STATISTICAL WORK OF THE FEDERAL GOVERN MENT. INTRODUCTION. No complete report has heretofore been issued describing in detail the scope and character of the statistical output of the United States Government. The lack of satisfactory information regarding this phase of the work of the Federal establishment is a matter of considerable consequence. Practically every bureau in Washington collects or disseminates statistics of one kind or another; and there is much confusion in the public mind concerning the work done by the various offices. The statistics collected by the Government relate to nearly every aspect of our economic and social life. Statistics of agriculture begin with the seed and follow through to the marketing of the ripened product. Statistics of manufactures extend from the mining of the crude ore to the production of the manufactured article; those of commerce, from the lighting of rivers and harbors to the consumption of imported commodities; and those of social relationships from a mere enumeration of population to elaborate data regarding the incidence of disease. The object of this report is to describe the statistical work of each bureau and office of the Government reported upon, to point out duplications between offices where they exist, and to make recommendations looking to the improvement of the statistical product of the Government as a whole. No attempt is made to evaluate the quality, or to pass judgment on the technical aspects, of the statistics of any organization; such an attempt would lie outside the scope of the present report. The aim throughout has been to describe, not to appraise or criticize. The entire statistical output of the Government can be grouped under the twenty-seven subject headings used in the table facing page 2. An examination of this table will show that frequently several bureaus and offices publish statistics in the same field. Accident statistics, for instance, are published by twelve bureaus, educational statistics by seven, and vital statistics by five. It must not be concluded, however, that the statistical work of the Government is characterized to any marked extent by duplication and overlapping. Where several bureaus publish statistics relating to the same general subject it will be found, as a rule, that they treat of different phases of the subject. The only cases of real duplication existing at the time of writing this report were the collection and publication of wholesale price statistics by the Bureau of Foreign and Domestic 31832-23 1 Commerce and by the Bureau of Labor Statistics, and the collection and publication of statistics relating to the production of oleomargarine and renovated, butter by the Bureau of Markets and by the Bureau of Internal Revenue. Instances of apparent duplication are numerous, but except as here noted, they invariably prove to be cases where several organizations are engaged in the collection, compilation, or publication of statistics relating to separate parts of the same general field rather than to the same identical subject. The existing situation, however, should not be permitted to continue. In the first place, it is difficult from the present separate and unrelated reports to obtain a complete statistical view of many important subjects. For instance, anyone desiring to determine the facts relating, respectively, to consumption and stocks of wool and to active and idle wool machinery would have to make inquiry of bureaus located in two separate departments-the Bureau of Markets in the Department of Agriculture and the Bureau of the Census in the Department of Commerce. The student interested in the whole range of price statistics would be compelled to address seven or more bureaus-the Bureau of Labor Statistics for the general range of wholesale and retail prices, the Bureau of Foreign and Domestic Commerce for import, export, and certain wholesale prices, the Bureau of Markets for prices of agricultural and live stock products after they have entered the channels of trade, the Bureau of Crop Estimates for prices of goods on the farm, the Geological Survey for prices of minerals, the Forest Service for lumber prices, the Federal Reserve Board for a miscellany of prices in this country and in foreign countries, and the Federal Trade Commission and the Tariff Commission for prices of a variety of commodities studied by them. A second evil of the present arrangement, and one quite as consequential, is the unnecessary expense and annoyance caused producers, traders, carriers, and others by the numerous and ill-coordinated requests of Government offices for information of various kinds. Finally, the present arrangement for the collection, compilation, and publication of statistical data is uneconomical and expensive to the Government. The ends to be sought-first, the improvement of the Government's statistical product, second, an abatement of the burden upon private establishments in furnishing information to Federal agencies, and, third, economy to the Government, could be largely achieved by concentrating, as far as practicable, the collection, compilation, and dissemination of all nonadministrative statistics in a central bureau, under the same general supervision, with a general unity of method. The term "nonadministrative statistics," as used in this report, means statistics that have no connection with administrative functions; that is, statistics that are collected primarily for the information they convey concerning economic and sociological conditions. RECOMMENDATIONS. The Bureau of Efficiency, as a result of its study of the statistical work of the Federal Government, submits the following thirty-three recommendations. They contemplate the reorganization of the Bureau of the Census; the transfer of a large number of statistical inquiries to the reorganized bureau; the transfer of all vital statistical inquiries from the Bureau of the Census to the Public Health Service; the discontinuance of certain statistical work; the distribution of all statistical publications of the Government on a sale basis; the collection and publication of coordinated statistics relating to our internal commerce; and the changing of the names of two bureaus-Census and Labor Statistics. If they are carried into effect they will bring about a consolidation of field work, a reduction in the number of questionnaire schedules, a reduction of clerical and supervisory costs, and savings in the purchase and rental of machine equipment for tabulation purposes, in printing and mimeograph work, and in the distribution of statistical publications. Moreover, the adoption of these recommendations will result in coordinated and unified statistics, something that is urgently needed by business men and by students of our economic and social problems. The recommendations, together with supporting reasons, are as follows: 1. The collection, tabulation, and dissemination of all nonadministrative statistics should be centralized, so far as practicable, within the Bureau of the Census of the Department of Commerce. Centralization of the collection and dissemination of all nonadministrative statistics within one bureau would result in the standardization and improvement of output; permit the consolidation of questionnaire schedules and inquiries, the more intensive use of machines, and the more economical employment of field agents; and provide one central office to which the public could apply for the great bulk of the statistical information collected by the Govern ment. The Bureau of the Census is the logical bureau in which to concentrate this work. It is the largest statistical unit of the Federal Government. Its sole function is the collection and dissemination of statistical information. It is organized into eight statistical divisions, each of which has a trained corps of statistical clerks. It is equipped with punching, sorting, and tabulating machines for 5 |