Censer

“ We are a great people over this way. Perhaps you are not aware of that, but we bear prosperity with meekness and adversity with patience. We feel that we can say to you, without boasting, if you seek a pleasant country, look about you. You may not know it, but it is a fact and the United States census reports ever since census reports have been made will prove it, that the annual valuation of the agricultural products of the county in which you now sit exceeds that of any other county in all this great nation. ”

“ So the census grew, from the simple enumeration of the people in 1790, under the very brief schedule which has been given, not only through various additions to the population schedule, but by the introduction of inquiries relating to production, until nearly all the material conditions surrounding the people, their industries, their wealth, their taxation, their carrying trade, fisheries, schools, health—nearly everything, in fact, that the social scientist wishes to know concerning the people and their conditions—are embodied in the census. ”

“ I believe that no census ever taken in this country has given the full amount of production, for instance. If more than the full amount was given the results might be damaging, but statements of less than the full amount, while disappointing, have little or no disastrous effect. The contributions of the census of 1850 must be considered as positive and valuable. ”

“ All this, however, to the mind of the impartial observer, rather militates against the credibility of American statistics than in their favour. The amount of money spent seems needlessly extravagant, while it is even more extravagant to hope that all this variety of information can be obtained with any degree of accuracy and trustworthiness. To many, therefore, the United States census is a 'monument,' but one provoking a sense of weariness and scepticism. ”

“ Another source of error in the manufacturing census of the United States is that the words of the census law are construed as requiring an enumeration of the various trades and handicrafts, such as carpentering. The deficiencies in such returns are gross and notorious, but the census office feels obliged to seek for them and to report what it finds, however incomplete or incorrect the results may be. Even on the population returns certain answers, such as the number of the divorced or the number unable to read and write, may be open to question. ”

“ If the department is to remain uncertain whether the census is to be taken under the act of 1850 or under a new law till the February of the census year — as was the case in 1870 — the work must suffer both through enhanced cost and through impaired value. ”

“ The not unnatural but wholly unsatisfactory suggestion of the Census authorities, that the discrepancy is due to the errors of others Censuses, should be received with politeness coming from such efficient workers; but can hardly be taken at its face value. After all the Censuses are our safest guides, and there is not much reason for thinking one so very much better than another. ”

“ In a word, through the census a picture is drawn of the economic condition of all the households of the community. The number of those who can read, or who are learning to read, is also given in the census. Certainly the material collected appears to be of such a character as to furnish fundamental facts for the formation of a judgment as to the economic condition of the population. ”

“ Notwithstanding desultory enumerations and the unsystematic collection of information by foreign countries and by the home government through our colonial period, the credit of the first regularly organized periodical census is due to the United States, and our government has, commencing with 1790, made regular enumerations of the population, and, beginning with the year 1850, has conducted what may be properly called a national census, comprehending many features beyond the mere enumeration of the inhabitants. ”

“ But the main object of the census, in which alone would be found the justification for so great an expenditure of labor and money, is its immediate use in directing the legislation and the industrial and social efforts of the present age. ”

“ To overcome the difficulty, an accurate schedule of every article that will be needed to meet the demands of the purchaser must be made.
The taking of a census is a long and laborious task, and to its completion years are devoted. Yet the census which the United States government takes is mere child’s play compared with the schedules which will have to be filled out, arranged and digested, if all the small commodities which people want to buy, and which they buy to-day, are to be ascertained and tabulated in preparation for production. ”

“ There is always a disparity between the figures of the State bureaus, the National bureau, and the census, and usually it is a disparity that cannot be harmonized.
The national census figures ought to be, as most persons will declare, a sufficiently correct guide. According to the last census, the number of wage-earners in manufacturing pursuits has increased in ten years 25.2 per cent, wages have increased 23.2 per cent. Despite the acknowledged increase in the country’s wealth, wages, if the census is correct, have declined. ”

“ 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. ”

“ The British Census proper reckons twenty-seven and a half million in the home countries. What makes this census important is the quality of the units that compose it. They are free forcible men, in a country where life is safe, and has reached the greatest value. ”

“ The figures on population, area, wages, housing, and the like, in the opening pages of this book, come primarily from the 1960 Census and the Statistical Abstract of the United States for 1961. The Census people have a diabolical genius for presenting their data in the least usable possible form, but they have a monopoly on the figures and no other source exists. ”

“ The census also serves as the basis for many public funding and private investment decisions. Census results play a part in determining the portion each State receives of more than $185 billion in funds distributed by the Federal Government each year. State and local public officials use census data to decide where to build public facilities such as schools, roads, hospitals, and libraries. Census data also are a valuable resource for businesses that are trying to identify where to build stores, office buildings, or shopping centers. ”

“ The Director of the Census states that the work in connection with the Twelfth Census is progressing favorably. This national undertaking, ordered by the Congress each decade, has finally resulted in the collection of an aggregation of statistical facts to determine the industrial growth of the country, its manufacturing and mechanical resources, its richness in mines and forests, the number of its agriculturists, their farms and products, its educational and religious opportunities, as well as questions pertaining to sociological conditions. ”

“ The contributions of the tenth census to social science constitute the most colossal official contribution that had ever been made by any government. The great variety of topics, their exhaustive treatment, the large number of specialists engaged, the clearness of presentation—everything connected with the tenth census—marked it as an epoch-making investigation. ”

“ The enumerators employed by the Federal government for the Census of 1910, were instructed to make an entry in the occupation column of the population schedule for every person enumerated, giving the exact occupation if employed, writing the word "none" if unemployed, or the words "own income" if living upon an independent income. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Every ten years our Government takes a census. This happens to be the year in which it is done. It is also good policy for a science, especially if it is a relatively new one, to take a periodical account of stock. ”

“ A periodic census of all the American people is required by the Constitution as the basis for apportioning representation in Congress. In addition, Congress has since 1840 provided for a special census of agriculture to periodically meet the Nation's requirements for reliable and timely statistics on this indispensable segment of our economy. ”

“ General conditions of trades as a whole are given in the census returns, though even there hardly more than approximately, little work of much real value being accomplished till the formation of the labor bureaus, with which we are soon to deal. Every allowance, however, is to be made for the Census Bureau, which found itself almost incapable of overcoming many of the lions in the way. ”

“ The 1974 Census of Agriculture has just begun. Statistics for more than 2.5 million farms will be collected to provide measures of the farm industry and agricultural economy for the Nation, each State, and every county. These data will be aggregated for use by virtually every segment of American society-farmers and their representative groups, the Congress, Federal agencies, State and local governments, educational institutions, private businesses, and consumer organizations. ”

“ The census will prove that the landed property of those who are thus supplied with from three to seven times their own number of negroes, if sold at its assessed value, and the proceeds of sales divided equally among all the inhabitants, black and white, each individual would have a larger sum than any Pennsylvanian, New Yorker, or New Englander, would have, if the land in the richest counties were sold at its assessed value, and the proceeds of sales divided equally among the inhabitants of the said county. ”

“ In truth, of all subjects upon which these people have been called on to think and act, during our proximity to them of two or three centuries, that of political economy is decidedly the most foreign and least known to them, or appreciated by them, and the census movement was, consequently, the theme of no small number of suspicions and cavils and objections. ”

“ By this combination of forces the census with the survey, the director will furnish the census bureau and Congress with a thorough exposition of the production of metals, coal and petroleum, and the most important branches of the mineral industry. In this combined labor care has been exercised that only census employés should be detailed to work in the region east of the one-hundredth meridian. The work of gathering the statistics proper is fast approaching completion. ”

“ Now, our decennial census during the nineteenth century established a base line a hundred years long—the first in all history—from which we may measure in the twentieth and in each succeeding century. ”

“ Under the statute authorizing this Census, recipients of census questionnaires are required to answer the questions in those questionnaires that apply to them, their families, and their farms to insure the accurate compilation of these statistics. The sole purpose of the Census is to secure general statistical information regarding agriculture and related resources of the country. No person can be harmed in any way by furnishing the information required. ”

“ The census of 1850 was taken on six schedules, one for free inhabitants, one for slaves, one for deaths during the preceding year, one for agriculture, one for manufactures and one for social statistics. The last asked for returns regarding valuation, taxation, educational and religious statistics, pauperism, crime and the prevailing rates of wages in each municipal division. ”

“ It is believed, however, that a regular census every five years would be of substantial benefit to the country, inasmuch as our growth hitherto has been so rapid that the results of the decennial census are necessarily unreliable as a basis of estimates for the latter years of a decennial period. ”

“ Abbott, the member for Helstone, brought in a bill to take a census of the people of the United Kingdom, pointing out not only the general importance of a knowledge of the population of a country in its entire amount and its different classes to every government, but also its special bearing on agriculture and on the means requisite to provide subsistence for the people, on trade and manufactures, and on our resources for war. ”

“ Civilization and taxation appear to be inseparable.
III. Having detailed the steps taken in procuring the census, it only remains to subjoin a few remarks, which I beg leave to add, on the general features of the statistics and the results of their agriculture upon their condition and prospects.
The printed queries being prepared exclusively for a population in a high state of prosperity and progress, embrace many items for which there was no occasion, among pseudo hunters, herdsmen, or incipient agriculturists. ”

“ The legislator without statistics is like the mariner at sea without the compass. Nothing can safely be committed to his guidance. A question of fearful importance, the well-being of this Republic, has agitated this House for many weeks. It is this: Are our rich men growing richer, and our poor growing poorer? And how can this most vital question be settled, except by the most careful and honest examination of the facts? Who can doubt that the next census will reveal to us more important truths concerning the situation of our people than any census ever taken by any nation? ”