Page 11 - clra62_0019-(GIPE)

THE UTILITY OF COMMON STATISTICS 5
ever, one of our secretaries, a regular attendant of our
meetings, and a frequent contributor to the" Journal."
I n the proper work of a statistician, moreover, there
are few men who have left a better name on our records.
I need only refer specially to three of his principal
works. Twenty years ago, when he was still compara-
tively a young man, his boo~ on the depreciation of
gold arising from the gold discoveries justly attracted
no sliall attention, both from the completeness of the
method employed, and the striking character of the
conclusion whIch he came to---that while there had
been depreciation to a moderate extent, there had been
no such depreciation as .many great economists had
anticirated. A few years afterwards his book on the
.. Coa Supply" drew attention to a problem which
is inevitably raised by the limited character of the
English coal field, and the rapidly increasing demands
upon it. This book had a wide success of notoriety,
and it was unfortunate, perhaps, that it was only too
popular, the public, which seldom makes nice distinc-
tions, running away with the notion that Mr. Jevons
predicted the actual speedy exhaustion of the English
coal supply. This, of course, was nonsense. His real
conclusion, however, viz., that one of the present con-
ditions of English prosperity was rapidly altering for
the worse, was undeniable, and was amply justified by
the experience of the coal famine of 1873. Few more
interesting books have, perhaps, been written; and
there are few better examples of the kind of statistical
works which ought now, with the increasing breadth
of statistical data, to be more largely written, viz.,
those dealing with the characteristic social and eco-'
nomic problems of the age. I t is to such works states-
men and politicians must look for a right comprehen-
sion of their task. Shortly afterwards, in 1868, Mr.
Jevons read a paper on the state of our gold coinage,
in which the same thoroughness. and completeness
exhibited in all his statistical works was again con-
spicuous, and which has since been the model of more