a maximum fine of $1,000. For three successive sessions, bills providing for the payment of fees from the county funds to persons required to keep registers were introduced in the legislature, but for some reason none of these became law. As an immediate outcome of this legislation the number of local boards of health and health officers rose to over one hundred in 1890, and it appeared that substantial progress was being made toward the development of a fairly adequate registration of deaths. But political changes in 1891 brought about changes in the personnel of the State Board of Health. New functions, moreover, had been developed for that body, so that it seems to have battled less strenuously than in earlier years for the cause of vital statistics. At least the enforcement of the law seems to have been left entirely in the hands of local authorities. The operation of the new statutes, however, enabled the board in 1892 to base its "annual tables of deaths," for the first time, on the reports received from the county recorders. The law requiring the registration of births and marriages was virtually inoperative. Mortality returns were received from only about half of the counties in the State, and their publication was wisely discontinued in 1896.* For over thirty years, then, the California registration system was thoroughly inadequate in principle and in operation. The introduction of new and better laws cannot be credited to any independent development of interest and knowledge within the State: it is to be attributed rather to the well-directed and wellorganized efforts of the Division of Vital Statistics of the Bureau of the Census to extend the registration area. California now has a "standard" law † similar in most respects to laws enacted in a number of other States in recent years. "Standard certificates" of deaths (obtained under the burial permit system) are transmitted to the State Registrar through the local registrars of deaths (County Recorders, City Clerks, and Health Officers). Certificates of births and marriages are transmitted *Save for a perfunctory résumé for the period 1899-1904 in the Eighteenth Biennial Report, p. 24. † Statutes of 1905, Chs. 110, 119, 346; Statutes of 1907, Ch. 236. through the County Recorders and the Health Officers of cities organized under "freeholders' charters." Small fees are paid to the local registrars from the public funds.* In the opinion of the State Statistician the reports of deaths and marriages obtained under the new law are fairly complete; but this cannot be said of the registration of births. The Secretary of the State Board of Health is ex officio State Registrar, but the law provides for a "Statistician," who has actual charge of the compilation and tabulation of the returns. This office was filled by the appointment of Mr. George D. Leslie, a trained and thoroughly competent statistician. The new California reports do more than present useful information: they present it in a useful and illuminating way. In this respect they must be ranked among the very best State reports. The tables are accompanied by an adequate explanatory text, in which the more elementary showings of the tables and the inferences that may be made from them are stated with all needed caution. Special emphasis is wisely placed on comparisons and rankings of different localities and regions. But the real test of reports such as these is, after all, the selection and form of the tables presented. In general, although lack of a sufficient clerical staff enforced rigid economy in this regard, care has been taken to present what most users of such statistics will regard as the more important classifications. The use of tables for the "main and minor geographic divisions" of the State is especially commendable in the case of a State covering so large an area and containing so many distinct physiographic regions as California. It is to be hoped that in future reports the number of general tables can be increased. Marriages ought to be classified by the age of the contracting parties. Births ought to be classified according to the ages of the parents, the duration of marriages, and the number of children previously born of the same mother. This information * In addition to the officials named, sub-registrars of deaths may be appointed by the County Recorder to receive certificates and issue permits at points remote from the county seat. is especially desirable in view of the fact that the birth rate is probably lower in California than in any other State.* In estimating the value of the tabulations of death statistics printed in a State report, it should be remembered that the State report is, or ought to be, part of a national system, including municipal, State, and federal reports. Co-operation between these different branches of our statistical service should not stop with the use of a uniform classification of causes of death. There would be a gain all around if the State reports should show the deaths from each important cause and each class of causes in each "region," county, and city in the respective States, and if the federal reports should develop much farther than at present the classification of deaths by causes and groups of causes in connection with the fundamental facts of sex, age, race, marital condition, rural or urban residence, and occupation. Of course there cannot be an absolute line of division between the work of the two jurisdictions. State registrars should give due attention to the effect of racial differences, for example, while upon the federal office there devolves the duty of making regional comparisons and studies on a broad scale. But the State registration office finds its primary duty (aside from the legal significance of its records) in its relation to the progress of the State and its subdivisions in matters of public hygiene. If this is true, there is thrown upon the federal bureau, as residual claimant, the special duty of contributing to our knowledge of those fundamental social and economic problems upon which mortality statistics throw light. As things now stand, one must sometimes go to the federal reports to ascertain the mortality from a particular disease in a particular locality, and must seek some of the materials upon which important generalizations may be based in the frequently incongruous tables of different State and municipal reports, or, more often, do without them altogether. *Cf. Quarterly Publications of the American Statistical Association, vol. ix, p. 266. BIBLIOGRAPHY OF THE WRITINGS OF HON. CARROLL D. WRIGHT, 1874-1908. Note. In the following Bibliography are listed all the official publications to which the name of Carroll D. Wright is attached as that of the official in charge at the date of publication. A number of reports are therefore included, of which he was not the actual author. The Battles of Labor. Philadelphia: Jacobs, 1906. Outline of Practical Sociology. With special reference to American conditions. New York: Longmans, Green & Co., 1899. Same, 2d ed., rev., 1899. Same, 3d ed., rev., 1900. Same, 4th ed., 1901. Same, 5th ed., rev., 1904. The Social, Commercial, and Manufacturing Statistics of the City of Boston, from the United States Census Returns for 1880. Boston, 1882. Some Ethical Phases of the Labor Question. Boston: American Unitarian Association, 1902. Second ed., 1903. History and Growth of the United States Census. Prepared in collaboration with William C. Hunt. Washington: Government Printing Office, 1900. Amalgamated Association of Iron and Steel Workers. Quarterly Journal of Economics, July, 1893, vol. 7, pp 400-432. American Labor. One Hundred Years of American Commerce. Chauncey M. Depew. 1895. Edited by The American Patent System. The Independent (New York), April 9, 1891. The American Statistical Association and its Work. Address at annual meeting of the American Statistical Association, Boston, January 17, 1908. Anniversary of the Battle of Opequan. Souvenir of the Shenandoah Valley. Boston, 1883. Are the Rich growing Richer and the Poor Poorer? Atlantic Monthly, August, 1897, vol. 80, pp. 300-309. A Basis for Statistics of Cost of Production. Publications of the American Statistical Association, June, 1891, N. S., vol. 2, No. 14, pp. 257-277. The Census: Its Methods and Aims. International Review, October, 1880, vol. 9, pp. 405–418. Census of Sex, Marriage, and Divorce. Forum, June, 1894, vol. 17, pp. 484496. Cheaper Living and Rise of Wages. Forum, October, 1893, vol. 16, pp. 221-228. The Chicago Strike. Publications of the American Economic Association, vol. 9, Nos. 5-6, pp. 33-47; vol. 10, No. 3, Supplement. 1895. The Collection of Statistics of Labor in the United States. Bulletin l'Institut International de Statistique, t. 2, livre 1, 1887, pp. 368–372. Commercial Ascendancy of the United States. Century Magazine. June, 1900. N. S., vol. 38, pp. 422-427. Compulsory Arbitration an Impossible Remedy. Forum, May, 1893, vol. 3, pp. 323-331. Concentration of Wealth. The Independent (New York), May 1, 1902. Consolidated Labor. North American Review, January, 1902, vol. 174, pp. 30-45. Contributions of the United States Government to Social Science. American Journal of Sociology, November, 1895, vol. 1, pp. 241–275. The Course of Wages in the United States since 1840. Publications of the American Statistical Association. December, 1893, N. S., vol. 3, No. 24, pp. 496-500. The Decline of Strikes. World's Work, July, 1906. Dedication of the Shedd Free Library. Address delivered at Washington, N.H., December 21, 1881. Distinction between Compulsory and Voluntary Arbitration. Address at Congress of Industrial Conciliation and Arbitration, Chicago, November, 1894. Does the Factory increase Immorality? Forum, May, 1892, vol. 13, pp. 344-350. The Economic Development of the District of Columbia. Proceedings of the Washington Academy of Sciences, December 29, 1899. An Economic History of the United States. Publications of the American Economic Association, 3d series, vol. 6, No. 2, 1905. Economic Trend toward State Socialism. 1901. Science and Economics, Science, December, 1904, N. S., vol. 20, pp. 897–909. Embellishment of Washington. The Independent (New York), November 15, 1902. Ethics in the Labor Question. The Catholic University Bulletin, Washington, April, 1895, vol. 1, pp. 277-288. Evolution of Wage Statistics. Quarterly Journal of Economics, January, 1892, vol. 6, pp. 151-189. The Factory System as an Element in Civilization. Journal of Social Science (American Social Science Association), May, 1882, No. 16, pp. 101–126. The Factory as an Element in Social Life. Transactions of the New England Cotton Manufacturers' Association, 1900, No. 69; also The Catholic University Bulletin, January, 1901, vol. 7, pp. 59–66. Families and Dwellings. Popular Science Monthly, August, 1892, vol. 41, pp. 474-482. The Federal Census. Forum, January, 1896, vol. 20, pp. 605–616. Francis Amasa Walker. Publications of the American Statistical Association, June, 1897. N. S., vol. 5, No. 38, pp. 245–275. |