Morning journal and courier., 1880-08-16
THE CENSUS IN soUTH CARROLL

THE CENSUS IN SOUTH CAROLINA. General Walkers faith in the honesty of the census returns from the South is reas- suring, but that 1t is well founded remains to
 be seen. Meanwhile, there is good reason for
 believing that false returns have been made.
 Take the case of South Carolina The Charleston News and Courier publishes a
 table showing in twenty-three counties pop
 ulation of 7O9, ,934, an increase of 1S4, ,145, or
 more than thirty-fve per cent These fig
 ures, 1t should be said are obtained from the
 supervisors of the census, and are identical
 with those sent to General Walker. It is
 probable that in going over them at the cen
 sus office in Washington some mistakes will
 be found, but it is also probable that the
 mistakes are not such as will render neces-
 sary any great reduction in the total
 The county of Kershaw, one of the coun- ties in the table referred to, is credited with
 an increase in ten years of 9,427, or eighty
 per cent. Only one railroad touches the
 county and that until lately ran one passen-
 ger coach every other day. There is no fac
 tory or mine in the county it is purely agri-
 cultural in it's industries and it's largest town, Camden, place of about one thousand in habitants, half of them white, is perhaps the
 sleepiest place on the continent. The growth | of the county in the past fifty years has been backward instead of forward. In 1880 it contained 13, 545 persons, and in 1870, forty
 years after, it had but Il, 754, loss of 1, ,791 | but from 1870 to 1880 it springs to 21, 181. Edgefeld and Barnwen counties have been l divided since 1870 and the new county of | Aiken taken from them, yet BarnweH of to- 1 day and Edgefeld show, it is claimed, 4,OOO ] and 1000 increase, respectively. In 1870 the population of these two counties was 78, 21O; I in 1880 the returns are, for the same territory, | III, ITS, an increase of 45 per cent. in ter
 ritory that is not known to have had immi- grafton from any source. Horny county is l in a wilderness, and not railroad in it, and
 has an increase of 50 per cent. Lexington,
 sandy, sterile county an increase of 50 per cent Marlboro, county away from
 railroads, with nothing to attract any one, an increase of 82 per cent!
 In sharp contrast with the returns from ] these counties are those from Rich1and coun- 1 ty. This county contains the capital of l South Carolina It lies.immediately joining Kershaw county, where the increase has been eighty ger cent. It has the advantage of be- ing traversed by no less than three lines of railroad It supplies city of 10000 inhab- l itants, has the penitentiary, lunatic asylum
 and other State charitablei institutions, all of l which draw population and keep it employed If any county in the State was expected to | increase more rapidly than another, Richland coun ty was perhaps it and yet here the in-
 crease is only 1,516 in ten years, or less than | seven per cent, against Kershaws eighty per l cent. Moreover, 8 comparison of growth in the past is as favorable to Richland as it is
 fatal to Kershaw's pretensions. Richland in
 creased gradually but certainly every decade
 from 1920 to 1870 at a nearly uniform rate of percentage.
 | In the twenty-three counties given in the 1 table of the News and Courier the increase
 from 1920 to 1880 was 14 per cent; from
 1880 to 184O it was 2.3 per cent; from 164O to 1850 it was 12.5 per cent; from 1850 to 1860 | it was 5.1 per cent; from 1860 to 1870 it was but 1 per cent, but from 1870 to 1880 it is
 35 per cent, so that from 1920 to 1870 the
 increase of South Carolina was at the rate of
 34.2 per cent in fifty years, or not quite so
 much as the alleged increase in the last ten years.
 This alleged increase is not explainable by 1 natural causes not even by the Register s l hypothesis of the exceeding fruitfulness of | Southern women. There is an explanation | of it, however. If these figures are accept ed South Carolina will have an additional
 representative in Congress and an additional l electoral vote. And there is, unfortunately,
 too much reason for believing that the party
 of bulldozing, tissue ballots and other crimes against freedom would not shrink from falsi- flying the census in it's own interest. If, when the count is made in Washington it is found that the enumerators and supervisors
 in South Carolina have not made mistakes
 enough in counting and adding to explain
 their enormous figures new census should
 be taken in that State by men who cannot be
 bought or frightened into doing the will of
 unscrupu1ous politicians