ost every state has its board of
health, with authority to require registration of births, deaths, and
sickness due to transmissible disease; with few exceptions the heads of
these state boards have spent their energies in abating nuisances. In a
short time they have degenerated into local scavengers, because they
have shown the public neither the meaning of the vital statistics
gathered nor its duty to support efficient health administration.

The state reports of vital statistics have not been accurate; therefore
in many states we have the anomalous situation of an aggressive
veterinary board arousing the farmer and the consumer of milk to the
necessity of protecting the health of cattle, and an inactive,
uninformed state board of health failing to protect the health of the
farmer and the consumer.

Vital statistics presume efficient health administration. An
inefficient health officer will not take the initiative in gathering
health statistics. If some one else compels him to collect vital
statistics, or furnishes him with statistics, they are as a lantern to
a blind man. Unless some one also compels him to make use of them,
unless we remove the causes of transmissible or infectious diseases and
check an epidemic when we first hear of it, the collection of
information is of little social value. "Statistics" is of the same
derivation as "states" and "statesmen." Statistics have always been
distinguished from mere facts, in that statistics are instruments in
the hands of the statesman. Wherever the term "statistics" is applied
to social facts it suggests action, social control of future
contingencies, mastery of the facts whose action they chronicle. The
object of gathering social facts for analysis is not to furnish
material for future historians. They are to be used in shaping future
history. They are facts collected with a view to improving social
vitality, to raising the standard of life, and to eliminating
permanently those forces known to be destructive to health. Unless they
are to be used this way, they are of interest only to the historical
grub. No city or state can afford to erect a statistical office to
serve as a curiosity shop. Unless something is to be done to prevent
the recurrence of preventable diseases annually experienced by your
community or your school, it is not reasonable to ask the public
printer to make tables which indicate the great cost of this
preventable sickness. A tax collector cannot