European Experiences and New Deal Statistics

Abstract

The typical development of central European administrative statistics can hardly be better illustrated than by the history of the Austrian Statistical Yearbook, the periodical preparation of which was included among my official duties during the last years before the beginning of the war. The Austrian Statistical Yearbook originated in 1830 under a system of authoritative State policy. In the introduction to the first volume, statistics is characterized as a science which is called to investigate, in a systematic manner, the actual conditions of the States. It is understood to form the connecting link between history which is dealing with the past and the political sciences which are establishing ideal schemes of the social structure and of the administrative machinery. This social philosophy which assigned administrative statistics a rank at least equal to history and the political sciences was based on a concept of the State being an organic unit the functioning of which can best be grasped by combining the statistical material available into a coherent system of statistical tabulation. To what an extent this ambitious program was possible of practical realization at the time when it was devised is of secondary importance. What matters in the first instance is the outright synthetic concept underlying the objectives of administrative statistics. This concept found its adequate expression in the creation in 1840 of a Central Statistical Board charged with the task of providing for any figures which might be held necessary for the execution of the program. However, in the course of the following decades this synthetic concept was superseded by a strictly analytical and atomistic one under the rule of the individualistic social philosophy, the growing influence of which was largely fostered by the development of the capitalist economy. This philosophy, as is well known, is based on the assumption that economic and social progress and well being are best to be served by the free working of individual forces. Statistical surveys, apart from those needed for the immediate requirements of important administrative departments, were now prepared with a view of illustrating developments occurring in specific fields of economic and social life. There existed synoptic tables relating to foreign trade, to saving banks, to bankruptcies, to criminal proceed227