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ests, must make liberal use of this report. It was one of a most valuable series of reports made by Mr. Hamilton, the others relating to the public credit of the United States, the national bank and coinage. Mr. Lodge, in his life of Hamilton, speaks of the report on manufactures as the most elaborate and, economically, the most important of all his reports, and at the same time the most far-reaching politically. It rested on the implied powers of the constitution, and was intended to do more than anything else toward the development of the resources of the country, the purpose nearest Hamilton's heart, and toward rendering the nation as strong and independent materially as in all other ways. The report completed the financial policy devised, and carried through by Hamilton and the Federalists. It must, therefore, be considered as the first important contribution of the Federal Government to social science, and as such becomes the foundation of the vast amount of work which has been done since then in furnishing information to the people through official sources. It proves that the framers of the constitution, in providing for a simple enumeration of the people, were free in their own minds, under the provision for promoting the general welfare of the people, in stepping far beyond the counting of the inhabitants. Mr. Hamilton's action was never criticised as an unconstitutional one, nor was the action of the House of Representatives in ordering the report ever criticised as one going beyond the powers of Congress. The national census, in its present scope, is often criticised in this very direction, and Congress condemned for going beyond the strict letter of the constitution in the collection of information on subjects having no relation to the enumeration, but the framers of the constitution had no such criticism to offer, and the very first Congress directed an investigation on as broad lines as any which have been carried out in later years. An inquiry into the condition of the industries of the country on the scale of that made by Mr. Hamilton must be convincing evidence of the intention of the founders of our government and the justification of their first practices under it. The contributions of the first