her start in again to do work outside her own home is very doubtful. It will be necessary to keep in constant touch with this man by volunteer aid or long reach from the office-letters and sometimes calls. There are all the tendencies present for a complicated problem five years hence. Deal with them now!

5. Desertion and Inebriety. These two disabilities, which are treated more fully in two of the questionnaires, illustrate the controlling influence upon diagnosis of a program of social treatment. In the days when no distinction was made between the social treatment of the wife and children of a deserter and that of a widow's family there was little reason for mastering the history of the desertion or desertions and the characteristics of the deserter. But with the development of a new sense of social responsibility for the deserter's movements and relations to his wife and children, with provisions for his extradition, release on probation, payments to family through the court, etc., has come a new reason for differential treatment based upon differential diagnosis. Is he really a deserter, or are there reasons to believe that he is in communication with his family and still in their immediate neighborhood? The history of former desertions, if any, may throw light upon the reasons for this one and upon the man's probable movements. Even if not in communication with his own family, more often than not he will have continued to keep up relations with someone with his own relatives, with former shop mates, or with old cronies. Are his relatives inclined to shield him or are they harboring him perhaps? If there is any chance of taking court action, proof of his marriage may be necessary. Not all deserters are equally culpable. An understanding of their difficulties and their points of view makes it clear that, given the right impetus, many of them are far from hopeless as family men. It is more important to understand the main drift of their lives than the one incident which brings them to our attention, whether this is an isolated one or the climax in a series of mistaken choices. The foundations of such an understanding are best laid in our early contacts with the Family Group.

Alcoholism is a disability which presents quite as great a variety of possibilities as desertion. In fact, there is no social disability in the treatment of which more use can be made of such indices to personality as will power, sociability, capacity for affection, and

susceptibility to religious influence. The problem has its medical aspects; the man's bodily and mental condition and the habits and mentality of his forebears are often the most important factors, but the social side is important too. Such environmental factors as the temperament of his wife, the comfort of his home, the family cooking, the conditions and nature of his daily employment, the character of his companions, need only to be mentioned to suggest a possible relation to his drink habits. These habits themselves vary in different men. Some are accidental drunkards; some free drinkers who occasionally get drunk; some are unable to touch. alcohol without being overcome by it; some always drink with others; some are solitary drinkers; some are using drugs also or have substituted alcohol for a drug. "The treatment of the inebriate can best be expressed," says Dr. Neff, "in the word 'individualization,'"' and the foundations of individualized social treatment are best laid in early contacts with and observations of the Family Group.

III. THE WIFE AND MOTHER

The household speaks for the wife, answering unasked questions about her as it does not about the husband. The wife's maiden name will aid in identifying her kindred and will enable references who knew her only before her marriage to place her. (In Italian families she is still often known by her name instead of her husband's.) Her maiden name may also aid in bringing to light the records of related families under treatment. She remembers birthdays and ages and church connections better than the man does, and is the first-hand authority on the family budget, more especially the outgo. Her schooling and her work and wages before marriage help to place her, as does also her account of how

1 "There is a passage in one of Miss Octavia Hill's essays that throws a flood of light on this question. She says that the love of adventure, the restlessness so characteristic of the Anglo-Saxon, makes him, under certain conditions, the greatest of explorers and colonizers, and that this same energy, under other conditions, helps to brutalize him. Dissatisfied with the dull round of duties that poverty enforces upon him, he seeks artificial excitement in the saloon and the gambling den. It is useless to preach contentment to such a man. We must substitute healthier excitements, other and better wants, or society will fail to reform him."— Friendly Visiting among the Poor by M. E. Richmond, p. 128.

2 See Proceedings of National Conference of Charities and Correction for 1911 (Boston), p. 135.

she and her husband first met, and of their pre-matrimonial acquaintance. Details of her work since marriage, of its relation to her health, to care of home and children, to her husband's exertions, and the attitude of her family and friends toward her work are all of them important.

If, in tracing the main current of the family life, it becomes evident that there have been marked changes in home standards, what has been the wife's share in these changes? If her home standard was fair at one time and now is low, what factors have entered in extreme poverty, too many children, overwork, her own or other family illnesses? In estimating the physical influence of childbearing, the children who have died and any miscarriages must also be included. Not only her husband's habits. but her own must be known and understood. If, for example, she is a gossip who neglects her household duties and spends much time away from home, what poverty of opportunity and of interests, what recreational need that can possibly be met is behind this? The drink habit is not always confined to the man of the family. Even where husband and wife both drink the one habit may have two quite different histories.

1. Physical Aspects of Homemaking. A household may be in a good deal of disorder and still be essentially cleanly. The reverse is true, of course, and the distinction is worth making. Has the wife learned to sew? Does she take pleasure in making the most of the family wardrobe, or has she lost or never had this interest in clothes? What does she know about cooking? Is she a good buyer?

Upon questions of "income and outgo" the wife and mother is, as has been said, the best authority. Details given under this head in the first of the questionnaires need not be repeated here, but one important point, not capable of outside verification, should be emphasized. The food habits of the family must be known in many forms of case work, because these habits are so closely related to the family's health and to its efficient use of income. The homemaker knows what food is bought and eaten, of course, but unless she keeps accounts, her estimate as to the total cost of any item of her family budget is worth very little. A case worker and

1 The wife does not always know the earnings of her husband and older children, however.

dietitian tells of an English-speaking Polish woman with five children who, when asked how much per week was needed to buy food for her family, said, with a manner that indicated the amount might seem excessive to her visitor, "I think I must have $2.00."

No mere account of food purchases and prices, moreover, can give all the data needed, for details of choice, preparation, and consumption are half the story. And any inferences drawn from these details must take into account not only such obvious factors as the size of the family, and the ages and occupations of its members, but those conditions of health and those national and religious characteristics which have a marked influence upon food consumption. Even so definite a matter as the size of the family is complicated, in some immigrant households, by the presence of boarders for whom the housewife cooks food provided separately by each boarder.1

Another modifying factor is the amount of time and skill that the housewife has to devote to homekeeping. Most economies in money call for an increased outlay of work and skill. In fact, the housewife's skill is "an asset which must be included in the family resources."2

Any study of food questions has a very stimulating effect upon the homemaker when she shares in the whole process. She needs some such stimulation of interest, for her devotion to a difficult. round of tasks is often taken entirely for granted.

When we confine our attention to the strictly diagnostic aspects of the food question, the greatest difficulty encountered will be with the housewife who cannot keep good accounts or any. This handicap means more frequent visits, some of them at meal times perhaps. As the housewife knows what she has just bought, a start in getting the rough outlines, at least, of food consumption may be had by working on a day basis and trying to discover, concerning each of the staple articles which every family is supposed to have, just what has been bought and eaten.

1 What is left over commonly goes to the family, hence it becomes practically impossible to estimate the money expended by the family or the amount of food that they have. The visitor may judge unfairly too, when she sees the boarder's chicken cooking and assumes that it belongs to the family. On the other hand, the family may claim that its own bountiful meal belongs to the boarders.

2 Byington, Margaret F.: Homestead, the Households of a Mill Town, p. 74. New York, Russell Sage Foundation Publication, Charities Publication Committee, 1910.

The dietitian of a public department administering mothers' pensions reports the following items of experience: "The department requires that household accounts be kept by the pensioners, and, though an untrained woman seldom keeps accurate accounts, wilful inaccuracies usually show either (1) impossible amounts of a given article, (2) costs which do not correspond with amounts purchased, or (3) monotonous repetition of the same few items. Entire absence of some essential is often an unintentional inaccuracy."

This dietitian finds that the best avenue of approach to the food question is an anemic or undersized child. The attention of the mother is called to the fact that the child does not look particularly strong, and she is asked whether he has a good appetite. What did he eat for breakfast this morning? How does this compare with what the other children ate? If, as frequently happens, the breakfast was "bread and coffee," this gives a chance for explaining the value of milk and cereals. The topic of the children's luncheon, especially that of the school children, naturally follows. Do they come home to a hot luncheon or do they buy bakery buns and cakes? Is their chief meal at noon or at night? Is it a meal at which all sit down together to eat, or do the different members of the family eat how and where they please? Is the dietary for adults and for younger children the same? When the mothers have once realized that an interest in the health of the family and not a desire to cut down monthly allowances is behind these questions, the response has usually been a cordial one.

Each visitor of this department is provided with a schedule of the normal weights of children of given ages, and secures, for the neighborhood in which she is working, a list of prices of staple foods in the stores in which prices and quality are most satisfactory.

After the actual food habits of the family have been clearly grasped a thing that cannot usually be achieved in one or two visits the question of finding the remedy for defects and inadequacies remains unsettled. A fair standard of food values and costs should be the basis of any budgetary estimate, but, as regards costs, the modifications necessary for each locality and each marked change in market rates should be worked out more carefully than they have been by family agencies. A unit of cost per person estimated for the whole country years ago can be very misleading. We must know also the health conditions and the family or individual idiosyncrasies that should modify our estimate. If all of the family are found to be in good physical condition on a smaller food allowance than our estimated local standard, should the standard be urged, or should this variation be ignored? All of

1 Dr. Healy says in Honesty (p. 105) that, unexpectedly, he found the overuse of tea and coffee one of the most frequent causes of delinquency in children.