Judge, 1914-12-19 · page 4 of 24
Judge — December 19, 1914 — page 4: what you’re looking at
What you’re looking at
This page contains two unrelated editorial pieces: **"The Statistician and the Hen"** satirizes government statisticians who waste resources on trivial calculations. The editorial argues that compelling hens to produce extra eggs would increase national wealth by $40 million annually—yet such impractical schemes reveal how statisticians obsess over minor economic data rather than addressing real policy questions. The satirist suggests statisticians lack basic common sense. **"Save the Birds"** advocates for protecting migratory birds from hunters and trappers. It references the Federal Migratory Bird Bill (now law), which faced court challenges from those opposing it. The editorial argues that bird conservation serves the public interest as established science, despite economic arguments from hunters and others opposing the law. Both pieces critique flawed reasoning in policy debates.
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WHENEVER a government stati: has nothing else to do, he tackles the harmless and uncomplaining hen. So from the latest effusion of Uncle Sam’s statistics we learn that if every hen within our broad domains could be persuaded, advised, induced, in- fluenced or compelled to add ten eggs to her annual output, it would mean an increased revenue of $40,- 000,000. All provided, of course, that the extra ten eggs did not glut the market and cut down the price of their predecessors. To show how easily this might be done, the alert statistician points gleefully to the record of a certain Plymouth Rock hen, which produced a total of 286 eggs in 365 days. From the pride this juggler of statis- tics takes in the performance of her henship, one would almost think that a detailed study of figures—by the hen—had something to do with the record of this poultry phenomenon. On the contrary, our guess would be that it was an ignorance of even the minor fundamentals of mathe- matics that brought about such a result. Probably this particular hen was so iniquitously illiterate that she could not count above thirty, and so she lost count and overworked herself. Maybe if she had been properly schooled in arithmetical computations, she would have stopped at the first one-hundred mark and given the other poor hens a chance. However, the real significance of this statistical outburst about eggs is the fact that it reveals anew the American failing of trying to get rich quiek by merely add- ing up figures. Lots of good white paper ale, SSSR is wasted that way. For instance, if ten extra eggs a year make $40,000,000, why not let twenty extra eggs make $80,000,- 000—or twenty-five an even $100,000,000, thereby wiping out the necessity for a war tax? Or why not figure that one grain of corn extra per ear would add WATCHING FOR SANTA CLAUS 6,000 a year to our national wealth, while an extra drop of water for each gallon of alcoholic entertainment would increase the number of headaches per year by 4, 2 without the expendi- ture of an extra cent? But please let the hen alone. | Save the Birds A™ A TIME when men—the very flower of Europe—are being slaughtered by hundreds of thousands, it may be regarded as trifling to refer to the killing of birds and animals sought as game by means that will result in extinction unless wise laws earnestly enforced inter- vene for their saving. The General Federation of Wom- en’s Clubs has many commendable purposes, but in its conservation de- partment it is doing work that should be encouraged on all sides, The Federal migratory bird bill, which was supported by the federa- tion, is now a law, although those opposed to it are testing its consti- tutionality in the courts. Its pur- pose is to protect insectivorous and rodent-eating birds from plumage hunters, trappers of song birds, “‘game hogs’? and market hunters, whose selfish operations cannot pos- sibly be regarded as related to “sport.” Even the unthinking small boy with his sling shot comes under its provisions. Government reports have dealt with the economic side of the ques- tion as to the value of various birds in their relation to the food supply. Losses that in the aggregate are staggering result from the killing of birds that protect crops, and the habits of hunters, by so many be- lieved to be warranted by usage, should be curtailed or stopped in the in- terest of the public as science has estab- lished that interest. We wish when our neighbors’ dogs have trouble that they wouldn’t think our front yard ia Belgium.