Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 39.djvu/464

448 Looking at one part of the foregoing table, it will be seen that between 1850 and 1890 the population increased 170·45 per cent, while the expenditures of the Government for the same period increased 338·36 per cent, the percentage of increase in expenditures being enormously in excess of the increase in population. If, however, one should examine the business side, which offers the truer basis of comparison, so far as expenditures are concerned, it will be seen that the percentage of increase in 1880 over 1850 was 426·89 per cent. The figures for 1890 are not yet available. Taking the same year, that is, 1880, for the three elements, we find that the population increased in 1880 as over 1850 116·26 per cent, expenditures for the same period 218·17 per cent, and the value of manufactured products increased 426·89 per cent. To carry this illustration to its logical completeness, the statistics of valuations and some others should be added, but they would simply be accumulative on the business side of the comparison as against the simple comparison of expenditures with population.

Criminal statistics are, perhaps, the most misleading, even when absolutely correct. The attempt is often made to compare the criminal statistics of one State with those of another, in order to determine relative criminal conditions. Such a comparison is and must be thoroughly vicious in every element. One illustration will be sufficient. Suppose one should undertake, as has been the case, to compare the criminal conditions of Massachusetts and Virginia by means of the statistics of crime. Such a comparison would lead only to unjust conclusions, to angry discussion, and to general ill-feeling, for the reason that the criminal codes of the two States differ widely. A few years ago I had occasion to examine this subject, and I found that the criminal code of Massachusetts, at the time the study was made, provided for the punishment of 158 offenses designated as crimes, and the sentences under the statutes of course appeared in the criminal statistics of Massachusetts. The code of Virginia at the same time recognized but 108 such offenses as crimes punishable at law; that is, there were 50 distinct offenses known to the Massachusetts law which were not to be found in the criminal laws of Virginia. No honest comparison, therefore, could be made between the criminal statistics of the two States, and a truthful statement of such statistics in comparison would lead to the most dishonest conclusions. Even with parallel codes and with accurate statistics of the number of persons in prison for crime, no conclusions would be justifiable, for of the offenses common to both States several were punishable by imprisonment in Massachusetts, but by fine only in Virginia. So the prison statistics would show sentences under grave crimes in Massachusetts, while the prison statistics of Virginia would show that no one had been sentenced for such crimes. The grave