Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 52.djvu/783

Rh It is because there are a number of true diseases of society to be met that the studied attempts to create new problems, neither imminent nor at present active, must be deprecated. When these attempts are based upon half knowledge of facts, to use no stronger term, they are still more to be discouraged as hostile to the welfare of the community, and as giving rise to policies that can only end in mischief or disaster. Much of the social unrest which finds expression in political activity has been bred and fostered by the agitation of half truths or of falsehood clothed in a quasi-scientific garb.

At present the question of the wheat supply of the world is prominent, and is being discussed in a manner that produces alarm, and with the alarm encourages every social quackery for its alleviation. Because the year 1897 was a phenomenal year in wheat—every one will admit that to be a fact—the fears of future famines and a general want throughout all wheat-consuming countries of the world are harped upon and magnified until the evidence seems to amount to a demonstration, and nothing remains for the civilized world but to become reconciled to a lowering of the standard of comfort, the substitution of a cereal of secondary quality for one that ranks next to meat in high food efficiency. The corners of the world are ransacked for figures to bear out so dire a prediction. Decreasing acreage devoted to wheat, reduced yield of crops, falling per-capita consumption of wheat, and market prices that seem to bear out the fact of an approaching if not existing famine, every incident of depression is carefully collated, and a picture drawn which casts into shade the fearfulest famine experienced in the world's history.

The error underlying such a presentation is a very common one, for it involves a partial study of a problem where the factors are so many as to present a double difficulty. Not only must the facts and statistics be collected, but they must be arranged in such a form as to be both intelligent and intelligible. Every statistician does not deserve implicit confidence. The most difficult task of the user of statistics is to attain to a proper appreciation of the relative value of compilers of statistics. Even Government work, though covered by the shield "official," is not above criticism, and if a bureau with the weight and authority of Government behind it is liable to go wrong, how much more liable to this mischance is an individual, whose interest may mislead, or whose eagerness to establish a thesis may blind to certain important phases of the problem. In the statistical treatment of any question the greatest care is needed to test fully the combination of figures presented, for a flaw in arrangement may lead to ridiculous conclusions.

These precautions of appreciating men and their work are all the more necessary in matters where the statistics at hand are