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THE UTILITY OF COMMON STATISTICS ,39
growth, and the probability of a check to it j but the
figures here used are also easily accessible. I trust you
will agree with me that we may conclude from all this
review, that the easy figures of statistics which we are
all more or less familiar with are fruitful. How im-
possible it would be even to conceive some of the
problems which are now raised for discussion if there
were no statistics, and how inexplicabl.e many of the
facts ~f the present day and of history would become
if statistics did not explain them.
If time permitted, it would not be diffi~ult to show
how other familiar figures in statistics also supply
problems for discussion, and colour all our political
thought. Let me only add, however, that the fact of
these easy figures being so useful should encourage
the development of the study of statistics. Familiar
as are some of the things we have been discussing, it
is often too evident that they are not sufficiently ap- .
preciated-that hazy ideas are widely held which a
clear knowledge of statistics would disperse. Still
more, not only should the accessible and easy figures
be more studied, but it is most desirable to digest
other masses of figures and increase the field of what
can be readily understood. The difficulties in the way
in some branches, as in the case of many trade figures,
the figures of national income, and the like, are
enormous, in consequence of the varying aspects of
the data and the difficulty of impressing on the public
mind some of the most elementary conceptions of the
statistician, such as the propriety of using figures of
trade on an imperfect basis to show progress or the
reverse for a series of years, because the basis, though
imperfect, is throughout the same. There is no doubt,
however, that with time and attention, order can be
educed of what is now chaotic to the public mind, and
many facts of some complexity brought to the general
knowledge. We have likewise to remember that time
is working with us. The influence of simple population
statistics upon political thought, and in suggesting