Methods of social study / by Sidney and Beatrice Webb.

  • Sidney Webb
Date:
1932
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Methods of social study / by Sidney and Beatrice Webb. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    83/284 (page 71)
    craft had encroached upon or superseded others; or what subordinate and other workers, such as labourers and helpers, there were in the trade, but who were not admitted to the union. No one who did not combine the accuracy and zeal of a scientific worker with the trustfulness of a saint or a fool, could or would respond to any such inquisition into the working constitution and day-by-day activities of the organisation to which he belonged. Such in¬ formation can be obtained, without much difficulty, but not in this way: not by a frontal attack all along the line, rousing suspicion, caution, and even resent¬ ment. The inhibitory effect on the minds of the patients is, however, not the worst outcome of any such questionnaire. A more insidious evil is the paralysis induced in the mind of the operator. For the student of social institutions who approaches his subject- matter by way of formulated questions will find himself suffering from one or other kind of disable¬ ment. The slovenly habit, characteristic of dis¬ tinguished personages on Eoyal Commissions and Government Committees of Enquiry, unaware of the complicated network into which they are in¬ truding, of extracting answers to vague or abstract questions such as, “What in your opinion are the results of the legislative restriction of the hours of labour”, leads to a sleepy satisfaction arising not from fullness of knowledge but from mere intel¬ lectual flatulence. But if, in order to avoid this dire complaint, the draftsman puts his interrogatory in