Page:American Journal of Sociology Volume 15.djvu/645

 CHANGES IN CENSUS METHODS 631

2. We have eliminated entirely the question calling for -the number of employees classified according to their rates of wages or earnings. This was done with much regret, for correct in- formation showing how many employees in the coimtry as a whole, or in a given state, or in a given industry, obtain specified rates of wages would be the most valuable possible form of wage-statistics. We were forced to the conclusion, however, that the amount of labor involved in getting this information correctly from actual pay-rolls would be prohibitive in view of our limited appropriations. There is every reason to believe that at prior censuses the information in most cases was not taken from actual records, but was based on more or less inaccurate estimates of the operator of the factory.

3. At the censuses of 1900 and 1905 the schedule called for a distinction between those materials consimied which were strictly raw materials and those which were partly manufactured. This distinction was intended to permit the calculation of the so-called net value of manufactures by deducting from the gross combined value of the product of manufacturing establishments the value of those materials which represented the product of some other manufacturing establishment. As was pointed out in the text of the report of 1900, however, it is not possible to make use of this system of eliminating duplications except with regard to the country as a whole. When applied to individual states or cities or to individual industries, it loses all significance. The books of manufacturing establishments ordinarily do not directly segregate the cost of raw materials proper from that of partly manufactured materials, and the special agent was in most cases forced either to accept estimates of the value of the two classes of materials or to work through a maze of details of separate purchases in order to segregate the one class from the other. It has seemed to us that the value of the information secured did not justify the encouragement of the practice of making estimates, which was bound to extend from the separate classes of materials to the totals. At the present census, there- fore, the only distinction which is made with respect to raw materials is that between fuel and other kinds of materials. It