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Page 16
Many theories about family desertion have suffered a change in recent
years. One of these relates to the "collusive desertion." Social workers
in training used formerly to be taught that the first place to look for
the deserter was around the corner, where he could slip back into the
house and partake of charitable bounty or, at the very least, keep close
watch of his family and return if any serious danger threatened them.
Although the collusive desertion seems to have been a frequent happening
in the past, there is almost unanimous testimony from case workers at
the present time that it is not common. "I don't come across an instance
once a year," said one case worker.
Another, after searching her memory, recalled what seemed to her one
instance of real collusion. A woman, pregnant and seeming to be in
great destitution, applied to a family social work society in a
small city for help. Careful search did not discover the man's
whereabouts--he seemed to have disappeared without leaving a trace,
and his wife professed ignorance. Some two weeks after this the
visitor, calling late, met a man on the stairs who proved to be the
missing husband. Times were hard and he was out of a job, so he had
taken to the attic of their house, and had kept so strictly
_incommunicado_ that not only the society but the neighbors had been
deceived.
Out of twenty or more case workers in different cities whose experience
was sought on this point, nearly all felt that the warnings against
possible collusion which used to be given to young workers no longer
needed to be emphasized. Testimony in the other direction is, however,
advanced by the National Desertion Bureau, which found that about 10 per
cent of the applications made in 1910 to the United Hebrew Charities of
New York for relief because of desertion were collusive.
It should be said, however, that one form of collusion is common to the
experience of case workers--that of the wife who knows where her
husband is, or has a very good idea, but does not want him to return
and so keeps her knowledge to herself. "In two of our regular allowance
families," writes the case supervisor of a family agency, "we
discovered--one quite incidentally, one after the allowance had been
discontinued for other reasons--that the wife had had reports regarding
the man which we might have followed up had we known of them earlier. It
could hardly be called collusion--it was mere indifference." A probation
officer writes:
"At the present time we have under investigation a family where the
man has been away from home for two years and his whereabouts during
the last year have been known to his wife. He has been living in a
suburb of the city and working steadily during that time. The woman
has received adequate aid from public and private organizations. She
has been content to accept that rather than notify the authorities
and have her husband required to meet the responsibility. The man on
his part was aware that his family was being supported, and while
there was no agreement between the parties regarding it,
nevertheless the arrangement apparently met with mutual approval."
To guard against this and similar omissions on the woman's part, more
than one agency which deals with family desertion requires the deserted
wife to sign an affidavit that she has given all the information she
possesses.
Although in practice the possibility of a collusive desertion is not the
first and most important thing to keep in mind, it is frequent enough
not to be entirely forgotten. And for yet other reasons it is well to
keep a watchful eye upon the neighborhood in which the family is living
for reports about the man. Often obscure impulses seem to bring him
back; jealousy of the wife or a desire to show himself in a spirit of
bravado, or even sometimes a fugitive affection for the children he has
abandoned may cause him to appear in the neighborhood. "The deserter,
like the murderer, harks back to the scene of his misdeeds" was the
generalization of one district secretary.
Even when he does not appear in the flesh the deserter may seek news of
his family. "One deserter was found through the Attendance Department
[of the public school system] to which he wrote after a three years'
absence asking the address of one of the children of whom he was
especially fond."
There is little in the literature of the subject covering methods of
discovering deserters, nor do case workers generally appear to have
developed a special technique. The decided reaction against detective
methods which has been apparent in the profession during later years may
help to explain this fact. Most social workers feel a subconscious sense
of injustice in having to do this work at all, since it is properly a
function of the police. Prosecutors and police officials generally take
very little interest in following up deserters, and have little idea of
giving any treatment to the deserter who has been found other than
arraignment and conviction. It is difficult for the probation officer or
the family case worker to hold up the machinery of the law, once it has
been started, and to do this long enough to find out whether some other
form of treatment best suits the case. For these reasons the social
worker usually prefers to do or else is forced to do the work of the
detective in desertion cases up to the point where arrest is in his
judgment necessary.
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