Part 3 (1/2)
[16] Breed, Mary: Eleventh New York State Conference, 1910, p. 76.
IV
FINDING THE DESERTING HUSBAND
A few years ago a young Jewish woman reported to the National Desertion Bureau[17] that her husband had left her and their children.
The couple had never got on well, and the man seemed to have been a melancholy and impractical fellow. The usual methods of the Bureau brought no results in finding the missing husband. Then the wife was more carefully questioned, and urged to tell all that she could recall or had heard about her husband's early life, his tastes and peculiarities. Among other things the Bureau learned that the man's father had died in America years ago, having come here to make a home for the family left behind in Russia. The boy had grown up in ignorance of the place of his father's death and burial, and, as the eldest son, he felt it his duty to find his father's grave. Filled with this idea he came to America as soon as he was grown and landed in New York, but his few poor clues availed him little against the difficulties of poverty and a new and complex environment. In the end he gave up the search, married, and settled down on the east side. After the sudden quarrel which led to his leaving home, his wife thought it possible that his old obsession might have reawakened. The Bureau, supplied with the clues in question, had little difficulty in discovering the father's burial place in St. Louis; and the cemetery authorities promised to send word if the missing husband should appear. Sure enough, a short time afterward he arrived, and, after visiting the grave, returned, not unwillingly, and took up his family duties again under the supervision of a probation officer.
The flexibility of method and the readiness to see and utilize new resources which are displayed in the foregoing account are great a.s.sets to the one who must inst.i.tute search for a missing husband and father.
The thing that sets desertion cases apart in a cla.s.s of peculiar technical difficulty for the case worker is not simply that the man is away from his family. There is no man to deal with in a widow's family, but widows' families present comparatively simple problems. The deserter, though absent, is still not only a potential but also a real factor in the family situation. The plans of the family are often made with one eye to his return; he is the unseen but plainly felt obstacle to much that the social worker wants to accomplish. The children look forward to his reappearance with dread or with joy (for many deserters have a way with them, decidedly, and are welcome visitors to their children). In short, he is usually at the key point in the situation. No plan can safely be made that leaves him out, but--there's the rub!--you cannot include him at once for he is not to be reached, certainly not at the outset. The discovery of the deserter's whereabouts is not only the first but the most urgent of the problems that confront the worker who tries to deal with a deserted family. Unless he can be found the whole plan rests upon s.h.i.+fting sand.
A prompt and vigorous effort to find the absentee is therefore a first requisite in dealing with family desertion. Unfortunately, many case workers, having started bravely and exhausted the first crop of clues, become discouraged and fall back on the supposition that the man is permanently out of the scene, and that it only remains to make plans for the family. Numberless case histories attest the unwisdom of this a.s.sumption. It is not making an extreme statement to say that, as long as the family remains under active care or until the missing man is proved to be dead, the effort to find him should not be abandoned. Mr.
Carstens, in discussing this point, says:
To carry on this search persistently is the great safeguard. It is rare when in the course of a few months the true state of affairs will not have been revealed, though it may have been quite hidden at the start.[18]
This is not to say that time must be spent unprofitably in going over the same ground, or that out-of-town agencies must be badgered to reinvestigate old clues. But the frame of mind that pigeonholes the whole matter as having been attended to must be shunned by the social worker, who should be always on the alert for new clues and prompt to follow them up. An example of a vigorous and persistent search for a deserter is taken from the files of the National Desertion Bureau.[19]
Adolph R. deserted his wife and their six little children on September 1, 1912. He was traced to Philadelphia, but had left there the day before the tidings reached New York. Information was obtained from fellow-employes which led to the belief that he had gone to Tampa, Florida. Inquiry was directed to the rabbi in that city, but again the information was disheartening, since it disclosed the fact that once more R. had ”left the day before.” The rabbi telegraphed that the deserter had evidently gone to Lakewood, Florida, and that he could be found in that place. Immediately the Bureau dispatched a telegram to its representative there, only to find that R. had merely pa.s.sed through Lakewood en route to Bartow, Florida. When the inquiry reached Bartow it was learned that R. had left a few days before, and that he was on his way to Memphis, Tennessee. The Jewish Charities of Memphis made investigation at the cigar factories of that city, but reported that no person bearing the name of R. or resembling him had been seen in their city. No further clue to his whereabouts could be secured.
Months later R. applied to the Jewish Charities of Louisville for transportation to New York, making an entirely false statement about his family.
This statement was telegraphed to the Bureau and no time was lost in securing a warrant. Louisville was notified by wire to arrest, but again a telegram came: ”Adolph R. left city. Learned from Cigarmakers' Union headquarters he went to Cincinnati. Wire Joe Rapp, 1316 Walnut Street, Cincinnati Union Headquarters. Man said he was going to Cincinnati or Indianapolis. Man joined union Richmond, Va., November 19, 1911, and reports to union in all cities.” The Desertion Bureau immediately telegraphed to Cincinnati and Indianapolis. The United Jewish Charities of Cincinnati working together with the labor union lost little time in effecting his arrest.
Many theories about family desertion have suffered a change in recent years. One of these relates to the ”collusive desertion.” Social workers in training used formerly to be taught that the first place to look for the deserter was around the corner, where he could slip back into the house and partake of charitable bounty or, at the very least, keep close watch of his family and return if any serious danger threatened them.
Although the collusive desertion seems to have been a frequent happening in the past, there is almost unanimous testimony from case workers at the present time that it is not common. ”I don't come across an instance once a year,” said one case worker.
Another, after searching her memory, recalled what seemed to her one instance of real collusion. A woman, pregnant and seeming to be in great dest.i.tution, applied to a family social work society in a small city for help. Careful search did not discover the man's whereabouts--he seemed to have disappeared without leaving a trace, and his wife professed ignorance. Some two weeks after this the visitor, calling late, met a man on the stairs who proved to be the missing husband. Times were hard and he was out of a job, so he had taken to the attic of their house, and had kept so strictly _incommunicado_ that not only the society but the neighbors had been deceived.
Out of twenty or more case workers in different cities whose experience was sought on this point, nearly all felt that the warnings against possible collusion which used to be given to young workers no longer needed to be emphasized. Testimony in the other direction is, however, advanced by the National Desertion Bureau, which found that about 10 per cent of the applications made in 1910 to the United Hebrew Charities of New York for relief because of desertion were collusive.
It should be said, however, that one form of collusion is common to the experience of case workers--that of the wife who knows where her husband is, or has a very good idea, but does not want him to return and so keeps her knowledge to herself. ”In two of our regular allowance families,” writes the case supervisor of a family agency, ”we discovered--one quite incidentally, one after the allowance had been discontinued for other reasons--that the wife had had reports regarding the man which we might have followed up had we known of them earlier. It could hardly be called collusion--it was mere indifference.” A probation officer writes:
”At the present time we have under investigation a family where the man has been away from home for two years and his whereabouts during the last year have been known to his wife. He has been living in a suburb of the city and working steadily during that time. The woman has received adequate aid from public and private organizations. She has been content to accept that rather than notify the authorities and have her husband required to meet the responsibility. The man on his part was aware that his family was being supported, and while there was no agreement between the parties regarding it, nevertheless the arrangement apparently met with mutual approval.”
To guard against this and similar omissions on the woman's part, more than one agency which deals with family desertion requires the deserted wife to sign an affidavit that she has given all the information she possesses.
Although in practice the possibility of a collusive desertion is not the first and most important thing to keep in mind, it is frequent enough not to be entirely forgotten. And for yet other reasons it is well to keep a watchful eye upon the neighborhood in which the family is living for reports about the man. Often obscure impulses seem to bring him back; jealousy of the wife or a desire to show himself in a spirit of bravado, or even sometimes a fugitive affection for the children he has abandoned may cause him to appear in the neighborhood. ”The deserter, like the murderer, harks back to the scene of his misdeeds” was the generalization of one district secretary.
Even when he does not appear in the flesh the deserter may seek news of his family. ”One deserter was found through the Attendance Department [of the public school system] to which he wrote after a three years'
absence asking the address of one of the children of whom he was especially fond.”
There is little in the literature of the subject covering methods of discovering deserters, nor do case workers generally appear to have developed a special technique. The decided reaction against detective methods which has been apparent in the profession during later years may help to explain this fact. Most social workers feel a subconscious sense of injustice in having to do this work at all, since it is properly a function of the police. Prosecutors and police officials generally take very little interest in following up deserters, and have little idea of giving any treatment to the deserter who has been found other than arraignment and conviction. It is difficult for the probation officer or the family case worker to hold up the machinery of the law, once it has been started, and to do this long enough to find out whether some other form of treatment best suits the case. For these reasons the social worker usually prefers to do or else is forced to do the work of the detective in desertion cases up to the point where arrest is in his judgment necessary.
A probation officer in D---- found that he could not work through the local police in searching for a certain deserter, because the missing man's political affiliations made them friendly to him. The probation officer knew in a general way that the man was likely to be in the city of S---- in the same state, so he secured a warrant and sent it with such slight clues as were at hand, to a probation officer of that city who was successful in the search. Avoiding the usual procedure, the warrant was served by the police in S----.