distress (as has been suggested to me) we should have to say that such probation work was not social work at all, because it is in most cases a labor of education pure and simple. What is the weakness in this child's character; how can it be helped? Environment is, of course, most carefully studied, but not only the physical environment. The influences about the child and their bearing on his character are the chief subjects of the social worker's study when he has made his diagnosis and turns to treatment.

Take as a second example the care of the girls placed out from a large reform school like that at Lancaster, Mass. Even a slight acquaintance with the young women who are in charge of these girls makes one at once aware of the same trained management of character based on the skillful study of character in its environment. Which girl is in trouble because of excess of vitality, and which because of moral

flabbiness, deficient vitality? Which one is really below par mentally, which is in need chiefly of encouragement and a healthy spiritual environment? Character is always the central problem, the true basis both of classification and of the choice of remedies. To classify these girls according to their "crimes has only a very limited value and cannot be used as a sufficient basis for intelligent treatment.

Here, again, there is often no question of charity or of financial relief. In many if not most of these cases there is no financial or economic question at issue. The problems are mental, moral, and physical.

Is it so different in the work of charity organizations and in the treatment of persons who are financially dependent? As I watch the work of experts in this field I feel, as in other instances, that the task is chiefly one of delicate and difficult psychical diagnosis and psychical treatment. To the expert social worker an

application for relief comes as a complaint of pain does to the physician. It is a symptom of deeper defects. Poverty is to social work as pain is to medical work. It may or may not need treatment, but thorough diagnosis is the first necessity. To find out whether it is discouragement, overwork, unforeseeable misfortune, arrogance, conceit, forgetfulness, imaginativeness, congenital degeneracy, alcoholism, ignorance, or some other cause that is back of the financial breakdown,this is what I see these experts busy about.

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Next they ask: What sound life, what untainted character, is left, and what is the best that can be made of it? What influences can be brought to bear on the paralyzed will, the spasmodic and ungoverned energies, the darkened and narrowed mental horizon? Physical and financial diagnosis, physical and financial remedies are always useful, but always subordinate to the central problem, which is more like

a problem in horticulture than one in economics.

Even in the almshouse, where we should be dealing, I take it, chiefly with the wrecks and relics of character, our problem is still how to make the most and best of what, life and character is left; how to prevent it from degenerating into a merely brutal or vegetable existence; how to make the outlook less gloomy and desperate.

Another evidence that character study is behind most if not all of the common relief problems appears when we ask: Why do we allow many widows and children, and most that are sick or aged, to be dependent? Why do we not urge them all on into the ranks of the self-supporting? Some children, many women, and a certain number of sick or aged men are doubtless the better for earning their salt; others are not. The principle of decision, which seems to be recognized by expert social workers, is this: What is best for the in

dividual's development and for the community? It is not good for the mental and moral life of most healthy adults to be dependent financially or in any other way. Whenever we find exceptions to this rule they must be made because we believe it best for the character of the individuals and of the community in which they live that they should be financially dependent in order that they may put forth their full powers in ways not now remunerative; for example, in getting educated or getting well. But some children, some sick, and some old people ought nevertheless to work for a living. Why? Because they need it to keep their souls alive, and because nothing else will do this as far as we know. Our campaign is not against all poverty and distress but against such poverty and distress as cramp the normal development of character.

The fact that dependence and relief are usually, but not always, undesirable in the