Walter Francis Willcox

“ First of all, let him assimilate this, and only when he has gained a complete and sympathetic mastery of some one system will he "be entitled to criticise and compare and dissent, until gradually is own belief on the vital problems shall be evoked from the disintegrating fragments of the system he has learned. And it will be admitted by many that, in choosing a system into which the beginner shall be inducted, none better in its temper and general results is to be found than the one for which our author vigorously fights, "that of Lotze, or perhaps better, the Lotzian phase of Kant." ”

“ The wide range of the American census, and the publication of uncertain figures, find a justification in the fact that the development of accurate census work requires a long educational process in the office, and, above all, in the community. Rough approximations must always precede accurate measurements; and these returns, while often inaccurate, are better than nothing, and probably improve with each decade. ”

“ The sharp check in the growth of negro population between 1910 and 1920 was due primarily to the flood of migration from the agricultural districts of the South largely to the cities and industrial districts of the North, but partly also to the cities of the South, and the exposure of negroes in their new homes to conditions tending to raise the death-rate or reduce the birth-rate, or both. ”

“ The reservation by the states of all rights not granted to the general government makes it fairly a matter of question whether purely statistical inquiries, other than for the single purpose of apportioning representation, could be initiated by any other authority than that of the states themselves. ”

“ This book aims to set forth the present attitude of philosophy in a way suited to the comprehension of the ordinary reader. For this difficult task the author has several important qualifications. He has read widely and has a considerable power of clear exposition. He is abreast of the scientific thought of the day especially in his own department of physics, and yet believes that science has not taken and cannot take the place of metaphysics. And, best of all, he firmly believes in his conclusions and writes with vigor, because he is so sure of his ground. ”

“ That large party which advocates a strict and jealous construction of the constitution would certainly oppose any independent legislation by the national Congress for providing a registration of births, marriages and deaths, or for obtaining social and industrial statistics, whether for the satisfaction of the publicist or for the guidance of the legislature. ”

“ On the analogy of the antipathy existing between different species of animals, the latter is explained as based on an instinctive recognition of the commonly increased sterility of hybrids, while the prohibition of marriage between near kin is believed to find its source in the fact that a certain amount of difference between male and female is beneficial to the offspring. Hence an instinctive antipathy to incest has been fostered by natural selection, but the basis on which the instinct works is not kinship by blood but living under the same roof. ”

“ The figures show as conclusively as their incompleteness permits that the conditions under which negroes live in the North are unfavourable to the natural increase of their race and that in this regard no important difference appears between city and country. They show also that southern cities are even more unfavourable than those in the North to natural increase. The great reservoir for the natural increase of negroes is the rural districts of the South, in which apparently there are about three births for every two deaths. ”

“ On each occasion new areas had to be brought within the sphere of enumeration, whilst the necessity for the use in the wilder tracts of a schedule simpler in its demands than the standard, grew less as the country got more accustomed to the inquiry, and the efficiency of the administrative agency increased. Not more than 5% of the householders in India can read and write, and the proportion capable of fully understanding the schedule and of making the entries in it correctly is still lower. ”

“ This is not the sexual instinct, for among animals, and quite probably also with primitive man, that instinct is powerful only at certain seasons of the year. Nor is it the social or gregarious instinct, for the anthropoid apes and lowest savages seem to live in families rather than in larger associations, and the scantiness of food probably compels this. It is rather the parental instinct, whereby the male is induced to co-operate with the female in aiding the offspring to survive. ”

“ In this regard the negroes of the United States are in somewhat the same position as the whites on both sides of the Atlantic a century or more ago, when cities were in a sense parasites upon the surrounding rural districts, at whose expense alone they could grow or even maintain themselves. ”

“ Another source of error in the manufacturing census of the United States is that the words of the census law are construed as requiring an enumeration of the various trades and handicrafts, such as carpentering. The deficiencies in such returns are gross and notorious, but the census office feels obliged to seek for them and to report what it finds, however incomplete or incorrect the results may be. Even on the population returns certain answers, such as the number of the divorced or the number unable to read and write, may be open to question. ”

“ The idea of the kingdom of God may be regarded, as by Pfleiderer, as the tie between dogmatics and ethics. But in the doctrine of the sumrnum bonum, which is essentially the same as that of the kingdom of God, the religious point of view is not so necessary as it is in the doctrine of regeneration. This latter doctrine Sigwart has recently emphasized, like Schopenhauer before him, as indispensable for ethics. — The ethical value of the concept of overcoming [Ueberwindung] depends on one's idea of the nature of this act of will. ”

“ At each period the rate of negro increase was less than that of the white. Apparently the immediate result of the Civil War and emancipation was to raise the relative rate of negro increase between 1860 and 1880 to nearly four-fifths of that of the white, a change due to the sharp check of white increase and a much slighter check in negro increase. ”

“ It was also the first American census to give a line of the schedule to each person, death or establishment enumerated, and thus to make the returns in the individual form indispensable for a detailed classification and compilation. ”

“ We have to overcome individualism on the one hand and the power of material conditions on the other." This Mr. Mackenzie terms "the practical problem" with which we are confronted; he attempts to deal with it by the aid of two ideas, "those of the organic nature of society and the spiritual nature of man," and he continues, "If we can succeed in showing what is their true significance, and in indicating, even in a slight degree, what is their bearing on the practical life of society, we shall have accomplished all that can reasonably be expected from the present inquiry." ”

“ By prearrangement, no doubt, uniformity may be obtained in regard to most of the main statistical facts ascertainable at a census, at all events in the more advanced units of the empire, and proposals to this effect were made by the registrar-general of England and Wales in his report upon the figures for 1901. Previous to that date, the only step towards compilation of the census results of the empire had been a bare statement of area and population, appended without analysis; comparison or comment, to the reports for England and Wales, from the year 1861 onwards. ”

“ It shows itself objectively in the actual improvement of the life, and subjectively in the knowledge not only that the oppressive burden of the former feeling of guilt has been rolled off, but also that the life is now guided by a practical law of progressive improvement. ”

“ Sweden, Norway and the United States are the only countries with any claim to have taken the first modern census, as distinguished from a register of tax-payers, &c., the lineal descendant of the old Roman census, and the innovation seems to be due to the United States. If so, the first modern census was the American census of 1790. At the present date more than three-fifths of the estimated population of the world has been enumerated in this way. ”

“ Whether those who have worked over his field for themselves agree with his results or not, they will hardly deny that it is best for the beginner in philosophy to be brought face to face with some coherent system of thought. ”

“ The difficulties facing the manufacturing census were of a different character. A large proportion of the industries of the country keep satisfactory accounts, and can answer the questions with some correctness. But manufacturers are likely to suspect the objects of the census, and to fear that the information given will be open to the public or betrayed to competitors. Furthermore, the manufacturing schedule presupposes some uniformity in the method of accounting among different companies or lines of business, and this is often lacking. ”

“ The proper method is, first, to find the causes of any phenomenon under consideration, and, secondly, to assume that the phenomenon extends beyond the range of our observation in time or space only when the causes are known so to have extended and there is no evidence of counteracting influences. ”

“ Under the federal form of government, with its delegation of all residuary powers to the several states, the United States have no system of recording deaths, births and marriages. Hence there is no such basis as exists in nearly every other civilized state for a national system of registration, and the country depends upon the crude method of enumerators’ returns for its information on vital statistics, except in the states and cities which have established a trustworthy registration system of their own. ”

“ The subjects to which most importance is attached from the international standpoint are age, sex, civil condition, birthplace, illiteracy and certain infirmities. Occupation, too, should be included, but the record of so detailed a subject is usually considered to be better obtained by a special inquiry, rather than by the rough and ready methods of a synchronous enumeration. This course has been adopted in Germany, Belgium and France, and an approach to it is made in the decennial census of Canada and the United States. ”

“ The years of work that have gone into its preparation show their fruits on every page. Notwithstanding its excellence, however, one lays it down with a little question whether the reconstruction of the development of the prehistoric family even in its broad lines is possible in the present state of our knowledge or will become possible in the near future. ”

“ The standard schedule, in addition to the leading facts of sex, age, civil condition, birthplace, occupation and house-room, includes education and sickness as well as infirmities, and leaves the return of religious denomination optional with the householder. Under the head of occupation, the bread-winner is distinguished from his dependants and is returned as employer, employed, or working on his own account, as is now the usual practice in census-taking. ”

“ The census of agriculture is also liable to a wide margin of error, owing to defects in farm accounts and the inability of many farmers to state the amount or the value even of the leading crops. The census figures relate to the calendar year preceding 1st June 1900, and hurried and careless answers about the preceding year’s crop are almost sure to have been given by many farmers in the midst of the summer’s work. ”

“ Enumerators’ returns in this field are so incomplete that hardly two-thirds of the deaths which have occurred in any community during the preceding year are obtained by an enumerator visiting the families, no satisfactory basis for the computation of death-rates is afforded, and the returns have comparatively little scientific value. In the regions where census tables and interpretations are derived from registration records kept by the several states or cities they are often made more complete than those in the state or municipal documents. ”