record can be secured better by a business man than by a social worker. Sometimes a prospective employer may know our client well already, and may have a real interest in his welfare.

His

But usually a prospective employer should not be seen. interest is slight, and the one fact that he alone can bear witness to is the offer of work. Sometimes it is necessary to have this fact. If, for instance, an agency dealing with homeless or nonresident men is asked to pay the board of a number of them until they can get their first wages, the statement that work awaits. them must be verified in some way, and it cannot always be verified without inquiry of the prospective employer. In such cases, the client's interests must be safeguarded; the promise of work must be confirmed without telling anything of the worker's affairs.

IV. METHOD

In addition to the analysis of a work record and the discussion of the social worker's relations to Employers, past and present, certain details of method should be mentioned, some of which apply generally and some only in accident cases, or to the work of the foreign day laborer.

1. The Approach. Addresses of Employers can be made fuller and more accurate by reference to the city directory. In choosing among a number of former employers, those for whom a client has worked the longest in recent years and the one for whom he worked the longest of all are the most important to see, though contradictory evidence may make it necessary to see all the others. Sometimes an Employer knows our client in other ways, as fellow member of some church or social organization, as an old friend of his family, etc. These relations that are outside of business should be noted. There is need of communication with the Employer direct, instead of through the former or present worker or his family.

An Italian widow told a family agency that her daughter of seventeen was earning from $5.00 to $6.00 a week in a stocking mill, and the girl herself confirmed this. At the mill she was found to have averaged $8.50 a week for the last eight weeks.

A boy of eighteen, who was believed by his mother, a widow with a consumptive daughter, to be earning $4.00 a week, and so was paying only $3.00 into the home, was found, upon inquiry, to be earning $8.00. An interview with the boy confirmed the social worker's opinion that the mother did not know.

Often a wife does not know her husband's earnings, and her statements, made in good faith, are not accurate.

From what has already been said it is evident that personal visits to industrial establishments are far more fruitful than telephone messages or letters. An appointment, though, to see the best member of the establishment at the best hour for him should usually be secured over the telephone. Unfortunately, letters are the only means of communication in some large establishments and in some large communities. Rules forbidding personal interviews may possibly be set aside, however, by seeking the cooperation of proprietors through channels that are particularly influential with them. Perfunctory responses should not be accepted as the only ones procurable without making a determined effort to win social interest higher up. On the other hand, good service can be had through letters and telephone messages when all inquiries about work records in a large concern are handled by one person, and the agency or worker inquiring happens to have already established a good understanding with this interested source. In industrial establishments employing a social worker the fact should be known, of course, and the approach be made through him.

Get the Employer's point of view before deciding how much can safely be told of a client's affairs, though more of what he knows will be revealed, usually, after he has been told a good deal. Often a reference to the foreman is the best result that can be had from the business office of a firm. "In our dealing with a certain railroad," writes Miss Florence Hutsinpillar, "we invariably get a negligible result by telephoning to the office, but never yet have we failed to get information of value when we pick our way through the yards to the shops where we can find the foreman."

1

Equally emphatic testimony is at hand as to the value of forewomen. One social worker believes that the forewoman of a factory has a rare opportunity to do constructive social work for girls, and cites instances of the influence of certain forewomen who are still the exception.

2. Accident Cases. In cases of accident coming under the new compensation laws, procedure must be regulated by the provisions 1 In one of the short, unpublished papers referred to in the Preface.

of the state law. Social case work in what used to be a most unsatisfactory group of cases has been greatly facilitated by these new laws. They have not done away with the need of individual social work altogether because there are countless adjustments to be made, and social case workers who have the detailed facts and are seeking no personal advantage can be of great service, moreover, to the arbitration boards responsible for fixing standards. A group of case records brought to the attention of the writer illustrates the way in which one family case worker was able, by energetic inquiry, to challenge with success an unfair ruling of the accident insurance companies as to the average wage of longshoremen. The decision of an arbitration board in the first of these cases established a new and higher standard of compensation.

For cases not coming under a compensation law and for which no lawyer has been engaged, Miss Hutsinpillar warns the social worker to distrust his own legal knowledge. It is necessary to hear the Employer's side of the accident, but, in doing so, to compromise the employe's interests in no way, and to commit him in this first interview to no settlement. "However pressing the necessity of the family, let the need be met in some other way until the evidence is fully in hand. When the employer assures us that there is no case but says that, because we come in the name of charity, he will give the employe's widow $100, it is here that the long sight, the view into the future, is much needed." Miss Hutsinpillar recommends compromise later, however, in those cases in which, after good legal advice, it is evident that no legal claim can be established under existing laws.

3. Foreign Workmen. Occupations in the old country furnish clues to industrial aptitudes and possibilities over here. If a man has been a skilled basket maker in Italy, it is a pity to let him continue to sort rags in New York or Chicago. Often the foreign workman is known by another name arbitrarily given to him by his foreman or mates at the shop, and it is necessary to discover what this name is before he can be identified at his work place. In large concerns he has a number, and may have his number tag or metal check with him at the time of the first interview. If he speaks no English, it may be necessary to name over the leading Employers of his neighborhood in order that he may recognize his

own place of employment. He may have a preference for seasonal work instead of a steady job; he may object to working in midwinter, for instance. If so, how has he made out before at dull times in his kind of work, and how are his fellow workers managing to get on?

Sailors (foreign and native) are given discharge papers from the boats on which they have served, stating, among other things, seaman's name, age, place of birth, date of entry and discharge, place of discharge, character, ability, capacity in which he served, and seamanship. The usual entries regarding character, ability, conduct, and seamanship are "G" for good and "V G" for very good; the Cunard Line uses only "G." "DR" (decline to report) is used when a record is unsatisfactory. Discharge certificates containing anything less than "V G" (or "G" from the Cunard Line) have a way of getting lost. Inability to produce a certificate may be due to another cause, however, for in the American service, especially the coastwise service, the law requiring the issuance of these certificates is very slackly enforced; in the English service it is strictly enforced.

The work record of a day laborer is more difficult, because he may work for contractors whose operations are now in one place and now in another. Every day laborer knows where he was last paid and by whom, however, and it is possible, as Miss Sears points out,1 to get his Employer's name in this way. The Italian bank may be mentioned, in passing, as a place that is often the employment agency for Italians, and often closely related to the padrone.

In the family of an Italian day laborer which applied to a charity organization society, the woman was sickly, there were four children under twelve, the man came and went as he pleased, and seldom supported his family. Upon one of his periodic returns he claimed to have earned only $60 in six months over and above board and travelling expenses to and from a small place 628 miles away in which he had done pick and shovel work on the railroad. The local office of the railroad that employed him provided the society with the name and address of the construction department chief in the city nearest to the small place where he claimed to have worked. A night letter dispatch to the charity organization society in that city secured the interest of this construction department. The dispatch had asked length of time working, pay, cost of board, reason for leaving, whether he worked full time, and whether cold weather had interfered with his work. All of these points were covered in the answer, which showed that the man had been earning enough, over and 1 The Charity Visitor, p. 30.

above his expenses, to have sent money home regularly, and that he left of his own accord.

V. MISCELLANEOUS WORK SOURCES

The miscellaneous work sources consulted in the three cities studied were trade unions, fellow workmen, welfare managers, store detectives, employment offices, and, in one case, the superintendent of a school for telephone operators. Store detectives appear in the records of adult probation departments only. Employment offices, as now organized, are of little value in any search for detailed knowledge of a worker's possibilities.

Unions and fellow workmen are the most important members of this miscellaneous group, though neither seems to have been used very frequently. One reason, perhaps, for the infrequency of consultations with unions is the difficulty of discovering where and when the union secretary may be seen.

In one of the cases studied, a bricklayer's union helped a child-saving agency to discover a deserting father; in another a Russian cigar maker who was incurably ill was given complete support through union sick benefits and through special subscriptions from union members; in another case, also that of a cigar maker, the man was not a union member, but was suffering from a disfiguring and progressive skin disease, and the cigar makers' union raised $60 which it turned over to a hospital social service department to be spent for him, also offering to be responsible for his funeral expenses. In this same hospital social service department was found the record of a man who had been expelled from a trade union because he had accused its officers of dishonesty. Later it came out that, at the time, he had had the morphine habit. After the hospital had practically cured him of it, his union agreed to reinstate him if the hospital doctor would state in writing that the man's inability to tell the truth had been due to the habit. This the doctor was able to do.

Fellow workmen are especially generous in cases of sickness, either the sickness of their shop mate or of one of his family. A visit to the shop of a sick breadwinner often brings out the fact that "the boys in the shop" have taken up a subscription for the man. The one who has this subscription list, as Miss Hutsinpillar notes, is a valuable source of suggestion and co-operation. He knows the sick man and has a warm personal interest in his affairs; the social worker, on the other hand, knows more than he about the medical and social resources of the community and how to use them.

In preparing the questionnaire on desertion in Part III the