The case-work agency as now organized might be equipped with trained
foreign-speaking visitors and with visiting housekeepers or dietetic
experts who know their neighborhoods, and the needs of the situation
would still be far from fully met. It was pointed out in the first
chapter that many immigrant families have to change their place of
residence, often more than once, before they settle in a permanent
home. The nature of their hardships and the slender margin of their
resources have been pointed out. Special misfortune may therefore
befall them at any point in the experimental period of their journey,
as well as after they have reached their final and permanent place of
residence.
The important moment in social treatment, as probably in any
undertaking, is in the initial stages. "The first step costs." This
brings us to the enormously important fact that distress outside the
relatively small number of larger communities in which there are
skilled case-work agencies, either public or private, will probably
mean contact either with the poor-law official under the Pauper Act,
if it is a question of relief,--or with some official of the county
prosecuting machinery or of the inferior courts, if it is a question
of discipline.
The case of an Italian woman may serve to illustrate the contact with
both these groups of officials. Mrs. C. was married in 1902 in a
Sicilian village, at about sixteen years of age. In October, 1906, the
husband came to the United States. In November, 1907, she and her one
surviving baby, a girl of two, followed, going to the mining town in
western Pennsylvania where he was working. There they lived until
March, 1913, occupying most of the time a house owned by the company
for which he worked. About 1913 she moved with her children to a
near-by city, where, on June 3, 1914, she was arrested for assault,
and the next day for selling liquor without a license and selling
liquor to minors. After some delay she pleaded guilty and was
sentenced to pay the costs of the prosecution ($76.42), and released
on parole.
She then seems to have moved to a mining town in Illinois, and there
lived with Mr. A. as his wife until March, 1916, when he was murdered.
The union paid his funeral expenses of $186.75, and she also, as his
widow, received his death benefit of $244.33. Through the summer of
1916 the Supervisor of the Poor gave her $3 every two weeks. On May
20, 1916, she applied for her first citizenship papers, and on
September 1st she was awarded an allowance of $7 a month under the
Mothers' Aid law, this being granted her under her maiden name, as
mother of a child born in Illinois in 1915. She was helped not only by
the public relief agencies, but by the priest ($11); and the Queen's
Daughters, a church society of ladies, gave her the fare to Chicago,
where the Italian consul gave her money to go home again. The
undertaker and other kind persons gave her and the children aid.
By December the union and the county agent both thought it would be
well to shift the burden of her support, and gave her the fare back to
Chicago. By the time she reached Chicago she was a very skillful and
resourceful beggar. In Chicago she was a "nonresident," ineligible for
a year to receive public relief under the Pauper Act and for three
years under the Mothers' Aid law; and so she obtained from a
Protestant church, from the Charities, and from an Italian Ladies' Aid
Society relief of various kinds and in various amounts.
The story is a long and a continuing one. Two points are especially
important from the point of view of this study. One is that the burden
not only of her support, but of her re-education, fell ultimately upon
Chicago agencies, and the cost to them is measured as it were by the
inefficiency of her casual treatment at the hands of both the courts
and the less competent relief agencies along the way. The other is
that such varied treatment leaves its inevitable stamp of confusion
and disorganization upon the life of such a family. To find American
officials getting very busy over selling liquor without a license, and
at the same time ignoring adultery or murder committed in an Italian
home, must surely result in confusion with reference to American
standards of family relationship and to the value placed on life by
American officials.