myself, and perhaps some evenings when you are not too tired you will get a chance to glance over it.  It is small and you can put it in your pocket.  Be very sure I have not forgotten the very satisfactory talks we had and the splendid way you have grimly started out to make good.  If you can help the Government do their work, even down there, give it a good try out.  Never mind the different nationalities you have to mix with.  You have already knocked around the world so much that you can just consider this another opportunity of getting to know a great variety of people.  You might even learn to talk Italian and Greek!  There is no experience in life we have to go through but can be a source of great education to us.  You are sure to win out and get the respect of everybody, your fellow-workmen as well as your superior officers, if you continuously day in and day out simply refuse to get discouraged and keep up your work and do as you are told.  Stick by.

    With all good wishes,
    Sincerely yours,
    DISTRICT SECRETARY.

But when all is said and done, there are no unbreakable rules about treatment.  A form of treatment is sometimes to do nothing at all.

Charles Morgan, a middle-aged machinist with a wife, a comfortable home, and seven children (the two eldest grown), picked up his tools and disappeared, after a quarrel over his wife’s extravagance.  He had been earning $50 a week in a shop where he had worked for eighteen years and he would not endure having his wages garnisheed for debt.

An experienced case worker to whom furious Mrs. Morgan made her complaint, decided, after studying Mr. Morgan’s record, that he ought not to be prosecuted, and refused to be party to it.  As he was a man of domestic habits, search was made in a nearby city where he had relatives.  He was easily traced.  Mr. Morgan was both proud and reticent, so the case worker made no attempt to approach him, but told the woman she must devise some way to get him back, preferably to write him and say she was sorry.  This she refused to do and on her own responsibility adopted the clumsy device of wiring him that a favorite child was sick.  This brought him “on the run,” and, being back, he stayed. The case worker has never seen Mr. M., nor has his wife been encouraged to come any more to the office, although reports have been received from time to time through the son and daughter that things at home continue to go well.

FOOTNOTES: 

[33] See p. 179 regarding equity powers of the courts.

[34] Massachusetts social workers succeeded in 1917 in securing the passage of a law which permits the ordinary non-support law to be invoked in case of the man’s failure to pay the amount ordered after a legal separation.

[35] See p. 13 sq.

[36] Colcord, J.C.:  Article on “Desertion and Non-support.” Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, May, 1918, p. 95.