worker's preference for the deserter as material with which to work is
not far to seek. With the deserter as described, the problem is chiefly
to alter his point of view; with the non-supporter it is, in addition,
to stiffen his will and to increase his capacity--a far more complicated
task.
"The deserter is likely to have less justification than the
non-supporter," says an observer of long experience. Studies which have
been made of the relative capacity of the wives of deserters and of
non-supporters seem to agree that the latter have the weaker characters
and are less competent and successful workers. A comment made upon one
such study points out the impossibility of sound conclusions, if both
chronic and incipient cases are included in the two groups. The
progressive demoralization in the family of the "intermittent husband"
makes such a study of little value unless this distinction is taken into
account.
The influence of ill-kept homes in the manufacture of non-supporting
husbands has been widely recognized.
A drunkard's daughter, who had never known a decent home, married a
young man who soon began to drink too. Luckily, the young couple
were brought in touch with a volunteer visitor who, on finding that
the wife possessed only two kitchen utensils, a teakettle and a
"frypan," and actually did not know the names of any others,
undertook to give her lessons in home management. She proved
teachable, and her husband stopped drinking and braced up. Some
years later the visitor was able to report a well established home,
although the family refused to move out of the poor neighborhood in
which they lived because the husband had been elected councilman for
that district.
If the inefficient wife contributes her share to this form of family
breakdown so also does the overefficient one. Many a non-supporter got
his first impulse in that direction when his wife became a wage-earner
in some domestic crisis. "There's only one rule for women who want to
have decent homes for their children and themselves," advised a wise
neighbor. "If your husband comes home crying, and says he can't find any
work, sit down on the other side of the fire and cry until he
_does_."[42]
One case worker comments on the relation that often exists between an
inefficient husband and an unusually competent wife, made up of a
motherly toleration on her side and a tacit acceptance on his that he is
not expected to be the provider. "Sort of a landlady's husband" was the
apt description of one such man, the speaker having in mind the "silent
partner" who does odd jobs around his wife's furnished-room house. The
lovable old rascal portrayed by Frank Bacon in his play "Lightnin'" is
typical of this kind of husband.
There is no ground for outside interference in such an arrangement as
long as both are satisfied and the family as a unit is self-supporting.
It is often a serious problem to the case worker, however, to know how
to treat such a family if the breadwinner-wife becomes incapacitated.
Such was the case when Mrs. Laflin fell ill with tuberculosis. Her
relatives described her husband as "that little nonentity of a man." He
had no bad habits and was pathetically eager to work, but though only a
little over fifty he was prematurely aged and incapable. The solution
had finally to be institutional care for the entire family, Mrs. Laflin
in a hospital for incurables, Mr. Laflin in a home for the aged, and
their two young daughters, through the interest of a former employer, in
a good convent school. "Uncomplicated" non-support, as in the case of
Mr. Laflin, is, however, rare in the experience of the social worker.
Out of a group of 51 non-supporters selected at random from the records
of the Buffalo Charity Organization Society in 1917, 46 showed some
serious moral fault other than non-support. Alcoholism is probably the
commonest of these complications; and, as has been pointed out in the
previous chapter, is probably a primary cause as well. It will be a
matter of great interest to social workers whether the "non-support
rate" is reduced after July 1, 1919. Grounds for hope that it may be are
found in the fact that some remarkable results have been obtained by
moving alcoholic non-supporters and their families from "wet" into "dry"
territory.
Another vice that has a direct relation to non-support (much more direct
than to desertion) is gambling. The gambler carries no signs of his vice
upon his person as does the inebriate, and it is therefore hard to
detect. It undoubtedly does not appear in social case records as
frequently as it should. Case workers should have it in mind as a
possible explanation, whenever there is a marked discrepancy between
what a non-supporter earns and what he contributes to the home.
With the non-supporters rather than with the deserters should be put
the group of men whose wives tire of supporting them and either put them
out or leave them. These men are often not only morally, but mentally
and physically, so handicapped that there is nothing to be gained by
constantly pursuing and arresting them, although some wives extract the
sweets of revenge from doing just this. Few courts of domestic relations
are without some wives as regular patrons who pursue their husbands not
for gain but for sport. For the most part, however, the wives of such
men are philosophical. "I only wash for meself now," said one of them.
These men, and the unreclaimed deserters, doubtless make up a large part
of the floating population of homeless men in our large cities. How
large a part it is impossible to say, for they are likely to give
assumed names and deny the possession of families. Mrs. Solenberger[43]
has noted, however, that if they are asked, not "Are you married?" but a
less direct question such as "Where is your wife now?" a story of
unfortunate married life will often be elicited. Until we have some
better method of inter-city registration of homeless men, many of these
who otherwise might be identified and in suitable cases brought back,
will continue to slip through our fingers.
With non-support in an incipient stage,[44] it is sometimes possible to
deal so suddenly and effectively that the man is shocked into a better
realization of his responsibilities.
A young Irish rigger, with a capable wife and two pretty babies,
lost his job after a quarrel with his boss rigger. He was a genial,
popular chap, always "the life of the party" in his circle; and his
companions encouraged him to feel that he was a much injured man.
They also helped him to fill his enforced leisure with too much
beer. When the family received a dispossess notice the wife's
patience was at an end, and acting on the advice of a society
engaged in family case work, she put the furniture in storage and
went to a shelter where she could leave her children in the daytime,
while she was at work, and have them with her at night. The man was
told to shift for himself until he could get together sufficient
money to re-establish the home. The arrangement continued for nearly
two months, during which the man lived in lodging houses, had an
attack of stomach trouble, and was altogether thoroughly miserable.
Every night he waited for a word with his wife on a corner that she
had to pass in coming from work. Finally, when it seemed to the
social worker and to the wife that his lesson had gone far enough,
the home was re-established, with only a small amount of help from
the society. During the five years since that time, no recurrence of
the trouble has come to the attention of the agency interested.
This experiment was realized to be a ticklish one, as a man less
sincerely attached to his home might have been turned into a vagabond by
such treatment.
In general, it may be said that, as there is less to work on
constructively with the non-supporter, court action has more often to be
invoked. If the non-supporter is a "chronic," his path must not be
allowed to be too easy. "Sometimes you just have to keep pestering him"
was the way one social worker put it. A Red Cross Home Service worker
successfully shocked one elderly non-supporter into going to work, as
described in one of the Red Cross publications:
"Well, Mr. Gage," I said, "I see you're not working yet."
"No, Mrs. Cox, the coal company promised to send for me."
"Well," I said, "I think you've been pretty fair with that company.
You've waited on it for three months now. If I had the offer of
another job I'd feel perfectly free to take it, if I were you."
"Yes," he said, "I think I should."
"All right, I have a job for you," said I. "My husband wants a man
now at his garage, to clean automobiles. The hours are from 6 p.m.
to 6 a.m., and you'll earn $15 a week."
His paper fell from his hands to the floor; his jaw dropped, and he
just looked at me. Then he tried to crawl out of it and began to
make excuses.
"I haven't time to argue with you, Mr. Gage," I said. "I'll keep the
job open till seven o'clock tonight and you can let me know then
whether you'll take it or not."
At seven he came to say he'd take the job.[45]
If in desertion cases the interest centers very vividly about the absent
man, in non-support cases the reverse is likely to be true, because he
is often not very interesting per se, and because, moreover, he is
always on the spot and does not have to be searched for. Familiarity
certainly breeds contempt for the non-supporter. Consequently the social
worker may easily fall into the danger of disregarding the human factors
he presents, and either treating the family as if he did not exist or
expending no further effort on him than to see that he "puts in" six
months of every year in jail if possible (since the law usually secures
to him the privilege of loafing the other six). It is not safe, however,
to regard even the most leisurely of non-supporters as beyond the
possibility of awakening. One district secretary who had thus given a
man up had the experience of seeing him transformed into a steady worker
after a few months of intensive effort by a first-year student in a
school of social science, whose only equipment for the job was
personality and enthusiasm. So remarkable are some of the reclamations
that have been brought about with seemingly hopeless non-supporters that
all possible measures should be tried before giving one of them up.
His Scotch ancestry, a good wife, luck, and a friend with insight
and skill, pulled Aleck Gray out of that bottomless pit, the
gutter. Aleck had been a bookkeeper; but he didn't get on well with
his employers, lost his job, got to drinking, and went so far
downhill that his wife had to take their two children and go home to
her people several hundred miles away. Aleck finally drifted into a
bureau for homeless men, where the agent became interested in him
and worked with him for six months, getting him job after job, which
he always lost through drink or temper. He seemed incapable of
taking directions or working with other people. In all that time the
agent felt that he was getting no nearer the root of Aleck's
trouble, though he came back after each dismissal and doggedly took
whatever was offered. Finally, the agent's patience wore thin, and
when Aleck had been more than usually dour and aggravating it went
entirely to pieces. Aleck listened to his outburst apparently
unmoved; then said, "Very well, if you want to know what would make
me stop drinking, I'll tell you. If I could see any ray of hope that
I was on the way to getting my home and family back, I'd stop and
stop quick." On the agent's desk there happened to be a letter from
a friend who wanted a tenant farmer. He thrust it into Aleck's hand
saying, "There's your chance if you mean what you say." The man's
reply was to ask when he could get a train. At the end of several
weeks Aleck wrote that he had not drunk a drop and was making good,
which was enthusiastically confirmed by his employer. He begged the
agent to intercede with his wife, and a letter went to her which
brought the telegraphic reply, "Starting tomorrow."
How they got through the first winter the agent never knew exactly.
But they pulled through and the next year was easy, as country-born
Aleck's skill came back. Six years later, during which time the
agent heard from them once or twice a year, Aleck was still keeping
straight, the children were doing well in school, and the family,
prosperous and happy, had bought a farm of their own in another
state.
FOOTNOTES:
[40] The deserter who does not fail to support is usually safe from
punishment no matter how aggravated his offense. A man living with his
wife and five-year-old boy in an eastern city eloped with another woman
to a city in the Middle West. The couple kidnapped the boy and took him
with them; and the distracted woman, bereft of both her husband and
child, had no recourse in any court, since the father was continuing to
provide for his son.
[41] Proceedings of the New York State Conference of Charities and
Correction, 1910, p. 76.
[42] Loane, M.: The Queen's Poor, p. 102. London, Edward Arnold, 1905.
[43] Solenberger, Alice Willard: One Thousand Homeless Men, p. 22. New
York, Russell Sage Foundation, 1911.
[44] For a consideration of possible lines of treatment for the
non-supporter and his family, the reader is referred to Chapter VII,
where is discussed the treatment of the deserter who is willing to
return.
[45] Behind the Service Flag, pamphlet ARC 211, American Red Cross,
Department of Civilian Relief.
IX
NEXT STEPS IN CORRECTIVE TREATMENT
Any discussion of laws, their application, and enforcement, must
perforce be very general, since the different states vary greatly in
laws governing desertion and in equipment for their enforcement.
Suggestions for a uniform federal desertion law are not considered here;
the term "next steps" should be read as meaning not plans in actual
prospect but rather the increase in legal facilities desirable from the
social worker's point of view. In communities where no such facilities
exist, social workers are in a good position to collect illustrative
material and push for desirable changes in law and law enforcement.
Especially advantageous is the position of the legal social agencies
such as legal aid societies and special bureaus and committees for
increasing the efficiency of the courts, many of which are affiliated
with or maintained by the large family work societies.
1. Measures for the Discovery, Extradition or Deportation of the
Deserter.--The nation-wide registration of males between certain ages,
under the Selective Service Act, was widely utilized by social workers
in finding deserting men, with the hearty co-operation usually of the
draft boards. This fact forms no argument for universal registration as
it was carried on in Germany before the war; no system which meant such
cumbersome machinery or so much interference with the freedom of the
individual ought to be advocated for a moment if it were solely for the
purpose of keeping track of the small percentage of citizens who wish to
evade their responsibilities, marital and other. Even such a
non-military device as that which obligates every person to register
successive changes of address with the postal authorities to facilitate
delivery of mail would be contrary to the American spirit and easily
evaded by people interested in concealing their whereabouts, unless
enforced with all the rigor of the European police system. But though
we can advocate no system of manhood registration, we can avail
ourselves of the incidental benefits of any that may be in force.
The Federal Employment Service offers a promising means of help in
discovering the movements of deserters whose trade and probable
destination are known. It should be entirely possible to work out a
system by which the managers of the local employment bureaus should be
furnished with name, description, copy of photograph, and so on, of a
deserter who is being sought, so that the man if recognized could be
traced or quickly apprehended if a warrant is already in the hands of
the local police authorities. It may even be possible, under the federal
employment service, to develop the long wished for national registration
of casual and migratory labor. Need for some such system has been felt
by all agencies trying to deal constructively with vagrants and homeless
men. Little track can be kept not only of the individual wanderer but of
the ebb and flow of the tides of "casual labor" without some system of
this sort. If employment bureaus were required to forward to a central
registry the names and some identifying particulars of every
non-resident who applied for employment, the problem of finding the
deserter would be rendered ten times easier than it is now.
One present obstacle to this and other improvements is the attitude of
authorities--city, state, and federal--toward wife desertion. We have
already mentioned the way in which the task of tracing the deserter has
been thrust back upon the wife and the social worker, as if he were not
an offender against the community as well as against his wife and
children. Almost as widespread is the reluctance of the proper
authorities to arrest the deserter and bring him back after he has been
found. A general atmosphere of indifference and despair of accomplishing
anything worth while surrounds any attempt to push the prosecution of a
man who has taken refuge outside the community. Hope for the future lies
in socializing the point of view of court officials, police, and
district attorneys--a process in which the social worker must play a
large part. No chance should be lost to drive home the social and
economic waste involved, by using the illustrative material which
abounds in the files of most case work agencies.
The pernicious system by which the wife is required to serve summons and
warrant upon the offending husband who is still in the same city, should
be done away with entirely. The social agency, public or private, which
has had to support or assist the man's family ought to be able to prefer
a charge for non-support, and to take out a summons or a warrant and
serve it without the wife's being present. The agency should in this
case protect itself by securing from the wife a signed affidavit and
authorization to act in her behalf. It may seem unimportant whether the
wife makes such complaint in the court or to a private society. The
psychological effect upon the man is, however, very different. If his
wife initiates the complaint in court, his resentment is directed toward
her--a fact which renders reconciliation more difficult if this is later
attempted. In other cases, for the wife to make the complaint puts her
in actual physical danger from the vindictive husband. If he is brought
into court on the complaint of a social agency, part of that resentment
at least is transferred to the intrusive social worker, who is not
usually seriously troubled thereby and is far better able to bear the
weight of the husband's displeasure than is his poor wife.
The absence of any treaty with Great Britain by which family deserters
can be extradited to or from Canada makes the Dominion a place of refuge
for many American evaders of family responsibilities. The National
Conference of Charities and Correction,[46] at its meeting in Cleveland
in 1912, passed a resolution on the need for such a treaty. As a result,
largely through the efforts of Mr. William H. Baldwin, the treaty was
signed and sent to the Senate for ratification in December, 1916. It was
referred to the Committee on Foreign Relations, where it met with
objection and has remained without action up to the present. The
National Conference of Jewish Charities, at its meeting in Kansas City
in May, 1918, sent urgent representations to the Senate Committee, which
it is hoped may result in ratification after the pressure of war-time
legislation is relaxed.
We should not stop when reciprocal extradition with Canada has been
secured; there is a similar situation on our southern border in states
from which escape into Mexico is easy. While American deserters are not
likely to go to other more remote countries than these two, immigration
into America from other countries creates desertion problems in other
places and presents us with a class of undesirables with whom it is
difficult to deal under existing immigration laws. In 1912 a report was
submitted to the Glasgow Parish Council showing the alarming amount of
dependency created in that one city by the emigration to America and the
Colonies of men without their families, and who subsequently drifted
into the status of deserters. This report makes the interesting
suggestion that no married man be permitted to emigrate without his
family unless he presents a "written sanction of the Parish Council or
other local authority," and further, that he be bound, under penalty of
deportation, to report himself to some authority in the country of his
destination, which would satisfy itself as to his conduct and insure
that he did his duty by wife and family.[47] Such a provision would of
course involve the revision of our own immigration laws, making wife and
family desertion a crime thereunder.
At present the law provides deportation only within five years after
entry, and for "persons who have been convicted of or admit having
committed a felony or other crime or misdemeanor involving moral
turpitude," or who are sentenced to a term of one year or more in this
country, within five years of entry, for such crime (or who may suffer a
second conviction at any time after entry). This would clearly cover
bigamy committed within five years after entry; whether it could be
stretched to cover lesser forms of marital irresponsibility remains to
be determined. (It should be remembered that a man who brings in as his
wife, or later sends for, a woman to whom he is not married, can be
deported under quite other sections of the immigration law.)
2. Improvements in Court Procedure.--A sore point with the social
worker is the often ridiculously inadequate amounts that unwilling
husbands are put under court order to pay. They accuse the courts,
whether rightly or wrongly, of considering first what part of the man's
alleged earnings will be needed for him to live upon comfortably, and
then of making the order for whatever may be left over.
Onofrio Mancini was under court order to stay away from home and pay
his wife $6.00 a week for the support of their two children, He
drove a two-horse truck, and, at that time, must have been earning
not less than $16.00 a week. Mrs. Mancini fell ill, whereupon
Onofrio promptly ceased all payments. The social agency interested
was permitted to make a complaint on producing a doctors certificate
that Mrs. Mancini could not appear in court; but Onofrio, when he
appeared, put up such a hard luck tale of earning only $8.00 a week
that the judge, without investigation, cut the order down to $4.00 a
week and _ordered Onofrio to return home to live_.
A bulletin issued by the Seybert Institution of Philadelphia gives a
very interesting set of diagrams showing the relation (or lack of
relation) between the amount of man's income, size of family, and the
court order issued in the Philadelphia Municipal Court.[48]
This report gives a series of illustrations, where glaring
inconsistencies between the man's earnings and the court order were
observed by visitors to the court. A sample of the reports made by these
visitors is as follows:
"Man earning $30 to $40 a week at ammunition factory. Can earn $20
with no overtime. Has been sending woman $10 a week but has
threatened to leave town. Judge said: 'You can't keep up $10 a
week--how much can you give?' Finally ordered $8 a week. Woman said
she couldn't live on that and Judge told her she had to go to work
herself then; that they should live together anyway. Woman says she
is unable to work--is ill. When man stated he was giving $10 great
consternation seemed to take hold of the entire court force. He did
not say he couldn't pay $10; the judge simply told him he couldn't
keep that up."