We are told, as though to settle the case against social work, that there are even social workers “who, while they may not say it publicly, do not hesitate to say privately that they regard social work as a mere “palliative,” and while they get their living from it, their real hopes are pinned to the coming social revolution.”[74] The personal immorality of anyone who would continue to get a living from a calling he believed to be sailing under false colors is not our business, but, if social work is what our definition says, there is no reason why any social worker need hesitate to say, either privately or with all the publicity he can command, that his hopes are pinned to the coming social revolution, or to the effects of New Thought or the Seventh Day Advent or anything else to which he may have happened, according to his lights and temperament, to have pinned them.
Social work attempts to serve persons in need of help; it shepherds the rear of the social procession; it cares for the casualties; it also claims opportunity for the unprivileged and asserts the rights of the individual lost in the mass. In so doing it finds itself effecting progress in the many ways already discussed. They are usually indirect ways. These critics assume that it could induce progress directly by an attempt to bring about radical social changes that would do away with the need for its services. They quote against it Tolstoy’s indictment of our social system—“The present position we, the educated and well-to-do classes, occupy is that of the Old Man of the Sea, riding on the poor man’s back, only, unlike the Old Man of the Sea, we are sorry for the poor man, very sorry. And we will do almost anything for the poor man’s relief; we will not only supply him with food sufficient for him to keep on his legs, but will provide him with cooling draughts concocted on strictly scientific principles; we will teach and instruct him and point out to him the beauties of the landscape; we will discourse sweet music to him and give him lots of good advice. Yes we will do almost anything for the poor man, anything but get off his back.”[75]
Such a picture makes everyone unhappy to reflect on and in face of it thoughtful social workers take stock of their position. But they can only conclude that to accuse social work per se of insincerity and temporizing, of clinging to a snug berth, because it does not attempt to end this intolerable situation by revolution is to imagine it both greater and less than it is. We have already seen that it is only a calling like others with a day’s work of its own. Reforms merely free it from old duties and open the gates to new ones and there is no reason to suppose that changes the most radical would do away with the need of it or the human impulse that perpetually recreates it. Whether revolutionary methods would free us from present abuses and confront us with a new set but, as it were, upon a higher level, is, of course an open question and a relevant one. But it is a question of pure expediency facing the social worker of each generation as it faces anyone else and it in no way involves the integrity or the permanency of the function of social work.
The alternatives in the interest of which social work is by these critics condemned are the labor movement and social revolution. But these are hardly genuine alternatives. Both of them have the allegiance of people in many callings, but each provides a day’s work to a comparatively small number of organizers and other workers. There is no logical reason why a social worker should not be active in the service of either or both and yet remain in his calling, as the bricklayer, lawyer, or laborer may.
The labor movement and social revolution and social work are three things of three entirely different kinds. The labor movement is a tide in human affairs. It is the projection in practical issues of certain interpretations and ideals of life. Social revolution is a cataclysmic expedient for precipitating, in finished form, readjustments which the labor movement and certain other influences tend gradually and adaptively to effect. The one is a great movement now under way, the other a vast enterprise or a vast dream. For them is spilt the martyr blood that is the seed of every church militant. They throw down a gauntlet; they raise a banner; they stir our hearts. But why not let the social worker also plod on with a good conscience and a hope for his labors.
For while the tired waves, vainly breaking,
Seem here no painful inch to gain,
Far back through creeks and inlets making,
Comes silent, flooding in, the main.
And not by eastern windows only,