Another, after searching her memory, recalled what seemed to her one instance of real collusion.  A woman, pregnant and seeming to be in great destitution, 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.