As this visiting developed among the different groups, several results
could be anticipated. Just as the needs of the unaccompanied girls
have been learned in this way, the needs of the families in the
different groups could become more exactly understood, and devices for
meeting those needs more efficiently worked out. It would perhaps be
possible to urge the woman to learn English when she is first
confronted with the strangeness of her situation, and before she
slips into the makeshifts by which she later is apparently able to get
on without learning English. Instruction in English might be made to
appear the path of least resistance, if it were made attractive and
available to the immigrant housewife at a sufficiently early moment.
These visitors might preferably be English-speaking members of the
foreign-speaking groups. If there were a sufficient staff, they might
also render many similar services to other women in the foreign-born
groups. They could persuade those who have not yet learned English to
come into English classes; they could organize groups for instruction
in cooking, child care, house and neighborhood sanitation; and
gradually accumulate both additional knowledge as to the need and
experience in meeting it.
A point to be emphasized in connection with this service is that it is
not related in any way to the problem of dependency, but is directed
wholly toward meeting the difficulties growing out of the strangeness
of the newcomer to the immediate situation. By developing a method for
lessening the difficulties connected with the migration of any group
from one section to another differing in industrial or social
organization, light would be thrown on analogous problems such as the
movements among the negroes from the South to the North during the
war, or of the mountain people to the cotton-mill villages at an
earlier date.
Another point to be emphasized is that while the method of approach
and of immediate service can be developed independently, and while the
amount of discomfort and genuine distress that can be prevented is
very great--as is shown in the experience of families whom such
organizations as now attempt work along this line have aided--the
opportunity for swift and efficient adjustment will be dependent on
the development of a body of educational technique.
It has been made clear that there are certain kinds of information
that should be given to the newcomers, with reference, for example, to
the change in the legal relationships within the family group, the new
responsibilities of the husband and father, and the rights of wife and
children to support. Attention has been called to the need of giving
instruction regarding sanitary and hygienic practices, with reference
to the new money values, and to the new conditions under which
articles of household use are to be obtained, to the requirements in
food and clothing, particularly for the children, in the new locality
as compared with that from which the family comes. And, as has been
suggested, above all there is always the question of teaching English.
Sometimes the necessary facts can be conveyed briefly and immediately.
Sometimes patient individual instruction will be necessary. Sometimes
group or class instruction will be the proper device. It is highly
important, then, that these various forms of instruction be developed
into a technique. Courses of instruction to be given according to
these different methods to those for whom a particular method is
appropriate must be organized, and a body of teachers developed.
The question then arises as to the extent to which this task has been
undertaken and the agencies that have undertaken it. As to the first
great body of material, it may be said to have been ignored. Only when
one is summoned to the Juvenile Court of Domestic Relations, or when
one learns of another's being summoned, is the body of family law
called to the attention of the group. In English, in cooking, and
child care, some agencies have attempted instruction. They are the
public school, organizations like the Immigrants' Protective League,
the State Immigration Commission, the social settlement, recreation
centers of various kinds, the Young Women's Christian Association in
its International Institutes. The possibilities in the work of these
agencies are numerous.