Abstract
Philadelphia, then and still one of the worst governed of America’s badly governed cities, was having one of its periodic spasms of reform. A thorough study of causes was called for. Not but what the underlining cause was evident to most white Philadelphians: the corrupt semi-criminal vote of the Negro Seventh Ward…. Would it not be well, to elucidate the known causes by a scientific investigation?… With my bride of three months, I settled in one room over a cafeteria run by a College Settlement, in the worst part of the Seventh Ward. We lived there a year, in the midst of an atmosphere of dirt, drunkenness, poverty and crime. Murder sat on our doorstep, police were our government, and philanthropy dropped in with periodic advice.
(DuBois, 1968/1975: 194–5 also in Logan, ed. 1944: 42)
What had been borne into me during my book studies was my utter ignorance of the manual-working class, that is, of four-fifths of my countrymen…. How was I to get an opportunity of watching, day by day, in their homes and in their workshops, a sufficient number of normal manual-working families to enable me to visualize the class as a whole; to understand what was meant by chronic poverty and insecurity of livelihood.
(Webb, 1926: 146–7)
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Wax, M.L. Knowledge, power, and ethics in qualitative social research. Am Soc 26, 22–34 (1995). https://doi.org/10.1007/BF02692025
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/BF02692025