lie just below the surface of modern civilization, often protruding above it. To root them out, or, if that be impossible, to bury them deeper, is the task, not of years, but of an age. But there are other reasons why this synthesis attempted by social work is so tardily accepted, and to these we must give a further word.

Social work, as a welfare movement, has fallen heir to the criticisms which, from many different angles, have been directed against humanitarianism. The respectability of these attacks varies both in regard to their content and with reference to those who make them. One ever present source of opposition to social work is commercialism. This is a characteristic of our civilization with which social work is, or ought to be, continually at war. We can paraphrase a remark once made by Professor Cooley to the effect that commercialism dominates our age somewhat in the same way that the crusading spirit ruled in medieval times. Social work seems a weak antagonist to this force, which often penetrates even our universities, possessing the minds of students before they have begun to think. It is the commercial instinct, as we all know, which makes it so difficult for the ideals of social work to take hold on the older professions. We are of necessity committed to a policy of "peaceful penetration" in attempting to modify the mores of business, law, and medicine; and yet, once the social ideal "gets across," it means a revolution in our outlook and a transformation of social life.

Another source of criticism of social work may be said to come from the intellectuals, of whom one group is to be found among some of the economists. Their opposition dates back to the controversies in England over the Poor Laws a century ago, when the wasteful administration of public relief encountered their just criticism. But there appears still to be somewhat of an issue between the social workers and those economists who view their subject as being concerned solely with the mechanism of the production and distribution of goods, and who are impatient with so-called "sentimentalists" who insist upon drawing attention to some of the human consequences of the economic juggernaut. The real difference between the two groups would seem to be that the social workers place man, his nature, and his needs first, making them the measure of the efficiency of the machine; whereas the older economists were inclined to contrive the mechanism of the economic order, and to regard it as so much the worse for man if he did not adapt himself to it. There is, no doubt, good precedent for this type of thinking, for do we not read that the world was made and finished in six days, before man was thought of? One may add, however, that this is a precedent which has little standing in science. No doubt much of this old controversy has died down, partly because the younger economists are breaking loose from the herd, and partly because the social workers are becoming more scientific. Still, enough of it lingers to make the difference in atmosphere that one detects between, let us say, a conference of social workers and a convention of business economists.

A new type of implied opposition to social work has arisen with the growth of the biological sciences. From some representatives of these we hear an increasing volume of protest against certain forms of social work as interfering with biological progress through a checking of the process of natural selection. We thought we had done with these ideas with the intellectual obsequies of Herbert Spencer, but they have, so to speak, been born again to a new vitality. From a eugenics program directed, wisely enough, against the genetically unfit members of the social group, this biologic interpretation has expanded so as to imply invidious differences between races as regards their innate value and capacities for progress. Now the social workers have no quarrel with sound any and temperate program of eugenics. Indeed, it is they who have appeared before legislatures on behalf of better marriage laws and more adequate provision for the segregation of the unfit. But the Nordic propaganda, in my judgment, at least, runs contrary to the democratic impulses of social work, which has faith in backward peoples, and has sought to enlarge their opportunities for self-expression. It makes a tremendous difference for the future of America which of these views prevail, that of narrow racialism, or that of social work; and yet, thanks to alarmists like Mr. Stoddard, and to the growth of feudistic organizations in our midst, the discriminating cosmopolitism of social work seems to be losing ground.

Perhaps one more source of implied opposition to social work may be mentioned. I have in mind the advanced guard of radicals who are impatient with the middle-of-the-road policies of social work. There are many groups in this country and in Europe-labor groups, the Youth movement, religious radicals, and others—who have lost confidence in ameliorative efforts for social betterment. Social work they regard as a technique, like science, which can lend itself as readily to the arts of war as to the arts of peace; which accepts in a docile way all social injustices; and which lacks any fundamental understanding of the problems over which it fusses and tinkers. This view seems to me to be a misconstruing of social work; and yet that it is held by so many should cause us to check up on our ultimate purposes. Surely it would be a mistake to interpret social work as a mere technique of finance or of case work, important as these are, leaving to others outside the field to determine the larger aims of social endeavor.

There are other groups, no doubt, who are hostile or aggressively indifferent to the claims of social work, either through ignorance or through dogmatic convictions contrary to the principles and methods of social work. My reason for dwelling upon these types of opposition that I have mentioned is that I believe it is time for us to try to orient the efforts which bear the name of social work with regard to the world of social thought and with regard to other movements which claim a prior importance. If social work is to be a culture, meaning by that not merely a set of activities, but a range of ideas into which we can

immerse students, giving them a humane, democratic, and scientific outlook on life, then it behooves us to introduce breadth, precision, and vigor into the studies by which this culture is to be implanted.

I have not attempted here any detailed discussion of the courses in the social service curriculum. We have agreed that the immediate background of the social worker should be the social sciences, with the addition of such special studies, like case work, for which a definite intellectual content may be found. My own opinion is that too strong an emphasis cannot be placed upon the need for a thorough discipline in the underlying social sciences of economics, political science, sociology, psychology, biology, history, and statistics. The person who undertakes community work without a knowledge of government, or of elementary economic principles, or of the laws of heredity, may find a job, but he cannot become a wise and constructive leader.

The remoter backgrounds which would be desirable for the social worker are impossible to define. A real culture will make intelligible the past as well as the present; yet to read of the past struggles of races and peoples with the point of view of social work in mind gives to them more significance. The greed, dogma, and ignorance which thwart the self-development of classes and races today are the same things that darken the pages of history. India, today, needs a Ghandi as a symbol of national unity, but, in the long run, his program is impossible. What his people need-following a greater degree of political and economic freedom-is a program of social work. But what vast and ancient systems of thought and practice would collapse once it were introduced! To the really educated social worker, as to the men of the Renaissance, nothing human can be alien. This view of the matter may be ideal, but it is the only one to which our universities, if they remain loyal to their traditions, can be asked to subscribe.

Since we have mentioned something of the sources to be drawn upon in education for social work, we may now ask what unique contributions, if any, can social work be said to add to the material with which it deals? In this regard, social work seems to have functioned in two ways: first, it has helped the development of ideas in the social sciences; and, secondly, it has been the vehicle for the spread of scientific ideas. Let us dwell a moment on each of these points. In regard to its contribution to our scientific ideas: First, there can be little doubt but that the discovery of the community has been, in large part, an achievement of social work. I mean the orientation of the community as an entity which fixes the habits, determines the ideals, and enlarges or cramps the human personality. Of course, the theory of the matter had been previously laid down by some of the sociologists; but the practice of social work has enabled us to check up on our theories, and to show not only that the group exerts an influence, but how, when, and under what conditions this group pressure does its work.

Second, correlated with this discovery is the contribution of social work to our knowledge of the individual. The causal sequence between past and present in the life of a human personality had again been theoretically developed in science, but it remained for the social case record of the social workers to confirm by the laboratory method the hypotheses of science. Without a social diagnosis and prognosis a psychiatrist, for example, would be at sea.

Third, it follows that social work has given to, and taken from, the organic theory of the relation of the individual to society, which has been the accepted formula of social students since it was outlined by Cooley, Baldwin, and others a quarter of a century ago.

Fourth, a still further contribution of social work has been to our knowledge of group psychology. The points of view, the culture, and the aspirations of ethnic groups in this country, for example, had remained to us a closed book were it not for the sympathetic insight of the social workers. Only the anthropologists can rank with the social workers in the necessary scientific achievement of bringing to light the customs, the lore, the hopes, and values of the peoples on the lower levels of social life.

With respect to social work as a vehicle of ideas, time permits of only a word. We may here recall Lester Ward's dictum that social progress depends on accurate information widely diffused. We know that sound ideas of health, of the origin, nature, and treatment of physical disease have been disseminated through social work. Now we are entering upon similar developments in the field of mental hygiene, with what possibilities for increasing human happiness! One might go on and show how, in many other fields, knowledge of the conditions for successful, happy living are being driven home through social work. Democracy simply cannot endure if such knowledge is kept in possession of a few. It can be said, I think, that social work has been the first effort to conceive of education as an organic development of body, mind, and soul in a socialized environment dominated by cooperation and good will.

We may now draw together the threads of this discourse. Social work is a type of culture, or of mental content and organization, which represents a synthesis of historically separated efforts of the human mind, any one of which is unable to effect the goal of social living. Religion, alone, tends to wander into the "bad lands" of sectarianism and fundamentalism. Democracy, unregenerated, is a shibboleth of ignorant and disorderly misrule. Science can as well destroy as save us.

The farthest ethical reach of science with regard to war, for example, is to show that poisonous gas is a more humane method of killing than projectiles! Is it any wonder that men of humane, aesthetic imagination, like Mr. Ralph Adams Cram, would turn back to the walled towns of the Middle Ages, with their communal spirit, as a desirable release from the machine-made barbarism that we call civilization? Over against the fragmentary view of our human prob

lem that comes to us through any one of these sources is set the clear-eyed vision of social work which, at its best, sees life whole, and through its programs offers us the means for the reflowering of the waste places.

I can, perhaps, be permitted to end this discussion with an incident. On the train coming here a dear old lady wished on me some religious tracts, giving me a sure routing to the heavenly city. The tragic implications, to me, of her effort, were that she represents the point of view of millions of people in this land, possessed of a cultural outlook thousands of years old. Against these entrenched habits on religious thought, no less than against the bulwarks of the undisciplined democracy, the commercialism, and the barbarous science of our day must be cast the whole burden of the message of social work, remaking our habits and our institutions, so that we may tentatively approach, a little more nearly and a little more quickly, that far-off goal of human endeavor. Finally, if the academic mind in our universities is not to contract beyond its accustomed narrow limits, the significance of social work must be set forth in no less than these broad terms; and when we have shown that it is not merely another new trade seeking academic indorsement, we can set to work undismayed at the grave task of recruiting and educating men and women worthy of the profession.

THE RELATION OF SCHOOLS OF SOCIAL WORK
TO SOCIAL AGENCIES

M. J. Karpf, Director, Training School for Jewish
Social Work, New York

As I see it, there are at least four very important aspects to the problem of training social workers, in which social agencies and the schools for social work have common interests. These are: first, the curriculum; second, the faculty; third, the students; and fourth, teaching material. I shall, therefore, discuss these items in this order.

The curriculum.-The problem of what to include in a course designed to prepare for social work is one of the most important problems facing the schools and agencies-a problem which deserves much more common thinking and discussion than has thus far been given it. Without going into a detailed discussion of the difference between "education" and "training" for social work, a subject which has been very suggestively treated by Professor Tufts, and without necessarily accepting his conclusions in this regard, we may well say that curricula of training schools for social work must be based on the determination as to whether we aim to "train" or to "educate" people for social work. The problem of curricula goes even deeper than that, in my judgment. It seems to me that it goes back to our very conception of social work, its basis, its methods, and its future. If we look upon social work as an art, having its basis in, and deriving