The Stourbridge Observer, Cradley Heath, Halesowen & District Chronicle.
Stourbridge, West Midlands, England, 1881-04-09 00:00:00

THE TAKING OF THE CENSUS.

The Times ot Monday has the following leader on the
taking of the Census :

The British nation in these islands passed last night
through the turnstile of its decennial classification.
This morning the record will be made up. To-night
it will be delivered to Somerset-house to assort and to
label, or will be on its journey thither. The celerity-
and smoothness of the enumeration mark the perfec-
tion of modern administrative machinery. It might
have been supposed that the air for the past few days
would have been rustling with figures. In ancient
times when a census was being taken the population
was like a flock of sheep huddled together on its way
to the shearing or the shambles. Except for a con-
vulsive spasm here and there on the question of the
equitable balance between age as it should be and age
as it is, the required details will have been collected
as easily as if the schedules had been applications for
cards for a flower show or a private view. The
Registrar-General will have encountered no resistance
and scarcely any reluctance in compiling his materials
for a statisticaltsketch of the past ten years. So ex-
cellent are the arrangements of his office that his task
will be no more insuperable, though necessarily
longer, in adding together his multitude of tables and
stating what they come to.
This army of schedules which is now marching on-
wards towards its camp in the Strand has a forcible
tale to tell the kingdom about itself. Englishmen and
Scotchmen and Irishmen have been living their lives
during the ten years since the last census. They have
been feeling prosperous or the reverse. They have
counted the numbers of their households, and known
their avocations. When, however, the Registrar.
General has cast up his sum and declared the general
totals, they may have as a people to revise their
thoughts about themselves, and to recollect that
things were not with them in the past as they had for
the time imagined them to be. The isolated words
and ciphers which recount sex, and age, and occupa-
tion, and infirmities, will in the mass present a
new picture of the condition of the entire country.
The numbers of a people in the separate stages of
life, the varieties of professions they pursue, and
the proportions in which they are distributed
among them, are the elements of national well
or ill being; they are connected with the essence
of its vitality. The Registrar-General will in a
few hours have the means of discovering how industry
has faded away from one division of the land, how it
has thriven or revived in another. He will be able to
ascertain to what extent its confluence in this district
has compensated for its subsidence in that. The ebb
and flow of favour in the direction of different callings
will read important lessons. The aggregate of human
beings at the several periods of existence will show
how disease and poverty had their will in one season,
how health and trade supplied the gaps in those
which succeeded. The most delicate shade of change
in the averages which Somerset-house can now com-
pare with the elder annals stored in its pigeon-holes
has its causes, and they may be deciphered. Were the
totals of the census of 1871 laid side by side with
those of 1881, lines might be drawn of sickness
and sorrow and stagnant trade to explain each
divergency and every slender vibration. The
purposes of a British census may not be so grossly
practical as of a census under the Roman Empire
or an Oriental monarchy. When an ancient
sovereign numbered his,peoMe the delight of the pride
of his heart wag not the sole motive. He desired to
count his spearmen. and learn whether he could safely
war with a neighbour, or to reckon the subjects of a
threatened poll-tax. The Registrar-General is no
instrument of the War Office or of the Exchequer.
But his labour of enumerating the inhabitants of the
United Kingdom isnndertaken for objects more per-
manently practical than those which impelled an
Emperor Tiberius or a King David. The statistics
are important as historical facts; they are even more
important as data from which to infer the
future than as memorials- of the past. The same
causes of which the operation is embodied in the
variations between the present census and its pre-
decessors may be trusted to continue their action.
How far their several forces will continue un-
impeded, be arrested, or emerge into fuller
freedom can be gathered approximately enough to
indicate the inherent certainty which only the multi-
plicity of the combinations of the problem conceals.
The census taken between last night and this morning
throws a shadow forward as well as backwards. It
does not follow that the line it traces through the last
ten years will be prolonged throughout the next in the
some direction or with the same decision. If its pre-
sent aspect be fortunate, a failing in national energy
may pervert it to disaster: if ominous, the evil omen
may be averted by national resoluteness. Whether
the augury, however, be for ill or good, the lesson the
figures inculcate should be eqgelly effectual. The
tendencies discerned in them may be assumed to go
on, unless so far as counteracting ingredient of human
will negatives and cancels the record.
To the household, which the census recognises as the
type and foundation of national life, the schedule is
not the less eloquent than its sermon has been in the
course of preaching any time during the last ten years.
There are voids in it which the keenest enumerator
will never detect, yet which gleam from its surface
with a brightness very visible to him or her who fills
it in. What is there suggests what is not there. For
every present detail there are others behind and
below, roots out of which it grows, wrecks upon which
it momentarily strikes. If the Registrar-General
decided to point the way to a family to keep an
instructive if a sombre chart of its progress, he
might issue his schedules in duplicatts, for the
householder to retain a copy for comparison with
its successor. A narrow convenient box would
be sufficient to contain a strange compilation of
perished lives and futile pursuits. Happily, the
decennial warning by which a nation, intractable,
obstinate, and unwieldy, may profit to steer a fresh
course, when the past has been inauspicious, can be
acted upon much more readily by its component sec-
tions. To anticipate, indeed, that the work of making
half-a-dozen entries should be treated commonly as
an epoch in family history would be like expecting
pedestrians in Fleet-street to survey the granite of the
curbstone with the curiosity of a geologist. Yet it
must be a very heedless disposition which is not
brought to a passing pause of meditation, sorrowful or
gay, by the writing up a census schedule. It is like
running through a bank pass-book, and gathering out
of it the cheques which have been drawn and cashed.
He is to be envied who, when he reviews this sum of
ten years' family life, observes his balance to answer to
his outgoings, and who can justifiably assure himself
that he has received value for his payments.

The Pa// Mall Gazette remarks :—" The mass
of information contained in the Census papers will
take years to digest ; but maywe] hope that in less
than three months a preliminary stateme iwill be
laid before Parliament showing the approximate num-
bers of the population and of the houses in the
United Kingdom. We shall then know whether the
rate of increase which took place in the decade pre-
ceding 1871 has been maintained. In 1871 the popula•
tion was larger by 2,646,042 souls than in lsog the
total in the former year (the last census year) being
31,857,338. This represents an increase of 88 per
cent. in the ten years, or a daily addition of 700 of the
pppulation of the United Kingdom, and this in spite
of the fact that no fewer than 1,674,594 persons
emigrated during the period. In connection with
emigration we may notice the singular fact that the
great preponderance of males who leave the country
serves to redress the balance of men and women, the
latter being considerably in excess, or some 600,000
more numerous than the former. Yet there are
104,811 boys born against 100,000 girls. The chances
of life are greatly in favour of females, and thus the
numbers are reduced almost to an equilibrium, only to
be again disturbed by emigration.

On the subject of filling up the Census papers "A
London Clergyman 'writes to The Times :—"ln order
to assist my people, I offered to fill in their papers. I
was most agreeably surprised at the very large num-
ber which they produced accurately filled up. It ap-
pears that the last ten years of school work has wrought
a great change for the better, some member in each
family could in most cases put in the required par-
ticulars. The leadingfarticles in The Times and other
papers have wiped away much of the prejudice which
existed during the past forty years to the object of
these returns. My tektimony to-day is that they were
cheerfully, promptly, and carefully returned, and that
the enumerators will have far less difficulty than in
past years. The instructions were so simple and so
well received that this census bids fair to be the most
accurate and extensive of any yet made of Great
Britain."
Local

The Census in England is taken under the
Government Board, in Scotland under the Secretary
of State, and in Ireland under the Lord Lieutenant.
At the last Census, in 1871, the number of persons re,
turned in the United Kingdom was 31,857,338, against
29,571,644 in 1861. The Census of 1571 showed an
increase of 2,646,042 persons and 519,612 inhabited
houses in England, in Scotland 297,724 and 18,965, in
the Channel Islands and Man 1,191 and 944. In Ire-
land the decrease was 387,551, or 56,506 families, and
33,927 lioses, giving, after the deductions, an increase
of 2,203,694 persons, and 505,620 inhabited homes as
the result of the Census. It is anticipaied that the
present Census will show that the population has in-
creased to about 34,000,000.

Inman:NG ExouTioN.—Scene : Drawing-room in
Grand Hotel. Aianager filling up. Census Paper.
Lady (presuming on her youthful appearance) :
" A.ge ? Oh—twenty-three." Manager (who has just
filled in particulars as to lady's daughter) : "Pardon
me, Madam. There are several instances in the
Hotel in which mother and daughter are of the same
age; indeed, that would seem to be the rule. But
your case is quite exceptional. I have not before met
with any lady who was younger than her daughter I"
—Funny Folks.