Our Trade-Unions Help European WorkersSource: Social Service Review, Vol. 23, No. 2 (Jun., 1949), p. 236Published by: The University of Chicago PressStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/30018273 .

Accessed: 25/06/2014 09:31

Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at .http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp

.JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range ofcontent in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new formsof scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact support@jstor.org.

.

The University of Chicago Press is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to SocialService Review.

http://www.jstor.org

This content downloaded from 195.34.79.54 on Wed, 25 Jun 2014 09:31:58 AMAll use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

236 NOTES AND COMMENT

OUR TRADE-UNIONS HELP EUROPEAN WORKERS

Two examples have shown what our unions can do to help the workers in

Europe. First, the Amalgamated Clothing Workers of America have demonstrated what a democratic American trade-union can do in helping the workers across the seas. In response to appeals from Italy to "do something" about the acute unemploy- ment situation among Italian clothing workers and about the clothing shortage as well, the A.C.W.A. donated a complete mass-production clothing factory to the clothing workers of Italy. This factory, funds for which were raised voluntarily among Amalgamated members of Italian descent, employs several hundred workers and is the first of a series of model co-opera- tive factories to be established under a 1500,000 program financed by union mem- bers in the United States.

A second example comes from the Inter- national Ladies' Garment Workers' Union, who have helped the workers in France and Italy. Last summer two significant cere- monies took place: the dedication at Mon- treuil, France, of the O.R.T. building (World Organization for Rehabilitation through Training), which was set up as a first-class trade school; and the opening at Palermo, Italy, of the Franklin Delano Roosevelt In- stitute Professionale, which was set up as a school of marine trades for orphans of Ital- ian workers who died in the last war. Both these schools were made possible by funds contributed by members of the Internation- al Ladies' Garment Workers' Union. In the O.R.T. school at Montreuil, five hundred boys and girls, men and women, are now be- ing trained or retrained to take their places in the rehabilitation and reconstruction of Europe. United States Ambassador Jeffer- son Caffery, speaking at the ceremony, said that "its significance lies in the fact that it is a gift of American labor to the working people of Europe. Both the donor and the recipient are united by one common cause, the cause of promoting a higher standard of living, progressive conditions of work, which

are the absolute prerequisite for true human dignity."

PREVENTING FRAUDS ON THE MENTALLY ILL

The Bureau of Mental Hygiene of the Attorney-General's office of the state of

New York is reported to have done some use- ful work in preventing frauds on the mentally ill. With a competent staff, the Bureau acts as legal counsel for the one hundred thou- sand inmates of the twenty-eight mental in- stitutions. This Bureau in less than a year apparently saved Si,500,000 for mental pa- tients in the New York State hospitals by getting the facts regarding frauds on their estates and preventing excessive expendi- tures by guardians.

Information concerning fraud cases is said to come to the Bureau from anonymous letters, from former neighbors of patients, and from nurses and attendants "who some- times learn from inmates of planned chi- canery on the part of unscrupulous friends or relatives." A report in the New York Times contains the following statement:

Illegal practices uncovered by the bureau's staff of lawyers usually involve the embezzle- ment of a patient's insurance funds and bank accounts, theft of his personal property out- side the institution and forgery of his real estate deeds and mortgages.

"The state may admit other than poor per- sons to its mental hospitals," Isadore Siegel, Assistant Attorney General and head of the bu- reau, remarked in explaining that the average estate of a patient was worth |i,ooo to 150,000. A woman committed to a state hospital last month, he added, owns property valued at |i 20,000.

"Many persons of means come to our institu- tions," he declared, "because their relatives have faith in the type of service rendered by the state. In spite of the crowded conditions, our facilities for treatment are greater than those of private hospitals."

Each year, 200 criminal investigations of forgery and embezzlement cases are undertaken by the bureau. A recent case, tracked down after weeks of inquiry, involved a patient's Sio,ooo property on Long Island, which was deeded to a fictitious woman by a man who eventually ex-

This content downloaded from 195.34.79.54 on Wed, 25 Jun 2014 09:31:58 AMAll use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions