Broken Homes: A Study of Family Desertion and its Social TreatmentColcord, Joanna C. (Joanna Carver)
General
Broken Homes: A Study of Family Desertion and its Social Treatment
Colcord, Joanna C. (Joanna Carver)
Desertion and non-support
"No, Mrs. Cox, the coal company promised to send for me."
"Well," I said, "I think you've been pretty fair with that company.
You've waited on it for three months now. If I had the offer of
another job I'd feel perfectly free to take it, if I were you."
"Yes," he said, "I think I should."
"All right, I have a job for you," said I. "My husband wants a man
now at his garage, to clean automobiles. The hours are from 6 p.m.
to 6 a.m., and you'll earn $15 a week."
His paper fell from his hands to the floor; his jaw dropped, and he
just looked at me. Then he tried to crawl out of it and began to
make excuses.
"I haven't time to argue with you, Mr. Gage," I said. "I'll keep the
job open till seven o'clock tonight and you can let me know then
whether you'll take it or not."
At seven he came to say he'd take the job.[45]
If in desertion cases the interest centers very vividly about the absent
man, in non-support cases the reverse is likely to be true, because he
is often not very interesting per se, and because, moreover, he is
always on the spot and does not have to be searched for. Familiarity
certainly breeds contempt for the non-supporter. Consequently the social
worker may easily fall into the danger of disregarding the human factors
he presents, and either treating the family as if he did not exist or
expending no further effort on him than to see that he "puts in" six
months of every year in jail if possible (since the law usually secures
to him the privilege of loafing the other six). It is not safe, however,
to regard even the most leisurely of non-supporters as beyond the
possibility of awakening. One district secretary who had thus given a
man up had the experience of seeing him transformed into a steady worker
after a few months of intensive effort by a first-year student in a
school of social science, whose only equipment for the job was
personality and enthusiasm. So remarkable are some of the reclamations
that have been brought about with seemingly hopeless non-supporters that
all possible measures should be tried before giving one of them up.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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