OF THE NATIONAL CONFERENCE OF SOCIAL WORK Formerly, National Conference of Charities and Correction AT THE FORTY-FIFTH ANNUAL SESSION HELD IN KANSAS CITY, MISSOURI MAY 15-22, 1918 PERMANENT HEADQUARTERS 315 PLYMOUTH COURT, CHICAGO, ILLINOIS ROGERS & HALL CO.. PRINTERS. CHICAGO PREFACE To comprehend and to report clearly the rapid developments of the year 1917-18 would seem to have been the first responsibility of the National Conference of Social Work, assembled at its meeting last May. The period under review was one of intense activity. Authoritative plans and data, rather than proposals for debate, seemed to be demanded. The present volume has some of the rare qualities of a battle picture. It has been produced, indeed, under some of the handicaps of war photography. The very assembling of leading participants was a problem of strategy. An event incomparable in the history of organized social work in America has occurred within the period of the last two National Conferences. Such surging of public opinion and concentration of national forces as the war has occasioned have been of profoundest significance to members of this Conference, concerned as they are with questions of reform arid methods of human improvement. But, great as are the issues of adjustment to the conceptions of the new era, National Conference discussions have not tended toward indefinite generalization. Aided largely by the system of divisional organization recently adopted, the Kansas City meeting went further than its predecessors in the direction of systematic consideration of the technique of social work. Chicago, December 15, 1918. W. T. C. |
