Relation of the Federal Government to ReaearcK 



207 



(2) Metropolitati areas. — Tlie research committee on urban- 

 ism of the National Resources ("ommittoe attempted to syn- 

 thesize the available data on urban communities, especially for 

 entire metropolitan areas, and uncovered many serious sta- 

 tistical gaps which need to be closed. The interim report of 

 this comn\ittee, dated July 1038, is particularly helpful in 

 showing the importance of some of the social and economic 

 problems for which specific new urban Census data are 

 necessary. 



(3) Employment status, industtru and occupation. — The Com- 

 mittee on Social Security, operating in Washington with a grant 

 from the Social Science Researcli Council, has made one of 

 its major tasks the exploration of needs of the Social Security 

 program for Census statistics. An elaborate study by Dr. W. S. 

 Woytinski has been published, i' endeavoring to reclassify the 

 1930 census data by employment status, industry, and occupa- 

 tion in a form useful to Social Security. This analysis opens 

 up a number of new problems and makes many concrete sug- 

 gestions for changes in procedure. A memorandum to the 

 Census Advisory Committee by the former executive secretary 

 of the Committee on Social Security, Dr. J. Frederic Dewhurst, 

 outlines further suggestions, based in part on Dr. Woytinski"s 

 studies. 



Industry and Trade 



Becoming of greatly increasing importance is the 

 basic reporting of the Bureau of the Census with re- 

 spect to industry and trade. In some aspects of this 

 great task the Bureau receives cooperation from other 

 Government agencies in carrying on field work. No- 

 table is the help of the Bureau of Mines, the Forest 

 Service, and the Federal Communications Commission, 

 which play a large part in the censuses of mines, 

 forestry, and electrical industries, respectively. The 

 Bureau of the Census has close working relationships 

 with many other agencies. 



Many Governmental Contacts. — Within the Govern- 

 ment, particularly close relationshijis exist with the 

 Central Statistical Board. The new assistant chief 

 statistician of the Division of Manufactures in the 

 Bureau had been for 2 years a member of the Board'? 

 staff devoting most of his time to a study of the prob- 

 lems of the Division. There are close working rela- 

 tionships with statisticians in the Bureau of Labor 

 Statistics, the Bureau of Foreign and Domestic Com- 

 merce, the Federal Reserve Board, the United States 

 Employment Service, the Bureau of Internal Revenue, 

 the Tarill Commission, the Bureau of Mines, the Fed- 

 eral Trade Commission, the Federal Communications 

 Commission, the Interstate Commerce Commission, and 

 the bureaus of many State govermnents. 



A concrete example of the type of cooperation which 

 has been established is the work of an inter-agency 

 Committee on Industrial Classification. For years it 

 has been recognized that the antiquated industrial 



" W. S. Woytinski. The Lator Supply in the United States, Washing 

 ton, 1937, and Labor in the United Btaten: Basic Statistics fnr Social 

 Security, Washington, 1938. 



classification of the census of manufactures and incon- 

 sistencies from census to census in allocating particu- 

 lar plants to given categories prevented realistic re- 

 search. The situation was made all the worse because 

 tlie industrial classification of the Bureau of Labor 

 Statistics and of other agencies also left much to be 

 desired and were not comparable with each other or 

 with the Census of ^lannfactures. A subcommittee 

 of the Central Statistical Board, comprising represent- 

 atives of six Federal agencies including the Bureau 

 of the Census and of one State agency, is now prepar- 

 ing a standard industrial classification. The hope is 

 to secure an agreement not to change the classification 

 oftener than once in 5 years and to refer any questions 

 ill the interim to an inter-agency "supreme court." 

 where rulings will be final. 



Non-Governmental Contacts. — Outside of the Gov- 

 ernment such organizations as the National Bureau 

 of Economic Research and the National Industrial 

 Conference Board, as well as research men in schools 

 of business, departments of economics in universities, 

 and private firms like Stevenson, Jordan, and Harri- 

 son (management engineers), are active advisers of 

 the Bureau. There is a formal advisory committee 

 from the American Manufacturers Association. 



The importance of the Bureau's work in the field of 

 industry and trade is so great that some observers 

 have felt that the Bureau might look in this direction 

 for a kind of support analogous to that received by the 

 Bureau of Agricultural Economics from agriculture, 

 and the Bureau of Labor Statistics from labor. Wliile 

 the Bureau has maintained cordial relationships with 

 trade associations and trade journals, and, through its 

 strict rules of secrecy, has established confidence that 

 the schedules would not be turned over to regulatory 

 bodies like the Bureau of Internal Revenue or Federal 

 Trade Commission, nevertheless, there are intrinsic dif- 

 ficulties in the way of eliciting from industry the kind 

 of supi^ort which other agencies receive from agricul- 

 ture and labor. 



Handicaps to Business Support. — Unless the Bu- 

 reau's service appears indispensable to the business 

 man, he is not likely to fight for adequate appro- 

 priations, which would have to come from taxes. 

 There are two handicaps: (1) The census of manufac- 

 ture gets out the raw ore and perhaps produces some 

 pig iron, but the consumers' goods, which the manufac- 

 turer sees in the reports of the Bureau of Foreign and 

 Domestic Commerce, in his trade journals, or in the 

 reports of private statistical organizations, are fash- 

 ioned in agencies other than the Bureau of the Census; 

 (2) the manufacturer's personal contact with the Bu- 

 reau of the Census is largely restricted to filling out a 

 long schedule, which he has a tendency to regard as a 



