692 SOCIAL SCIENCE 



the root of the problem. He stood almost alone in his insistent 

 and persistent self-exaction to ascertain accurately the facts of the 

 actual situation. The opening years of the twentieth century have 

 registered no greater achievement than the completion of Mr. 

 Charles Booth's Life and Labor in London at the close of the 

 nineteenth. The worth of this work, not only to London, but to all 

 the cities of the world, can scarcely be overestimated. 1 It supplies 

 a practical classification and method which by a consensus of opin- 

 ion are already widely recognized and used. Its conclusions are 

 models of tested accuracy, cautious conservatism, and the fearless 

 facing of ascertained facts. Its permanent reference value is assured 

 by well-nigh perfect tabulations, abstract of contents, and full 

 indices. Already the type of scientific investigation set by this 

 colossal work of London's great shipper is reproducing itself in books 

 of other thoroughly original investigators which deserve to be classed 

 with it. It is a pleasure thus to rate Mr. B. Seebohm Rowntree's 

 Poverty: a Study of Town Life in York ; the report on the housing 

 conditions of Manchester by Mr. T. M. Marr ; and the London Daily 

 News's investigation of Religious Life in London, edited by Mr. 

 R. Mudie-Smith. 



The endowment and equipment of the " Musee Sociale," in Paris 

 furnishes and suggests a provision for perpetuating such efforts, 

 preserving their data, and publishing their results, which is sure to 

 create similar centres for archive and research with far too little 

 resource, and, therefore, on a less exhaustive scale, the Institute 

 of Social Service in New York is gathering a valuable collection of 

 clippings, pamphlets, photographs, official reports, and books 

 bearing particularly upon the welfare work of industrial establish- 

 ments and municipal departments. The " Museum of Security " in 

 Amsterdam by its permanent exhibition of appliances for protecting 

 and saving life has established a centre of unique interest and far- 

 reaching practical value. Great libraries, notably the Crerar 

 Library in Chicago, have begun to specialize in these departments 

 on a scale which promises to locate at several great centres not only 

 exhaustive collections of their literature but also original data, which 

 will open new sources to research. 



The rise of university departments of sociology and social eco- 

 nomics, so fully reported in the proceedings of the International Con- 

 ference of Charities and Correction and Philanthropy held at Chicago 

 in connection with the Columbian Exposition in 1893, has been fol- 

 lowed by a steady and apparently permanent development, almost 

 exclusively confined, however, to American institutions. The 



1 Its collaboration of the hitherto incoordinate facts of official inquiry, 

 departmental reports, and government census, is even more valuable, in setting 

 a standard of scientific exaction and method, than in its great direct results. 



