ABSTRACT
Historians accustomed to drawing their materials from words have until recently shied away from numbers; having trouble enough with the more familiar verbal symbols, they preferred not to tangle with the less familiar numerical ones. A comparison of the totals between one decade and another could be informative when the reality measured was the same, that is, when there was no change in the margin of error, fraud, and scope; but it could also reveal only a redefinition of the terms of counting. The Statistical Abstract of the United States, issued annually by various agencies after 1878, contained general information on practically every subject for which government and certain other bodies collected data. Robert William Fogel and Stanley L. Engerman did not make it easy for historians to come to grips with Time on the Cross. By dividing it into two volumes-one a narrative, the other evidence-they sought to evade the problem of combining literary exposition and statistical data.
