STATISTICAL COMPARISOXS. 485 



There is one point in addition to be noticed in regard to the 

 method of these calculations. Where property in two countries 

 appears to be subject to a tax like probate duty or income tax 

 on apparently much the same basis, the temptation is very 

 strong to apply tlie calculated amount of such property per 

 head to each nation respectively, but nothing could be more 

 dangerous owing to the difficulty of the data. The laws and 

 their administration of the respective countries compared would 

 need careful examination before any such short cut could be 

 used, and even then one ought not to be too sure of any single 

 method. Unless some detail could be given, no such method 

 should be einployed except as a check on a more detailed 

 method. Such a method is also specially dangerous when the 

 wealth of a community is arrived at without any items being 

 given ; by such a method, for instance, as that of dividing the 

 average wealth subject to probate duty in a year by the numbers 

 dying in a year, assuming the wealth per head thus arrived at 

 to be the average wealth per head of the community, and then 

 multiplying the numbers of the community by that figure so as 

 to arrive at the aggregate wealth. The method may yield 

 useful results if care be taken to establish aliunde what is the 

 relation between the wealth per head of those members of a 

 community who die within a year, and the wealth per head of 

 the members of a community as a whole, but when no such care 

 is taken, and communities are compared whose probate and 

 income tax laws are not really the same, the result of the com- 

 parisons may be the merest chance. 



CONCLUSION. 



The conclusion of this long review may be very shortly stated. 

 All the leading branches of statistics without exception, when 

 examined, give numerous illustrations of the dangers of taking 

 the figures relating to them from dictionaries or works of refer- 

 ence at haphazard for international comparison, as if the figures 

 called by the same names in different countries meant the same 

 things, or the units had the same values. On the contrary, from 

 the simplest figures as to population and area, through the more 

 cornplex figures as to the moral qualities of communities 

 indicated by statistics like those relating to education and 

 crime, down to the still more complex figures relating to pro- 

 duction, trade, and wealth, the same tale is told as to the 

 necessity for constant watchfulness lest things that are really 

 unlike are put together as if they were like. The moral is what 

 was stated at the outset, that the figures as such may be right 

 enough, though there are many difficulties as to the data 

 themselves to be faced in statistics, but the exact meaning of 

 the figures called by the same name, when place and 

 circumstances are difierent, may require a great deal 

 of elucidation. Perhaps some may think that the difficulties 

 are so great as to make it hopeless to handle most statistics in 

 such a way as to reach any conclusion. This is, however, by no 

 means the case. When care is taken true conclusions begin to 

 appear, and a picture is obtained of the general conditions of 

 communities in the mass which would otherwise be unattain- 



