{"value"=>"<p>Correspondence and papers of the progress survey special committees. The tthirty-one special committees described below were appointed by the Industrial Economics Department to prepare a survey questionnaire relevant to each special committee's field of interest. The names of the progress survey special committees accurately define the subject of study, and could serve as a list of the reform concerns of the Progressive Era. The work of the project survey special committees was supervised by the Executive Council, and was designed and directed by the academic statistician, Roland Falkner of the Alexander Hamilton Institute), with the assistance of Hayes Robbins. The special committees were guided by an Advisory Committee of historians, lawyers, journalists, actuaries, economists, labor officials, manufacturers, agriculturists, clergy, and other specialists in the subjects covered by the survey.</p> <p>According to a statement of purpose, the department planned to send questionnaires to 10,000 labor organizations, 25,000 employers, 10,000 churches, 3,000 boards of trade, 5,000 charity organizations, and 5,000 women's clubs. Among the chairs of the progress survey special committees were August Belmont, Jr., Samuel Gompers, Jeremiah Jenks, Alton B. Parker, James Bronson Reynolds, Edwin R. A. Seligman, O.D. Skelton, and William H. Taft. Begun in 1912, the survey, conceived by the department's Committee to Consider Ways and Means to Defend American Institutions Against the Onslaught of Socialists (usually referred to by its short name, \"Ways and Means Special Committee\"), was completed in 1916, except for some studies which were postponed by the war in Europe. Due in large measure to the scope of the surveys and the time in which they were compiled, the 1912-1916 progress survey by the Industrial Economics Department, and the 1925-1930 old-age dependency statistical survey made by the Industrial Welfare Department, were NCF's most ambitious and significant projects. Nowhere in the collection is NCF's fundamental anti-socialist political agenda and its use of reform as a political instrument, more evident.</p>"}