90 CARNEGIE INSTITUTION OF WASHINGTON. 



Documents is the only part of our work for the pubHcation of which 

 the Institution has made itself responsible. It seems to the writer 

 undesirable that this Department should be obliged to appeal to 

 commercial publishers to issue its completed volumes. In the nature 

 of things, works of this kind can not count on a large popular sale 

 and are, therefore, not likely to prove attractive as a purely business 

 proposition. It is, therefore, respectfully urged that provision be 

 made in the publication budget for a sufficiently large sum to provide 

 for the issue of several of the reports during the next j^ear. 



The difficulty of bringing to a speedy conclusion twelve different 

 divisions of a large subject without sufficient funds to pay salaries to 

 the authors emphasizes the importance of considering the reorgani- 

 zation, on a permanent basis, of the Department of Economics and 

 Sociology. This is a subject to which the writer has invited the 

 attention of the Trustees in his reports for 1912 and 1911. The need 

 of such a reorganization has been apparent for a long time, and it is 

 appreciated by no one more than b}^ the collaborators themselves, 

 who, in order to be prepared to meet any request that might come 

 from the Trustees, discussed and adopted, in October 1912, the out- 

 line of a plan w^hich they believe would be successful if put into oper- 

 ation. Such a reorganization, either on the lines suggested or on other 

 lines, might be carried on independently of the present organization, 

 which was adopted specifically for the Contributions to American 

 Economic History. The foundations for these are so well laid, and 

 so large a part of the final summaries is done, that each of the heads 

 of divisions can complete his own task without making any demands 

 upon a reorganized department, excepting for routine matters of 

 accounting and supervision. 



The need of reorganization is emphasized in the present year by 

 the fact that the writer has accepted the appointment to the Roose- 

 velt Professorship in Berlin for the winter of 1914-15. This will 

 involve his absence from the country for a good part of a year, prob- 

 ably from July 1914 until May or June 1915. It will, of course, be 

 impossible for him during that time to give much attention to the 

 work of the Institution, and it would seem better to proceed at once 

 to the reorganization of the Department than to appoint a substitute 

 and adjourn the whole question for a couple of years. Any reorgani- 

 zation inevitably involves an appropriation adequate for the purpose. 

 The writer respectfully urges upon the Trustees the desirability of 

 giving this matter serious consideration. The multiplicity of pub- 

 lications and discussions regarding economic and social questions, 

 while it indicates the public interest in these subjects, also calls atten- 

 tion forcibly to the need of trustworthy information regarding them. 

 A department applying scientific methods intensively to a limited 

 field of the general subject of economics and sociology would, in the 



