these matters are important; most of them do not belong here, however, but in a discussion of the later stages of treatment.

2. The Family Housing. The following list of the housing defects that are serious enough to arrest the attention of social workers, no matter what their errand to the home, is an amplification of one prepared by the writer in 1911. Not all of these things can be covered in one visit, of course, or in two, but all are important.

a. Bad Toilet Arrangements. We visit homes frequently where there is inertia, low vitality, or even sickness without knowing definitely or taking the trouble to discover the condition of the plumbing, the trapping of the waste pipes, etc. The cleanliness of the toilets, their location and provisions for privacy, such as inside locks, have a bearing upon health and decency. An untrapped waste pipe means sewer gas, probably, and sewer gas means ill health. Where there are outside vaults a menace to health from fly infection always exists, while inconvenience of access and noisome odors combine to make the condition one of the most serious of housing evils. b. Dampness. The condition of the cellar, the walls, and the roof, more especially of the cellar; is its floor wet or damp, has it a dirt or a cement floor, is it cluttered with rubbish or animals? Are the pipes leaking? Does the roof leak?

c. Dark Rooms. When these are used for bedrooms, the fact should be noted on our records, should be related to our family histories of disease and premature death, and should be made the subject of steady pressure upon citizens, lawbreakers, and public administrators.

d. Overcrowding. This is especially to be noted as regards sleeping accommodations. Its vital relation to health, particularly to the spread of tuberculosis, and to decency must be vividly realized and kept constantly in mind in all our plans for making people economically independent. Independence built upon a standard that ignores decency is built, of course, upon quicksand. In this connection the taking of lodgers and boarders is especially important because of the physical, moral, and social dangers involved.

e. Insufficient Water Supply. In the purity of the source and the amount are involved the condition of the cistern or tank and its care between official inspections. Is there running water and, if not, where is the nearest tap?

When we have trained ourselves to observe these things, we shall find that the unhealthful conditions discovered are some of them violations of existing statutes, others not. With regard to the first group, we should lose no time, of course, in reporting to the right place bad conditions that really are violations. The second group furnish arguments for further legislation, but they do this only when they are promptly and accurately recorded. Pending See Proceedings of National Conference of Charities and Correction for 1911 (Boston), p. 327-328.

the securing and enforcement of such legislation, it is possible to keep the worst houses and tenements empty by persuading tenants to move, and it is possible to remedy the less serious nuisances with their co-operation. It has also been found practicable sometimes to appeal directly to landlords who had been in the habit, earlier, of leaving the management of their properties to agents, and persuade them to correct the evils complained of.

IV. THE CHILDREN

Here we find blood relationship and all those undercurrents of sympathy and antagonism which it implies. Propinquity only aggravates any natural lack of sympathy. Between kindred such lacks are often fundamental. Often, however, as Mrs. Bosanquet points out, antagonism is due not so much to fundamental differences as to the assumption that there should be no difference. The implacable attitude of child toward parent, parent toward child, and of brothers and sisters toward one another is due to likenesses even more than to differences. "That a member of the family, sharing in its common nature, partaking in its impulses, instincts, sentiments, and education, can have done this thing-it is that which wounds deeper than all the scorn or pity from the outside, for it reveals possibilities unrealized before." A probation officer tells of a girl in her care who held a grudge grimly against her mother for three years because she complained of her to the juvenile court at a critical time. So often do parents' complaints to the court cause open rebellion and permanent estrangement that this officer strives in every possible way to settle such difficulties without appearing in them.

One common cause of estrangement is the inability of children to give expression to their ambitions or to find a natural outlet for their energies. The effects of these checks are intensified in any family that is passing through a sudden change of economic status, whether that change be favorable or the reverse. The response of the different members to the outward change is a varied response; the upheaval which depresses and alienates one member acts as a stimulus to the energies and affections of another, with the result that all are thrown out of their accustomed relation 1 The Family, p. 257.

to one another. The human situation thus created has been a favorite theme of English fiction from the Vicar of Wakefield to the latest best seller.

Other causes of estrangement are the unwise reticences of parents and their failure to appreciate, at critical periods, the physical reasons for a child's lack of control. "There is the most definite necessity," says Dr. Healy,1 "for little people telling what they have seen and what they have done. For them to bottle up within themselves affairs of importance is a dangerous proceeding. We should most earnestly counsel that children should be accustomed to go over the items of their daily life with their guardians that there may be no hidden knowledge to be dwelled on in morbid fashion. Of all forms of prevention of delinquency I know of nothing comparable to the confidences and counsels between elders and children."

It is a commonplace of child-saving, of course, that a child placed away by one or both parents loses, in large degree, the sense of family solidarity.

The mother's attitude toward her children and theirs toward her are easily observed as they come and go in the home. A medical-social worker says that if, after the immediate purpose of her visit to a home is accomplished, she has occasion to wait to make a train and busies herself with a book or some work meanwhile, the members of the family, ceasing to react to her, begin to react to one another, and she gets an impression of the home that she might miss altogether otherwise. Have the parents good control over their children? Do the latter seem afraid of either parent? Are they punished in anger, or is self-control exercised? The unfortunate practice of some teachers, nurses, and social workers of dealing with the family's affairs almost entirely through the medium of the children has a definite bearing upon the loss of respect for parents which is so marked a characteristic of the young people in certain families.

Mention has been made of the failure of many children's institutions and societies to study the family backgrounds of their wards. Quite as grave an omission is the failure in many family agencies to individualize each child in the families under their Honesty, p. 177.

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care. Aside from the consultation of school records and possible court records, both of which are items to be covered outside the home, visits to the home itself should lead to inquiries as to the physical and mental condition of every child showing any variation from the normal,1 and should also give us a clear impression of the temperament of each of the children. What are their aptitudes, their ambitions, their small achievements? The sleeping arrangements for the children, both with reference to their healthfulness and their decency, are an important point. So are their recreations. Are their small, individual possessions respected? Have they any? What opportunities have they for sharing pleasures and duties as a part of the family? Is there any indication that they are overworked at home duties? That they are doing sweatshop work at home? Are they sent to charity offices with messages which should be taken there by adults only? Are they sent out to beg? Are they illegally employed? It should be unnecessary to add that inquiries about the children, especially with regard to matters involving their conduct, should not be made in their presence.

1. The Matter of Ages. The ages of any children in the family who are still minors may become so very important at any time that the recording of them with exactness must be urged. The only way to be absolutely sure of ages is to have day, month, and year of birth in each case and to verify these from official records. Their importance is shown from the following list of actions and judgments in which such dates must be used:

a. Prosecution of parent for desertion or abandonment of infant. b. Bastardy charges.

c. Establishing legitimacy or a previous marriage.

d. Identification of a family (where names are incorrectly given).

e. Collecting insurance.

f. Choice of a guardian.

g. Prosecution of parent for cruelty or neglect.

h. Choice of institutions for temporary placing or for commitment.

i. Entering in school and requiring school attendance.

j. Establishing legal date for going to work, for engaging in street trading, etc. k. Establishing legal hours of work.

1 See questionnaires on the Neglected Child and on the Child Possibly Feebleminded in Part III.

2 See p. 256 sq.

1. Protecting from certain injurious employments.

m. Deciding right of parent to collect wages of child or receive support from him. n. Bringing suit for accident indemnity.

o. The age of consent.

p. Fixing period during which alimony is payable in cases of legal separation or divorce of parents.

q. Securing special transportation rates.

r. Establishing the legality of a minor's marriage.1

The secretary of the Massachusetts S. P. C. C. puts this matter more concretely as follows: One day after a child is fourteen he can nominate a guardian; one day after he is fifteen he cannot be sent to the Industrial School; one day after he is sixteen his case cannot be considered in court under the Neglect Law; one day after he is seventeen he cannot be considered a juvenile offender; one day after she is seventeen a girl cannot be committed to the Lancaster School [girls' reformatory].

Not only the month but the exact day is essential in all the foregoing. In recording the ages of parents, the year is usually sufficient, unless a parent also is a minor.

2. The Older Children. The educational side of the children's lives is discussed in Chapter XI, Schools as Sources. It need not detain us here. When the children are about to leave school, their special aptitudes and their ambitions become very important matters. Are they thrust into dead-end occupations? Are they frequently shifted about from one job to another? These are the years in a child's life when highly individualized case work is often needed to supplement whatever plans of vocational guidance have been developed in the schools.

The attitude of the wage-earning child who takes the turning over of all his earnings to his parents as a matter of course, and 1 Miss Amelia Sears, to whom the writer is indebted for most of the items in this list, gives the following additional reasons for seeking the exact ages of children: "If there is a lapse of three or four years between the births of two children in a large family where most of the children have come close together, three possibilities occur to the experienced case worker: First, the parents may have lost a child; second, there may have been a second marriage on the part of either the father or the mother; third, the parents may have been separated for a period. The reply to a question concerning such a lapse sometimes reveals a former desertion hitherto unmentioned; sometimes the separation of the parents at the time of migration to America, when the father may have preceded the mother by several years; or occasionally, a period of incarceration of one of the parents in a penitentiary or a hospital for the insane. On the other hand, the ages of the children not infrequently conflict with statements of the parents concerning desertion, migration or imprisonment. The explanation sometimes discloses efforts at deceit in the matter of the children's ages, and sometimes the fact of promiscuous living on the part of the parents."-The Charity Visitor, p. 29.