advance to be impracticable; third, officers are changed too often to discover needs and devise remedies or to develop a continuous policy. And, lastly, it will always be difficult to get the public to use even the clearest and most carefully prepared information. For obvious psychological reasons the question, "Has any money been stolen?" will always be more vitally interesting than "Are we getting our money's worth?" After all "goodness" and "badness"-the absolute-is what takes the public eye, not the how much or how many. Nevertheless, the statistical method is the necessary machinery of the future. Like that other method of dealing with matters in gross, the factory system,—it will never supersede the method of dealing at first hand with the concrete things, and may often follow very clumsily after; but it is necessary to supply the clamoring need of the world, which can no longer be supplied by individual effort.

KATE HOLLADAY CLAGHORN.

Problems of social research require for their practical solution an adequate and conclusive basis of data free from even the suspicion of bias in their collection or serious error in their analysis. The ever-increasing complexity of social relations demands a clear presentation of social facts and forces, which, unfortunately, is only too often wanting as an underlying basis for plans and purposes of social reform. The collection of social statistics is almost invariably a most difficult and complex task, involving what may often amount to impertinence in a scientific inquiry into the actual facts of domestic life and the more or less successful individual adaptation to conditions as they are. This, for illustration, is best made evident in the numerous efforts to collect data as to household expenditures among wage-earners and others, but with patience and skill some, at least, of these investigations have produced conclusive and very valuable results. The value of investigation into social conditions is increased in proportion as the field is limited and as the investigator brings personal qualifications of an exceptional character to bear upon the collection of the data required. Those who are most familiar with the life and labor of the wage-earner, the poor and the pauper class, are, by their knowledge and experience, the best qualified to secure the original data upon many of the most important questions

1908.

*Read before the American Statistical Association, Yale Club, New York, April 24,

which demand solution. Unfortunately, it is difficult to secure qualified investigators, whose judgment has not become impaired by repeated impressions of social misery resulting from circumstances or conditions which may have no connection whatever with the problems under consideration. The object in view being strictly a scientific one, every effort should be made to eliminate sentimental bias or prejudice strongly inclined towards unwarranted conclusions or an unwarranted interpretation of the facts collected. Nowhere is the risk of amateur work greater than in the field of social statistics and social research, and, per contra, nowhere is the necessity of exceptional ability and discriminating judgment greater than in this. In economic statistics, such as prices and wages, cost of production and hours of labor, errors of judgment are less likely to occur, in that the degree of variety in the units to be considered is much less. Such data also are much less elusive in character, and not so complex in their relation to other and still more involved problems.

In its finality social research, as the term is generally understood, may be said to have for its object the solution of the problem of poverty, with all its resulting problems. Such social investigations, therefore, are largely concerned with an inquiry into the actual circumstances of life on the part of the poor and the relation of their condition to the wealth and circumstances of the materially more fortunate, or the well-to-do and the rich. The question which is being asked with everincreasing frequency is whether, under modern conditions, it is necessary that there should be as large a proportion of the poor and pauper class as are actually met with in civilized countries. Social inquiries are being directed to ascertain whether poverty, pauperism, ignorance, and crime are not more the result of an accidental miscarriage of human effort than of inherent limitations of human society as it is organized. Those who have felt most strongly upon the subject of social misery have elaborated in detail plans of radical social reform, but the many ideal communities which have been established have all been more or less complete failures. There are those who deny that

social progress is actually being made and who, in the words of Henry George, believe that "the poor are growing poorer, and the rich are growing richer." Theories are being spread broadcast over the earth as to the ever-increasing duties of the rich, the well-to-do, and even the prosperous towards those who are living under less fortunate material circumstances and conditions. In the abstract it is a question of social justice of one group of human beings towards the other, and it must be admitted that within the last generation, at least, a sense of social responsibility has been developed which was unknown in earlier and even comparatively recent times. The evidence is overwhelming that much of what goes under the term of social legislation has been productive of decidedly beneficial results, having improved the conditions of life generally and eliminated, among others, the needless evil of child labor and of degrading work on the part of women formerly employed in many industries unsuitable to the sex and certain to produce physical and moral deterioration. Much good has also been accomplished by social legislation relating to factory inspection, hours of labor, employers' liability, etc., all of which warrants the conclusion that even greater results may be attained by still more effective legislation or associated effort for the benefit of the mass of mankind not in a position to help itself.

As an aid toward the solution of these problems, social statistics are indispensable, and it may be said without fear of contradiction that much of the miscarriage of effort in social legislation has been the result of misleading statistics and even more of misleading analysis, little short of amateur guesswork. By slow degrees the inadequacy of the present basis of fact along certain lines of social legislation has been recognized, and efforts are being made in every direction to make such investigations more qualified, trustworthy, and practically useful. The time has passed when a plain statement of absolute fact relating to social conditions possible of amelioration or change could go unchallenged or leave a problem unsolved, merely as a matter of complacency, indifference, or criminal neglect. The present age demands the truth, and, when the truth has

been secured, it is willing to take action and institute reforms at whatever cost, provided the result is for the distinct and unquestionable benefit of the mass of mankind.

There is an essential difference which marks and limits the field of social statistics, and that is that the most important data have to be secured by private enterprise for a large variety of purposes, while economic statistics are properly a matter of government concern. There is a natural and proper limit upon government inquiries into the facts of every-day life and labor, as made evident by the great difficulty of the Census Office to secure data as to sickness and infirmity among different classes, while still more delicate investigations, such as, for illustration, the sanitary condition of homes, the physical condition of children, the degree of frequency of periodical savings, and the expenditures for drink, are evidence that private enterprise can do the most efficient work in this field of scientific research. But another difficulty in such investigations is that the trained investigator is rare, and it is only too often an amateur who takes up such work as a sort of plaything for an idle hour. Yet of all the delicate tasks to which the human mind may apply itself the collection of social facts and the study of collective social phenomena are the most difficult, but at the same time the most valuable.

Social research, in a limited sense, has for its chief concern a qualified inquiry into the underlying causes of poverty and economic dependence on the part of a disproportionately large number of wage-earners and others constituting the mass of mankind in all civilized countries. Since the beginning of time the weak and dependent have been compelled to rely upon the strong and more fortunate, and to the end of time, in the nature of things, this must needs be so. But in a free democracy it is a political as well as a social duty, by majority rule, to bring about, through an intelligent co-operation in State and associated effort, a condition of things most favorable to the highest development of social units and efficiency in citizenship and social relations. Blind faith is often placed in law and legislation to bring about reforms which, in too many cases, can only