[15] History of English Philanthropy, p. 20.
[16] Ibid., p. 70.
[17] See also Charities for Feb., 1898. Report of the Association for Improving the Condition of the Poor, housing inspection, vacation schools, public baths and vacant lot farming begun by the Association and continued by the city.
CHAPTER III
THE SCIENTIFIC ELEMENT IN SOCIAL WORK
The historical perspective which shows social work to have developed out of charity shows also that there is a close relation between that development and contemporaneous developments in other lines. We know that in every field of production, trade and business, enterprising men have lately developed practical sciences to replace the old rules of thumb, and that even in such a field as teaching there has lately appeared a derived science of pedagogy which levies on psychology and other direct sciences for its material. The stewards of charity, like other people, saw the light of science full on their path. The result was a new hope. Again and again in statements like the following we have been told that the grosser disabilities which charity relieved could be done away with for good if we would systematically search out and treat their causes. “Poverty, vice and crime are no more impossible to stamp out from human society than small-pox and measles. To do the one requires the same intelligence on the part of man, though perhaps in a higher degree, that the other does. The social sciences and arts should have the same expansion as all the other sciences and arts combined in that the relations of men to each other are equally important if not more important than the relations of man to nature.”[18] Or again, “The most formidable obstacle to the adoption of the policy of prevention and treatment is not resistance to the necessary public expenditure, still less inability to raise the money, but the lack of administrative science and the shortcomings of our administrative machinery. Merely to relieve destitution has been nearly as easy as to do nothing. But successfully to intervene in order to prevent—whether to prevent sickness, to prevent the neglect of children, to prevent the multiplication of the mentally unfit, or to prevent unemployment—involves the discovery of causes, the formation of large schemes of policy, the purposeful planning of collective action in modifying the environment of the poorer classes, together with scientifically diversified treatment of those individuals who fall below the recognized standards of civilized life.”[19]
When charity had thus accepted the necessity of using scientific methods there ensued immediate and far-reaching results. Chief of these have been the three developments which transformed charity into social work. It is possible to trace them in performance and to trace a parallel development of philosophy in the literature of the subject. These developments can be simply indicated as (1) a systematization of service; (2) an interest in causes of disaster, and (3) an extension of charitable interest into new fields.[20]
THE SYSTEMATIZATION OF SERVICE
The converts to a scientific method undertook to work within the traditional field of charity with a new thoroughness and system.[21] Fired with the belief of their times in a tenable norm of prosperity and a continuous progress dependent only on scientific control of our environment they naturally hoped that the most stubborn situation could be harmonized with the general melioration by the use of appropriate methods and they were no longer content to offer only relief, work, care for the helpless and such simple services as were once all that was thought of. They constantly challenged the applicability of old palliative expedients and looked for reconstructive measures. “For every one thing,” writes Miss Richmond, “that could then (1832) be done about a man’s attitude toward his life and his social relations, about his health, housing, work and recreation, there are now (1917) a dozen things to do. The power to analyze a human situation closely as distinguished from the old method of falling back upon a few general classifications, grows with the consciousness of the power to get things done.”[22] This change in expectation may be seen in the nomenclature of the tasks which social work has set itself. At first “relief” was the objective, then “adequate relief” and now it is “rehabilitation.” The methods were, first the alternatives “relief” or “corrective treatment,” for there were sheep and goats in those days, then “preventive treatment” and now “adjustment.”
Rehabilitation and adjustment are far more delicate and responsible matters than mere relief or even “preventive treatment” and we find social workers warning each other that “life cannot be administered by definite rules and regulations and that wisdom to deal with a man’s difficulties comes only through some knowledge of his life and habits as a whole and that to treat a separate episode is almost sure to invite blundering.”[23] The excuse for quoting so obvious a statement is that former practice actually required it to be made. Philanthropy took little cognizance of its supposed beneficiaries’ “life and habits as a whole.” Such a feat of synthetic judgment cannot of course be more than roughly approximated. It has, however, proved possible to develop a technique of inquiry, analysis, interpretation and direct or indirect remedial action which is known as social case work and can be made the subject of systematic instruction in the schools for training social workers. And within the last six years has come Miss Richmond’s book with the suggestive title, “Social Diagnosis,” to give a description of simple charity availing itself of the means suggested by an age of scientific experiment and so justifying the expression, “scientific charity,” which, unexplained, sounds so incongruous. The method of social case work is sometimes claimed to be the essential and distinguishing feature of social work but if we study the classic expositions of case work we find that they are describing on their own showing a method[24] and a method which though applicable to many types of social work is not applicable to all and which is, moreover, by no means confined to social work. Case work, in any connection, is the systematic study of all considerable effects and causes in a particular situation and the development and application of special means to alter that situation in some preferred direction. Social case work is simply case work in the form it takes when applied in social work. There are some fully accepted forms of social work which have no occasion to use it. Important as it is we must recognize it as an expedient and not social work per se.