1865

Founding of American Social Science Association, with first meeting under sponsorship of Mass. State Board of Charities (Haskell, 91-121). Its prime object was to understand society and to improve it, with implicit assumption “that the social order is fundamentally rational and will reveal itself to the patient inquirer. Beneath the confused surface of events there is a harmonious order, a realm of ‘Truth,’ in which the interests of all members of society blend without friction” (101). Both ASSA and the Board of Charities “were institutional devices designed to invigorate and systematize the collection, dissemination, and evaluation of factual information” (103). “Merely to gather the most elementary statistical data about society,” it was believed in the 1860s, “would, in itself, lead almost automatically to vast social improvement” (102).