newer generation that now comes to discuss housing, and taxation, and the I. W. W., that would have been sufficient cause in those days to call in the police. During that seven years we steered a cautious and devious course between the old traditions that were so precious and the newer ideas that had to come if this Conference was to fulfill its destiny. Well, the Conference still survives. There are certain traditions that even now need to be preserved. The first is that it is a conference. I view with some anxiety the feeling of some of our members, that it is absolutely necessary for them to adopt a platform and announce it to the world in order that this Conference may accomplish its mission. I observe that some people in this meeting have spent hours in debating the points which they are going to put into a platform. The good old tradition is that this is a conference, a free platform where everybody who is respectable shall have opportunity to say what he likes, standing only upon his own authority, and the Conference not assuming any responsibility for his statements. This Conference has always held debate and published its Proceedings. You ask for them in any great library and you will find the librarian perfectly familiar with them. The best part of the Conference is the personal contact with the real, live people that are meeting annually and solving the same life problems that are yours. I wish that I had time to say something about the great men of this Conference. There were great leaders among us in the early days, men like Sanborn, Wines, Elmore, Brinckerhoff, Letchworth, Byers, Hoyt, and the other great men who did the foundation work of the Conference, and to whom we owe a great debt which we scarcely realize. There are great figures among us now, doubtless, and little by littie we shall come to realize their significance. If we are to succeed in social work the most important thing is that we shall maintain the teachable spirit; and the other need is the spirit of humanity, the human touch, so that we shall realize we are dealing with souls and not merely with cases. 2. A. M. McDonald, Edmonton, Alta.: We have great reason as Canadian delegates to express our appreciation of the hearty way in which we have been received into your membership and into your gatherings. I have wondered during the week whether it would be possible for an equal number of Americans to be present in a Canadian city and hear as little—practically nothing—that would grate upon national sentiment as we have heard since we came to Kansas City a week ago. Perhaps you will be interested in knowing what impressions a Canadian delegate will carry back with him from this Conference. Some of them are deep and lasting. First, we think of our unity. A year ago at Pittsburgh some delegates discussed the question of the advisability of the Canadian social workers forgetting our national Conference in Social Welfare and becoming simply a part of this Conference. A majority said "No, we want to be an integral part of the Conference here, but we cannot forget our own national conference." I think it would have been a grievous error if we had made the least suggestion of separating ourselves from you. You have a great body of social workers such as we cannot have for some years to come. We find your problems are our problems. In fact, you are much like us. We are stimulated by what you do. Your utterances are an inspiration to us. There are some things, possibly, in Canada that might at least appeal to the imagination of the social workers in the United States. In Manitoba, for instance, we have the best drafted and worked out Mothers' Assistance bill that there is on this continent. We have in one of the western provinces perhaps the best factory law, or at least one that gives the best protection to women and children that I have been able to find out about anywhere on the American continent. In that province no woman or child is allowed to work in factory, store, restaurant, or kindred occupation for less than ten dollars a week. We are trying to follow the suggestions that you give us from time to time. If the United States is passing through a period of history that marks an epoch, Canada is facing another. You will understand me when I say that Canada is now further into the war than are you. We have been in it about four years,—just four times as long as you have been. We could not have anticipated three years ago what four years of war would mean. * * * When you have been through you will know what we think, we social workers, have to do in reconstruction work. It is a tremendous task. I have gained the impression while at this conference that you feel that the leaders in your various institutions should learn the lessons taught by this war, among them that your boys should have military training, and last but not least, as one speaker said, they should be thoroughly American boys. He was right. I should say the same in Canada, except that I should say "thoroughly Canadian boys." But is that all? Lloyd George has said that we are building a bridge into a new world in which open discussion shall take the place of intrigue, friendliness revived shall take the place of the artificial barriers that have existed between the nations in the past, in which good will shall take the place of hate and jealousy. I wonder how such a new world shall be built up,—by making Americans only? And by making Canadians only? We social workers, in my estimation, should keep this ideal—that it will be a new world only as we are able to inoculate the new world citizens with the idea of international good will and peace and brotherhood. 3. Miss Gertrude Vaile, Denver: Never before, certainly not in modern times, has there been a time when everything we are thinking and doing is being tested as never before have we tested the foundation of things. Political and industrial ideals are being changed. Ideals of social life and relationships are being called into question, and certainly the ideals of spiritual truth, of our religious life, are all in question. We are testing things by realities. Conventionalities are falling away. We want to know what is true, what is real, and what are the things we need. Certainly the Conference, where we can exchange ideas on all these subjects, is of primary importance if the war is going to be decided right in the end. 4. Mrs. Hugh C. Ward, Kansas City: Kansas City has derived great benefit and inspiration from the presence of these splendid social workers in our midst. It was an education in itself to prepare for these meetings and for your entertainment. We have great civic pride in this mid-western city, and I am afraid we expected more admiration or commendation for our attainments than we deserved. You have put us on the defensive, because you have intelligently understood and investigated our weak points. But we thank you for your spirit of investigation that has been on duty day and night, and for your frank expressions of criticism. We realize the importance of social work in these war times; we are told every day that we are fighting this war with two armies; first: the fighting forces, the army and navy; second, the army behind the lines, the army at home. Of this last, the social workers are and must be the leaders. And, if we were compelled to go into this war without having our military forces prepared, it is encouraging to think that we are not unprepared to carry on the work of the second army, the army at home, because for many years we have had trained social workers who have studied and are familiar with our social forces and problems. 5. Mrs. Edith Shatto King, New York: I should like to make an appeal for a real study of the question of the distribution of trained workers in social service at this time. Let every well organized social agency think over its force, let the superintendent consider whether he can spare one worker who is needed in some new service that must be given to a community that perhaps has not known what social work was before. I want to ask that everyone who can spare a trained worker will let us know about him or her, in order that we may perhaps suggest where that worker can be of perhaps greater usefulness than at present. I should like to see a real distribution of the trained service of the country, so that everybody might get proper direction from the people who have thought out what real professional service is at this time. 5. Alfred Fairbank, St. Louis: We thank you for the example you have given to the West. Realizing that you have helped us, we go back to our toil resolved to do our especial jobs the best we can in order that the sum total of the social work of the country may be carried forward to a successful conclusion. 6. Lawson Purdy, New York: I have been greatly interested and pleased that the response of the audience to radical utterances at various sessions has been hearty and prompt. I have been disappointed that in all the many useful discussions and the many learned and very helpful papers there has not been a little more attention devoted to those studies from which we might hope that poverty would be abolished. 7. Jeffrey R. Brackett, Boston: This Conference session, in these times of renewals or of new movements, has certainly emphasized three thoughts. The first is that the larger things, opportunities for more health, recreation, educational vocation, and spiritual development, must ever be kept foremost in our work. The second thought, a corollary to the first, is that we are to practice a larger psychology in our contacts with human beings in distress of any form. Too often, too many of us in the past have hindered our usefulness by a lack of the spirit of real adventure for usefulness. This Conference has certainly emphasized also our recognition that these ways of social work, expressed in these two thoughts, are not separate ways but that they widen into one broad highway, where side by side, with mutual helpfulness, go those who are aiming primarily to deal with individuals and those who aim primarily to improve general conditions. 8. Mrs. E. T. Brigham, the secretary of the Kansas City Committee on Arrangements, and William T. Cross, general secretary of the National Conference, made brief addresses. 9. President Woods: On behalf of those of us who come from the northern and eastern sections of the country, let me say how greatly we have enjoyed meeting the representatives of the great Southwest. One of the objects of the Conference in coming to Kansas City was not only that the Conference members might have the satisfaction of learning about many things achieved in Kansas City, but that we might have the opportunity of coming into acquaintance and friendly fellowship with those who in the sections of the country beyond Kansas City are beginning to come into the privileges of social work. We have met many of these men and women and hope they will feel permanently attached to the Conference, and will conspire among themselves and their associates at home to see this attachment kept up wherever the Conference may meet, so that whatever happens in the future the Conference will feel it is having effective representation from this great southwest section of the country. We are all sorry that our new president, Miss Lathrop, is not here to participate in the formal ceremony of receiving the gavel. Miss Julia Lathrop is the settlement worker who has been known in the National Conference longer than any other. She was the first of our settlement people to be broad enough to see the meaning, the whole range of the work of the National Conference. She was the first to master, not only the principles of charity organization, but the principles of state board work. She has been continuously the vital link between the interests of the National Conference and the settlement forces, until now it seems inevitable that the settlement workers should feel themselves a part of the Conference. This is but one of many reasons why the Conference should be particularly grateful and loyal to Miss Lathrop. She is doing a great piece of work, and we do not want to add to her burdens. We all want to help her in assuming this additional responsibility and make it a reinforcement to the historic national service she is rendering in laying the foundations for the sound life and work of the coming generation in the great reconstruction period. 10. LeRoy A. Halbert, First Vice-President elect, Kansas City: Mr. Woods has claimed Miss Lathrop as a representative of the social settlements in the position she holds, but I was thinking that she was the representative of the public officials, and that as the head of a great national department she was magnifying the office of the public official. I hope her term of office will be one in which there will be a modification in sentiment with regard to social work in a public office. We have come to the time when there is going to be a great extension of work of the government in social service, and we should rejoice in the future extension of it. We should be glad that we have greater responsibilities and the authority with which to meet these great questions. If it be true that there are great problems connected with making this government service efficient, instead of shying away we should face them courageously, with the intention of solving them. SOCIAL WORK IN JAPAN Upon being introduced to the Conference at the evening session, May 16th, said: It is really a special privilege and my happy opportunity for me to be here with you and to be introduced by the persident of this great association, and to make acquaintance with so many prominent social workers not only from all over this country, but also from Canada and other parts of the world. I came to this country just two months ago, being sent by the Japanese government to see the activities of social workers in this country. I visited San Francisco, Seattle, Los Angeles and Chicago, where I was so cordially welcomed that words fail me to express my sincere thanks, by so many eminent social workers that I can not enumerate their names here. As to the social work in our country, Japan, I wish to mention just a few things; namely, we have in Japan one association of our social workers, of which the first convention was held last fall in Tokio, where we had more than 800 delegates together from all parts of our country, and we welcomed American women and men in that convention. Since 1908 our government conducts every year a special course for social workers and gives lectures for their education in social betterment. Last year the bureau of social welfare was separated from the prefectural bureau of the Home Department of our government, and was enlarged extensively. In Japan there are many institutions for delinquent, dependent and defective children. Fifty-seven schools for delinquent children are supported by local communities. All other institutions for dependent and defective children are supported partly by public expenditure, partly by private contributions. Though there are, also, many day nurseries, free hospitals, free lodging houses, playgrounds, the Big Brother's movement and employment bureaus, we have still much to be desired in those institutions, for they are really not so complete as in this country. America is, indeed, the most wonderful nation in the world. There are, certainly, many things which have impressed me deeply since my arrival at San Francisco. I wish to mention here only those which particularly interested me, namely, first, women's activity in social work. American women are doing their best as the queens of their families— the fundamental elements of society; but also they are doing most splendid social work. Second, national prohibition of liquor. Since the amendment of the federal constitution passed Congress last year, more than 36 states are willingly ratifying this amendment to the constitution. It is expected that America—the largest and most wealthy nation in the world—will become, as you say, bone-dry in the near future. Most men seem to be fond of drinking by nature, but American gentlemen are abstaining—really a hard task, but it is most splendidly done. This is as noteworthy and creditable as is women's work for social welfare. I thank you, ladies and gentlemen, again for your cordial" welcome and courtesy, and for many facilities which you are giving me for my investigations in his country. / wish you also great success in your work for human welfare throughout the world, and for the safety of Democracy. HEALTH AND SOCIAL WORK IN JAPAN* Matsujiro Takenouchi, M. D., Assistant Professor of Medicine, Imperial University, Tokio, Japan It is a special privilege to be here with you and to speak for a few minutes about the social condition in Japan. Some ladies and gentlemen have asked mc: "What is the program of social work in Japan?" "How about sanitary conditions in Japan?" Another gentleman asked me last Friday at the Municipal Farm of this city: "Is there, in Japan, any such system of taking care of criminals or prisoners as in this country?" Most of those questions which have been asked us here can be answered equally in the affirmative. In answering those questions, we are convinced that some of you are only slightly familiar with the true condition of our country. I am not speaking of average American people. We are aware that a thorough understanding of every nation's condition mutually is a vital necessity for international good will. I have asked myself why our true condition, either material or *Address given before the Division on Health, May 20, 1918. |