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pitch in and do what seemed best. There weren't any principles. I didn't have any training. I wasn't a graduate of a school of social work. If I were I would have known what ought to be done, how you ought to rehabilitate the family and all that. But I didn't know. I didn't know how to make a social investigation. I had never made a social investigation. I often think that it's funny that I got started that way.

They had very little money so that in addition to keeping the organization together they did hire an office and a stenographer before I came. They had a president, a secretary and a treasurer, but very little money. Therefore, they were very sorry that the only salary they could offer me was fifty dollars a month. I said, “All right.” It seemed all right to me. I lived on that for two years anyhow, and it's just possible that there was a third. This was just before 1908 - about 1907 or '06.

My family were entirely innocent of what went on in social work. They had no contact with it except as they were charitable people, who whenever they heard of any distress were very willing to give money to help - they'd give food, blankets, or whatever you had to give. The church was the usual distributor of alms. They were innocent, as I was. I had read Jacob Riis' How the Other Half Lives one college vacation. I don't think my mother had read it, or my father.