xo2 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



As for the last and most inclusive of all sciences, that which con- 

 siders the interrelations which alone make civilization, science and 

 progress possible; some of whose laws even the lowly ant and bee have 

 unconsciously learned and applied; I must leave our guest of the 

 evening to speak as one having authority. That man is a unit in a 

 certain sense ; that every individual carries with him determining atoms 

 of his entire hereditary line, the unbroken continuity of which is the 

 first condition of his existence; is a truism. That in another sense 

 mankind is also a unit and that no member of the entire congregation 

 can suffer or enjoy without effect upon the mass, is equally true if hard 

 to realize. Once realized by the generality of mankind it seems con- 

 ceivable that the flame of a genuine fraternity would illuminate the 

 darker mysteries of life and labor, of good and evil, among us, as if 

 from the refulgence of that shining city, not built with hands, of which 

 the prophets tell. 



STATISTICS. 

 By the Hon CARROLL D. WRIGHT, 



DEPARTMENT OF LABOR. 



GOTTFKIED ACHENWALL, who was born in 1719 and died in 

 1772, and was a professor of philosophy at Gottingen in 1750, is 

 reported to have originated the modern statistical method. Un- 

 doubtedly others used it before Professor Achenwall, but it is as well to 

 attribute the first specific use of the method in the modern sense to him 

 as to any other. 



The word 'statistics' is from the French 'statistique/ from the 

 Greek 'statos,' meaning fixed or settled, from the stem 'sta,' to stand. 

 Hence statistics means, a method by which fixed or settled conditions 

 can be determined. According to definition, statistics is first a collec- 

 tion of facts relating to a part or the whole of a country or people, or of 

 facts relating to a class of individuals or interests and different coun- 

 tries, especially those facts which illustrate physical, social, moral, 

 intellectual, political, industrial and economic condition or changes of 

 condition, and which admit of numerical statement and arrangement 

 in tabular or graphic form. Second, it is that department of political 

 science which classifies, arranges and discusses statistical data. 



As we understand it, one of the most essential primary objects of 

 statistics is to secure a simple, concrete statement of a mass of facts 

 the essence of which could not otherwise be expressed except by means 

 of long and tedious descriptive language, and even by the use of such 

 lano-uasre no concrete and cleaiTv-defmed conclusion could be reached. 

 There is no method of expressing certain things except through the 

 statistical method. This is true when we understand that statistics 



