whole matter by naïvely stating he was in the habit of selling liquor to the D children for their mother's use; a statement of quantities, dates, and hours at which it was sold brought, when produced in court, the first conclusive evidence to the attention of the much troubled judge.

Similarly, court officials and the charity organization society united to secure data sufficient to satisfy the judges of two courts in which various members of the C family were simultaneously arraigned. Pending the collection of evidence, Mrs. C was released from the municipal court on suspended sentence, having been charged with open and notorious adultery, and the children were paroled from the juvenile court, pending the disposition of their mother's case. The school and the landlord and various relatives were willing to give general statements; it remained, however, for the neighbors in the rear tenement on the same lot to produce the evidence of an eye witness necessary to convict the mother.

The rule of visiting present neighbors only in cases necessitating court evidence holds in relation to families in which possibly there is little viciousness, but where the abuse of the children is the result of ignorance and of low standards.

The old grandmother and the drunken uncle to whom Grace and Johnny M were paroled from the juvenile court never meant to harm the children, but still the home was unfit and a menace to the children, both of whom were subnormal. The efforts of the probation officer to secure sufficient evidence to remove the children from this home were curiously frustrated by the fact that during the last months Johnny had improved continuously and unaccountably in health, appearance, and even weight, in view of which fact it was difficult to persuade the judge that the home was entirely unfit. The explanation came when the visitor seeking evidence of carousals in the home unexpectedly found the "good neighbor" in the baker's wife, who proudly accounted for Johnny's improvement by the fact that she had fed him regularly for weeks and, of late, mightily interested in his improvement, had also been weighing him regularly.

The justification of the use of any method of investigation as harsh as this visiting of present neighbors exists only in its beneficent results to the family. If we grant that, as stated in the beginning, the use of this method is limited to such family situations as contain inherent dangers, and keep in mind the solution of the family difficulties compatible with the best and lasting interest of all concerned, it is conceivable that this conquering, this gaining the ascendancy through force-mental not brute, it is true, but still through force-may prove the only means of aiding the family.

This was written when Miss Sears was the district secretary of a charity organization society and it gives the point of view of a family rehabilitation agency. Its findings are confirmed by our case record reading in other social agencies.

The records of an S. P. C. C. show many instances of the usefulness of present neighbors in securing proof of insanity, of immorality, of the need of other guardians for children, or of their physical abuse. These records also show that neighbors are capable, out of pure spite, of lodging unjustifiable complaints against parents.

A hospital social service department finds neighbors invaluable in insanity cases. One such case was that of a woman about whose daily ways, as evidence of her insanity, it was difficult to get any information. A neighbor in the same house helped the department to procure a clear picture. Another patient came to the hospital in such an excitable state that she was probably too dangerous to leave at large. One of the hospital social workers took her home, but found no one there. A neighbor in the same tenement house gave the necessary addresses of the patient's children.

A woman who was keeping a disorderly tenement petitioned the court for a revocation of the decree that made a social worker the guardian of her thirteen-year-old daughter. The mother's petition was denied after a long hearing. She afterwards told a probation officer that the case was going her way at the trial until a neighbor testified whose apartment was immediately over hers. When seen before the trial, the woman's landlord and the police had denied that anything was wrong, though the tenant had been in jail before on the charge of keeping a disorderly house. In court, however, the police confirmed the neighbor's story.

There is great difficulty in persuading neighbors to tell in court what they know about the neglect and physical abuse of children, and often no other witnesses can be secured to testify to the specific acts of cruelty justifying removal.

A school principal complained to the S. P. C. C. that a stepmother was suspected of abusing her husband's children. One neighbor said, when seen, that the stepmother had been drinking and carousing for more than two years back. A second, a city employe, said that he could tell a horrible tale if he would, but that it was none of his business. A third had seen the small girl hard at work before 5 a. m. The city employe was summoned at the trial but did not appear, and the court returned the children to the home to see whether they would not be treated better. But how was this to be ascertained? The wife of the witness who failed to appear was seen and reported further fighting, indecent talk, and the girl's being dragged into the house by the hair of her head by the stepmother, but this informant would not go into court because she was afraid of the woman in question. Another neighbor confirmed this story, but also refused to testify. There was no difficulty in getting a number of statements that tallied in all important particulars, but there was not a court witness among them.

The same society received an anonymous complaint that the children were neglected in a certain family. Their mother said that the complaint must have come from colored neighbors with whom she had quarreled. The policeman on the beat, the visiting housekeeper of the charity organization society, and the children's teacher all believed that the charge was unfounded. The family was persuaded to move to a better neighborhood, and the charity organization society continued its visits.

Critical comments on the records of a large family agency contain the following: "Much of the information gathered from present housekeepers and janitresses is contradictory and of nega

tive value. Often it is one-sided, and often totally misleading. The reason for using this source and statements from previous residences which are near the present one is that they are easiest to get." Consultation with such sources to the exclusion of better ones, or their frequent use at all in cases not requiring court action, marks a low degree of social skill.

II. FORMER NEIGHBORS

Under the head of former neighbors may be included the tenants at each former residence, the neighbors living nearest to these who were there at the same time as our client, the local tradesmen, and the landlords or real estate agents who rented to our client, also the housekeepers, janitresses, etc., connected with the properties. Landlords and tradesmen will be considered separately.

When removal has been only a short distance away, or when the community is a small one, some of the objections made to interviewing present neighbors apply also to seeing former ones. In neighborhoods well removed from the present residence inquiries quietly made do no harm and sometimes reveal facts of value, especially in those obscure cases in which the evidence is very contradictory or in which clues are not plentiful. The former neighbor's experience is removed from the enthusiasms and irritations of daily intercourse and has acquired a certain degree of perspective. It is still open to the objection, however, that it is liable to be the experience of one who is not a good observer. Especially important, in recording such statements, therefore, is the habit of writing beneath them an evaluation of the witness's personality. Such brief impressions must be clearly set apart as impressions only, though it is often possible to add to them the testimony of others, such as, "has a good name in the neighborhood for trustworthiness," "said by the local tradesmen to be quarrelsome," "standing in the community unusually good; regarded as a leader by his fellow-countrymen," etc.

When our list of clues includes five or six previous residences, a good principle of choice is to select those in which the client has lived the longest during the last five years. It may be necessary, should we obtain contradictory statements from these, to visit all the others.

If a family has arrived from another city and has immediately become dependent, previous residences in other places may be our only clues outside the family group at first, and out of these scant materials a plan of treatment must be devised. Where there have been many changes of both residence and neighborhood within the same city, the character of the different neighborhoods is some indication of an upward or downward trend in standard of livingoften too the very time at which the stream of the family life was bent from its natural course is thus suggested.

Sometimes unfavorable rumors in present neighborhoods are disproved by a former neighborhood record. Sometimes, on the other hand, the withholding of all clues to trustworthy information is one sign among others of an anti-social purpose, and it is necessary, for the protection of innocent people whose welfare is directly involved, or even for the protection of the community in some cases, to push forward with whatever slender thread may be discoverable. Here, too, the first clue is likely to be a previous residence. Thus, we are able to utilize former neighborhoods in a number of ways that are not only different from but less hazardous than present neighborhood uses.

The matron of a children's charity reported of a certain cobbler whose family were in distress that a relative of hers, who lived in the neighborhood, heard that the man was employing three assistants and doing unusually well. At the cobbler's former residence and shop this rumor was discredited.

In a city in which the charitable work for families had recently been reorganized and an attempt made to substitute the idea of rehabilitation for the old, promiscuous dosing, a citizen asked the reorganized agency to visit a woman who had been a persistent beggar for many years, adding, in the letter containing the request, this suggestive sentence: "Our agencies have looked after her many times, but I feel that some action should be taken to change the general condition of her life, so that neither an organization nor individuals should be called upon to make so many decisions per year in her behalf." Expert after fifteen years of experience with the aimless questioning of many different givers, the woman would give very little information about herself, except a long recital of misfortunes and the statement that her only child was feeble-minded. She did happen to mention one previous residence, however, and near it was found a housewife who had lived in the same place for years and knew that her former neighbor had several children, one of whom was a policeman. When the policeman was seen at his home, he told of three married brothers and sisters, and of seven uncles and aunts, some of them well-to-do. So far as could be discovered, none of these had ever been conferred with before by the agencies that had been making the "many decisions per year," nor had any evi

dence been brought to light before that the woman's begging was a monomania, as proved to be the case.

These supplementary clues to other sources (in the case just cited clues furnished by the former neighbor to the married children and by them to the other relatives) are among the best results of former neighborhood visits.

There is a great deal of evidence at hand, as a result of case reading, of the extreme untrustworthiness of the ordinary run of former neighborhood opinion. The following are fair examples:

"At 302 E Street landlord not at home; neighbors said family were a hard lot; man and woman drinking all the time; evicted on account of non-payment of rent. Had lived in house five years. Man had been discharged from the railroad because he ran over a child and killed it. Said he was all right except for drink, but woman was a wicked, bad creature." The evidence of the former landlord, seen later, of the former employers of the man and of the woman, and of the family doctor proved that these statements were altogether untrue.

The janitress at the former address "has lived there about five years. Knew all about the family. Says she is a beautiful lady, and that the husband gambles. 'She drank a little but nothing to hurt,' and more in the same strain." Further inquiry brought out the truth-the janitress and the subject of the investigation used to drink together, and both were untrustworthy.

"It is necessary to remember," writes Francis H. McLean, "that while others whom we consult may mislead . . here we enter the domain of mere gossip. . . . Is it not fair to say that one ordinarily cannot expect to receive a just picture of the whole family from the angle of the old neighborhood connections, but that they may bring certain concrete elements into relief?" 1 So much for neighborhood statements, but we must not forget that neighborhoods, both past and present, speak for themselves, that the physical condition of the house lived in2 and its environment-the character of the shops, the streets, the local amusements, the play facilities-are all eloquent to one who brings to them an observant eye and a good basis of comparison.

III. LANDLORDS

Here as with employers and neighbors we must discriminate between present and former. The present landlord is to be avoided,

1 In one of the short, unpublished papers referred to in the Preface.

2 See p. 151.