The case of an Italian woman may serve to illustrate the contact with both these groups of officials. Mrs. C. was married in 1902 in a Sicilian village, at about sixteen years of age. In October, 1906, the husband came to the United States. In November, 1907, she and her one surviving baby, a girl of two, followed, going to the mining town in western Pennsylvania where he was working. There they lived until March, 1913, occupying most of the time a house owned by the company for which he worked. About 1913 she moved with her children to a near-by city, where, on June 3, 1914, she was arrested for assault, and the next day for selling liquor without a license and selling liquor to minors. After some delay she pleaded guilty and was sentenced to pay the costs of the prosecution ($76.42), and released on parole.
She then seems to have moved to a mining town in Illinois, and there lived with Mr. A. as his wife until March, 1916, when he was murdered. The union paid his funeral expenses of $186.75, and she also, as his widow, received his death benefit of $244.33. Through the summer of 1916 the Supervisor of the Poor gave her $3 every two weeks. On May 20, 1916, she applied for her first citizenship papers, and on September 1st she was awarded an allowance of $7 a month under the Mothers' Aid law, this being granted her under her maiden name, as mother of a child born in Illinois in 1915. She was helped not only by the public relief agencies, but by the priest ($11); and the Queen's Daughters, a church society of ladies, gave her the fare to Chicago, where the Italian consul gave her money to go home again. The undertaker and other kind persons gave her and the children aid.
By December the union and the county agent both thought it would be well to shift the burden of her support, and gave her the fare back to Chicago. By the time she reached Chicago she was a very skillful and resourceful beggar. In Chicago she was a "nonresident," ineligible for a year to receive public relief under the Pauper Act and for three years under the Mothers' Aid law; and so she obtained from a Protestant church, from the Charities, and from an Italian Ladies' Aid Society relief of various kinds and in various amounts.
The story is a long and a continuing one. Two points are especially important from the point of view of this study. One is that the burden not only of her support, but of her re-education, fell ultimately upon Chicago agencies, and the cost to them is measured as it were by the inefficiency of her casual treatment at the hands of both the courts and the less competent relief agencies along the way. The other is that such varied treatment leaves its inevitable stamp of confusion and disorganization upon the life of such a family. To find American officials getting very busy over selling liquor without a license, and at the same time ignoring adultery or murder committed in an Italian home, must surely result in confusion with reference to American standards of family relationship and to the value placed on life by American officials.
NEED FOR NATIONAL AGENCY
Irrespective of whether the family is of the native-born or foreign-born group, the problem of the case of those in distress should not be regarded as solely a local problem. It is indeed of national importance. Poverty, sickness, illiteracy, inefficiency, incompetence, are no longer matters of peculiar concern to a locality. The causes leading to these conditions are not local; the consequences are not local. The agency that deals efficiently with them should not be entirely local.
Yet at the present time there is lacking not only a national agency and a national standard; there is often lacking a state agency and a state standard.[75] In Illinois, for example, the Pauper Act is administered in some counties by precinct officials designated by county commissioners; in other counties by the township officials.[76] The Mothers' Aid law is administered in Illinois by the juvenile court, which in all counties except Cook County (Chicago) is the county court. There is no agency responsible in any way for the standardization of the work of these officials, and niggardly doles or indiscriminate relief without either adequate investigation or adequate supervision, often characterizes the work of both.[77]
Not all states are in as chaotic a condition as Illinois. A few states have developed a larger measure of central control. Massachusetts, California, and New Jersey, for example, secure a certain measure of standardization in the administration of their Mothers' Aid laws by paying part of the allowances, in case the central body approves—the State Board of Charities in Massachusetts,[78] and California,[79] and the State Board of Children's Guardians in New Jersey.[80] Pennsylvania secures this by assigning to the Governor the appointment of local boards and providing central supervision, while in other cases there may be inspection, the preparation of blanks and requiring reports. A member of the State Board of Education is supervisor of the Mothers' Aid law administration in Pennsylvania.[81]
The case cited above illustrates the way in which the demoralizing effects of unskillful treatment in Pennsylvania and then in Illinois lasted into the period in which Chicago agencies tried to render efficient service.
It would not be possible to develop at once a national or Federal agency for rendering aid to families in distress. Nor would such an agency be desirable if characterized by the features of the old poor law. But the development of a national agency for public assistance will undoubtedly be necessary before such problems as these can be adequately dealt with. It should be based on such inquiries as the United States Children's Bureau and other governmental departments can make as to the volume and character of the need and the best methods for dealing with that need. Undoubtedly the Grant in Aid, as proposed in the bill introduced into the Sixty-fifth Congress to encourage the development of health protection for mothers and infants, will prove the quickest path to a national standard. Careful study into the kind of legislative amendment necessary in the various states in order to reduce the chaos now existing in the exercise of these functions should also be made.