Part 8 (1/2)

A young Irish rigger, with a capable wife and two pretty babies, lost his job after a quarrel with his boss rigger. He was a genial, popular chap, always ”the life of the party” in his circle; and his companions encouraged him to feel that he was a much injured man.

They also helped him to fill his enforced leisure with too much beer. When the family received a dispossess notice the wife's patience was at an end, and acting on the advice of a society engaged in family case work, she put the furniture in storage and went to a shelter where she could leave her children in the daytime, while she was at work, and have them with her at night. The man was told to s.h.i.+ft for himself until he could get together sufficient money to re-establish the home. The arrangement continued for nearly two months, during which the man lived in lodging houses, had an attack of stomach trouble, and was altogether thoroughly miserable.

Every night he waited for a word with his wife on a corner that she had to pa.s.s in coming from work. Finally, when it seemed to the social worker and to the wife that his lesson had gone far enough, the home was re-established, with only a small amount of help from the society. During the five years since that time, no recurrence of the trouble has come to the attention of the agency interested.

This experiment was realized to be a ticklish one, as a man less sincerely attached to his home might have been turned into a vagabond by such treatment.

In general, it may be said that, as there is less to work on constructively with the non-supporter, court action has more often to be invoked. If the non-supporter is a ”chronic,” his path must not be allowed to be too easy. ”Sometimes you just have to keep pestering him”

was the way one social worker put it. A Red Cross Home Service worker successfully shocked one elderly non-supporter into going to work, as described in one of the Red Cross publications:

”Well, Mr. Gage,” I said, ”I see you're not working yet.”

”No, Mrs. c.o.x, the coal company promised to send for me.”

”Well,” I said, ”I think you've been pretty fair with that company.

You've waited on it for three months now. If I had the offer of another job I'd feel perfectly free to take it, if I were you.”

”Yes,” he said, ”I think I should.”

”All right, I have a job for you,” said I. ”My husband wants a man now at his garage, to clean automobiles. The hours are from 6 p.m.

to 6 a.m., and you'll earn $15 a week.”

His paper fell from his hands to the floor; his jaw dropped, and he just looked at me. Then he tried to crawl out of it and began to make excuses.

”I haven't time to argue with you, Mr. Gage,” I said. ”I'll keep the job open till seven o'clock tonight and you can let me know then whether you'll take it or not.”

At seven he came to say he'd take the job.[45]

If in desertion cases the interest centers very vividly about the absent man, in non-support cases the reverse is likely to be true, because he is often not very interesting per se, and because, moreover, he is always on the spot and does not have to be searched for. Familiarity certainly breeds contempt for the non-supporter. Consequently the social worker may easily fall into the danger of disregarding the human factors he presents, and either treating the family as if he did not exist or expending no further effort on him than to see that he ”puts in” six months of every year in jail if possible (since the law usually secures to him the privilege of loafing the other six). It is not safe, however, to regard even the most leisurely of non-supporters as beyond the possibility of awakening. One district secretary who had thus given a man up had the experience of seeing him transformed into a steady worker after a few months of intensive effort by a first-year student in a school of social science, whose only equipment for the job was personality and enthusiasm. So remarkable are some of the reclamations that have been brought about with seemingly hopeless non-supporters that all possible measures should be tried before giving one of them up.

His Scotch ancestry, a good wife, luck, and a friend with insight and skill, pulled Aleck Gray out of that bottomless pit, the gutter. Aleck had been a bookkeeper; but he didn't get on well with his employers, lost his job, got to drinking, and went so far downhill that his wife had to take their two children and go home to her people several hundred miles away. Aleck finally drifted into a bureau for homeless men, where the agent became interested in him and worked with him for six months, getting him job after job, which he always lost through drink or temper. He seemed incapable of taking directions or working with other people. In all that time the agent felt that he was getting no nearer the root of Aleck's trouble, though he came back after each dismissal and doggedly took whatever was offered. Finally, the agent's patience wore thin, and when Aleck had been more than usually dour and aggravating it went entirely to pieces. Aleck listened to his outburst apparently unmoved; then said, ”Very well, if you want to know what would make me stop drinking, I'll tell you. If I could see any ray of hope that I was on the way to getting my home and family back, I'd stop and stop quick.” On the agent's desk there happened to be a letter from a friend who wanted a tenant farmer. He thrust it into Aleck's hand saying, ”There's your chance if you mean what you say.” The man's reply was to ask when he could get a train. At the end of several weeks Aleck wrote that he had not drunk a drop and was making good, which was enthusiastically confirmed by his employer. He begged the agent to intercede with his wife, and a letter went to her which brought the telegraphic reply, ”Starting tomorrow.”

How they got through the first winter the agent never knew exactly.

But they pulled through and the next year was easy, as country-born Aleck's skill came back. Six years later, during which time the agent heard from them once or twice a year, Aleck was still keeping straight, the children were doing well in school, and the family, prosperous and happy, had bought a farm of their own in another state.

FOOTNOTES:

[40] The deserter who does not fail to support is usually safe from punishment no matter how aggravated his offense. A man living with his wife and five-year-old boy in an eastern city eloped with another woman to a city in the Middle West. The couple kidnapped the boy and took him with them; and the distracted woman, bereft of both her husband and child, had no recourse in any court, since the father was continuing to provide for his son.

[41] Proceedings of the New York State Conference of Charities and Correction, 1910, p. 76.

[42] Loane, M.: The Queen's Poor, p. 102. London, Edward Arnold, 1905.

[43] Solenberger, Alice Willard: One Thousand Homeless Men, p. 22. New York, Russell Sage Foundation, 1911.

[44] For a consideration of possible lines of treatment for the non-supporter and his family, the reader is referred to Chapter VII, where is discussed the treatment of the deserter who is willing to return.

[45] Behind the Service Flag, pamphlet ARC 211, American Red Cross, Department of Civilian Relief.