Wood County reporter. [volume] (Grand Rapids [i.e. Wisconsin Rapids], Wis.) 1857-1923, 1880-12-16

should cost four dollars of the pre-
cious money of the United States to
review locality in doubt. and decide
whether Raspberry Alley was actually
taken or not,-and several alleys
quite as large we're not taken at all in
1S70,-it would pay the United States
to spend the money. The census is
great executive act, intended to take
the whole of every class of statistics,
and not to be defeated even by its own
imperfections. IF the first effort fails,
the present law, at least, authorizes
second effort. The s'milch COWS" that
escape into the street and the other
animals or other facts that elude the
underpaid canvasser in the beginning.
should not be permitted to disappear
because he disappears
In short, it is the methods of the
census that defeat the census Driven
under whip and spur for five or ten
days on a work wholly new to him, the
original enumerator did not and could
not enumerate anything with accuracy.
He did the best he could in what every
one of them pronounces "a hurried
and disgraceful scramble" and then
disappeared. No promise or tempta-
ton would bring one of these men
forward again. IF the work has been
we'll done it is fortunate, but if not,
be, the indignant enumerator, will not
help 20 correction. 1t would have
been better if small share of these
men had been decently paid and their
services retained, in which case the
cost and disgrace of retaking great
cities like ST. Louis would have been
avoided.
The entire tone of the census Office
has from the beginning been repelling
and censorious. In a service dependent
almost wholly on the faithfulness of
employees, over whom the central office
could exercise little or no supervision,
it has fettered and oppressed those
employees in every possible manner.
They dare not state the difficulties
they encounter to the Office itself.
That which is impossible in fact is
charged to them as neglect. If forty
or fifty manufacturers in the district of
one assistant fatty refuse to make re-
turns, the assistant is tempted, after
one appeal for help, to say no more
about it. Nobody in the census service
can tell, or is likely to tell, any other
person, if he should be informed him
self, whether there may be hundred
or a thousand omitted. All are under
the same repellent influence, driven
furiously to accomplish what is practi-
cally impossible in the time afforded
them. The laws of industrial growth,
as of the increase of population, are now
reduced to definite expressions, and it
is impossible to evade them or deny
their application. The census and it's
results will this time be subjected to
the keenest scrutiny, and to tests that
will disclose all its defects. The
common Judgment of the country has
condemned the report of population;
and the best known laws of statistical
inquiry prove that account by many
thousands of Impractical enumerators,
running through their work in from
five to fifteen days each, which work
is not reviewed by themselves or by
anybody else.-must inevitably fall
short five to ten per cent In this
'hurried and disgraceful scramble"
these unframed naen did the best they
could. OF course they could not enter
the names and ages of the families not
at home, nor could they take travellers
on the road; and as three to five per
cent, of the people of this country were
in June last either not at their homes,
because they were travelling, OF because
they had no permanent place of resi-
dence, this proportion of the
population was not counted.
We repeat. that the methods of the
census, not the census law, are re-
sponsible for the inevitable defects of
the returns; which defects may be
roughly stated to amount to five per
cent. of the population, and thirty per
cent. of the products of agriculture and
of manufacturing industries.