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ON INTERNATIONAL STATISTICAL COMPARISONS 63
point would usually make it possible to turn the figures
to support some useful conclusion.
In connection with these comparisons, it should also
be noticed that many of the deductions per head and
per acre, into which it is usual to convert the figures of
agricultural production, are calculated to mislead, even
when the units themsel ves are comparable, because the
comparisons are with the total acreage and total popu-
latioQ of a country, and not with the special acreage
and a~ricuItural population. What could be more use-
less, for instance, than to compare two countries like
England and the United States as regards their pro-
duction of wheat or any other agricultural product per
head of the whole population, the one population living
on its own wheat and other products, and the other
not? All such comparisons to be of any value should
be made from the purely agricultural point of view-
to illustrate differences in the style of agriculture carried
on, or in the fertility of any two countries. But they
are often made with lingering notions that all States
can, to some extent, be dealt with as agricultural units,
which is far from being the case.
Coming to statistics of manufacturing production-
and this to some extent applies to agricultural and
mining production-what we find is that. save as to
some particular industry in detail, and for the purposes
of discussions of that industry by itself, there is really
no common denominator between countries, except in
so far as the production of their respective industries
can be represented in money. The coal and iron of
one country are not the same as the coal and iron of
another; the wool is not the same; the cotton, woollen,
and linen manufactures of the one cannot be expressed
in the same units of quantity as the similar manufactures
of the other; the same with manufactures of metals,
leather, and wood, and with machines of all kinds.
. Even if there is a general likeness in industrial char-
acteristics between any two countries such as England
and France, yet the different distributions of the leading