is not the professional but the neighborhood state of mind. It is only in the capacity of social witness, of course, that the policeman is here considered, and even so the country as a whole, not any one of its cities, is in mind. Often the policeman holds so many relations, political and other, to the people who live on his beat that he is not willing to tell what he knows when the telling would have great social value and would be in no wise subversive of discipline; nor is he always willing to discover the things which it is his special task to discover.

A worker in a child-protective agency suggests that, in cases where such personal and political complications are likely to interfere with the patrolman's usefulness, it is often better to seek information through the sergeant of police. He is in line for promotion, is anxious for court work for that reason, and, though still closely in touch with his district, is no longer so dependent upon the good will of its people. The individual policeman has been known to withhold testimony against a family whose children were neglected, for the reason that he was indebted to them for a useful tip or for some other favor. Moreover, the statements of those members of the force that are known by the judge to be untrustworthy are likely to be discounted in court.

After these drawbacks are given due weight, it is still not only necessary to consult patrolmen in a good many instances, but perfectly possible, often, to establish an understanding with them which will win very valuable co-operation.

Usually three men patrol each beat, one in the daytime and two who alternate at night. There is no record system. What each one knows is known to him only, so that, where it is important to cover the whole ground, each one of the three must be seen. It is necessary to know the hours at which patrolmen and different special officers can be found at the police station. The night officers are particularly useful in child neglect cases, as the disorderly conduct that will be accepted as proof of neglect often takes place at night.

In the search for runaway boys and mentally disturbed adults who have disappeared, it is necessary to communicate with the police both in town and elsewhere. The chief of police in smaller places is consulted a great deal by social workers at a distance,

who seek from him information as to the standing of former and present residents, as to records of arrest, etc. If it is possible to judge by case record reading, the police departments in these communities are giving a better grade of social service than in the large cities. They deal with many problems that are divided among the varied agencies of the large place, and this fact alone develops in them a degree of social experience.

2. Other Officials. The list of Miscellaneous Sources actually used in the 2,800 cases reviewed shows occasional consultations, though these are by no means frequent, with the following state and city departments or officials: State, employment bureau, department of labor, controller, board of insanity, penal commissioner. City, district attorney, city solicitor, assessor, treasurer, sheriff, street inspector, store inspector, superintendent of newsboys, town clerk, chairman of the board of supervisors.

Courts are not included here because, often, they have probation officers and other social workers associated with them and are consulted as social agencies. More often still their official records are the real source, and these are considered under Documentary Sources. When it is necessary to consult an official of the court it will usually be found that the clerk remembers the case in question better than the judge. In like manner, the town clerk in small communities, or the official whose duties correspond to those of the town clerk, is the one who knows most about his fellow citizens. The town librarian is another possible source of community information, though he does not appear in the statistics gathered.

Social workers must remember that most of these city officials are desk men and take a desk point of view. The impressions that they get, aside from the documentary evidence that passes through their hands, are the impressions not of those who work in the open but of those who hear only the client's stories usually, and who accept or reject these without the analysis or the readjustment of view that follows naturally upon frequent home and neighborhood visiting. Whereas the policeman is too much exposed to neighborhood influences these others are not enough so. It is often the social worker's task to explain to them the modifying circumstances of an individual case as the facts come to light. Only in personal

interviews, where the desk man has the opportunity to explain his own point of view at length, can he be induced to modify it. Again, the official who is already interested in a personal problem is antagonized by letters and telephone messages, unless he has had enough experience with social work processes to understand their details without careful preliminary explanations, which are given much better face to face.

The federal officials most often consulted are those in the bureau of immigration, postmasters, United States consuls, 2 and officials of the War and Navy Departments.

Foreign consuls appeared frequently in the case records read for this volume. Here are a few of the matters about which they were consulted: 3

A German consul in an American city was appealed to about a young German officer who claimed that he had been obliged to leave the army because the death of a relative had reduced his income. He asked to be sent to New York, where he was sure that he could get work with the Hamburg-American Line. The consul was able to throw some light on the young man's finances and on his chances of getting work in New York.

An Austrian consul knew the region from which a miner, blinded through his own carelessness, had originally come. There was no provision for the blind there and the man had no family. The consul's first-hand knowledge of this Austrian province determined a hospital social service department against deportation and in favor of training for work in this country.

A Greek consul in one of our states undertook to get information in another about the mother of a Greek girl who had run away from home because, as she claimed, her mother had abused her. The consul, after inquiry by letter, gave the woman a very good name, but a social worker, sent to the mother's own community later, discovered that the girl's charges were more than justified.

A Greek consul helped a widow whose children were still in Greece, first by paying her board while she received special treatment to recover the use of her arm; second by asking his own sister in Athens to secure certain information about the children.

II. CERTAIN BUSINESS SOURCES

Employers and neighborhood tradesmen by no means exhaust the list of business sources that may be used in social diagnosis. 1 See p. 336. 2 See p. 326. These were all consultations before August, 1914. The European war may have modified the method of approach and the service procured in some instances. See Chapters XII, Employers and Other Work Sources, and XIV, Neighborhood Sources.

A firm with whom our client has had business dealings in the past, or someone who is an authority on the fluctuations of a certain market, or on a certain industrial process may be an invaluable witness.

Sometimes it happens that the business dealings may have been of the most casual kind-the moving of furniture, its storage, its purchase on the installment plan, the collection of an insurance premium, the delivery of an express package-but the details of the transaction may reveal some bit of evidence that is all the more valuable because it is circumstantial and not originally related to the matter at issue.

A charity organization society was helping the drinking wife of a workman employed in another city. The wife was on probation, and the husband was sending money to the society for the support of his family. Two insurance agents who called to collect weekly premiums at the woman's home were able to give clues that aided later in the protection of the children. The relation of such agents with the homes that they visit is, of course, only a business one; these men were not willing to have the information obtained from them used as evidence in court. treated as strictly confidential.

It was

A girl who came to a dispensary was so dangerously ill that she was transferred to the city hospital. The medical diagnosis was obscure, and the only social information was her address. This was a lodging house to which she had recently come; the landlady knew nothing but the name of the expressman who had brought the girl's trunk. From him was procured an earlier address and from that previous residence a pertinent history.

A summons for the father of six neglected children could not be served because the family had moved, present residence unknown. The former landlady was able to give the license number of the moving van that took their goods, however, and through the police this number was traced to a local firm. They kept no record when a family paid for the moving in advance, as this family had, but they obtained the address from the driver of the team.

A charity organization society over 1,100 miles away wrote to an S. P. C. C. in the interest of a child whose mother had deserted her home in the society's city, had taken her little boy with her, and was living with a man not her husband. A neighbor known to the S. P. C. C. was asked by them to take the number of the moving van, if this couple moved away. As a matter of fact, however, they were found in another city through the records of a sewing machine company from which they had made an installment purchase. The father of the boy was sent to this third city and there secured the legal custody of his child.

An Italian family, upon its first application to a relief agency, often claims to have no relatives whatever. Where there has been

a death in the family, the undertaker often knows the name of the male relative that managed the funeral.

One visit to an undertaker in a large city brought an unexpected piece of information. A middle-aged man with a young wife and one small child had applied to a charity organization society for relief and help in getting work. As the background of his story was very scant, a memorandum was made of the name of the undertaker, in a neighborhood five miles away, who had "buried" his first wife. This information had been volunteered, not sought. The undertaker knew all about the first wife; she was a neighbor of his, still living and in excellent health. There had been no divorce, her husband had simply disappeared one day, but she had no desire to see again the man whom she had formerly had to support.

A somewhat unusual use of a business source of information is the following: A hospital social service department was interested in an alcoholic case, a woman whose only near relative was a daughter. The mother was unable to give this daughter's address, as was also a cousin who was visited. The latter knew, however, that she was engaged to marry a professional baseball player whose name he was able to give. The sporting editor of a daily paper supplied an address at which the player was found.

III. FRATERNAL ORDERS

Benefit societies of the insurance type often have to be consulted. They belong halfway between references of a business and those of a social nature. The fraternal feature is more marked in the foreign benefit orders, for in these the ties of a common past are more binding. A point worth remembering is that the one who proposed our client for membership in the order is usually a person well acquainted with him and with his family.

Of the fraternal societies, not of the insurance type, the oldest and the one that appeared most often in the case records studied was the Masons. This society's relations to social workers may well stand for those of the whole group of sources to which it belongs. Membership in the Masonic fraternity, even if a generation or more back, is a fact worth knowing, as the society interests itself in the descendants of members who died in good standing. In some of the cases studied, members not in good standing were helped generously, if not by their own home lodge, then by one in the city of temporary residence. This generosity is so generally known that it has been imposed upon in the past, and the society has found it necessary to establish a "black list" of those who are making fraudulent claims of membership and are begging from city