These commercial changes and social revolutions were continued with increasing intensity during the next decade. The great famine in Ireland sent us swarms of laborers. The Mexican war brought us California, and the discovery of gold there marked the beginning of a new era in our material condition. It was under the influence of these stimulating events that the seventh census was undertaken. To make such preparations that it should, to some extent, embody the spirit of the time and furnish us with a correct statement of our condition under the new impulses and burdens of the nation, an act was passed March 3, 1849, creating a census board, whose duty it should be to prepare, and cause to be printed, forms and schedules for the enumeration of the population, and also for collecting "such information as to mines, agriculture, commerce, manufactures, education and other topics as will exhibit a full view of the pursuits, industry, education and resources of the country; provided, the number of said inquiries, exclusive of enumeration, shall not exceed one hundred." On the same day the Department of the Interior was established, and all matters relating to the census were transferred to that department. The census board reported "an act for taking the seventh and subsequent censuses of the United States," which became a law May 23, 1850, and under that law the censuses of 1850, 1860 and 1870 were taken.
However far that law was an improvement upon either of those under which the preceding censuses were taken, it is now wholly inadequate—so much so, indeed, that the superintendent of the ninth census (1870) declared, "It is not possible for one who has had such painful occasion as the present superintendent to observe the workings of the census law of 1870 to characterize it otherwise than as clumsy, antiquated and barbarous. The machinery it provides is as unfit for use in the census of the United States in this day of advanced statistical science as the smooth-bore muzzle-loading 'queen's arm' of the Revolution would be for service against the repeating rifle of the present time." It includes many inquiries which are practically worthless, and excludes many vitally necessary to an understanding of our social and industrial condition. Thus the questions, "Has this season produced average crops?" "What crops are short?" "What are the average wages of a female domestic per week, without board?" "How much road-tax did you pay, and how?" may be of some interest, if regarded as conundrums, but are practically of as little value as the color of one's hair or the average number of hours one sleeps; while, as matters of fact, the answers to them have been so unsatisfactory that no attempt has ever been made to classify them, and in the census of 1870 they were discarded altogether, though still forming part of the law. Nor is the method required for ascertaining the facts relating to manufactures of any greater value. The inquiries are the same in regard to every kind of industry, whether the product be cloth, leather, iron or silver, and are confined solely to wages, kinds and quantities. No means are provided for ascertaining with skill and exactness the necessary details of the varied manufactures of the country. The schedules for agricultural returns are also the same for all sections—for cotton and sugar-cane in Maine, for maple-sugar and hops in Louisiana. These, however, are merely superficial defects, some of which might easily be remedied in the hands of a competent superintendent, as was the case with the census of 1870. The graver inherent defects are equally obvious, but not equally susceptible of remedy. Nothing short of a new law will accomplish that result.
In the first place, the officer designated to take the census is, in every point of view, objectionable. That officer is the United States marshal, originally selected, probably, for no better reason than that, as there was such an officer in every State whose services could be made available, it was better to use him than to create a new office. But neither the legitimate duties of his office nor the department to which he belongs justify such a selection. His duties are chiefly connected with violations of law, and he is necessarily associated in public opinion with the criminal side of life. A police-officer is not a good census-taker. Moreover, many of the States are divided into several marshalships from considerations which do not at all enter into the taking of the census. Thus, New York has three districts, the largest of which contains more than two and a quarter millions of inhabitants, while Florida has two districts, the smaller of which, but by far the more important so far as the legitimate duties of the marshal are concerned, contains scarcely six thousand inhabitants. Massachusetts is a district with over a million and a third of people: so is Arizona, with less than ten thousand.
Then the methods of payment are unfair, irrational and cumbersome. They bear no relation to the amount of work performed, are irregular in their operation, are obscure in their manner of calculation, and impose needless labor alike on the officer to be paid and the census office. To say that the square root of an area multiplied by the square root of the number of horses indicates the number of miles travelled in taking a census is as absurd as to say that the square root of the yards of cloth in a suit multiplied by the square root of the number of stitches taken to make the suit will give the length of the thread used. In its practical working in 1860 the result was to give to one assistant marshal a per diem of $1.66 and to another $31.32 for the same labor. A proposition which works out such a result may serve for a joke in negro minstrelsy: it will hardly be accepted as honest figuring by the recipient of the minimum pay.
But the greatest objection of all is to the schedules created by the law of 1850. The number of inquiries is limited by that law to one hundred, though why that number should be selected as the limit, except at haphazard, is a mystery. It is purely arbitrary, and in its practical working is mischievous. Statistical inquiries ought to be exhaustive, whether the questions asked are ten or ten thousand. To limit the number to one hundred requires the lumping together of incongruous facts or the entire omission of some of prime importance. Of what real value is the answer to the question, "Kind of motive-power?" in relation to manufactures unless other details are given? Yet only such questions can be asked where the margin is so narrow. In the census of Massachusetts for 1875, 304 inquiries were made, embracing 1337 topics; and so satisfactorily was the work done that out of a population of 1,651,912 only 43 persons were unaccounted for when the statistics of occupations were compiled; while in the United States census of 1870 the number thus unaccounted for exceeded 1,000,000. In Rhode Island no less than 561 inquiries were made in the census of 1875, and the result is the most complete census—not merely of persons, but of every kind of manufacture and production—yet taken in any State. The returns of cotton, woollen and iron manufactures show what can and ought to be done in that direction for the whole nation in 1880. They answer the requirements set forth by the superintendent of the census of 1870 by presenting "tables so full of technical information as to become the handbook of manufacturers."
By the side of the census reports for 1875 of Massachusetts and Rhode Island, and even of the young State of Iowa, those of the United States hitherto published appear like incomplete, vague and childish efforts. For instance, in the census of Massachusetts for 1875, in the agricultural statistics, 140 different items are reported, exclusive of 10 included among "domestic products," but reckoned in the United States census among agricultural products. Of these 150 items, only 24 are reported in the United States census of 1870, although some of those omitted are from $1,500,000 to $5,000,000 in annual value. In the case of manufactures the defects are still more striking—ludicrously so but for the importance of the subject. By the schedules of 1850 the facts called for in regard to manufactures are simply these: number of establishments, horse-power, hands employed, capital, wages, materials, products. The 1 establishment which employed 3 hands and turned out $3000 worth of artificial eyes demanded and received exactly the same treatment with the 22,573 flouring- and grist-mills with their army of 58,448 workmen and $444,985,143 of products. On this Procrustean bed all are stretched or shrunken—the giant industries by which men are fed, clothed, housed and shod, with their 1,000,000 of men and $2,000,000,000 of products, and the pigmy occupations of making skewers, calcium-lights, mops, dusters, etc., employing 150 persons and aggregating $150,000 of products.
And this leads directly to a consideration of the measures necessary to secure a proper census of the United States in 1880. To begin with, as already reiterated, a new law is imperatively demanded: no good thing can come of the present statute. As early as possible during this present Congress a committee on the tenth census should be appointed, which should carefully study the laws and methods of every civilized state and country in which a census is taken, and from these collect whatever is best, giving at the same time ample power to the superintendent in all matters of administration and appointment. Such a law might be as short and simple as that of Rhode Island, which is comprised in eight brief sections, yet is so comprehensive that under its provisions was compiled the most complete census yet taken in this country, if not in the world.
The time at which the census is taken should be changed from June 1 to at least November 1, if not to January 1, when the labors of the year are ended, when the harvest has been gathered in, the books made up and the family naturally talk over the events of the past twelve-month. Then, if ever, is the time when full, frank and honest answers will be given, and the census-taker will be hailed rather as a friend than an enemy in disguise. The method adopted years ago in all other civilized countries, and in Massachusetts and Rhode Island in 1875, of leaving the blank schedules in advance at each house and manufactory, to be filled up carefully and thoughtfully, and to be called for on a given day, should also be adopted. The result of the first attempt in Massachusetts was that 37 per cent. of the schedules was found ready for delivery to the enumerator, and for the remaining 63 per cent. the labor was greatly diminished by the readiness of the people to answer all inquiries intelligently. The number who at first failed or refused to comply was only one hundred, and of manufacturers less than twenty; and these all subsequently made the necessary returns. The total answers of all kinds received at the census office was 13,000,000, at a cost to the State of one dollar for each hundred answers.
Under such a law, enacted by the present Congress, and by such methods, the census report of 1880 would become a document to which every good citizen could point with pride and congratulation. We should no longer be mortified with such errors and shortcomings as are so frankly commented on in the census report of 1870. We should have not merely a correct enumeration of the population, with all the important facts connected with their domestic and social condition, but also such a return of the occupations, manufacturing industries, education and commercial operations, and all the elements which go to make up the material well-being of the races on this portion of the continent, as would mark a new departure in our national life. The absurd inanities which characterize so much of the report of the superintendent of the census of 1860, and the doctrinaire theories injected into the report of 1850, ought never again to find expression in any public document bearing the official sanction of the United States.
The census report of 1860, as compared with that of 1870, is as the Serbonian bog to a well-appointed lawn. For the first time since its inception the taking of the census was in 1870 placed in thoroughly competent hands. By inherited ability, as well as by previous training, General Walker possesses in an eminent degree the qualities essential to the fitting and successful execution of such a task. At every step he shows the skill and readiness of a master workman; and it will be fortunate for the country if he shall be selected as superintendent of the tenth census under a law of his own devising.