Two years after the death of E.E. Southard, one of his co-workers, Mary Jarrett, published one of the volumes on social work which Southard had proposed before his death. The Kingdom of Evils was meant to be a kind of instructional chart of what Southard — and presumably Jarrett – felt were the chief problems likely to confront the social worker.
Jarrett and Southard divided the social problems they saw into various spheres, including the legal and educational realms. Kingdom was similarly divided into combinations of the types of evil: six complex cases, triadic combinations of evil, two binary combinations of evil and so forth. The bulk of the book is case studies illustrating the various permutations and combinations of the social problems between the public, social, and individual levels.
The case studies make for fascinating reading. From today’s perspective, many of the “problems” Southard and Jarrett identified are hardly problems at all, such as “acting out” in a teenager or depression in an older man who has lost his long-time job.
Flick through the pages below or follow this link to read E.E. Southard and Mary Jarrett’s The Kingdom of Evils (1922).