The Life and Work of James A. Garfield, Twentieth President of the United States / Embracing an Account of the Scenes and Incidents of His Boyhood; the Struggles of His Youth; the Might of His Early Manhood; His Valor As a Soldier; His Career As a Statesman; His Election to the Presidency; and the Tragic Story of His Death.

by John Clark Ridpath

“‘He can hardly take a single safe step without consulting them. Whether he be framing a plan of finance, or considering the operation of an existing tax, or following the variations of trade, or studying the public health, or examining the effects of a criminal law, his conclusions ought to be guided by statistical data.’—Vol. i, p. 134.

“Napoleon, with that wonderful vision vouchsafed to genius, saw the importance of this science when he said:

“‘Statistics is the budget of things; and without a budget there is no public safety.’

“We may not, perhaps, go as far as Goethe did, and declare that ‘figures govern the world;’ but we can fully agree with him that ‘they show how it is governed.’

“Baron Quetelet, of Belgium, one of the ripest scholars and profoundest students of statistical science, concludes his latest chapter of scientific results in these words:

“‘One of the principal results of civilization is to reduce more and more the limits within which the different elements of society fluctuate. The more intelligence increases the more these limits are reduced, and the nearer we approach the beautiful and the good. The perfectibility of the human species results as a necessary consequence of all our researches. Physical defects and monstrosities are gradually disappearing; the frequency and severity of diseases are resisted more successfully by the progress of medical science; the moral qualities of man are proving themselves not less capable of improvement; and the more we advance, the less we shall have need to fear those great political convulsions and wars and their attendant results, which are the scourges of mankind.’

“It should be added that the growing importance of political science, as well as its recent origin, is exhibited in the fact that nearly every modern nation has established within the last half century a bureau of general statistics for the uses of statesmanship and science. In the thirty states of Europe they are now assiduously cultivating the science. Not one of their central bureaus was fully organized before the year 1800.

“The chief instrument of American statistics is the census, which should accomplish a two-fold object. It should serve the country by making a full and accurate exhibit of the elements of national life and strength, and it should serve the science of statistics by so exhibiting general results that they may be compared with similar data obtained by other nations.

“In the light of its national uses and its relations to social science, let us consider the origin and development of the American census.

“During the colonial period, several enumerations of the inhabitants of the Colonies were made by the order of the British Board of Trade; but no general concerted attempt was made to take a census until after the opening of the Revolutionary War. As illustrating the practical difficulty of census-taking at that time, a passage in a letter, written in 1715 to the Lords of Trade, by Hunter, the colonial governor of New York, may be interesting: