Appletons' Cyclopædia of American Biography/Wright, Carroll Davidson

WRIGHT, Carroll Davidson, statistician, b. in Dunbarton, N. H., 25 July, 1840. He was educated in New Hampshire and Vermont, and began the study of law. At the beginning of the civil war he enlisted in the 14th New Hampshire regiment, of which he became colonel in December, 1864. After serving as acting assistant adjutant-general under Gen. Philip H. Sheridan, he resigned in March, 1865, and was admitted to the New Hampshire bar in October. His health led to his removal to Massachusetts, where he was in the state senate in 1871-'2, during which time he secured the passage of a bill to provide for the establishment of workingmen's trains to Boston from the suburban districts. He was chief of the state bureau of statistics of labor in 1873-'88, and in 1880 was appointed supervisor of the U. S. census in Massachusetts, being also special agent of the census on the factory system. In 1885 he was commissioned by the governor to investigate the public records of the towns, parishes, counties, and courts of that state, and in January, 1885, he was made first commissioner of the bureau of labor in the interior department in Washington, which office had been created in June, 1884. Col. Wright was a Republican presidential elector in 1876. In 1875 and again in 1885 he had charge of the decennial census of Massachusetts. He was lecturer during 1879 on phases of the labor question, ethically considered, at the Lowell institute in Boston, Mass., and during 1881 university lecturer on the factory system at Harvard. He is a member of various scientific societies and has been recording secretary of the American statistical association and president of the American social science association. The degree of A. M. was given him by Tufts college in 1883. Col. Wright has published “Annual Reports of the Massachusetts Bureau of Statistics of Labor” (15 vols., Boston, 1873-'88); “Census of Massachusetts” (3 vols., 1876-7); “The Statistics of Boston” (1882); “The Factory System of the United States” (Washington 1882); “The Census of Massachusetts” (4 vols., Boston, l887-'8); “Reports of U. S. Commissioner of Labor,” including “Industrial Depressions” (Washington, 1886); “Convict Labor” (1886); and “Strikes and Lockouts” (1887); also numerous pamphlets, including “The Relation of Political Economy to the Labor Question” (Boston, 1882); “The Factory System as an Element in Civilization” (1882); “Scientific Basis of Tariff Legislation” (1884); “The Present Actual Condition of the Workingman” (1887); “The Study of Statistics in Colleges” (1887); “Problems of the Census” (1887); “Hand Labor in Prisons” (1887); “Historical Sketch of the Knights of Labor” (1887); and “The Growth and Purposes of Bureaus of Statistics of Labor” (1888).