Page 42 - 1925 September - To Dragma

TO DRAGMA OF ALPHA OMICRON PI

a r e willing to accept volunteers and apprentices on equal terms as
workers in training, but who balk at giving increased responsibil-
ity to the volunteer.

This attitude also reacts on the volunteer, who often comes to
feel that the only way she can avoid having her time and her
serious interests broken into, is to ask f o r and receive a salary f o r
what she does. I know at least two social workers of independent
means, both holding responsible executive positions, who draw
down regular salaries for their work, but whose contributions to
their society's treasury almost, i f not quite, offsets the salary
received. Such subterfuges ought not to be necessary, and I
believe will not continue to be.

I f a more desirable balance between paid and volunteer social
work is to be attained, however, the social agencies will have to
furnish more opportunities for real training than they do at pres-
ent. A great many of them still cheerfully exploit the time of the
volunteer by giving her odds and ends to do, and nothing which
leads to increase of responsibility or skill. The person who pro-
poses to make a free g i f t of his time to a social agency has as
much right as the person who gives money, to know how the
agency is going to spend it, and what return the community will
receive f r o m the g i f t .

We social workers have been accused by the labor unions of
contributing to the exploitation of the poor f o r the benefit of the
rich, but I have certainly seen instances in which we have done
the reverse.

The need for skilled services increases in our complicated
society faster than communities can be brought to see the need
of paying f o r it. I see no reason to suppose that we shall ever be
able to command all the skill and time necessary to deal econom-
ically and humanely with maladjusted human beings. The only
hope, i t seems to me, lies in mobilizing, not just the money of the
well-to-do to pay more and more salaries f o r this service, but the
time and interest of their daughters and sons, to learn in all humil-
ity how their time and effort may be effectively expended in the
common weal. Already the cheerful giver and tax payer is
beginning to question the increasing costs of service and is
appalled to learn that as social work gets more skillful, the need
for its ministrations increases. Y o u know that wonderful flow-