492 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



penetrating analysis was needed, and at the meeting of the six- 

 teenth National Conference, where about forty representatives of 

 this branch of philanthropic work were present, a schedule was 

 adopted for the collation of more elaborate and, it is hoped, more 

 useful statistics. This schedule, except for a few minor altera- 

 tions and additions, is the same as the one elaborated and used 

 by the Buffalo society. As an example of the manner in which 

 the figures will tell their story when collated, we may glance at 

 some of the results reached by the Buffalo society through a very 

 careful study of 1,407 families, including 5,388 persons. The chief 

 cause of destitution was adjudged to be lack of employment in 

 263 cases, sickness in 326, no male support in 373, intemperance in 

 124, physical defects in 113, insufficient earnings in 87, accidents 

 in 45, imprisonment of bread-winner in 35, shiftlessness in 26, and 

 insanity in 15. 



The personal equation must enter very largely into the collec- 

 tion of such statistics. For instance, it might be inferred a priori, 

 from the foregoing figures, that those who were responsible for 

 the decisions are not rabid " temperance people " nor prohibition- 

 ists. Such is, indeed, the fact ; but, at the same time, it must be 

 said that in Boston, and among workers inclined to give intem- 

 perance its full meed of discredit as a cause of poverty, a careful 

 statistical analysis of this character convinced them that it was 

 the chief cause in only about half the cases. Though statistics of 

 this nature may not be the firmest ground to tread upon, they yet 

 afford better footing than the quicksands of hap-hazard opinion.* 



In some matters, also, the facts are more tangible, and the 

 results, therefore, more reliable. For instance, it has for some 

 time been the opinion of practical workers that a considerable 

 portion of the most hopeless poverty is caused by the decay of the 

 ties of the family. It is found that, in the 1,407 families reported 

 on in Buffalo, there were, in fact, 183 deserted wives. Where, as 

 in this case, investigation merely confirms a previous opinion, it 

 is still of the greatest use, because it enables the workers to make 

 a more cogent appeal for remedial legislation. 



Recently, more than in the immediate present, it was the fash- 

 ion to talk as though a common-school education was the one 

 thing needful to cure all social ills, and to bring down upon us an 

 imminent millennium. The reformers of that time went to battle 

 with a spelling-book shield that might have borne the device of 

 a schoolmaster rampant. In such a connection it is interesting 

 to notice that in the 1,407 destitute families investigated in Buffalo 

 it was found that the respective heads of 1,019 of them could both 



* See an article by the present writer, " Notes on the Statistical Determination of the 

 Causes of Poverty," in the " Publications of the American Statistical Association," March, 

 1889. 



