The present is in many ways an unfortunate moment at which to suggest the necessity of developing such an agency. The War Risk Bureau, created to provide certain services for the families of soldiers and sailors and others in the service, through the failures and imperfections of its service, has discouraged the idea of attempting such tasks on a national scale. It should be recalled, however, that the assignment of the War Risk Bureau to the Treasury Department concerned with revenue instead of to the Children's Bureau concerned with family problems, rendered it practically inevitable that such limitations of skill would characterize its work. Neither a taxing body nor a bank should be chosen for the supervision of work with family groups.
The "home service" work of the American Red Cross constituted such a national agency during the period of the war, and if the so-called "peace-time program" is successfully developed, the need urged in this chapter may be met.
The efficient local private agencies suffer in the same way from the lack of a national agency and a national standard in case work. The American Association for Social Work with Families, and the National Conference of Social Work, attempt by conference and publication to spread the knowledge of social technique and to improve the work done by existing societies. But there are whole sections, even in densely populated areas, in which there exists no such agency.
If, then, the benevolence and good will of the community are to be embodied in such service for foreign-born families that fall into distress as will not only relieve but upbuild the life of the family, interpret to them the standards of the community, and help them to become a part of the true American life, a national minimum of skill and information must be developed below which the agencies for such care will nowhere be allowed to fall. From the experience both of these foreign-born families and of the communities into which they finally come we learn again the doctrine laid down a hundred years ago by Robert Owen, that the care of those who suffer is a national and not solely a local concern.