Page:American Journal of Sociology Volume 15.djvu/651

 OUTLOOK FOR AMERICAN STATISTICS 637

field in which the federal government has exerted almost no influence, has been as great as the extension of the registration of deaths.

Regarding divorce it need only be said that this is the one branch of vital statistics in which the United States has made contributions of capital importance, when judged by international standards. The most important sources of statistical information about divorce throughout the world are the two reports of the federal government covering together the forty years between 1867 and 1906.

The outlook for American vital statistics then appears hope- ful. The next generation may and should do much to elevate it to the level of the best work done in older and more densely settled countries.

The recent rapid development of the public health movement has reinforced the demand for competent demographers and so for an adequate training in vital statistics. Our states and cities might do much more for public health than they are doing if they could find more readily men able to show statistically the need for and the success of remedial measures. The medical schools to which we naturally look give little, if any, training in demography and cannot, because their curricula are badly overcrowded. A suggestion may be found in British experience. In that country a degree of B.S. in public health, or a diploma in public health, is given to a doctor who pursues after graduation a prescribed course in public health, including vital statistics. This example could be followed by our medical schools only if the position of health officer or registrar were to be filled by the best-qualified person, whatever his residence at the time of ap- pointment, and carried a salary on which the appointee could live.

It would be possible to review the other important branches of American statistical work and to show that in most, if not in all, of them interest has been growing during the last few years. The development of demands for an effective and detailed super- vision of public-service corporations, for a dispassionate and expert investigation of the industrial and commercial conditions with which a federal tariff law has to deal, for carefully planned