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ECONOMIC INQUIRIES AND STUDIES
investigations, even in the same country, the precaution
is equally indispensable.

Statistics as to Character 0/ Population.
I proceed next to statistics, from which inferences
are commonly drawn as to the qualities of a population
-1 mean statistics on such subjects as education, crime,
sexual morality, drunkenness, insolvency, and,thrift.
On all these points different countries have statistics,
which may have a meaning when they are properly
used, but which it is most difficult to use properly.
To begin with education. Which is the most for-
tunate population of the world as regards the general
education of the people? One often hears of the United
States in this connection-of the numbers of children
of school age and the numbers attending school as com-
pared with less fortunate populations. But let me take
the following passage from a memorandum by Mr.
{afterwards Sir Joshua) Fitch, one 'of Her Majesty's
chief inspectors of training colleges, on the working of
the Free School system in the United States, France,
and Belgium:
"In England and Wales the calculations of average attendance are
made on the assumption that every school is open at least 400 times
-or 200 days in the year. It is on this basis that the annual returns in
the official report of the Education Department state the average
attendance of scholars in infant schools and departments to be 68 per
cent., and that in schools for older children to be 82.2 per cent. But
in the United States there is no uniform or generally accepted rule
respecting the length of the school year. In the principal cities, especi-
ally in the East and West, the schools are open ten months out of
twelve, and in these the statistics of attendance may be fairly com-
pared with our own. But taking the country through, the average
number of days in which the public schools are open is J 29 in the
year, and this fact implies that in the country places, especially in
the South Atlantic and South Central States, the number of school
days falls much below that average. In Alabama and in Georgia the
schools are open only three months in the year, the teachers are paid
by the month, and hold no permanent appointment. In Louisiana
and Missouri the, small sum appropriated to education by the State
barely suffices to ~eep the schools at work more than four months in