The Indiana State sentinel. [volume] (Indianapolis) 1868-1895, 1880-05-12
CENSUS OF 1880.
taiaroTt hsuruIrI- q ln rH1uglt-Ifl
The Scheme for Taking It and How It is
,-- organizsd--Inside Working of the
Vast Machinery.
The Clerks In the Bureau and What They
Do-TrOubles of the Over-Burdened
.t,..ts POstofiice Department.

washington Letter to st. Louis Times.l
Census supervisors and enumerators of
Arizona, Washington, Oregon. Idaho and
Montana Territories will be supplied with
blanks thirty for each enumerstor, within
the next ten days. Two tons of this matter
were shipped from this city Friday night.
The printing had been delayed because Of
Congressional inaction, and the census clerks
worked day and night till the msil bags
were filed, wagons loaded at night and
two tons of broad books, each enyeloped
In cotton sack. were sent away. Last
night the Postofice Department began in
Washington to swear about five tons of
blanks, eDveloped and packed like that
| above described, and addressed to the enum-
| orators of California and Utah. Kansas and
Texas will be supplied tomorrow. and for
| the current month daily shipments Of mail
matter from the census bureau will weigh
| FIVE tons. Special agents will see that these
papers are promptly forwarded and enume-
| rators and supervisors will soon have their
\ hands full. The whole work is to be DONE
in cities, within the first fifteen days in June,
and every where, during the twenty-six work.
| ing days of June. Each enumerator is
| furnished a card for each day, very like
large postal" on which is summed up
briefly the work of the day. This will be
| forwarded to the Washington Office each
i evening, and thus there will be q daily aver
i age OF 30 600 of these cards to be inspected
| and their contents summed up by the clerks
/ here in Washington; S64, 600 of these little
| cards will 60 out and come back. They will
travel each an average of 1000 miles, or
| S64 OOOOOO miles Will be traversed by these
/ census postals. These and the great paste
board books, each in a cotton sack, will
| burden railways and madden mail agents
| and clerks through the next two and a half
months In preparing this vast mass of
blanks and In conducting this correspond
ence and organizing this machinery and
| putting this army OF IS, 900 men in the field
for q campaign of one month forsging upon
| statistical facts of every conceivable cilarac-
| ter, 40 men and women are employed in a
/ great pile OF brick and stone, with its man.
/ sard roof and bronzs eagle on It's summit,
constructed originally as a crazy newspapers
sign. board, when credit mobihers and freed
mans banks and Jay Cookies still prospered.
The stilted structure was the birthplace and
| abode of crude, wild fancies then as OF SOL
emn, hard and curious facts to day.
INSIDE THE CENSUS BUREAU BUILDING.
1t is fearful workshop. There is 10 idle
ness there. The whole is perfect machine,
and each individual clerk must supply the
| demands of another, and on esch floor q
superintendent regulates the distribution OF
tasks. These superintendent are trained
| accountants, and we're employed ten years
ago at the same desks. But industry and
capacity to comprehend instructions readily
are the qualities chiefly in demand aud
these must distinguish each successful EN-
ploye of this Bureau.
WHAT THEY DO
Not many days ago a dozen clerks were
going through the great bound manuscript
returns, made by enumerators in 1870, to
ascertain the relative provocative capacity OF
families engaged in different avocations
/ ind oh ha in fviA al
clerks that cobblers, lawyers and Msssa-
chusetts farmers are slowest IN obeyirg the
primal command to multiply and rsnlenish
the earth" But facts gathered by ali these
clerks will be collected, and when in tabU-
lated forms tell that cobblers and tailors, like
poets, are not born, but made. They have
| In any event fewest children, while men en-
| gagged in transportation and fishermen have
most. But these deductions are not wholly
| trustworthy, since they are only con illusions
reached by an individual clerk who ex-
plored the srcana of mighty volume of re-
turns from Eastern Massachusetts,.
PERSONNEL OF THE BUREAU.
| II is needless to tell that the scope of Gen
eral Walkers inquiries is wider than ever
before. The returns from enumerators will
give more minute, practical and even curl.
intellectual and PHYSICAL condition of the
people of the United States than were ever
furnished any Government by any scheme
of inquiry ever devised 1t is onlv untoI-
tunste that, in the presence of Presiden-
tial election, each Representative of each
party in his esgerness 70 win votes by win
| ming notoriety, has sought TO expend the
| least possible sum in the acquisi
} ton of the most useful and benef-
cent information, and ii is stated
that the Bureau will be forced, as has already
happened, to oyertax its employees. requiring
them to toll by night and day. They have
been confined to their tasks for the past four
months much longer and more continually
than employees OF any other Department
and not until Monday last were they suffered
/ TO rest half an hour at noon. But the clerks
are imbued with the feelings and aspirations
Of General Walker and his chief assistants
and there is not an intelligent servitor of the
Bureau who is not impelied to toll by the
desire to make the taking OF the census Of
} 1880 wholly successful and honorable &c
those engaged in it.
The general superintendent of the complex
machinery of the census of 1880 is Genera
f. A. Walker. The chief clerk is Colonel c.
w. Seaton Colonel Boernstein's stationery
clerk, Rswlins. is appointment clerk Lee
land is in charge of the supervisors and emu
merstors, on the second floor of this tower o.
Washington. Burr is on the third floor il
charge of mortality returns. Gannett, IL
fourth story, manages the geographical di
vision. Colonel G. s. Mixter, on the iftI
/ floor, gathers and tabulstes statistics of pop
ulation, while Baron Hillman, of George
town, in the sixth story, manages the SEIZED
ule department
Is is worth seeing and studying, this living
machinery that gathers for distribution po-
: litical and social and moral facts, without
knowledge of which government and society
could hardly exist.
|
Uncle Remus' Folk Lore.