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 The procedure followed in this interview is frequently used in helping people out of trouble, and particularly, in helping them to understand and to face their problems. The process by which an individual tells the story of his experiences and then has that story retold to him as it appears to the person whom he has consulted is a fundamental method of interpretation. The application of it will vary with circumstances but the same underlying principle is always involved.

The initial telling serves two purposes—it usually relieves the feelings of the person in trouble, preparing him emotionally for the reception of the truth and it makes his history vivid. He sees his life as a whole and is thus the better able to appreciate the significance of its events and relationships as they are revealed to him. Sometimes the mere act of reciting the facts clarifies his mind so that by the time he has completed his story he is well on the way to an understanding of it. Sometimes, also, the process of telling and of receiving a sympathetic hearing strengthens his confidence in the person who is listening to him and by that much facilitates the task of interpretation.

The retelling of the story is not necessarily a


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 literal rehearsing of the entire narrative. While occasionally it is precisely this, more often it becomes rather a series of questions, suggestions, and comments which clear away the clouds of difficulty and discover the problem in its essentials.

Presumably the person who is able to help brings to the work of interpretation the background of a wider experience in the adjustment at hand than that possessed by the individual in trouble. This is an important consideration. It is what influences us in consulting a physician when we are ill. We seek an explanation of certain pains and disabilities through the medium of his greater knowledge of disease. It may be the first time that we have encountered this particular pain. To us it is unique. To him it is familiar, a symptom which he has observed in many different people. So, too, the trouble which puzzles a man can often be clarified by the experience of one who has seen other persons pass through the same difficulty.

When William Flack lost his job, although through no fault of his, he felt a sense of failure and defeat. He began to have doubts about himself. He was ashamed. He dreaded the inevi-

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 table question about what he was now doing. He wanted to avoid meeting his friends. He was loath to mention his predicament. Finally, he sought the advice of a person who had helped many men through the difficulties of unemployment. This man told him that he was simply showing what were characteristic symptoms of his adjustment. They were almost inevitable accompaniments of his problem and nearly everybody in a like situation was obliged to cope with them. The cure lay in admitting his predicament and in recognizing that only as he informed people that he was in the market for a job would he be likely to secure employment. The relief that William Flack felt in learning that his reactions to his problem were not unique is the relief which one can bring to many an individual who is in difficulty by giving him the perspective that comes from knowing what other people have felt and done under the same circumstances.

The interpretation of this man's problem was accomplished through a marshaling of testimony about what had occurred in many similar problems. For Mrs. Gordon it involved reviewing her own intimate experiences with a person who not being involved in them was able to point out


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 their significance to her. With the daughter of the widow who was about to become a mother it required a statement of the facts accompanied by an appeal to the child's sympathies and to her instinct to protect.

With each individual there was a difference in procedure, but it all led to the same conclusion—the facing of the facts. This is not an easy thing for anybody to do. It takes courage. Often one is tempted to follow the example of the boy who plays hookey to avoid taking an examination, even though the postponement only prepares a more unpleasant crisis. Often, too, like Christiana in the Valley of the Shadow of Death, we are glad to have some one stand with us as we confront the experience. Yet not infrequently to face the adjustment strips it of much of its terror. To see what one is about to meet or what one is already grappling with is to be strengthened for overcoming it. Let a man face the facts of his life and he has gone more than half-way toward a solution of his problems. The surest way out of trouble will be found in a seeking of the truth.


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our difficulties as wholly apart from ourselves as a problem in arithmetic the facing of them would be a simple matter. But they are not. Often the most critical fact in a man's life is himself and frequently the diagnosis, "He doesn't know what he's up against," must be accompanied by the equally familiar one, "He's his own worst enemy."

He may be unskillful in handling himself. He may have unfortunate mannerisms. He may say the wrong thing in spite of his desire to say the right. He may have habits that are as hobbles to his efforts toward success. He may not appreciate his own worth. He may lack confidence in his ability. He may be making mistakes in behavior.


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Growing Up

 * "Growing Up" (1925, "I've got shoes with grown-up laces"), a poem by Alan Alexander Milne
 * Growing Up (1928), a book by Karl de Schweinitz
 * Growing Up (1920), a novel by Mary Heaton Vorse

title: Growing Up


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26 . Is anything there?

. All quite quiet and still. Oh, how I wish I was not going out to dinner to-night.

. Can anything harm us, mother, after the night-lights are lit?

. Nothing, precious. They are the eyes a mother leaves behind her to guard her children.

(Nevertheless we may be sure she means to tell, the little maid, to look in on them frequently till she comes home. She goes from bed to bed, after her custom, tucking them in and crooning a lullaby.)

(drowsily). Mother, I’m glad of you.

(with a last look around, her hand on the switch). Dear night-lights that protect my sleeping babes, burn clear and steadfast to-night.

(The nursery darkens and she is gone, intentionally leaving the door ajar. Something uncanny is going to happen, we expect, for a quiver has passed through the room, just sufficient to touch the night-lights. They blink three times one after the other and go

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 He may not realize that in order to adjust himself to life he must change himself.

It is rarely that in greater or less degree a man's personality is not involved when he comes to face the predicament that is troubling him. To tell the unemployed man (see Chapter VII) that his sense of failure and of shame was a symptom of his unemployment was in a measure interpreting him to himself. After all, the real cause of his worry was lest there be something wrong with him. To learn that his difficulty was typical of what many other persons had suffered was to be assured that he was not peculiar in this respect and that, therefore, he was as good a man as he had ever been. His concern was himself, but to talk to him in terms of his adjustment was to make his problem objective rather than personal and thus to render it easier for him to grasp.

For, although since our earliest school days we have been reared to believe the maxim, 'Know Thyself,' we find the acquiring of this knowledge through the vehicle of other people the most painful of all ordeals. Few of us can receive the slightest compliment without blushing or undergoing a change in facial expression, and when the truth carries an adverse criticism our suffering


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 is so great that we cannot recall what was said without feeling a repetition of the anguish we endured at the time.

The pain of such experiences causes us to try in every way possible to protect ourselves from a recurrence of them. We will shy with all the timid alertness of a frightened animal from anything which appears to be leading us into this kind of a discussion. Once we are unavoidably in the midst of it we take various means of saving ourselves from hurt. Some people do this by pleasantly admitting everything that they are told, thus shortening and lightening the ordeal and escaping the unpleasantness of any extended thought upon the subject. Others surround themselves with an armour of temper, and through a quick anger prevent themselves from perceiving the truth that may disturb them. Others again guard themselves by unconsciously cultivating such an attitude of certainty about their qualities and characteristics that it is practically impossible for them to apprehend or to believe anything which contradicts their own opinion of themselves. Sometimes people reduce the discomfort of the experience by discounting the capacity of the individual who is presenting the


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 truth to them. What, after all, does he know about it, and what right has he to speak as he does. He has failings of his own—and thus thinking, they avoid or relieve any injury to their feelings.

Some people develop a too great willingness to engage in discussions about themselves and their problems. Just as not infrequently a sick person who has dreaded the thought of an operation comes to like the life of the hospital so much that he acquires what the doctors and nurses speak of as hospitalitis, and will even, for the sake of returning to the institution, complain of symptoms which require a surgeon, so, too, some individuals having had the experience of an exposition of themselves will seek a repetition of that experience at every opportunity. Nothing delights such an individual more than a description of himself as this or that sort of man, even though the criticism be of a derogatory nature. He likes to think of himself as a case to be studied, but in spite of the advice he receives he makes no effort to change. Once the initial sensitiveness to criticism has been dulled, this is a state of mind into which almost anybody can fall. The individual who is thus afflicted becomes so much interested in thinking about himself that he loses the habit of


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 action and becomes an ineffective human being, useless both to himself and to others.

The interpretation of a man should not, therefore, be undertaken without some assurance that he will be able to profit by it. Usually one will do best to wait until the person in trouble asks for this service. His request may be direct or implied. That it is spoken may not, however, necessarily mean that it is intended. A man may ask for advice about himself when he is too overwrought to apprehend what may be said to him. He may urge that he be told the truth when it is not the truth that he wishes to hear. What he desires to be told is that in his attitude and behavior he is being the only sort of person he could be under the circumstances. On the other hand, often those to whom we long to tell the truth know it before we speak, and when we tell them that which we think is new to them we are only confirming what they have long suspected. On every count the burden of proof rests upon the person who feels that he must offer to help a man to face the facts about himself.

What this process of interpretation involves when once it is called for may be seen in part in the story of Salvatore Donato.


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 Donato was a violinist of fair ability, but a fondness for liquor, unwisely indulgent parents, and a wife whose standards of home-making were below his own, had contributed to his deterioration. For fifteen years he had slipped from one failure to another until at last he was going about the streets seeking alms in return for his music. Even in this he was unsuccessful, and at length his wife and his five children and he were reduced to living in three miserable rooms. They faced a winter without money for fuel and with no apparent means of paying the rent now overdue or of providing the next day's food. Donato's parents had come to the rescue on so many similar occasions that they were unwilling to help, and Mrs. Donato appealed to a social agency.

A social case worker called upon the family in the late afternoon and found Mr. and Mrs. Donato and their children sitting in semi-darkness. There had been no money with which to buy oil. Before entering the house the social worker had obtained from Mr. Donato's father, and from several other persons a general knowledge of the situation and of Mr. Donato's difficulties.

"If I am to be of any help to you," she began, "I shall need certain information." She drew a


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 chair close to one of the windows, and, departing from her usual practice, put her inquiries to Mr. Donato in almost questionnaire form, entering the answers upon a pad. She was as impersonal in her manner as a physician would have been in inquiring about symptoms. She asked the name of his present employer—he had none; his last job—he had had none for years; his vocation; his means of livelihood; his early successes; his membership in an orchestra; and so on through his life. In this the social worker was making a different application of the same method as that illustrated in the interview with Mrs. Gordon (see Chapter VII). Through her questions she was taking Donato back from the present to the past and helping him to tell himself what he had been. She made no attempt to evaluate the facts which were being set forth. She accepted them without comment. Everybody else who had dealt with Donato had berated him, had told him that they were disgusted with him, and in similar ways had expressed their scorn, arousing within him protective emotions which prevented him from appreciating the truth of what they said.

Having led him to recapitulate his life she looked up from her notes: "Now, tell me, Mr. Donato,"


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 she asked, "what is the trouble?" Her manner of speaking was one of consideration and respect. The interview thus far had enabled her to recognize in him that which his parents and even his wife had forgotten. Along with the signs of weakness she saw a certain sensitiveness and something akin to fineness. Not for years had any one addressed this side of his nature.

"It is as you see," he replied sadly. "We are at the end." He was seated opposite to her.

She leaned toward him. "It is terrible for you to be living like this," she said in a tone low enough to reach his ears alone. Other people had told him what they thought about him in voices loud enough to inform the whole neighborhood. "You played in an orchestra, and now"—she hesitated—"you beg."

That sentence brought the whole picture into focus.

"The more I thought about it, the more ashamed I felt," Donato told a friend to whom some months afterward he described the interview. The social worker had succeeded in enabling him to see himself. The remainder of the interview was only a confirmation of her accomplishment.


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 "But what can I do?" Donato was apologetic. "I have no money. I have pawned my violin."

"You can work."

"My leg," he replied; "I am lame. No one would take me."

"You can get a job here," the social worker told him, scribbling the address of an employment bureau upon her card. "I'll see that you have a better pair of shoes," she added, noticing the condition of those he was wearing.

The effect of the interview was more instant than she had realized. Although she called early the next morning with the shoes, Donato had gone to the employment bureau in a pair of leather slippers—it was crisp winter weather—and had secured a job as a laborer, a place that he held for six months until it was possible for him to return to music as a vocation instead of as an introduction to alms.

There were several reasons for the social worker's success. In the first place, she acted from a well-founded knowledge of the man, obtained from his parents, his physician, and others who had tried to help him. It was this knowledge which made it possible for her to point the interview as she did. There is a vast amount of harm


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 done by well-intentioned people who in a first interview with a stranger give him advice which rests upon nothing but the impression they have gotten of him in the course of this initial conversation.

The atmosphere of impersonality which the social worker cast about the interview was another factor in her success. By approaching Donato objectively, by not evaluating what he told her or commenting upon it until she spoke the critical sentence in which she compared his present beggary with his happier past, she prevented the rising of beclouding emotions. The impartial and unbiased way in which she addressed him took him in a sense outside of himself and enabled him to see Donato as he was.

This attitude of impersonality is exceedingly important. Usually, as with Donato, the person in trouble has passed through that trying stage when relatives and neighbors take sides for and against him, blaming or condoning, chiding or sympathizing, until his feelings have become oversensitized to any discussion of himself. The objectivity of a stranger is like the application of the antiseptic solution that cleans the infected wound.


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iv To you, Sir, it is owing that this Hitory was ever begun. It was by your Deire that I firt thought of uch a Compoition. So many Years have ince pat, that you may have, perhaps, forgotten this Circumtance: But your Deires are to me in the Nature of Commands; and the Impreion of them is never to be eraed from my Memory.

Again, Sir, without your Aitance this Hitory had never been completed. Be not artled at the Aertion. I do not intend to draw on you the Supicion of being a Romance Writer. I mean no more than that I partly owe to you my Exitence during great part


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 The very intimacy of our relations with the members of our families and with other friends makes it difficult for them to help us to face the facts about ourselves. We are too cognizant of their limitations and their weaknesses to give weight to what they say. It not infrequently happens that the more dearly we love them the more animus we seem to find in what, with every good intention, they tell us about ourselves. This is not to say that often the best person to reveal the truth to a man isan intimate friend, but it does mean that the chances for success rest with the individual whose relationship with him is distinctly an impersonal one.

In such a relationship stand the psychiatrist, the teacher, the physician, the social worker, the lawyer, the clergyman, the employer. In varying degree and under different circumstances these occupy a position of authority. Their place, their experience, and their special knowledge give us confidence in them. Their opinions have credit with us. With them we can develop a kind of oblique objectivity. We can receive the truth from them with less hurt because we feel that it is not our whole selves that we are presenting for review but only that part of us which is student, employee, parishioner, patient, or client.


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 There is also that in our relationship with them which in our minds seems to vest them with the right and the duty under suitable circumstances to tell us that which we need to know about ourselves. Donato did not specifically ask the social worker to show him the facts about himself, but he instinctively recognized the appropriateness of her doing this. In seeking medical advice the patient realizes that the state of his health may make it necessary for his physician to discuss with him his most intimate habits. It is taken for granted that a teacher may discover in the quality of a student's work a need for helping him to perceive mistakes in behavior, and it is generally understood that at the time of employment, of promotion, of discharge, and in many other situations an employer may find it important to give an employee an estimate of his personality and work.

It is a question whether often under such circumstances the employer does not owe his employee this service, provided, of course, he recognizes in him an attitude of mind which will enable him to accept what he is told. For to be able to receive the truth requires the capacity for impersonality in the person who is being helped as


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 well as in him who is helping. There are few tributes to character that are higher than that which is paid a man when an employer takes his open-mindedness for granted by telling him why he is not offering him the position for which he has applied or why he is not promoting him. Some executives go farther than this, and as a matter of routine give each member of the staff an opportunity once or twice a year to learn how he and his work are regarded. This practice, applying as it does to everybody, throws an atmosphere of impersonality about the whole process and smooths the way to a reception of the truth.

The truth is as important as the impersonality. This is frequently forgotten. Too often we are inclined to speak in the spirit of Mrs. King, of "Old Chester Tales," who told people things flatly and frankly for their own good out of a sense of duty. To interpret a man to himself is to set forth not merely that which is unfavorable. This sort of half-truth only hurts and blocks him. It is the balanced presentation that wins a hearing.

The social worker told Donato the whole truth. She referred to the unfortunate elements in his character but she also recognized his strengths. That she herself was a musician helped


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 her perhaps the more quickly to sense his possibilities, but to use one's every resource is part of the art of helping people and does not vitiate the principle that in explaining a man to himself it is important to set forth his assets as well as his liabilities. Emphasis at the start upon his positive qualities strengthens him for learning about his weaknesses. The consciousness that he is appreciated for his successes enables him to consider his failures in a hopeful and constructive spirit.

This method of interpretation prepares the way for the next process which is exemplified in the interview with Donato. Having, through the recognition of his ability, aroused within him the desire to change, the social worker offered him an opportunity to act. She made the concrete and practical suggestion that he take a job. Without something definite to do, something to work toward, any discussion of a man with himself is likely to encourage a morbid introspectiveness that defeats the very end we would accomplish. The way men change is by following thought with action, and in offering opportunity for the one it is important to offer opportunity for the other.

Action, a balanced presentation, impersonality,


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 these three things underlie the process of explaining a man to himself. They apply also to the interpretating of his adjustments to him and to many other phases of the art of helping people out of trouble.

In one respect the story of Donato is not typical. His change was far more immediate than usually happens. Most people arrive at an understanding of themselves only gradually. It is a slow dawning rather than a sudden flash.

Self-knowledge is a triumph of intelligence over emotion, but such victories do not come quickly. Human beings surround themselves with such a network of sensitiveness that any close approach to their personalities is often impossible. Frequently one must try to accomplish by indirection what one would prefer to bring about through more direct methods. One must explain adjustment after adjustment, in the hope that at last by implication the individual may come to realize that the fundamental difficulty lies in himself. Sometimes he can be helped to self-understanding through an interpretation to him of those who are involved in his adjustment. Sometimes one must give up hope of interpretation by any means and must rely instead upon quickening his desires


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 and extending his interests and upon other phases of the art of helpfulness. It must be remembered that the facing of a man with the facts about himself is a method, not anend, a method fraught with difficulty and to be adopted only when there is good assurance of success. The surest way out of trouble is the recognition of the truth, but those that achieve this are exceedingly few.


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as few people are solitary, most persons being framed in a vast variety of relationships, having families, homes, neighbors, and many other affiliations, there is nothing more important to success in living than an appreciation of our fellows or more fraught with trouble than a failure to understand them. Blindness to the thoughts and desires and feelings of others seems, nevertheless, to be acommon human trait. It is at the bottom of many a maladjustment. It appears again and again as a disturbing factor in marriage, in widowhood, in adolescence, in work, in single life. Nearly everybody has at some time been called upon to repair the damage which it has caused.

The remedy lies, obviously, in clearing away


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 whatever misunderstandings exist. It is a work of interpretation, of mediation, and often of arbitration, the underlying principle always being the explanation of one person to another, as, for example, Mrs. Reynolds was explained to her husband.

He was out of patience with her. There had been trouble between them for many months. She was insanely jealous of him and without cause accused him of being unfaithful to her, even going to the hospital to see whether a woman, who was ill there, a fellow employee of his had not supplanted her in his affections. She mistrusted that he was withholding part of his wages from her, as indeed he was, and the disturbance which she made at his place of employment was undoubtedly a factor in bringing about his discharge. When he learned that he had lost his job, he took some money which had come to him as part of a legacy and gave himself up to alcohol. He had not been home for several days when the following interview took place.

"I suppose I am to blame for it all," he began sullenly. "I have done all sorts of things, I suppose, with no cause at all."

"I am neither blaming nor praising you," the


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 social case worker replied. "If I did I wouldn't have asked you to come to my office and tell your story."

"Oh, what's the use of my talking," Reynolds retorted unconvinced. "My wife's been blackguarding me to you."

"Now, Mr. Reynolds, you know that I know too much about your situation to be influenced by anything that anybody might say to me, but I can only help you if you will lay your cards down on the table and be fair with me."

"Oh," he exclaimed. "I admit that I've been drinking. Any man would have if he'd been through what I've been through. You take a horse out and beat it and he will act ugly toward you. It's the same way with a human being. If she would only have a little faith in me and speak a kind word to me once in a while, I could go ahead and keep things decent."

"I know it's been hard for you," he was assured, "but your wife has a pretty hard time of it too. She's at home all day working. She scarcely sees anybody except the children and they're a good deal of a trial. Anybody would be nervous with five of them running in and out all day long."

"Yes, but she needn't criticize me to them.


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 Why, she even sent Sarah to Fifteenth Street to watch where I went from the factory. The way she talks to me, the children don't respect me any more."

"If you heard how nicely Harry talks about you, you wouldn't think so," the social worker replied. "And, after all, you did tell your wife that your wages were less than they were. That's why she sent Sarah."

"And last pay-day she came herself," Reynolds interrupted, "and made such a fuss that I lost my job."

"She told me all about it," explained the social worker. "She knows that she was responsible for your discharge. She is very sorry. She said so to me several times."

Reynolds was mollified by this. He seemed pleased that his wife had admitted her mistake. "Only I wish she had told it to me," he remarked, and added that it was the loss of his job and Mrs. Reynolds's belief that he had been unfaithful to her which had driven him to drink.

"If it hadn't been for her going to the hospital to see Miss Arsen, I wouldn't have gone on a spree. Miss Arsen is fifty, if she's a day. The only time I ever saw her was at the factory, ex-


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 cept when she first got sick. Then I took her pay to her house. But I had nothing else to do with her, and when my wife went out to the hospital to see her and asked for the maternity ward, that was the last straw."

"Your wife told me about that too." Reynolds stared at the social worker in surprise. "And I think she really feels badly about it and is ashamed."

The man was amazed and appeased by this, too much so to reply, and the social worker continued:

"A good deal of your wife's trouble is caused by her nervousness. People are just like the machines you run at the steel works. Some of them are more complicated and harder to understand than others. If you don't handle them properly, they break and do a lot of damage. When you have a machine you don't understand, don't you try one way and then another until you find the one that works? Think how much time and patience you take over a machine of steel. And how much more complicated human beings are!"

"That's true,' the man admitted. "That's true. She is nervous and I guess she does have a hard time. Well, she seems to know what's what


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 now and I'll do the best I can if she will do her part." Then, as he rose to go, he added:

"It's easy for me to keep from drinking. You won't catch me going on another spree now."

He kept his word. Moreover, he made an earnest effort to understand and to conciliate his wife, and it was only her mental condition which ultimately caused them to decide upon a separation as the one possible solution.

In this interview the social worker did three things. She told Mr. Reynolds that his wife recognized her mistakes and was sorry for them. At the same time she did not let him forget that he had not been truthful about his wages. When errors have been made, it is usually wise to dispose of them by admitting them. This clears the way for a new understanding. It would have been better if Mrs. Reynolds could have done this for herself, but, since she could not, there was an advantage in having the social worker act for her, inasmuch as she could point out to Mr. Reynolds wherein he too had been wrong, a task which his wife could scarcely have undertaken without jeopardizing the chances of a better relationship.

The next step consisted in showing Mr. Rey-


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 nolds some of the difficulties which were handicapping his wife. There is no more certain way of bringing about an understanding of an individual than to describe the obstacles with which he or she must contend. It awakens sympathy and also explains the reasons for actions of which otherwise there would be adverse criticism.

Lastly, the interview was clinched by the analogy of the machine and the human being. This was an attempt to interpret Mrs. Reynolds in terms of Mr. Reynolds's own experience. It was an application of that fundamental principle in education which advises one to proceed through the known to the unknown.

Throughout the interview, of which what has been quoted was only a part, the social worker did not fail to give a sympathetic hearing to all that Mr. Reynolds said, even when she was obliged to tell him that she could not agree with him. By the time he left her office he had relieved himself of the emotions which had prevented him from thinking clearly about his predicament. To allow an angry man "to have his say" is the surest method of bringing him to reason. Feelings dissipate themselves in their own explosion, but accumulate in violence as they are forced back by


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 antagonism, a law of human nature which every one recognizes in the abstract, but which few observe when the emotional outburst is directed against them or when it is their part to listen to it.

Another important phase of interpretation consists in showing what might be called the average expectation of human beings. This was what Mrs. Cavallo needed to know in order to understand her son, Tony, who ran away from home one day taking with him twenty dollars which she had set aside for the payment of the rent.

"Tony no good—too bad," Mrs. Cavallo complained. "I treat him right. I give him clothes. I give him money for lunches. I give him car-fare."

"That's just the trouble," explained the social worker. "You give him only the money he has to have. You must remember Tony is growing up. He wants a good time, wants to do as other boys of his age do. He sees other boys going to the movies and he wants to go too."

Mrs. Cavallo raised another objection.

"I sit here. I sew all day, all night. He stay out nights, no come in."

"How late?" asked the social worker.

"Sometimes half-past nine, sometimes ten o'clock."


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 "That's not so bad," Mrs. Cavallo's visitor assured her. "If a boy of sixteen is in by ten o'clock, that's early enough."

"Tony no good, though," returned the mother, shaking her head. "He steal twenty dollars that I save for house [meaning rent] and coal."

"How did you get the twenty dollars?" her visitor inquired.

"Tony give me his pay every week. I save twenty dollars."

"Well, then," the social worker explained, "Tony probably didn't think that he was stealing the money. He thought it belonged to him. He had earned it. You mustn't expect a boy of his age to feel the same responsibility toward the family that you do."

But Mrs. Cavallo found still another objection.

"Tony just like his father. He no good."

"If Tony has had as bad a father as you say, how do you expect him to support you like a good husband?" was the response. "He hasn't had any example to live up to."

"He talk like his father," continued Mrs. Cavallo, still apparently unconvinced. "He talk bad to me. When I tell him to do something, he talk bad. He say—'I do as I darn please.


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 "He's always heard his father talk that way," the social worker reminded the mother. "Besides, he thinks he has the right to do as he pleases because he earns his own money."

Thus far Mrs. Cavallo had shown no indication of any appreciation of Tony's side of the argument, except to change the subject after each of the social worker's comments. Now, however, she said:

"A friend tell me my husband say Tony come over there to see him. You, please, go over and see my husband and Tony."

"Will you take Tony back?" the social worker asked.

"Yes," answered Mrs. Cavallo, evidently from a variety of motives. "No good for Tony to be over there. We need Tony."

"Will you give him money from his pay and let him have a good time two or three nights a week?"

"Yes, I do that."

The social worker, having progressed thus far in helping the mother to a more reasonable attitude toward her son, now went to see the father, who was separated from his wife and was living in a neighboring city. Mr. Cavallo promised to tell


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 Tony to call to see the social worker, but Tony did not do so. She, therefore, went once more to see Mr. Cavallo, this time in the company of Mrs. Cavallo, who had several matters of business to transact with him. They found father and son together.

The interview that ensued was decidedly to the advantage of the mother. The man was considerably older than the woman, as lifeless and careless as she was energetic and neat. He was not well, and doubtless his irritability was partly due to this cause, but he stormed about needlessly while his wife was quiet and dignified. All the differences that had existed between the two appeared in the discussion and the substantial qualities of Mrs. Cavallo became more and more evident.

The social worker had not planned the interview as a demonstration for Tony, but since it was developing in this way she allowed the boy to watch his parents for a few minutes. Then she took him aside.

"Well, Tony," she said, "I have heard something about this trouble that you and your mother have had, and I'd like to hear your side."

Tony was moody and sullen, but also a bit ashamed.


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 "I got tired of giving all my wages to her and hearing her talk," he grumbled.

"Why did she scold you?" the social worker asked.

"She didn't think I ought to go out with the fellows. She didn't want me to go to the movies."

"It was only her desire to do the best for you," the social worker explained. "She meant well. You know that boys sometimes get into trouble by hanging around the streets at night."

"She wouldn't give me my money," Tony objected.

"That was because your mother thought the money could be better spent at home. She has to think of the whole family. You want your sisters to be well dressed, don't you? You ought to be proud because she wants to have nice things and because she keeps the house so clean and neat." The social worker now made a direct plea to the boy. "She's lonely without you. She needs some one at home to protect her. If you will come back, she has promised to give you spending money and to let you go out at night."

Tony was plainly appeased by what the social worker told him, but he was too stubborn to yield at once.


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 "Well, I'll think it over," was all he would say. But a few days later he visited his mother and within two weeks he was at home.

In addition to explaining the son to the mother in terms of what boys ordinarily want and do, and the mother to the son in the light of her responsibility as a parent, the social worker in bringing about a better understanding also acted as a negotiator and mediator. She proposed a new working agreement to Mrs. Cavallo and submitted it to Tony. It was a situation in which concessions must needs be made by both. It was a mutual adjustment.

Peter and Annie Ainsley, on the other hand, represent the type of problem in which the adjustment of a family depends chiefly and almost exclusively upon the actions of others. Their relatives had consulted a social worker in order to discover why Peter could not secure a better job and why Annie did not take better care of her home. They could not understand why she did not serve meals at regular hours; why her husband's clothes were never mended; why her little daughter was not started for school early enough to enable the child to arrive there on time, and why, when the family moved into a new home,


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 the furniture remained for days exactly where the moving men had left it.

The social worker, having taken the man and the woman to a mental clinic, suggested that the relatives meet for a conference with her. There were ten adults in the group that gathered one evening at the home of Mr. and Mrs. Gardner, the parents of Mrs. Ainsley. All the brothers and sisters of the man and the woman were present. They had brought their children with them and every now and then the discussion was interrupted by the entrance of one or another of the youngsters.

"I am not going to try to repeat the doctor's exact words," the social worker began, for she knew her audience was composed chiefly of persons of no great education. "But it amounts to this: Peter and Annie have never grown up mentally. Their bodies are fully developed and they have the feelings of a man and a woman. They have fallen in love with each other and have married like the rest of you, but their brains are still those of a boy and a girl. Their minds haven't changed since they were seven or eight years old."

Just then one of the children looked in through the door for a moment and then ran away.


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 "Suppose Esther were suddenly to be given a great big grown-up person's body to manage," the social worker suggested after the little girl had left, "and suppose she were to have all the grown-up person's responsibilities; the marketing, taking care of the children, finding a new house, planning the meals, and all the other things, wouldn't she make many of the same mistakes that Annie makes? As Esther's body gets older, her mind will grow older too. She will be able to think what to do. She will learn by experience. But Annie so far as her mind is concerned is just where Esther is to-day. She always will be. The same is true of Peter. He and Annie aren't able to decide things for themselves."

"Why, that isn't the way Annie is at all," interrupted one of the sisters. "She knows perfectly well what she wants and she knows how to holler for it too. She certainly can make an uproar if she has a mind to."

"Doesn't that almost prove what I said?" the social worker replied. "Isn't that just the way children act? Surely hollering or making an uproar would not be your or my way of obtaining our wishes."

The company smiled, and the speaker continued:


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Rh of the Time which I have employed in compoing it: another Matter which is may be neceary to remind you of: ince there are certain Actions of which you are apt to be extremely forgetful: but of thee I hope I hall always have a better Memory than yourelf.

Laly, it is owing to you that the Hitory appears what it now is. If there be in this Work, as ome have been pleaed to ay, a tronger Picture of a truly benevolent Mind than is to be found in any other, who that knows you, and a particular Acquaintance of yours, will doubt whence that Benevolence hath been copied? The World will not, I believe, make me the


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 "Children know what they want, but they don't always want the right things. We expect adults to decide rightly most of the time at least."

The family was plainly convinced of this point and she turned to another phase of the same question.

"When Annie still lived at home, was she interested in a lot of different things or did she seem to be 'hipped' on only one thing?"

"Oh, my!" exclaimed the sister who had spoken before, "I guess she was 'hipped' all right. She used to be crazy about cleaning and wouldn't even let father sit on any of the chairs after she had dusted. If he did, she'd almost throw a fit. Really, I don't know what's come over her lately, but since the baby came she hasn't cared a bit about anything else."

"Nothing has come over her," the social worker explained. "She simply hasn't the ability to be interested in the many things you can be interested in. She has room for only one interest. Before she was married, she cleaned. After her marriage she wanted furniture and spent all her money for it. When the baby came she did nothing but take care of him and everything else had


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 to go—cleaning, furniture, Peter, marketing, everything."

Old Mr. Gardner shook his head.

"Yes," he said, "I knowed right along that Annie was nothing but a child."

"That's it exactly, Mr. Gardner," the social worker concluded. "Annie and Peter are nothing but children. If you'll remember this, you'll have no trouble in understanding them and helping them."

She might have said that they were mental defectives. That she did not was the success of her explanation. She told the relatives about Peter and Annie in terms that were within the range of their experience, using the apparently inexplicable behavior of the Ainsleys as proof of the diagnosis which she advanced—Peter and Annie were nothing but children.

In general, the same methods of interpretation were used both here and in the other instances that have been presented. While the dialogue was devious and prolonged and while what has been reported represents only the climaxes of the various conversations, they all bear testimony to the validity of certain fundamental principles.

If, as with Tony Cavallo, the behavior of the


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 person who needs to be explained is normal then it is only necessary to show that other people are doing the same thing; if abnormal, as with the Ainsleys, then the plea for understanding should be based upon the special handicaps of their abnormality. One can usually gain a hearing and a sympathetic interest by describing the obstacles with which the individual in trouble must contend, but as with Mr. Reynolds, one must be careful also to give emotions an opportunity to express themselves. Finally, one must never fail to speak in the language of the experience of the man to whom one is talking, always proceeding through the known to the unknown. To observe these axioms of human intercourse is the essence of the art of helping people to understand each other.


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is no phase of the art of helping people out of trouble that is more delicate or that cuts closer to the roots of one's philosophy than that which has to do with the development of the plans by which an individual makes his way out of difficulty. As soon as a man appears to hesitate and to be uncertain about his future, there comes the temptation to suggest an appropriate course of action to him. The more obvious the course of action, the greater the temptation. Frequently his friends succumb to it and undertake to tell him what to do, urging and even insisting that he adopt their advice.

To try to help a man in this way is to overlook one of the fundamental human impulses. This is that everybody wants to govern his own life and


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 to make his own decisions. Puzzled, bewildered, and buffeted though a man may be he never loses the urge to self expression. No matter how submissive he may have become to another's suggestions, no matter how prone he may be to turn to some one else for the solution of his problems, when he reaches that which to him is vital he wants to be the arbiter of his own desires.

How can he enter enthusiastically into a plan that is wholly the creation of some one else? He must have had at least a part in its conception. He must feel a sense of ownership in it. Without this there is little hope that the plan will be successfully executed or have anything of permanence about it.

People vary greatly in the ability to devise ways of overcoming their difficulties. Some persons are quick to discover what they should do and need only freedom and opportunity to carry out their decisions. Others find it hard to originate or to develop solutions of their problems. In any event it is by freeing a man so that he can express himself and by stimulating him to do his own thinking that the best plans are developed. We may suggest, we may advise, but only as a subsidiary part of the process by which the indi-


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 vidual in trouble is working out his own way of life.

The application of this principle is as various as are human beings. In one of its aspects it is illustrated by the manner in which George O'Brien came to arrange for the care of his motherless baby.

He had fallen in love with Mrs. Ledoux, whose husband had deserted her, and the young people—for they were still in their early twenties—had become parents without marriage. A few months after the baby's birth, Mrs. Ledoux entered the last stages of consumption. She lived with her widowed mother and eight brothers and sisters. For her own comfort and for the protection of the other members of the family, it was important that she go to a hospital. This she hesitated to do.

The social case worker who had been asked to help decided to discuss the situation with Mr. O'Brien, both because she knew that Mrs. Ledoux would enter the hospital if he wanted her to do so, and because it was important that some plan be made for the future of the baby.

"I've been quite anxious to have a talk with you about Mrs. Ledoux's illness," she said as she


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 shook hands with Mr. O'Brien. "She's very sick and her mother doesn't seem to realize it. I felt that you ought to know about her condition."

"What did the doctor say?" asked O'Brien who knew that the social worker had consulted Mrs. Ledoux's physician.

"He said that both her lungs were affected. She has scarcely any use of her right lung and her left lung is not much better. I'm afraid that he doesn't feel hopeful. He talked very seriously to me about her. I fear that he doesn't think she is going to get well."

For a moment O'Brien was too shocked to reply.

"I didn't have any idea," he began. "I knew she was sick. I didn't think it was anything like that."

The social worker waited until he had recovered himself. Then she said:

"You know that her home is no place for her in that condition."

"I certainly do," the man agreed. "It makes me sick to go there. I hate even to sit down there."

"We ought to give her every chance, and make her comfortable. Won't you see whether you can persuade her to go to the hospital?"


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 O'Brien promised to do so, and the social worker continued:

"It's going to be hard for the baby with her mother away. Have you any plan for taking care of the little girl?"

O'Brien seemed to be greatly embarrassed by this turn in the conversation. His face flushed, and it was evident that it was a subject which was not easy for him to discuss. The best way of helping him would probably be to recognize his difficulty:

"I know it's hard for you to speak about this, but I also know how devoted you and Alice are to each other, and I want you to feel that you can talk plainly to me about everything and that I will always understand."

"Yes," O'Brien teplied, "I think you would understand. I'm awfully ashamed of having anything like that happen, but I really don't want to do anything until after Alice is in the hospital."

"I think you're right," the social worker agreed. "Of course you will first want to see that Alice is comfortable, but after she goes to the hospital I am afraid that the baby won't get the care she ought to have."

"I've always felt," O'Brien said, "that if any-


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 thing happened to Alice I would try to do what was right about the baby."

"I'm not surprised to hear you say that. I've respected you ever since I heard about the way you've stuck to Alice and how you helped her after the baby came."

"You're the first one that ever gave me credit for acting white. The whole neighborhood is down on me. They blame me for Alice's being sick."

"That's because they don't understand. You know how the neighbors gossip. If only you could take your little girl away from it all. Do you think your mother could be persuaded to take her?"

"I've never talked to her about it," the man replied. "I don't know how she'd feel about it."

"I know you'd rather have one of your own people take care of the baby, but of course you could always place her with a foster mother. I'm sure I could help you to find one if ever you should want me to."

O'Brien listened thoughtfully.

"As soon as Alice is in the hospital, I will come to see you."

A few days later he told the social worker that


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 his sister with whom he had decided to make his home had agreed to care for the baby. The plan was carried out, and Mrs. Ledoux had the satisfaction of knowing before she died that the child would be reared by its father, and that its name would be Alice O'Brien.

In all that was essential, the plan for taking care of the child was O'Brien's. The social worker helped him to see that the time for planning had come. She confirmed him in his intention "to do what was right about the baby," but she only suggested. She did not even advise. She was merely the means by which he began to think about what he should do, not an inconsiderable service, to be sure, when it is remembered that most unmarried fathers leave to the mother the responsibility of caring for the child.

Such was the experience of Mrs. Darnell. She had, however, no difficulty in making a plan. What she needed was freedom for carrying it out. She had never been free. She had been so carefully sheltered at home that she had been unprepared for life. At an early age she married a man who soon proved to be unfaithful to her, and after several years of unhappiness she obtained a divorce. The members of her family regarded the


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 whole experience as a reflection upon her ability to direct her own affairs, and they proceeded to manage them for her. They instituted a system of chaperonage and supervision which would have been irksome to a child, but the very man with whom, because he was married, Mrs. Darnell's relatives thought she was safe, became the means of her seduction.

Mrs. Darnell left her home and went to another city where her baby was born. Inasmuch as marriage with the father of the child was impossible, she decided that she would try to make a home for herself and the baby. The only means was a place at service. No one in all her relationship had ever earned a living in this way, and when the members of the family learned about it, they felt that they had been doubly disgraced. Mrs. Darnell's uncle hastened to call upon the social case worker to whom she had turned for advice.

"This must all stop," he announced. "We have everything planned for Edith. She is to come back home where we will take care of her. We'll place the baby in an institution and nobody need know that anything has happened."

Then he asked the social worker to persuade Mrs. Darnell to give up her plan and adopt the


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 one that he suggested. The social worker refused. She pointed out that the family had just witnessed the cost of repression. Why repeat the experiment? Mrs. Darnell now had in her love for the baby a controlling purpose and a reason for living. It was something that would steady and strengthen her. To deprive her of her child and the opportunity to plan her future would be to take away the greatest asset in her life.

The man was unconvinced, but Mrs. Darnell was allowed to carry out her plan. She remained at service until she found employment which enabled her to establish a home for herself and her baby, and there, in less than a year, she entertained the members of her reconciled family. The service of the social worker had been to see that Mrs. Darnell's relatives left her free. Frequently the greatest assistance one can give the person in trouble is to see that other people keep hands off and that he has a chance to work out his own salvation.

It is seldom that a man can act without reference to the ideas of some one else. Often plans must be developed by an interchange of thought between the persons affected. The art of helping may then consist in bringing the interested indi-


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 viduals together so that they may discuss the situation. This was what the social worker did for Peter and Annie Ainsley (described in Chapter IX), when she sat as the chairman of a family council in which a policy and a procedure for helping them were evolved.

Although it is important to leave an individual free to make his own plans, this does not mean that one should blindly endorse every idea that is proposed by the person who comes for advice. The plan must be genuine and must have a reasonable chance of success. What results when these elements are absent is illustrated by the following incident.

A social worker had been endeavoring to aid Harry Wallou, a boy of nineteen years, to discover his vocation. Perhaps because Harry felt that something was expected of him, he said that he would like to be a wireless telegraph operator. It was more a statement at a venture than the expression of a profound desire. It was not a genuine plan. The social worker obtained a job for him in a telegraph office from which, after six months, he was discharged as being utterly incapable of acquiring even the rudiments of wireless telegraphy. The boy's lack of the necessary


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 intelligence and the appropriate educational background could easily have been ascertained before his plan was endorsed. He had not originally suggested it with conviction and it would not have been difficult to show him that the idea was unwise. He might have been spared the additional handicap of the sense of failure which the experience brought him. Only too often a sanguine and enthusiastic personality will embark a man upon plans in which he has no fundamental interest, mistaking his acquiescence for a positive desire. Once the buoyancy and optimism of the helper is removed, the individual slackens his efforts because he has never really made the plan his own.

Sometimes the person in trouble will have a plan which is genuine, but which is unsound. He is so eager to start upon the project that neither persuasion nor advice is enough to make its undesirability evident. Under such circumstances it may be wisest to help him to learn in the only way by which, after all, most people learn, that is, by experience.

A widow with two children was invited by her sister and her brother-in-law to make her home with them. They lived in a city three hundred miles distant. A social case worker learned that


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 the real purpose of the invitation was to use the widow as a servant and that the personality and character of the sister and of her husband were such as to make living with them anything but congenial. She told these things to the widow, but when in spite of this the woman persisted in her wish to carry out her project the social worker helped her to prepare for the journey. Three months later the widow returned to her native city. She had been convinced of her mistake, and was now ready to develop a better plan.

To learn by experience is expensive, and when health and morals are at stake it would seem dangerous to assume the responsibility of making an unwise experiment possible. Would it not be better then to force the individual to adopt the plan that is in his own best interest?

The use of force is always a confession of failure. It implies that one has not at the moment the skill or the knowledge to solve the problem which has been presented, for after all there usually is a solution.

A man who was ill with tuberculosis was unwilling to go to a sanatorium. Yet his carelessness and his failure to take precautions were menacing the health of his children. A social agency which


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 had been supporting the family refused to continue to supply financial assistance so long as he remained at home. The man agreed to enter the sanatorium. After he had been there three months, he returned. When persuasion did not succeed in inducing him to go back, the refusal of support accomplished this purpose. Again he came home, and again the process was repeated. Altogether he was admitted three times to the sanatorium. Three times he returned, and, doubtless, it was only his death at the sanatorium which prevented him from coming back once more. This shows both the effectiveness and the ineffectiveness of force. The man went to the sanatorium, but he had nothing within himself to keep him there; yet, on the other hand, the use of force sent him back and saved his wife and children from contracting his disease.

Sometimes the very fact that a man in such a predicament has a wife and children makes the use of force questionable, for the hardship which the lack of money may cause the family may injure the health of the children more than the presence of the father. The cure is worse than the disease, and there always remains the question, suppose force fails, what then?


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 Because a person says 'no' to-day does not mean that he will not say 'yes' to-morrow. This was certainly true of John Ellsworth. His mother had died leaving him with seven brothers and sisters, the youngest, a baby. He was only twenty-two years old. His sister Gertrude, was seventeen. She was a stenographer.

"What are you going to do?" asked the social worker.

"Gertrude will give me ten dollars a week," John replied confidently, "and I'm going to take care of the family."

"Have you thought it out thoroughly? It takes a lot of money to clothe and feed so many children and to pay the rent and buy coal."

"I don't care," said John, "that's what I'm going to do."

"Sometime you'll want to marry and have a family of your own. Could you ask a wife to take care of your brothers and sisters? What would you do if Gertrude married and left you to support the whole family? I think you're splendid to have the idea, but don't you think it would be better if the youngest four children were sent to live with some other family? I'll be glad to help you place them."


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 "There isn't any use talking," John insisted. "I know what I'm going to do and that's keep the children."

The social worker, seeing how determined he was, decided not to press him.

Three or four days later she called again, but did not mention the subject. To do so would only strengthen John in his determination and weaken her influence with him.

A little later John raised the issue.

"You know, I've been thinking that it costs an awful lot of money to keep a family going, and I think the best thing I can do is to put the children away somewhere," and when the social worker offered to help him, he continued, "maybe you could do it better than I could—you just go ahead."

People are hardly ever convinced by argument. When a man has positive opinions, it is seldom wise to oppose him. It is vastly better to wait until more opportunity for thought or the logic of events convinces him. Then, when he arrives at a decision, the plan is his own.

The more difficult the plan is of execution, the more vital to the individual in trouble does the sense of personal identity with it become. It was


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 this which caused a social case worker to wait a year and a half for a family to decide upon a course of action, which during all this time she felt was necessary to their happiness. Husband and wife had begun to jar each other's nerves. With rest and recuperation for the woman and a stay in a sanatorium for the man, the physical basis of their oversensitiveness to each other might be removed. But in order to accomplish this it would be necessary to break up the home and place the children temporarily with some private family. This would be a difficult step for the parents to take. The social worker knew that if she persuaded them to do it they would not be nearly so likely to hold to their decision as if they arrived at it of their own accord. Therefore, she suggested the plan and then waited until at last they came to see that it was the only possible solution of their difficulties.

The more one works with people the more one realizes that the way of freedom is the only sure road to success. The plan that carries through is the plan that is a man's own. Suggest it to him, perhaps, but only as a thought for him to digest and to make a part of himself. Offer him the stimulation that comes from a meeting of minds,


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]

''out, precisely as children (whom familiarity has made them resemble) fall asleep. There is another light in the room now, no larger than fist, and in the time we have taken to say this it has been into the drawers and wardrobe and searched packets, as it darts about looking for a certain shadow. Then the window is blown open, probably by the smallest and therefore most mischievous star, and flies into the room. In so far as he is dressed at all it is in autumn leaves and cobwebs.'')

(in a whisper). Tinker Bell, Tink, are you there? (A jug lights up.) Oh, do come out of that jug. ( flashes hither and thither.) Do you know where they put it? (The answer comes as of a tinkle of bells; it is the fairy language. can speak it, but it bores him.) Which big box? This one? But which drawer? Yes, do show me. ( pops into the drawer where the shadow is, but before can reach it,  moves in her sleep. He flies onto the mantelshelf as a hiding-place. Then, as she has not waked, he flutters over the beds as an easy way to observe the

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 from the action and reaction of ideas, from the thinking out aloud with some one who understands; edit, perhaps criticize, but let the authorship remain with him. It is both his right and the way of his salvation.


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 Compliment of thinking I took it from myelf. I care not: This they hall own, that the two Perons from whom I have taken it, that is to ay, two of the bet and worthiet Men in the World, are trongly and zealouly my Friends. I might be contented with this, and yet my Vanity will add a third to the Number; and him one of the greatet and noblet, not only in his Rank, but in every public and private Virtue. But here whilt my Gratitude for the princely Benefactions of the Duke of Bedford burts from my Heart, you mut forgive my reminding you, that it was you who firt recommended me to the Notice of my Benefactor.


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the opposite pole of human nature from man's desire to think and act for himself is his tendency to thrust upon others the solution of his problems. In its insidious way this inclination to escape responsibility is as strong as his will to achieve his own salvation. It appears at every stage of life, from childhood to age, and, while it varies in intensity in different people, it is absent from no one.

Weakness and inability are its special opportunity. The strong man obviously is able to take care of himself, and is expected to do so. There is


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 no excuse for him to transfer his responsibilities, and therefore less temptation for him to do so, but where there is weakness the opposite prevails. Then the need of help is recognized and the person in trouble by reason of his own insufficiency can hope that his fellows will carry his burdens. Many things are done for the sick which in health they would do for themselves. Children being unable to cope with all the vicissitudes of life unaided are spared responsibilities which in later years they must assume. The loss of a job may force a man to accept assistance in meeting his financial obligations, and there are many other circumstances in which people are relieved of tasks which ordinarily they would be expected to assume.

Unless help of this kind is extended with understanding and foresight, it may become like the morphine which, having been administered out of the necessity for deadening pain, proves to be the means of forming in the patient an addiction to opiates. Once a man has enjoyed the luxury of having had his responsibilities carried by some one else, he finds the temptation to continue the period of weakness exceedingly difficult to resist.

Every one has moments when he does not feel


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 like exerting himself, and when he would willingly yield to this disinclination even though at the expense of other people. All that we need at such a time is a sufficient excuse. We tell ourselves that the hot weather is especially hard for us to bear; or it may be that we still feel the effects of the influenza; or perhaps we are not qualified by experience for the undertaking; or, as a last resort, we just do not feel equal to it. If we can prove this to ourselves we feel that we can preserve our self-respect; and if we can lead others to believe us we can induce them to do our work for us.

This tendency which all of us occasionally experience may become greatly accentuated in any one who frequently or over a long period of time has received help from others. He finds effort more and more difficult and dependence easier and easier, until at last his energies seem to suffer a kind of atrophy and he becomes a parasite upon his friends and a handicap to all with whom he is associated.

One way of treating a person thus affected and of preventing his deterioration is to place responsibility upon him and to expect accomplishment of him. The doing of this involves more an attitude of mind than a definite procedure, a point of


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 view that will be found to be more strongly developed in some persons than in others. Is it not true that there is a vast variation in the amount of effort which different people draw from us? As between two men, equally friendly, equally interested in us, we will be more careful to present accomplishment to one than to the other, more punctilious in the keeping of appointments, more precise in the making of statements, more effective in every way. The reason for this is that we feel that the one expects more of us than does the other. The same fact holds good of our attitude toward those whom we are helping out of trouble. We can make our assistance stimulating or we can make it enervating in proportion as we look for strength or invite weakness. There is nothing more difficult in the art of helping than this, for one must maintain a nice balance between doing everything and doing nothing, varying the weight of responsibility according to the strength of the individual who is being helped. This calls for the most intimate knowledge of the person in difficulty, and even then, one is frequently at a loss to know how much or how little of achievement should be expected of him.

Perhaps the simplest illustration of this is pro-


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 vided by the experience of a father and his daughter, who, one winter's day, were climbing a hill down which they had coasted. The snow was covered with a crust. Through this the man occasionally broke and therefore found the ascent easier than did the girl, a child of about five years, who, as they came to the steep rise that defended the top, began to be in difficulty. Her feet slipped from under her. She fell. She slid back, and it seemed almost as if she would be unable to complete the climb. The father was greatly tempted to put forth his hand and pull the child out of trouble. Instead, he encouraged her to continue the struggle. Walking now beside her, now half a pace ahead, he tried to make a game of it, laughing whenever the child fell, but with her, not at her, and cheering her on to greater effort, until at length the hill was conquered. Thereafter, with the experience and assurance of her first success the little girl repeated the victory with increasing ease. The mastery of the ascent strengthened her for the next attempt. Had not this achievement been expected of her she would have been by just that much retarded in the development of self-confidence. At the same time, however, that her father was placing the responsibility of mak-


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 ing the climb upon her he was helping her to accomplish it. He gave her the assistance of his encouragement and he aided her by pulling the sled up the hill. Had she been older and stronger, they would have pulled the sled together, or perhaps have taken turns, but the father recognized what was possible and what was not possible, and asked of her only that which she could perform.

This recognition of the possible and the impossible is admittedly the crux of the problem of placing responsibility, a problem that cannot be solved by rule, but can be dealt with only on the basis of one's understanding of the person whom he is helping. Generally speaking, parents in comfortable circumstances are likely to underestimate rather than to overestimate the capacity of their children. Necessity compels the poor to expect self-reliance of their sons and daughters, but their wealthier neighbors have not this advantage. It is not unusual for boys and girls of families in comfortable circumstances to enter the first year of school without being able to dress themselves, or even to lace their shoes, while the overanxiety of parents and the availability of motor-cars prevents many a child of eight or


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 nine years of age from learning to go to school alone.

Occasionally one finds instances of exactly the reverse of this, parents who expect too much too quickly. This often causes the children to feel that their elders have no sympathy for them and no understanding of them. Responsibility and self-dependence should be cultivated gradually, as was done by the parents of a seven-year-old girl in accustoming her to take herself to and from school.

The child lived where electric cars and automobiles passed continually, and the possibility of such an accident as every city mother dreads was always present. On leaving the electric car to walk to the school she was obliged to cross the street with its double tracks, and then, at the end of a block, a thoroughfare where the motor traffic was exceptionally heavy. The parents began by accustoming their daughter to the passage of the street on which their home stood. At first the mother crossed with the child, emphasizing, by example, the importance of watching for electric cars and automobiles, and of waiting for lulls in traffic. After a time she went only so far as the curb, leaving the little girl to complete the


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 remainder of the journey alone. The next step was to watch from the window until her daughter waved to her from the other side.

While the child was learning this lesson—and the home of a playmate across the way provided frequent occasion for it—one or the other of the parents took her to school. As soon as she had acquired the necessary skill and confidence, they began to reduce the distance which they accompanied her at the school end of her journey, first stopping to watch her cross the automobile thoroughfare; then going only to the farther side of the street with the double car tracks, and at last discharging her from their tutelage by remaining on the electric car while she stepped off by herself. Could any procedure be more simple? Yet, for lack of such elementary processes as these, children are sheltered beyond the years when they should be relying upon themselves.

Nor is it only children who are unwisely protected in this way. The same mistake is frequently made by those who undertake to help people of foreign birth to adjust themselves to American life. Thus, a young woman who had entered training for social work devoted several hours


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 each week for a number of months to taking a woman of immigrant stock to a dispensary. The trip involved a change of cars which apparently the woman did not feel able to manage. Later, an experienced social case worker became acquainted with the woman. She explained that she would accompany her to the dispensary once more so that she could observe the way, but that she was too busy to undertake more than this one trip. The next expedition the woman made alone, and thereafter she continued to attend the dispensary without a companion.

Often it is the subtle appeal to the pride of having some one consult us that prevents us from expecting accomplishment of the individual who seeks our help. There is nothing quite so flattering as to be asked to give advice. When a man comes to us in trouble we find it hard to resist telling him what, if we were in his place, we should do, and if he is at all inclined to be dependent upon others we are likely to assume the responsibility for most of his decisions, gradually depriving him of his self-reliance.

This was the way in which the spirit of dependence had been developed in Henry Norton. His parents had died before he had reached ten years


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 of age, and an aunt had become his guardian. She was a woman of strong personality, and this, together with her pity for her orphaned, and to her mind, therefore, helpless nephew, caused her to take the initiative in all decisions. The boy learned to turn to her for the solution of his every problem. He became more and more dependent upon her, a dependence of which apparently he was quite unconscious until her death in a railroad accident.

Without her he seemed to be unable to direct his life, and in his dilemma he turned eagerly to the social case worker who had met him in the course of her work among the survivors of the disaster. Where should he live? What would she suggest? The social worker recognizing his difficulty felt that to throw him immediately upon his own resources would be to send him to a dependence upon the first sympathetic person whom he might meet. On the other hand, to tell him what to do would be but to continue him in a habit which was already too strong. She decided upon a compromise.

"Well, what is there that you can do?" she asked. "Have you any place at all where you could live?"


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 "My things are at the apartment, but I couldn't live there alone, could I?"

"Would you want to?"

"It would be lonely. What do you think I ought to do?"

"How do the students at the university find rooms?" This question was designed to open the way for a new plan.

"There is a registry of houses at the Dean's office, and sometimes they answer advertisements in the newspapers."

The social worker purposely offered no suggestion, and the young man added, "I suppose I could go to see the Dean."

Having visited a number of possible living places, he returned. He wanted the social worker to make a choice for him. She questioned him about the advantages and disadvantages of each house, but when he asked her where she would go, if she were in his place, she put the responsibility upon him. "You're the only person who can decide where you want to live," she told him.

Finally, he made the choice, uncertainly, and tentatively, but nevertheless his own. It was a wise selection, and the social worker added to his assurance by telling him so.


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 Almost immediately thereafter Norton was obliged to make up his mind about whether he should return to the university for a year of postgraduate study, or whether he should enter the field of advertising where an opportunity had been opened to him. Again, he turned to the social worker, and again she helped him by the indirect method of questioning instead of by telling him what to do. She paralleled advantages and disadvantages for him, but having done this she once more placed the decision upon his shoulders.

The man with whom Norton was now making his home perceived the young man's problem and supplemented the work of developing his spirit of self-reliance. The following comment was typical of the way in which this friend threw Norton back upon his own resources.

"The engine is stalled and I think I'll ask her to crank it," Norton had said by way of explaining that he was discouraged and was going to the social worker for inspiration.

"Wouldn't she prefer having you use a self-starter?" was the man's reply.

Norton had not thought of this. He decided to be his own inspiration. The process was repeated again and again, for once a person has contracted


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 the habit of depending upon others for advice, he is not likely to break himself of it in a week, nor yet in a month.

This is not to imply that to give advice, and, when possible, to provide inspiration is not a legitimate and important form of helpfulness. To establish a principle of never doing this would be as unwise as always to supply it whenever it was asked. There is, however, a place beyond which one cannot go. This is where one finds the burden of decisions resting upon himself instead of—where it belongs—upon the person who is striving to make a better adjustment to life.

Sickness and physical handicap are perhaps the most difficult circumstances in which to tell whether or not—and to what extent—one should carry the responsibility of the individual in trouble. It is not so much in the acute illnesses that this question arises, for the man who is in the midst of one of these attacks obviously is capable of no exertion other than that involved in the will to recover. It is rather during convalescence, in chronic handicaps, or in minor indispositions that the issue develops.

In such situations the patient frequently believes that he is unable to undertake any of the


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 usual activities of life and is in constant fear of what may happen to him if he attempts them. This caution is well founded. Any one whose vitality has been drained by disease or who has suffered the results of too early a return to work knows how justifiable and significant is the inclination to continue the period of incapacity. During illness the patient's willingness to abandon his ordinary tasks is often the measure of his chances of recovery; but not always. Sometimes the feeling of incapacity and the fear of effort may prevent a man from realizing that he is no longer ill or from appreciating that even in the presence of certain kinds of handicap a useful and interesting life can be lived. How many persons with weak hearts have betaken themselves to an unhappy invalidism despite the experience of those who in the same condition have been able to fulfill the ordinary demands of business. The belief that an individual who has had tuberculosis is stopped from any but that elusive occupation known as light outdoor work has become so firmly embedded in the minds of people that a physician will often have the greatest difficulty in convincing his patient that he can work eight hours a day in a great variety of employments.


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 The tendency here and in like situations is toward a construing of the physician's diagnosis of disease in terms of an abandonment of effort, when what he intends is a more reasoned and a more intelligent activity.

This tendency is encouraged by the attitude of the friends of the convalescent or handicapped person. Out of a mistaken chivalry and in their desire to help they frequently confirm him in the feeling that he is not equal to the ordinary exigencies of life. This was what made a beggar of Harold Griffin. At the end of his last year in grammar school he met with an accident which necessitated the amputation of one of his legs. On regaining his strength he decided to go to work; but instead of aiding him to realize his plan, those from whom he sought employment expressed their sympathy by offering him money, until at length the boy decided that people did not expect him to support himself, and for four years he relied upon this kind of misdirected generosity.

Illness can become a habit. The longer a person is led to think of himself as an invalid the greater is the temptation to continue in this state of mind. He becomes confirmed in the feeling that he is too


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 sick to do things for himself and he becomes willing that others should carry his burdens.

Complicating the problem of dealing with people who have acquired this habit is the fact that often one cannot tell whether the illness is real or imagined. Sometimes this unwillingness once more to assume the responsibilities of life is entirely unconscious. The person who has been sick and then convalescent over a number of months has during this time been removed from the struggle for existence. He has been able to think and to plan without translating his thoughts and his plans into action. Except for the recovery of his health he is likely to have no fixed purpose and his attention and his interests scatter. He dreams over the things he would like to do, but does not point them in any one direction. He talks about working but he does not realize that he has lost the habit of effort and that there has been insidiously developing within him a disinclination to action.

Even under such circumstances it is possible to throw responsibility upon an individual. This may be seen in the manner in which a social case worker dealt with a man who, after having had influenza, complained of not being well enough to


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 return to his job. So many people are not strong enough to work for months after their apparent recovery from this disease that the social worker was puzzled about what to do. Finally, after consultation with a physician and with the man's former employer, she devised a scheme of graduated employment, beginning with three hours a day. The man could not deny his ability to work for so brief a period. After he had become accustomed to this schedule, it was lengthened, until at last he was busy eight hours out of twenty-four.

What added to the difficulty of this man's problem was the presence of financial as well as physical disability. During the period that his illness had prevented him from working he had been dependent for his living upon money which had been supplied to him by the social worker. It was therefore all the harder for him to overcome the temptation to find in his weakness an excuse for avoiding effort. For financial assistance, while frequently required by the person in trouble, is so obvious and so tangible a way of having his burdens carried by others that unless administered with the utmost wisdom it may cause a man to abandon his initiative and the exercise of his energies.


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 Most people still need the incentive to accomplishment that springs from economic necessity and material wants. How few of us if suddenly supplied with money enough to provide for these things would continue to work with the same concentration. Unless already in the grip of some dynamic interest we would probably follow the example of Jacob Wesley.

Wesley had completed a course in mechanical engineering and was about to start upon his career when he received a legacy involving an annual income of two thousand dollars. This took from work its imperative immediacy and he found one good reason after another for postponing action. First, it was a trip to Europe to complete his education, then it was a visit to some relatives, and after this it was the difficulty of finding just the right sort of an opening. When at last he took a job he could not forget that he was not obliged to work. This prevented him from developing an interest in his occupation and he soon left it. After a period of idleness he obtained another job which after a brief trial he abandoned. He drifted about here and there without cultivating his abilities.

Then an industrial depression took his income


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 And what are your Objections to the Allowance of the Honour which I have ollicited? Why, you have commended the book o warmly, that you hould be ahamed of reading your Name before the Dedication. Indeed, Sir, if the Book itelf doth not make you ahamed of your Commendations, nothing that I can here write will, or ought. I am not to give up my Right to your Protection and Patronage, becaue you have commended my Book: For though I acknowledge o many Obligations to you, I do not add this to the Number; in which Friendhip, I am convinced, hath o little Share: Since that can neither bias your Judgment, nor pervert your Integrity. An Enemy may at any Time obtain your


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 from him. His necessity might now quite possibly have been the making of him had not an aunt interfered. She felt so sorry for him that she gave him money upon which to live while seeking work. It was only a few hundred dollars, but it made a virtue of procrastination. When the money had been spent, Wesley did not find it difficult to suggest that he required a little more time to settle his affairs. Soon his aunt had grown as accustomed to giving as he to asking, and the opportunity to make a man of himself had passed.

Essentially there is no difference between the loss in initiative and the sense of responsibility which Wesley suffered and the dependence and beggary brought about in the boy who, on seeking a job after the amputation of his leg, received gifts of money instead of employment. The boy was seduced by dimes and quarters and Wesley by checks and banknotes, but the result was the same.

Dependence induced in this way is more complete and more demoralizing than that occasioned by any other form of reliance upon others. This is because money is vastly more than a medium of exchange. It is the symbol and the trophy of man's struggle for existence. It is the measure


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 of his ability to provide for himself and his family. The instinct of self-preservation has made it the first, the most primitive, and the most widely recognized criterion of success—witness the satisfaction with which a wage-earner will remark as he looks back over the years, "I've always been able to support my family," or the manner in which a worker, now come upon hard times, will exclaim by way of describing past achievements, "Those were the days when I had money in my pocket."

Correspondingly great is the humiliation of the man who is obliged to confess his failure to meet this age-old test of manhood by taking as a gift the livelihood that other men are earning for themselves. It matters not whether the amount of money involved be great or small. His self-respect has been invaded. He has been obliged to yield his independence, and in its place there often comes a feeling of futility and of inferiority. He ceases trying to do things for himself and weakly allows others to carry his burdens.

When financial difficulties appear as part of a man's trouble, every possible measure should be taken to make it unnecessary for him to accept money as a gift. Perhaps he can be aided to find


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 more remunerative employment. Perhaps a wiser household management will fit his present resources to his needs. Perhaps he can call still further upon his credit. Every conceivable resource which a man may have should be developed in the hope that by capitalizing past or future productivity he may succeed in meeting the crisis in his finances.

If his assets are not sufficient to his necessity and financial assistance is inevitable, then money should be given to him in such a way as to stimulate his sense of responsibility. This can be done through a careful selection of the source from which help comes to him. It should, if possible, suggest the idea of reciprocity. Thus, assistance from a member of the same family or from a friend, for whom in a similar situation he might conceivably perform a similar service, is better than aid from a stranger or from some one whose financial status is such as to render remote the possibility of his needing help. Aid from an employer contains the element of reciprocity, for there is, on the one hand, a growing public opinion that the employee contributes to industry more than the amount of his wages, and, on the other, the hope of the employee that in the future he


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 may be able to make return in more effective work. Money received from the union or the church or the lodge to which an individual belongs has the virtue of appearing as a prerogative of his membership. On previous occasions his dues or his contributions may have gone to aid others. Now it is his turn. Perhaps later on he will once more be able to help some fellow member.

What the conception of reciprocity may do to foster the individual's sense of responsibility can be supplemented by expecting accomplishment of him in return for the money he receives. Financial assistance should always be supplied as part of a definite plan toward the execution of which the person in trouble must work. If he is sick, the goal may be his restoration to health. If he is out of work, it may be employment. If the individual in need of assistance is a mother, then the plan may center about the education of her children. The more definite the undertaking and the greater the emphasis upon what the person who is receiving help must do, the better are the chances of safeguarding his initiative and his self-respect.

Whenever the gift of money is necessary, this is the spirit in which it should be given, the same


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 spirit in which every approach to people in trouble should be made, whether the assistance be financial or inspirational. Only thus can one prevent what one does for a man from becoming a temptation to him to allow his burden to be carried by others. To insist that he do his own thinking and that he act for himself is indispensable to his rehabilitation. It is the best way of showing respect for his ability and confidence in him, and this in turn has the effect of quickening his own confidence in himself. What we expect of an individual determines in large measure what he does. Give him responsibility, and he will develop in self-reliance and self-dependence.


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elderly gentleman was discovered by his relatives to be living a hermit's life on the top floor of a cheap and wretched rooming house. He was a university graduate, a person of taste and refinement, who had traveled widely and had been accustomed to wealth. Domestic troubles had left him without a home and he had drifted hither and thither as circumstance directed, until at last he had reached his present miserable quarters.

Here for three winters he had occupied two rooms which were without means of heating. He had furnished them—if it could be said that they were furnished—with the odds and ends that remained from the days when he had had a house of his own. The bed clothing consisted of a thin and ragged quilt. There were neither rugs nor carpet on the floor, and despite his retention


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 of habits of personal neatness, there was dust and dirt everywhere, even vermin.

Gradually he had become isolated from intercourse with his kind. He went out less and less, and began to depend for his food upon sandwiches and fruit which a neighbor's boy brought to him. The paper bags in which his lunches had been carried formed a considerable part of the rubbish with which his room was littered. He was beset with aches and pains of many sorts, chiefly the result of this irregular way of living, and he was wretchedly unhappy. He spent the hours worrying about his present and his future, and regretting his past.

A social worker was asked to help him to move to an environment where he would be comfortable and where he would find friends, but when it came to the point, the old gentleman could not make up his mind to go. He was well acquainted with the facts of his situation. He knew what it would mean to pass another winter in unheated rooms. He was miserable in his loneliness and in the barrenness and the inconvenience of his quarters. He had none of the attachment for them that age frequently has for its home. He wanted to escape from the wretchedness of his