The Social Worker

by Clement Attlee

G. Bell and Sons, 1920

This webpage contains only chapter 1:

The full book is available online.

CHAPTER I

CHAPTER I  SOCIAL SERVICE AND CITIZENSHIP

THE term social service that forms part of the title of this series requires some examination. In its simplest meaning it comprises every contribution that each member of a society, individually or working through a group, brings to society in so far as his or her work is not an absolute disservice. The miner who wins coal from the pit, the farmer who grows food, the railwayman who assists in its transportation, and the business man who facilitates the exchange and distribution of commodities, are all engaged in social service as much as the civil servant, the member of a governing body or the charitable worker; but in actual every-day speech the term has been narrowed down to denote a fairly distinct sphere of human activity. If one hears of anyone engaged in social work, a very definite picture is formed in the mind; one sees the man who gives up his evenings to the work of a boy’s club, or the woman engaged in district visiting or assisting at a school clinic or infant welfare centre. The term suggests the secretary of a Charity Organisation committee, the hospital almoner, or the probation officer. Social service presents itself as either an occupation for the leisure of the better-fed classes, or a specialised employment for certain professionals. Particularly it suggests persons of a superior position in society engaged in the endeavour to ameliorate the lot of the poor.

The picture may not be thought very inviting, rather drab, dusty and uninspiring, with a touch of the patronising and unco' guid about it. In the foreground of the picture are a number of people in sad- coloured garments with a parson or two among them sitting round a deal table in an aroma of soap and water or disinfectant, obviously engaged in doing their duty towards their neighbours, who are represented in the background by a shabby and ill-at-ease group of mothers and children, with an infrequent and deplorably humble man.

“Social workers,” someone will say rather pityingly, “good people no doubt in their way, but very dull, forever fussing over their lame ducks; all very well, of course, for people who like that sort of thing, elderly spinsters and men with no settled occupation.” This or something like it is a not uncommon view, but it is, I believe, a profound misconception. The Social Service movement of modern times is not confined to any one class, nor is it the preserve of a particular section of dull and respectable people. It has arisen out of a deep discontent with society as at present constituted, and among its prophets have been the greatest spirits of our time. It is not a movement concerned alone with the material, with housing and drains, clinics and feeding centres, gas and water, but is the expression of the desire for social justice, for freedom and beauty, and for the better apportionment of all the things that make up a good life. It is the constructive side of the criticism passed by the reformer and the revolutionary on the failure of our industrialised society to provide a fit environment where a good life shall be possible for all.

Poetry has been called a criticism of life, and in the work of the great poets of the nineteenth century we can see the discontent caused by this failure getting stronger and stronger as the fruits of modern industrialism began to ripen. The note is struck in the earliest of the new school that renewed the poetry of imagination after the long sleep of Georgian artificiality. William Blake, visionary and prophet, declared:

I will not cease from mental fight,
Nor shall the sword sleep in my hand,
Till we have built Jerusalem,
In England's green and pleasant land.

In the poetry of Keats may be observed the gradual invasion of misgivings as to the Tightness of the position of the dreamer, striving to create beauty, but turning his back on the parallel creation of ugliness, moral and material.

Thus in “Isabella; or, the Pot of Basil” the summary of the murderous brothers’ worldly position is startlingly modern, and is capable of, and clearly intended to bear, a wider application:

With her two brothers this fair lady dwelt,
Enriched from ancestral merchandise,

And for them many a weary hand did swelt
In torched mines and noisy factories

For them alone did seethe

A thousand men in troubles wide and dark,
Half-ignorant, they turned an easy wheel,

That set sharp racks at work, to pinch and peel.

While in “The Fall of Hyperion” the note becomes even clearer.

“Are there not thousands in the world,” said I,
“Who love their fellows even to the death,
Who feel the giant agony of the world,
And more, like slaves to poor humanity,
Labour for mortal good ?”

In Shelley an even more militant note is sounded, in such poems as “Men of England, wherefore plough,” or “The Masque of Anarchy,” or “Queen Mab.” Here we have the spirit of revolt against social in- justice, not intruding on the poet’s vision, as in Keats, but animating and inspiring all his work. Later comes a still more striking figure, the greatest of the modern prophets, Ruskin. A man extremely sensitive to beauty, greatly gifted in its portrayal, is torn from his contemplation of the scenery, the architecture and the paintings that he loves by a horror of the ugliness around him, a disgust at the injustice of the social system under which he lives, and feels an imperious need to do all that he can to denounce the evil and sweep it away. As he says himself, “I feel the force of machinery and the fury of avaricious commerce to be so irresistible that I have seceded from the study, not only of architecture but of art, as I would in a besieged city, to seek the best mode of getting bread and butter for the multitude.” Thus he was led to denounce the current economic theory, and in “Unto this last” shook its ascendancy, while he demonstrated in “The Stones of Venice” and the “Seven Lamps of Architecture” that the root of ugliness was social injustice, and that beauty depended on freedom and justice. But further, in contrast to the mere rebels who only denounced, he definitely attempted to put his ideals into practice. His co-operative commonwealth failed and cost him a fortune, but it is just this determination to make practical experiment as well as to theorise, to do as well as to think, that is the kernel of social service. William Morris, again, was drawn from the practice of the many arts in which he delighted, and of which he was master, to the uncongenial duty of street-corner agitation, for which he was little fitted.

Now, in all these cases it will be observed that it is precisely the finest, most sensitive and most daring spirits of their age who feel the call for change. The social worker is in high company, and social service is not the preserve of the parish worker, the charity-monger and the statistician, but is the legacy of the prophets. Social service is not the monopoly of the few, nor is it confined to any one class; it is not a particular set of activities so much as an attitude of mind to all human actions. It is the demand that their existence as members of society, and as members of a particular part of that society, makes on all men and women. It is essentially the duty of citizenship not only to the city and the State but to the world.

In the course of this book we shall be obliged to use the term “social worker” in its narrow sense, but it is necessary to emphasise at the outset that although this may be done, the more extended meaning will be kept in view.

The development of the social service idea from the old position of the charitable worker must now be considered, and we will turn to the examination of some of the factors that have altered the outlook of the social worker from the time when his principal object was benevolence down to the modern conception of social justice.

THE CHARITY IDEA

Before the industrial revolution the goodwill of the ordinary man and woman that is the main factor in social service, expressed itself in acts of charity. For each particular need that arose our forefathers devised some form of voluntary organisation or relied on the efforts of charitable individuals.

Thus, when it was observed that there were a number of uncared-for, and unwanted infants the Foundling Hospital was started : for the needs of the sick, hospi- tals and provident dispensaries were set up, and for the aged almshouses were built, while unusual distress would be met by the free issue of soup, or by gifts of clothing or blankets. In a comparatively static society this method of individual provision worked fairly well ; although there were many poor there was not very much destitution, and for the destitute provision had been made by the poor law of Queen Elizabeth's reign. In general the kindness of neigh- bours and the benevolence of the well-to-do were sufficient to deal with the normal cases of distress, and provide relief according to the not very extended conception of necessary comfort that obtained. When, however, the whole structure of society was altered by the agrarian revolution that broke up the old life of the countryside, and the industrial revolution which collected huge numbers of people together into particular districts, and divided society rigidly into two main classes, a small landlord and employing class, and a proletariat, the system that was suitable for small, almost self-contained communities was powerless to grapple with the host of new problems raised by a complicated system of industry and the emergence of the Great Society. While industry was on a small scale masters and men were intimately acquainted with each other, and there was little need of intervention from outside ; there was no place for factory inspection, and little possibility of combined action on the part of the workers. In a small society custom and public opinion are enough to regulate the relationships between man and man in the ordinary affairs of life in accordance with elementary ideas of justice. Here and there, it is true, the powerful and unscrupulous person may dominate a small com- munity, and work his will ; but it is far harder than in large societies where the details are so many and the system so complicated that few people see much out- side the narrow round of their own preoccupations.

At the beginning of the nineteenth century the conception of society as divided into classes, each with its own particular function, held sway, and charity was regarded as an act of grace on the part of the rich to their poorer neighbours. The tide of opinion was running strongly in favour of laisser faire, old regulations as to wages and hours of labour, formerly fixed by the justices of the peace, were being swept away, old restrictions on industry were found to be obsolete, owing to the changes in the methods of production, and the geographical distribution of industries, and the country was committed more and more to the forces of unrestrained competition. The optimistic doctrine that if each individual sought his own good the interests of the community as a whole would be best served was generally accepted, and the only mitigation to the harshness of economic law admitted was the charity of individuals.

If we examine in a little more detail the charitable idea we shall see how essentially it belongs to a certain conception of society. The charitable motive is primarily religious. Christianity lays down that charity in its widest sense is necessary to salvation, and that almsgiving is one of the duties of the Christian, so that throughout the ages of faith one finds a large amount of charitable work done with the principal object of benefiting the soul of the giver, the effect on the welfare of the recipient being a secondary consideration. Christianity shares this conception of charity with other oriental religions, and in so far as the object is the good of the benefactor rather than that of the beneficiary it is very far from the social service idea, although its effects may, or more probably may not be, socially desirable. Thus the frequent English charitable donation by will of a sum of money to be laid out in loaves or bread for the poor, sometimes coupled with the obligation to pray for the soul of the testator, must be classed with the casual pence bestowed upon the beggar by someone who can well spare it. In both cases the element of self-sacrifice which is implicit in social service is absent, indeed, this is absent in all charitable gifts that are given out of superfluity of riches, or out of wealth which the donor cannot take away with him, so that the only people to be denied anything are the residuary legatees. Akin to these are the numerous benefactions which are given in order to quiet the mind from uneasiness at the sight of wretchedness, or to satisfy a queasy conscience that, recognising that all is not well, endeavours to obtain a cheap insurance against disturbing thoughts, or a mild glow of satisfaction at the feeling that some good has been done, and that gratitude has been merited. As an early Victorian children's book puts it, “For Mary truly understood the luxury of doing good.”

There is a great difference between this sort of charity and that of those who actually take the trouble to find out what is amiss before trying to devise appropriate remedies, and who themselves perform their own almsgiving.

Charity at its highest is the expression of the love for one’s fellows that is at the root of all vital social work; but, at the period with which we are dealing, it had become narrowed down in most cases to mere almsgiving. The old incentive to charity that we find in the mediaeval church became weaker when at the Reformation the doctrine of salvation by faith caused less stress to be laid on works, and although at the latter end of the eighteenth century it was reinforced by the philanthropic impulse which was so powerful a motive with men like Jonas Hanway and Romilly, the general view of charity was not a high one.

Society as constituted was accepted, and the existence of the poor taken for granted, nay even welcomed as providing an outlet for the benevolence of the rich. Charity is always apt to be accompanied by a certain complacence and condescension on the part of the benefactor, and by an expectation of gratitude from the recipient which cuts at the root of all true friendliness. The charitable of the time seem to us today to be smug and self-satisfied. They delighted in sermons to the poor on convenient virtues, and lacked that sharp self-criticism that is the note of society to-day. The change from this attitude to social service has been effected not only by the utter failure of charity to cope with the difficult problems of poverty (a failure that does not mean the condemnation of the charitable, for it was inherent in the very nature of the problem), but also by an entirely changed outlook, due to three principal causes: the work of the social reformers, the advances in knowledge, and the rise of democratic ideas.

SOCIAL REFORM MOVEMENTS

The change from the charity conception mentioned above to that of social service has been effected particularly by the work of the social reformers. Our attitude to social service will be different according to the conception that we have of society. If we regard it as at present constituted as on the whole just and right, and approve of the present economic structure, social work will seem to us, as it were, a work of supererogation, a praiseworthy attempt to ease the minor injustices inevitable in all systems of society. We shall see a series of more or less disconnected problems not related to any one general question. On the other hand, we may see as the root of the trouble an entirely wrong system altogether, a mistaken aim, a faulty standard of values, and we shall form in our minds more or less clearly a picture of some different system, a society organised on a new basis altogether, guided by other incentives than those that operate at the present time, and we shall relate all our particular efforts to this point of view.

All social reformers belong to one or other of these schools of thought; the dividing line may be a narrow one in some cases, but is sufficiently visible. The movements for reform of the earlier half of the nineteenth century were carried on mainly by those who held the first view, who dealt with particular social evils but did not attack the basis of society as a whole. Thus the prison reformers, Howard and Mrs. Fry, the factory reformers, Shaftesbury, Oastler, and Sadler, all belong to the first class. Shaftesbury was able to carry out his work of agitation for the enforcement of decent conditions in the factories and mines without consciously working for State intervention in industrial matters, and indeed without the realisation that he was sapping the foundations of the laisserfaire attitude of the State, and starting the building of the great edifice of regulation and inspection which has extended over almost every part of the national life. On the other hand, Robert Owen, who laid the foundations of so many fruitful movements for the bettering of conditions in factories, of education and co-operative distribution and production, was able to relate all his activities to his “New View of Society,” and was essentially revolutionist in his attitude.

As the century proceeds a vast amount of practical reform in every field of activity was brought about through the disconnected efforts of little groups of reformers, most of them intent on the abolition of some particular abuse or the introduction of some advance in social organisation. Some grappled with the evil of pauperism and endeavoured to organise the goodwill of the ordinary man and woman so as to make charity effective, others attacked the evils of the housing conditions in the towns. Others, like Dr. Barnardo, were affected by the sight of some particular evil (as in his case of children sleeping out in the streets), and devoted their whole lives to a particular piece of social work.

As the time goes on we can see a steady tendency at work for social reformers to feel the need of collective rather than individual action. The man or woman who is interested in one particular piece of reform inevitably comes in contact with others who are working in the same field, but with different methods and a different point of view: he begins to realise what a small part of the evil he is able to affect by his work, and is driven to recognise that it is only by the co- operation of individuals with the community generally that the special reforms which he has at heart can be brought about. He discovers that instead of a particular evil being, as he thought, peculiar to his own district, it is only a part of a wider problem, which as an individual he is powerless to solve, so that he finds himself obliged to turn to the organised community to help him. Thus today the social reformer is less apt to rely on his own individual efforts than to endeavour to arouse the nation to act by passing laws to prevent the occurrence of certain abuses or to empower local authorities to take action.

Again, the individual citizen or the social reform society may set to work to prove the practicability of certain reforms, and may then wish to see them adopted generally; but it is found that precisely where such a reform is most needed it is impossible to get it put into action, owing to the indifference or even hostility of a particular class or locality. The need of some form of compulsion is felt. A good instance is that of the notification of births, which was first pioneered by individuals, then made permissive so that the districts that were enthusiastic for child welfare could adopt it, and finally made mandatory to force the indifferent to take action. Thus while there is still much work done by voluntary individual enthusiasts, the whole tendency of late has been to translate the ideas of social reformers into legislative and administrative action.

The social reformers of the present day have little fear of State interference, and generally speaking are far more ready than in the past to face big changes. Robert Owen and his fellow-workers in their day, the Christian Socialists in the 1850’s were voices crying in the wilderness. Today the ideas that prompted their reforming efforts are more and more widely accepted. Most social reformers are ready to accept a very large amount of control by the community over the activities of the individual, and to recognise the need for a greater recognition of the rights and duties of all citizens. The question to-day is thus rather one of the method and proportion than of complete denial and assertion. Society is far more self-conscious than it was in the past, and the social conscience is at work among men and women of all classes. The Settlement movement was an early expression of this, and the increased searchings of heart in the Churches as to the relationship between the principles of Christianity and business, and the difficulty of reconciling the two, are becoming more and more evident. The demand of the social reformer to-day is for a new attitude to social problems rather than for specific reforms in any particular department of life.

ADVANCES IN KNOWLEDGE

Looking back on the conditions of the early part of last century and reading of the years of effort that it took to prevent small children, even under seven years of age, from being worked for fourteen or fifteen hours a day in factories and mines, we are amazed at the callousness with which such a state of affairs was regarded, and can hardly conceive how people who were, as we can see, in other affairs intelligent, reasonably humane and enlightened, should not have instantly protested. Yet at the same time we are ourselves indifferent to numbers of evils to which we have become accustomed, and which are rarely noticed. Probably in a future time it will seem amazing to our descendants that we should have allowed huge slum-areas like East and South London, the Lancashire towns, or the mining villages, to remain for years without taking real action to abolish them. We all imagine that if we had been present in Jerusalem we should not have voted for Barabbas.

In our criticisms of the social workers of the past we are apt to forget how great has been the increase in knowledge since their day. The careful dissection and investigation of social phenomena is a comparatively modern achievement, but it has perhaps done more than any single factor to change the outlook of men and women on social problems. Early reformers were working in the dark, grappling with evils that had come on society with great suddenness. The causes underlying social discontents had not been investigated, and even the facts were not known to more than a few.

Today the social worker can profit by the labours of their predecessor, the ground has been explored and mapped out. Research has been made into almost every phase of poverty, and many of its causes have been elucidated.

The older type of social worker was mainly endeavouring to deal with results: they saw that people were hungry, or ill-clad, or sick, and their first impulse was to provide food, clothing, and medicine. The existence of classes of the community habitually in this state was taken for granted, and the reasons why they were so were not investigated. The result too often was that the remedy, dealing as it did with symptoms only, was as bad as the disease. In the same way, many social reformers did not sufficiently realise that the evil which appeared to them to be a cause was in itself only a result. Thus the prevalence of drunkenness would be asserted as a prime cause of poverty, without considering whether in fact drunkenness itself was not due to bad conditions of work, a degrading environment, or the general greyness of life.

During the nineteenth century a great advance was made in the science of preventive medicine. Instead of being concerned almost entirely with healing disease after it had arisen, medical science turned to the improvement of the environment, and the prevention of disease arising. Thus the recognition that a whole group of diseases were bred in the slums, and were due to a low standard of life, led to the public health agitation, and the passing of legislation promoting sanitary reform, which has done far more to improve the health of the urban population than any great advances in curative methods. By anology from this in social matters we can see that unemployment, for instance, is a disease of an industrial society in our present stage of development, and that no amount of provision for individual men and women will take the place of the removal as far as possible of its causes. In the words of Mr. Sidney Webb it is no good hammering on the bulge, the direct method is often the ineffective one. There are numbers of social workers who find in the work of research and investigation the best outlet for their desire for social service. Some may be chiefly engaged in investigation into the psychological effects of certain pieces of social machinery, others in the machinery itself. It is almost a distinct motive in itself, this desire to see the machinery of society running smoothly and cleanly. Such a feeling can be seen running through the works of Mr. H. G. Wells, where he exhibits the disgust of an orderly and scientific mind at the wasteful and chaotic nature of our social arrangements. One has only to compare his Utopias with that of William Morris to see the difference between the scientific and aesthetic appeals to social service. In those of the former the emphasis is on the mechanism of society, and the possibilities of harnessing the forces of nature in order to make attainable a fine life for human beings are worked out in considerable detail and with great imagination. In Morris, on the other hand, there is little attention to the machinery of society, but a very keen realisation of the sort of life he thought best for people. Thus the scientific motive takes its place as one of the incentives that lead men to devote themselves to social service, and the great influence of the scientific investigator on the methods of social reformers, and on the outlook of those engaged in social work, must be acknowledged.

It has been pointed out above how much the doctrines of the classical economists hampered the efforts of social reformers by practically forbidding all action by the State outside the narrowest lines. Economics became known as the dismal science: it was thought to be opposed to the efforts of the more earnest reformers, and to render futile all the endeavours of the working classes to improve their industrial position: hence the vehement attacks on it by Ruskin and others. At one time it seemed as if economic science had got entirely out of touch with human life: it had become abstract and academic. To the man who keenly realised the evils of the industrial system the doctrines of the classical economists seemed to offer little hope of better things. He read for instance of the fluidity of labour, and that if labour was displaced from one industry it would flow to wherever it was needed; that if new processes and increased machinery were introduced, in the long run more men would be employed; but to the man in touch with the sufferings of the unemployed this was cold comfort, for he knew that the long run was often fatal to the man with the short purse. The economist did not seem to realise that the abstract concept of labour consisted of a number of human beings who were in fact the greater part of the nation. Political economy seemed to be inhuman, in laying stress on how commodities could be most cheaply produced, without enquiring what would be the effect on social conditions.

From this position the science has been rescued through the work of the practical social worker, the experimenter, and the investigator. The transition from the earlier to the later views of J. S. Mill marks the turning of the tide, and since that time the science has become more and more social. It has become the hopeful science.

This changed outlook has been reflected in the policy of the country in regard to social questions. From complete freedom of contract we have moved to an ever increasing state regulation of conditions. The earlier efforts at regulation of hours of labour, wages, and conditions of work were regarded at the time as rather regrettable exceptional provisions, introduced for the protection of certain classes who were especially weak; women and children. Today the idea of a minimum wage and a maximum working day is almost generally accepted. In the same way during the last thirty years the work of the organised community in local affairs has steadily increased, and the question whether a certain industry should be carried on by individual enterprise or collective effort is decided more on grounds of practical convenience than general principle. Where formerly it was considered that the State was a sort of referee who kept the ring wherein contending individualities had full scope for contest, we now have the conception that it is the duty of the State to act as the co-ordinating factor in making all individual efforts work for the good of the citizens.

This idea of a conscious endeavour to promote by governmental action the production of the best possible environment for the breeding of good citizens was shortly expressed by the present Prime Minister [David Lloyd George] when he said that we could not produce an A-1 nation from C-3 conditions. It may be claimed that this does not amount to a great change of outlook, that all states have this aim to promote the best life for the citizens, but the point that differentiates a statement like this from the speeches of the statesmen of sixty years ago, is that today we consider that it is possible for the community by collective action to alter men’s environment, whereas then it was thought that any interference with environment would be acting against nature, and against all sound economic principles.

THE PROGRESS OF DEMOCRACY

The rise of democracy has changed the outlook of the social worker: formerly social work was done for now with the working classes. This is due to several factors. First to the efforts of the workers themselves; during the last hundred years the working classes have gradually built up their own organs of collective expression, their own machinery of government, and have, to some extent, evolved their own philosophy of society. The poor are not now an inert mass on which the kindly disposed may exert moral or material pressure, or mould to their own liking. Through their associations, trade co-operative and political, they have trained their own leaders, and express their own views as to the general and particular policy of the community.

The social worker of today has to recognise that among the working classes are men and women as well equipped as himself, and as awake to the problems of the day. From parliament down to the parish council working men and women are engaged in the actual work of legislation and administration; in industry they are claiming a large share in the control over their own lives and over the governance of industry, and in education they are claiming an equality of opportunity. It is unnecessary to labour this point; it has been driven home recently by numberless instances, the most significant of all, perhaps, being that the British delegates at the peace treaty of Versailles included a working man. We have only to cast back in our minds to the treaty of Vienna to realise what this means. In a word, today working men and women claim full citizenship. They are not content to be legislated for by special acts of Parliament designed to protect them, far less to be mere recipients of charity. They refuse to be regarded as a special class with special functions.

The second factor is the narrowing of the gulf of ignorance that formerly was so deep between classes. In a recent investigation in Sheffield of the habits and mentality of some particular streets it was found that twenty-five per cent, belonged to Class I, which comprised the well equipped who were informed on questions of the day, read a good deal, were fairly educated; in a word were qualified citizens. It is doubtful whether other classes put to the same test would yield much better results. The small minority in each class that reads and thinks has access to the same books and understands a common language: members from the well-to-do classes can find working men who will be prepared to discuss problems of economics, philosophy, or natural science in an intelligent way, just as others in each class would find a common ground in the works of the late Nat Gould [an author of popular novels, often featuring horse-racing] or in the pages of the “Pink ‘Un.” [A newspaper about sports, mainly focused on horse racing].

A third factor is the greatly increased travelling facilities, which have not only brought people from different parts of the country together, but has helped to mingle classes.

Thus in the growth of the social service idea the working-class attitude has its place and has contributed valuable ideas.

CITIZENSHIP

The fact that we live in societies implies that we have certain rights and duties as members. I do not intend here to go into the old controversy as to natural, political, and legal rights, or to discuss the theory of the social contract. The object of our coming together and living in a society is that we may have a better chance of obtaining the means to live a good life than if we remain isolated. We claim the right to as full an opportunity of expressing our personalities as has anybody else, and that implies the duty of securing as good an opportunity for others as we have ourselves. Society is built up on a series of rights and duties express or implied; they may vary at different stages of human development and between different classes, but at our present stage of development in which all do at least lip-service to democracy, our ideal is the fullest opportunity for the development of every human soul. It is possible to have societies based on a different principle organised for the benefit of a single class, for the use of which the remainder are subordinated. In one society the subordinate class may be slaves, in another nominally free but really subject, in yet another the women may be considered as unworthy of the rights of citizenship and only existing for the pleasure of men. But in our present stage the rights and duties of citizenship are conceived of as belonging to and incumbent upon all.

But although we may all admit the object of society and the duties of citizenship the content of that duty is very variously interpreted. Some people will emphasise one duty, some another. One aspect of the duty of the citizen has been very much emphasised of late, that of the defence of the political community against attack by armed forces. During the late war it was accepted by everybody that private interests must be subordinated to the good of the community; it was urged, and by none so loudly as by those whose conception of citizenship had not previously been highly developed, that it was the duty of every man to do his service in the trenches or munition works, and it was recognised that all forms of work in the country must subserve one aim, the success of the nation in war. The able-bodied man or woman who did not in current phrase do his or her bit was looked upon almost in the same light as the profiteer who devoted himself to piling up a big fortune out of his country’s extremity. All this appeared perfectly natural to those who made the appeal and those who responded to it, yet few had any definite theory of the relation of the citizen to the State, so much so that those who claimed allegiance to a duty that they considered overrode even their duty as citizens of England failed to make people understand their position. The idea that it was the duty of the individual to give not merely his service but his life for the benefit of the rest of the community or even for the benefit of humanity did not seem strange at the time. What was strange was that this was a new attitude, something temporary adopted for an emergency, even something unnatural.

It appeared to most people before the war and apparently to many since perfectly natural, right and reasonable that the interest of the individual should come first, that of the community second, that in normal times citizenship should be passive, an affair of votes now and again, that the service of society should be so unimportant that it should merely take up the fag-end of a man’s time, or to be so exceptional a vacation that those who endeavoured to give their services should be regarded as a special class, the social workers.

It appeared natural to most people that the ordinary citizen should pursue his own interests without regard to their effect on society, that the prevailing motive should be self interest, and that the idea of regarding one’s ordinary work as an act of social service was confined to very few.

As Professor Urwick points out:

“In our modern national life the sense of unity is not realised, and the all pervading duties of citizenship are lost sight of in the wilderness of interests of both individuals and groups. Our extraordinarily complex life, our far too numerous activities, our strong asser- tion of individual liberty which we very imperfectly understand, and the assumed importance of our occupation as self-seekers and self-developers all these things tend to drive the citizen idea into the background. Yet in theory and also in fact it is still the necessary and single basis of social duty and social morality. Perhaps also the looseness of most social ties and bonds, the plasticity and vagueness of most communal relationships, make it additionally hard for us to think of the great duties, and easier to think of duties as those of the smaller, inner circles, such as the family or the workshop. And so nowadays we have to search for the citizen-duties underneath or behind those others, just as we have to go out and search for our neighbours to whom Samaritan kindnesses are due.”
[E. J. Urwick. Philosophy of Social Progress]

This attitude of mind, this habit of regarding society as something with which the individual citizen was not concerned, can be traced in part at least to the dominant idea of the nineteenth century, the exaltation of the individual at the expense of society, and the theory that the less the organised community interfered with the individual the better. The prevailing theory that the industrial welfare of the country could best be served by each individual pursuing his own interests led to a weakening of the conception of citizenship. It was assumed that progress came about through the unconscious action of individuals rather than through the active endeavours of groups. This emphasis on individual action and deprecation of interference by the State led to a conception of social service as something extra, a work of supererogation, and a line was drawn between the narrow field in which collective action could function and the wider field for initiative of the charitable and philanthropic. Charitable work being looked upon as a virtue not as a duty, took away from the dignity of citizenship.

Today we have travelled far from those ideas, the awakening of the social conscience so conspicuous in the later days of the nineteenth century, and turned more and more to community action. The confident belief that our progress is necessarily in the right direction, that evolution inevitably moves towards a higher and better state, is less assured. The confidence has become weaker and weaker as investigation has revealed the other side of the enormous industrial development of modern times. The motive of self-interest has been shown to work in a very partial manner, now for good and now for evil, and a search is being made for something to replace it. The problem of motive is the great one today. Over the greater part of the field of industry the motive of self-interest does not operate. To the entrepreneur it is still sufficient to produce the necessary energy though it does nothing to ensure that this energy will be well directed. To the wage-earners, who are the great majority of the citizens of the modern State, profit making, if not impossible, is unattractive; their energies were stimulated formerly far more by fear of losing their places in industry and falling into the ranks of the unemployed than by any hope of increasing their gains: their increased knowledge of the industrial system and their demand for an increase of leisure and life rather than more work and more pay are symptoms of the new outlook: appeals made for increased output fall on deaf ears, the motive is absent and therefore our industrial machinery is creaking.

The problem of society today is not so much material as psychological. We have the means of producing all the material necessities of a good life, food, clothing, and houses in abundance; luxuries as much as we please, and the means of enjoyment of art and literature could be open to all. The one thing necessary is the getting of the human will to operate.

Now there is another motive that operates over a considerable field of human activity and that is Service. We are wont to pride ourselves on the number of men who have this instinct for service, rich men who undertake the burdens of State when they might live on their estates, the men who undertake the less burdensome but more tedious duties of local justice and administration. We call the military and naval establishments services, and boast of the traditions of devotion to duty and sacrifice for the common weal of our civil service at home and abroad. That this motive exists is admitted, and this is the motive that makes for good citizenship and social service in the narrow sense is one of its manifestations.

It is then to the spirit of social service, in my opinion, that we must look for the new motive to replace, or at least reinforce, that of self-interest. We have demands made by bodies of workers that their industries should be turned into public services. During the war the makers of munitions were stimulated to greater exertions and submitted to long hours and intense work by appeals to their desire to do service to their country and their comrades in the field, while many a man who fought and died in the war did so in the main because he believed he was serving the cause of humanity.

It is true that in all these cases other motives are at work, self-interest, the desire for distinction, the lesser loyalties, but in a greater or less degree the spirit of social service is present.

Thus the more we can get the idea of social service as the main motive for all our work, the more likely are we to find a peaceable solution to our present discontents. We have to realise that we cannot divide up the various spheres of human work into water-tight compartments, some carried on solely for the benefit of the individual, others solely for the good of the community; both motives must be present; the maker of machinery or boots must regard his work from the standpoint of its satisfying certain wants of the community as well as supplying him with a living, just as the doctor, although he adopts his profession as a means of earning an income, regards it also as a service to humanity, and binds himself to exercise it in a way that shall be most conducive to the well being of all. His professional traditions prevent him from exploiting a new discovery as a monopoly for his own benefit no less than they inhibit him from spreading disease in order to obtain fees for curing it.

In social service, then, we particularly emphasise the position of men and women as citizens. In our society today we have many interests, and are joined together in many different circles, social, religious, economic, aesthetic, or civic, so that our good will is apt to be dissipated by this distribution, but in each of these spheres the spirit of social service is present, and constitutes the force by which the group is formed, and through the power of which it operates. But whatever smaller groups we belong to, we are all united as members of the State.

What, then, is the relationship between social service in the broader sense which we have just been considering and social service in the narrow almost professional meaning? Just this; that the social worker is one who feels the claims of society upon him more than others, he brings to all his work this conception of his duty as a member of a civilised society to make his contribution to the well being of his fellows.

At this time there are many men and women who have received a strong impression from the war period, of their duty to work unselfishly for the community, men who have been in the army or navy, women who have been occupied in nursing in the hospitals or have been serving in one or other of the auxiliary services, and others of the older generations who have been doing various forms of war work, are finding a certain blank in their lives now these interests have come to an end. I heard a girl who had grown to womanhood during the war ask after the armistice, “What did people do before the War?” She did not wish to go in for the more or less futile social life that was the lot of many in pre-war days, and could not conceive of life without work.

The series of books of which this is the introductory volume is an attempt to show what has been done in the past and what is being done now in various fields of social work, to discuss some of the problems that affect different groups of people at certain ages or in certain capacities, and to describe the methods of solution that are being adopted. It is in fact an endeavour to answer the question asked by many people, “What can I do to perform my duty as a citizen?” In each volume some particular set of problems will be discussed; thus in one volume will be found an account of the agencies dealing with the mother and the infant, in another the provision for the sick, while others will deal with the various associations of working-men and women, in order that those who wish to take up social work may find in them material for judging what work will give most scope for their abilities, and most enlist their enthusiasm.