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The study of religious experience provides an example of those strange discontinuities which seem to beset the social sciences. The present paper Is intended as a beginning of this conceptual task. There is an attempt to develop some basic sub-types and ordering dimensions for organizing the variety of experiences to which men attach religious definitions. The conceptual scheme has been informed by data from a sample of Protestant and Roman Catholic church members residing in the San Francisco Bay Area, California. These data include both quantifiable and qualitative information on the religious experiences of respondents. Where appropriate, these data will be introduced both to indicate the relative frequency of different forms of religious experience and to illustrate how people perceive such experiences. Following many previous writers, it has been suggested that the essential element characterizing religious experience, and distinguishing it from all other human experience, is some sense of contact with a supernatural agency.

A major reason for the sociological importance of Negro-white intermarriage is the possibility of a link between the low status of Negroes in the United States and the infrequency of such intermarriage. This paper analyzes trends in Negro-white marriage in the four states -- California, Hawaii, Michigan, and Nebraska -- which have recent data. For these states an upward trend in Negro-white marriage is shown which cannot be accounted for merely on the basis of changing racial composition. Negro-white intermarriage rates are relatively high in those areas where residential segregation by race is low and where there are minimal status differences between the white and Negro populations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper presents an empirical investigation of the importance of risk in decisions. The adaptive expectations geometric lag model is generalized by geometrically including quadratic lag terms indicative of risk. The computation of consistent estimators is described, and the model is applied in the analysis of California field-crop supply response. Results indicate that the effects of stabilization (possibly associated with government programs) might have seriously offset the acreage-reducing effects of voluntary acreage restrictions. Finally, more general implication relating to reduced-form estimation of the standard Nerlovian model are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper presents a technique for estimating the physical yield function of a fishery when detailed biological and environmental data are lacking. The physical yield function of the California trawl fishery is incorporated in an economic model to show the relationship between maximum sustainable physical yield of the fishery and maximum economic yield. Maximizing the economic benefit of the fishery to society would involve a drastic reduction in resource use at a catch level considerably below the biological maximum sustainable yield. Only through marginal cost pricing can resources be allocated efficiently to the fishery. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Concern over recent increases in the number of bankruptcies filed by individual consumers has resulted in a small group of studies of consumer bankrupts and their financial problems. Four studies, dealing with consumer bankruptcies in Sacramento, California; Flint, Michigan; Seattle, and the state of Maryland are examined and their results compared. These studies provide detailed information on the bankrupts' personal characteristics, the nature of their debts, and the reasons for their financial difficulties. The studies, however, provide relatively less information about the reasons for the choice of bankruptcy over other alternatives or about the effectiveness of bankruptcy as a long-run solution for family financial problems. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The preference between two factions in the religious schism of a Serbian Orthodox church was found to be highly correlated with preference between American political parties. The religiously dissenting group was found to be predominantly Republican in political preference. Although the religious dissent was interpreted as reflecting and protesting degradation in social status, this group apparently hoped for more relief through the anticommunist policies of the Republicans than through the social ameliorative policies of the Democrats. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article presents the results of a study conducted by the Bureau of Business and Economic Research of the University of California on the capital availability for postwar investment in California, with an emphasis on the concerns of small business. The article outlines the methodology, presents a survey of previous studies, the criteria for measuring the availability of capital, the data detailing the available capital from 1945-1946, a summary of the findings, and a discussion of the implications. The findings showed a large number of concerns raising capital through equity funds from owner's savings or the sale of stock, bank loans, and some manufacturing firms with intense capital needs found greater difficulty in capitalization. Proposals and recommendations are presented.

The article has two main themes: (1) problems of managing a cabinet department, with Commerce the instant case; and (2) problems of the delivery system- the Oakland case and the multi-state Regional Development Commissions. Part I treats the management problem of a cabinet agency-the problems and pitfalls for the senior executives who fry to "run it" and make it do something useful. Among the several vantage points considered are the views "up," "down," and "sideways." Part II considers two types of delivery systems. It points up the difficulty (if not futility) of trying to bend a federal agency to effectively deal with a major local problem in a particular locale in a complex context, with Oakland as a case in point. Having argued in Part II that the direct federal/local combination is unworkable, federal/multi-state arrangements are examined. Here the topic is "regional development" and the cases in point are the Appalachian Regional Commission and the eight Title V Commissions. Part III concludes with the need for decentralization of programs, structures, and money in order to place the resources closer to the problem-and the people. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article focuses on the problem of stabilizing the migrant farm laborers of California. The lot of the migrant farm laborer is not a happy one, particularly in the Pacific Coast states. To some extent these same deplorable conditions exist in other highly seasonal industries, such as the salmon fisheries and lumbering, for example. In these latter industries, however, the labor force consists more largely of single men, or at least of men whose families do not travel with them. Thus despite the problems of intermittent work and low incomes, their situations do not present the far-reaching social problems which are found among the migrant agricultural workers. This general problem has been present in one form or another for generations. Always it has been complicated by diversity of race and custom and, in all later periods, by farming systems dependent on labor supplies for which operators do not have continuous responsibility through the year. This lack of responsibility for the laborer in slack seasons is not, to be sure, greatly different from the situation which prevails generally in industrial concerns. For reasons later discussed, however, this problem is somewhat uncharacteristic for most farming sections of the United States.

This article provides information on the historical background of California farm labor. During less than a century of agricultural history, the rural work of California has been performed successively by ranch hands, by farm hands, and by semi-industrialized proletarians. During the past 40 years, the significant feature of California agriculture has been, not the expansion of the area under cultivation, but intensification of the use of areas already cultivated. The intensification of agriculture accounts not only for the large percentage of farm laborers in California. It is responsible, also, for the long line of immigrant nationalities which have played so large a role in the agriculture of the state. The Oriental and the Mexican groups stand apart not only because of their wide participation in intensive agriculture, but also because of their lack of participation in the older forms of farming. The use of alien workers on California farms has markedly complicated the adjustment of economic and human relations in agriculture.

The article discusses how western states in the U.S. manage their water supply systems. Western water users have had long experience with community organizations at the local level: with commercial water companies, municipal governments, mutual water companies and a variety of public districts. The most successful is a type of special service district called an irrigation districts. These originated and have their prototype in California, but have spread, with modifications to all states. California irrigation districts historically arose from the extremity of small farmers who needed an organization to provide them with an essential service which otherwise would, because of its large scale, be the sole preserve of giant landowners. Without districts, these giants would have dominated arid land agriculture, an outcome which was indeed envisioned and fostered by the Desert Land Act of 1877. For their success, districts required three basic powers: taxation, bonding and forced inclusion of lands within the economical service area. Irrigation districts serve over 4 million acres in California. Irrigation generally presupposes an intensive application of labor and capital to land, with close management of small tracts.

Californians have had long experience in the use of a device of local government known as an irrigation district. This is one of a class of greatly diverse forms of public districts which in some states of the United States are in wide and growing use and in others almost unknown. Districts as such are something of a mystery to most people although they are in fact a simple conception. Simple and ingenious, they provide a means of accomplishing two basic ends: questions relative to projects of calamitous local import may be locally decided, and boundaries of tax burden may be conformed with those of the anticipated project benefit. In the case of California irrigation districts, which tax all the land whether the owner irrigates or not and tax only land, exempting improvements, there has been a kind of side benefit of extraordinary importance to the state. Where invoked these provisions have combined to change a semiarid land from expectable permanent slumber as an area of absentee baronies to one of prosperous independent farms and rural cities offering social as well as economic rewards to the State.

The article presents information on preferential tax provisions under both income and property taxation. According to the article, twenty-five of the thirty-five states in the United States, imposing state income taxes have old-age exemption or credit provisions. Twenty of the thirty-five states allow liberalized medical deductions for the aged. Social security benefits are not taxable in nearly all of the states. Property tax concessions are granted in seven states. Additional minimum standard deduction and capital gains from personal residence are new provisions under the Revenue Act of 1964. Persons over 65 are allowed a tax credit for taxable income from pensions, annuities, interest, dividends, and rents, up to a limit of 1,524 $. According to provisions of "State Income Taxes With Liberalized Medical Deductions for the Aged" in 1965, medical deductions in California is excess of 3 percent of adjusted gross income. Expenses for medical care of taxpayer and spouse, if either is 65 or over, are not subject to the rule which limits deductions to that in excess of 3 percent of gross income in Maryland.

The widespread introduction of electronic data processing at every level of government operation has brought very great, and as yet incomplete, changes in organizational procedures and structure. Already, more sophisticated tools of management science are being utilized in public ad- ministration; operations research, systems analysis, and simulation, the quantitative methods, which have demonstrated their effectiveness in aerospace endeavors, are being applied to matters of public concern. The author here presents preliminary findings on an ongoing research study of the State of California's experience in the application of systems analysis to five designated problem areas-crime, transportation, waste management, information-handling, and welfare. Al- though the potential advantages and limitations of these techniques cannot be predicted at this early stage, it is apparent that new patterns of intergovernmental relationships are evolving, that new kinds of staff capability must be developed, and that management in the Space Age calls for a new order of competence, viability, and innovativeness. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Determines the factors influencing the formation of attitudes towards mathematics in California. Evaluation of the psychological distance of student-father relationship; Emphasis on the existence of distant relationships; Accounts on the ratings of the attitude of fathers toward mathematics.

This article presents results of a study conducted in two suburbs outside London, England and San Francisco, California, respectively, to ascertain family relationships. It was found that the groups were found to be similar, when in both cases, parents in their old age maintained close ties with their adult children both in terms of geography and frequency of contact, and daughters play consistently more important parts in their parents' lives than sons. The difference was that a larger proportion of the American group have knowledge of and pride in their pedigree, while the English group have relatively little knowledge of ancestry. The study was carried out on a countrywide basis in a limited way with a group of 3,964 for the U.S.A. and 900 for Great Britain. Results of the study suggest that old people generally maintain close links with their children and that the mother-daughter tie is the central nexus of the kinship network of industrial societies. Concern for ancestry seems to be more pronounced in the U.S.A. than in Great Britain. But in view of the size of the inquiry these statements are not so much findings as suggestions for further research.

The article discusses the contribution of social service & mdash; public health and travellers' aid, to help immigrants in California. The Gold Rush brought such an overwhelming number of the sick and impoverished that the immigration wave threatened to become a catastrophe. Social work was peculiarly difficult to initiate because it was not only undertaken in the midst of an emergency but also before there was any experience in social service in the area. All newcomers had one idea in mind — to hurry off to the mines as soon as possible, make their pile and return home. Hurry, excitement, self-interest, gambling, drinking, vigilantism, robbery, and murder —all the ills of society appeared concentrated in an area which lately had been quiet and innocent. To San Francisco, California, came all who traveled by ship. Although the trip from the east coast of the United States was made by a few steamboats, most of the vessels were sailboats and took six to nine months for the trip around Cape Horn.

Some characteristics dud attitudes of 100 middle-class families, recent migrants to a California metropolitan area, were sampled by questionnaire. The respondents had a history of frequent moves on short notice and reported that they settled into new communities quickly and without apparent difficulty. The sample showed a higher than anticipated level of independence, self- reliance, and ability to adapt to what is often considered a tension- and stress-producing situation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]