all causes among grinders, cutlers, tool-makers, and file-cutters in Sheffield during 1890-1907, the improvement has not been due to any considerable reduction in the mortality from consumption, or, at any rate, the mortality from consumption has not declined in proportion to all causes, for, as a rule, the proportionate mortality from consumption was higher during 1902-07 than during 1890-95. The apparent general improvement in the mortality from respiratory diseases is quite noticeable in all the tables, and it is possible that in recent years deaths may have been reported as phthisis that would formerly have been reported as bronchitis or some other respiratory disease. In the following table, comparison is made of the proportionate mortality of grinders, cutlers, tool-makers, and file-cutters from consumption and respiratory diseases. To clearly indicate the excessive mortality in these Sheffield trades from diseases of the lungs and air passages, the corresponding proportionate mortality for all occupied males in England and Wales as reported in the Supplement to the Sixty-fifth Report of the Registrar-General is given in the last column. COMPARATIVE PROPORTIONATE MORTALITY, SHEFFIELD, Ages. PHTHISIS. All Occupied Grinders. Cutlers. Tool-makers. File-cutters. Males, England and Wales, 1900-02. Ages. COMPARATIVE PROPORTIONATE MORTALITY, SHEFFIELD, PHTHISIS AND RESPIRATORY DISEASES. All Occupied Wales, 1900-02. Grinders. Cutlers. Tool-makers. File-cutters. Males, England and This table requires little comment. It shows that persons employed as grinders, cutlers, tool-makers, and file-cutters, are considerably more liable to death from some disease due to, or accelerated by, dust inhalation than would be expected on the basis of the mortality of all occupied males in England and Wales. The statistics point unmistakably to the causes of the high mortality of these classes or groups of workmen, and they indicate the need of greater precautions and more effective safeguards against the inhalation of the metallic and mineral dusts peculiar to the trades specified. In conclusion I may again* point out that there are many cities and towns in the United States where one or more industries, more or less hazardous or health-injurious, are centralized. For example: Trenton and Perth Amboy, N.J., and Circleville, Ohio, are pottery centres; Orange, N.J., and Danbury, Conn., are felt-hat making centres; Barre, Vt., among other cities, is a centre for stone-cutting; White Mills, Pa., and Corning, N.Y., for glass-cutting; Amsterdam, Cohoes, and Middletown, N.Y., for the knitting industry; Philadelphia, Pa., for carpet mills; Fall River and New Bedford, Mass., for cotton and woollen textiles; Paterson, N.J., for silk goods; Pittsburg, Pa., for iron and steel products; Minneapolis, Minn., for the flour industry, and Key West, Fla., for the manufacture of cigars and cigarettes. If the local authorities in such cities and towns would "The Mortality from Consumption in Small Cities," Quarterly Publications of the American Statistical Association, December, 1907. evince a willingness and enthusiasm to contribute to the general fund of knowledge of trade diseases and mortality, they would not only perform a really valuable service to their fellow men, but they would at the same time connect their names with investigations similar to those which have contributed greatly to the fame of Ramazzini, Thackrah, Hirt, Farr, Arlidge, Oliver, and some others of the select few who have found time to give to the world the results of their inquiries into the effect of certain industries or trades upon the disease liability and mortality of those employed therein. Few, indeed, are the contributions which have been made along these lines by qualified American authorities. It may very properly be said that here is a field where the harvest is full and ripe, but the reapers few. STANDARDIZATION OF HOUSING INVESTIGATIONS. BY JOHN R. COMMONS, PROFESSOR OF POLITICAL ECONOMY, I had read that Glasgow was the most densely crowded of modern cities, because fourteen per cent. of the families lived in one room. After visiting one of the model tenements of the London County Council, I was asked by a Glasgow mechanic to look into his ancient rookery. The one room in which he and his family lived seemed to me to be larger than the threeroom apartment of his fellow who enjoyed the municipal socialism of modern London. The difference was that he put up his own flimsy partitions, while paternal London got the credit of relieving congestion by merely erecting permanent partitions. In Pittsburg I was told by experts in housing investigations that the cost of housing there was greater than in any other city of the country, but when I compared the few houses that I saw with similar houses in Chicago, taking into account appurtenances, I could not see that the costs were different. British workmen and employers contended that their lower wages were compensated by the lower cost of food as well as housing, compared with American wages, and I could not refer them to any authentic standards of food and prices, housing and rents, that would disprove their claims to their satisfaction. If comparisons of this kind were a matter of profit and loss, standard units would long since have been devised. Such units have been worked out by the trusts, syndicates, and engineering societies, in order to bring all of their manufacturing plants, their superintendents, managers, and engineers, their inventions and experiments, to an exact comparison of efficiency based on unit costs. There is one department of sociology which eventually will make it plain that standard units of housing, food, and occupation, are also a matter of profit and loss. This is the health, vigor, and efficiency of the working population. The trade longevity of the workman, the number of days lost through sickness, fatigue, and devitalizing, the rate of mortality, are the greatest of all matters of national business, and they are largely the results of housing, food, and occupation. But, to what extent these different factors enter, it is impossible to say until standard units are devised by which to compare each factor with the resulting morbidity, mortality, and fatigue. Here the problem of the economist and that of the hygienist overlap. The economist is interested in comparative cost of living, the hygienist in comparative causes of industrial efficiency. But the cost of living is really the cost of the workman's efficiency. If so, the unit of comparison which the economist wants is the same unit that the hygienist wants. Take housing as the simplest problem. The comparative cost of housing is the comparative price paid for a unit of housing accommodation. But housing accommodation is not merely floor space or "rooms per occupant": it is also location, air, ventilation, sunlight, structural condition, bath, laundry, running water, etc. These are also the conditions of health. The cost of housing is one of the costs of industrial vigor. If, then, we devise our standard unit with reference to the conditions of health, we shall have practically the standard needed for comparing prices of housing accommodation. But the unit of housing accommodation is a complicated and elusive one. It consists of many factors, and no two individual investigators attach the same weight to each of the factors. The problem here is exactly the same as that which has been met in standardizing and grading agricultural products, such as wheat, corn, oats, butter, cheese, horses, cows, pigs, and so on. To illustrate by means of the score card used in the department of Animal Husbandry of the University of Wisconsin: A draft horse, perfect in every particular, is represented by 100 points. These are subdivided into a detailed and com |