30 A REPLY TO CRITICISMS OF THE 



A few further illustrations of Sir Victor and Dr. Sturge's 

 perfectly random misstatements may be extracted from their 

 letter of Feb. ii, 1911 to the ^5. J/, y.i Take the following 

 sentence : 



' If your readers have the curiosity to turn to this [the 

 paper in the Royal Statistical Society s Jo7ir7ial\ they will 

 find a most extraordinary compendium of estimates as to 

 how much the drinker and the sober man respectively 

 earned, but not from beginning to end does he mention the 

 original estimate published in the first memoir. This we 

 may suppose, therefore, will also be buried, like various 

 other inconvenient conclusions to which we have drawn 

 attention ' (p. 2i'^^\ 



The ' compendium of estimates ' is identical with that 

 given above. That Sir Victor thinks it 'extraordinary' 

 probably arises from his total ignorance of the methods 

 of statistics — it is probably the only form in which statistics 

 of wages in a population of any kind can be presented. 

 So far from the original estimate being 'buried', the table 

 practically confirms the original estimate and accords 

 closely with that estimate, which indeed was formed 

 essentially in the same way, with a little less rigid definition 

 of categories, and so a possibility of more personal equation. 

 The result shows that the possibility was not an actuality. 



of individual wages, three of them have been classed as regular according to 

 the record, and the fourth in the group of no work of our Table, p. 21 of this 

 paper. Notwithstanding this, here as elsewhere, Sir Victor Horsley makes 

 the deliberate misstatement that I have asserted that * all these twelve earn 

 28i-. dd. a week '. Absolutely the same type of misstatement occurs in his 

 remarks as to masons (our classification including bricklayers — a small body 

 in Scotland having no separate union, and combined with masons by the 

 Registrar-General), as to painters, &c. It is purely idle, however, to waste 

 type in going through each such case in detail. 



^ The Editor of that Journal thought any reply on my part to the nineteen 

 columns of Sir Victor and Dr. Sturge unnecessary, and I only succeeded under 

 considerable difficulties in getting my letter of Feb. 4 inserted. A brief reply 

 of a few lines to the above letter was acknowledged by the Editor but not 

 inserted. Comment is needless. 



