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Although this method undoubtedly presented the proportion of each influence with somewhat greater accuracy, it was found to be too complicated for general use in the Charity Organization Societies.

A third source of error in charity statistics is the variation between the cause of distress as given by the applicant and the causes afterward registered by the relieving agents. This discrepancy is illustrated by the following tabulation of 800 cases in New York City.

TABLE III.
Alleged and true causes of poverty.
800 cases, C. O. S., New York, 1896-1897. (34)

The alleged cause is often merely a measure of the ability of the applicant to gauge the intelligence of the charity agent, but it is of some slight value in throwing light upon the character of the applicant.

After making all possible allowance for the personal equation of the applicant and the investigator, and for the limitations and inconclusiveness of figures alone, they have nevertheless a considerable value as representing the judgments of those who are studying dependence at first hand. When it has been found that a great number of investigators, at different times, in different places, have reached conclusions which, while varying in many and often inexplicable ways, are yet in agreement on certain points, it must be concluded that the figures to some extent reflect actual conditions. Without pressing these conclusions too far, and constantly remembering that statistics are only the formal skeleton of truth, we may proceed to discuss what results have been reached by the case-counting method in the study of dependence.

TABLE IV. (35)
Causes of Poverty in Buffalo.

Although the causes of pauperism had been enumerated and discussed in occasional reports of charitable societies, (36) the first systematic investigation and tabulation of results through a term of years appears to have been made by the Charity Organization Society of Buffalo, New York. The table (see p. 46) is interesting as showing that the more obvious causes, i.e. sickness, lack of employment, intemperance, and shiftlessness, stood in almost the same order and proportion in 1887 as they appear in the Charity Organization Society statistics of a later time. Devine, "Principles of Relief," pp. 278-293, Tenth Report, New York State Board of Charities, 1877.

The systematic registration of decisions in large numbers of cases brought out certain conclusions as to the general needs of applicants for relief. Table V. shows decisions averaged for a total of 42,031 cases between 1887 and 1900.

TABLE V.
Decisions in Cases of Applicants for Relief. (37)

The table shows that approximately one-third of all applicants needed work rather than relief, and nearly another third needed intermittent or temporary relief only, while almost one-fifth needed either "discipline" or no relief at all. Charles D. Kellogg of the New York Charity Organiza-tion Society, when submitting a report on 27,961 cases in 1887 (column 1) to the National Conference of Charities and Corrections, stated that the logical deduction from these facts was that two-thirds of the real or simulated destitution could be wiped out by a more perfect adjustment of the supply and demand for labor, and a more enlightened police administration. The table further indicates that charity organization societies were dealing largely then as now, not with chronic pauperism, but with those on the verge of dependence.

The question most commonly in the minds of the inexperienced students of this subject is whether dependence is a misfortune or a fault. In the first edition of this book Professor Warner compiled an elaborate table from English, German, and American sources, classifying the causes of poverty under two main heads as indicating misconduct or misfortune. A table condensed from the original, so as to show its essential features, is given on pp. 50, 51.