Problems of family desertion involving men in service during the war were in the main handled by the Red Cross Home Service. Before the war, private case working agencies had learned that the regular Army and the Navy often seemed desirable havens to would-be family deserters. The difficulties of finding them there were great, owing to the fact that they often enlisted as single men under an assumed name. It has usually been possible to gain excellent co-operation from the military authorities if there are any clues whatever.
The desertion bureau of a family social work society learned that a deserting man had expressed a desire long before he left his family to enlist in the Army. Several letters were exchanged with the War Department, and the man was finally found to be with a company serving in the Canal Zone. As he had made misrepresentations when he enlisted, the War Department was willing to transfer him from Panama to a camp within the limits of the city where the desertion had taken place and there discharge him. This brought the absconder within the jurisdiction of the local courts and made it possible to arrest him as soon as he was outside the bounds of the camp.
It will repay the visitor to make not only a careful study of the deserting man's employment history but also to learn something about the trade he follows. A cloakmaker, for instance, who deserts in New York City is likely to be found in Cleveland, for these are the two centers of the cloak branch of the garment trade. Certain seasonal occupations give the periodical deserter a great opportunity. Among these are hop picking, berry picking, and lumbering. The amusement parks near the large cities also furnish occupation for the seasonal deserter. The case worker cannot be expected to have such knowledge at his finger-tips, but he can go to people who know about the fluctuations of particular trades—to employers, union officials or fellow-workmen who may throw light on a deserter's movements. The story of Adolph R.[21] is an excellent illustration of the help that may be obtained from trades unions and from fellow-workmen. A family welfare bureau in a western city writes:
"In one instance a blacksmith's union published the picture of the deserting man in its official journal and asked that information regarding him be sent to the local unit here. This proved successful. In another instance a union gave us access to its books and helped us to trace all the men of a given name listed there. By this means we found the man we were looking for. One man, a vaudeville performer, we traced through the Bill Board (a trade paper) by discovering the movements of the show with which he had been connected."
Another society succeeded in getting a certain trade union to post a description and photograph of a missing man on its bulletin boards. This aided in finding the man. Fraternal orders may be; used in the same way, though for many reasons they cannot be so helpful as the trades unions.
Employment agencies should not be forgotten in seeking to trace a man through his industrial record. The extension of the federal employment service, with free inter-city communication, should be of assistance in getting upon the track of deserters.
The co-operation of newspapers can be secured to good effect in tracing missing men.
Herbert McCann, who had been doing railway construction in Russia, returned to this country and disappeared while en route from an eastern city to his home in Canada. There was reason to think that he might have left the train in an intoxicated condition at an important junction point; and the family social agency of that city was asked to trace him. No information was secured from the police, lodging houses, employment agencies, etc., and finally the following advertisement was inserted in the local paper: "Information Wanted—Anyone knowing the whereabouts of Herbert McCann, Montreal, who returned from Russia in June, will confer a favor upon his family by notifying Social Service Building, 34 Grand Street." Six days later a reply was received from a man in a nearby town, and McCann was found at work in a factory there.
More than upon any other method the National Desertion Bureau depends on the publication of pictures and short newspaper paragraphs. As this Bureau deals entirely with Jewish deserters, it works chiefly through the Yiddish newspapers. Its "Gallery of Missing Husbands" is a regular weekly feature in some of the better known of these journals, and attracts increasingly wide attention. The Bureau estimates that 70 per cent of the deserters which it finds are discovered through the publication of pictures. It should be remembered, however, that this Bureau is dealing with a selected group, who know a great deal about one another, live closely together, follow in the main only a few trades, and read only a limited number of foreign-language newspapers. Whether anything like the same results could be obtained by the same methods applied to deserting husbands of many different national and social backgrounds is open to question.
Since most deserters leave the city, if not the state, the social worker who is dealing with the family problem is often not the same person to whom is delegated the task of finding the man. This fact makes necessary the most careful and sympathetic co-operation between the social workers or agencies, which must work together at long range upon the problem. In the case of Herbert McCann, just cited, not less than four family social work societies were concerned—three in the United States and one in Canada. This necessitated keeping in the closest touch, by letter and telegram, so that each was informed of the doings of the others. Such a piece of work calls for a common body of experience and technique among the workers concerned, amounting almost to an unwritten understanding as to how the work should be done. Nothing makes more fascinating reading than the record of a quick, touch-and-go investigation, such as is presented in the finding of a deserter conducted by skilled case workers who are accustomed to work together. Much can, under these circumstances, be taken for granted or left to the discretion of the worker or agency whose help is being sought. There are instances, however, where no such common understanding exists, and where the home-town agency has to work through people with little social training or with training of a type which definitely unfits them properly to approach the deserting man. It is a distressing experience to know that a man has slipped through one's fingers, been frightened off or alienated, by poor work at the other end. Are there any ways to reduce the number of these mischances?