642 TRANSACTIONS OP SECTION P. 



with Galton's name — to enable us to understand the magnitude and nature of tlie 

 burden to be supported. 



Again I would urge that in regard to all these questions we are in a condition 

 of gi-eat ignorance. If the numbers of unemployed or unfit are increasing 

 relatively to the population at large, the position is Tery serious and heroic 

 remedies are wanted ; but if they are diminishing, while we lament the present 

 evil, we may be hopeful as to the future. What light do statistics, mathematical 

 or otherwise, throw on this question P \^'^e know that the wages of regular 

 workers have increased steadily for many decades, whether measured in cash or in 

 purchasing power, and that hours of labour have diminished progressively. The 

 consumption of necessary commodities and of common luxuries has increased more 

 rapidly than the population. Working-class savings and investments have grown 

 enormously. What evidence we have indicates that aggregate wages and aggregate 

 national income have increased at nearly the same rate. Unemployment, so far as 

 it is registered, has, period for period, been at nearly the same level for forty years, 

 except that the years of good employment were specially numerous in the nineties. 

 But this is only one side — the visible side — of the pictvu-e. For the permanently 

 unemployed and unfit our only records are the singularly inadequate and imperfect 

 statistics of pauperism. W^e have nothing to go on but guesses as to the I'eal 

 extent of poverty. W^e cannot recover records for previous years, and statistical 

 science must remain powerless where there are no data. We are not taking any 

 steps as yet to learn our existing condition in any complete way, though the work 

 done in intensive inquiries would have been sufficient, if directed over the whole 

 field, to have given us an adequate sample. 



It is because of the immediate and pressing need of information before we 

 commit oiu'selves to dangerous remedies on an erroneous diagnosis, that I have 

 spent my allotted time in pressing the importance of scientific method in statistical 

 research. 



The following Report and Papers were read :— 



1. Third Heport on the Accuracy and Comparability 0/ British and Foreign 

 Statistics 0/ International Trade. — 8ee Reports, p. 339. 



2. Theory oj Distribution. By Professor F. Y. EdgBWOKTii, LL.D. 



That the shares of the national dividend are determined by a complicated 

 play of supply and demand (with implicated propositions as to 'marginal' value) ; 

 that the process of production and distribution has the character of a How ; that 

 certain factors of production are not only attracted from one destination to 

 another, but also called into existence by tbe prospect of remuneration — these 

 leading principles are re-stated with dialectical reference to contemporary 

 writings. 



3. The Inhabited House Duty as a (Graduated Tax, 

 By James Bonar, M.A.^ LL.D. 



The tax dates from Adam Smith and Lord North. It is unlike the income- 

 tax in steadiness, stringency, iuevitableness, and independence of ' taxation at 

 the sources.' It is unlike a rate or a land tax in its uniformity within Great 

 Britain. It produces to the revenue about two millions a year, raised (a) from 

 dwelling-houses on a scale of three steps, dd., Qd., and M. in the £ of annual 

 value, and (b) from residential shops, farmhouses, hotels, &c., on a scale of three 

 smaller steps, 2d., Ad., and Qd. The imperfections of the graduation are most 

 striking in the higher steps, but quite as real in the lower. The resulting hard- 

 ships are not to be explained away by shifting, although that, too, is real. 



It is possible to suggest a graduation which should begin from the same 



