modifications perhaps, they would lead to a more peaceful and satisfactory condition in the anthracite coal regions. They may not lead, even if adopted fully, to perfect peace, nor to the millennium; but I believe they will help to allay irritation and to reach the day when the anthracite coal region shall be governed systematically, and in accordance with greater justice and higher moral principles than now generally prevail on either side."

These suggestions were not accepted, either in whole or in part, by either party. The report was followed in time by that long, bitter, and dramatic strike which the President finally terminated by the appointment of the Arbitration Tribunal, to whose findings he compelled both parties to agree in advance to abide. Colonel Wright was the recorder of that tribunal, and its guiding spirit throughout its long, epoch-making proceedings.

Thus we realize how important a chapter President Wright's life constitutes in the history of the labor movement in America "quorum pars magna fui." No other man, all things considered, has played so large a part in the remarkable modification of the legal, the political, the social, and the educational status of the workingman that marks the last half-century.

During all these years of official activity President Wright displayed an extraordinary literary industry and a versatility equally remarkable. One of his great tasks was the completion of the Eleventh Census after Superintendent Porter's resignation, a task for which he was again selected by President Cleveland, because no other available man was so conspicuously fitted to wind up the work.

He had been thoroughly trained in the general principles. governing the practical application of the statistical method in the development of his bureau work. He had inaugurated many new statistical presentations of the human problems in the most difficult field of statistics. There is no more troublesome problem, for instance, than the statistical study of wages and the proper differentiation between wages and earnings. We are to-day still very far from the satisfactory treatment

of this complex problem. President Wright frankly admitted that his handling of this and of some other statistical problems was crude and tentative. But he had one characteristic as a statistician by which his successors in this field must judge him, and out of which grew his chief service to the science of statistics. It may best be stated in his own language:

"If the statistical investigator is really scientific in his methods of study, he cares not so much to be pleased by what the results may bring out as to feel assured that the showing is accurate; he is ready at all times to recast his opinions, to modify his reasoning, and even to turn his mind into new channels of thought, whenever the statistical results require that such changes shall be made; his face is always turned to the light."*

With this intense devotion to the truth, at the sacrifice of all personal opinions, President Wright cherished profound contempt for the statisticians-so called, and, alas! too plentifulwho ingeniously and ingenuously twist and distort statistics to give color or credence to some preconceived conception or prejudice on the subject under statistical treatment. It is a simple matter, as President Wright often pointed out in his lectures, by some deft construction of statistical tables, unsuspected by all but the trained expert, to convey totally false impressions regarding the real facts under consideration. The statistical fallacy thus championed is the more dangerous, because of its plausibility, when apparently fortified by official figures, which are supposed never to lie, and yet can be made to lie atrociously. The statistical mountebank was the scorn and horror of Colonel Wright. It is the presence of this statistical mountebank everywhere-in the newspaper, on the rostrum, in official reports-which has hampered and limited the science of statistics, as the one effective instrument by which to measure the volume and the trend of the great forces always at work in the evolution of human society.

President Wright was an attractive personality on the lecture platform, and his services were always at the disposal of a good cause in any part of the country. His repertoire was full

*Outline of Practical Sociology.

to overflowing. He was most effective in interesting the public in the topics which occupied his own thoughts,-topics too commonly regarded as tedious. His way of presenting them appealed to the popular audience by its appeal to the human element. But he was always serious and always scholarly. He was for years a lecturer in the economics department of the Catholic University at Washington, and in the George Washington University; and he delivered many courses of lectures before the Lowell Institute and most of our universities and colleges.

He was a tireless contributor to magazine literature. His essays on social and industrial topics constantly appeared in our best periodicals. He was the author of two notable books, "The Industrial Evolution of the United States" and "An Outline of Practical Sociology," both of which have passed through many editions and have done great service as textbooks in our educational institutions. To convey a definite impression of his intellectual activity, I have attempted a bibliography of his writings-ephemeral, official, and otherwise -which I shall attach to this address.* It embraces no less than 350 titles.

I would not convey the impression that this formidable title list reflects the individuality of Colonel Wright alone. He would have been the first to disclaim such an inference. He possessed in marked degree the power to train co-operative thinkers and to direct their work in the channels of his own thought. His bureau at Washington has been a university for the education of experts in statistics, in sociology, in economics, and in industrial studies. From no other office has graduated so large a group of trained men who are making their mark to-day in the government service, in our educational institutions, and in social and civic organizations.

I must not omit allusion to the great work he planned and to the supervision of which he devoted the best energies of his later years, "The Economic History of the United States,"

* Owing to lack of space this bibliography will be published in the September number of these publications.-[ED.]

financed by the Carnegie Institution at Washington, of whose trustees and executive committee he was an active member from its foundation. Surrounding himself with a corps of the first specialists in each field of economic research, some fifteen in number, he blocked out a work which, in scope, in thoroughness of research, and in significance of results, is without a prototype in the economic field, which will stand for all time as the standard study of the origins, the development, and the influence of the civic institutions of the nation which are profoundly modifying the civilization of the globe. He hoped to live to see its completion. It will become his monument.

But the magnitude of this task weighed upon him; and he had overestimated and overtaxed his strength for years. It can truly be said of him that he literally worked himself to death.

As he neared the completion of forty years of official service, under changed administrative conditions in Washington, which were naturally irksome after his long years as the head of an independent department, President Wright was approached by the late Senator George F. Hoar with the suggestion that he accept the presidency of the new Clark College in Worcester, recently endowed by the founder of Clark University, but occupying an independent relation to that institution. President Wright was deeply touched by the suggestion. It came at a most opportune time. Though he maintained his wonderful serenity undiminished, he felt tired after his long service, and he realized that his physical strength was waning. He was impressed that he, unblessed by college education, should be deemed most worthy to organize a new college, designed to teach the old institutions some new and better methods of education. He gratefully accepted the trust, and he put Clark College on its feet, bringing into its organization and methods certain new and practical ideas, destined to work something of a revolution in our American colleges. From the day that Clark College opened its doors, with President Wright as its head, it was a success; and it will continue to grow and to thrive because it will cling to his ideals.

I have thus hurriedly sketched this unique and inspiring career, and indicated some of its multiform activities and something of the character and personality, something of the spirit, the methods, and the ideals which marked it and made it a thing apart.

I have left for the last a reference to the real secret of the man whose memory we so profoundly revere. We must couple with this picture of the man a brief study of his philosophy of life, if we are to fully understand him.

At the foundation of this philosophy was the instinctive sense of justice. In working out a theory of life based upon the sense of justice, President Wright troubled himself very little with the abstractions of political economy. He is often spoken of as an economist: it is doubtful if the economists, profoundly as they respect him, will accord him a high place in their synagogue. He took little interest in the theories of capital, of exchange, of money and its value, of the production and distribution of wealth, of the dynamics of the science,of any of the controverted topics which have filled so many dreary libraries and led to so many endless controversies among the economists since the attempt to formulate such a science first began. Throughout the great volume of his writings and reports these topics are avoided,-ignored. An entirely different point of view everywhere pervades and illumines them.

We may call it the ethical point of view. Birks has defined ethics as the science of ideal humanity; and that definition fits Mr. Wright's conception of the science it was his life-work to expound. He dealt with the nature and grounds of moral obligation and the rules which ought to determine conduct in accordance with this obligation. This is the spirit which always underlies his analysis of statistics and his interpretation of a given statement of facts.

"The real labor question," he wrote in "Sociology," "is the struggle of humanity for a higher standard"; and, again, “It is a conflict which cannot be avoided, and which has existed since the beginning of man. This conflict is the labor ques