FAMILIES AND DWELLINGS. 



475 



commonly understood that is, consisting of the husband, wife, 

 children, and immediate dependents like relatives and servants 

 but it comprehends all persons living alone where they maintain 

 their own establishments, and all larger aggregations of people 

 subject to one common supervision, such as the inmates of hotels, 

 hospitals, prisons, asylums, etc. So in nearly all Federal and 

 State censuses in this country and all censuses abroad the family 

 has comprehended hotels, boarding-houses, lodging-houses, penal 

 and reformatory institutions, and every aggregation of indi- 

 viduals living under one roof, or has related in some way, either 

 arbitrarily or otherwise, to one head. The inmates of a great 

 hotel, or a great college, or a prison constitute, for census pur- 

 poses, a family. It would seem at first thought that this artificial 

 extension of the composition of the family would have a dis- 

 turbing influence upon the average size of the family, but a 

 careful analysis of results indicates that such influence is very 

 slight. In the census of Massachusetts for 1885, the census family 

 in its average size consisted of 4*58 persons. The Massachusetts 

 State census offered facilities for ascertaining just the effect of 

 considering institutions and other bodies as families upon the 

 normal family. Eliminating all families coming under the arti- 

 ficial designation, it was found that the average size of the actual 

 normal family of Massachusetts in 1885 was 4'45. The influence, 

 therefore, arising from the inclusion of the artificial or arbitrary 

 family, so far as that State taken as a whole was concerned, was 

 but *13 per cent that is, the difference between 4'58, the average 

 for all families of all sizes, and 4'45, the average of the normal 

 family alone. Practically, it makes but little difference, then, 

 so far as great bodies of people are concerned as, for instance, 

 the population of a State whether the families are considered 

 on the basis of the actual normal family or on the ordinary 

 census basis, which includes all aggregations living under one 

 roof or having certain relations to one head. It would not do, 

 however, to consider this as a rule in small aggregations of 

 people. As an illustration, Danvers, in the State of Massachu- 

 setts, contains a large asylum for the insane. The number of 

 families in 1885, including the asylum, was 1,474, representing a 

 population of 7,061. The average size of families on this census 

 basis for the town of Danvers in the year named was 4"79 ; but, 

 eliminating the asylum as a family, the average size of the 

 families was 4' 17, too large a variation for accurate calculations. 

 Again, in the town of Concord, in the State named, containing 

 the reformatory prison, the average size of the family, including 

 the reformatory, was 5.15 ; excluding it, it was 4"62. Taking a 

 college town, Wellesley, the average size of the normal family 

 was 5*10 ; but, including Wellesley College, it was 6'15, or an 



