pend
upon arousing an active interest in the welfare of the community's
"disadvantaged" through discussion by such organizations as the church,
the grange, the farm and home bureau, lodges, women's clubs, instruction
in high schools, etc. The work of the public health nurse will reveal
many family problems with which she is unable to deal and which demand
the help of one experienced in social work, and the nurse will be of
service in educating the community to the need of such work.

It seems obvious that by itself the rural community is too small a unit
to employ a social worker who is professionally trained for dealing with
the more difficult social mal-adjustments, and that it must cooperate
with other communities for the organization of such work on a county
basis. Experience has shown that trained social workers actually save
the county the cost of their salaries and expenses, without considering
the greater efficiency and permanent value of the work done. The social
worker has been well termed a "doctor of domestic difficulties." Every
county and community needs such a doctor who is skilled in treating
social disease, but one of her chief functions will be to act as an
educational director in promoting the study of local social conditions
by the existing organizations in every community and in discovering and
training leadership for carrying out a constructive program as it is
evolved. In some way there should be a volunteer committee or worker in
each community associated with the county social worker to advise
concerning policies and to carry on much of the local work under her
supervision and training. For it must be recognized that the economic
resources of rural communities are limited and that they cannot afford
several social workers for different lines of effort, as is common in
cities. But more important is the fact that social welfare depends more
largely upon a proper understanding of its problems by the local
community and a willingness to grapple with them intelligently and
sympathetically, than upon the remedial treatment afforded through
professional workers, courts, institutions and other public agencies.
Social welfare is like health, for which sanitation and hygiene are more
important than doctors and medicines.

What is needed in the rural community is a transformation of the
old-time family hospitality and neighborliness into a feeling of
responsibility for the unfortunate within the community