This is in fact the point of view which sociologists have adopted as
soon as progress ceased to be, for sociology, a matter of definition and
became a matter of observation and research. Score cards for
neighborhoods and for rural communities have already been devised.[347]

2. Indices of Progress

A few years ago, Walter F. Willcox, in an article "A Statistician's Idea
of Progress," sought to define certain indices of social progress which
would make it possible to measure progress statistically. "If progress
be merely a subjective term," he admitted, "statistics can throw no
light upon it because all such ends as happiness, or self-realization,
or social service are incapable of statistical measurement." Statistics
works with indices, characteristics which are accessible to measurement
but are "correlated with some deeper immeasurable characteristic." Mr.
Willcox took as his indices of progress:

1. Increase in population.
2. Length of life.
3. Uniformity in population.
4. Racial homogeneity.
5. Literacy.
6. Decrease of the divorce rate.

Certainly these indices, like uniformity, are mere temporary measures of
progress, since diversity in the population is not per se an evil. It
becomes so only when the diversities in the community are so great as
to endanger its solidarity. Applying his indices to the United States,
Mr. Willcox sums up the result as follows:

The net result is to indicate for the United States a rapid
increase of population and probable increase in length of life,
and increase in racial uniformity and perhaps in uniformity of
other sorts connected with immigration, and at the same time a
decrease in uniformity in the stability and social
serviceability of family life. Some of these indications look
towards progress, others look towards retrogression. As they
cannot be reduced to any common denominator, the statistical
method is unable to answer the question with which we
started.[348]

The securing of indices which will measure satisfactorily even such
social values as are generally accepted is difficult. The problem of
giving each index in the series a value or weight in proportion to the
value of all the others is still more difficult. This statement, at any
rate, illustrates the procedure and the method.

The whole subject of numerical indices for the measurement of
civilization and progress has recently bee