fting sand.

A prompt and vigorous effort to find the absentee is therefore a first
requisite in dealing with family desertion. Unfortunately, many case
workers, having started bravely and exhausted the first crop of clues,
become discouraged and fall back on the supposition that the man is
permanently out of the scene, and that it only remains to make plans for
the family. Numberless case histories attest the unwisdom of this
assumption. It is not making an extreme statement to say that, as long
as the family remains under active care or until the missing man is
proved to be dead, the effort to find him should not be abandoned. Mr.
Carstens, in discussing this point, says:

To carry on this search persistently is the great safeguard. It is
rare when in the course of a few months the true state of affairs
will not have been revealed, though it may have been quite hidden at
the start.[18]

This is not to say that time must be spent unprofitably in going over
the same ground, or that out-of-town agencies must be badgered to
reinvestigate old clues. But the frame of mind that pigeonholes the
whole matter as having been attended to must be shunned by the social
worker, who should be always on the alert for new clues and prompt to
follow them up. An example of a vigorous and persistent search for a
deserter is taken from the files of the National Desertion Bureau.[19]

Adolph R. deserted his wife and their six little children on
September 1, 1912. He was traced to Philadelphia, but had left there
the day before the tidings reached New York. Information was
obtained from fellow-employes which led to the belief that he had
gone to Tampa, Florida. Inquiry was directed to the rabbi in that
city, but again the information was disheartening, since it
disclosed the fact that once more R. had "left the day before." The
rabbi telegraphed that the deserter had evidently gone to Lakewood,
Florida, and that he could be found in that place. Immediately the
Bureau dispatched a telegram to its representative there, only to
find that R. had merely passed through Lakewood en route to Bartow,
Florida. When the inquiry reached Bartow it was learned that R. had
left a few days before, and that he was on his way to Memphis,
Tennessee. The Jewish Charities of Memphis made investigation at the
cigar factories of that city, but reported that no person bearing
the na