With modern equipment, steam heat, electric utensils, and new and sanitary apartments, it is not a difficult task to keep the quarters fresh and clean, but in rickety, shadowy apartment buildings or houses where the floors are worn and rough, with no hot-water service, and too often without even gas for lighting, we can at once recognize the trials and handicaps which confront the housewife in the poorer districts.[74] The visiting housekeepers interviewed saw many discouraging features of their work. All stated that improvement came very slowly. One worker stated that she had worked three years in her district and she had some families under care all the time, but that she was just beginning to see the results of her efforts. Others pointed out that their constant supervision was essential, that as soon as they relaxed their efforts at all the families dropped back to their old habits. There was, however, general agreement that in time, by much expenditure of effort, constant visiting, teaching, and exhorting, they did help some families to a better standard of living. It was impossible to get an estimate from most of them as to how many families they thought they had helped, but the worker in one district said that for the three years it would not be more than five or six. Two workers who estimated the number of families with which they could work at one time, put the number at between twenty and twenty-five, and both thought that they could do much better with twenty than with twenty-five. They did not know with how many families they were working at present, but thought they were not trying to do intensive work with many more than that number. The explanation of failure may be that not enough care was taken to make the Old-World habits of cooking and diet the starting point of instruction in the use of American foods, utensils, and diets. Such procedure would be based on sound pedagogy in starting from the known and familiar and leading to the new and unaccustomed. However, it may be true that even after sound methods have been given a thorough trial, arduous effort still will fail to bring desired results. Case-work agencies, however efficient, may not be fitted to raise the standards of living in the homes of immigrant dependent families. It may be taken care of by other community forces and only be effected in the way that the independent family's standards are changed and improved. The task for the case worker is to help the family make the natural connections with their neighborhood and community, which are the most effective means for creating and sustaining social standards.