September 20, 1900] 



NA TURE 



509 



SECTION F. 



ECONOMIC SCIENCE AND STATISTICS. 



Abridged from the Opening Address by Major P. G. 

 Craigie, V.P.S.S., President of the Section. 



Of all statistical work the enumeration of the units of popula- 

 tion must ever take the foremost place, and on the eve of the 

 census to be taken before many more months have passed a re- 

 ference to that great impending task could hardly be omitted on 

 this occasion. In common with all students of the machinery 

 of census-taking, I am sure I echo the feelings of the Section— as 

 1 do those of the Royal Statistical Society, who have long 

 laboured in this direction — in deeply regretting that the first 

 census of the twentieth century is not to possess the distinction 

 many had hoped to see conferred upon it of being by preliminary 

 announcement— as I hope it may prove to be in ultimate 

 fact — the first of a series not of decennial but of quinquennial 

 countings of the people. 



The growing complexity of social conditions and speed of life 

 in all its functions at the present date, contrasted with the 

 ieisurely movements of a hundred years ago, would alone and 

 amply justify a more frequent stock-taking of the inhabitants of 

 Great Britain than has been the practice in the past. The prac- 

 tical wants of our much multiplied system of local government 

 cannot fail, I believe, ere long to bring about the granting of an 

 intermediate numbering, even if for the moment other considera- 

 tions overrule the more academic pleas of statisticians for this 

 reform, or the arguments, sound as I believe them to be, for a 

 permanent Census Office, a permanent Census Act, and a trained 

 and continuous Census Staff, to whom preparation of the ma- 

 chinery beforehand and detailed elaboration of the results after 

 the actual census year might with real economy be entrusted. 



Although the proposal which has been before the International 

 Statistical Institute in one form or another for a sychronous 

 ■" world's census," at the moment of passing from one century 

 to another, is hardly likely, for administrative reasons, and in 

 view of the previous fixtures of the great census-taking Govern- 

 ments of the earth, to be literally realised, the dates of the great 

 countings of the nations will nevertheless come sufficiently close 

 for all practical comparisons. The great Russian enumeration, 

 on the success of which M. Troinitsky is so heartily to be con- 

 gratulated, is not yet long accomplished. The twelfth census of 

 the United States is now being taken. The Scandinavian 

 inquiry coincides with the century's end, the Italian and 

 the Spanish censuses are already overdue, and both France 

 and England take their count within a few months after the 

 twentieth century has begun. 



Attempts to utilise statistical data, to determine the relative 

 development of agriculture in different parts of the world and 

 at different periods of time, are sometimes made with regard 

 solely to what is described as the world's aggregate of one or 

 two leading individual products as typical as the rest ; or, again, 

 one or two typical countries, or at least countries where the 

 available information is more complete than elsewhere, are 

 chosen, and the course of development or decline of their crop 

 areas or the several descriptions of their animal produce is traced 

 and compared. 



Certain obvious objections, which it is well to recognise, im- 

 pede the student of figures who resolves to proceed on the first 

 of these methods. At the outset he is arrested by embarrass- 

 ment attending the choice of what single products are to be held 

 as representative of agricultural outturn. The most usual of all 

 selections is that which restricts inquiries to the case of wheat. 

 This course appears to be rendered, comparatively speaking, 

 easy, as more has probably been written and more statistics, 

 official or unofficial, theoretical or commercial, actual or ima- 

 ginary, have been compiled with regard to this bread grain than 

 for any other crop. But it is time we recognised that wheat has 

 too much and too exclusive attention directed to it as a type of 

 agricultural production. Very widely as it is undoubtedly used in 

 the form of bread, even as food its place is occupied at one time 

 or another, and in one country or another, by other substitutes, 

 and its cultivation, is, after all, not the employment which de- 

 mands the most attention and most skill at the hands of the 

 agriculturist. Not only do rye and even maize serve as substitutes 

 or supplements in feeding man, but other crops, such as oats, 

 barley, millet, rice, and so on, have claims to greater notice than 

 they receive, and play a direct as well as indirect part in 

 providing food. Cotton, flax and wool are other typical 

 products, the use of which for clothing is all-important to an 

 NO. 161 2, VOL. 62] 



enormous population, and the extension or retrc^ression of 

 such crops deserves some of the attention of the agricultural 

 statistician. Tea, coffee, wine, spirits and beer are, it is not to 

 be forgotten, agricultural products in one clime or another, either 

 directly or indirectly ; and crops so important as sugar or tobacco 

 are almost to be classed as necessaries of existence. Of yearly 

 growing importance is it also, in these days, when the animal 

 portion of our food supply bulks so much more fully than before 

 in the daily rations of populations as they grow in wealth and 

 increase in consumptive power, that we should closely follow the 

 fluctuations in the live stock maintained for food and learn the 

 teaching of the agricultural returns on the manufacture of beef, 

 of mutton, of pig meat, or of milk. 



Although the attempt to grasp the relative magnitude of the 

 agricultural production of one State as compared with another, 

 or to note the growth or decline of its prominence in the culti- 

 vation of particular staples, or the manufacture of particular kinds 

 of human food, is always an enterprise of difficulty in existing 

 statistical conditions, it is one which has fascination for many 

 classes of economists and politicians. If attempted at all, it is 

 well to recognise that there are inevitable dangers in the task, 

 and that if any figures are relied on as conclusive their meaning 

 must be interpreted by some knowledge of the demographic con- 

 ditions of each State and its geographical, climatic and 

 agricultural circumstances. 



Taking a few of the most conspicuous products of the soil, it 

 will generally be found that a very few leading States are so par- 

 ticularly identified with one or other type of production that the 

 examination of their records are therefore available as guides to 

 the course of a single crop. 



Probably quite two-thirds of the cotton of the world is grown 

 in the United States alone, where the surface so employed 

 reaches 25,000,000 acres as compared with under 9,000,000 

 acres in British India, the next largest cotton-growing region 

 of which statistical record exists. In wool the produce of the 

 Australasian Colonies of Great Britain — with flocks which still 

 exceed 100,000,000 head — makes much the largest contribution 

 to the total. In rice, so far as statistics carry us, our Indian 

 possessions head the list of producers. In hops the English 

 crop still probably exceeds the German in production, although 

 the latter with larger area closely contests the place. In 

 tobacco, while the acreage apparently employed in British 

 India is nearly double the 595,000 acres in the United States, 

 no other country in our statistical records comes within one- 

 seventh of the American area. The vineyards of Italy are 

 returned as covering 8,500,000 acres, and those of France 

 4,300,000 acres, while those of Austria and Hungary, 

 next in magnitude, cover but a seventh part of the 

 last-mentioned figure. Russia bulks largely as a grower 

 of flax, and alone shows a whole third of the area of barley 

 recorded in all the countries which supply returns, and if in the 

 case of potatoes the Russian acreage is not very different from 

 that of Germany the total production of the latter empire 

 reaches the largest aggregate of any single country. 



If the subject of inquiry be the place of wheat-growing in 

 the world at one date or another, it would not be to the older 

 European countries, other than Russia at all events, we should 

 turn to see where the surface so utilised was extending. 

 Reckoned by the percentage of her cereal area which she still 

 devotes to wheat, France, with 47 per cent, under the crop, 

 or Italy, with 55 per cent., would naturally be selected as 

 typical wheat-growers ; but both are practically in a stationary 

 or, collectively, even in a slightly retrograding position. It is 

 on the other side of the Atlantic where the most note- 

 worthy movements have occurred. In comparatively new 

 exporting countries, such as Argentina and Canada, though 

 the statistics from neither are complete, wheat areas 

 still extend, and that of the United States, though fluctuating 

 with great sensitiveness under varying price conditions, and 

 moving from one centre to another westward or north- 

 westward across the American continent, is now reported as 

 covering 44,600,000 acres. This total, it must be allowed, 

 whatever views may be held as to future progress, makes the 

 United States a typical grower of this particular cereal, to which 

 it gives an importance second only to the still more extensive 

 product of American soil, to which we give the name of maize, 

 but to which alone in American parlance is allowed the title 

 of corn. 



The leading changes in the production of typical crops as 

 measured by the acreage, and the stock of cattle, sheep and 



