Page:American Journal of Sociology Volume 3.djvu/375

 ECCENTRIC OFFICIAL STATISTICS 361

more than the average and often several times the average number as figured out by the methods employed in compiling the census of 1890.'

"In formulating the schedule for the Eleventh Census it was evidently the intention not to perpetuate the errors of the Tenth but to obtain data from which a correct statement could be made as to the true average number of employes engaged during the year and the total wages .... After Mr. Porter left the census office, the Hon. Secretary of the Interior investigated the matter of the statement of wages, and the great increases shown between 1 880 and 1890 did not appear to him to be reasonable. He there- fore undertook through the Division of Manufactures, to eliminate the errors and to straighten out the whole matter. In doing this some $60,000 were expended, but without satisfactory results. On taking charge of the census office, I took this matter up immediately and, as I have said, everything has been done to give the public the facts as they appear with ample explanation as to their value in all directions."

How much has been done to give the public the facts may be judged when it is known that not only those unused to*statistical investigation quote these statistics in utter disregard of their incomparability, but that one so eminent as a statistician as Mul- hall is at present contributing a series of articles to the North American Review in which he bases his conclusions upon the statistics of the Eleventh Census seemingly unconscious of their grossly misleading character.

Colonel Wright's anxiety to give the public the facts is also illustrated in his contribution to the Atlantic Monthly in which he says : " But fortunately, we are not obliged to depend upon the increase of rates of wages to show that the ordinary man is better off than at any former period in our history, because our censuses report aggregate earnings and also the number of per- sons among whom the earnings are divided. Looking to this side of the problem, we find that in 1850 the average annual earn- ings of each employ^ engaged in manufacturing and mechanical pursuits, including men, women, and children, in round numbers