DEPARTMENT OF ECONOMICS AND SOCIOLOGY. 101 



with less available tune to give to the work of the Institution, while 

 the active membership of the board automatically shrinks whenever 

 one of the twelve collaborators completes the work of his Division. 



The problem which confronted the writer when he was chosen to 

 succeed Colonel Wright as chainnan of the Department was, therefore, 

 a difficult one. The original plan of laying very broad foundations 

 and devoting many years to the work did not seem to be acceptable to 

 the Trustees, nor was the form of organization ideal; and yet, if we had 

 disbanded the board of collaborators, it would have been very difficult 

 for the Department, even though reorganized on a plan intrinsically 

 more effective, to utilize the work already done. For it should be 

 remembered that, in addition to the large number of formal mono- 

 graphs, some of which have been pubhshed and some of which are still 

 in manuscript, each collaborator has accumulated a great mass of notes 

 and studies which clearly can be utilized only by him. Under the 

 circumstances the best plan seemed to be to pool our funds and, by 

 transferring money from those divisions which had relatively large 

 balances to those whose work was most susceptible of being hastened, 

 to get some, at least, of the divisional reports completed. This is the 

 task to which the writer has been devoting himself for the last seven 

 years. In order to make the funds go as far as possible, he has drawn 

 no salary for himself, nor has he even charged for the time of his 

 secretaries, and the fund set apart for administration has therefore 

 carried only such minor items as postage, stationery, printing, and 

 occasional traveling expenses. The administration expenses, which 

 in the six years down to 1909 amounted to $7,474.47, have been in the 

 last seven years $1,640.44, or an average of about $234 per year. This 

 policy has enabled us to transfer from the administration to the 

 research departments the sum of $8,550. 



Besides the funds obtained by transfers, the trustees have made 

 additional appropriations for the pm'pose of paying salaries to such of 

 the collaborators as might be able to take a leave of absence from their 

 regular occupations and devote themselves exclusively for a period to 

 the work of the Institution. In this way we have succeeded in com- 

 pleting the more comprehensive histories enumerated at the beginning 

 of this report in addition to the foundation work represented by the 

 volmnes of the Index, some 136 monographs, published and unpub- 

 lished, and over 100 magazine articles enumerated in our bibliography. 

 But our unexpended balances are now so small that some decision with 

 regard to the future is urgent. This involves an answer to three specific 

 questions : 



(1) Shall the department be reorganized with a salaried head to 

 harmonize with other departments? 



(2) Shall work upon the Contributions to American Economic 

 History be continued, or shall we conclude the series after the publica- 



