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APPENDIX TO THE REPORT
OF THE
ONTARIO BUREAU OF INDUSTRIES
1896.
1. POLITICAL AND SOCIAL ARITHMETIC.
(An Address before the Political Science Club of Toronto University,)
By S. MORLEY WiCKETT, PH.D., (LEIPZIG),
Felloxo in Political Science at Toronto Univertity^
2. THE GROWTH OF MUNICIPAL INSTITUTIONS IN ONTARIO.
(Reprinted from the Canada Law Journal, Jan. 2, 1897.)
By C. R. W. BiGGAR, Q.C., Toronto.
3. THE MUNICIPAL GOVERNMENT OF ONTARIO.
(Prepared for the American Association for the Advance of Science,)
By C. C. James, M.A.,
Secretary Ontario Bureau of Indxisti^,
4. THE DEVELOPMENT OF AGRICULTURE IN ONTARIO.
(An Address before the Political Science Club of Toronto University,).
By C. C. James, M. A. Toronto.
PRINTED BY ORDER OF
THE LEGISLATIVE ASSEMBLY OF ONTARIO.
TORONTO :
WARWICK BRO'S & RUTTBR, PRINTERS, Ac, &c., 68 and 70 FRONT STREET WEST.
1898.
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POLITICAL AND SOCIAL ARITHMETIC.
An Address before the Political Science Club of Toronto Univebsity,
ON February 3rd 1898.
To-day, in America, the currency problem, the question of the tariff, and the riddle of the
exchanges are arousing public sentiment to a keen appreci-ition of a knowledge of economic and
of social facts. And not ajone in federal, but also in local circles the demand is becoming ever
stronger for reliable and complete official returns. As early as 1874, the late well-known Amer-
ican Economist and Statistician, General Walker, wrote : ** The country is hungry for informa-
tion ; everything of a statistical character, or even of a statistical appearance, is taken up with
an eagerness that is almost pathetic : " Though, he adds significantly, **th6 community have not
yet learned to be half skeptical and critical enough in respect to such statements." Fifteen
year» later another eminent authority, Carroll D. vVright, at present Director of the VVashington
Labor Bureau, was still able to state that : ** In this country the popular demand for statistical
information is usually far in advance of the government." And he too adds, the need for skilled
compilers of such returns is great indeed. These remarks can apply, in the main, also to Can-
ada, though at times in a modified sense, for on the whole, Canadians in the past have not been
as nationally curious as their American friends. However, there is now growing up in Canada
a strong desire for statistical information which is decidedly encouraging. Not alone for the
mercantile classes is this the case, but it is true also for the administrative authorities, federal,
provincial and municipal, as well as, and no less, for the student of social and of economic prob-
lems in this country, whose numbers are happily growing, and with sympathy will increase still
faster. Without attempting to refresh your minds on the prime importance of statistics for all
classes of thinkers — that were in these latter days hardly necessary — I have ventured to choose
** Statistics " meaning thereby, a sketch of the history of statistics, as the subject of this paper
before the Political Science Club for two reasons : because in this University, as indeed through-
out Canada, there is no special attention given to this intensely practical subject ; and, again,
that I might take this opportunity to refer to the character of some of our Canadian statistical
publications.
When *' statistics " are referred to, the student may have in mind two fciirly distinct concep-
tions : on the one hand, of a mere bald tabulation of facts like the accounts of a simple shop-
keeper, on the other, of a perspicuous, methodical arrangement of these facts with reference to
the general truths which they would demonstrate. This is, the word '* statistics" may mean at
one time merely statistical material or data, at another, so called scientific statistics.
Statistical data there has been for long ages. An official statistic — and this use of the sing-
ular form of statistics is becoming more and more legitimate — carried out by the Emperor of
China over 4000 years ago is preserved to us by Confucius in the first chapter of part two of the
Chou-King, the oldest Chinese book. The book of Numbers and many other parts of the Bible
also give accounts of different enumerations of the fighting men of a tribe and the like. During
early times, however, conceptions of arithmetical quantities were so crude and systems of nota-
tions and of enumeration so undeveloped that the value and extent of much early statistical work
must not be exaggerated. Even down to modem times, as the statistical hyperbole of many a
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scribe will attest, the value of a cypher or two at the end of a number was often very inadequat-
ely appreciated , and some people would even venture to say tliat the same statement could be
applied locally to-day I True it is, at least, that we have often wondered at the surprising fol-
lowing of a Xerxes, and at the astonishing number of deaths in some plague-stricken mediaeval
town, which later investigation shows to have been quite impossible. In Roman times especially
celebrated, not alone for financial but also for political and for social reasons, was the Roman
census, which tradition dates from the time of Servius Tullius. The census under the Republic
was made every five years, and for a time under the Empire every ten. It is claimed indeed
that the Romans, if they may be represented by Cicero, had a true conception of the nature
and importance of administrative statistics ; for in his de omtoie^ lib. ii., Cicero states categori-
cally ** a(/ roiU"j7< urn (/e Bepnblica ilandum caput cst^ yufsse Hempvblieara,'' Statisticians make
frequent reference to this diction of the great Roman, as also to the latter's ^^ notitia renim
pnbUatrum.'^ To the Middle Ages belong, as sources of historical and statistical moment, the
breviaria of Charlemagne, the national inventory of William the First of England, the Domesday
Book, and the ctmsular relazioni of some of the Italian Republics so often referred to by histor-
ians, as also local tax lists, gild documents and inventories of private manors. Systematic
tabulation of births, marriages and deaths dates generally from the Reformation when
the adherents of the rival churches were now more carefully marshalled. But still greater
statistical activity was the result of the growth of mercantile policies and the development of
national administrations and organizations in which the spirit of the intellectual awakening, the
renaissance, was well reflected. This increased statistical activity was indeed, a feature of Sully's
administration in Fmnce and also of Colbert's and Necker's ; and it was to the first of this
trio that falls the merit of having erected about 1602 a cabinet complet dc politique ot de finance,
which may be regarded as the forerunner of modern statistical Bureaus.
In the erection of statistical oflices England was not quick to follow the example thus set her
now by France, and later cm by one or two of the other continental countries. Not until the
third decade of the present centuiy was a permanent Statistical Bureau opened in England. But
in 1832 such an office was attached to the Board of Trade, under the able direction of Mr. Porter,
afterwards author of the well-known *' Progress of the Nation." England, however, in the
meantime, had not been neglecting the gathering of information, as will be indicated especially
by her valuable parliamentary papers, dating from the latter part of the seventeenth century.
On the continent Napoleon who regarded statistics as the ** budget of things, without which
there was no public safety " made his influence felt in the same direction : as did also the need
of detailed information on the part of several of the over-trodden continenbd Slates both during
and after the Napoleonic war. There was this difference, however, between then and now, that
then all official information was looked upon as the peculiar and inviolate property of the
government.
We have spoken thus far of administrative statistics, not of scientific statistics ; and the
development of statistics in the latter sense, that is, as the arithmetical science of facts, natural,
social and political, has been peculiar. The word statistics itself, was first coined or roughhewn
in Italy and polished in Germany. In Italy ragioni di statu was the science of the State, and
the publicist or statesman, familiar with such department, was called statista. Thus Shakespeare
in Cymbeline speaks of a statesman as a '* statist " : for which reason some of the English dele-
gates to the Statistical Congress at London in 1860 proposed that those having to do with
statistics should be called ** statists." But the German University professors had long since
taken over the Italian expressions, and having giving them a Latin form had popularised them.
And **status" was their new word for state and ''statisticus" that for statistics. Hence the word
•* statistician " (Statistiker) as well has been preserved.
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POLITICAL AND SOCIAL ARITHMETIC.
This orij(in of the word shows that at that time statistics as a field for research were of a
quite diflferent character and extent to what they are at present. For these early statistics thus
embraced all matters of interest to publicists — political geography, and general administrative
and constitutional organization. Their aim was to give political wisdom and to this end their
subject matter was, in short, to use a then familiar phrase, *Hhe remarkable things of the State."
For this reason they have been called ** descriptive statistics." And so Sanso vino's work, Del
Governo et Amministratione di diversi Regni et Republiche, etc. , published in Venice about 1563,
and regarded by M. Block as the first statistical work, describes some twenty different countries
cosi antiche, come moderne, now ancient, now modern. It even included a description of the
Republic Utopia of **Tomaso Moro, Cittadino di Londra.", (1) but it is almost bare of any
ciphering. And this latter may be said also of the writings of Conring in the seventeenth
century, the founder of German University Statistics ; and again, of Achenwall, Professor of
the Political Sciences at Goettingen in the middle of last century, who because of his more
conscious treatment of statistics as a department of political science, has since been called the
** father of statistics." The well-known French title ** Etat de la France " is a literary souvenir
of somewhat similar conditions. It was this class of work that in Germany went by the name
we have just mentioned, of ** University Statistics," and the name is still used, though with a
somewhat altered meaning.
This mention of Goettingen and of academic statistics makes necessary passing reference to
a curious but not on that account less warm strife between two sets of eighteenth century
statisticians. The Dane Anchersen, had published in 1741 a * statistical' work arranged
throughout in tabular form. And the model thus given was copied in Germany by Ochhardt and
others, who laid stress on the tabular presentation of facts. At times even sentences and
paragraphs were arranged to appear like tables ! Though there was often no essential difference
in the value of their statistical matter, yet the Goettingen School were pleased to contemptuously
dub their rivals ** Knights of the (statistical) table, "^ and to refer to their work as "vulgar "
in style. Amusing though the main ground of strife thus was, there seems to have been this
difference that the ' Knights ' although having it seems, less ready access to official information,
devoted more attention to arithmetical data than the academic men, and showed on the whole a
more lively appreciation of succinctness of statement. In a certain sense then the * Knights *
may be said to have beaten the first mould for later German statistical work.
In the meantime, during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, statistical work of a
somewhat more specific nature was shaping itself especially in England, under the characteristic
name of ** Political Arithmetic." Political arithmetic first embraced all calculations of national
concern ; population, trade, etc. And so this period of colonial expansion and of commercial
development, a period of keen rivalry in these matters between Holland, France and England,
was the peculiar era of such work. And with this work will always be associated the names of
Petty, of Davenant, of John Graunt and of many others. The conception of political
arithmetic, however, has since been narrowed to refer rather to practical calculations,
such as that now carried on in England by actuaries, — computations with regard to
pensions, to interest, to rent, and at times calculations of probabilities as seen in the
mortuary tables of our insurance companies. There has long been political arithmetic ; and
considerable political arithmetic there will always be. But it is a pity that such an honorable
name should be known only by its epitaph ; for the expressions Political Arithmetic and Social
Arithmetic seem in many ways both more inviting and more suggestive than the vague and
hybrid term statistics. Moreover, the latter word has a repellant, unmusicial sound that
in practice must probably be discounted at the expense of popular interest.
^An agreeable rendering of " Tabellenknechte."
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On the continent and in England then, statistical work of a certain iind was being profitably
carried on, but it was not until the present century, indeed, not until toward the middle of the
century, that much further progress was made in scientific statistics. That is, not until the pro-
vince of statistics had become less encyclopedic, and more clearly defined by the enfranchisement
of Political Economy as well as by that of Geography and Ethnology, of the departments of Ad-
ministrative Organization, and of Constitutional Flistory. Independent statistical work advanced
therefore, but slowly : though by the middle of last century the foundation of population statis-
tics, or demography, was well laid by a Prussian Pastor, Sucssmilch. Suessmilch's standpoint,
however, was theological. He sought to prove by the relative freijucncy of births and of deaths,
and by the numerical proportion in which men and women stood to one another, especially at
the marriageable age, etc., that the Divine Laws with regard to society wore an eternal and exact
arithmetic. This theological study of society has been continued in our own century especially
by Oettingen in his ** Moralstatistik." In this connection the essay of Mai thus on Population
need hardly be mentioned, for Malthus' work was not statistical in character, but rather of the
nature of a compilation. Thus indirectly and also directly statistics as a valuable ancilliary
science was impressing public opinion ; and the result has been of late genuine sympathy
between scholars and practical atiitisticians. The British Association, whose meetings were held
in this City last summer, added a statistical section in 18^30 ; and soon aft^jr was founded in Man-
chester a local statistical society, and in London, the Royal Statistical Society. If the final
impetus to statistical activity can be laid to the credit of one man, that man was the Belgian Math-
ematician, Astronomer and Statistician Quetelet. Tliis able thinker through his writings which
enjoyed considerable popularity, by his enthusiastic championing of statistical investigations, and
by the l)r lliant success he achieved in connection with the administration of the Belgian Census
of 1846, and again through his epoch-marking publication of the full census returns, attracted
the attention of Eutopo to his favorite subject as never before. And from this time practice and
science have worked more and more hand in hand, while the giant arms of the printing press
have carried statistical material to all parts of the world. In 1851, on the occasion of the Lon-
don Exposition, an International Statistical Congress was f(jrmed which down to IhTO^had held
nine sessions in various parte of Europe. In 1878, the Congress gave place to the Internationa
Institute of Statistics which holds a session every two jears and publishes a journal. By such
means trained statisticians have been enabled to enjoy intimate converse one with another ; and
the techni(pie of statistics has been correspondingly advanced. In the meantime a statistical
society, similar to the one in London was founded in Paris in 1860. The United States ha;5 also
made considerable advance in the same direction as the increasing activity of the American Stat-
istical Association, founded some fifty years ago, and the recent multiplication on all sides of ar-
ticles and works of a sUitistical nature readily indicate. At the same time we must register the
existence of such valuable statistical publications of international importance as Neumann Spal-
lart's Review of the Markets of the World, now edited by Von Jurascliek, Vcm Mayr's Statis-
tical Archives, the journals of the Royal Statistical Society, and of the French International
Institute of comparative Statistics, and in America, the publications of the American Statistical
Association. Concurrently with this development, or as part of it, statistical bureaus and oflicial
publications have been multiplied, and their rich fund made free to all. ^ Political and social
facts arranged by statists have been popularized ; and the conclusions of science, as also the
generalisiitions of practice, have been controlled, checked and advanced. If in this connection
we were to talk of Victorian Era development, wo would eay that the twentieth century will
likely look back upon the sixty years just passed as the era in which by means of statistical
investigation and development a sure foundation was laid for much of its economic and admin-
istrative progress, in a word, of its social organization.
^ In the Political Seien4se Quarterly for March, 1886, will be found a general account of the Bureaux of
Statistics of Labor in the United States,
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POLIXrCAL AND SOCIAL ARITHMETIC.
At the present time statistics as a science are taught in most of the continental universities^
and in the United States at many of the larger seats of learning. In London a series of lec-
tures on statistics is given at the London School of Economics by Mr. Hewins. Possibly the most
enthusiastic work of this character, however, is met with in Germany and Austria, where the
Government statisticians are frequently at the same time university professors. This being the
case the statistical bureaus are at definite hours the scene of most practical academic work.
And if classic is that which popular esteem has pronounced good, then we must say that in these
two countries, and^ indeed, throughout western Europe, statistics are already classic. ^
In Canada statistical work is as yet not well forward. A decided lead however in such
matters is taken by Ontario with her Bureaus of Industries and of Mines under the able super-
vision of Mr. James and of Mr. Blue. Of these two Bureaus the 14th and 6th Annual Reports
respectively have just been issued. The valuable reports of the Bureau of Industries are divided
into six parts, treating consecutively of :
1. The Weather, and the Crops.
2. Live Stock, the Dairy and the Apiary.
3. Values, Rents, and Farm Wages.
4. Chattel Mortgages.
5. Loan Companies.
6. Municipal Statistics.
Mr. Blue's report from its nature is more descriptive than statistical. Manitoba's activity
as legards such work is also very commendable ; while the recent organization of statistical
work in British Columbia under Mr. Gosnell is quite encouraging. Mr. Gosnell's recent issue
of a provincial statistical year book merits special mention. ^ In the other provinces government
publications are, however, not at all what we would wisH for, and might expect. Reports,
however, have recently come to hand that Quebec is now contemplating the erection of a statis-
tical office. It would seem that some of the provinces in the past have been vainly endeavoring
to throw the tasl: and expense of statistical compilation and publication upon the Dominion,
and are only now beginning to see the futility of such efforts, and to undertake the work
themselves.
The plan to be adopted by public financiers for the scientific classification of receipts and
expenditures is also a subject of statistical moment, and one which, in the United States, finan-
cial writers like Professor Seligman of Columbia College and Professor Plehn of Leland-Stanford
University have been urging upon scientific and administrative attention. Certain it is that a
presentation of the yearly incomings and outgoings in accord with the divisions adopted in
financial treatises would greatly aid students of financial statistics and also likely make the work
of the authorities less arduous. But this is a subject that in a paper like the present one we
can but indicate.
It might be mentioned here that our own local statistics of births, because of their well-
known incompleteness, are quite unreliable. The value of our municipal returns is also
lessened by delay in publication. In Ontario these returns are not finally published