558 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



Survivals of the Non-Invidious Interest, is that of beneficences. The 

 Higher Learning was primarily the exclusive privilege of the leisure class, 

 and has still attached to it a mass of ritual in the shape of paraphernalia, 

 ceremonies, degrees, and privileges which grow more elaborate as the col- 

 lege and the community become richer. Devotion to classical learning, 

 which is practically useless, is a form of " conspicuous leisure " and " con- 

 spicuous expenditure," but now encounters a rival in athletics, which is 

 equally useless and conspicuous and more costly. 



THE American Economic Association, at its meeting in Cleveland, Ohio, 

 in 1897, authorized the appointment of a committee to inquire into the 

 scope and method of the eleventh census, with a view of determining what 

 ought to be attempted in the twelfth. In order to make an adequate review 

 of the eleventh census this committee invited a certain number of critical 

 articles on particular portions of the work ; and further, in order to discover 

 what might seem weak points in the work and what inquiries it might 

 seem desirable to elaborate in the twelfth census, addressed a circular letter 

 of questions to all the members of the association. Only about sixty replies 

 were received to the questions, but a generous response was made to the 

 invitations to contribute reviews, the result of which is a series of papers 

 by independent authors upon specific topics which are regarded as consti- 

 tuting a very valuable commentary on the Federal census and on statistical 

 methods in general. These criticisms are now embodied in a book* of 

 more than five hundred pages, containing twenty essays by authors each of 

 whom is specially interested in the particular topic of which he treats. 

 These articles include a general review of the statistics of population, by 

 Walter F. Wilcox, and special articles on the negro population, by W. Z. 

 Ripley; the North American Indians, by Franz Boas; Age, Sex, Dwell- 

 ings, and Families, and Urban Population, by George K. Holmes; Illiter- 

 acy and Educational Statistics, by Davis R. Dewey; Statistics of Occupa- 

 tion, by Richard Mayo-Smith; Various Aspects of the Vital and Social 

 Statistics, by Cressy L. Wilbur, Irving Fisher, Roland P. Falkner, and 

 Samuel M. Lindsay; of Agriculture and Farms, by N. I. Stone and David 

 Kelley ; Transportation, by Emery R. Johnson and Walter E. Weyl; Manu- 

 factures, by S. 1ST. D. North, William M. Stewart, Worthington C. Ford, 

 and Charles J. Bullock; Wealth, Debt, and Taxation, by Carl C. Plehn; 

 Municipal Finance, by Henry B. Gardner; and the Scope and Method of 

 the Twelfth Census, by William C. Hunt. A number of general conclu- 

 sions are pointed out by the committee as deducible from the papers con- 

 tributed by these writers. The criticism throughout touches not so much 

 the accuracy of the census as the treatment of the data and the lack of 

 continuity from census to census both defects believed to be largely due 

 to the insufficient time allowed by law for preparing plans and schedules. 

 The work of the census is believed to be seriously impeded by the number 

 and variety of the investigations ordered, in consequence of which funda- 

 mental inquiries can not receive attention. A number of subordinate 

 inquiries might advantageously be transferred to established bureaus or 

 departments under whose scope they would properly fall, and some of which 

 already publish annual volumes of kindred statistics. Among classes of de- 

 fects or weaknesses in method pointed out in the criticisms are a lack of 



* The Federal Census. Critical Essays by Members of the American Economic Association, 

 collected and edited by a Special Committee. Published for the American Economic Association by 

 the Macmillan Company, New York. Pp. 516. Price, $1 ; cloth, $2.50. 



