Wheeling register. [volume] (Wheeling, W. Va.) 1878-1935, 1900-07-31

WASHINGTON, July 3O.--According
to statement from the Democratic
Congressional Campaign Committee
the United States Census Bureau has
been turned into partisan adjunct
of the Republican party and ma
chine for the manufacture of Repub-
lican campaign literature.
Evidence of this fact" says the
statement, sis accommodating in such
overwhelming quantity and of such
unimpeachable character as will fairly
startle the business world, which is
most nearly affected by the work of
the Census Bureau. AS a fair, i'm
partial and non-partisan report of the
population and industries of the
United States the twelfth census will
be absolutely misleading. The work
of the partisan managers of the
bureau, especially in the great cities
and industrial centers of the North
and East, has been so bold and flag
rant that all who have come into
contact with the bureaus agents are
well aware of the doctoring OF statis-
tics which is going on.
The chief complaints do not arise
from incorrect returns of the popu-
lation, though in this particular there
is plenty of ground for investigation.
The failure or neglect to enumerate a
Few Hundred Thousand
citizens in the country is not a matter
of vital Importance to the country at
large or to the business and CONNER
Gal interests, which are chiefly inter-
ested in an accurate census. 1t is a
matter of local and municipal pride
everywhere to get out a full enumer-
alton of the population, but the i'm
portance of this branch of the census
is insignificant in comparison with the
great work of securing an absolutely
fair, accurate and non-partisan report
of the industrial and labor conditions
of the country. And it is precisely in
this branch of the work that the
managers of the twelfth census
are doctoring the records.
"The business man, the manufacture
err the importer and exporter the sta
tistician, the sociologist, the student of
public affairs and by no means least
of all, the politician and public man,
pin their faith to the United States
Census reports as they do their Bible.
When this report is deliberately twist
ed by scheming partisan managers in
order to show a false condition of pros
perity and bolster up party policy and
class legislation the result cannot be
otherwise than DISASTROUS. Yet this is
the condition of affairs in the Census
Bureau to-day, and the character of
the work renders it no more reliable
statistically than a doctored campaign
document.
I'm the great cities and mining and
industrial centres of the North and
East, the men appointed as special
agents of the census for the work of
taking the
Industrial anu Labor Statistics
are, almost without exception, parti-
sans of the Republican census ma
chine, and in every case they are the
victims of the policy of that machine
The Republican administration has de-
cided that the census must show a
high degree of prosperity of the Nc
Kinley brand and the real facts of the
situation are never allowed to hamper
the editors of the census in making
UP their reports.
I'm the first place, the work of re-
porting the textile works of the coun-
try, one of the largest branches Of
manufacturing industry and one which
responds most promptly and surely to
artificial legislative restrictions and
special privileges, has been taken out
of the hands of the regular agents and
given into the charge of men who are
alleged to be experts, but whose chief
qualifications for the work are the
ability to make black look like white
IN statistical report and manufac-
ture prosperity out of the whole cloth.
1t will be their duty to show that the
textile industries of the country are
enjoying the highest degree of pros
perity-and they will obey orders in
the fact of Numerically opposite con-
ditions.
ut is further charged that agents who
bring in reports which fail to show sat
isfactory degree of prosperity are in
structed to return these reports to the
manufacturers and request them to revise
che reports so as to make a more favor
able showing. Thousands of manufac-