The Boy With the U.S. Census

by Francis Rolt-Wheeler

"Some schedules need a good deal of editing, I suppose," exclaimed Hamilton thoughtfully.

"You may be sure of that," the other answered. "If you think for a moment how impossible it would be to have all the supervisors and enumerators work exactly in the same style, you can see how necessary it must be for some group of persons to go over them to make them all uniform. Besides which, there are a lot of obvious mistakes that the editors remedy before the card is punched ready for tabulation. But go on with your explanation, so that I can see if you really do understand it."

"The parent columns run the same way, of course," Hamilton continued, "'U.S.' meaning any one born in the United States, and 'Un.' cases in which the parentage is unknown. Then 'NP' means native-born parents, and 'FP' foreign-born parents. Further on, 'Na' means Naturalized, 'Al' stands for Alien, 'Pa' that first papers have been taken out, and 'Un' unknown. Down the column, 'En' seems to mean that the foreign-born can speak English, 'Ot' that he can only speak some tongue other than English. The year of immigration, of course, is obvious. But this occupation, I can't make head or tail of!"

"That you have to learn," the instructor said. "There is a printed list here for reference that contains the principal kinds of employment in the United States and classifies them. In a very little while you will find that you can remember the numbers which signify the more common of these and you will need to refer to the list but seldom. All occupation returns not contained in the printed list will be classified and punched later by a special force of clerks. Holes punched for those out of work and the number of weeks unemployed are all easy. At the top of the last column, too, 'Emp' means Employer, 'W' Wage Earner, while 'OA' means working on his or her own account, and 'Un' is for Unemployed."

"All right, sir," Hamilton replied, "I think I can do it now. I should find it harder, though, if I hadn't been writing all those things just exactly as they are here on population schedules for the last month."

"It makes an astonishing difference," the experienced man agreed, "you know the why and wherefore of everything. Now you had better take this old test schedule and I will give you fifty blank cards, and we will see how they come out."

Through the rest of the afternoon, Hamilton worked steadily over this set of cards, not only doing the work, but getting the principles of the whole thing thoroughly in his mind, and, as he had said to the sub-section chief, knowing just the manner in which the schedules had been made up helped him to an extraordinary degree. He was well pleased, therefore, when he came down to work the following morning, to find at his machine a real schedule, not the test that he had been working on the afternoon before; the exact number of cards required for his schedule all ready in the hopper of the machine, and it was pointed out to him that error was not permissible and that he must account for every card.

"Why is that?" asked Hamilton, "what difference would a card or two make?"

"It isn't the cards, it's the numbering," the other explained. "Don't you remember that each card was numbered, and so, if one card is wrong it would throw all the succeeding numbers out? Besides, you never have a chance to see whether a card is right or not, because after you have touched the lever and the card is punched it slides into its own compartment. You have all the chance you want to look over your arrangement of depressed keys before the card is punched, but none after."

Before a week had passed by, Hamilton was so thoroughly at home with the machine that the work seemed to him to become more or less mechanical, and his interest in it began to wane. As—under government regulations—he left work early, he sauntered over several times to the verification department to become familiar with the work of the machine used there. There was a fascination to the boy in this machine, for it seemed almost to possess human intelligence in its results, and he was curious to know the principle on which it worked. Generally every one quit at half-past four o'clock, just as he did, but sometimes a man would work a few minutes longer to finish a batch of cards, and the boy would go to watch him.