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ON INTERNATIONAL STATISTICAL COMPARISONS 73
so much lower-employment for employment-than
they are in the United States or Australasia, and to a
large extent I believe the solution I have now sug-
gested is the true one. It is not enough, then, to com-
pare employment with employment, but mass must be
compared with mass.-
Other dangers in these international statistical com-
parisons, such as differences in the purchasing power
of mqney in different places, may be suggested. But I
should not be disposed to lay so much stress on any
other point as upon that of the relative importance of
different employments in different countries. In these
days of cheap freights and rapid transit, the equalization
of prices in ale countries has been carried very far
indeed, the most important differences that remain
being, I believe, artificial, arising from the protection
of food products in countries like Germany and France,
and the like causes. The different distribution of popu-
lations according to employments remains, however,
an enduring cause of differences in their relative aggre-
gate earnings and average earnings per head.

fVealth Stai£stics.
FinaIIy I have some remarks to make on the dangers
of comparisons between nations as to their aggregate
wealth.
Apart from all other difficulties that of the data them-
selves is here very great. It is hardly possible to obtain
an account of the wealth of any country on any basis
that can give a minutely accurate result, and it is the
more difficult to obtain such accounts for any two
nations made up in exactly the same way. If one
country, therefore, is made out to have an aggregate
wealth of about £250 per head, and another of £300
per head, it may well be that, owing to the necessary
want of exactness in the calculation itself for any country
and the differences of method employed in each case,
the facts represented by these figures may either be