Ai^ril 5, 1917.

THE COLLIERY GUARDIAN.

677

stoppages of pits are reported. Practically no
business is passing in Cardiff, except for Government
and. Allied requirements. The home demand in
Western Scotland is very good, and collieries there
are comparatively well placed. In Eastern Scotland
prices have an easier tendency.

Rather more activity has been shown in the out-
ward freight market, but most of the tonnage
consists of small steamers for near Allied destinations.

Heavy falls of snow seriously affected colliery
traffic by blocking the wagon-ways. Cartage
arrangements were seriously disorganised for a time.

The Controller of Coal Mines has arranged, pending
a detailed investigation, a reduction of Is. per ton in
the public advertised prices and a penny per cwt. in
the prices of small quantities of coal sold from
trolleys and shops in London.

The French Government has arranged three zones
for coal supply, and the western zone will be supplied
entirely with imported coal. It is hoped that by this
arrangement transport will be made easy. The
State controls all supplies, which are deficient to the
extent of 300,000 tons a month.

A scheme for the better utilisation of canals for
coal transport is reported to be under consideration.

The 40th annual meeting of the Mining Institute
of Scotland will be held in the Royal Technical
College, -George-street, Glasgow, on Saturday,
April 7, commencing at 3 p.m. Mr. J. B. Thomson
will give another demonstration of the Chalmers-
Black Visual Indicator. Mr. D. Ferguson’s paper
on “ The Form and Structure of the Coal Fields of
Scotland ” will be open for discussion.

The coal industry is one of the many
Official branches of commercial activity in

Statistics, which statistics play an important
part. The reasons are not difficult
to understand. But it is clear that statistics, in
order to be useful, must be not. only accurate but
also standardised in such a way that they may be
strictly comparative,, and also capable of giving the
maximum amount of information. That our mineral
statistics are not at present satisfactory from these
points of view is obvious to everyone who has
studied them; and amongst the numerous reforms
which should undoubtedly be undertaken after the
war, in the course of the economic reconstruction that is
bound to take place, the reorganisation of our official
statistics deserves to take a prominent place.

The question has recently been discussed at con-
siderable length in a paper read by Mr. Geoffrey
Drage before the Royal Statistical Society. This
paper deals with statistics in general, but much of
it applies to mineral statistics in particular. The
author shows in his introduction how pressing is the
need to make good existing deficiencies in Blue
Book and Board of Trade information. At various
times attempts have been made to institute a
more perfect system. Thus, in 1871, Mr. Purdy
read a paper before the Royal Statistical Society on
the “ Preparation and Printing of Parliamentary
Statistics,” in which he pointed out that returns
moved by members1 of Parliament were often
defective, because they neither knew exactly what
was wanted, nor what department could supply the
figures. This applies forcibly to mineral statistics ;
for it would certainly not be an easy matter to deter-
mine whether the information required could better
be furnished by the Board of Trade or by the Home
Office, and not seldom the figures given by these
departments would fail to agree. To obviate this
difficulty Mr. Purdy advocated the establishment of
a Central Statistical Office having well-defined duties,
amongst which would be included the indexing and
collation of all statistical information available in
the country. He very rightly condemned the rivalries
of the different departments, each of which ran its
own system of statistics, and leading in 1877 to such
an open dispute between the Board of Trade and the
Customs House that a Treasury Committee on Official
Statistics was appointed. In appointing this com-
mittee, Mr. W. H. Smith stated that there was an
absence of any system. “Each department,” he
said, “compiles and publishes, from time to time,
information more or less detailed .... but there

appear to be no fixed principles laid down for the
guidance of the several offices, and the consequence
is that but little harmony or coherence exists between
the various classes of statistics thus published.
Comparison between them is often impossible, and
their practical utility is thereby most seriously
impaired.” In 1881, the Committee reported that
the unsatisfactory state of official statistics was due
(1) to the attempt to make the Blue Books presented
to Parliament serve the double purpose of continuous
public record and of temporary instruction to
administrators and departmental officers ; (2) to the
absence of any central or general supervision of
national statistics regarded as a whole. The principal
recommendations of the majority of the Committee
were—(1) that the statistics of each department
should be divided into two classes, those that are
required by the department for administration and
those which are of continuous interest to a considerable
section of the public or Parliament; (2) that a small
Central Statistical Department«should be appointed,
which should be charged with the preparation of the
Annual Abstracts, home, foreign and colonial.

Among the suggestions calculated to prevent
further departmental controversy, which were made
by the majority, was a proposal to remove from the
Board of Trade to the new department all statistical
duties not directly concerned with its administration,
but a minority, which consisted of two representatives
of the Board of Trade, preferred to leave matters as
they stood in this respect,

But little seems to have been done, and in 1907
Sir Charles Dilke called attention to the persistence
of the same unsatisfactory conditions. He complained
that different departments worked independently of
each other, and possessed but imperfect knowledge
of the work upon which others were engaged. The
statistics of each department were treated as having
only an individual departmental significance, the
figures often disagreed, and were perfectly useless
for purposes of general enquiry.

Thus arose a state of confusion in the public mind,
and a general distrust of all statistics whatever.

In the paper referred to above, Mr. Drage
'summarises the chief causes of this unsatisfactory
condition of official statistics, which he attributes to
the following causes:—(1) Lack of co-operation
between the different departments. (2) The absence
of any central or general supervision of national
statistics as a whole. (3) The attempt to make the
Blue Books, annually presented to Parliament, serve
the double purpose of continuous public record and
of temporary instruction to administrative and
departmental officers. (4) The inclusion in depart-
mental reports of quantities of matter for the purpose
of showing how much work has been done in the
year. (5) The fact that compulsory powers are too
few and too seldom applied. (6) Defective supervision
in the collection of statistics and the employment,
especially for census work, of ill-paid, uneducated,
and, therefore, uninterested persons in the collection.

As a remedy he proposes the re-grouping of the
chief statistical departments, which should then be
placed under a central authority, charged with the
production of a proper scientific statistical year book
for the United Kingdom.

With regard to Imperial and Foreign statistics, in
which the same defects occur, often in an exag-
gerated form, he suggests the adoption of a common
statistical year, a common statistical method, and
generally the establishment of the means of making
satisfactory comparisons of the productive power of
the several States of the Empire. The discrepancies
in the returns as now made are too well known to
need recapitulation. They do not agree either in
time, in classification or in method of computation. In
the case of foreign countries an international standard
should be aimed at by mutual agreement. It would
then be possible for the Central Statistical Depart-
ment to compile three separate abstracts, for (1)
the United Kingdom, (2) the Empire, (3) Foreign
Countries.

If, says Mr. Drage, the desired system of recon-
struction at home, of closer union with the Empire
and closer relations with our Allies after the war, is
to be realised, some such machinery will be necessary
to place it on a sound and permanent basis.

The whole question of statistics was considered in
considerable detail by the Dominions Royal Com-
mission, whose final report has just been issued.
Some progress is even stated to have been made
towards securing greater uniformity throughout the
Empire, as a result of a resolution passed by the
Colonial Conference of 1907. The Commission
admits that differences in statistical methods are in
some cases the reflex of varying conditions and of
divergent fiscal systems, and that the convenience of
uniformity cannot outweigh considerations of more
fundamental importance to the States concerned.
This is, doubtless, true, but can scarcely apply to any
great extent to mineral statistics, more particularly
in the case of coal and iron. Strong support is
given to a scheme suggested by Dr. Bowley, whereby
a Central Statistical Office would be in a position to
publish monthly trade summaries, covering the period
up to the end of the preceding month. Dr. Bowley
maintains that speeding-up is more important than
pedantic accuracy, and there is much to be said for
that point of view.

The present time would appear to be well suited
to a re-organisation of official statistics, for the hiatus
caused by the war has definitely closed the old order
of things, and a new era will start from the time
when peace is concluded.

In the Official Report of Parlia-
Coal Mines mentary Debates in the House of
and Commons for Tuesday, March 27,
State Control, considerable space is devoted to a
discussion of the State control of
coal mines. Mr. Duncan Millar, in opening the
debate, called attention to the national importance of
the decision of the Government to appoint a Coal
Controller. He emphasised the importance of coal
as a munition of war, and asked for some informa-
tion respecting the future policy in respect of the
maintenance of the output of this vital commodity.
At the same time he referred ‘ to some of the more
salient features of the present situation, and suggested,
amongst other things, the desirability of the internal
reorganisation of the mines. In reply to the request
for information upon these points, the Parliamentary
Secretary to the Board of Trade drew attention
to the fact that the Coal Controller had only taken
up his duties at the beginning of March, and that
he was confronted by a problem of extraordinary
complexity. Mr. Oalthrop has been busily engaged
in getting to close quarters with some of its essential
features. He has been occupied in tracing the
whole of the consignments of coal from the pit’s
mouth to the consumer, and the task of analysing
the mass of statistics thus collected is one of con-
siderable difficulty. Yet this preliminary work is
essential to the introduction of any scheme of organi-
sation. It will be admitted by all who are familiar
with the intricacies of the coal trade, that its effective
control cannot be accomplished by a wave of the
Controller’s wand, however skilful an organiser he
may be. It is true that valuable spade work has
already been done by the Home Office Committee,
and the announcement that Sir Richard Redmayne
himself has been taken over by Mr. Calthrop, will
be welcomed as conclusive evidence that the Coal
Controller is approaching the question in 'the right
way, and that there is no prospect of any
loss of energy from inter-departmental friction.
Mr. Calthrop is admirably fitted by his railway
experience to deal with the question of transport and
distribution of coal, and it is understood that this is
one of the first questions he proposes to attack. He
proposes to economise transport by securing that
consumers shall, as far as possible, receive their
supplies from the collieries nearest to them. In war
time it is not to be expected that consumers can be
so particular as in times of peace. There has,
undoubtedly, been much waste of transport in
conveying coal from one extremity of the country to
the other, when there is suitable coal nearer at hand.
This sort of wastage the Coal Controller is certainly
in a position to minimise, and, under existing condi-
tions, when both the coal and the railways are under
State direction, there is no reason why a great deal
should not be accomplished towards this end. The
same system has recently been minutely studied in