WRIGHT, CARROLL DAVIDSON (1840—). An American economist and statistician, born in Dunbarton. N. H. He began to study law in 1860, but his course was interrupted by the war, in which he served first as a private and finally as a colonel in the Union army. Resuming his studies in Boston in 1865, he was soon admitted to the New Hampshire bar. _After serving two terms in the :Massachusetts Senate, to which lie was elected in 1871, lie was chief of the Bureau! of Labor Statistics of Massachusetts from 1873 to 1888, in which position he superintended the State censuses of 1875 and 1885. In 1885 he became United States Commissioner of Labor, a position which he still holds. In long ser vice he has published in the annual and special reports and the bulletin of the department many valuable statistical studies of the labor question. He was placed in charge of the completion of the census of 1S90 and has made other valuable in vestigations at the request of Congress. lie be
came president of the American Statistical As sociation and occupies an honorary chair of political science in the Catholic Cniversity in Washington. lie was an important member of the commission appointed by the President to in vestigate and arbitrate the strike of the an thracite coal-miners in 1902, and he served on many other conciliatory hoards. Andrew Car negie made him one of the original trustees of the Carnegie Institution. In 1902 he accepted the presidency of the College Department of Clark University, Worcester, Mass. lfis writings in clude a large number of essays in the periodicals, and the following works: The Industrial Erolu lion of the United States ( 1S95) ; and Outlines of Practical Sociology ( 1899),