10 Attempts have been made to impart to American statistics, more of an analytical and scientific character, by means of official Bureaux to be specially organized for the purpose. The State of Ohio, some years since, under the- administration of Governor Chase, the present Secretary of the Treasury of the United States, established a Bureau of Statistics, as one of the organs of the State government, which was committed to the charge of Mr. Mansfield, whose copious and instructive Annual Reports, fully justify the selection : while far away, in the remote interior, beyond the great chain of Lakes, the infant State of Minnesota, with a single exception the youngest in the American Union, containing by the census of 1860 but 173,000 inhabitants clustered around the head waters of the Upper Mississippi, and more than fifteen hundred miles from the Atlantic, established almost at the moment of its birth, a Bureau of Statistics. Two of the Annual Reports of its able Commissioner of Statistics, Mr. Wheelock, are now submitted to the inspection of the International Statistical Congress, as affording reasonable ground of hope that, in due time, America may at least approach in scientific accuracy and philosophical arrangement, the more mature and perfect performances of the statisticians of Europe. The Congress of the United States has not yet established a distinct Bureau of Statistics, although repeatedly recommended and urged to do so; but in taking the census of inhabitants, required by the National Constitution at intervals not exceeding ten years, the practice has been gradually introduced of superadding, by special direction of Congress, inquiries, more or less extensive, in regard to various branches of industry and production, and recently embracing social statistics to a moderate extent —so that the compend of the census of 1860, herewith submitted to the International Statistical Congress, will be found to contain a considerable mass of statistical information illustrating the material and, to some extent, the social and moral condition
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