Survey

“ By making surveys at regular intervals of five or ten year periods, a community can determine the amount and direction of its441 own progress. The idea of a survey is similar to that of an inventory of a business house—to find out the gains and losses, and to plan for the future according to the verdict of the inventory. ”

“ A State survey, so organized as to make every intelligent school-teacher, every country-surveyor, every civil and mining engineer, chemist, amateur or collector, one of its working corps, would, we believe, do the work better, more cheaply, and with vastly more benefit to the material and intellectual prosperity of the State, than any present organization. ”

“ When it does, an impartial survey of the whole ground should be taken, the state of public opinion properly considered, and one’s personal condition, physical and intellectual, duly examined and weighed. ”

“ That making a general survey is useful as a preliminary to deliberate study, either of a whole or of any part, scarcely needs showing. Vagueness of thought accompanies the wandering about in a region without known bounds or landmarks. ”

“ The truth is, that the historic survey gained over any field of human activity from the height of generalizations so vast in scope as these are must needs, in the complexity of earthly affairs, be a survey too distant to give much guidance until its omissions are filled up by a great deal of nearer study ”

“ Whether the surveyor be learned or ignorant in the matters which he undertakes to survey must always be a matter of doubt, but it is evident that a person who exercises such arbitrary power ought on no account to be allowed to practise his profession for his private gain. ”

“ Social technology has produced the survey.XXIV-22 The social survey, being related in its origin to the census, is an accurate method of gathering social facts, not merely facts about the numbers of people, the acreage, and the amount of wealth, but the facts about the societary assets and liabilities of a city or community, and concerning the constructive and the destructive forces. ”

“ A systematic, thorough-going investigation requires the combined labor of many, who must all strive to answer the same questions—questions which in this chronological survey are, in regard to one single individual, in part answered, but in part could merely be proposed. ”

“ From another standpoint the social survey may also be regarded as a means of control. Many of the “surveys” are merely single investigations of administration, housing, justice, education, recreation, in urban and rural communities, carried on by the group itself or by some outside experts called 227in for the purpose. ”

“ Every time one wished to rejoice over something good, an anxious survey would be necessary respecting other existing goods in order that the measure of proportion to our total strength might in no way be exceeded. ”

“ The same principle of dividing the labour as much as possible was carried out in the actual work of the survey, one set of men being employed to value the land and to fix what was profitable and what was unprofitable; another to do the actual measurement; another to make up the books of reference; and another to draw and paint the maps ”

“ It is this purpose or end which decides what is to be included and what is to be excluded from the survey. If, for instance, we are making a survey of the acoustic properties of church buildings in England, it is not scientific to introduce questions as to the character of the gospel preached in them. A scientific survey is not necessarily a collection of all possible information about any people or country; that is an encyclopaedia; a scientific survey is a survey of those facts only which throw light on the business in hand. ”

“ I repeat it, that a thorough and enlightened survey of the whole school should be taken, and plans formed for elevating the whole mass in those great branches of knowledge which are to be of immediate practical use to them in future life. ”

“ Another matter of interest these days is the educational survey that has been taken up by many progressive communities. The plan is, as many of you know, to subject the school system of a city or community to a searching investigation in order to discover, if possible, its weak points, if it has any, to the end of their betterment. ”

“ A survey, or rather a study, of these propositions, made in a fairly eclectic spirit, cannot fail to be advantageous to the method of a cabinet arrangement, even if leading to no higher biological conception. ”

“ For by extending the base of observation over a long period, errors due to personal equation, change of circumstance, and other temporary causes, are eliminated from the survey, and the seeker after truth is thus furnished with a trustworthy criterion by which he may verify his conclusions. ”

“ How, if you would really like to be the person to finish off your remarkable career by completing such a survey, unshackled by other avocations than those of the geographical explorer, I should be delighted to consult my friends of the Society, and take the best steps to promote such an enterprise. ”

“ The fact is that no one person or group of persons is in a position to know all the conditions thoroughly and that the elementary task of ascertaining them and stating them is usually by no means easy. It is now generally recognized that we must have a Survey—an ascertainment and plain statement of the facts as they are—as a preliminary to action or even to discussion. ”

“ Nothing, therefore, would be more urgently required than calm reflection, a quiet survey of the whole field, so as to ascertain what there is calling for transformation, and what the means are, and where and how proper material can be found, to execute it. ”

“ After all, the real aim of the survey is to be serviceable. It will be most serviceable when it is used by the greatest number of individuals, and it will be chiefly serviceable in that it stimulates them to do something definite to improve conditions. ”

“ If a retrospective survey of the labors of thirty years, on this occasion, has rekindled a degree of enthusiasm, it is the natural result of an examination of all our volumes, from the contents of which we have endeavored to make out a summary both of the laborers and their works. ”

“ For evidence in favour of this view we must take a rapid survey of the whole domain of human science, and test the chief departments of it to see how far they contain, on the one hand, objective knowledge and facts, and on the other, subjective knowledge and hypotheses. ”

“ Yet it is very commonly argued that unless survey can be made complete, unless, that is, every factor which we can think of as exercising an influence on our action is duly weighed, it is futile to survey the larger, commoner, and more easily accessible factors. ”

“ You are, by the like waies and meanes, to inquire of and find out the true yearly value of the premisses, and of every of them, as the same were lett for, or worth to be lett, in the year 1640, or at any time before; and also what part of the premisses are chargeable with any pious and charitable use or uses; and also to inquire of and survey, or cause to bee surveyed, the buildings, houses, edifices, timber, woods, open quarries, or mines, upon the premisses, and to make true and particular returns of the same in your bookes of survey. ”

“ I don't see what business any man on the Survey has to fall. That isn't what he's there for. He's there not to fall. Personally, I have never had any accidents which would need other than ordinary attention, nor have I had any with any members of my party. ”

“ A general survey of an important question, or an exhaustive comment on a single phase of a subject prominently in the public eye may cover the first three columns of a great daily, while in the care taken in the presentation of the subject it may vie with all that is best in literature. ”

“ Where the States survey maketh more disposeable acres in any barrony then the private survey exhibited by the adventurers doth, whether the same happen by the adventurers omitting of certaine parcells taken in by the State, or by reason of difference in distinguishing the quality, or through difference in admeasurement not exceeding three per cent. ”

“ This survey indicates the present status of attempts to define and measure differences in original and human nature. A knowledge of individual differences is important in every field of social control. It is significant that these tests have been devised to meet problems of policies and of administration in medicine, in industry, in education, and in penal and reformatory institutions. Job analysis, personnel administration, ungraded rooms, classes for exceptional children, vocational guidance, indicate fields made possible by the development of tests for measuring individual differences. ”

“ Its purpose is to suggest lines of inquiry for those contemplating a local survey. 17Contents: The meaning of the survey; General considerations; Character of the community; The city plan; Local government; Suffrage; Industry; Health; Leisure; Education; Welfare agencies; Crime; Statistical facts and the survey; Social legislation and the survey; The facts and the people; A social program. A list of Social agencies of national scope is given in an appendix and there is a bibliography of thirty-six pages. ”

“ The effort to extend the maps to a real survey, by this collection and publication of memoirs in connexion with it, had also its analogy in the Ordnance Survey, in which also the effort failed. Governments, like men, are apt to measure the value of a thing by its cost, instead of its results, by what produces it, instead of by what it will produce,—"will bring" (less wise in that respect than Sir Hudibras!) ”

“ And yet, were we to take members of the Mathematical Society, who, having severally devoted themselves to the laws of quantitative relations, know that, simple as these are intrinsically, a life's study is required for the full comprehension of them—were we to ask each of these his opinion on some point of social policy, the readiness with which he answered would seem to imply that in these cases, where the factors of the phenomenon are so numerous and so much involved, a general survey of men and things gives data for trustworthy judgment. ”

“ On the other hand, the fact disclosed by a survey of the past, that majorities have usually been wrong, must not blind us to the complementary fact, that majorities have usually not been entirely wrong. ”

“ I saw at once that my only hope of filling the situation, with satisfaction to the survey and to myself, was in at once applying my exertions to enlarging and adapting the organization of the office to the increasing wants of the survey. The office work would necessarily increase for two or three years without any increase of field work. ”

“ Thus social survey prepares for social service, as diagnosis towards treatment and hygiene; and these react fruitfully upon our knowledge and understanding anew. Beyond social observations, and the needed observatories for making them more adequately, we need social activities and the laboratories for preparing them, or at least the leavens of them ”

“ In such an extensive and distant survey, numerous subjects of inquiry, though not strictly nautical, will suggest themselves to your active mind; and though, from your transient stay at any other place, you will often experience the mortification of leaving them incomplete, yet that should not discourage you in the collection of every useful fact within your reach. ”

“ Mostly, we’re all of us so sure of things, that we saw or heard or thought or remember, that we just know we’re right, about this or90 that, and can’t be wrong. If we know a little bit about surveying, we feel we can tell surveyors how to survey, and so on. ”

“ The Qualification of the Survey Maker.
The survey maker must be an accurate observer. He must be able to see what the conditions really are, and to describe and record what he sees in simple, clear language that will enable others to understand what he says. The survey [Pg 23] may be made by any one of several types of survey maker:
1. ”

“ We need then a table of the foreign missionary force. In its form it will be a mere statement of proportions. The proportions are essential in order to make comparison between one area and another possible; and comparison is the sweet savour of survey. We cannot compare the work of three men labouring among an unstated population with the work of two other men working in an unstated population; the moment that the proportions are worked out the cases can be compared. But some men detest this purely quantitative comparison. ”

“ What sort of information then are we to seek concerning it? It is so important that it cannot be omitted; it is so widespread that it almost demands special consideration; it is so protean that tables designed to reveal all its aspects and values would be with difficulty designed, and tediously minute. From the point of view of this survey it would be futile to ask, as most of the societies ask, simply for the number of Sunday schools, the number of teachers, and the number of scholars. ”

“ When one takes a broad survey of the country, he will find that the most useful and influential people in it are those who take the deepest interest in institutions that exist for the purpose of making the world better. ”

“ The appointments to positions in the survey are made, on recommendation in case of persons of recognized scientific reputation in their several fields, and through civil-service examination for younger men. The work of each division of the survey is represented in the special report of its chief. ”

“ Such a survey, like a microscopic lens of low power, must sacrifice detail to secure a wider field. Its compensating gain will consist in what it can contribute to the orderly product of methodised enquiry which is the essence of science, and the interest in which becomes associated with the interest of curiosity when the method has been applied in a region not usually acknowledging its reign. ”

“ You are further strictly to inquire and examine as aforesaid what court-rolls, rentalls, bookes of survey, books of accompts, or what other records, evidences, or writings touching every the premises, or any part of them, any of the said persons have come to the knowledge of ”