about money affairs.

If such bureaus prove their usefulness there is no reason why they might
not be greatly extended, and why other agencies than banks (insurance
companies, for example) might not be eager thus to serve their
customers. This opens a new field for the home economist, but
incidentally it would appear that, in order to function successfully,
such bureaus would need to have access to the services of agencies
employing highly skilled social case workers. It is conceivable that, if
there are developed in our large cities consultation facilities under
social auspices for people who feel their marriages going wrong, and
want help and advice in righting them, such bureaus as those described
above would be excellent "feeders" for this new form of social service.

Family social agencies have been distinctly backward in some of their
approaches to the fundamental problems of family life. The failure of
most of them, for instance, to study or seek improvements in the laws
governing marriage or in their administration, is difficult of
explanation. Such a consultation service as that suggested does,
however, indicate a new point of departure in dealing with marital
relations which would seem to fall distinctly within the field of the
family case work agencies. It is time that these agencies began to find
means of dealing, not with the dependent family alone but with the
family in danger of becoming dependent--not with the family broken and
estranged only, but with the one whose bonds, even if cracking and
ill-adjusted, still hold.

Concretely, why should not family agencies establish such consultation
bureaus as have just been mentioned, distinct from their regular
activities and hampered by no suggestion in their title of association