Page:On the economy of machinery and manufactures - Babbage - 1846.djvu/189

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(203.) I cannot omit availing myself of this opportunity of calling the attention of the manufacturers, merchants, and factors, in all our manufacturing and commercial towns, to the great importance, both for their own interests, and for that of the population to which their capital gives employment, of collecting with care such averages from the actual sales registered in their books. Nor, perhaps, would it he without its use to suggest, that such averages would be still more valuable if collected from as many different quarters as possible; that the quantity of the goods from which they are deduced, together with the greatest deviations from the mean, ought to be given; and that if a small committee were to undertake the task, it would give great additional