FOOTNOTES:

“Not the ruler for me, but the ranker, the tramp of the road,The slave with the sack on his shoulder, pricked on with the goad,The man with too weighty a burden, too weary a load.Others may sing of the wine and the wealth and the mirth,The portly presence of potentates goodly in girth;Mine be the dirt and the dross, the dust and scum of the earth.”[78]

“Not the ruler for me, but the ranker, the tramp of the road,The slave with the sack on his shoulder, pricked on with the goad,The man with too weighty a burden, too weary a load.

“Not the ruler for me, but the ranker, the tramp of the road,

The slave with the sack on his shoulder, pricked on with the goad,

The man with too weighty a burden, too weary a load.

Others may sing of the wine and the wealth and the mirth,The portly presence of potentates goodly in girth;Mine be the dirt and the dross, the dust and scum of the earth.”[78]

Others may sing of the wine and the wealth and the mirth,

The portly presence of potentates goodly in girth;

Mine be the dirt and the dross, the dust and scum of the earth.”[78]

Social work is interested in all people that need help and classifies them according to their needs, with no ulterior interest. It tries to serve them in their individual capacity as human beings with lives of their own. It is always extending benefits in excess of any recognized obligation. These we have heretofore said were the habits of charity, using the word in a broad and primitive sense. When charity adopted a scientific method and took to studying the social sciences for light on its problems social work began. Although it has been necessary to refer to charity often and at length in establishing the nature of social work, it is not well to dwell on it in general discussion, because, first, it has lately been applied only to the relief of poverty and cannot be used in a wider sense without explanation and, secondly, through centuries of association with an idea of meritorious liberality towards persons inferior, it has acquired connotations which do not belong to social work.

Social work as we now have it makes use of modern science. From the social sciences it takes perspective, generalization and knowledge of the complication of influences responsible for any given situation. By statistical methods it relates cause and effect. The discovery of such a relationship always emphasizes causes and in consequence social work extends its protective function in the direction of prevention. By so doing it becomes not only a ministerto misery but also one of the forces operating to make the world a better dwelling place for all of its inhabitants.

Social work because it is tentative and experimental seems to be imperfectly developed and still on trial. There is a temptation to anticipate for it more certainty, more obvious consistency and more clearly formulated purposes when it shall have become better established. But any such anticipation fails to take account of its wholly relative nature. Social work is always feeling its way beyond clearly formulated obligations, ignoring imposed consistencies and groping in unexplored regions where sure-footedness is not possible. Social work will take many more forms and all of them will prove temporary.

This makes social work hard to compare with the established professions with the ministrations of which its services have many points in common, with medicine for example. Although several sciences are helpful to social work it specializes in the application of no one of them. It is only in the very loosest sense applied sociology and might with almost equal suggestiveness be called applied eugenics or social psychology or any one of half a dozen other things. Conversely its observations and experiences are valuable to a dozen arts and sciences but build no science of their own. Nor does it build any systematically cumulative body of principles exclusively for its own use, as does the law. This is no disgrace to social work, which may be equally respectable with the well established professions and yet quitesui generis. But it operates in indirect ways as a handicap.

It is a familiar observation that any new science, any new departure in human knowledge must use the vocabulary already available and so can only receive its first formulation in terms of things that have gone before. The failure of social work to produce any compact body of doctrine pertaining to its range of undertakings has kept it long in the stage of analogy and tutelage. It evidentlyfeels a temptation to shape itself after the fashion of the best respected types of human activity instead of simply envisaging its own objects as clearly as possible and enlisting every available means to attain them.

Its essential inability to develop any compact body of doctrine may also be handicapping it in a more fundamental way. It is said that social work does not get its proportionate share of the best students taking professional training. May not this be because a course which offers an acquaintance with the high lights of half a dozen subjects and mastery of none is not likely to recommend itself to able students as promising to lead to dignified and responsible work? Social work can only hope that when more time and more ability have gone into the development of its separate fields such discipline may be developed along special lines as will give it better intellectual status and the power to attract and hold recruits by something beside that appeal to their imagination or their humanity exerted by its general possibilities. “I treat philanthropy seriously,” wrote one of its historians, “because of what it implies; its professors have commonly not been very efficacious.”[79]But scientific social work is something more than philanthropy and its history is yet to be made.

Whatever is in store for social work it is pre-ordained that its functions can only persist by adaptive variation of its practices, that it will never be perfected, never be satisfied, never even, in any final and completed sense, successful. Its object is to correct the mistakes of nature and man in the making of human lives and its undertakings grow with our hopes for life. Such presumption can never succeed, but its mere instalments of success would be triumphs in a lesser enterprise. For social work each new triumph opens only a new range of possibilities. It might well take as its motto the proud words of Masefield, “Success is the brand on the forehead for having aimed too low.”[80]

FOOTNOTES:[61]Philanthropy and the State, p. 303.[62]John Stuart Mill, Principles of Political Economy, p. 577.[63]Ibid., p. 575.[64]William McDougal, An Introduction to Social Psychology, p. 14, et seq.[65]Porter R. Lee, at the National Conference of Social Work, 1920, p. 468.[66]Charities Review, 1898, p. 9.[67]Hamlet, Act III, Sc. 2, line 379.[68]Emil Muensterberg, Impressions of American Charity, in Charity and the Commons, 1907, p. 268.[69]H. G. Wells, The Outline of History, Vol. II, p. 339.[70]John Boyle O’Reilly, In Bohemia, quoted in The Cry for Justice, p. 497.[71]S. A. Queen, Social Work in the Light of History, Chap. II.[72]Sidney and Beatrice Webb, The Prevention of Destitution, p. 281.[73]Arthur J. Todd, at the National Conference, 1920, p. 271.[74]Charles A. Ellwood, at the National Conference, 1920, p. 271.[75]Count Leo Tolstoy, quoted in The Cry for Justice, p. 88.[76]Arthur Hugh Clough, “Say not the struggle nought availeth,” in Poems.[77]Frank Parsons, Legal Doctrine and Social Progress, p. 212.[78]John Masefield, A Consecration, in Poems.[79]Philanthropy and the State, p. 20.[80]John Masefield, Multitude and Solitude.

[61]Philanthropy and the State, p. 303.

[62]John Stuart Mill, Principles of Political Economy, p. 577.

[63]Ibid., p. 575.

[64]William McDougal, An Introduction to Social Psychology, p. 14, et seq.

[65]Porter R. Lee, at the National Conference of Social Work, 1920, p. 468.

[66]Charities Review, 1898, p. 9.

[67]Hamlet, Act III, Sc. 2, line 379.

[68]Emil Muensterberg, Impressions of American Charity, in Charity and the Commons, 1907, p. 268.

[69]H. G. Wells, The Outline of History, Vol. II, p. 339.

[70]John Boyle O’Reilly, In Bohemia, quoted in The Cry for Justice, p. 497.

[71]S. A. Queen, Social Work in the Light of History, Chap. II.

[72]Sidney and Beatrice Webb, The Prevention of Destitution, p. 281.

[73]Arthur J. Todd, at the National Conference, 1920, p. 271.

[74]Charles A. Ellwood, at the National Conference, 1920, p. 271.

[75]Count Leo Tolstoy, quoted in The Cry for Justice, p. 88.

[76]Arthur Hugh Clough, “Say not the struggle nought availeth,” in Poems.

[77]Frank Parsons, Legal Doctrine and Social Progress, p. 212.

[78]John Masefield, A Consecration, in Poems.

[79]Philanthropy and the State, p. 20.

[80]John Masefield, Multitude and Solitude.

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