Appletons' Popular Science Monthly, August 1899: Volume LVVarious
Science
Appletons' Popular Science Monthly, August 1899: Volume LV
Various
Science -- Periodicals; Technology -- Periodicals
Holmes; Illiteracy and Educational Statistics, by Davis
R. Dewey; Statistics of Occupation, by Richard Mayo-Smith; Various
Aspects of the Vital and Social Statistics, by Cressy L. Wilbur,
Irving Fisher, Roland P. Falkner, and Samuel M. Lindsay; of
Agriculture and Farms, by N. I. Stone and David Kelley;
Transportation, by Emery R. Johnson and Walter E. Weyl; Manufactures,
by S. N. D. North, William M. Stewart, Worthington C. Ford, and
Charles J. Bullock; Wealth, Debt, and Taxation, by Carl C. Plehn;
Municipal Finance, by Henry B. Gardner; and the Scope and Method of
the Twelfth Census, by William C. Hunt. A number of general
conclusions are pointed out by the committee as deducible from the
papers contributed by these writers. The criticism throughout touches
not so much the accuracy of the census as the treatment of the data
and the lack of continuity from census to census--both defects
believed to be largely due to the insufficient time allowed by law for
preparing plans and schedules. The work of the census is believed to
be seriously impeded by the number and variety of the investigations
ordered, in consequence of which fundamental inquiries can not receive
attention. A number of subordinate inquiries might advantageously be
transferred to established bureaus or departments under whose scope
they would properly fall, and some of which already publish annual
volumes of kindred statistics. Among classes of defects or weaknesses
in method pointed out in the criticisms are a lack of comparability
in data from census to census, lack of co-ordination, certain
specified faults in method, and faults in the textual analysis of the
figures. A summary of the answers received to the circular letter of
questions is appended, particularly of the answers to the request to
suggest what special information might be furnished by the twelfth
census which is not in the eleventh. Many of the writers point to the
desirability of a permanent census bureau. The committee has a right
to congratulate itself, as it does, "upon this noteworthy collection
of papers--the result of the scientific zeal and effort of so many
men."
[Footnote 59: The Federal Census. Critical Essays by Members of
the American Economic Association, collected and edited by a
Special Committee. Published for the American Economic
Association by the Macmillan Company, New York. Pp. 516. Price,
$1; cloth, $2.50.]
GENERAL NOTICES.
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