3 6 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



dull mind an outline of an idea which can then be modeled and 

 shaded to the condition of a natural truth. The teacher will find, by 

 experience, that an idea thus given is very seldom forgotten. The 

 pupil has thus once turned the abstraction into a concrete form, and 

 he can now use it for himself after he has once grasped it. It does 

 not at all imply that he will get hard and definite conceptions of hu- 

 man affairs by this process ; for he is shown that the principle which 

 he has once seen in a concrete form, appears in other forms, and he is 

 constantly seeing that it is so. 



7. In close connection with this method, but having an entirely 

 different purpose in view, is the use of charts and graphic representa- 

 tions of statistics. The method just described above aimed to help in 

 finding concrete expressions for the general principles ; but graphic 

 methods usually have as their object to assist in that part of the eco- 

 nomic process heretofore referred to as verification. Every one knows 

 the common dislike of dreary statistics ; to many persons columns of 

 statistics are repellent or meaningless. Collections of facts regarding 

 banking, finance, taxation, and wages become a tangle in which one's 

 direction is constantly lost. But arranged graphically the whole di- 

 rection of a movement is seen at once, and the mind takes in new and 

 unexpected changes, which force an investigation into their cause. 

 Moreover, there comes a certain breadth of treatment, when, in look- 

 ing at the facts graphically expressed, one is able to see the whole 

 field at once. There is no waste of thought on temporary and acci- 

 dental movements, for the action is seen from beginning to end at one 

 glance. There are many charts which would illustrate this meaning 

 very distinctly ; but perhaps none are simpler than the one here 

 appended, showing the steady and continuous fall in the value of sil- 

 ver relatively to gold since the discovery of the New World. No one 

 has ever claimed that there has been any " unfriendliness " displayed 

 toward silver in the legislation of the chief countries of the world be- 

 fore 1816, at the farthest, and yet the white metal had been steadily 

 on the decline ever since the Spanish galleons, in the fifteenth century, 

 began to pour the precious metals of America into the coffers of Spain. 



In short, the more extended collection of economic data is now 

 rendered possible by the better methods employed in census and sta- 

 tistical bureaus, and the resort to the work of verification of economic 

 principles by the examination of these data is the one thing only 

 which can redeem political economy from the baseless and common 

 charge of being a set of impractical formulae. Into this work one 

 can carry no instrument so effective and helpful as graphic represen- 

 tations. In fact, the investigator, after having collected his tables and 

 columns of figures, will find his gain in first putting them in some 

 graphic form, before he can intelligently see exactly with what he 

 has to grapple ; then he can turn his energies directly upon the prob- 

 lems disclosed by the chart to every other eye as well as his own. 



