(3) His work record was poor; employers said he was irregular and unreliable. (4) Visitor felt he had never earned as much as he was easily capable of earning and was rather indifferent to the needs of his family. (5) The woman was willing to work--had applied for day nursery care, but visitor had persuaded the nursery not to accept the children. After the visitor had stated the first two of the above items she stopped, and did not add the more significant three that followed until reminded that many workmen who drank intermittently were at that time thinking enviously of munition factory wages; and that these hardly constituted danger signals. The cumulative effect of all five items cannot, however, be denied. Another statement, similarly obtained, concerns a colored couple, married about two years and with two children, the youngest less than a month old. Man had been out of work and family had gone to live with relatives. (1) Man earns $20 a week but refuses to start housekeeping again, although they are seriously overcrowded--seven adults and five children in five rooms. (2) Woman says he makes her sleep on chairs so that he can get better rest. (3) He is seeing a good deal of another woman, a friend of the wife (wife's statement only). (4) Woman had applied for nursery care for both children so that she might go to work. (5) It transpires that she lived with him before marriage, and that the first child was a month old when the marriage took place. He "holds it over her." (6) Man had been married before and divorced. (7) The family's habits of recreation are changed; the man no longer "takes her out." Such attempts to foretell the future are not infallible, of course; but a listing process is a valuable aid to diagnosis, and, by its help, a situation may be uncovered which tends toward complete family breakdown. This may be taken in time and prevented; or, if separation is inevitable it can be prepared for in advance, the necessary legal arrangements can be made to protect the family, and the anxiety, suspense, and useless effort avoided which a sudden and downright abandonment would cause. But the trouble is that the problem seldom comes to the case worker until matters have progressed farther than this. The real question is--not how to recognize pre-desertion symptoms, but how to get hold of families when these symptoms are in the incipient stage.