TRANSACTIONS OF THE SECTIONS. 201 
with the age, sex, religion, and education, all ina concrete manner or in their several 
relations. He also submitted that by it records could be kept at each dispensary 
district of the diseases of the locality part passu with their occurrence, showing 
how they were “begun, continued, and ended ;” one of the incised copies to be 
forwarded periodically to'a central office to be tabulated for the advancement of 
medical science and the consequent sanitary benefit of the community. Doctors 
could, on a properly arranged table, register the leading particulars of each day’s 
work in a few minutes. 
In conclusion, he attributed the delays that occur in the publication of census 
and other standard statistics to the apathy of the public regarding statistical 
science ; for if it were more generally appreciated, the laws of demand and supply 
would soon provide a remedy. By a proper arrangement of the statistics of his 
business, both as regards “plant,” “materials,” and “money,” the merchant or 
manufacturer could learn when, where, and how to repress expenditure and develop 
income, and from an intelligent examination of our national statistics see new 
fields for the investment of capital. Narrow and sectarian views too often restrict 
the utility of a census, as is the case in that of Great Britain, which affords no 
information respecting the religion or education of the people, which was so much 
wanted in connexion with recent legislation. If statistics were better understood, 
we would very soon have a department at Whitehall where al] our national facts 
would be registered with mathematical precision and published with the regularity 
of a gazette, so that merchants, manufacturers, and philanthropists, as well as 
statesmen, could obtain standard information on all subjects of importance. It 
could supply at a day’s notice the Parliamentary returns so frequently called for - 
by the advocates of new measures and now provided with such delay and expense, 
and, what would be perhaps of greater importance, it could afford correlative infor- 
mation to the opponents of them fully and promptly. 
The Economic Law of Strikes. By W.H. Dovv, A.M., Barrister at Law. 
At the outset it is necessary to inquire if there be a “law.” Economic science 
has been put on its defence recently by writers both in America and England. 
The “law ” of abstract political economy on the subject is modified in actual fact 
in two ways. It is modified by the nature of profits themselves. The first element 
in SA is remuneration for saving, or interest; the second is remuneration for 
risk, or assurance; the third is the wages of superintendence, including all 
elements not included under the first two. The first two elements are equal or 
nearly equal over all trades and manufactures in the same country at any given 
time; the third varies from trade to trade, and from individual to individual. It 
is this third element that a combination of labour attacks ; and on this very account 
a strike is more difficult of settlement, since the amount of the profits is unknown 
to those attacking them. But the economic law is also modified by historical or 
local circumstances ; and here it may be well to inquire what s the law. The rate 
of wages depends on the amount of the wage-fund divided by the number of 
labourers. The first element in this (wage-fund) is made up of all capital other 
than fixed capital, and all wealth not capital devoted to the employment of labour. 
Again, profits depend solely on the cost of labour. If we assume A to be the 
finished commodity, W+P=A, and therefore A~W=P. Lastly, as regards 
exchange. Articles will exchange in accordance with the wages and profits 
expended on them, or W+P=W'+P'+. This is briefly the law of political 
economy; but it is modified locally and historically by a variety of considera- 
tions. In a place, for example, where there is only one manufactory, such as 
Bessbrook, the relations between employer and employed are open to modification 
from the sagacity and wisdom of the employer in making more profits than usual 
in the manufacture, from his being content with less, or from his deliberately 
sharing his profits with his workmen. On the other hand, they may be modified 
by the ignorance or selfishness of the employed, or by factious and evil-minded 
agitators, Again, a particular manufacture may have exceptional advantages in 
locality, and may for a series of years obtain a kind of monopoly. Capitalists in 
1874. 
