THE TESTIMONY OF THE CONFERENCE

We have now propounded a tentative definition of social work based upon an interpretation of its development and present practices. We will not be sure of the correctness of that interpretation until we have tested the applicability of the result to the whole range of social work. Nor can we do this fairly by making our own presentation of social work. For such a test we must find some ready-made presentation which will marshal social work in all its diversity. The reports of the national conference do this and, indirectly, the courses offered by the school for training social workers. This chapter will test and, if possible, expand the definition by the testimony of the conference and the succeeding chapter by the testimony of the schools.

The conference is divided into ten sections:

  1. Children.
  2. Delinquents.
  3. Health.
  4. Public agencies and institutions.
  5. The family.
  6. Industrial and economic problems.
  7. The local community.
  8. Mental hygiene.
  9. Organization of social forces.
  10. Uniting of native and foreign-born.

At the annual convention each of these ten sections holds its own group meetings at which papers are presented and discussions conducted on the subjects appropriate to the section. It will be seen that the division into sections is on a basis of administrative fields rather than technique or function. The fields however are not mutually exclusive but overlapping. Children although giving their name to the whole first section appear among “delinquents” in the second, candidates for health in the third and so on. Indeed, all of the ten section names might serve as subheads under most or all of the other topics.

More significant in the search for a definition is the fact that these several fields are not exclusively possessed by social workers. “Children” are also the special concern of elementary teachers, “delinquency” is primarily referred to the courts, “health” is the conceded bailiwick of the medical profession and so forth. Even at the conference many papers are presented by persons other than social workers.[32]

These two types of overlapping make the masses of material with which we have to deal both indeterminate and confusing. But representing as they do the mutual interpenetration of social work and other callings, they give a fresh opportunity to distinguish the nature of social work. We may inquire what is the special interest of social work in “children,” in “delinquents,” in “health,” and in what ways does it differ from the respective interests of teaching, law, medicine and so forth.

It is obviously impossible to review in readable compass the fifty years in which the conference has met and, as there have been great changes in social work during that time, it would be profitless for a contemporary definition. A new arrangement of sections was made in 1918, and therefore the reports of the years 1918, 1919, and 1920 (the last in print when this study was made) were chosen for detailed analysis.

That analysis can be most simply presented to the reader by sections, putting before him an itemized statement of the subjects covered in the reports of each section (treating the three years as a unit) and then following this sectional review with such considerations as have recommended themselves cumulatively and can only be offered on the basis of the material as a whole. We are looking for the characteristics of social work as a whole and can therefore consider only such features as continue to show themselves throughout the sections. In the following itemized lists for each section the figures represent the number of papers in which the subject indicated was the principle topic.

I. CHILDREN.