CA USES OF PO VER TV 6 1 /
when compared with the dominating cause, lack of employment. Although the tendency of this method is to decrease the per- centage contributed to the whole mass of distress by this cause below that indicated by " case counting," as it often shows that lack of employment is accompanied by subsiduary and con- tributing causes, still an inadequate labor market contributes nearly three times as many units to the total sum of distress as any other one cause and more than any other four combined. Ninety-two in the Stock Yards and 84 in Englewood out of the 100 cases would have been improved by a better adjustment of the labor market. This was in spite of the fact that the mode of selection would tend to eliminate the purely " out of work " cases, and the further fact that the long continuous knowledge possessed regarding the families caused many who would at first sight have been unhesitatingly classified as unemployed to be placed under other heads because of the development of hidden weaknesses and defects.
In both tables intemperance is shown to be of comparatively minor importance. It is generally a subsiduary cause, as is shown by the fact that, although it enters into a considerable number of cases in both tables, the average number of units assigned it per case is in each instance a trifle over four.
Perhaps the greatest discrepancy between the two tables is seen in the importance assigned to laziness. This may be par- tially accounted for by the fact that the Englewood compiler was inclined to put more emphasis on individual defects of char- acter than the one from the Stock Yards, and felt that the table of causes was deficient in that it did not sufficiently provide for such defects. Therefore, many other forms of individual weakness, especially moral ones, were included by him under the general head of laziness, and it must not be concluded that in every case so marked the party had refused work. Incom- petency is another cause where subjective differences undoubt- edly show themselves. In other respects, however, the uni- formity of the results obtained is little less than wonderful when it is remembered that the analyses were made entirely inde-
