Education: Social Servants

To Cleveland went social servants of all ages, sizes, colors, creeds, and of both sexes, to the round number of 5,000. They represented the National Federation of Settlements, the National Probation Association, the National Association of Travelers Aid Societies, the National Conference of Jewish Social Service, the National Conference on Social Service of the Episcopal Church, the International Association of Policewomen, and scores and scores of others. They swarmed in Cleveland’s public meeting places and hotels, coming together after a series of individual meetings as the National Conference of Social Work, “largest convention of its kind in history.”

Among the smaller preliminary meetings, one of the most active was that of the Federation of Settlements, before which Jane Addams, co-founder (1889) and head of Hull House (Chicago), arose to protest against loose public thinking. The American people “are in a panic,” said she. They identify everything connected with “social work” with “Socialism,” or more often with Bolshevism. She cited the case of a distinguished member of Congress who “had it on very good authority” that the proposed Child Labor Amendment to the U. S. constitution had been written by the late Dictator Lenin in Moscow.

A clergyman made a direct hit: “It isn’t a work for butterflies. Sitting on hospital boards and passing around compliments isn’t enough.”

The Settlement Federation listened to various papers advocating birth control, which one speaker sought to rebut with the pat, laudable, but slightly euphemistic theory that all that was needed was self-control.

President Gertrude Vaile of Denver opened the Conference proper with a vaulting keynote speech. Half a century ago, the emphasis of social work was upon alleviation and correction. “Today the goal is nothing short of an effort to see that every individual becomes the best he can be, and the community the finest and fullest expression of social life that it can be.”

Dr. Richard C. Cabot, Harvard professor of social ethics, trimmed ship by telling the workers that they were a trifle “too breathless” in their good works. He urged less haste and more thoroughness, more study and fewer slogans—all very good humoredly.

At another session, Porter R. Lee, director of the New York School of Social Works, announced that the perfect social worker had not yet been born. When he or she did arrive, the characteristics would be these: tact, cooperation, reliability, fair-mindedness, agreeability, poise, magnetism and a large sense of humor.

Later, Jane Addams again took the rostrum, greying, spare and benign in her 66th year. Her penetrating low voice filled the hall with quiet reminiscence. She made no comment on a remark by President Vaile to the effect that the day of organization has succeeded the day of leadership in social work-the day of Jane Addams, Mary Richmond,* Owen R. Lovejoy**—but did say: “It is curious to notice the difference in world opinion 50 years ago and now. When I first went to Europe people everywhere were interested in the United States. They thought of America as a way out of the poverty and misery in which they were living.” She appealed for more lenient immigration laws to restore the lost illusion of the Land of Promise, to put an end to the “inhumane separation of families.”

*Director of the Charity Organization Department of the Russell Sage Foundation.

**Secretary of the National Child Labor Committee for nineteen years. His resignation (March, 1926) was recognized at this conference by a eulogical luncheon at which 700 were present, 400 turned away.