The extension of the sense of public responsibility, the realization that reform must come in all the interlocking activities of a highly organized business, political and social life has tempted some people to think that the days of social work are numbered or to seek out for it some highly specialized or recondite function. But if we are right in ascribing to it this function of challenging all forms of service to reach and satisfy individual needs it may be more important in the future than in the past. Wholesale and collectivist methods call for constant adaptation of general means to particular cases and the more we give of government service the more we may need of social work. The more varied our health service, the more flexible and extensible our educational opportunities, the more occasions there will be for adjustment. Such follow-up work as is done by hospitals and by the workmen’s compensation office, the work of the mothers’ assistance fund, of the voluntary experiments in special nutrition classes, vocational guidance, and scholarships for trade school attendance, are only a few examples of the kind of thing social work branches into as established agencies extend their own responsibilities. The fact that social work rescues people who fall through the meshes of the school system, people dismissed from clinical treatment only to return to a regimen bound to revive their troubles, that it discovers the round pegs in square holes and the neglected groups and anomalous cases has caused other people to see it as all converging in a liaison work which shall ultimately be all there is left for it to perform and which shall be in essence social case work. From what has already been said it will be evident that there is no reason to think that social work which has been so prolific of criticism of our established institutions and a pioneer in experiment should cease to exercise this function, which is as infinite in possibilities as the life of man itself, or even that it will cease to work along lines of inquiry or of group work. That little word “social” opens up the possibilities of all the permutations and combinations in human consciousness. The conference at least hints that social work knows it.