THE SURVEY 481 



When we fully understand our problem, we shall make our 

 best surveys in consecutive order. We may classify all phases 

 of survey-work freely under three groups physical, economic, 

 social ; and the order of the surveys should preferably follow this 

 sequence. We should first know what the region is geography, 

 physiography, climate, resources, soils; then what it does the 

 farming, the industries, the markets, the business, the profit-and- 

 loss ; then how it lives its people, its homes, its health, its insti- 

 tutions, its modes of expression, its outlook. I very much doubt 

 the lasting value of surveys of church or school or particular 

 crops or special products that are not founded on a good knowl- 

 edge of the physical and economic conditions of the region. 



FIVE PRINCIPLES OF SURVEYS 1 



PAUL U. KELLOGG 



FIRST of all, the survey takes its unit of work from the sur- 

 veyor. It has to do with a subject matter, to be sure, but 

 that subject matter is subordinated to the idea of a definite geo- 

 graphical area. It is quite possible to carry on a study of tuber- 

 culosis, for example, as a piece of physiological research, or as a 

 piece of sociological research, wholly apart from where it occurs. 

 But just as geological survey is not geology in general, but the 

 geology of a given mountain range or water shed, so, even when 

 a special subject matter is under study, the sociological survey 

 adds an element of locality, of neighborhood or city, state or 

 region, to what would otherwise pass under the general term of 

 an investigation. 



And when the subject matter is not specialized, but concerns 

 the more intangible "needs" of a community, the survey becomes 

 necessarily different things in different localities. It cannot be 

 thought out at a far-away desk. It is responsive to local con- 

 ditions ; in a worn-out country district, suffering from what Pro- 

 fessor Ross calls "folk-depletion," its content has little in com- 

 mon with that of a survey in a textile center, tense with human 

 activity, and dominated by its terms of work. 



i Adapted from "The Spread of the Survey Idea," Proceedings Acad. of 

 Political Science, Vol. 2, No. 4, July, 1912. Columbia Univ., N. Y. 



