Chapter VII: Appendix: I

=Edward T. Devine in “Social Work”= says (p. 21): “Social work, then
is the sum of all the efforts made by society to ‘take up its own
slack’ to provide for individuals when its established institutions
fail them, to supplement those established institutions and to
modify them at those points at which they have proved to be badly
adapted to social needs. * * * It may be well done or badly done;
according to the most enlightened system which intelligence and
experience and sympathy and vision can devise or according to the
archaic methods of careless and lazy emotion. * * * It includes
everything which is done by society for the benefit of those who
are not in position to compete on fair terms with their fellows
from whatever motive it may be done, by whatever agency or whatever
means and with whatever results.”

=Edward T. Devine and Lilian Brant in “American Social Work in the
Twentieth Century”= say (the first words of the book): “In the
United States of America ‘social work’ has come into use in recent
years as a comprehensive term, including charity and philanthropy,
public relief, punishment and reformation and all other conscious
efforts, whether by the state or on private initiative, to provide
for the dependent, the sick, and the criminal, to diminish the
amount of poverty, disease, and crime, and to improve general
living and working conditions.”

These statements obviously are not trying to distinguish between
“social work” and the more primitive forms of “charity” and
“philanthropy.”

The pamphlet “=Social Work=,” issued by the American Association
of Social Workers in 1922 disclaims any intention “to give an
authoritative definition of these terms (i.e., charity,
philanthropy, and social service) or of ‘social work,’” but it
does authoritatively indicate that “social work as a profession”
may have occasion to differentiate itself from charity and
philanthropy (pp. 3 and 4). “In discussing social work as a
profession it is necessary to clarify certain conceptions which are
popularly confused with it. As is the case with any activity that
has emerged into professional status and differentiated itself from
the kind of activity in which any one of ordinary intelligence
might participate, social work must live down a variety of names
and conceptions which were common to it in its early and
unprofessional forms.” “So we come to the term ‘social work’ for
a connotation which at least has implicit implications of a process
requiring specialized knowledge and skill sufficient to be called
professional.” “It is well also to point out here that emphasis
must be placed on ‘process’ as an aid to keeping in mind the fact
that not what is done, but how it is done, is what constitutes the
test of professional activity.”

=“Education for Social Work,” by Jesse Frederick Steiner= (University
of Chicago Press, 1921) gives, as its first chapter, a five-page
statement of “The Nature of Social Work” which does not lend itself
to quotation otherwise than _in toto_. It reports about the same
conclusions as this thesis, which was prepared before Mr. Steiner’s
study.

=Porter R. Lee= speaking to the National Conference of Social Work
in 1915 (see Report p. 597) described three conceptions of the
social worker. First, “Any person is a social worker if his work
has conscious social purpose, although his vocation may be any one
of the historic forms of human activity. The second conception
includes as social workers those who are engaged in so-called
preventive work, that is to say, those whose efforts are directed
towards social legislation, toward the development of the social
point of view in the general public and toward readjustments in
social institutions and social habits. * * * social work in this
sense is not concerned with those who are disabled by adverse
conditions of life but with the adverse conditions. The third
conception of the social worker on the other hand identifies him
primarily with efforts on behalf of the subnormal. To one holding
this conception the social worker is one who endeavors through case
work to reestablish disabled families and individuals in a routine
of normal life. This does not preclude interest in social
legislation and other forms of preventive work, but these are not
the first task of the social worker. When social work as a generic
term first came into general use leaders in the work for dependent
families, neglected children, the defective, the delinquent and the
destitute sick comprised almost the entire group to which it was
applied.” In the 1920 Conference (see Report p. 466) Mr. Lee said:
“The subject matter of social work is the adjustment of men to
their environment. * * * The necessity for social work arises
because of the difficulties faced by men in making this adjustment.
These difficulties are sometimes in the man and sometimes in the
environment. Some factors in the environment bear too heavily upon
all men, some bear too heavily upon a smaller number. * * * A large
part of social work is conducted with the purpose of softening the
effect of environmental factors which bear with undue severity upon
all men. Another large part of social work aims at the development
of greater resourcefulness in all men in meeting environmental
demands. The greater part of social work, however, is at present
devoted to the development of a higher adjusting power in those
persons who are most handicapped by environment or a modification
of those particular environmental factors which handicap them.”

=Miss Mary E. Richmond in “What is Social Case Work?”= (Russell Sage
Foundation, N.Y., 1922) breaks up what Mr. Lee calls “preventive
work” into three parts (pp. 223, 224). “The other forms of social
work all of which interplay with case work, are three--group work,
social reform, and social research. Case work seeks to effect
better social relations by dealing with individuals one by one or
within the intimate group of the family. But social work also
achieves the same general ends in these other ways. It includes a
wide variety of group activities--settlement work, recreational
work, club, neighborhood and local community work--in which the
individual, though still met face to face, becomes one of a number.
By a method different from that employed in either case or group
work, though with the same end in view, social reform seeks to
improve conditions in the mass, chiefly through social propaganda
and social legislation. Whether the immediate object be better
housing, better working conditions, better use of leisure, or a
long list of other objectives, the main purpose in these different
social reforms still is to advance the development of our human
kind by improving social relations. Finally, social research with
its precious freight of original discovery in all the fields
covered by social work, has also the secondary task of assembling
known facts in order to reinterpret them for use in social reform,
in group work and in case work.”

A fair amount of searching has failed to reveal many statements which do as much as the above toward defining social work in succinct and specific terms. One finds instead descriptions which, while satisfactory enough for the purposes for which each was intended, ascribe to it no really distinctive character but rather present it in generalizations equally true of other disinterested undertakings, or by making it synonymous with applied sociology or applied religion simply throw the burden of definition onto those other terms leaving the matter as indefinite as before.