Page:American Journal of Sociology Volume 1.djvu/267

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CONTRIBUTIONS TO SOCIAL SCIENCE.
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ber it, this bill passed the House but was defeated in the Senate. So the census of 1870 had to be taken under the law providing for that of 1850. The schedules in this bill were better proportioned than any previous schedules. They had the approval of General Walker, whose heart was set upon a scientific census, and of such proportions as to meet the constant demand for information. These plans and hopes, however, had to be deferred until the census of 1880, when practically the system which had been urged upon Congress for 1870 was adopted. To deal with the specific inquiries contained in the schedules of 1880 would take too much space. It is sufficient to say that all those involved in the census of 1850 were continued and many entirely new subjects introduced. These related to railroads; telegraphs; fire, life, and marine insurance; public indebtedness; the defective, dependent, and delinquent classes, and other important topics. The number of published volumes containing the results of all the inquiries was twenty-two, covering the following topics: Population; manufactures; products of agriculture; agencies of transportation; cotton product; valuation, taxation, and public indebtedness; newspaper and periodical press; Alaska, its population, industries, and products; seal islands of Alaska; ship-building industry; forests of North America; petroleum and its products; manufactures of coke; building stone; mortality and vital statistics; precious metals; United States mining laws; mining industry, power and machinery employed in manufactures; the factory system; social statistics of cities; statistics of wages in manufacturing industries; average retail prices of necessaries of life; strikes and lockouts; defective, dependent, and delinquent classes; machine tools and woodwork machinery; steam-pump and pumping engines; wool and silk machinery; manufacture of engines and boilers; marine engines and steam vessels; ice industry in the United States.

The contributions of the tenth census to social science constitute the most colossal official contribution that had ever been made by any government. The great variety of topics, their exhaustive treatment, the large number of specialists engaged, the