The Sedalia weekly bazoo. [volume] (Sedalia, Mo.) 187?-1904, 1890-05-13
THE STORY OF THE CENSUS.
By Robert p. Porter. Superin-
tendent of the Census.
New York World.

Ii it were pnssib'e f,r the superin
tendent Of the &c IS to ascend in q
balloon on the morning of June 2 al
ap'int somewh re IL tie Ueighb n
hood of Ciucinn al, where The centre
of population was located In 1880, to
height that would enable him, with
extended vision, to survey thi- vast
domain of ours, be could watch with
interest the army of 10000 Gunner
ators, equipped with portfolios of
schedul s march ter b on the imppr''
tant errand to count tie populati N of
the United States.
''Surely, you have big job" [
hear my youthful reader remark.
Yes, it is big b TO take the .nsus
of a country with $1,000, 900 of pop
ulatioo. especially if it be taken on
the scale required by the congress of
the Uni'e1 States. 1t takes lots of
organic alton and a great deai of
money. 1t must be done piily and
everything has to be in readiness so
thai at the tap of the drum On the
morning set for counting the people
every one is ready to d. Lis share of
the work.
1t should he remembered that the
census office is nota perm nent bureau
of the Government, but an impromtu
branch OF the Interior Dep 1rtment,
organic ID IN er the direction of an
officer cilled The Superintendent of
Census for the express purpose of do
ing this work. TIE Superintendent
of the Eleventh Census began his
work on the morning of April IL,
1889, having Eeen appointed by the
President of the Unile1 Sta es in &C
cordance with the provisions of IN act
of Congress, approved March l, 1859,
for taking of the eleventh and suhse-
queDt censuses. On that day the
Census Office cons sted of superin
tendent, clerk, one messenger boy,
two desks, a ream of white paper, aud
box or two of official enve ops, and
sundry and o:her stationery. Today
the Census Office employs 800 clerks.
500 spscial agents and 175 supervisors.
Next June the census TO ce will con
sist of 10000 eaumerators, 1000
clerks and prob IDLY 1000 special
agents Then it will gradually DE-
cline until the last report has been
printed, when the superintendent and
the small force then around him will
fo!d their tents AMI silently p ,ss away
and become merely a intinitesimai
part of the great population which
they have enumerated.
MUST COUNT CITIES IN FIFTEEN DAYS.
The law requires that the popula-
tion shall be all counted in fifteen
days IN cities and in thirty days in
country districts.
Few who have never been inside of
a census Office have any idea of the
labor necessary even 10 make rough
count, to say nothing of the classified |
ton of the population into all the
different groups required by the GEN.
sus law.
The eleventh census will be counted
by the aid of electricity. AT fist |
this seems rather startling sta emeDt,
but if any of my readers would only
come to the census Office and see the |
electrical counting and sorting ma
chimes now at work on some of the
special data the thing would be made
clear to them at once.
Now you will see that the enumer-
ators have furnished the census Office
with quite complete description of
every person living in the United
States, but these records are not in a
convenient form for counting or tabu-
lating. We, therefore, first prepare
a card for each person, on which we
record the different facts regarding
that person with machine something
like typewriter, only that instead of
printing letters or figures these ma
chimes punch round holes. These
cards will be about the size of postal
cards, and if stacked in one pile would
make a column over ten miles high
and will weigh fully $50 tons.
The Census Office will have to
to know how many boys there are ten
years old, bow many eleven years,
how many twelve years. and so on,
and the same for the girls. Again,
it must know how many could read,
how many could write, how many
were born in New York, how many in
Pennsylvania, and many other things.
To obtain this information from these
pul ched record cards We use the cleo
trical tabulating machines. You see
it wonld be impossible to make a ma
Chine which could read writing or
printing, but our little typewriters