X.—CORRELATION : ILLUSTRATIONS AND METHODS. 193 
VIII, Chap. IX.), as numbers are more important than cost from 
the standpoint of the moral effect of relief on the population. 
The returns, however, generally include both lunatics and vagrants 
in the totals of persons relieved ; and as the administrative methods 
of dealing with these two classes differ entirely from the methods 
applicable to ordinary pauperism, it seems better to alter the 
official total by excluding them. Returns are available giving 
the numbers in receipt of relief on 1st January and 1st J uly ; 
there does not seem to be any special reason for taking the one 
return rather than the other, but the return for 1st January was 
actually used. The percentage of the population in receipt of 
relief on 1st January 1871, 1881, and 1891 (the three census 
years), less lunatics and vagrants, was therefore tabulated for each 
union. (The investigation was carried out in 1898.) 
5. ddministration.—The most important point here, and one 
that lends itself readily to statistical treatment, is the relative 
proportion of indoor and outdoor relief (relief in the workhouse 
and relief in the applicant’s home). The first question is, 
again, shall we measure this proportion by cost or by numbers? 
The latter seems, as before, the simpler and more important ratio 
for the present purpose, though some writers have preferred the 
statement in terms of expenditure (e.g. Mr Charles Booth, Aged 
Poor—Condition, 1894). If we decide on the statement in terms 
of numbers, we still have the choice of expressing the proportion (1) 
as the ratio of numbers given out-relief to numbers in the work- 
house, or (2) as the percentage of numbers given out-relief on 
the total number relieved. The former method was chosen, 
partly on the simple ground that it had already been used in an 
earlier investigation, partly on the ground that the use of the 
ratio separates the higher proportions of out-relief more clearly 
from each other, and these differences seem to have significance. 
Thus a union with a ratio of 15 outdoor paupers to one indoor 
seems to be materially different from one with a ratio of, say, 10 
to 1; but if we take, instead of the ratios, the percentages of 
outdoor to total paupers, the figures are 94 per cent. and 91 per 
cent. respectively, which are so close that they will probably fall 
into the same array. The ratio of numbers in receipt of outdoor 
relief to the numbers in the workhouse, in every union, was 
therefore tabulated for 1st January in the census years 1871, 1881, 
1891. 
6. Environment.—This is the most difficult factor of all to deal 
with. In Mr Booth’s work the factors tabulated were (1) persons 
per acre ; (2) percentage of population living two or more to a 
room, .e. “overcrowding”; (3) rateable value per head (Aged Poor— 
Condition). The data relating to overcrowding were first collected 
13