It is no coincidence that that was also the decade James Watt patented the rotary steam engine. As the factory system, which had evolved in the middle of the eighteenth century, and the new power source spread, enterprises could operate on a far larger scale. The owner of a business that employs hundreds or thousands of people needs statistics. As the mathematics of statistics, and thus their power to illuminate an increasingly complex world, rapidly advanced in the nineteenth century, governments began to utilize them more and more as well. And because politicians like to point with pride at statistics that make them look good, and view with alarm statistics that make their opponents look good, it is not surprising that they were soon making tendentious use of them.
Politicians are only part of the problem.
Because bad news sells more newspapers than good news, bad statistics are likely to be played up in the news media. Further, while schools often teach how to create statistics, they seldom teach how to interpret them and spot the phonies. Thus political reporters and their editors often simply pass them on unvetted, so to speak. Analyzing statistics is crucial to understanding what is really going on. You don't need to know much about baseball to be awed by Hank Aaron's 755 home runs or Nolan Ryan's seven no-hitters.