SOCIAL STATISTICS.•

THIS is an age, among other things, of tabulation and enumeration. The facts of human life, as far as they are capable of numerical expression, are put together and worked out to two places of decimals in all sorts of reports and statistical abstracts, and are then generally left in depart.. mental pigeon-holes, unless they are wanted to support or refute a policy or a doctrine. Mankind at large dislikes figures, as involving arithmetical efforts which are asso- ciated with unpleasant reminiscences of tear-bespattered slates, and, to a certain extent justly, mistrusts them as inconveniently stubborn, but at the same time frequently fallacious, arguments. "There is no getting round figures," it is often said ; but Mr. Justice Vaughan Williams, and other inquirers into the vagaries of shady finance, would probably object that much depends on the methods by which the figures are arranged ; and in other de- partments of life there are many examples of the ease with which statistics may be made to accord with the bias of the statist. For instance, the ingenuity with which masters of the art of political arithmetic can prove diametrically diverse conclusions from the same set of figures is exemplified when- ever a General Election, or even a by-election, is commented on by party journals.

• Statistics and Sociology. By Richmond Mayo-Smith, Ph.D., Professor of Political Economy and Social Science in Columba College. New York and London: Macmillan and Co.

Trustworthy or not, however, figures are very interesting as long as they are suppressed. A writer who will wade through tables and reports, and will then give the world a brief and lucid summary of their contents, mentioning as few figures as possible and clothing the bare skeleton of fact in the flesh and blood of inference and imagination, will have enriched the world with a piece of really suggestive instruc- tion. More suggestive than instructive certainly, for even if we could rely entirely on the figures that are supplied, the phenomena that lie beneath them are so various and com- plicated that it is extremely difficult to establish anything like a satisfactory chain of causation; but though statis- tical sociology is still a pastime rather than a science, and

is not much more useful to a practical statesman than the knowledge of Kriegspiel to a General in the field, it certainly enables us to make many interesting guesses, even if it but seldom presents us with a certainty. Professor Mayo-Smith, of Columbia College, has published a very large volume dealing with the subject of Statistics and Sociology. The- size of the book is likely to offend the delicate appetite of modern readers, who prefer to feed only on occasional morsels, and the Professor might certainly have lightened his menu without spoiling the feast, by leaving out some of his dissertations on " moral statistics" and their effect on the free-will " problem, but, nevertheless, it is a pleasanb

volume enough as long as one does not take the subject too seriously, or expect to find " the relations of men in society " here reduced to a mathematical formula. The writer does not attempt to conceal the untrustworthiness of many of the figures with which he has to deal, and the difficulty of making s❑fcient allowance for the carelessness with which man- kind, viewing such questions with easy-going indifference, approaches the task of filling in the papers supplied by official inquiries. For instance:—

" There has been much discussion as to whether this small proportion of women [in India] is due to omissions, or whether- the number of women is really so much smaller than that of men. Undoubtedly part is due to simple omissions. Women are held in such low esteem that many males, heads of house- holds, would simply neglect to return daughters or female servants, not thinking the matter of sufficient importance_ Others having daughters of marriageable age not yet married would neglect to return them on account of a feeling of shame, and among the hill tribes there is said to be considerable jealousy in regard to their wives and daughters."

Then again statistics of age are further complicated by the extraordinary fact that ignorant people are accustomed to give the age roughly in round numbers, so that " the ages concentrate on the years ending with a 0 or the figure 5;" while the proverbial difficulty of inducing ladies to state their ages is another confusing factor :—

" Even in Prussia, where the common people are well educated, we find that while the number of people returned in 1800 as 40 years of age was 3%,604, the number of 39 years was only 335,607, and the number of 41 years was 337,596. In India, where the population is very ignorant, the concentration on the decennial periods is extraordinary. Out of 100,000 persons of villages the number returned as 40 years of age was 5,240, of 39 years was 322,

and of 41 years was 216 In England the number of women returning themselves as from 20 to 25 years of age is always greater than the number of girls 10 to 15 years of age ten years previously, although they are only the survivors of the latter after a lapse of ten years, and should of necessity be fewer in number."

Professor Mayo-Smith is dealing, of course, with international statistics, and it is interesting to find that he takes our countrywomen as the worst offenders among the ladies of the world in the matter of fibbing about their age. But with regard to ignorant and useless returns as to the causes of death, it seems that the palm is awarded to American practi- tioners. An astonishing quotation is given from the mortality statistics of the Tenth Census :-

" While the results obtained from these physicians' returns- are of interest and value, it must be constantly borne in mind. that they were not derived solely from competent medical men, but from all those who chose to call themselves physicians_ When the cause of death is reported as 'Tecis,' Spinalgitis: Celory in Phantum," Cobria fontim,' Cholor Rhear InfantuW. Hasphmar," New Moner Fever,' No fisian tendin,' Struck in on the sire sells," Yeller ganders of the Liver,' Unnowing,' ' Know Knowen Cause,' &c., it is evidently unsafe to lay too much stress on the scientific accuracy of the diagnosis by the same reporter in other cases, even although the spelling may be more nearly correct."

In spite of these many drawbacks, however, our statistician is able to present many interesting facts with a ondilcient

approach to certainty. For instance, he tells us that owing to the industrial development of England, the number of marriages has ceased to fluctuate with the price of food, and now follows the volume of the total exports, and "an increase or depression in the one is almost always followed by a corre- sponding increase or depression in the other." The next novelist who creates a match-making mother must be careful to picture her, not as conning the pages of Debrett, but as keeping a sharp eye on the Board of Trade Returns. The volume of the exports is also said to have a direct and in- variable effect on the number of suicides in England.

Professor Mayo-Smith gives some startling figures of the estimated monetary loss caused by disease and premature death :—

" Sickness and mortality bring great loss to the community- According to Dr. Farr's English Life Table, of a million persons born, 72,397 die between the ages of 15 and 45 as the result of phthisis and 24,805 as the result of zyinotic diseases. If we take the money-value of each person aged 15 to 45 as £200 sterling, the pecuniary loss from phthisis alone is .214,479,400.

A comparison between the annual deaths per million in England during the two decades 1861-70 and 1871-80 shows that the deaths from fever had decreased 401 per million and from phthisis 359 per million. Every decrease of this sort is a direct gain to the community?'

Another remarkable calculation traces the beneficial effect of improved sanitation in England. It appears that "the {mean annual number of births in England and Wales in 1871-80 was 858,878. If these children be traced through life, the changes occurring in the death-rates of 1871-80, as com- pared with 1833-54, will result in an addition of 1,800,047 years of life shared among them ; and since this number of births occurs annually, it may be reasonably inferred that there is an annual addition of nearly 2,000,000 years of life to the community, the greater share in which must be ascribed to sanitary measures." The points of interest in this large volume are indeed almost endless, and any one who has come under the spell of the fascination of figures will find it a well- stocked storehouse. We may perhaps be allowed to suggest, in the interests of the Anglo-Saxon tongue, that one or two Americanisms might be corrected in future editions. It is not professorial to speak of "back of" instead of "behind," and " due " is not synonymous with "owing."