Atlanta semi-weekly journal. (Atlanta, Ga.) 1898-1920, 1909-12-03
and System Are
KeynOteS of Census Taking

make tables OF figures. telling how many
persons there are of each age, how many
are white, black or of mixed blood: how
many carpenters, undertakes and trained
nurses there are how many can read and
write and so on, even to the tabulation
of these and hundreds of other matters
I'm every township and city.
QUICKLY, AUTOMATICALLY.
To do all this by hand would be vast
ly expensive and almost. interminable
job But the machines attend to it auto
matically. and with an expedition tha2
is nothing short Of marvellous. All that
is required is to feed the cards into them.
and they do the rest. working out the
problems and giving the results without
possibility of error. With the help of one
Of these contrivances a capable clerk can
tabulate from $4,000 to 10000 cards. as al
ready stated in a working day. all the
facts they contain being duly assembled
and classified.
Some Of the new tabulators have adding
machines attached to them 10 prepare
statistics of agriculture and certain other
arrangements of figures international.
Another novel device is an automatic
sorter which separates the cards into
classes, electromagnetic controlling their
passing through a series of chutes. In
deed, all of the mechanism from begin
ming to end depends upon electricity, the
current being made and broken by little
metal rods which pass through the holes
in the cards.
The enumerators employed to gather the
facts for the census of 1910 from all parts
of the country will number 5000, and all
of them will be men, save perhaps rev
who for some special and particular rea-
SON will be of the gentler sex. Some wo-
men did this kind of work for the. last
a hfvT ms
is too rough, not infrequently involving
ouite little hardship of one kind or an
other. The business of putting the facts
together. however. after they have been
collected will be intrusted mainly to wo-'
men. the great majority of them being
young.
Fxperience has shown that women are
more clever than men at such WoIA'
though they are not easy to manage. "A
census bureau official said the other day;
81 once knew a man who had 20 girls
under his control. He would. introduce
any one of his friends to Is of them, say
ing that he reserved the other five for
himself. Now, during the last census
had 700 young women under me, and any
body might have been welcome TO them
all. / say without reserve that a.mans
who can manage that number of girls
can do anything. The greatest difficulty
is to curtail their chatter. Yet in the
long run they make better clerks than
the men," 80
The census bureau is now permanent
establishment in Washington. 1t Is Kept
running. with a. comparatively small
force of clerks, all the time, whereas it
used to go out of existence after each
enumeration of the population was ac-
complished, springing up anew and sud
dapIv every ten wears like a gigantic
mushroom As things are at present ar
ranged, however. the plant is always in
existence on. a small scale. There is
skeleton organizat ion. so to speak. and
this is readily expanded. when the occa-
sion arrives, into a huge and effective
machine for the gathering of facts. Such
an expansion is now beginning to take:
place. and within short time the ma
chine will be in full operation for the
taking of the 18th census of the United
States.-EXchange