A Study of Family Conditions Among FERA People in Logan, Utah, 1934

This study was undertaken at the request of the Cache County Council of Child Health and Protection, who in cooperation with the Juvenile Court of District No. 1 beginning with 1933 planned specific undertakings to minimize delinquency. Life is a ceaseless struggle for existence. It enters every aspect of life and culture and in the long run the more fit tend toward the high places and the less fit are sifted and shaken to the low places. This struggle goes on in our physical environment, the less able take poor homes and the poor sections to live. In employment the less able take the brunt and often shift from one unskilled job to another. In intellectual attainments the less fit cannot compete and drop out of the race early. In the field of nervous stability and physical health the less able die young or carry chronic difficulties with them through life. They are the occupants of our sanitariums and mental hospitals. This struggle brings out the winner and the superior with honors and crushes the loser with discouragements. Is the difference all within man or could each one succeed if the right note were sounded to which he could respond? Does our society make the struggle too severe for some to surmount? To what extent on the other hand, does faulty economic and social organization bring into the ranks of the needy, physically and mentally fit people? What types of maladjustments are most pronounced among the underprivileged groups? An important part of the study has been concerned with the health situation. To find out the nature and extent of the health difficulties experts generously and without pay made physical examinations of thirty-five families. These families came to the FERA health center and received a complete medical examination. Dr. J. O. Heyward and Dentist Clark Haskins, with Miss Emma Willmore and Miss Anna Malmberg, FERA nurses assisting, spent five full evenings giving these examinations to 173 people. This service represents a very real contribution to the effort to clarify conditions in Logan among the dependent classes. The willingness of the three professions involved to render unpaid service of no small extent on a social problem of significance is once more in evidence

Bulletin No. 321 - Utah Housing in Its Group and Community Aspects

The method employed in this study is to select a comparatively important segment of living--housing--for careful appraisement with the purpose of comparing different groups and localities with respect to it. Comparisons are made (1) between Utah and other states, (2) between counties of Utah, and (3) between four Utah communities. The data include the house, home conveniences, the automobile, the streets ad joining the house, newspapers, magazines, books, and connection with water, sewer, power and telephone lines. The segment is thus not small. The groups are segregated by the vocation, farm and nonfarm, from which the living is made. The communities consist of four northern Utah villages each of a different type. The purpose of the inquiry is to find out how successful the different vocational groups living in different types of. communities have been over the years in providing satisfactory homes for their families. This study, therefore, constitutes an appraisement of housing conditions that exist among the chief rural farm and nonfarm groups in the communities studied