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ON INTERNATIONAL STATISTICAL COMPARISONS 43
temptation to which he is exposed to use works which
are only good Cor reference in this haphazard fashion.

Population Statistics.
At the risk of being commonplace through enforc-
ing considerations which no one will dispute, I pro-
pose to begin with the foundation statistics of all-
those of population. It is obvious at the first sight,
when -the statement is made, that for very few purposes
can the populations of different countries be placed to-
gether as if the units were the same. The peoples of
Europe and the United States are as a rule units of a
very different value from the units of population in
Hindoo, Chinese, negro, and aboriginal communities.
Even among European peoples themselves there are
enormous differences.
I t follows, then, that many questions of first im-
portance for which statistics of population are used,
cannot be discussed at all without reference to the
quality of the units. The fact has only to be stated to
be admitted. Among such questions, for instance, is
the question of the population that a given area will
support. The plain of Bengal, say, supports some
seventy million Hindoos-the population, in numbers,
of the United States. But if the consuming power of
the Hindoa were at all like that of the average man of
the U niled States, how many could Bengal support?
The same, mutatis mutandis, comparing even a French
or German with a United States population. The
units in the different cases are entirely different The
area of the U niled States mi~ht suffice with the same
total value of production that It now has for the support
of perhaps twice as many French or Germans as it
could support of people of the actual type of those now
planted on the soil of the United States. The question
may be turned about another way. Along with the in-
creased capacity of consumption there may, or may not,
be an increased capacity of production. If there is such