usually, by any agency whose connection with a tenant, if known, would be liable to create prejudice against him. The landlord has been known, also, to take advantage of any new philanthropic interest to secure better returns from his property, and, as the relation between landlord and tenant is a business one, it had better remain undisturbed. When this statement was made to a group of social case workers, two of them protested. One of these worked in a small southern city where, in his experience, landlords were actually more lenient with their tenants when they knew that the associated charities was trying to help them. The other worker was a district secretary in the Polish section of a large city, where many of the Polish landlords reported their tenants to the district office for assistance as soon as they failed to pay their rent promptly. The first knew best a group of landlords who wished to share the social agency's burden; the second had in mind a group who wished the society to help them rather than their tenants. The divergence of view illustrates the importance of knowing local conditions and of accepting no social formula without testing it anew with reference to these conditions. A kernel of truth remained unchallenged, however; it was that the social worker must protect his client from all unnecessary annoyance, and must get the needed facts from sources that will assure this protection.

Like foremen in large industrial establishments, the agent of the property is often the right person to see, instead of the landlord. He collects the rent and so is in and out among the people. Sometimes the landlord is also a tenant and sublets. In that case he is a neighbor and is to be dealt with as such. In addition to the neighborhood causes of bias, he is likely to be influenced by an additional one in that the tenant who has paid his rent is a model citizen, and the one who has not is under grave suspicion. The landlord who is not a neighbor can show this same bias. An unfounded complaint made to a society to protect children from cruelty that a certain man's family and children were neglected came from the man's landlord at a time when the rent was unpaid.

On the other hand, there is evidence at hand that landlords, former ones more especially, can often give the one needed clue -the name and address, or information about relatives, work connections, etc.—that leads to helpful co-operation and a possible

solution. In addition to this, their account books are evidence of the amount of the rent, of the way in which it was paid, and when.

In writing of janitresses or caretakers, Miss S. F. Burrows points out1 that we cannot draw conclusions from information secured at former addresses without taking into account the type of housekeeper interviewed, the differences between the family that formerly lived there and herself in nationality and religion, and the loss to her if the tenant moved away in arrears for rent. Despite these drawbacks, Miss Burrows feels that such caretakers can give us some insight into "the attitude of the members of the household toward each other as well as toward their neighbors; the class of relatives or friends frequenting the rooms; their habits of cleanliness, temperance, and morality." She would agree with Mr. McLean, of course, in urging the most rigid analysis of all evidence from old neighborhoods.

IV. OTHER NEIGHBORHOOD SOURCES

The local tradesmen are the most important Neighborhood Sources not yet mentioned. The grocer, the druggist, and the saloon keeper are the best known of these. The grocer is preeminently a neighbor, but his account books reveal purchasing habits and food habits. The druggist's value is illustrated by Miss Sears, who is quoted on page 275. We should know the laws regulating the sale of opiates, and realize that the druggist who observes such laws strictly, especially while they are still new, is a very unpopular man in some neighborhoods.

In most foreign neighborhoods there is some one man who stands out as the representative member, the spokesman of the foreign group. His position is not an official one, though he is often interested in local politics. He is a mine of information about the family life of his compatriots, but he must know and sympathize with the inquirer's interest before he will be frank. This fellow-countryman need not always be a present or a former neighbor. In the smaller foreign groups, he is likely to know any of his own people who are living in the same city.

One very important Neighborhood Source-the social settlement is not included in this chapter because the valuable evi1 In one of the short, unpublished papers referred to in the Preface.

dence that it can give about the neighborhood background and other important matters is considered under Social Agencies as Sources.

SUMMARY OF THIS CHAPTER

1. A tendency to lean heavily upon evidence from Neighborhood Sources marks a low degree of diagnostic skill.

2. Present neighbors are often biased witnesses, because they wish to do a favor or to pay off a grudge. In questioning them there is also risk of humiliating a client. 3. Certain difficulties cannot be solved without the evidence of present neighbors, however. These situations usually center around the need of legal protection or of physical protection for someone whose welfare is seriously endangered.

4. It is possible to utilize former neighbors in a number of ways that are less hazardous than are consultations with present neighbors, especially in cases in which other evidence is contradictory or in which clues are not plentiful. In the latter case a former neighborhood will often supply a supplementary clue.

5. The evidence of neighbors aside, neighborhoods speak for themselves, and their physical, moral, and social characteristics-those of the house lived in, of the shops, the streets, the local amusements, the play facilities—should all be noted.

6. Present landlords should be avoided usually by representatives of any agency whose connection with a tenant, if known, would be liable to create a prejudice against him.

7. The local tradesmen—the grocer, the druggist, the saloon keeper-are Neighborhood Sources.

8. In foreign neighborhoods there is often some one man whose co-operation is valuable because he stands out as the group leader, as the natural spokesman and representative of his compatriots.

CHAPTER XV

MISCELLANEOUS SOURCES

HIS review of outside sources of information and their uses

Tis

is nearing its conclusion. One of the most important sources

of all is the social agencies themselves, but treatment of this source has been reserved for the next chapter for reasons there explained. The other sources to which no attention has yet been given fall into three groups: (1) public departments not directly engaged in social work, (2) business sources other than employers and neighborhood tradesmen, (3) fraternal orders. None of these requires very extended notice.

It was hoped that even a limited inquiry into the outside sources now being used by social agencies would discover some useful ones which were still quite generally neglected. As a matter of fact, a number of these have been unearthed. Every new source evaluated and held in reserve for the right occasion enriches social case work and gives it greater flexibility. There is crudity everywhere in the processes of an art so new, but the only discouraging case work practice is that which settles back into a certain routine, a certain round of things invariably done, without any fresh thought or spirit of adventure. By comparison with the efforts of those who are less experienced, such routine work may seem, on first examination, fairly good, but there is a blight upon it; closer scrutiny shows that no experiments are being tried, no established method is being revised or discarded. Work not half so good may contain far more promise, therefore, if it bears marks of dissatisfaction with the tool and its manipulation.

One of these marks is the habit of seeking unusual sources of knowledge and co-operation. Without imagination we do not find even the obvious source that has been overlooked. Like Mr. Deland's advertiser of carpets, who realized that families were

1 Deland, Lorin F.: Imagination in Business, p. 43. New York, Harper and Brothers, 1909.

more likely to buy floor coverings when they moved to another house and then, after repeated experiments in wrong directions, discovered that the one man who always knew when people were going to move was the moving van proprietor, we must be able to think of familiar things in a fresh and unfamiliar way. The unusual sources mentioned in this chapter under business sources are mentioned not so much for their value in themselves as for the process by which they were brought to light. The same enterprise that, in the agencies studied, discovered and used these will discover and use others.

I. PUBLIC OFFICIALS

Educational and health authorities have been discussed in earlier chapters,' and public charitable and correctional agencies and institutions are more appropriately considered under social agencies than under miscellaneous public agencies.

1. Police. From one point of view the police seem an important neighborhood source, so identified are they with the neighborhood life. Nor are they infrequently consulted. In two of the three cities studied, they rank seventeenth and eighteenth respectively and in one even third in frequency of use.

The idea has often been advanced that the police forces of our cities should be made up of men with the point of view and the training of social workers. Boies in 1893 was probably the first one to take this view, but even a quarter of a century later the actual situation hardly justifies the classification of police departments under social agencies, though advances in that direction have been made, notably in New York City, under the administration of Police Commissioner Woods. A probation officer some of whose case histories were studied for this book declares that the policeman is a too much neglected factor in social endeavor, that he knows the families on his beat thoroughly, and is very sensitive to the critical attitude taken toward him by some social workers; after his personal friendship is won, there is nothing that he will not do. True enough, but the attitude thus described

1 See Chapters XI, Schools as Sources, and X, Medical Sources.

* Boies, Henry M.: Prisoners and Paupers, p. 241. New York, G. P. Putnam's Sons, 1893.