down by General Walker and in the fact that there is something deeper and more comprehensive than the mere statement of figures, for the statistician must have the spirit of what again Mr. North has called ethical philosophy, the recognition of the existence of the great fundamental law, the principle which governs this world and all things in it, the principle of evolution.

How perfectly true this is, and how absolutely lacking was this spirit at the time of the organization of this Association! The modern statistician makes statistics popular by presenting their results in popular and readable form. The official statistician is under limitations in this respect, for his work, no matter what his spirit is, must, to a certain degree, be conventional, for it must be official in its character; but the Association to which we are devoted can put this spirit into its work in interpreting the statistics of the government.

The field for our exploitation is vast and rich, and it is growing vaster and richer as time goes on. We now have what we have long needed, a permanent census office, a great clearing house of federal statistics, and more and more Congress will use it as the vehicle for sending out to the people its costly information. Not only this, but more and more will it consolidate into the Census Office other statistical works, so that there shall be harmony in preparation, unity and science in presentation.

The United States now holds a unique position in statistical work. As I have intimated, no other country approaches it. Any one who has given any consideration whatever to the volumes and bulletins which are coming out of that office must concede this fact, and feel proud every time that such a volume is examined that we not only now have an office competent, adequate, skilfully manned to make it a great clearing house of statistical information, but that we have a man, one of our own Vice-Presidents, at the head of it who comprehends that spirit to which I have alluded,-who has the judgment, the intellect, and the ability which makes him pre-eminently the peer of any statistician the world can name, and holding a field

and having an opportunity not even approached by any other statistician on earth. He understands clearly the duty to which he is assigned. He understands not only the present scope of his work, but what it may be made to reach in the future.

He knows that he is painting a grand and enduring picture, not in bright colors mixed and laid by an artist's hand on canvas which might not tell at the close of another century of the work of our generation, nor yet in glowing words of description by sentences constructed by most gifted writers, whose language one hundred years hence might not mean all the interpretation we give it in our time, nor in any of the perishable methods which convey to posterity as much of the vanity of a people as of the reality which makes the Commonwealth of to-day; but that he sets the picture in cold, enduring Arabic characters, which have survived through the centuries that have passed, unchanged and unchangeable by time, by accident, or by decay, and will remain through the ages to come as truthful as of old. They are the symbols that have unlocked to us the growth of the periods which make up our past. They are the fitting and never-changing symbols by which to tell the story of our present state, so that, when the age we live in becomes the past of successive generations of men, the story and the picture shall be found to exist in all the just proportions in which it has been set by ourselves. A quiet and may be unlovely setting the statistician chooses, but he knows it will endure through all time.

At the close of the address of the President, Dr. Samuel W. Dike said:

This address has noted the many State Bureaus of Labor (34 in all, I think) besides the National Bureaus that have grown out of the Massachusetts Bureau of Labor Statistics. Mr. Wright, I believe, might have also mentioned two or three important European Statistical Bureaus that owe their origin largely to our Massachusetts Bureau. I happen to have heard from excellent authority many years ago the story of the

way in which the Massachusetts Bureau was saved from impending extinction and started on the road to success. The briefest statement of an incident will give you the clue. The Massachusetts Bureau had dragged along for three or four years, and seemed to be on its last legs. Governor Washburn sent for Colonel Carroll D. Wright, then a young man scarcely rising above thirty years of age, who was completing his term of service in the State Senate, and said to him, "I have watched your work on some measures before the legislature, and now I want you to take this Bureau of Labor and make it or bust it!" After considerable urging on the part of the governor, the young man, who was intent on returning to his excellent law practice and was without statistical experience, consented.

THE OUTLOOK FOR STATISTICAL SCIENCE IN THE UNITED STATES.*

By S. N. D. NORTH.

I am glad of the opportunity to supplement President Wright's interesting retrospect with a brief allusion to the present situation and the future outlook for statistical science in this country, and more especially in relation to the statistical work of the government.

I have but one criticism to make upon the address. It resembles the play of "Hamlet," with Hamlet left out. It nowhere hints that Colonel Wright has contributed more to the development of statistical work in the United States, and to its substantial advancement along straight and sane lines, than any other living American. Colonel Wright could not say all this, but I can.

We cannot yet fully realize what a tremendous step forward was taken when the Census Office was made a permanent institution by the act of March 6, 1902. No single thing, save only the requirement for a decennial census in the Federal Constitution, has done so much to promote the study and to perfect the methods of statistics as that legislation, to which Congress consented with the utmost reluctance and with much misgiving.

It will only be after a decennial census has been taken that we can measure the gain that must come in the quality of the work by reason of the existence of the permanent bureau. That the gain will be tangible and real we already know; for a large part of the work of the office has been concentrated during this interval upon a study of weaknesses and defects and upon plans for strengthening the machinery and improving the methods.

*Address delivered at the annual meeting of the American Statistical Association Jan. 17, 1908.

The bill already introduced in Congress for the taking of the thirteenth census is the first visible result. The bill has received a more careful study by the best statistical experts than was ever before given to a census law.

I believe it has but one serious defect: that is the provision for the appointment of the temporary clerical force after noncompetitive examinations rather than through the usual civil service method. The Director ought to be wholly relieved, during the progress of the tremendously difficult work of a decennial census, of all pressure for patronage.

We hope to see it enacted at the present session of Congress. This will be a year earlier than the usual date of census legislation heretofore. This additional year for preparation, by the complete organization of the working machinery, kept alive at its highest efficiency, means a good job, more deliberately and carefully done than was ever possible before.

There has been much speculation as to the margin of error in past censuses. It is customary to reassure the doubters by the statement that one error tends to offset and balance another, giving a net result sufficiently near the truth for all practical purposes. I have always been sceptical as to the soundness of this reasoning. At the next census we may make some discoveries that will be startling. At any rate, we are for the first time in a position where we can intelligently check one census with another.

The permanent Census Office has created a training school for government statisticians. Many of you will recall the remark of General Walker in 1896, that "the government which has spent millions and tens of millions in the collection, compilation, and publication of statistics, had never spent anything in training and preparing the men who should conduct the statistical work of the country." We have an army and a military academy to train men in military science, a navy and a naval academy to prepare men to conduct the service of the navy in war and in peace; but for the development of the science of statistics, the science whose light guides and directs the action of legislature in the shaping of policies that