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58 ECONOMIC INQUIRIES AND STUDIES
could be correctly ascertained. More bankruptcy in the
one case than in the other may simply mean greater
enterprise making more opportunity for failure, and not
an excess of dishonesty in one compared with another.
It may also mean that the industries carried on in one
country, and which are suitable to be carried on in it,
are essentially more fluctuating at a given period than
the different industries of another country. Farming is
often the most fluctuating of all industries. A country
dependent on farming may suffer more from bankruptcy
at a given date than a country less dependent. In
turn, a manufacturing or commercial country may suffer
more from catastrophes like war or invasion than an
agricultural country would suffer. Perhaps even these
difficulties could be overcome or evaded, and bank-
ruptcy statistics be handled so as to indicate differences.
of character between two peoples; but the labour of the
comparison would be very considerable indeed if any-
thing is to be made of it at all.
I come finally to the last branch of statistics referred
to as being often used to compare the character of two
peoples, viz., the statistics of thrift or the diffusion of
prpperty among the masses. Here the temptation is
to take some one form of saving, such as savings
banks, or the holding of land, or investment in Govern-
ment stocks, and roughly judge one people by their
habits as to this one form of saving. So far as I have
observed, the usual comparisons in detail, even as to
the one branch of saving selected for comparison, are
most erroneous. Thus, I have seen the number of
separate inscriptions of French rentes in the books
of the French Ministry of Finance treated as the num-
ber of separate holders. The truth is that the question
of the number of inscriptions of rentes, the inscriptions
being anonymous, is purely a formal matter, depend-
ing upon the subdivisions which are most convenient
for dealing. One individual may, and as a rule does,
hold many inscriptions. When the French issued
new loans in 1871 and 1872 to pay the war indemnity