“Named for your great poet?” I questioned, for the sake of leading her thoughts into other channels. Though I had not at that time the remotest idea of what ailed the dog, I saw that its show of confidence pleased her and awed the men. I had no intention of acknowledging my ignorance.
“You read his poems!” she exclaimed, bending eagerly across the little table. What wonderful eyes she had! and teeth like evenly matched pearls.
Had I been a social service worker I could not have spent so much time sipping indifferent red wine and chattering about Italian poetry even with the most beautiful woman I ever saw. With Mr. Horton it was all right—I induced the woman to license her dog. It would take a brave, thrice brave social worker to report such an incident to her committee.
All social workers, so far as I was able to learn, are guided by a committee—the power behind the throne, or perhaps I might say the ball and chain attached to the foot of every social worker.
Of course no committee intentionally renders null and void about fifty per cent of a worker’s accomplishment. Neither do I imagine that a ball and chain intentionally trips up a convict at every other step. A ball and chain is insensate metal, it cannot learn. The members of the average committee supervising philanthropic work in New York City differ from a ball and chain in that they will not learn.
They know nothing about “those people,” yet they never hesitate to advise the worker how to treat them, how much money to spend for them, and where. In no case must the spending of so much as a nickel be intrusted to “those people.” That is one of the chief duties of a social worker, laying out the amount allowed by her committee on each specified case.
On one case I was allowed twenty-five dollars. After buying comfortables and several pieces of second-hand furniture there were a few dollars left over, less than five. I consulted with an experienced worker—might I not hand the amount to the mother of the family?
“My dear!” she exclaimed, her tone and manner as though I had suggested setting fire to the hospital. “You mustn’t think of it. The committee would not like it. Think how good they were to give you twenty-five dollars for one family.”
Not to give money is, I admit, an excellent general rule. But how about the worker’s judgment and knowledge of conditions? In this instance the family were gentle people of good character. Besides the expense of maintaining eight children under fourteen, the father had paid for two long and expensive attacks on his wife—she had had both breasts removed because of cancer. Almost immediately after her second operation the family was stricken with influenza.
For the sake of spending those last few dollars judiciously I had to follow that educated, refined, and half-sick woman around a shop—after she selected articles, cheap bits of crockery, knives and forks, I paid for them. There never was a sheep-killing dog that felt sneakier than I did when we left that store.