On the other hand, there are twelve agencies that approach the
problem, or at least attempt to approach the problem of household
management from a scientific standpoint, so that the work done shall
be a serious attempt to adjust the standards of the foreign-born
women to the standards formulated by the home economics experts for
families "under care." There are several methods used in this work.
The first and most common is the employment of visiting housekeepers
by the case-work agency; another is that of referring families to
another agency especially organized to give instruction in the
household arts, such as the Visiting Housekeepers' Association in
Detroit; a third is the one used in New York City, that of a
Department of Home Economics within the organization, and still
another, used in Boston, is a Dietetic Bureau.
The cities in which there are visiting housekeepers in connection with
the case-work agency are Chicago, Cleveland, Pittsburgh, Worcester,
Fall River, Cambridge, Stamford, and Springfield, Illinois. In
Brooklyn the visiting housekeepers are not employed by the case-work
agencies, but are student volunteers from Pratt Institute. The
visiting housekeeper in Springfield has worked almost exclusively with
English-speaking families, and the one in Worcester "has had at
different times foreign-speaking families." In other words, in two
cities with large foreign-speaking populations the visiting
housekeepers only occasionally helped immigrant families to adjust
their standards and methods of housekeeping to the new conditions
found in this country.
The work that is expected of a visiting housekeeper has been
frequently described. As it demands the combined qualifications of a
case worker and a skilled worker in home economics, an attempt was
made to learn the education and training of the various workers in the
field. Information was available in only a few cases, but these cases
seem to point to the fact that the visiting housekeeper is usually
trained for one phase of her work only--either as a case worker or as
a home economics expert. In either case she can be expected to give
the type of service her position demands only in the field in which
her interest and training lie.
Interviews with the five visiting housekeepers employed by the two
largest relief agencies in Chicago in general bear out the impressions
obtained from the statements of the agencies in other cities. None of
those in Chicago speaks the language of the people with whom she
works, though one agency is now training a young Italian girl to be a
visiting housekeeper.
Most of the visiting housekeepers claimed very slight knowledge of
what the diet of the family was in the old country, although they had
considerable knowledge as to what was customarily eaten here. They had
made very little study of the habits and tastes of their group; and
although they were agreed that in most families the diet was
inadequate, they had apparently not looked far for the cause.
Ignorance of food values and ways of preparing food seemed to them the
chief reason; poverty, racial prejudice, and laziness might be
secondary features.
Since the visiting housekeepers deal almost entirely with dependent
families under the care of a relief agency, their work in helping the
women provide for the clothing needs of the family is quite largely
concerned with making over old clothing.
In the effort to raise the standards of cleanliness and sanitation the
visiting housekeepers meet with great difficulty. One thinks the
greatest difficulty is indifference on the part of the housewife and a
lack of anything to which the visitor can appeal; another thinks that
her greatest difficulties are that the mothers are usually overworked,
that frequently they are kept worn out by having one child after
another in close succession, and sometimes a woman has had to contend
with a drunken husband. These cases she finds especially difficult to
deal with. Some of them lay stress on the economic factor and point to
the fact that most of these families are deprived of the conveniences
which would make housekeeping a comparatively simple task. As one of
the visiting housekeepers has said:
With modern equipment, steam heat, electric utensils, and new
and sanitary apartments, it is not a difficult task to keep
the quarters fresh and clean, but in rickety, shadowy
apartment buildings or houses where the floors are worn and
rough, with no hot-water service, and too often without even
gas for lighting, we can at once recognize the trials and
handicaps which confront the housewife in the poorer
districts.[74]
The visiting housekeepers interviewed saw many discouraging features
of their work. All stated that improvement came very slowly. One
worker stated that she had worked three years in her district and she
had some families under care all the time, but that she was just
beginning to see the results of her efforts. Others pointed out that
their constant supervision was essential, that as soon as they relaxed
their efforts at all the families dropped back to their old habits.
There was, however, general agreement that in time, by much
expenditure of effort, constant visiting, teaching, and exhorting,
they did help some families to a better standard of living.
It was impossible to get an estimate from most of them as to how many
families they thought they had helped, but the worker in one district
said that for the three years it would not be more than five or six.
Two workers who estimated the number of families with which they could
work at one time, put the number at between twenty and twenty-five,
and both thought that they could do much better with twenty than with
twenty-five. They did not know with how many families they were
working at present, but thought they were not trying to do intensive
work with many more than that number.
The explanation of failure may be that not enough care was taken to
make the Old-World habits of cooking and diet the starting point of
instruction in the use of American foods, utensils, and diets. Such
procedure would be based on sound pedagogy in starting from the known
and familiar and leading to the new and unaccustomed.
However, it may be true that even after sound methods have been given
a thorough trial, arduous effort still will fail to bring desired
results. Case-work agencies, however efficient, may not be fitted to
raise the standards of living in the homes of immigrant dependent
families. It may be taken care of by other community forces and only
be effected in the way that the independent family's standards are
changed and improved. The task for the case worker is to help the
family make the natural connections with their neighborhood and
community, which are the most effective means for creating and
sustaining social standards.
Certain limitations to the present work of the visiting housekeeper
appear in the above discussion. These are, the lack of persons with
combined training in case work, home economics, and knowledge of
immigrant backgrounds, the limited number of families with whom
intensive work can be done, especially if the visiting housekeeper
tries to do all the work with the families she visits, the hardship to
the family in the duplication of visitors if the visiting housekeeper
tries to render only specialized services to a larger number of
families.
Attempts have been made to overcome these limitations while still
retaining the visiting housekeeper. In Cleveland the visiting
housekeepers do all the work with the families assigned to them, as
well as instruct the other visitors in the elementary principles of
home economics and give advice on individual families, as occasion
requires. Their work has been materially lightened by the adoption of
a standardized budget prepared under the direction of a well-known
expert in home economics. The superintendent of the Cleveland
organization expressed himself as well satisfied with the work of the
visiting housekeepers. It should be noted that one of the visiting
housekeepers in that city not only is a skilled case worker with good
training in home economics, but also is of foreign-born parentage and
speaks most of the Slavic languages.
In other cities, however, notably New York and Boston, case-work
agencies have given up the employment of the visiting housekeepers.
In New York there is a Home Economics Bureau and in Boston a Dietetic
Bureau. The organization of the two bureaus differs, but the
underlying principle is the same. Both are organizations of home
economics experts, who give advice to the regular case workers both as
to general principles and as to individual problems. They also make
studies from time to time of problems in national groups. As its name
would indicate, the scope of the New York organization is wider. It
takes up problems of clothing and other phases of household management
as well as of food.
The advantages claimed for this plan are that the home economics
experts can devote their time exclusively to their own field. The
visitors are thus enabled to advise the individual families with more
effect than can the specialized worker. The question as to the best
way of rendering to the family under care this combination of services
is by no means yet decided, and it is evident that further experiment
in the various methods is necessary. They are, in fact, not mutually
exclusive, and perhaps combinations of various kinds of the skill of
the home economics expert, of the skilled social worker, and a
generalized helper, may yet be developed.
A third task to which some agencies address themselves is that of
providing educational opportunities for the immigrant family. This
effort often consists first of inducing the mother herself to enter a
class, and, second, of securing the attendance of the children at the
public school rather than at the non-English-teaching parochial
school. The difficulties in the way of securing the mothers'
attendance at a class have already been described. It need only be
pointed out here that the case worker who has won the mother's
confidence may often persuade her to go when the stranger will fail.
Where a regular allowance is given and support for a considerable
period is contemplated, it has been treated as something in the nature
of a scholarship or educational stipend and conditioned on the
mother's fulfilling definite requirements in the way of better
qualifying herself to use the allowance.
The subject of establishing connections between the members of the
families and such educational opportunity has been somewhat confused
by the fact that the case-work agency often depends upon the
settlement to supply certain recreational facilities for the children
in the families, and there is a temptation to use the settlement club
or class rather than the school for the mother.
With reference to having the children attend the public school or the
school in which all instruction is given in English, it would be less
than frank to ignore the difficulty often occasioned in the past by
the nationalistic and separatist Church. The society may be faced
with a real dilemma here, since it desires the co-operation of the
Church and is loath to weaken any ties that may help in maintaining
right family life. And so, when the Church conducts the school in
which the mother tongue is used, and in which English is either
inadequately taught or not taught at all, the relief agency may be
practically forced into a policy involving the neglect of English in
the case of both mother and children.