But when this third group tell social work that it is not extending benefits but in the long run delaying their extension, when they tell it that there is a dragon “privilege” which can grow new heads of offence faster than it can cut them off, when they say that social work must be either utterly entangled in its own red tape or corrupted by the flesh pots of Egypt not to see that it is simply compounding with the mammon of unrighteousness to allow the continuance of privilege and abuse, then indeed social work itself is troubled. It has known all along that those are wrong who say it is a mistake to serve the disadvantaged, but to be told that it--social work--is not serving them, that is a very different matter. The charges are two, first that it is selfish and pharisaical, and second that it is practically bought for the defense of privilege. The first complain of “The organized charity scrimped and iced In the name of a cautious statistical Christ.”[70] Social work is confessed by the definition, to be “cautious” and “statistical.” Used in this opprobrious sense the words make a reproach that could scarcely be more bitter, but who would want a doctor to pour out without stint the strichnia needed by his patient’s heart? The development of methods, standards and technique has been referred to in these pages as matter only for congratulation. But obviously these have their dangers like everything else. Our childish humanity has been tempted, from the days of the medicine man on, rather to claim the confidence of a gullible public by the impressiveness of its ceremonies than arduously to achieve that confidence by the excellence of its performance. The temptation to aim at an impression is especially strong in the case of social work because it often does for people the sort of things that friends are at the same time sporadically attempting. When with every intention of producing efficiency social work tries to establish “standards” it again has to risk the shift of emphasis from the work to the technical measurement and the resulting tendency to attempt what can be put through in good form instead of what most needs to be done.