ECCENTRIC OFFICIAL STATISTICS. V.
IN the March number of the Bulletin of the Department of Labor are data of wholesale prices from January, 1890, to July, 1899, quar- terly ; with a summary by Roland P. Falkner, under whose super- vision the data were collected.
The analysis of the Aldrich report, not the least eccentric of our official statistics, which was the work of the statistician of the present report, has been severely criticised as leading to erroneous conclusions through giving undue weight to relatively unimportant factors. While these criticisms have been mostly of the summary of the wage statistics of that report, similar criticism is applicable to the price statistics of both the Aldrich and the present report.
By a fallacious method of giving equal weight to series of wage statistics representing the wages of a single foreman or overseer, with series representing the wages of large numbers of operatives, the report arrives at conclusions indicating an advance in average wages (gold value) from 1873 to 1891 of 7 per cent., whereas a simple arith- metical average, giving equal weight to the wages of all employes, shows a fall in wages for the period of nearly 20 per cent. 1 In one brewing establishment, which, though an extreme case, may serve for illustration, the wages of the brewer increased from $3.19 per day in 1855 to $23.96 per day in 1891, or 650 per cent. This brewer being put in a class by himself, the increase of his wages is given equal weight with the increase of each of four other classes which in 189 [ embraced seventy employes. In consequence of this deceptive method of com- putation there is an apparent increase in wages for the establishment of 165.9 percent., whereas if we omit from the calculation the class comprising but the one brewer, the average for the remaining classes shows an increase for the period of but 90 per cent. Thus the increase in the wages of but one man is made to nearly double the apparent increase of the wages of the entire brewing industry, for which this establishment stands as the sole representative in the Aldrich report. Professor Charles J. Bullock, in the quarterly publication of the American Statistical Association (March, 1899), criticising this report, remarks :
'See computations of PROFESSOR CHARLES JB. SPAHR in Present Concentration of Wealth in the United States.
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