the diagnosis and treatment of disease; he must exercise his judgment in applying those principles to the patient before him. The conduct of the case is his responsibility, and he will he held to account for the manner in which that exclusive duty is discharged.

Second, the raw materials of a profession are drawn from science and learning. The laboratory, the seminar, the textbook and other forms of specialized literature supply the content for the practice of law, medicine, or the ministry.

Third, this material must be mastered and applied to produce definite and practical results. The task of the professional man is concrete and clearly defined; he deals with the sick or those seeking to establish their legal rights, or he ministers to the spiritual needs of his congregation.

Fourth, a profession must have a content which can be transmitted by a specialized educational process to those desirous and capable of learning it. Thus it is possible to train teachers and architects and doctors and lawyers in an exact and standardized fashion.

I if th

Fourth, a profession tends toward self-organization, the members of which, both on the social and professional side, are class-conscious, watchful of ethical standards, critical of method, and devoted to the advancement of professional interests.

Sixth, there is a tendency for a professional group to be influenced by questions of public interest, as well as by questions of personal and group interest, and there is greater opportunity for the development of altrusitic motives in relation to social need.

Seventh, a profession should have a body of literature, critical and scientific in character, which records its development and achievements. The quality of the publications which speak for a profession are a fair index of its character and status.

In applying these tests to social work Mr. Flexner finds that it draws upon science and learning for its tools. He believes also that social workers are consciously organized to advance their vocation, and he stresses the altruistic motive which he feels sure dominates the social worker. Three essentials he regards as lacking. In the first place, while social work is intellectual rather than manual in character, the social worker is not the guiding genius in the treatment of the needs of his client, and he does not bear the sole, or the major, responsibility in making the necessary adjustments. He is a mediator who brings to his client the lawyer, the doctor, the clergyman, and the other organized services of the community. He may be likened to a keyboard summoning those who can help and coordinating their services. Under this view, social work becomes a phase of many different types of service; it rounds out the undeveloped places in the existing professions, and becomes an auxiliary to them, just as many persons think of medical social service as an incidental aid to medicine. In the second place, Mr. Flexner thinks that social work does not possess a definite and concrete aim and an integrated form of service which is important on its own account. The skill required is simply that of a clever piecing together of the parts of a human puzzle, and the responsibility for results in treatment rests upon other shoulders. Thus, social work covers so broad a field, in this piecing-out process, as to make impossible any delimitation of its scope in such a way as to develop certainty of knowledge and expertness in procedure, both of which are essential to professional status. Finally, a field of service without a specific aim and a definitely bounded scope affords little opportunity for the organization of educational training upon a professional basis. Nor is such service likely to develop a literature of the depth, variety, and dignity which marks the established professions.

In so short a paper as this must be it is impossible, if one had the ability, to analyze the whole range of social work and to apply to each specialty the tests