  In an early statement (Du Bois, ca. 1897), Du Bois maintains that the organization of modern society is a function of social laws and regularities that sociology identifies through detailed, statistical research that “generalizes[s]” a “mass of facts,” showing how various social phenomena, including, e.g., the “degree of poverty, the prevalence of suicide, [and] the extent and kinds of crime,” tend “to a certain rhythm and regularity which we call the social group” (ca. 1897, 4). Knowledge of these social rhythms, regularities and, sometimes, laws (sociology studies “human action which by its regularity gives evidence of the presence of laws”) is the “first step” in modern social reform (ca. 1897, 3, 8). Such knowledge can contribute to social reform, Du Bois’s examples suggest, for it enables the reformer to explain causally the conditions she wishes to transform and rationally to chart plans to alter those conditions: e.g., the death rate of children in the slums, the treatment of prisoners, and pauperism (ca. 1897, 9–11).[28] Such knowledge, presumably, empowers Du Bois in his capacity as a social reformer to explain the existence of the Negro problem and rationally to identify means to eradicate the Negro problem (see 2.1 above and 4.1.1 below).