UC-NRLF 
 
 No. S. E. 1 
 
 HN 
 
 THE SOCIAL SURVEY 
 
 Papers by 
 
 PAUL U. KELLOGG 
 SHELBY M. HARRISON 
 GEORGE T. PALMER 
 
 REPRINTED FROM 
 
 THE PROCEEDINGS OF 
 
 THE ACADEMY OF POLITICAL SCIENCE 
 
 VOLUME II. No. 4 
 
 JULY, igi2 
 
 SECOND EDITION 
 
 DEPARTMENT OF SURVEYS AND EXHIBITS 
 RUSSELL SAGE FOUNDATION 
 
 128 EAST TWENTY-SECOND STREET, NKW YORK. 
 
GIFT OF 
 
 f ' 
 
f 
 
 THE SOCIAL SURVEY 
 
 Papers by 
 
 PAUL U. KELLOGG 
 SHELBY M. HARRISON 
 GEORGE T. PALMER 
 
 REPRINTED FROM 
 
 THE PROCEEDINGS OF 
 
 THE ACADEMY OF POLITICAL SCIENCE 
 
 VOLUME II. No. 4 
 
 JULY, 1912 
 
 DEPARTMENT OF SURVEYS AND EXHIBITS 
 RUSSELL SAGE FOUNDATION 
 
 128 EAST TWENTY-SECOND STREET, NEW YORK. 
 
\ 
 
 X N 
 
The Spread of the Survey Idea 1 
 
 PAUL U. KELLOGG 
 Director of the Pittsburgh Survey, 1907-09 
 
 IN most of our social movements, we are under the necessity 
 of starting something going. We must stir up interest as 
 the first step. The survey movement, if we can call it that, 
 does not seem to be handicapped in this way. There is more 
 spontaneous outcropping of the survey idea the country round 
 than as yet we have any sufficient organization or body of 
 trained workers to deal with. Close on the heels of Pittsburgh 
 came Buffalo. The pioneer work in the steel district was 
 instigated by Charities Publication Committee and was car- 
 ried out in co-operation with militant Pittsburghers, under 
 grants from the Russell Sage Foundation. The study of the 
 Polish section of Buffalo was the first undertaking of the 
 sort instigated and financed by the city surveyed. Then we 
 had that interesting state-wide tour of Kentucky by Mrs. 
 Caroline Bartlett Crane, which was a quick sizing up of con- 
 ditions in a group of smaller cities under the State Board of 
 Health and the State Federation of Women's Clubs. We 
 know of the series of community studies carried out by Mr. 
 Aronovici in Rhode Island, and by Mr. St. John and Mr. 
 Stelzle in Newark, Sag Harbor and elsewhere; the studies of 
 the Huntington Presbytery in seven counties in central Penn- 
 sylvania; the work of the Presbyterian Board in its rural 
 surveys in Illinois, Missouri and Pennsylvania ; and the scores 
 of neighborhoods, mill and mining towns which the Federal 
 Immigration Commission caught up in their schedules. Last 
 summer the Associated Charities of Syracuse, the Chamber 
 of Commerce, the Central Trades Assembly and the Min- 
 isterial Association joined forces in the stock-taking of a 
 single city which is described (p. 18) by Mr. Harrison; while 
 the findings of the Lowell survey are just out in book form. 
 Booth's London, Rowntree's York, the Hull-House Books and 
 
 7 Read at the meeting of the Academy of Political Science, April 18, 1912 
 
 389213 
 
2 ORGANISATION FOR SOCIAL WORK. 
 
 Papers, the South End House Studies, Mr. Kirk's Providence, 
 Dr. Roberts' Anthracite Coal Communities, the Washington 
 number of Charities and The Commons are instances, all of 
 them, of social investigations which have embodied many of 
 the elements we find in the survey idea, but which are not 
 identified with the more or less crystallized movement which 
 to-day engages our attention. For I have before me four 
 closely typewritten sheets, thoroughly covered with the names 
 of cities and organizations which are either embarked on sur- 
 veys or are considering surveys, or would like to know more 
 about them. The names of Minnesota, Missouri, Texas and 
 Kansas towns show the spread of the idea no less than those 
 of the four chief cities of the British Northwest. One in- 
 quiry comes from India. 
 
 Just at this juncture, the more immediate aspect of the 
 movement presents itself in the fact that in nearly every city 
 in which the Men and Religion Forward teams have set forth 
 a social program, one of the planks in that program has been 
 to recommend a social survey. So we are faced with the 
 question: What is a survey, and how shall the residents of 
 the average city go about one, with some prospect that they 
 will be doing a craftsman's job of it? We know in a general 
 way that a survey is something different from the ordinary 
 operations of a municipal league or a charitable society or a 
 settlement different even from their campaigns for special 
 reforms. We know also that it is different from newspaper 
 work, or a civic exhibit, or an official report or scientific re- 
 search as such ; although we may have an inkling that it par- 
 takes of all of these things, in one way or another. What 
 then? What elements distinguish the survey? The papers 
 by Mr. Harrison, Miss Goldmark and Dr. Palmer give con- 
 crete answers and give them with a precision and taking 
 quality which can scarcely be bettered by any generalizations. 
 They tell, however, of three fairly well-defined types of sur- 
 vey ; and it will help in arriving at a working conception of 
 the survey idea, to run over some of the elements common to 
 all. 
 
 And first, for purposes of comparison, let me set down 
 the elements, five in number, which we felt at the close of the 
 
THE SPREAD OF THE SURVEY IDEA. 3 
 
 Pittsburgh Survey made that a distinctive enterprise. These 
 methods were : 
 
 1. To bring a group of experts together to co-operate 
 with local leaders in gauging the social needs of one city. 
 
 2. To study these needs in relation to each other, to the 
 whole area of the city, and to the civic responsibilities of de- 
 mocracy. 
 
 3. To consider at the same time both civic and industrial 
 conditions, and to consider them for the most part in their 
 bearings upon the wage-earning population. 
 
 4. To reduce conditions to terms of household experi- 
 ence and human life. 
 
 5. To devise graphic methods for making these findings 
 challenging, clear and unmistakable. 
 
 If I were recasting this formula to-day, I do not know 
 that I should want to change it materially. But it will perhaps 
 give a better approach to the survey movement to consider not 
 what sets it off from other undertakings, but what it draws 
 upon them for. 
 
 First of all, the survey takes its unit of work from the 
 surveyor. It has to do with a subject matter, to be sure, but 
 that subject matter is subordinated to the idea of a definite 
 geographical area. It is quite possible to carry on a study of 
 tuberculosis, for example, as a piece of physiological research, 
 or as a piece of sociological research, wholly apart from where 
 it occurs. But just as a geological survey is not geology in 
 general, but the geology of a given mountain range or water- 
 shed, so, even when a special subject matter is under study, 
 the sociological survey adds an element of locality, of neigh- 
 borhood or city, state or region, to what would otherwise pass 
 under the general term of an investigation. 
 
 And when the subject matter is not specialized, but con- 
 cerns the more intangible "needs" of a community, the survey 
 becomes necessarily different things in different localities. It 
 cannot be thought out at a far-away desk. It is responsive to 
 local conditions ; in a worn-out country district, suffering from 
 what Professor Ross calls "folk-depktion," its content has 
 
4 ORGANIZATION FOR SOCIAL WORK. 
 
 little in common with that of a survey in a textile center, 
 tense with human activity, and dominated by its terms of work. 
 
 In the second place, the survey takes from the physician 
 his art of applying to the problems at hand standards and 
 experience worked out elsewhere. To illustrate, if your pure 
 scientist were studying the housing situation in a given town, 
 he would start out perhaps without any hypotheses, tabulate 
 every salient fact as to every house, cast up long columns of 
 figures, and make careful deductions, which might and might 
 not be worth the paper they were written on. Your housing 
 reformer and your surveyor ought to know at the start what 
 good ventilation is, and what cellar dwellings are. These 
 things have been studied elsewhere, just as the medical pro- 
 fession has been studying hearts and lungs until they know 
 the signals which tell whether a man's organs are working 
 right or not, and what to look for in making a diagnosis. 
 
 In the third place, the survey takes from the engineer his 
 working conception of the structural relation of things. There 
 is a building element in surveys. When we look at a house, we 
 know that carpenters have had a good deal to do with it, and 
 it is possible to investigate just what the carpenters have done ; 
 also the bricklayers, the steam-fitters and the rest of the build- 
 ing trades. But your engineer, like your general contractor 
 and architect, has to do with the work of each of these crafts 
 in its relation to the work of every other. So it is with a sur- 
 vey, whether it deals with the major elements entering into 
 a given community which has structural parts or a given 
 master problem such as Dr. Palmer describes in his survey 
 of the sanitary conditions in Springfield. Only recently I 
 received a letter from a man engaged in making a general 
 social survey of a manufacturing town a so-called survey. 
 He did not think that it was truly a survey, nor did I, because 
 out of the scope of that investigation had been left all of the 
 labor conditions in the mills. The local committee had been 
 fearful of raising opposition in forceful quarters. Yet these 
 labor conditions were basic in the town's life; on them, for 
 better or worse, hung much of the community welfare; and 
 by ignoring them, the committee could deal with partial solu- 
 tions only. It was as if a diagnostician in making his exam- 
 
THE SPREAD OF THE SURVEY IDEA. 5 
 
 ination had left a patient's stomach out of consideration be- 
 cause the patient was a dyspeptic and irritable. They had 
 violated the structural integrity of their survey. 
 
 In the fourth place, the survey takes from the charity- 
 organization movement its case-toork mjethod of bringing 
 problems down to human terms. Death rates exemplify 
 human units in their barest essentials; but I have in mind a 
 more developed unit. Let me illustrate from the Pittsburgh 
 Survey in the painstaking figures we gathered of the house- 
 hold cost of sickness lost wages, doctor's bills, medicines, ice, 
 hospitals, funerals, the aftermath of an epidemic in lowered 
 vitality and lowered earnings, household by household not 
 in sweeping generalizations but in what Mr. Woods called 
 "piled-tip actualities." If I were to set one touchstone, more 
 than another, to differentiate the true survey from social 
 prospecting, it would be this case-work method. In employ- 
 ing it the surveyor, because of lack of means and time, must 
 often deal with samples rather than with the whole population 
 coming within the scope of his study. These samples may 
 be groups of school children ; or the people who die in a cer- 
 tain year; or those who live in a certain ward. The method 
 is one, of course, which is scientifically justifiable only so 
 long as those who employ it can defend their choice of the 
 sample chosen, and show where it does and does not represent 
 the entire group. 
 
 Under this head it is to be noted that the survey is in a 
 .field friendly to what we have come to call municipal research. 
 The latter is indebted for its methods of unit-costs and effi- 
 ciency to the accountants. These methods may be applied to 
 city budgets and city departments as an integral part of a 
 social survey, the distinction between the two movements 
 in practise being perhaps that the one is focused primarily on 
 governmental operations; the other on phenomena imbedded 
 in the common life of the people. 
 
 In the fifth place, the survey takes from the journalist 
 the idea of graphic portrayal, which begins with such familiar 
 tools of the surveyor as maps and charts and diagrams, and 
 reaches far through a scale in which photographs and enlarge- 
 ments, drawings, casts and three-dimension exhibits exploit 
 
6 ORGANIZATION FOR SOCIAL WORK. 
 
 all that the psychologists have to tell us of the advantages 
 which the eye holds over the ear as a means for communica- 
 tion. With these the survey links a sturdy effort to make its 
 findings have less in common with the boredom of official 
 reports than with the more engaging qualities of newspaper 
 "copy" especially that simplicity of structure, tangible frame- 
 work, and readability which American magazine men have 
 developed as their technique in writing for a democracy. 
 This is not a counsel, bear in mind, of flimsy sensationalism; 
 although those who have matters to conceal seek to confuse 
 the two. A startling article patched up from a few glints of 
 fact is a very different proposition from a crystal set in a 
 matrix of tested information. 
 
 Underlying this factor of graphic portrayal is the factor 
 of truth; truth plus publicity. It is often possible to work 
 out large and definite reforms internally, by getting a group of 
 forceful men around a table and convincing them that so and 
 so is the right thing to do. This is, I take it, a legitimate 
 method of philanthropic work and of social reform. But it is 
 not the method of a survey. The survey's method is one of 
 publicity ; it is another and separate implement for social ad- 
 vance, and its usefulness should not be negatived by a failure 
 to hold to its distinctive function. The philosophy of the sur- 
 vey is to set forth before the community all the facts that 
 bear on a problem, and to rely upon the common understand- 
 ing, the common forethought, the common purpose of all the 
 people as the first great resource to be drawn upon in working 
 that problem out. Thus conceived, the survey becomes a 
 distinctive and powerful implement of democracy. 
 
 With these five working principles in mind, how can the 
 survey idea be applied to the average community, how and on 
 what scale should its working scheme be launched? Here 
 there is already some experience upon which to draw. At one 
 extreme we have a superficial skimming of facts what we 
 call in the Middle West a lick-and-a-promise. Perhaps it is 
 limited to passing round and filling out schedules devised to fit 
 any city such as were used in many places in advance of the 
 Men and Religion campaign week. These were not without 
 value in throwing some facts of community life into relief 
 
THE SPREAD OF THE SURVEY IDEA. 7 
 
 and in showing where released energies might at once be ap- 
 plied; but the team leaders very properly did not call them 
 surveys, making them rather a basis for recommending the 
 larger work. They bear about the same relation to a survey 
 that the blanks which a mail-order tailoring establishment 
 sends out for self -measurement bear to a thorough-going phy- 
 sical examination. 
 
 At the other end of the scale we have the sort of a survey 
 which the Pittsburgh Survey, if we regard it as an experiment, 
 demonstrated can with staff and resources some day be made 
 in one of our first-class cities. The Pittsburgh Survey made a 
 quick diagnosis of perhaps twenty phases of life and labor in 
 the steel district on the basis of standards worked out else- 
 where; it brought these diagnoses together and studied some- 
 thing of the structural relation of the problems set forth ; but it 
 sank shafts of definite, consistent, active investigation in but 
 five or six fields and even there rigorous limitations had to be 
 set to the scope of the work. For example, we studied, case 
 by case, 500 families to see how they actually made shift when 
 the bread-winner was killed at his day's work. The super- 
 survey would not only gauge the chief factors entering into a 
 community ; gauge also their fabrication into its general work- 
 ing scheme; but would study the human bearings of every 
 factor as searchingly as we studied the economic reaction of 
 these industrial accidents. 
 
 Not a few of the elements in such a survey will ultimately 
 be carried out as part of the routine work of our governmental, 
 institutional and industrial organizations. This was illustrated 
 in the recommendation made by a stockholders' committee at 
 the recent meeting of the United States Steel Corporation. 
 The work which the Pittsburgh Survey put into gathering 
 elementary facts as to hours, wages and other labor conditions 
 in the Pittsburgh district exhausted a very considerable share 
 of our funds and energy. This stockholders' committee held 
 that in the same way that their corporation had taken the lead 
 in publishing extensive reports on its financial operations and 
 output, it should be its policy in the future to lay before stock- 
 holders and public the general facts as to labor conditions in 
 their mills. That, it seemed to me, was well-nigh revolution- 
 
8 ORGANIZATION FOR SOCIAL WORK. 
 
 ary. Similarly many of our city and state departments 
 health, labor, finance and education are putting out more 
 and more as part of their legitimate routine the salient facts 
 upon which public opinion can formulate working judgments. 
 
 If this were done generally, the survey, to my mind, 
 would still be an opportune instrument for social advance ; on 
 its civic side, in enabling us to see whether or not there are 
 great gaps in the frontage with which a community faces the 
 future, and on its scientific side, in measuring the human re- 
 action of various institutions, agencies and measures, which 
 are carried forward in the name of progress and which should 
 be tested and checked up from time to time. 
 
 But what we can discuss most profitably here is the sort 
 of undertaking which as things stand to-day a community, 
 ranging anywhere from ten thousand to half a million, can 
 take up, neither a skimping survey that does not get beneath 
 the surface, nor the comprehensive interlocking survey just 
 outlined which must needs require a large staff and resources. 
 What are we to recommend when a group of progressive peo- 
 ple in such a community come forward and say they want to 
 start a survey a group with only general notions as to the 
 things most seriously in need of inquiry in their locality, and 
 with slender funds which may grow only as the undertaking 
 shows its usefulness ? Two lines of action seem most promis- 
 ing. 
 
 The first of these is to recommend that they secure a man 
 of all-around experience in social work to come to their com- 
 jiiunity for a quick sizing up of things a report which will 
 enable them to see where the land lies and either base a 
 general social survey upon this report, or follow up intensively 
 one or more of the principal "leads" disclosed. 
 
 The second possible line of action is to start out with some 
 unit less than the general social problem of their city, with the 
 idea that work less spread-out and more exact will in the long 
 run lead farther. There are several ways in which this can 
 be done. One method is to take a given neighborhood, in the 
 way that the Buffalo survey took its Polish district. This 
 method has the advantage of focusing attention on a manage- 
 able area, where definite results (like the Buffalo playgrounds 
 
THE SPREAD OF THE SURVEY IDEA. 9 
 
 and evening schools for immigrants) can be reached while the 
 survey is in process. It has the disadvantage that it may tend 
 to confirm the impressions of squalor already held by polite 
 residents of a city as to some particular neighborhood, without 
 forcing in upon them the fact that a community is like a hu- 
 man being and none of its members can be sick without being 
 a drag on the whole ; without rousing the whole city to action, 
 or even, as in Buffalo, leading up to a general city survey. 
 A modification of this method was discussed in New Haven 
 the suggestion being to take a belt running through the town, 
 so as to be representative of good and bad conditions alike, 
 the well-to-do, the middling-to-do, and the poor. This plan has 
 imaginative values, a practical obstacle perhaps being the diffi- 
 culty in fitting existing sources of statistics to such a philan- 
 thropic gerrymander. Another method is to take a block and 
 study its people intensively in the matter of their social needs 
 and the resources of the city with respect to them, in much 
 the same way as (from the standpoint of racial composition 
 and social mind) Dr. Jones and Prof. Woolston have studied 
 given New York city blocks. Such a method would unques- 
 tionably supply an exceptional group of citizens with rare 
 insight as to the actual operations and values of much of our 
 social work. With this insight they could reach judgments 
 and execute reforms, but the plan would scarcely usher in that 
 self-consciousness which comes when a whole community sees 
 itself in the large, and which, to my mind, gives the commu- 
 nity survey its exceptional dynamic force. 
 
 In contrast to these methods, which consider fairly small 
 areas in their relation to a wide range of social needs, another 
 partial method is to take some one social problem and study 
 it in its bearings on the entire community such a problem as 
 recreation. This would cover not only a study of playgrounds 
 and play opportunities, but an examination of the city play 
 bill (nickleodeons, skating rinks, cheap shows, dance halls) as 
 was made by the Kansas City Board of Public Welfare, to see 
 how much fun was costing the people, how they could spend 
 less and get more, and how far commercialized amusements 
 should be supervised. It would cover the larger uses of school 
 houses, substitutes for saloons, the utilization of outdoors, 
 
io ORGANIZATION FOR SOCIAL WORK. 
 
 and the natural resources of wood and valley back from a city ; 
 the extent of leisure and the social effects of its compression 
 through over-work and Sunday labor; the money surplus for 
 recreation in household budgets ; and so on. 
 
 While local conditions, the agencies interested, the public 
 temper and the money available are considerations which must 
 be duly reckoned with, my feeling is that the first line of 
 approach described is the one which will serve most cities 
 best ; that is, the quick sizing up process to see how the land 
 lies and to plant what the civil engineers call "bench marks" 
 at points of vantage. For this work can be done on a scale to 
 fit any town's pocket-book, it embodies in a rudimentary way 
 the elements which we have seen are the essential methods of 
 a survey, and it gives perspective. The scientific farmer who 
 has his soils examined in taking up new land, the business man 
 who is used to inventories as a basis of planning for the year 
 ahead, the physician who is called on less frequently to doctor 
 fevers and set bones than to overhaul patients who are "all 
 run down," will not need to have the value of such a piece of 
 preliminary stock-taking argued out with them. A town with 
 ten thousand people can get a man with what you might call 
 a general practitioner's equipment in social work to spend half 
 a week there with fair prospect that his report will be some- 
 thing on which they can build. Superficial though it would 
 frankly be, it should bring the more easily recognizable needs 
 and opportunities in the town's life to the test of standards 
 worked out elsewhere which, as we have seen, is one of the 
 first and easiest tasks of a survey. It could scarcely fail to 
 show how health hangs on civic enterprise and in kindred 
 ways make average citizens see that things which they may 
 have regarded as unrelated are bound up in each other. It 
 would correspondingly show these things in proportion. The 
 sky-scraping pride with which a growing town points to an 
 atrocious six or ten-story block on its chief corner is not 
 energy any more misapplied than many a philanthropic enter- 
 prise, bred to suit city conditions, which the small town swal- 
 lows hoofs, hide and all. Such a report would gather up, if 
 rightly made, the progressive ideas held by local people who 
 have seen farther ahead than their neighbors ; and it would 
 
THE SPREAD OF THE SURVEY IDEA. n 
 
 have the force and that counts for a good deal in a growing 
 community of being heralded as the judgment of a "city ex- 
 pert," thereby gaining a hearing for things which local 
 prophets may have despaired of. Further, such a report, if 
 it sets a vision of what the town might be, tugs at the imagina- 
 tion of the people and loosens energies in many directions. 
 The same things hold true for a larger city the city of 
 twenty-five to fifty thousand which can employ such a prelim- 
 inary prospector for from a fortnight to six weeks ; or the 
 still larger city which can engage for this sizing-up process 
 a man of experience and all-around equipment with two or 
 three assistants, for a six months commission. Its alternative 
 would be to get experts in half a dozen of the major fields 
 of social concern to come on the ground for say a fortnight 
 each, relying upon a local committee to synthesize these special 
 reports into a general scheme of procedure. The Syracuse 
 survey illustrated these two methods somewhat in combina- 
 tion, for Mr. Harrison spent six weeks in his general work, 
 and various national and local bodies were successfully ap- 
 pealed to to carry on the field work along special lines. 
 
 Such a preliminary report once in hand, the community 
 small or large is in much more favorable position than at the 
 start to make constructive decisions. It may decide to carry 
 on any one of the inquiries which I enumerated earlier as pos- 
 sible lines of action, only with far larger chance of their being 
 done intelligently and with prospect of results for the whole 
 city. It may do what Rochester is doing that is, what might 
 be called a consecutive survey, organizing and calling on ex- 
 perts to take up first one phase of social concern and then 
 another. This is the sort of work done by the Pittsburgh Civic 
 Commission. It may focus its efforts on some district, and 
 there sink its inquiries into the structure of the common life. 
 This the Bureau of Social Research under Miss Goldmark 
 has done on a district scale on the upper west side of New 
 York, scrutinizing in a given neighborhood how courts and 
 charitable agencies, the departments of health and education 
 come in contact with the life of the people how they may be 
 turned from impersonal machines to intimate agencies within 
 reach of the average family. The community may focus its 
 
12 ORGANIZATION FOR SOCIAL WORK. 
 
 attention, on the other hand, on the co-ordination of govern- 
 mental activities and by means of municipal research, budget 
 exhibits and the like, make the public business take on new 
 efficiency and new meaning. 
 
 But for cities of from 25,000 to 250,000 population, the 
 simple and natural and, I believe, most promising result of the 
 preliminary survey, would be a systematic community survey 
 growing out of it, one with sufficient staff, sufficient time and 
 sufficient expenditures to make a thorough-going inventory of 
 the life and labor of the place, to seek out the wastes in its eco- 
 nomic and vital resources, to captivate and give constructive 
 content to its evanescent and often sorely exploited enthusi- 
 asms, and to lay a sure foundation of information on which 
 to plan and build for ten years ahead. 
 
 The scale on which such a permanent survey and by per- 
 manent I of course do not mean a perennial enterprise, but one 
 enduring in the foundation it lays should be undertaken, 
 would depend on the size and public spirit of the community. 
 But the survey movement has reached a point where we can 
 say with some degree of precision as I have undertaken to do 
 earlier in this paper what are the essential methods which 
 should enter into its work, and where we can say, with some 
 degree of conviction, that such a working scheme will have 
 practical and far-reaching results. 
 
 Right here, it may be well to interpolate two points as to 
 the civic investment which a community puts into a survey. 
 No town should be balked at launching one, under the im- 
 pression that it is a contraption suited only to a large city, or 
 one which only a great philanthropic foundation can afford. I 
 have indicated how a small town can make a start at modest 
 expense ; and Dr. Palmer describes the wide range of sanitary 
 investigations which he carried out as commissioner of public 
 health of Springfield, Illinois, in co-operation with local people 
 and at almost no extra cost to the city. With a superintendent 
 of schools as far-sighted and resourceful as this health com- 
 missioner, a judge who would look at jails, police and legal 
 processes with what the Wisconsin supreme court calls twen- 
 tieth-century eyes, an engineer with ingenuity and vision, and 
 with other volunteers and officials of like caliber, men with 
 
THE SPREAD OF THE SURVEY IDEA. 13 
 
 social viewpoint and with some acquaintance with other cities, 
 men giving their leisure and to some extent their working 
 hours to the plan, you would have a local staff for a rounded 
 community survey. They could carry it out as a piece of good 
 citizenship on a level which would command national atten- 
 tion and respect, and which would set a new gauge for civic 
 patriotism. On the other hand, consider a city with say a 
 cigar-store keeper as health commissioner, without any health 
 reports, and with acrid resistance on the part of the dominant 
 political machine to any probing of its health service. The 
 process of surveying in such a backward city is a very differ- 
 ent matter; so also is the cost of bringing onto the ground a 
 sanitarian of Dr. Palmer's breadth of outlook, gained from 
 his work in the state and city public health service; and then 
 keeping him there long enough to get a thorough grasp of the 
 sanitary situation, and to gather data sufficient to carry the 
 town with him. 
 
 And here we are close to the fact that while many of the 
 more obvious social conditions can be brought to light by lay- 
 men, the reach of social surveying depends on those qualities 
 which we associate with the expert in every profession ; knowl- 
 edge of the why of sanitary technique, for example, and of the 
 how by which other cities have wrought out this reform and 
 that. And townsmen who would think nothing of paying the 
 county engineer a sizable fee to run a line for a fence bound- 
 ary must be educated up to the point where they will see the 
 economy of investing in trained service in social and civic up- 
 building. Unscientific acquaintance with what other cities are 
 doing may lead only to duplicating their mistakes ; untraveled 
 advice may, on the other hand, lead only to finding out slowly 
 and at bitter cost what has elsewhere been demonstrated. 
 Ignorance of the facts that lie concealed in an unresolved mass 
 of local statistics is only less costly, humanly speaking, than 
 the too ready acceptance of notions which hearty but ignorant 
 handling can shake out of the same statistics. 
 
 My second point as to the civic investment in a survey is 
 that it pays not only for a city to get at its underlying facts 
 but to get those facts out into the open. There is no older 
 subterfuge than to beat the drums of local pride and charge 
 
i 4 ORGANIZATION FOR SOCIAL WORK. 
 
 that the leaders who are overhauling bad conditions are injur- 
 ing the fair name of a city. This charge finds customary ex- 
 pression in the rumor that manufacturing enterprises will 
 keep away if they learn that the schools are poor, the council 
 is full of graft, or the water is infected; and that one who 
 advertises these things by rousing the public to reform is the 
 town traitor. Yet the city of the Southwest that, as a gala 
 day approached, put up a high board fence so that you could 
 not see the shacks that at one point lined its principal thor- 
 oughfare, may have fooled the distinguished visitor who was 
 driven past, but it could not fool the manufacturer who is look- 
 ing for a new site; still less and this is equally important 
 from the standpoint of local interests could it fool intelligent 
 workmen who are looking for a town in which to bring up 
 their families. I have known of an enterprise that refused to 
 settle in a city because it would not bribe the aldermen for a 
 side track (perhaps the first of a long series of petty hold-ups) 
 and of another that refused to settle where skilled mechanics 
 could not find the sort of living conditions and recreation they 
 were accustomed to. It could not get its men to come along. 
 When such decisions hang in the balance I fancy one factor 
 that counts in Worcester's favor is the fight of its manufac- 
 turers against tuberculosis, in Pittsburgh's favor is the great 
 filtration plant with which the city has downed typhoid, in 
 Cleveland's favor is the civic campaigns of its Chamber of 
 Commerce. All these things stand for enterprise. They are 
 upbuilding of the sort which means first of all getting down 
 to bed rock; and that is the sort of investment which a city 
 puts into a survey. 
 
 Convinced as I am, however, that a survey is "good busi- 
 ness" in the long run from the standpoint of a city's prosperity, 
 it has a broader appeal. It is one of the channels open to the 
 aroused social conscience of our generation. In the govern- 
 mental field we have two strong movements one towards 
 greater efficiency; the other toward greater democracy. The 
 first is reflected nationally by the President's Commission on 
 Efficiency and Economy; the second finds expression in the 
 Western insurgent movement which through the initiative, 
 referendum and recall, seeks to bring the legislative "say" 
 
THE SPREAD OF THE SURVEY IDEA. 15 
 
 back to the people. If we were to personify the first move- 
 ment, it would be to give it the character of the expert; the 
 second, the character of the average citizen. And in the gen- 
 eral trend, we have the expert and the average man coming to- 
 gether; and jointly challenging the frontage which existing in- 
 stitutions, professions and organized forces bear toward the 
 needs of the times. 
 
 They challenge the church, the school, the city council, 
 the court, the mill, in the name of the mighty industrial 
 changes which have put new strains on old institutions ; in the 
 name of science, which has opened new possibilities and new 
 hopes ; and in the name of the common welfare which is strik- 
 ing a fairer balance between property and life. 
 
 For many existing conditions we have only ourselves to 
 blame; but in changing them, we have to overcome the re- 
 sistance of those whose scheme of service to the community 
 has grown up with the old conditions. Dr. Palmer illustrates 
 this in what he says of the milk supply. Let us look at the 
 milkman as a factor in the community life an institution if 
 you will. In the past we may have officially asked of him a 
 certain grade of butter-fat in his milk, but that is a dairyman's 
 standard, worked out in the cheese and butter trade. We have 
 demanded a collar of cream as a sign of richness the unin- 
 formed milk-drinker's notion of protecting himself against 
 watered milk. But we are only beginning to demand what the 
 dietitians and physicians are showing us is more important 
 than either of these, namely, clean milk clean milk, rendered 
 more difficult to obtain by the very dirt and congestion of our 
 new urban conditions ; rendered vital by the laboratory dis- 
 coveries of the last twenty years in bacterial diseases ; ren- 
 dered possible by our advances in methods of sterilization; 
 rendered an issue among the people at large, by the demon- 
 strable effect of dirty milk upon the health of thousands of 
 babies a human test, this last, such as enables the average 
 mother and the expert sanitarian to join forces in a campaign 
 to clean up stables and milk routes, and to put an end to dirty 
 cans and tuberculous cows. I need not show how through all 
 this runs the three-fold challenge in the name of mighty in- 
 dustrial changes, of scientific advance and of the common 
 welfare. 
 
16 ORGANIZATION FOR SOCIAL WORK. 
 
 That challenge is one repeated over and over again in the 
 fields of social concern. It does not require a very wide 
 stretch of the imagination to apply the same analysis to the 
 Titanic disaster. Compare the commercial demand for speed 
 and capacity in ocean liners with the commercial demand for 
 butter fat. Compare the blind popular demand for luxuries in 
 cabins with the blind popular demand for a thick collar of 
 cream. Life boats are like clean milk. Safety is a human 
 rather than a commercial standard. Some naval experts have 
 been preaching it for years, but their judgments have fallen 
 on deaf ears. Now the average man at last sees ; and (in high 
 rage) he is calling for a change. Those responsible for ocean 
 vessels are charged to make safety keep pace with the great 
 structural changes in the shipping industry; to apply science 
 to human well-being, as well as to speed. 
 
 In many of these deep-seated social needs, apparently 
 some great disaster has to overtake us, and smite us, before 
 as a people we are aroused to them, and half-blindly, often 
 wholly unthinking of our own responsibility, demand immedi- 
 ate reform. This is so whether it is a dam which gives way 
 like Austin; or a theatre which burns like the Iroquois; or a 
 blazing schoolhouse full of children like that at Cleveland; or 
 a loft building like the Triangle. Coupled with this very 
 human tendency is another, equally human. For while it takes 
 one of these great disasters to drive the lesson home, we are 
 faced with the fact that the feeling of exasperation and pur- 
 pose, the "conscience-smittenness" of the community, more of- 
 ten than not fritters away before it accomplishes anything. 
 Thus a year has already elapsed since the lives of 146 working 
 people were snuffed out in the Triangle disaster in New York, 
 and while public indignation has vented itself in mass meetings 
 and safety committees, in investigating commissions and fire 
 bills, there has been no action within the intervening twelve 
 months which would thoroughly prevent the recurrence of 
 such a panic fire and no sure provision which would get the 
 people out, any more than the Titanic's meager life-boat equip- 
 ment was enough to float the two cabins, the crew and the 
 steerage, when the great boat sank. Had a modern shipload 
 of passengers in New York harbor ever gone through the 
 
THE SPREAD OF THE SURVEY IDEA. 17 
 
 motions of getting into the life boats and away, the safety 
 equipment of our ocean liners would have been put to a human 
 test. That test would have borne out what the naval experts 
 had been saying, and would have demonstrated it so thrillingly 
 that not only the people who were left behind on deck would 
 have seen their own helplessness, but average citizens every- 
 where would have been alive to what safety means in ocean 
 travel. 
 
 To visualize needs which are not so spectacular but are 
 no less real, is the work of the survey to bring them to 
 human terms, to put the operations of the government, of 
 social institutions and of industrial establishments to the test 
 of individual lives, to bring the knowledge and inventions of 
 scientists and experts home to the common imagination, and 
 to gain for their proposals the dynamic backing of a convinced 
 democracy. 
 
 The survey cannot count upon a catastrophe to point its 
 morals. The public interest it creates comes harder but has 
 better staying qualities. In so far as it must lay a framework 
 for setting forth the wide range of needs and opportunities 
 which fall within its field, so it has inherent the prospect of 
 a more sustained and organic accomplishment. 
 
A Social Survey of a Typical American City 1 
 
 SHELBY M. HARRISON. 
 Director of the Syracuse Social Survey. 
 
 JUST as cities or communities differ, so will city or commu- 
 nity surveys be different. Any set method for this kind 
 of inventory-taking, intended for general application, 
 must after all be largely suggestive, leaving wide latitude for 
 shifting the emphasis according as conditions vary from city 
 to city. Not with the thought, therefore, that the recent pre- 
 liminary social survey of the city of Syracuse, New York, 
 presents an inclusive plan for city surveying nor that it is a 
 sample of what a full-fledged city survey ought to be; but, 
 rather, that it may carry some suggestion for organizing and 
 defining a city survey and be an illustrative instance of what 
 one city did toward securing a program of "next-steps" in its 
 civic and social development, that undertaking is recounted. 
 
 About a year ago several citizens of Syracuse, among 
 them Rev. Murray S. Howland and Paul E. Illman, became 
 convinced that the rapid growth of the city in the last decade, 
 with its consequent changes in social relationships, had 
 brought new problems calling for new diagnosis and treat- 
 ment, and that the time had come for at least a preliminary 
 stock-taking of local conditions affecting the life, health and 
 progress of the city's 150,000 people. This purpose became 
 specific along at least two lines : first, to gather sufficient data 
 on points which seemed to call for immediate action so that 
 definite constructive recommendations could be made; and 
 second, to make a sufficient diagnosis of general conditions so 
 as to determine whether and along what lines a later, more 
 intensive survey should be carried on. 
 
 In order to give the enterprise strong and wide local back- 
 ing, the support of the four large organizations in the city 
 which themselves were federations of other organizations was 
 sought and secured, namely, the Ministerial Association, which 
 
 1 Read at the meeting of the Academy of Political Science, April 18, 1912 
 
SURVEY OF A TYPICAL AMERICAN CITY. 19 
 
 includes something over a hundred churches ; the Chamber of 
 Commerce, which represents employers and industrial and 
 commercial organizations ; the Central Trades Assembly, 
 which represents all the labor unions of the city; and the 
 Associated Charities, which represents to some extent the 
 relief agencies. The Chamber of Commerce subscribed two- 
 fifths of the estimated expenses of the survey, and each of the 
 other three organizations guaranteed one-fifth. Each organ- 
 ization chose three representatives on a central survey com- 
 mittee of twelve, and gave the committee full power to go 
 ahead with the survey. The committee included some of the 
 most influential men in the city. Representing, as it did, forces 
 that are not always in accord in city life, the committee de- 
 veloped into a very remarkable working group so remarkable, 
 in fact, that people outside the group were unwilling to see it 
 broken up after it had completed the immediate work to which 
 it was committed. 
 
 A director from outside the city was secured to carry the 
 social inventory as far as seemed practicable in five weeks ; and 
 several sub-committees were appointed to gather general in- 
 formation which would be of use to the investigators includ- 
 ing city and county reports for a number of years back ; special 
 reports published by the chamber of commerce, the board of 
 education, the academy of medicine and other organizations : 
 population figures ; maps ; city ordinances ; and so on. The 
 director spent most of his first week in company with some 
 member or members of the central committee, interviewing 
 city officials, business men, labor leaders, clergymen, teachers, 
 social workers, physicians and others familiar with social con- 
 ditions. The purpose of the interviews was to become satu- 
 rated with the main facts of the community, especially those 
 which indicated, from many points of view, improvements 
 made in the last ten or fifteen years, and improvements also 
 from many points of view that were thought to be needed in 
 the next few years ahead. With these facts digested the cen- 
 tral committee picked out the main lines of inquiry to be 
 followed. They were, in broad terms : 
 
 T. Health conservation and sanitation. 
 
 2. Housing conditions among unskilled workers. 
 
20 ORGANIZATION FOR SOCIAL WORK. 
 
 3. The betterment agencies of the city. 
 
 4. Foreign populations. 
 
 5. Juvenile delinquency. 
 
 6. Civic improvement. 
 
 7. Labor conditions. 
 
 Certain phases of municipal accounting, public finance and 
 local taxation, would have been included in the survey, but for 
 the fact that one member of the central committee had already 
 set on foot plans for handling such an investigation in another 
 way. This investigation has since been made by experts from 
 the New York Bureau of Municipal Research ; and interest in 
 it had undoubtedly been enhanced by the social and civic re- 
 vival which citizens are free to credit as one of the results of 
 the social survey. 
 
 All of these subjects chosen presented phases of such cur- 
 rent importance that the committee wished them followed fur- 
 ther; yet it was evident that each subject, to be covered ade- 
 quately, would require the investigator's time for more than 
 the remaining four weks. A request was therefore made to 
 several state and national organizations, which sooner or later 
 would be conducting investigations of their own in Syracuse, 
 to send their representatives at once. They would thus co- 
 operate with the survey, and on the other hand they would 
 gain for their own work through the strong local backing 
 afforded in the central survey committee. A number of 
 organizations responded immediately, among them the New 
 York Child Labor Committee, the North American Civic 
 League for Immigrants, the National Housing Association, 
 the National Consumers' League and the National Prison 
 Labor Committee. In addition to this outside co-operation a 
 score of Syracuse people volunteered their services as a per- 
 sonal contribution to the survey among them a young physi- 
 cian, who made the study of the city's vital statistics ; a young 
 rabbi, who prepared a statement of playground equipment and 
 needs ; the secretary of the associated charities, who took 
 charge of the housing investigation ; an official of the city sew- 
 erage commission, who prepared a summary of the sewerage 
 situation; the probation officers, who studied juvenile delin- 
 quency ; a young lawyer, who gathered data on relief work in 
 
SURVEY OF A TYPICAL AMERICAN CITY. 21 
 
 the city; students in a sociology class in the university, who 
 aided in the investigation of child labor in the street trades; 
 and others who made maps and charts, arranged exhibits, 
 offered prizes or acted as judges. The liberal co-operation of 
 the newspapers was invaluable. 
 
 A work-program indicating data to be gathered on each 
 major subject was worked out by the different investigators 
 and the survey director; and the latter spent the remainder 
 of his time investigating several phases of labor conditions. As 
 already indicated, the reports were not expected to be analyses 
 of many or all sides of the subjects inquired into; they were to 
 take up only those matters which seemed to call for immediate 
 action or which pointed the need for more extended study. 
 The outlines of facts to be looked for, however, covered a range 
 wide enough to allow the different investigators some degree 
 of latitude in deciding, as they got deeper into the fact-gather- 
 ing, what matters should be given special scrutiny. Several 
 of the work-programs follow : 
 
 A. HEALTH AND ITS CONSERVATION. 
 
 I. Vital statistics 
 
 a. General death rates for 1907-08-09-10-11; and aver- 
 age death rates for five-year periods running back twenty 
 years; infant death rates, same period. 
 
 b. Distribution of deaths by wards, for 1910. 
 
 c. Population by age and sex in each ward, in 1910. 
 
 d. Deaths from the more prevalent diseases for the last 
 ten years, especially contagious and preventable diseases such 
 as typhoid, tuberculosis, diarrhea and enteritis (under one and 
 under five years of age), and pneumonia. 
 
 e. Case rates of the diseases more prevalent locally for 
 the last ten years especially contagious and preventable dis- 
 eases, such as diphtheria, typhoid, measles, scarlet fever, 
 tuberculosis. 
 
 f . Births : reporting of ; still births ; birth rates com- 
 pared with other cities of similar size and population make-up. 
 
22 ORGANIZATION FOR SOCIAL WORK. 
 
 II. Health administration 
 
 a. Effect of administering health work through a su- 
 bordinate bureau of the department of public safety, instead 
 of through a department of health; adequacy or inadequacy 
 of health appropriations. 
 
 b. Educational work for health ; any special needs ; op- 
 portunities for increasing educational work as shown by work 
 done in other cities. 
 
 c. Organized work against venereal diseases; its chief 
 needs ; work done by Syracuse Society for Prevention of 
 Social Diseases. 
 
 d. Quarantine practise in less serious contagious dis- 
 eases. 
 
 e. Medical inspection of schools; how adequate? In all 
 schools? How financed? 
 
 III. Food inspection 
 
 a. Meat, fruit, fish. 
 
 a. Screening from flies. 
 
 c. Milk supply; analysis of bacteriological count from 
 January i to July i, 1911; percentage of producers whose 
 milk was above the maximum bacterial count; method of en- 
 forcing the milk rule ; any licenses revoked ; analysis of cream 
 count; need of better publicity work on milk and cream scor- 
 ing. 
 
 IV. Water supply 
 
 a. Source of general supply; water sheds; cost. 
 
 b. Surface wells ; springs. 
 
 V. Sewerage system 
 
 a. Houses connected; open privy vaults not connected 
 with sewers. 
 
 b. Location of sewer outlets. 
 
 VI. Garbage disposal 
 
 a. Cost ; method. 
 
 b. Location of plants. 
 
 c. Method of collection of garbage. 
 
SURVEY OF A TYPICAL AMERICAN CITY. 23 
 
 B. HOUSING OF THE UNSKILLED WORKERS. 
 
 I. A close study of six typical districts where the unskilled 
 
 workers live. 
 
 a. Apartment buildings : number separate apartments ; 
 material ; stories ; repair ; halls ; fire escapes ; basements. 
 
 b. Family apartments in the buildings (facts relating to 
 individual apartments rather than the whole building of which 
 each apartment is a part) : number of rooms ; number of fam- 
 ilies ; number of adults, children and boarders ; cleanliness ; 
 light ; ventilation ; plumbing. 
 
 c. Water supply: location; number of persons per tap; 
 bath ; drainage. 
 
 d. Yards : area ; cleanliness ; live stock ; alley ; garbage ; 
 rubbish. 
 
 e. Toilets : inside ; outside ; cleanliness ; number using ; 
 sewer connection. 
 
 f. Rent. 
 
 II. Similar close study of a few old tenement houses. 
 
 III. Similar study of a few new apartment and tenement 
 
 houses 
 
 To see whether the new ones are conforming to accepted 
 principles of good housing, or whether they are making the 
 same mistakes as those made in the old tenements. 
 
 IV. Lodging houses 
 
 Number ; rooms ; beds ; air-space per bed ; charges for 
 lodging. 
 
 V. A census of the number of open privy vaults, by wards, 
 
 throughout the city. 
 
 C. FOREIGN POPULATION. 
 
 I. Statistics of foreign populations 
 
 a. Total number of foreigners ; number by nationalities. 
 
 b. Number, by sex and age groups. 
 
 c. Number of families. 
 
24 ORGANIZATION FOR SOCIAL WORK. 
 
 d. Number of immigrants by nationalities, admitted to 
 New York state during 1909-1910. 
 
 e. Sex and ages of same. 
 
 f. Illiteracy of those 14 years old and over. 
 
 g. Number of immigrants, by nationalities, who arrived 
 in Syracuse during 1909-1910. 
 
 h. Number, by nationalities, in hospitals, 
 i. Number in prison. 
 
 j. Number in almshouses ; number applying for relief 
 and charity. 
 
 II. Neighborhoods 
 
 a. Map showing foreign quarters, by nationalities. 
 
 III. Housing and lodging conditions (made in conjunction 
 
 with general housing study) 
 
 a. Kind of lodging. 
 
 b. Study of a few old tenements in each neighborhood. 
 
 c. Number of persons in each house. 
 
 d. Number of lodgers and families. 
 
 e. Number of persons and beds in each room. 
 
 f. List of lodging houses and number of immigrant 
 lodgers in each place. 
 
 IV. Industrial opportunities 
 
 a. Industries employing foreigners. 
 
 b. Number, by nationalities, in each industry. 
 
 c. Methods of obtaining work. 
 
 d. Hours of work, in general. 
 
 e. Days per week. 
 
 f . Any night work. 
 
 g. Industries continuous through year, 
 h. Days worked yearly and quarterly. 
 
 i. Estimated average yearly wages for both skilled and 
 unskilled workers. 
 
 V. Economic conditions 
 
 a. Amount of money transmitted to different countries 
 
SURVEY OF A TYPICAL AMERICAN CITY. 25 
 
 during 1909-1910 by post-office money orders; drafts on for- 
 eign banks; express orders. 
 
 b. Number of local foreign bankers. 
 
 c. Number of steamship ticket agents. 
 
 d. Any need for postal savings banks? 
 
 e. Number of immigrants that own houses. 
 
 VI. Educational opportunities 
 
 a. Number and location of public schools ; of evening 
 classes ; of private schools. 
 
 b. Number of adults and children, by nationalities, at- 
 tending evening schools. 
 
 VII. Naturalization 
 
 a. Number of applicants for first papers, by nationalities, 
 for the last five years. 
 
 b. Applicants for final papers, by nationalities, for the 
 last five years. 
 
 c. Number of final papers issued. 
 
 d. Final papers denied. 
 
 e. Final papers still pending. 
 
 f. Number of naturalized citizens who voted at last few 
 elections. 
 
 VIII. Courts 
 
 a. Number of arrests and convictions, by ages and na- 
 tionalities. 
 
 b. Juvenile delinquency. 
 
 c. Interpreters in court. 
 
 d. Shyster lawyers. 
 
 e. Any legal aid societies. 
 
 f. Action in accident cases. 
 
 g. Ambulance chasers. 
 
 IX. Social agencies for betterment, protection and relief. 
 
 a. Foreign societies. 
 
 b. Labor unions among foreigners. 
 
 c. Civic clubs among foreigners. 
 
26 ORGANIZATION FOR SOCIAL WORK. 
 
 d. Settlements. 
 
 e. Playgrounds accessible to immigrants. 
 
 f. Public baths. 
 
 g. Consuls or consular agents, 
 h. Handicap of foreign women. 
 
 i. Notaries public, midwives and doctors, among for- 
 eigners. 
 
 D. JUVENILE DELINQUENCY. 
 
 I. An analysis of cases of juvenile delinquency, by wards 
 
 and blocks, throughout the city. 
 
 Its relation to the congestion of population and the lack of 
 open spaces where children may play. 
 
 II. Nature of offenses 
 
 a. Proportion that are offenses against the person ; pro- 
 portion offenses against property. 
 
 b. Locality in which offenses against property predomi- 
 nate over offenses against person, and vice versa. 
 
 c. Similarly, by nationalities. 
 
 d. Proportion that are first offenders ; proportion re- 
 peaters. 
 
 III. Individual conditions 
 
 a. Age of largest proportion of offenders of both sexes. 
 
 b. Physical condition stature and weight; diseased? 
 
 c. Mental condition : proportions bright, dull, defective, 
 fearless, venturesome. 
 
 IV. Social environment 
 
 a. Parental condition: proportion with both parents liv- 
 ing; proportion fatherless, motherless, orphans, illegitimates. 
 
 b. Condition of home : regular employment ; kind of em- 
 ployment. 
 
 V. Conclusions 
 
 Remedial agencies needed; playgrounds, boys' club, 
 library extension? 
 
SURVEY OF A TYPICAL AMERICAN CITY. 27 
 
 E. LABOR CONDITIONS, GENERAL. 
 
 I. Wages of men and women in industry 
 
 a. Weekly earnings ; skilled or unskilled, by trades. 
 
 b. Annual earnings. 
 
 c. Day labor or piece work, by industries. 
 
 d. Increases in pay in last 15 years. 
 
 e. Extra pay for overtime work. 
 
 f. Recent changes in hours per day affecting wages. 
 
 g. "Speeding" tendencies, if any. 
 
 II. Hours of labor 
 
 a. Hours per day ; Saturday hours. 
 
 b. Days per week any seven-day labor ? 
 
 c. Extra time work. 
 
 d. Day work or night work. 
 
 e. Industry continuous through year. Days worked in 
 year. 
 
 f. How long in the industry. 
 
 III. Conditions of labor 
 
 a. Sanitary conditions of plant ventilation. 
 
 b. Occupational diseases. 
 
 c. Industrial accidents : safety devices ; settlements for 
 injury or death. 
 
 IV. Organization of labor and capital. 
 
 a. Trade unions. 
 
 b. Union of employers. 
 
 c. Protective agencies : insurance ; hospitals ; societies ; 
 legal aid. 
 
 d. Avenues of expression regarding work conditions. 
 
 V. Individual and home conditions 
 
 a. Married; any children; keep boarders; other mem- 
 bers of family work ; own home ? 
 
 b. Support self. 
 
 c. Save any money? 
 
28 ORGANIZATION FOR SOCIAL WORK. 
 
 d. Leisure for reading or recreation. 
 
 e. Sanitary conditions of home surroundings. 
 
 VI. Any recent serious labor troubles ; strikes, lockouts. 
 
 F. CHILD LABOR. 
 
 I. Thoroughness of inspection 
 
 a. Number of children granted work certificates, by na- 
 tionalities. 
 
 b. Number found by inspectors. 
 
 c. Number not found. 
 
 d. Number of inspectors. 
 
 II. Newsboys 
 
 a. Age classification. 
 
 b. Violators of the law. 
 
 c. Earnings. 
 
 d. Character of school work done by newsboys. 
 
 e. Newsboys in juvenile court. 
 
 f. Newsboys and truant school. 
 
 III. Issuance and regulation of working papers 
 
 IV. Summer child workers 
 
 a. Number missing more than one week of school. 
 
 b. Average time missed. 
 
 c. Effect on scholarship. 
 
 V. Night messenger law 
 
 VI. Hours, pay, regulation, among child workers 
 
 a. Bootblacks. 
 
 b. Pin boys in bowling alleys. 
 
 c. Morning paper carriers. 
 
 d. Child workers in home industry. 
 
 The outline on betterment agencies laid special emphasis 
 upon the investment in equipment, the cost of relief work, and 
 the social responsibility felt by church, school, university, 
 hospital, Christian associations and settlements ; and the out- 
 
SURVEY OF A TYPICAL AMERICAN CITY. 29 
 
 line on civic improvement covered the need of a city plan, 
 directions of the city's growth, recreation needs, park and 
 playground facilities, the elimination erf grade crossings and 
 the improvement of water fronts. 
 
 As the investigations progressed the mass of data collected 
 began to show cleavages along certain clear-cut lines; and by 
 autumn after the several reports were drafted the central com- 
 mittee was able to put its finger upon what it had reason to 
 believe to be the weak spots in local civic and social conditions. 
 
 In order to give the findings of the survey wide local pub- 
 licity the central committee determined to have a Know-Your- 
 City-Week last November. The week started off with forty 
 ministers preaching sermons, on Sunday morning, on the civic 
 responsibilities of citizenship. On Monday exercises were held 
 in the public schools, the main feature being the reading of 
 prize essays written by the children of the schools on "How to 
 Make Syracuse a Better City." Over 1000 essays were written 
 and the dominant note struck in the essays indicated that the 
 children had caught the point that a better city involves not only 
 greater business prosperity but the betterment of living and 
 work conditions ; in other words, that emphasis upon human 
 welfare, whether through better sanitation and public health 
 regulations, better houses to live in, safer places to work in, 
 or greater opportunities for self -improvement, is of prime im- 
 portance in city advance. The survey committee regarded 
 the essay contest as one of the best achievements of the whole 
 enterprise. On the other afternoons throughout the week, 
 conferences on concrete local problems were held in one of the 
 chambers of the county court house. In the main, the subjects 
 were closely related to those discussed at the respective evening 
 meetings ; and the discussions were led and participated in by 
 representative citizens, upon the shoulders of many of whom 
 the work of carrying out reform measures advocated by the 
 committee would undoubtedly fall. 
 
 At the evening mass meetings, which were attended by an 
 average of 500 persons per night, the survey reports were read 
 from the platform ; and speakers from out of the city pointed 
 the moral of local findings from the vantage point of a national 
 perspective. One of these meetings, the one which probably 
 
3 o ORGANIZATION FOR SOCIAL WORK. 
 
 involved the greatest outlay of both time and money, was com- 
 pletely taken charge of by the physicians of the local Academy 
 of Medicine. The larger audience reached, of course, was 
 through the medium of the newspapers, which co-operated 
 thoroughly. Several of the reports were reproduced in full by 
 the press. Further publicity for the facts was gained through 
 the exhibit of maps, charts, and diagrams showing graphically 
 the kernel of each report. The exhibit occupied sixty feet of 
 window space of a retail store on one of the most prominen f 
 street corners in the city. 
 
 With reports in hand the central committee formulated 
 seven resolutions as a preliminary working program for the 
 city, which would not be partisan, sectarian or sectional, but 
 would aim at healthy industrial and social growth. In an 
 eighth resolution the committee sent back to the bodies which 
 created it, and which it jointly represented, a recommendation 
 that they take action to see that the program is entered upon. 
 The resolutions are as follows : 
 
 First, that the mayor and common council be urged to 
 establish a city-planning and housing commission to secure a 
 plan for the city's growth and development, and draw up a 
 housing code such as would meet the needs of the city for 
 some time to come. 
 
 Second, that the board of education be petitioned to con- 
 sider and adopt a far-reaching plan for the education of the 
 foreign population of the city by a larger provision of night 
 schools, by the introduction of civics and industrial courses in 
 night schools and by the extension of vocational training to 
 the grades. 
 
 Third, that the police and school departments be petitioned 
 to enforce the child-labor laws relative to the street trades. 
 
 Fourth, that the board of health be petitioned to provide : 
 
 (a) For the inspection of mercantile establishments and 
 for the enforcement of those provisions relating to child labor, 
 hours of work of women, and sanitary conditions under which 
 such people work. 
 
 (b) For the publishing monthly of the milk score of all 
 milk producers whose milk is sold in the city. 
 
SURVEY OF A TYPICAL AMERICAN CITY. 31 
 
 (c) For more rigid inspection of tenements. 
 
 (d) For the engagement by the city of the services of 
 some sanitarian of national standing to study and report on the 
 needs of the public health of Syracuse, as a basis for planning 
 future health work. 
 
 Fifth, that the employers engaged in such industries as 
 require the plant to be in continuous operation be urged to 
 make such adjustments as to assure every laborer one day of 
 rest in seven. 
 
 Sixth, that there should be among the betterment agencies 
 of the city a closer co-operation expressed in some system, such 
 as a united charities, a social-service league or an associated 
 charities organized on broader lines than those in existence at 
 present. 
 
 Seventh, that the city at large have some organization to 
 study the needs and development of the city and to crystallize 
 the findings of such studies in some yearly program such as 
 this Know-Your-City-Week. 
 
 Eighth, that to accomplish this end the central survey com- 
 mittee recommend to the respective bodies represented in the 
 committee the formation of a comprehensive and democratic 
 body to study the problems and promote the adoption of the 
 reforms suggested by the survey. 
 
 In the few months since the resolutions were adopted, the 
 central committee has succeeded in getting local organizations 
 of one kind and another to back up nearly all of the resolutions 
 and to carry on a definite campaign for the changes advocated 
 in them. Several of these campaigns have already succeeded 
 and the success of others is believed by the committee to be 
 sure. A few of the results may be enumerated: 
 
 The mayor has publicly promised to appoint a city-plan- 
 ning and housing commission. In the meantime a volunteer 
 city-plan commission is at work. A committee of the board 
 of education and a volunteer committee are at work gathering 
 information from all over the country as to effective school 
 work for foreigners. The police are thoroughly enforcing laws 
 regulating the work of newsboys. The bureau of health has 
 of its own accord invited a trained sanitarian to the city to go 
 
3 2 ORGANIZATION FOR SOCIAL WORK. 
 
 over its work and to make suggestions, and those who have 
 been watching the milk scores state that they have shown 
 marked improvement this winter over a year ago. A federa- 
 tion of all betterment agencies in the city is being formed with 
 enthusiastic general co-operation. A further survey, by ex- 
 perts from the New York Bureau of Municipal Research, as 
 already noted, has been made, and it is planned that other in- 
 vestigations shall be carried on by the new federation. One 
 more or less intangible but nevertheless very real and import- 
 ant result is the awakened interest of citizens in civic and 
 social affairs of the city. 
 
 This has been accomplished at a total money outlay 
 amounting to only a little above $1100 the investigations cost- 
 ing about $500 and the publicity work about $600. 
 
A Sanitary and Health Survey 1 
 
 GEORGE THOMAS PALMER, M. D. 
 
 Springfield, Illinois. 
 
 ON account of the gratifying results in public health work 
 during the past few years, and on account of the popu- 
 lar interest born of the realization of our ability 
 actually to reduce morbidity and increase the span of life, it is 
 easier to bring about public health reform in an American 
 municipality than to secure any other kind of civic improve- 
 ment. 
 
 Jealous as they are of personal liberty, the people have 
 come to recognize that they must submit to a certain amount of 
 inconvenience and even to scrutiny and investigation of their 
 lives and personal affairs in the interest of the health of the 
 community. The business man who is not in sympathy with 
 many social reforms appreciates the practical utility of sanitary 
 and public health supervision. 
 
 We have ceased to question the right of health authorities 
 to extend their operations even far beyond the letter of the 
 law, while opposition to private agencies working for sanitary 
 betterment, even when accompanied by wide publicity of 
 unenviable civic conditions, is usually inconsiderable. The 
 intelligent portion of the community is fully capable of appre- 
 ciating the benefits to be derived from such activities. 
 
 Hence, the sanitary survey may often be employed as an 
 entering wedge in general civic betterment, leading naturally to 
 increased interest in those other agencies for improvement 
 which extend more intimately into the moral and social lives of 
 the people, but all of which are more or less associated with 
 public health work. 
 
 It is on this account, in my opinion, that the sanitary sur- 
 vey is the most important phase of general survey work just 
 at this time, when municipalities are but beginning to recog- 
 inze the value of systematic study of their underlying condi- 
 tions. 
 
 ] Read at the meeting of the Academy of Political Science, April 18, 
 
34 ORGANIZATION FOR SOCIAL WORK. 
 
 Further, I am impressed by the fact that an enormous 
 field is opening up in the study of the sanitary and other civic 
 conditions in the smaller cities of the nation. The muni- 
 cipalities ranging from 10,000 to 100,000 in population repre- 
 sent an enormous number of people and present civic prob- 
 lems quite as definite, if not so extensive, as those to be found 
 in any of the larger cities. And yet the civic student may 
 find in almost any of the hundreds of smaller American cities 
 an absolutely virgin field which so far has been shamefully 
 neglected. 
 
 I feel that I should have no claim upon your attention this 
 afternoon, that I should not be here to present a plan of survey, 
 except on account of an experience which, it seems to me, 
 should have been looked upon as commonplace enough, but 
 which appears to have been regarded as somewhat unusual. 
 
 This experience was the study of the sanitary conditions 
 of a city of from 50,000 to 60,000 population and the attain- 
 ment of fairly satisfactory results without the expenditure of 
 money. Before offering to you a definite plan of sanitary 
 survey, I feel that it may be worth while to describe that 
 simple investigation, the methods employed and the results 
 attained. 
 
 I certainly have no intention here and in the presence of 
 those who have done such brilliant things along those lines, of 
 discussing anything of the theory or principles of survey 
 work. I would suggest, however, that perhaps the very bril- 
 liancy of your accomplishment has prevented many muni- 
 cipalities from entering upon such undertakings. 
 
 With the Pittsburgh survey as the best known if not the 
 only generally known specimen of its class, many persons have 
 come to look upon the survey as a gigantic, technical and 
 complicated institution, demanding a large amount of expert 
 skill and considerable financial outlay for its accomplishment. 
 
 Wherever I have found intelligent city officials and citi- 
 zens interested in civic betterment, I have found an earnest 
 desire for more thorough knowledge and understanding of 
 existing civic conditions; but a conviction that the survey is 
 entirely beyond the reach of the average municipality. 
 
A SANITARY AND HEALTH SURVEY. 35 
 
 In fact, at the time we undertook the sanitary study of 
 Springfield, if someone had suggested such a thing as a "sani- 
 tary survey," I should have replied that we were not in a posi- 
 tion financially or otherwise for such an ambitious undertak- 
 ing. 
 
 As it was, we simply started out in Springfield to ascertain 
 certain definite facts, and we had not the faintest idea how far 
 or where our studies would carry us. We knew that the city 
 had a higher typhoid-fever mortality than other cities of like 
 size and similarly situated. We knew that we had houses and 
 tenements which served as centers of infection of tuberculosis 
 and other diseases. We realized that our infant mortality was 
 too high. We started out simply with the purpose of ascertain- 
 ing the causes of our undue morbidity and mortality that we 
 might be enabled to take intelligent steps to decrease sickness 
 and lower our death rate. 
 
 It was not until our work was completed that we realized 
 we had done anything which could be dignified by the term 
 "sanitary survey." I cite this fact because I feel that there 
 ought to be something done to change the general conception 
 of the term "survey" and because I ani. convinced that we 
 must reach a clearer definition of the term before many cities 
 will undertake it. 
 
 I am also impressed with the belief that when a city sets 
 out to learn definite things about itself and for a definite pur- 
 pose, the results will be more satisfactory than when an 
 attempt is made merely to apply a plan of study for no better 
 reason than that other cities have done the same thing. That 
 is, the desire for knowledge without the plan will come nearer 
 landing us somewhere than the plan, however perfect, without 
 the underlying intelligent desire for knowledge. 
 
 In the vaults of the city hall we recently unearthed several 
 massive volumes, the results of a sanitary survey carried out 
 in 1885 on a plan suggested by Dr. John H. Rauch, then secre- 
 tary of the Illinois state board of health. The city council 
 appropriated $1,000 for the purpose and the work was carried 
 out with most minute detail. The net result of this painstak- 
 ing application of a survey plan consists of these big, clumsy 
 volumes, dusty, moth-eaten and stowed away in a vault. In 
 
3 6 ORGANIZATION FOR SOCIAL WORK. 
 
 fact, when our work was done in 1910, no one recalled that a 
 sanitary survey of the city had ever been carried out. This is 
 merely an example of the city going through the motions and 
 carrying out a plan suggested by others, but without a desire 
 for specific results. 
 
 In 1910 we awoke to the fact that Springfield had a ty- 
 phoid-fever mortality of something over 40 per 100,000 popu- 
 lation. This mortality had been as high as 8 per 100,000 and 
 the last year recorded showed a mortality of 52. That was 
 twice as high as it should have been. Half of our deaths from 
 this disease were apparently unnecessary. 
 
 Four million dollars had been expended by the city for 
 water works and sewer system, and the mains extended to all 
 sections of the town. We made repeated analyses of the city 
 water, extending over a long period of time, and found that 
 the public supply was always safe for domestic use. We had 
 to go further to locate the cause of our excessive typhoid- 
 fever mortality. Analyses were made of 150 samples from 
 supposedly good wells. All but three were found to be dan- 
 gerously polluted. Then the question arose as to the extent 
 to which wells were used in the city and the cause of well 
 pollution. On these points, as is true in practically every other 
 city in the United States where wells are used, reliable inform- 
 ation was entirely unobtainable. 
 
 There was but one thing left to do and that was to have 
 the four underpaid, untrained but enthusiastic inspectors of 
 the health department visit each of the 9,000 homes spread out 
 over the 1,600 blocks of the city to locate every well and vault 
 and ascertain the general sanitary conditions of all premises. 
 It required two months to cover the city, the work being 
 done in addition to the rather exacting routine duties of the 
 department. The results plainly told the story of our typhoid 
 fever. 
 
 The 9,000 homes of the city had 6,000 shallow wells, the 
 pollution of which was guaranteed by 7,000 privy vaults. There 
 were 6,000 polluted wells in the city, and the water mains and 
 sewers were convenient to 5,000 of the premises that main- 
 tained them. That is, the use of 5,000 of the 6,000 polluted 
 wells in the city was entirely unnecessary. From a sanitary 
 
A SANITARY AND HEALTH SURVEY. 37 
 
 standpoint the city's expenditure of $4,000,000 was wasted. 
 
 I should make this statement about my home town with 
 reluctance were it not that Mr. Hiram Messenger has advised 
 me, after studying the typhoid conditions of over thirty cities 
 of from 40,000 to 100,000 people, that Springfield is now the 
 only one in which he could obtain accurate data as to wells 
 and well pollution. 
 
 The results of our investigation were not bound in red 
 morocco and filed away to decay, nor were they hopelessly 
 buried in dreary and unread reports. We prepared a large 
 map of the city, large enough to show each house by number 
 and the gross sanitary conditions of all premises. Each un- 
 sanitary lot was shown in red and every well, vault, sewer, 
 water main, vacant lot, business property and public building 
 was indicated by symbol or color. 
 
 We knew the facts; but we had to demonstrate them to 
 get results. The map was shown at a luncheon to three 
 hundred members of the Chamber of Commerce, with a talk 
 on "The Truth About Springfield." The business men en- 
 dorsed our work and the newspapers gave the facts wide 
 publicity. Next the map was hung in the council chamber 
 and the members of the city council were shown why we 
 should have ordinances compelling property holders to con- 
 nect their property with sewers and water mains. The ordi- 
 nances were passed in three weeks, although we had vainly 
 sought to secure such ordinances for over two years. 
 
 Then another interesting thing developed. Protest on the 
 part of the business men gave way to serious consideration. 
 The work had gone too far to be stopped and it became the 
 part of wisdom to fall in line with it. Real-estate men adver- 
 tised their property on its sanitary merits and money became 
 harder to borrow on unsanitary property. For the first time 
 in the community, sanitation took on a commercial value. 
 
 But the Springfield sanitary survey if you choose to 
 dignify it by that name went a little further than a mere cen- 
 sus of wells and vaults. During the house-to-house canvass 
 the inspectors made notes of all unsanitary conditions and all 
 nuisances and these were ordered remedied and abated. 
 
3 8 ORGANIZATION FOR SOCIAL WORK. 
 
 They also noted all tenements and bad housing conditions 
 and the data furnished by them along this line afforded the 
 basis for the housing investigations we have since carried on. 
 We have studied, charted out and photographed the worst con- 
 ditions in the city and we are now ready to do our part in con- 
 vincing the Illinois General Assembly that there are slums in 
 the smaller cities and that there is a crying need for good state 
 housing laws. 
 
 In this housing investigation we took a tuberculosis census 
 of the worst tenements and fumigated and disinfected as far 
 as possible. We succeeded in improving the conditions of the 
 worst tenements ; but lack of state laws made satisfactory 
 action impossible. 
 
 As I have stated, we were making this investigation en- 
 tirely without a plan or system. Each undertaking when com- 
 pleted had pointed out something else that required attention, 
 and at this juncture we found a new force urging us on. 
 That was an aroused public interest. The better element of 
 the people were watching to see what we would do next and 
 the four daily newspapers of the city backed up our work and 
 featured everything that was undertaken. This aroused inter- 
 est was sufficient to hush all opposition. 
 
 We were now ready to consider our infant mortality. Our 
 first effort was in the direction of an honest milk, containing a 
 reasonable butter fat and total solids and free from preserva- 
 tives. We recognized, however, that this was a commercial 
 rather than a public health proposition. 
 
 We realized that "the amount of manure a milk contains 
 is more important than the amount of butter fat" and we 
 determined to visit and inspect all of the dairies supplying 
 milk to the city. In this tour of inspection we attempted to 
 teach the dairymen and farmers the prerequisites of pure and 
 clean milk; but we warned all of them that inspections would 
 be made from time to time and that the conditions of all 
 dairies would be made a matter of public record open to milk 
 consumers. 
 
 This investigation of dairies was followed by inspection 
 of restaurants and bakeries, the details of which cannot in- 
 
A SANITARY AND HEALTH SURVEY. 39 
 
 terest you here. The results, however, were gratifying to 
 us. 
 
 We are now engaged upon an investigation of garbage 
 collection and disposal, studying our own conditions and the 
 methods of other cities. We are trying to solve what I am 
 inclined to regard as the livest public health problem of 
 American municipalities a problem, incidentally, which is 
 not yet solved ideally by even the largest of cities. 
 
 The Springfield sanitary survey is not complete, nor will 
 it be for several years to come. We are studying the town 
 part by part and we are preserving all of our data in the hope 
 that we may be able some day to show a complete sanitary 
 survey of a smaller city. But every step is being taken with a 
 definite plan in view. We have to produce results, and results 
 that we can show the people. 
 
 The people, as a rule, will give active co-operation to work 
 of this kind. They will be tolerant of criticism of local con- 
 ditions. But after a while they will meet you with the es- 
 sentially practical and entirely proper demand, "Now that 
 you have given us all this undesirable publicity, what have 
 you accomplished?" Incidentally, they are not to be satisfied 
 with a story of "interesting data." The only way you can 
 safely use a town as clinical material is to cure its sores. 
 
 For twelve years the average mortality from typhoid fever 
 in Springfield had been something over 40 per 100,000 popula- 
 tion. In 1910, the year our investigation was undertaken, it 
 was 52. In 1911, the year after our agitation of polluted wells 
 and the passage of sanitary ordinances, our typhoid mortality 
 was in the twenties. The record of one year is not conclusive. 
 Such a result immediately following sanitary agitation, how- 
 ever, is suggestive and encouraging. 
 
 In 1909, sixty-eight infants died from summer diarrhea; 
 in 1910, even after we had a good commercial milk supply, 
 there were sixty-four deaths. In 1911, after our dairy inspec- 
 tions, there were forty-one deaths. This may be coincidence, 
 but it is suggestive. 
 
 My only excuse for burdening you with the details of our 
 work in a small mid-western town is to make you realize that 
 the small town has real sanitary and public health problems 
 
40 ORGANIZATION FOR SOCIAL WORK. 
 
 unappreciated by the people, to demonstrate that reasonably 
 good results may be attained without an elaborate plan and 
 without any considerable expenditure of money. The same 
 excuse will justify this additional detail. 
 
 The collection of data in our work was entrusted to four 
 inspectors, already overworked, and receiving $60 per month 
 men entirely without sanitary training and three of them 
 with little more than ward-school education. They have 
 served as sanitary inspectors, dairy inspectors, housing inspec- 
 tors, as conditions required, their only instruction being such 
 as we could give them; but each man being fully informed as 
 to what we were trying to do and why. 
 
 In addition to the salaries of these inspectors, which had 
 been paid from time immemorial, the total cost of the survey 
 and the sanitary map to the city of Springfield was less than 
 $100. 
 
 There is but one other thought in connection with our 
 sanitary study. We were after a direct result, the reduction 
 of morbidity and mortality. We are encouraged to believe 
 that we have accomplished at least enough to justify the 
 effort. But we now feel that we see other results more grati- 
 fying and far-reaching than we had anticipated. 
 
 Our work had been accompanied by unrestrained pub- 
 licity. We accentuated the civic needs of the city in every 
 possible way and we feel that we perhaps stimulated others 
 to activity in their individual lines. We had demonstrated, 
 perhaps, that civic improvement was not so difficult to bring 
 about as had been generally believed and we had possibly 
 stimulated a general spirit of investigation. 
 
 At any rate, whether our sanitary investigations had any- 
 thing to do with it or not, a great many things have come 
 about during the past two years. A detention home has 
 removed children from the jail and has simplified the work of 
 an excellent trained probation officer. A tuberculosis associa- 
 tion of 1,000 members operates a dispensary and employs 
 visiting nurses. Medical inspection of school children is estab- 
 lished. The almshouse of Sangamon County is being thor- 
 oughly studied from a medical and sociological standpoint and 
 provision is being made for county care of indigent consump- 
 
A SANITARY AND HEALTH SURVEY. 41 
 
 tives. The dispensing of county charity has been placed in 
 better hands. But most important, the people are awakened 
 to the necessity of a thorough knowledge of local conditions, 
 and a broad and sweeping survey of the city a real survey 
 this time is being considered and is practically assured. 
 
 The experience in Springfield, the gratifying results 
 attained without the employment of expert skill, has made me 
 believe that similar results may be attained by other cities 
 either through the agency of their health departments or 
 through the activities of private agencies. The survey in 
 Springfield was carried out without a definite plan of action, 
 and the following scheme of study was the result rather than 
 the foundation of the work. 
 
 Unquestionably a well defined plan will serve to simplify 
 the survey, will render it more systematic and will prevent 
 ineffective labor in various directions. The one submitted 
 here is little more than a skeleton in the elaboration of which 
 we are now engaged. It may serve in its present form, how- 
 ever, to suggest a rather simple and consecutive line of action 
 which will prove helpful to those about to engage in work of 
 the kind. 
 
 SCHEME OF A SANITARY SURVEY. 
 
 I. STUDY OF MORBIDITY AND MORTALITY FROM COMMUNI- 
 CABLE DISEASES. 
 
 No intelligent work to reduce morbidity and mortality 
 can be undertaken until we know the present morbidity and 
 mortality and the averages for several years past. 
 
 In most instances morbidity from communicable diseases 
 may be ascertained from the records of the local health depart- 
 ment. Such records, however, are frequently faulty and in- 
 complete. Under such circumstances, the present morbidity 
 may generally be estimated after interviewing all members of 
 the local medical profession. Morbidity records for the past 
 will be unattainable. 
 
 Mortuary records for many years past should be obtained 
 from the local health department. If the municipality has no 
 registration of deaths, the desired data can usually be obtained 
 
42 ORGANIZATION FOR SOCIAL WORK. 
 
 from the state registrar of vital statistics or from the state 
 board of health. 
 
 After securing the present and past average mortality 
 from preventable diseases, these should be compared with 
 similar figures from other municipalities as near the size and 
 existing under as nearly the same conditions as possible. 
 Much valuable information for purposes of comparison may be 
 obtained from the last reports of the United States Census 
 Office dealing with mortality statistics. It is only by such 
 comparison of figures that we can determine whether the local 
 mortality is higher than it should be. 
 
 1. Diseases to be Studied (a) Typhoid fever; (b) tubercu- 
 
 losis; (c) malaria; (d) yellow fever; (e) small-pox 
 (f) chicken-pox; (g) diphtheria; (h) scarlet fever; 
 (i) measles; (j) whooping cough ; (k) industrial diseases 
 peculiar to the community; (1) summer diarrhea of in- 
 fants; (m) accidental deaths. 
 
 2. Sources of Information Local health department ; state 
 
 health department ; local physicians ; report of United 
 States Census Bureau. 
 
 NOTES Seek out the cause for every decided deviation from 
 the normal or average mortality. Such deviations are at 
 times due to outside influences bearing in no way upon 
 local sanitary conditions. 
 
 Ascertain total mortuary figures. Do not accept death 
 estimates in percentages. One death in the community 
 may affect the rate 100 per cent. 
 
 II. WATER SUPPLY AND SEWAGE DISPOSAL. 
 (Special relation to typhoid fever.) 
 i. Source of Municipal Water Supply 
 
 (a) Results of last analyses. 
 
 A single analysis should not be accepted as final. 
 Conditions in an unprotected supply often change 
 from season to season. 
 
 (b) Possible pollution of the public supply at source. 
 
 Information should be obtained from the mu- 
 
A SANITARY AND HEALTH SURVEY. 43 
 
 nicipal water company, the local water depart- 
 ment or the local health department. It would 
 be well to inspect personally the source of supply. 
 
 NOTE If analyses have not been made, samples should be 
 secured and sent to laboratories for analysis. In several 
 states, the state water survey, the state university or other 
 state departments will make analyses of local water sup- 
 plies without charge. Reliance should not be placed on 
 the so-called "simple water tests." 
 
 2. Private Wells 
 
 (a) Extent to which they are used. (If used at all, it will 
 
 be impossible to ascertain the extent without a 
 house-to-house canvass. The same is true with 
 privy vaults. See below.) 
 
 (b) Analysis of water from presumably good wells. 
 
 It is never worth .while to make analyses of 
 water from wells which are obviously polluted. 
 
 3. Privy Vaults (Important on account of pollution of wells) 
 
 (a) Extent to which used 
 
 (b) Enforcement of ordinances or regulations as to the 
 distance of vaults from wells or cisterns. 
 
 (c) General construction of vaults to prevent soil pollu- 
 tion. 
 
 4. Sewer System 
 
 (a) Extent throughout the city. 
 
 Location of those sections not reached by sewer. 
 
 (b) Location of outlets of sewers. 
 
 (i) Danger to people of this community, 
 (ii) Danger to other municipalities. 
 
 (c) Extent to which sewers are used by those to whom 
 
 they are available. 
 
 NOTE Information as to the sewer system and the sewer out- 
 lets may be obtained from the city engineer or the depart- 
 ment of public works. The extent to which sewers are 
 used by those to whom they are available can often be 
 determined only by house-to-house canvas's. 
 
44 ORGANIZATION FOR SOCIAL WORK. 
 
 5. Methods of Sewage Disposal 
 
 (a) Is sewage "treated" before discharge or is it dis- 
 
 charged in its raw state? If treated, what is the 
 method of treatment? 
 
 (b) Present and future dangers of the system employed. 
 
 6. Pollution of Soil 
 
 (a) By privy vaults. 
 
 (b) By polluted ponds or streams receiving sewage. 
 
 (c) By sewers with loose joints. 
 
 (d) By tile or surface drains. Private sewers. 
 
 III. ALLEYS. 
 
 ( Special relation to fly-borne diseases ; nuisances from de- 
 composition of organic waste matter; dust and mosquitoes.) 
 Remember that, as a general principle, the alley belongs 
 to the muncipality and that it is unlawful to place ashes, 
 manure, garbage or any other material therein. 
 
 1. Ashes 
 
 (a) Extent to which they are placed in alleys. Loose or 
 
 in containers. 
 
 (b) Disposal of ashes. 
 
 2. Manure (breeding place for flies) 
 
 (a) Extent to which it is placed in alleys. 
 
 (b) Loose or in tight, screened boxes. 
 
 (c) Frequency with which it is removed. 
 
 To guarantee against the breeding of flies, ma- 
 nure should be removed at least once a week 
 from alleys and premises, 
 (c) Disposal of manure. 
 
 (i) Dumps (sources of danger.) 
 
 (ii) Burned. 
 
 (iii) Distribution to farmers for fertilizer. 
 
 In some cities this is carried out system- 
 atically and satisfactorily. 
 
 3. Garbage (nuisance and flies) 
 
 Presence in alleys (see Section IV) 
 
A SANITARY AND HEALTH SURVEY. 45 
 
 4. Alley Grade 
 
 Drainage into yards. 
 
 Low places breeding-ground of mosquito. 
 
 Permitting the use of alleys for even the tem- 
 porary disposal of ashes often results in raising 
 the grade of the alley above that of surrounding 
 property, causing the water to drain into nearby 
 yards. 
 
 NOTE In the house-to-house canvass proposed in this plan, all 
 bad alley conditions should be noted and reported to the 
 health department or to the department of streets and 
 alleys. 
 
 IV. GARBAGE DISPOSAL. 
 
 ("The livest public health problem of American munici- 
 palities.") 
 
 (Special relation to fly-borne diseases, soil pollution. 
 Dumps bear a close relation to contagious diseases.) 
 
 1. Handling Garbage at Home 
 
 (a) Are special cans or retainers required? 
 
 (b) Destroying garbage at home. 
 
 (i) To what extent practised? 
 (ii) Method employed. 
 
 (c) Separation of refuse into garbage, ashes and rubbish. 
 
 (d) Wrapping garbage in paper (dry garbage). 
 
 2. Collection of Garbage 
 
 (a) Public or private collection. 
 
 (i) Cost to householder. 
 
 (ii) Frequency of collection. 
 
 (iii) Specially constructed garbage wagons. 
 
 (iv) Regulations concerning collection. 
 
 3. Disposal of Garbage 
 
 (a) Dumps. 
 
 (i) Location of dumps. 
 
 (ii) Character of waste taken to dumps. 
 
 (iii) Policing dumps. 
 
46 ORGANIZATION FOR SOCIAL WORK. 
 
 NOTES The municipality has no more right to permit the 
 dumping of decomposable waste near to the home of a 
 citizen than it has to empty its sewers near to the home of 
 a citizen. 
 
 The recovery of articles from the dumps, as is often done 
 by the poor, is a common means of carrying contagious 
 diseases into those homes in which such diseases are most 
 difficult to locate and control. Much of the most usable 
 salvage in a city's waste has been discarded on account of 
 contagious and infectious disease in the home. 
 
 (b) Feeding garbage. 
 
 (i) Distributing garbage to farmers, 
 (ii) Municipal hog- feeding. 
 
 Not a sanitary or practicable plan in the 
 
 ordinary climate. 
 
 (c) Incineration. 
 
 (i) Incineration of garbage alone. 
 
 (ii) Incineration of all waste. 
 
 (iii) Incineration with artificial fuel. 
 
 (iv) Burning garbage and other waste with its 
 
 own combustible material. 
 
 NOTES The ideal method of refuse disposal is incineration of 
 all kinds of waste garbage, manure, ashes and rubbish. 
 In this way we avoid the necessity of dumps of any kind 
 in the community. 
 
 Ideal incineration implies the utilization of the fuel content 
 of the refuse itself. In this way sufficient heat may be 
 obtained to produce steam for power in municipal plants. 
 
 (d) Reduction of garbage. 
 
 (i) By public or private company, 
 
 (ii) Materials regained from garbage, 
 
 (iii) Revenues to the city from reduction. 
 
 (iv) Cost to the city. 
 
 V. STAGNANT POOLS AND OPEN CISTERNS. 
 
 (Special relation to the mosquito and to malaria and yel- 
 low fever. More important in southern cities.) 
 (a) Location of stagnant ponds and pools. 
 
A SANITARY AND HEALTH SURVEY. 47 
 
 (b) Best means of draining same. 
 
 (c) Screening cisterns. 
 
 VI. HOUSING. 
 
 (Special relation to tuberculosis, contagious diseases, im- 
 morality, physical inefficiency, deficient education, crime and 
 children.) 
 
 1. General Survey of Housing 
 
 In the house-to-house survey, all bad housing conditions 
 should be located and noted for future investigation. 
 
 2. Intensive Study of Housing 
 
 The study of individual houses and blocks indicated in the 
 general housing study as being undesirable. 
 
 3. Yard space 
 
 (a) Percentage of lot unoccupied by buildings, 
 (i) Grass and trees, 
 (ii) Paved. 
 
 (iii) Drainage and sanitary conditions, 
 (iv) Uses of yard space. 
 
 4. Light (A study of each room in undesirable buildings used 
 
 for dwelling purposes) 
 
 (a) Outside rooms. 
 
 (b) Light wells. 
 
 (c) Sky lights. 
 
 (d) Dark rooms and uses of dark rooms. 
 
 5. Ventilation (Studied according to above outlined scheme 
 
 for light) 
 
 6. Business Houses 
 
 Relationship of dwellings or tenements to saloons, im- 
 moral resorts, business houses and industries. Dwellings 
 over stables. 
 
 7. Home Industries 
 
 8. Congestion 
 
 (a) Number of inmates. 
 
48 ORGANIZATION FOR SOCIAL WORK. 
 
 (b) Room congestion. 
 
 (c) Roomers, boarders, homes and light housekeeping. 
 
 9. Water Supply 
 
 (a) Source. 
 
 (b) Convenience to living quarters. 
 
 10. Sewage 
 
 11. Condition of Plumbing 
 
 This study should include observation of plumbing condi- 
 tions and facilities for ordinary cleanliness. 
 
 12. Disposal of Garbage and Waste 
 
 13. Nationality and National Traits 
 
 14. Children 
 
 Number of children in each dwelling, with note as to the 
 manner in which they live, association with immorality, 
 sanitary conditions, etc. 
 
 15. General Sanitation 
 
 16. Transient or Permanent Residents 
 
 NOTES In collecting housing data the name of the landlord 
 and agent of each piece of property should be obtained. 
 Each dwelling, building or block studied should be mapped 
 or platted out. 
 Photographs should be obtained of the worst conditions. 
 
 VII. RESTAURANTS, BAKERIES, BUTCHER SHOPS. 
 
 I. Sanitary Conditions 
 
 (a) Cleanliness. 
 
 (b) Plumbing. 
 
 (i) Condition, 
 (ii) Location in relation to foodstuffs. 
 
 (c) Living quarters near to place of food handling. 
 
 (d) Protection from flies. 
 
 (e) Health of workers in foods. 
 
 (f) Spitting. 
 
 (g) Care and protection of food supplies. 
 
A SANITARY AND HEALTH SURVEY. 49 
 
 VIII. MILK SUPPLY. 
 
 (Special relation to infant mortality, tuberculosis and con- 
 tagious diseases.) 
 
 1. Chemical Content (Butter fats and total solids) 
 
 (a) How often tested by local authorities. 
 
 (b) Collection from homes of consumers or on open 
 
 market and testing privately. 
 
 (c) Freedom from preservatives. 
 
 A milk containing the legal amount of fats and 
 solids and free from preservatives is merely a 
 good commercial milk. The greatest importance 
 attaches to the amount of filth the milk contains. 
 
 2. Dairy Inspection 
 
 (a) Health and condition of cows. 
 
 (i) General health, 
 (ii) Tuberculin testing, 
 (iii) Cleanliness. 
 (iv) Feed. 
 
 (b) Condition and construction of barns. 
 
 (c) Condition and cleanliness of milk houses. 
 
 (d) Conditions and method of shipping. 
 
 (i) Cleansing cans. 
 
 (ii) Rapid reduction of temperature. 
 
 (iii) Pasteurization. 
 
 (e) Water supply. 
 
 3. Bottling 
 
 (a) Sterilization of bottles. 
 
 (b) Hand or machine bottling. 
 
 (c) Place of bottling. 
 
 (i) At the farm (good). 
 
 (ii) At the milk depot (unsatisfactory). 
 
 (iii) In the milk wagon (intolerable). 
 
 4. Health of Employes 
 
 Contagious diseases are often transmitted by the milk sup- 
 
5 o ORGANIZATION FOR SOCIAL WORK. 
 
 ply. Scarlet fever and diphtheria have been traced back 
 to this disease among milk handlers or their families. 
 
 5. Milk Depots 
 
 Methods of handling milk and general sanitary conditions. 
 
 6. Infant Mortality 
 
 Ascertain the source of milk supply in all cases where 
 there has been infant mortality in the family. 
 
 IX. METHODS OF STUDY. 
 
 1. House-to-House Canvass 
 
 This is the foundation of every satisfactory sanitary sur- 
 vey. Study each house and yard and note all wells, privy 
 vaults and the general sanitary conditions. Information 
 is also gathered during this house-to-house canvass upon 
 which to base the future investigation of water supply 
 and sewage ; alleys ; garbage disposal ; stagnant pools and 
 cisterns ; housing ; restaurants and bakeries. 
 
 2. Sanitary Map 
 
 A large map of the city should be prepared with each lot 
 large enough to show house number, wells, vaults and all 
 gross sanitary conditions. This map should also show the 
 paved streets, sewer system and water mains. 
 The making of the map teaches a great deal about the city 
 as a whole and brings together the accumulated data in a 
 form which can be shown to the people or to the city 
 officials. 
 
 3. Study Water Supply, Sewers, Topography, etc. 
 
 Study of the data in the office of the city engineer and 
 department of public works. 
 
 4. Intensive Study of the Various Subdivisions of Work 
 
 (a) Visit all dumps and garbage-disposal plants. 
 
 (b) Study all housing conditions and plat out all blocks, 
 
 houses or rooms investigated. 
 
 (c) Inspect all dairies supplying milk to the community, 
 
 using the government score card as a guide. 
 
 (d) Visit and inspect all restaurant, bakeries, etc. 
 
A SANITARY AND HEALTH SURVEY. 51 
 
 X. STUDY OF EXISTING LAWS AND ORDINANCES. 
 
 Study the state laws under which the municipality is given 
 its right of public health control. 
 
 Study the city ordinances to see what improvements can 
 be brought about by merely enforcing existing laws. 
 
 XI. NEW ORDINANCES. 
 
 Ascertain what faulty conditions will require new ordi- 
 nances to bring about their improvement. 
 Study ordinances of other cities which are bringing about 
 satisfactory results in these lines. 
 
 XII. STUDY OF EXISTING HEALTH DEPARTMENT. 
 
 (See the standards of public health efficiency in an article 
 by the writer, "The Inefficiency of Municipal Health De- 
 ments," published in The American City, August, 191 1). 
 
 1. Duties of the Health Department under the Ordinances 
 
 2. What Ordinances are not Enforced? (Ascertain why). 
 
 3. Study of Special Functions of the Department 
 
 (a) Water analysis. 
 
 (b) Milk inspection. 
 
 (c) Quarantine. 
 
 (d) Reports of communicable diseases. 
 
 (e) Isolation hospital. 
 
 (f) Abatement of nuisances. 
 
 (g) Registration of vital statistics, 
 (h) Constructive work. 
 
 4. Provisions for Efficient Service 
 
 (a) Qualifications of health officer. 
 
 (b) Salary and assistants. 
 
 (c) Reasonable appropriations. 
 
 (d) Freedom from politics. Civil service. 
 
5 2 ORGANIZATION FOR SOCIAL WORK. 
 
 XIII. METHODS OF PUBLICITY. 
 
 (a) The sanitary map. 
 
 (b) Newspapers. 
 
 (c) Expositions and exhibits. 
 
 (d) Bulletins and circulars. 
 
 (e) Public meetings. 
 
 (f) Churches. 
 
 XIV. DEALING WITH CITY OFFICIALS. 
 
 Co-operation if possible. 
 
 Meet opposition by a showing of fact and overcome oppo- 
 sition by publicity. 
 
 XV. THE SURVEY STAFF. 
 
 (a) A competent physician, preferably with some public 
 
 health training. 
 
 (b) A public-spirited and competent lawyer. 
 
 (c) Staff of paid or volunteer inspectors to collect data. 
 
 (d) A practical plumber, or better, a sanitary engineer. 
 
 (e) Clerical help and draftsman. 
 
 THE NEWS CO.. NEWBURGH. N. Y. 
 
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