The important moment in social treatment, as probably in any undertaking, is in the initial stages. "The first step costs." This brings us to the enormously important fact that distress outside the relatively small number of larger communities in which there are skilled case-work agencies, either public or private, will probably mean contact either with the poor-law official under the Pauper Act, if it is a question of relief,--or with some official of the county prosecuting machinery or of the inferior courts, if it is a question of discipline. The case of an Italian woman may serve to illustrate the contact with both these groups of officials. Mrs. C. was married in 1902 in a Sicilian village, at about sixteen years of age. In October, 1906, the husband came to the United States. In November, 1907, she and her one surviving baby, a girl of two, followed, going to the mining town in western Pennsylvania where he was working. There they lived until March, 1913, occupying most of the time a house owned by the company for which he worked. About 1913 she moved with her children to a near-by city, where, on June 3, 1914, she was arrested for assault, and the next day for selling liquor without a license and selling liquor to minors. After some delay she pleaded guilty and was sentenced to pay the costs of the prosecution ($76.42), and released on parole. She then seems to have moved to a mining town in Illinois, and there lived with Mr. A. as his wife until March, 1916, when he was murdered. The union paid his funeral expenses of $186.75, and she also, as his widow, received his death benefit of $244.33. Through the summer of 1916 the Supervisor of the Poor gave her $3 every two weeks. On May 20, 1916, she applied for her first citizenship papers, and on September 1st she was awarded an allowance of $7 a month under the Mothers' Aid law, this being granted her under her maiden name, as mother of a child born in Illinois in 1915. She was helped not only by the public relief agencies, but by the priest ($11); and the Queen's Daughters, a church society of ladies, gave her the fare to Chicago, where the Italian consul gave her money to go home again. The undertaker and other kind persons gave her and the children aid. By December the union and the county agent both thought it would be well to shift the burden of her support, and gave her the fare back to Chicago. By the time she reached Chicago she was a very skillful and resourceful beggar. In Chicago she was a "nonresident," ineligible for a year to receive public relief under the Pauper Act and for three years under the Mothers' Aid law; and so she obtained from a Protestant church, from the Charities, and from an Italian Ladies' Aid Society relief of various kinds and in various amounts.