Part 20 (2/2)
With modern equipment, steam heat, electric utensils, and new and sanitary apartments, it is not a difficult task to keep the quarters fresh and clean, but in rickety, shadowy apartment buildings or houses where the floors are worn and rough, with no hot-water service, and too often without even gas for lighting, we can at once recognize the trials and handicaps which confront the housewife in the poorer districts.[74]
The visiting housekeepers interviewed saw many discouraging features of their work. All stated that improvement came very slowly. One worker stated that she had worked three years in her district and she had some families under care all the time, but that she was just beginning to see the results of her efforts. Others pointed out that their constant supervision was essential, that as soon as they relaxed their efforts at all the families dropped back to their old habits.
There was, however, general agreement that in time, by much expenditure of effort, constant visiting, teaching, and exhorting, they did help some families to a better standard of living.
It was impossible to get an estimate from most of them as to how many families they thought they had helped, but the worker in one district said that for the three years it would not be more than five or six.
Two workers who estimated the number of families with which they could work at one time, put the number at between twenty and twenty-five, and both thought that they could do much better with twenty than with twenty-five. They did not know with how many families they were working at present, but thought they were not trying to do intensive work with many more than that number.
The explanation of failure may be that not enough care was taken to make the Old-World habits of cooking and diet the starting point of instruction in the use of American foods, utensils, and diets. Such procedure would be based on sound pedagogy in starting from the known and familiar and leading to the new and unaccustomed.
However, it may be true that even after sound methods have been given a thorough trial, arduous effort still will fail to bring desired results. Case-work agencies, however efficient, may not be fitted to raise the standards of living in the homes of immigrant dependent families. It may be taken care of by other community forces and only be effected in the way that the independent family's standards are changed and improved. The task for the case worker is to help the family make the natural connections with their neighborhood and community, which are the most effective means for creating and sustaining social standards.
Certain limitations to the present work of the visiting housekeeper appear in the above discussion. These are, the lack of persons with combined training in case work, home economics, and knowledge of immigrant backgrounds, the limited number of families with whom intensive work can be done, especially if the visiting housekeeper tries to do all the work with the families she visits, the hards.h.i.+p to the family in the duplication of visitors if the visiting housekeeper tries to render only specialized services to a larger number of families.
Attempts have been made to overcome these limitations while still retaining the visiting housekeeper. In Cleveland the visiting housekeepers do all the work with the families a.s.signed to them, as well as instruct the other visitors in the elementary principles of home economics and give advice on individual families, as occasion requires. Their work has been materially lightened by the adoption of a standardized budget prepared under the direction of a well-known expert in home economics. The superintendent of the Cleveland organization expressed himself as well satisfied with the work of the visiting housekeepers. It should be noted that one of the visiting housekeepers in that city not only is a skilled case worker with good training in home economics, but also is of foreign-born parentage and speaks most of the Slavic languages.
In other cities, however, notably New York and Boston, case-work agencies have given up the employment of the visiting housekeepers.
In New York there is a Home Economics Bureau and in Boston a Dietetic Bureau. The organization of the two bureaus differs, but the underlying principle is the same. Both are organizations of home economics experts, who give advice to the regular case workers both as to general principles and as to individual problems. They also make studies from time to time of problems in national groups. As its name would indicate, the scope of the New York organization is wider. It takes up problems of clothing and other phases of household management as well as of food.
The advantages claimed for this plan are that the home economics experts can devote their time exclusively to their own field. The visitors are thus enabled to advise the individual families with more effect than can the specialized worker. The question as to the best way of rendering to the family under care this combination of services is by no means yet decided, and it is evident that further experiment in the various methods is necessary. They are, in fact, not mutually exclusive, and perhaps combinations of various kinds of the skill of the home economics expert, of the skilled social worker, and a generalized helper, may yet be developed.
A third task to which some agencies address themselves is that of providing educational opportunities for the immigrant family. This effort often consists first of inducing the mother herself to enter a cla.s.s, and, second, of securing the attendance of the children at the public school rather than at the non-English-teaching parochial school. The difficulties in the way of securing the mothers'
attendance at a cla.s.s have already been described. It need only be pointed out here that the case worker who has won the mother's confidence may often persuade her to go when the stranger will fail.
Where a regular allowance is given and support for a considerable period is contemplated, it has been treated as something in the nature of a scholars.h.i.+p or educational stipend and conditioned on the mother's fulfilling definite requirements in the way of better qualifying herself to use the allowance.
The subject of establis.h.i.+ng connections between the members of the families and such educational opportunity has been somewhat confused by the fact that the case-work agency often depends upon the settlement to supply certain recreational facilities for the children in the families, and there is a temptation to use the settlement club or cla.s.s rather than the school for the mother.
With reference to having the children attend the public school or the school in which all instruction is given in English, it would be less than frank to ignore the difficulty often occasioned in the past by the nationalistic and separatist Church. The society may be faced with a real dilemma here, since it desires the co-operation of the Church and is loath to weaken any ties that may help in maintaining right family life. And so, when the Church conducts the school in which the mother tongue is used, and in which English is either inadequately taught or not taught at all, the relief agency may be practically forced into a policy involving the neglect of English in the case of both mother and children.
KNOWLEDGE OF BACKGROUNDS
These have been some of the fundamental difficulties in the relations.h.i.+p between the case-work agency and the immigrant family.
The knowledge of the Old-World background and the impressions made by the experience of emigrating that should illumine all the work of the agency, are generally lacking to the case worker. Of course there are brilliant exceptions. One district superintendent of the Boston a.s.sociated Charities, for example, whose work lies in the midst of a Sicilian neighborhood, will have no visitors who are unwilling to learn the language and to inform themselves thoroughly concerning the history and the habits of the neighbors.
Her office has been equipped so that it takes on somewhat the appearance of a living room. It is made attractive with growing plants; an Italian and an American flag are conspicuous when one enters the room; a picture of Garibaldi and photographs of Italian scenes are on the wall. Books on Italy are to be found in the office, and with the aid of an Italian postal guide the superintendent has made a card index of the home towns from which her families come. From one town in Sicily of seventeen thousand inhabitants, 108 families have come to the district office. Such an index is acquired slowly and must be used with great discretion. It is of a.s.sistance to one who understands how to use it, but it may suggest hopeless blunders to workers unfamiliar with the group.
In making plans for the care of families, leading Italians, such as physicians of excellent standing, with a practice in the district, a member of the Harvard faculty who has unusual interest in his less fortunate fellow countrymen, and others who have special knowledge along certain lines, are consulted.
One of the workers connected with the Vocational Guidance Bureau in Chicago has been trying an interesting experiment in the same direction of establis.h.i.+ng contacts with the group among which she works. Many of the children who come to the Bureau for jobs are Polish children. She is, therefore, taking lessons in the Polish language from an editor of one of the Polish papers in the city, and through his interest has secured board and room in a home for working girls that is run by one of the Polish sisterhoods. In a month's time she has learned a vocabulary of some hundred and fifty Polish words, and has gained an insight into the Polish att.i.tudes toward some of their problems that she considers invaluable. She found the Polish people with whom she consulted as to the best means of learning the language very much interested and anxious to be helpful in any way in their power.
It is, in fact, clear that by the interpreter, or the foreign-speaking visitor, or the American visitor who learns the foreign tongue, the language difficulty must be overcome. In the case of the foreign-born visitor it should be noted that workers coming from among the various groups encounter difficulties not encountered by the American visitor.
They seem to the members of their group to enjoy very real power, and they are often expected to grant favors and to exert influence. A Polish visitor in the office of a relief society in Chicago finds it very difficult to explain to her friends why they do not always receive from her fellow workers what they ask.
In another neighborhood three Italian sisters, better educated than their neighbors, have become visitors. One works for the Catholic, one for the nonsectarian, charitable agency, and one for the social-service department of the public hospital. They seem to have a real ”corner” on the aid given to applicants from their groups.
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