Wells, Emory Washburn, Caroline Healey Dall, Samuel Eliot, F. B. Sanborn, Joseph White, George Walker, Theodore W. Dwight, and James J.
It will give attention to pauperism, and the topics related thereto; including the responsibility of the well-endowed and successful, the wise and educated, the honest and respectable, for the failures of others.
It will aim to bring together the various societies and individuals now interested in these objects, for the purpose of obtaining by discussion the real elements of truth; by which doubts are removed, conflicting opinions harmonized, and a common ground afforded for treating wisely the great social problems of the day.
"[1] The society divided itself into departments of inquiry (education; health; jurisprudence; economy, trade and finance) and laid out research questions to guide collection of the most pertinent "data required."
The questions proposed for research reflected key issues of the time in American society: national debt and a national currency; taxation and revenue; labor and capital; hasty and excessive legislation; crime and punishment; the province of law in regard to education, public health, and social morals; education of neglected and vicious children; relative value of classical and scientific instruction in schools and colleges; fine arts in education and industry; half-time system of instruction; quarantine considered in its relation to cholera; the tenement house; inspection of food and drugs; pork as an article of food; sewerage of great cities; and management of hospitals and insane asylums.