132 SEVENTH REPORT. 



works of art, aud you merely considered us as somewhat advanced bar- 

 barians. Kow we have killed forty or fifty thousand Russians, and all 

 Christendom hastens to admit us among the highly civilized nations! As 

 if progress was proved alone by systematic slaughter of enemies." A 

 higher basis of comparison would be the wonderful record of sanitary 

 efficiency of the Japanese nsedical service in the present war, which 

 stamps the awful death rates of American troo])s at Chicamauga and of 

 the British troops at the ("ape from preventable diseases as quite un- 

 necessary and marks of defective sanitary organization. In Japan the 

 surgeon goes ahead with and co-operates with the line officer, knowing 

 that typhoid is usually more deadly than bullets in a campaign. 



When the Japanese sent re])resentativf'S forth among the Western 

 nations to learn what was best in our culture for adoption as the foun- 

 dation of a new Japan, she could find little of value in America in the 

 line of vital statistics. Euro[)ean and es])ecial]y German models were 

 taken in demography as in war. and the thoroughness with which the 

 ideas were assimilated in both cases have been shown to the world, in 

 the one case by the splendid publications of the General Bureau of 

 Statistics of the Imperial Cabinet of Japan, in the other by the victories 

 of Oyama and Togo. ]>oth of these achievements are magnificent tri- 

 umphs of national organization, but in the long run I am not sure but 

 that the quiet work of the statistician will ])rove as sure a foundation of 

 national greatness as the more thrilling deeds of the soldier and sailor. 



On the importance of adequate statistics for national guidance we may 

 quote from the reports of Major J. ^y. l*owell, the late Director of the 

 Bureau of American Ethnology : 



^ "Statistics are compared for different conditions to exhibit important relations of social 

 life as causes of good or evil effects. The comparison is made of numbers taken at different 

 periods in the history of a people for the purpose of exhibiting the evolution of social con- 

 ditions. This leads to the consideration of statistics in Aerification. 



So common is this use that it would not be a bad tiefinition to say that statistics is the 

 science of the verification of sociologic inferences. The statesman, whose vocation is the 

 study of practical government, deals largely with statistics, and the sociologist, whose 

 theme is the social structure and its functions, resorts to statistics for the verification of 

 his doctrine. In this use of statistics the greatest care is necessary in order that unsound 

 doctrines may not receive apparent confirmation. 



Causes are multitudinous, much of demotic invention is exercised for the pur])ose of 

 discovering the particular cause most easily modifiable in the interest of human purposes. 

 In the multitude of such devices the causes are examined in a nuiltitude of ways by a multi- 

 tude of people who naturally seek verification for their inferences as to the best methods 

 of modifying causes. In sociology this verification is l^y statistics, and any arrangement 

 of figures which appears to verify an hypothesis may easily be belicA^ed to indicate the 

 true or modifiable cause of the effects considered. 



In all the field of human thought there is no region in which verification is more important 

 than in sociology, nor is there any field in which pseudo-\erification entails more misery 

 on mankind. Men may claim to verify their speculations about motors, and arrive at 

 conclusions in which perpetual motions are supposed to be involved in mechanical con- 

 structions; but only the deluded persons themselves who are engaged in such enterprises 

 as inventors, promoters or capitalists, are deceived. But when social inventions which 

 are supposed to accomplish "perpetual justice" are adopted bv men as bodies politic, 

 calamity for the multitude is the result. — Twentieth Annual Report of the Bureau of 

 American Ethnology to the Secretary of the Smithsonian Institution, 1898-99, p. Ixi. 



Let us consider hoAv this country "sizes up" with Japan in presenting 

 adequate statistics as a basis of social study and legislation. Besides the 



