The United States were divided into 207 supervisor districts and 53,000 enumeration districts. Enumeration began June 1, 1900, continuing two weeks in cities, elsewhere thirty days. Persons in the navy, army, and on Indian reservations were numbered. For those in institutions there were special enumerators. Each enumerator used a “street-book” or daily record, individual slips for returns of persons absent when the enumerator called, and an “absent family” schedule.
The returns were tabulated by an electrical device first employed ten years before. Its work was automatic and so fine that it would even obviate errors. For instance, age, sex, etc., being denoted by punch-holes in cards, the machine would refuse to pass a card punched to indicate that the person was three years old and married.
Nearly 2,000 employees toiled upon the census during the latter part of 1900, and nearly a thousand during the entire year, 1901. From July 14, 1900, piecemeal results were announced almost daily. By October the population of the principal cities was out. A preliminary statement of total population was given to the press, October 30, 1900, followed by a verified one a month later. The first official report on population was made December 6, 1901, within eighteen months from the completion of the enumerators’ work. Results were first issued in sixty bulletins, all subsequently included in the first half of the first volume. Two volumes were devoted to population, three to manufactures, two to agriculture, and two to vital statistics. One contained an abstract of the whole. Following these came volumes on special lines of inquiry.
Census Examination.
The population of the United States, not including Porto Rico or the Philippines, was found to be 76,303,387, an increase of not quite 21 per cent. in the decade, or less than during any previous similar period of our history. All the States and territories save Nevada were better peopled than ever before. Nevada lost 10.6 per cent. of her inhabitants, as against two and a half times that percentage between 1880 and 1890, occupying in 1900 about the same tracks as in 1870. Oklahoma people increased 518.2 per cent. Indian Territory, Idaho, and Montana came next in rapidity of growth. Kansas, with 2.9 per cent. increase, and Nebraska, with only 0.7 per cent., showed the slowest progress, the figures resulting in considerable part from padded returns in 1890. Vermont, Delaware, and Maine crawled on at a snail’s pace. In numerical advance New York, Pennsylvania, and Illinois led. Texas marched close to them, overhauling Massachusetts. In percentage of increase the southern, central, and western divisions were in the van.
Almost a third of our people were now urban, ten times the proportion of 1790. The rate of urban increase (36.8 per cent.) was, however, smaller than during any preceding decade, except 1810-1820, and was notably less than the 61.4 per cent. urban increase from 1880 to 1890. Numerically also city growth was less than at the preceding census.
There were 545 places of 8,000 or more inhabitants, with an average population of 45,857. Of the larger cities fully half adjoined the Atlantic. Greater New York, a monster composite of nearly three and a half millions, ranked first among American cities, and second only to London among those of the world. Chicago, Philadelphia, St. Louis, Boston, and Baltimore followed in the same order as a decade before. The enterprising lake rivals, Cleveland and Buffalo, had raced past San Francisco and Cincinnati. Pittsburgh, instead of New Orleans, now came next after the ten just named.
There were, as in 1890, three cities of more than a million inhabitants each. There were six of more than 500,000, as against four in 1890. Of cities having between 400,000 and 500,000 people none appeared in 1900; three in 1890. Five cities now had over 300,000 and less than 400,000, a class not represented at all in 1890. Thirty-eight cities used in numbering their people six figures or more each, a privilege enjoyed in 1890 by only twenty-eight. The cities of the Pacific coast showed noteworthy increase.
Ohio, Indiana, Delaware, Kansas, and Nebraska and all the North Atlantic States except Rhode Island, Connecticut, and Pennsylvania, lost in rural population. Rhode Island, with 407 inhabitants to the square mile, was the most densely peopled State. Massachusetts came next. Idaho, Montana, New Mexico, Arizona, Wyoming, and Nevada could not show two souls to the square mile. Alaska, doubled in population, had one in about ten square miles. No western State had ten to the mile.