Richmond Mayo-Smith

“ In the cities the safety of the census lies in the fact that the special inquiries are taken out of the hands of the ordinary enumerators and placed in those of men especially qualified for the work. Paying by the name in large cities has, however, this weakness, that where an enumerator meets with unusual obstacles, as in a tenement house inhabited by foreigners who do not understand English, or a house when all the adult members of the family are absent, he is tempted to pass such places by and devote his energies to easier cases. ”

“ The safety for the census lies in the country enumerator who has a chance for a month's employment, and the fact that he is paid according to the amount of work he does. For each living inhabitant he receives two cents, for each death reported two cents, for each surviving soldier five cents, for each defective person or criminal five cents, for each farm fifteen cents, and for each manufacturing establishment twenty cents. In sparsely settled districts higher rates are allowed for living inhabitants, farms, and manufacturing establishments ”

“ The births are to be estimated by adding to the number of persons less than one year of age at the time of the enumeration those who were born and died during the census year. Of course vital statistics obtained by such methods must be imperfect and crude; but this whole matter is forced on the census by the fact that we have no uniform registration of births, deaths, and marriages in the United States, and owing to our federal form of government are not likely to have. It is the best we can do. ”

“ Questions l0 to 15 (and 21) are forced upon the census by the peculiar make-up of our population, with its large proportion of persons of foreign birth and of foreign descent. If we neglected to get these statistics and combine them with those of sex, age, conjugal condition, occupation, illiteracy, disease, and death we should miss the greatest opportunity for ethnological and sociological investigation which is offered anywhere in the world, besides depriving ourselves of information absolutely essential to our own welfare. ”

“ The explanation of the Census Office is that as a country grows older the natural rate of increase tends to decline; and this is true, but of doubtful application when we consider the amount of land still unoccupied in the United States, and that immigration during the last twenty years has added to the population an enormous number of persons in the most productive ages of manhood and womanhood. ”

“ The first class consists of the ordinary enumeration of the people taken by the regular enumerators appointed for that purpose, and on one schedule, including the usual statistics of age, sex, conjugal condition, etc., together with certain questions intended to furnish the basis for further special investigations. This is the census proper. The second class comprises certain investigations which are intrusted to the ordinary enumerator, who fills out a special schedule whenever the occasion demands. ”

“ Suppose the rural enumerator comes to a farm where there are six or eight persons to be recorded besides the farm itself, and very likely a death, or a surviving soldier, or a diseased or defective person. He can easily earn from twenty—five to forty cents on that one farm, and it is to his interest to get as many items as possible, for his loss occurs in travelling from one farm to the next. ”

“ In a certain sense, thus, the expensiveness and extent of the census is an advantage, for it offers to the intelligent son of a farmer or small shopkeeper a tempting opportunity to earn a little ready money by easy work. ”

“ Taking them in order, question 2 is useless for any practical purpose because a great many persons will answer it in the affirmative under the vague impression that it will lead to a pension or something of that sort. It is not unlikely that when we come to examine the returns we shall find a new curiosity in statistics, namely, a too great willingness to answer in the affirmative, the reverse of that disinclination to answer at all which the fear of taxation has so often aroused. ”

“ The presence of the blacks at the South and of the foreign-born in the North constitute the most important demological problems with which we have to deal. Question 16 will doubtless contend with the usual difficulties of an occupation census, but public opinion would not permit its omission. Question 17 labours under the disadvantage of requiring exact knowledge or memory on the part of the person concerned, and when it is answered by the wife or other member of the family in respect to the husband or father it will probably lack accuracy. ”

“ But the census has long outgrown that clause, and it would be impossible to justify even the questions on the population schedule as necessary to an enumeration of the people. With the employment of special agents the necessity for a uniform date has ceased, and it is the opinion of such men as General Walker and Commissioner Wright that it would be better to make these special inquiries at some other time, when the Census Office is less overwhelmed with work. ”

“ The same figures, however, are accessible to the opponents as well as to the advocates of any social reform; while the educational value of these attempts to throw the light of exact statistical investigation on social phenomena otherwise unknowable is very great, both for the practical statistician and for the large number of persons who in an intelligent democracy try to comprehend and solve social problems. ”

“ As both of these groups of questions were intended to be the basis for supplementary inquiries, I will speak of them further on. Such is the explanation of the complicated and unwieldy population schedule which the Census Office sent out and expected to have answered for every individual in the United States, man, woman, and child, white or black, native or foreign-born, intelligent or ignorant. The final reports will doubtless show failure in many directions. ”

“ Whenever he shall deem it expedient, the superintendent of the census may withhold the schedules for manufacturing, mining, and social statistics from the enumerators of the several subdivisions, and may charge the collection of these statistics upon experts and special agents, to be employed without respect to locality. ”

“ It was said that it compelled men and women to reveal weaknesses or even shameful diseases which had been a secret between them and their physician, and to expose themselves to the pity or contempt of the entire community. ”

“ Besides, as has lately been pointed out by Westergaard, imperfect data are not necessarily valueless, for the man of science by skilful manipulation and the exercise of the scientific imagination may out of a fragment construct a probable whole ”

“ Acres, crop, amount sold, value sold. There are 255 subdivisions in this schedule. Of course no single farm would need them all, and the schedule is made so as to be used for a cotton plantation in the South, a wheat farm, a kitchen garden, or a stock farm. Each schedule (four pages, 11 by 15) has space for ten farms, and is filled out by the snumerator.
General Schedule No. 3.—Statistics of Manufactures. One schedule is sent to each establishment, and the questions are grouped as follows: 1. Name of corporation, firm, or individual. 2. Date when this establishment commenced operations. 3. ”

“ Besides the first twenty-five questions on the Population Schedule, these schedules contain further questions, as for instance on the Insanity Schedule: Able to speak so as to be readily understood, imperfectly, or not at all ”

“ The questions will not be truthfully answered in thousands of cases, but the chief application of the law will be in the case of officers of charitable institutions who refuse to take the trouble to make a proper return. ”