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vided for, to be appointed by the President, by and with the advice and consent of the Senate, at an annual salary of $5,000, instead of, as under the law of 1850, a superintending clerk appointed by the Secretary of the Interior, at an annual salary of $3,000. It was the duty of the Superintendent of Census, under the direction of the Secretary of the Interior, to superintend and direct the taking of the tenth census of the United States, in accordance with the laws relating thereto, and to perform such other duties as might be required of him by law, but the terms of service of the Superintendent and of the clerical force provided by the act of March 3, 1879, were to cease upon the completion of the work of compiling and publishing the census returns.

The entire inadequacy of the machinery provided by the law of 1850, under which the seventh, eighth, and ninth censuses had been taken, had been made clearly apparent, especially at the ninth census period, and the work of supervising the enumeration, heretofore charged upon the judicial marshals, was by the new law intrusted to a body of officers specially chosen for the work, to be known as supervisors of census, to be appointed by the President and confirmed by the Senate. The law provided that one or more supervisors of census should be appointed in each State and Territory, of which they should be residents, and that the Secretary of the Interior should designate the number to be so appointed in each State or Territory on or before March 1, 1880; but the total number was not to exceed 150. This was more than twice the number of judicial marshals, and provided the means for securing not only a higher degree of local knowledge on the part of the supervisor, of great value in the subdivision of his district, but also a closer and more direct supervision of the actual work of enumeration.

The Superintendent and supervisors were required, before entering upon their duties, to take and subscribe to an oath or affirmation to support the Constitution of the United States, and to perform and discharge the duties of their respective offices, according to law, honestly and correctly, to the best of their abilities.

Each supervisor of census was charged, under the act of March 3, 1879, with the performance, within his own district, of the following duties:

1. To propose to the Superintendent of Census the apportionment of his district into subdivisions most convenient for the purpose of enumeration.

2. To designate to the Superintendent of Census suitable persons, and, with the consent of said Superintendent, to employ such persons as enumerators within his district, one for each subdivision, and resident therein, who shall be selected solely with reference to their fitness, and without reference to their political or party affiliations, according to the apportionment approved by the Superintendent of Census.

3. To transmit to enumerators the printed forms and schedules issued from the census office, in quantities suited to the requirements of each subdivision.

4. To communicate to enumerators the necessary instructions and directions relating to their duties and to the methods of conducting the census, and to advise with and counsel enumerators in person and by letter, as freely and fully as may be required to secure the purposes of this act; and under the direction of the Superintendent of Census, and to facilitate the taking of the census with as little delay as possible, he may cause to be distributed by the enumerators, prior to the taking of the enumeration, schedules to be filled up by the householders and others.

5. To provide for the early and safe transmission to his office of the returns of enumerators, embracing all the schedules filled by them in the course of enumeration, and for the due receipt and custody of such returns pending their transmission to the census office.

6. To examine and scrutinize the returns of enumerators, in order to ascertain whether the work has been performed in all respects in compliance with the provisions of law, and whether any town or village or integral portion of the district has been omitted from enumeration.

7. To forward to the Superintendent of Census the completed returns of his district in such time and manner as shall be prescribed by the said Superintendent, and in the event of discrepancies or deficiencies appearing in the returns from his district, to use all diligence in causing the same to be corrected or supplied.

8. To make up and forward to the Superintendent of Census the accounts required for ascertaining the amount of compensation due under the provisions of this act to each enumerator of his district.

Each supervisor, upon the completion of his duties to the satisfaction of the Secretary of the Interior, received as compensation, without reference to the size of his district, the sum of $500 in full for his services, while in certain cases an additional allowance for clerk hire was made, at the discretion of the Superintendent of Census. The enumeration districts at the census of 1880 were made much smaller than at the previous censuses and were not, under the law, to exceed 4,000 inhabitants according to the census of 1870, and the boundaries were to be clearly described by civil divisions, rivers, roads, public surveys, or other easily distinguished lines. This was a great improvement over the law of 1850, which allowed an enumeration district to contain as high as 20,000 inhabitants, but which at the census of 1870 did not, as a matter of fact, average much more than 6,000 persons.

Another important change was the time in which the general enumeration, taken as of the 1st day of June, as before, was to be com

pleted, being reduced to two weeks (12 working days) in cities having over 10,000 inhabitants under the census of 1870 and to one month (26 working days) in all other divisions, instead of covering, as at the ninth census, a period of, in round numbers, 100 working days. In the Territories and the States admitted into the Union since 1870, additional enumerators were authorized, if the census could not be properly taken within the time allowed, on account of the increase of population or of the physical features of the district.

The enumerators were required to be residents of their respective districts, except that, under the provisions of section 5 of the act of April 20, 1880, "in case it shall occur in any enumeration district that no person qualified to perform and willing to undertake the duties. of enumerator resides in that district, the supervisor may appoint any fit person, resident in the county, to be the enumerator of that district." Each enumerator was required, as under the law of 1850, to be duly commissioned, under the hand of the supervisor of census of the district to which he belonged, and bearing the approval of the Superintendent of Census, and to take and subscribe to the oath or affirmation prescribed by the act for the proper performance of his duties, and to forward a copy thereof, duly authenticated, to the supervisor of his district before the date fixed for the commencement of the enumeration; and no enumerator was deemed qualified to enter upon his work until these provisions of the act had been conformed to. Each enumerator was required by law "to visit personally each dwelling house in his subdivision, and each family therein, and each individual living out of a family in any place of abode, and by inquiry made of the head of such family, or of the member thereof deemed most credible and worthy of trust, or of such individual living out of a family, to obtain each and every item of information and all the particulars" required by the act of March 3, 1879, as amended by the act of April 20, 1880. In case no person should be found at the usual place of abode of such family or individual living out of a family competent to answer the inquiries made in compliance with the requirements of the census act, the enumerator was directed by the law "to obtain the required information, as nearly as may be practicable, from the family or families, or person or persons, living nearest to such place of abode."

Instead of the two copies of the schedules required under the law of 1850, the enumerator was directed to forward the original schedules, duly certified, to the supervisor of his district, but before doing this, he was required, under the terms of section 6 of the act of April 20, 1880, to make and file in the office of the clerk of the county court or in the office of the court or board administering the affairs of the county to which his district belongs, a list of the names, with age, sex, and color, of all persons enumerated by him, which he shall certify to

be true, and for which he shall be paid at the rate of 10 cents for each 100 names. He was also required to give notice by written advertisement at three or more public places in his district that he would be at the court-house of said county on the fifth day after filing said list, not including Sunday, from 9 o'clock antemeridian to 6 o'clock postmeridian, and the following day, for the purpose of correcting his enumeration by striking out or adding the designation of persons improperly enumerated or omitted; and he was required at the time specified to correct, on such reliable information as he may obtain, all omissions and mistakes in such enumeration, swearing and examining witnesses for the purpose, if necessary, and to then make known to the bystanders, if any, the result of such inquiry for correction and the whole number of persons enumerated by him. In order to enable him to perform this additional duty, the time for making his return to the supervisor was extended fifteen days.

There were five general schedules of inquiry authorized, relating to population, agriculture, manufactures, mortality, and social statistics, as at the census of 1870, but several changes and additions were made in them in accordance with the requirements of the census acts. The general schedules used at the census of 1880 were much larger in size than those used in 1870, being about 21 by 15 inches, and spaces were provided on the population schedule for the entry of 50 names to each page.

The inquiries as to the value of real and personal estate owned and male citizens were dropped from the schedule relating to the population, and new inquiries added calling for a statement concerning each person enumerated of the relation to the head of the family, as wife, son, daughter, servant, boarder, or other; civil (or conjugal) condition, as single, married, widowed, or divorced; place of birth of parents, as State or Territory, or country, if of foreign birth; condition of health, as sick or temporarily disabled; physical disabilities, as maimed, crippled, bedridden, or otherwise disabled; and number of months unemployed during the census year, in connection with the return of profession, trade, or occupation.

The inquiries as to the conjugal condition and the birthplace of the parents of decedents were also added to the schedule relating to mortality, and, in addition, inquiries as to the length of residence in the county and the name of the place where the disease was contracted, if other than the place of death.

The schedule relating to productions of agriculture included not only new inquiries as to the tenure of farm, weeks of hired labor, cost for the year of building and repairing fences and of fertilizers purchased, but the inquiries concerning the various crops were very much, amplified, including inquiries as to the acreage of the principal crops, and those relating to live stock to include, in addition to the number on hand June 1, 1880, the movement during the year.

The schedule relating to manufactures contained new inquiries as to the greatest number of hands employed at any one time during the year, the number of hours in the ordinary day of labor from May to November and from November to May, the average daily wages paid to a skilled mechanic and to an ordinary laborer, five details as to months in operation on full and part time, and ten details as to the power used in manufactures. The law also made provision, in the discretion of the superintendent, for special schedules for separate industries, and further provided that the schedules of manufactures could be withdrawn from the enumerators of the several subdivisions, whenever the superintendent should deem it expedient, and the collection of these statistics charged upon experts and special agents, to be employed without respect to locality. Under this provision of the law, the schedules for manufacturing industries were withdrawn in 279 cities and towns, and in all but 31 cities a single special agent only was required to do the work. In addition, experts were charged with the collection of the statistics relating to certain industries, to be gathered throughout the country, under the direction of these experts, without reference to locality. These experts were also charged with the classification and analysis of the returns, and the results were published in a series of special reports or monographs. The industries for which the statistics were so collected by experts included not only the manufactures of iron and steel; cotton, woolen, and worsted goods; silk and silk goods; chemical products and salt; coke and glass; and shipbuilding, but also the fisheries and mining in all its branches, including the production of coal and petroleum.

The Superintendent of Census was also authorized, in his discretion, to withdraw the mortality schedule in localities where an official registration of deaths is maintained, and to obtain the required statistics from the official records, paying therefor such sum as might be necessary, not exceeding the rates authorized to be paid to the enumerators for a similar service. The mortality schedules were accordingly withdrawn from the enumerators in Massachusetts, New Jersey, and the District of Columbia and in 19 cities, including all the leading cities in the country, and the statistics of deaths compiled from the registration records. Of the whole number of deaths reported from all sources in 1880 (756,893), not quite one-fourth (178,645) were secured from registration offices, and the enumerators were, to that extent, entirely relieved from this duty. The total population represented by these registration areas was 8,538,366, or substantially one-sixth of the entire population of the country.

The collection of the social statistics, authorized by schedule No. 4, was also withdrawn from the general enumerators, under the provisions of section 18 of the act of March 3, 1879, and the information was collected either wholly by experts and special agents appointed without regard to locality, or partly by special agents and partly by corre

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