Family and neighbourhood

This book has developed, to write a brief Foreword Survey of which an account is here rendered would lead on directly to a fuller Survey, covering both a wider geographical field and a larger range of subjects. Detailed plans were indeed made for this larger project, which has been held up only because the funds needed for it have not yet been found. Nevertheless, the research for which this study was designed to prepare the way will con tinue within the limits allowed by the means at command. With the help of the General Register Office, unpublished statistics from the Census of 1951 have been made available for Oxford special small subdivisions called Census Tracts. These tracts have been a feature of the U.S. Census since 1910; but this is the first time that a city in the United Kingdom has been so treated. In preparing this new, detailed, statistical base for studies of the city, the Committee had the valued assistance of Professor W. F. Ogburn, at that time a Visiting Fellow of Nuffield College. This device will make the national census figures much more useful to the local authority as well as for purely academic studies and, once its use fulness has been demonstrated, may, I hope, be taken up by other towns.

Mr. Mogey has been solely responsible for the writing of the present volume; and the conclusions arrived at are to be taken as his alone. The Committee, though its members helped in planning the work and advised Mr. Mogey at each stage of its development, rightly left him to take his own course. Indeed, it spent more time in making plans for the proposed fuller Survey than in supervising the 'pilot' stage, and drew up a plan which, in my opinion, is well worth carrying into effect but is beyond the resources of the University until outside help can be got!