Page:American Journal of Sociology Volume 15.djvu/285

 REVIEWS 271

friendly and everyday relations. Mrs. Moore's study continued through a period of two years and included many accounts actually kept for a year. The impersonal, incidental contacts of the former study are thus set over in strong contrast to the personal, sustained ones of the latter. Although these are to be preferred, there are practical difficulties in realizing them. Such, connections as Mrs. Moore sustained to her families do not exist on scales sufficiently wide, and where they are to be found it is doubtful whether the families are representative, just because they are by that fact differ- ent from others. Dr. Chapin, himself, has said that the ideal method is to have an exact account kept for a full year, but this was for- bidden to his committee by practical reasons.

There is another difficulty that was encountered. The com- mittee recognized from' the first that the value of the schedules depended upon the persons who filled them out. This is eminently true. Nevertheless, more than eighty different persons were engaged in filling the schedules, fifty-seven reports coming from forty-three volunteers, thirty-four from trade-union officials, and five hundred and fifty-one from twenty-one different paid workers. The author does not say how many different investigators sub- mitted the three hundred and eighteen schedules generally used. Under the most favorable conditions, however, it is evident that experience in asking questions and filling schedules could not have helped much, that uniformity of ability in estimating could not be secured, and that nothing could eliminate the many personal equa- tions represented. It is presumed that the accepted schedules were checked by some one or few persons, but this is precisely a process of scaling up or scaling down, of approximating, probably done by those who lacked an intimate knowledge of the families.

Not only were there many workers with few schedules each, but the strangers met only a few times. The author remarks that some- times several visits were necessary to fill the schedule, as though this was unusual. Probably in the majority of instances only one visit was made. Some attempt was made to have the families keep an account for a week or longer, but the author says that "in the majority of cases, however, it was not practicable to secure account books, and the visitor sat down with the housewife and ran over the schedule with her, getting estimates where figures were not avail- able All this required time, and the patience of mother

and visitor was sometimes exhausted before the end was reached"