The Plague of Statistics

THERE was nothing equivocal about the plagues of Egypt, and this was assuredly the good fortune of the Egyptians. Their calamities were grievous enough to be definite. Such obtrusive matters are the easiest remedied, for one knows what they are. In this our present day an affliction must be subtle indeed to escape notice. With professional diagnosticians rioting in the pulpit, the legislature, and the press, our blights multiply. We scent danger from afar, cry it from the public places, appoint a commission forthwith, and read its report with amazing complacence. State and national bureaus insatiably lay about them, that salaries may be earned and investigations pursued. If witch-finding is no longer a recognized profession, plague-finding has taken its place most satisfactorily. Circumstanced as was Egypt in her distressful days, we should turn the various afflictions over to boards and bureaus; let the entomological gentlemen memorialize the grievances of locusts and lice along with the gypsy moth and the Hessian fly ; give to the health boards the matter of boils and blains, and create such other commissions as the plagues demand, to the end that laborious reports should be made, and great quantities of folios proceed from the public printer.

Is it not possible that this whole matter of compiling statistics, and relying on them when compiled, is itself a modern plague ? This reduction of all subjects to the state of the statistic, — is it not an evil in itself, an evil leading to and encouraging other evils ? More than anything else this has led to a reverence for that shameful thing, the quantitative life.

Captive imagination is fast becoming confined in the web of Arabic notation and statistics. To express the shame of it phrasally, itself a dangerous and difficult matter, it may be said that if the English are a nation of shopkeepers, Americans are a nation of expert accountants. There is something of the Zerah Colburn in every successful American, and it is just that something we have in common with this still famous mathematical prodigy that makes both for our successes and our shortcomings. If ambitious imitation be the gauge of what constitutes opinion, it may safely be said that the Zerah Colburn in us, plus the A. T. Stewart we wish to have, is the pedestaled abstract of the American ideal. But success has nothing to do with the quantitative life which seems so desirable. Our reverence for numbers does not mean success ; the Zerah Colburn is stronger than the A. T. Stewart.

What then is involved in the problem ? Why and to what extent are statistics an evil ? The first part of the question is the more easily answered ; briefly it can be stated in this way : We have come so to rely upon numerical expression that numbers stand both as end and means; no longer dare we appeal to the emotions, no longer do men sway men with truth of words. Facts, and the exact expression of them, are what we seem to desire. Fast are we drawing the chilling robes about us; fast have our finer instincts, our higher powers, become drugged with sums total. Judging from the means taken to convince and excite us, as a race we are becoming incapable of any reason not expressed by one of the great divisions of mathematics. Pythagoras would be delighted indeed to see our reverence for numbers; for we bow lower than did he, and for less reason.

But what actually is the extent of the evil ? We can hardly measure the effects aright without knowing the extent; how greatly are we afflicted by it ? The children of the imagination were long in bondage to science. Now they wander, let us hope not a full forty years, in the wilderness of purely scientific expression, the arid, sterile waste of statistics. What function of public life has not been unduly brought under this dread domain ? Understanding quantity by instinct and quality not at all, the appeal is made at once to arithmetic. Would we convince the average American ? Experience has taught that it can best be done by figures. The Zerah Colburn in him is most alert. Do not the newspapers rely upon this trait continually ? Latterly, our editorial pages are digests of tables prepared by various commissions. Does the pulpit scorn this means of arousing interest ? How do we raise funds for starving India ? The chief instrument for rousing compassion is famine statistics ; the bulk of the misfortune readily appeals. We group disaster as our merchants corner markets. Do we plead the cause of temperance ? Here statistics revel, and they may be had patiently plotted out even to the number of drunkards to the square rod in Cuyahoga County, Ohio, or the arrests for inebriety in Kokomo, Indiana, for 1900. What seems to be the crux in literature ? How appraise the success of a book save by the number of copies sold in a given time ? How ascertain the merit of a play save by the number of nights it “ ran ” in the dramatic centres ? Thus is our American mark set on what is what. We go about reforming and purifying the world, with a committee report at elbow and a statistical compilation in each hand.

We have lost the power of reasoning without a mathematical crutch. Americans are indeed a calculating people. The premise of those who wish to inflame, convince, excite, or move us is that this must be done in no other way than in digits and systems of digits. Of the cowardice of proverbs as a retort Robert Louis Stevenson has feelingly told us ; yet proverbs are brave compared to statistics. Once upon a time (it was almost as long ago as that), logic, expressed with a fine garnishing of words, swayed multitudes ; proselyted with Paul, aroused the crusades, wrought the Reformation, accomplished American independence. The time for this seems to have passed. We read to-day the speeches that once thrilled England or kept men breathless in our American halls, and, somewhat dazed, ask vaguely, “ What are the figures ? ” Argument was once a passage at arms of wit; to-day, deductive rapiers and assertive broadswords alike would stand small show pitted against the bludgeons of statistical exactness we so unhappily applaud. What inspiration we may have is but the faculty of coördinating figures raised to the nth power.

It might be too daring to say that the only vent for the pure emotion of the American public mind is in acts of mob violence. If emotion still actuates, if principles and feelings, prejudices and passion, still hold sway in America, surely it would be manifest in the great business of a people choosing from its number a ruler. Let us see how the matter was recently gone about. Party conventions were called and men were nominated. What caused the choice ? The mathematical availability of certain men. What principles did they represent ? Those thought by the party managers to appeal respectively to the greatest number of people. The matter was a pure mathematical deduction ; the man supposed to have the greatest numerical following was chosen. Thus the campaign was launched. The victory would be to the closest figurer. Once nominated, statisticians set to work to elect. The appeal was not to party, but to pocket, and two great masses of figures were arrayed against each other. One promised bigger wages and more general employment, the other greater wealth to the commonalty. The Zerah Colburn in the American voter was the object of the contention. His mathematical instinct struck a balance, and victory crowned one candidate because he had the abler corps of mathematicians. An abstract idea did manage to struggle into the campaign, but the so-called anti-imperialist argument was weak because it relied upon truths that were not expressed in Arabic notation. Thus is history made, and thus are administrations set up.

Our government is one of numbers, by numbers, and for numbers. Representation is figured out in a movable ratio. The House of Representatives is the epitome of the quantitative life. Desiring auto-analysis, we ordain a multitude of governmental inquisitions ; increase boards of compilation that we may have the last set of figures on strikes, cinch bugs, forestry, tuberculosis, and sewage disposal. States take up and multiply the national lust, and municipalities rush to supply any missing links. In an age to come it may be said that Carroll D. Wright was the greatest American of his time.

Thus does the apotheosis of arithmetic mark our growing habit. We forget that statistics are the first resort of the ill-informed. They may be of use in the concrete, but there is little beauty in them, and, with due respect to the public, the World Almanac is not the highest achievement in American literature. As a race we need more Harold Skimpoles. It was delightful unmathematical, unstatistical blood which did most worth doing of that which has been done. The Greeks attained to passable prominence without the trail of Arabic notation smeared across their national life or sullying conversation in Academe. The Elizabethans did much without referring to the decimal system. And Genesis was written before Numbers.

Eugene Richard White .