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So that the job was to be the investigation of this tide of immigration to find out what it was economically and socially. Secondly, it was to be an investigation of the exploitation, if there was such, of these immigrants. There were just rumors. There weren't any facts. I was to find the facts. If the facts were found, I was to devise ways to prevent it or overcome it, either by social representations or by legislation at the municipal or state level. We were to investigate the transportation facilities. We were to investigate the lodging houses where they stayed and devise some way of correcting anything bad. We were to investigate and determine their standard of living, their wages, the employment offices that got them jobs, what kind of jobs they got, what their economic level was, what their social connections were. That was the principal thing - immigration, exploitation, lodging houses and employment offices.

This was called the Philadelphia Research & Protective Association. Why they had invented that name, I do not know, but it indicated the research that was to be done. After the research had discovered the facts, then some kind of protection was to be devised. Social work was an infant then. People sometimes ask me, “How did you get to the top?”

I say, “I don't know. I began at the top.”

The truth is that social work was so new, so undefined, that almost any energetic young person of good will could