avowed statisticians, in this country especially, have long resisted the
consistent use of graphic methods.

I submit, therefore, for discussion, as even more urgent and pressing
than that of the general and abstract methodology of the social
sciences, the problem of elaborating a concrete descriptive method
readily applicable to the study and comparison of human societies, to
cities therefore especially. To do justice to this subject, not only the
descriptive labours of anthropologists, but much of the literature of
sociology would have to be gone through from the "Tableau Economique" of
the Physiocratic School to the "Sociological Tables" of Mr. Spencer, and
still more fruitfully to more recent writers. Among these, besides here
recognising specially the work of Mr. Booth and its stimulus to younger
investigators, I would acknowledge the helpful and suggestive impulse
from the group of social geographers which has arisen from the
initiative of Le Play[7], and whose classification, especially in its
later forms[8], cannot but be of interest and value to everyone whose
thought on social questions is not afloat upon the ocean of the abstract
without chart or bearings.

[7] La Nomenclature Sociale (Extrait de La Revue, "La Science Sociale,"
Dec. 1886) Paris, Firmin-Diact, 1887.

[8] Demoulins, La Science Sociale d'apres F. Le Play 1882-1905;
Classification Sociale, "La Science Sociale," Jan. 1905.

Yet with all respect to each and all these classifications and methods,
indeed with cordially acknowledge personal obligation and indebtedness
to them from first to last, no one of these seems fully satisfactory for
the present purpose; and it is therefore needful to go into the matter