e must take out a warrant,
and a given number of years must elapse during which the man shall not
have been heard from, before state aid can be granted to the wife.

Finally, it is more clearly recognized than formerly that the time to
"close the case" is not just after the man's return.

A case supervisor speaks of "the strong temptation to close our
records as soon as relief becomes unnecessary. The man's return to
the family is often the critical point at which there is need of
skilful and sympathetic friendship. These cases cry out for
continued treatment. We need to think more humanely about all the
unsettling elements in our urban civilization and to see that all
the nice individual adjustments that as case workers we can make are
made. If the man's work gives him no opportunity for
self-expression, what attempt are we making to give him such
opportunities outside his work, to connect him with a trade union,
with clubs and with fraternities? How much are we thinking about
cures for inebriates, psychoanalysis, vocational guidance,
recreation?"

Briefly, then, changes in the social worker's attitude toward treatment
have meant less emphasis on punitive and repressive measures, more
consideration of the man's point of view, less tendency to press court
action, at least in the beginning, fewer commitments of children, a more
liberal relief policy (partly as a preventive of "forced
reconciliations"), and lastly, longer supervision after the man has
resumed support of his family.

FOOTNOTES:

[15] Adapted from the writer's article on "Desertion and Non-Support in
Family Case Work," _The Annals of the Academy of Political and Social
Science_, May, 1918, p. 98.

[16] Breed, Mary: Eleventh New York State Conference, 1910, p. 76.

IV

FINDING THE DESERTING HUSBAND

A few years ago a young Jewish woman reported to the National Desertion
Bureau[17] that her husband had left her and their children.

The couple had never got on well, and the man seemed to have been a
melancholy and impractical fellow. The usual methods of the Bureau
brought no results in finding the missing husband. Then the wife was
more carefully questioned, and urged to tell all that she could
recall or had heard about her husband's early life, his tastes and
peculiarities. Among other things the Bureau learned that the man's
father had died in America years