Los Angeles herald., 1909-11-04
FHFE THIRT RTEENIH CENSUS
V-Flistory of Census Making
Bv Frederic j. Haskin

thought $4,000 was appropriated for col
lecting the names of the manufacturers
of the United States Population had
appI oximately doubled in the twenty
years since the first census, and the
cost of making the count had quad
rupled. The fourth census made
number of inquiries beyond those pre-.
ceding, among them being questions
showing the number of unnaturalized
foreigners, and the number of persons
engaged in agriculture, commerce and
manufactures. Later q special act
caused some Investigations to be made
with reference to manufactures.
The fifth census returned largely to
inquiries limited to population, and q
provision was made for q revision OF all
the previous census reports. This re-
port was hastily and heedlessly made,
and General Walkep who had charge
of the ninth and tenth censuses, says
1t was filled with errors to such an ex-
tent as to be valueless. He observed
that many pages of the republication
would, by merely noting the necessary
corrections, be almost a7 much dis
figured as the worst proof statistic2l
matter ever seen In a printing house.
The next decennial census, taken IN
1S40 Is regarded as lamentable fail
ure. So glaring were its errors that
the American Statistical Association
memorialized congress, declaring that
such documents could not be sane
toned by congress, and that II the
statistics could not be corrected they
ought to Je disowned. The inaccvracy
Of the 1910 census Is attributed to the
vast expansion OF the census inquiries
without adequate machinery TO sup
port the work. 1t was really the first
census at which the modern scope of
inquiry was adopted. From II dates
the larger meaning of census taking,
and its failure II attributed more to
defective machinery than to its plan
and purpose.
The law providing for the taking OF
the seventh census passed in the early
part of 1850 served for the taking of
three decennial censuses. The seventh
census witnessed the first centraliza-
ton OF the census-ta taking business un-
der one office in washington, and the
conditions under which ii was taken
makes II the first comparable with the
present methods. The eighth census
in 1850 was taken under the same law.
In 1870 II was argued that the law
of 1850 had outlived its usefulness and
that the census of that year ought to
be taken under entirely changed con-
ditions. A strenuous effort was made
to secure a new census law. A bill em-
bodying the idea of the advanced sta
tisticians was passed by the house,
but was defeated in the senate. The
result was that the census had TO be
taken under wholly inadequate law,
one that had been completely out
grown. Yet by reason OF the excellent
work OF those in charge of the under
taking the results we're such as to COM
pare favorably with anything that had
gone before. 1t was at this census
that the first attempt at mechanical
tabulation was made. II was in the
81 20 rTfna ,,.kf xxsos
used with good results.
A strong effort to obtain a quinquen-
NAL census was made In 1875, General
Grant lent the prestige OF the presi-l
dental office to the movement by
recommending IL in two annual mess
ages. 1t was contended that such a
census would be especially fitting as
showing the progress of the nation in
the first hundred years of independence.
But the proposition fell through. and
the inquiry was delayed until the regu-
lar ten-year period. james A. Garfield
introduced bill providing for the taxi
ing of the tenth census, but II was not
able TO run the gamut of the commit
tees OF the senate and house.
The history of the succeeding CEN
suses and of the creation of the per-
manent census bureau is fresh in the
public mind. One OF the interesting
pieces of work performed at the
eleventh census was the enumeration
of the names and service of the sur
vivors of the Civil War. No provision
was made for the publication of this
data, which would have filed eight large
quarto volumes of thousand pegea<
each. The returns were deposited In
the pension bureau and never have
been printed. The publication of the
last volume of the eleventh census did
not take place until 1897, seven years
after the gathering of the data. How
ever, bulletins were extensively used,
and the essential results were all given
to the public by 1895.
A famous French statistician, Moreau
de Jonnes, declared during his life that
the United States presents phen-
omenon without a parallel In history
that of a people who instituted the
statistics of their country on the very
day they founded their government,
and who regulated by the same instru-
ment the census of their inhabitants,
their civil and political rights, and the
destinies of the nation" From the time
that the great king OF Israel offended
his God by taking a count Of his peo-
pie down to the present day there have
been thousands of reckonings or popu--
lation, but nowhere else In the world
has the art of census taking reached
the high state of perfection existing
today in the United States.
Tomorrow--The Millinery business.