Gambar halaman
PDF
ePub
[ocr errors]

What may be termed the sociological services of the Government, referring both to the regular and the emergency agencies, require new population data. Thus, the rapid decline of the birth rate appears to have brought about, in many communities, an actual diminution in the number of elementary school students. At the same time, if children whose ages are such as to include them alternatively in the school or the working population are unemployed, there is a potential addition to the school population. School authorities require knowledge of both population and unemployment by age levels to ascertain the present and prospective demands for educational facilities.

Public-health authorities are in need of population data, which cannot now be provided, for the calculation of birth and mortality

rates.

As a final illustration of the need for this census at the present time, we may mention the dependence of the agricultural program of the Federal Government upon the data to be procured from the quinquennial census of agriculture, and the dependence of the latter for its accuracy upon a concurrent census which will include an enumeration of population.

These and other uses of the Federal Government for census data were submitted in a memorandum of April 4, 1934, by the Assistant Director of the Census to the Director of the Budget. A copy of this memorandum is attached for the records of the Committee on the Census. The interests of certain of these governmental agencies will be elaborated by other witnesses at the present hearing.

The demand for the present census is widespread and has been brought to the attention of the Secretary of Commerce and the Director of the Census by a large number of organizations and individual specialists in the fields of statistics, sociology, public health, actuarial science, business, labor, city planning, engineering, and various other fields of public service.

(The memorandum above referred to is as follows:)

SOME SPECIFIC INTERESTS IN A CENSUS OF POPULATION, OCCUPATIONS, AND UNEMPLOYMENT, CONJOINED WITH AGRICULTURE

The purpose of this memorandum is to set forth some specific needs for data which would be supplied by the proposed census. These needs may not in all cases have been expressed by the administrative personnel concerned. There are broader questions pertaining to social policy which cut across departmental lines. For example, it is widely believed that a disturbance of an earlier balance between agricultural and industrial production is responsible for the depression. Numerous governmental agencies are participating in attempts to effectuate a policy of restoring the earlier balance. All aspects of this general problem are closely related to the distribution of population. No effort is here made to enumerate such broader policy questions.

DEPARTMENT OF THE TREASURY

1. The credit of local governments, and the security behind their negotiable paper, depends largely upon population, its growth or decline, since this affects all taxable values. For the administration of Federal responsibilities related to municipal finance, therefore, the Treasury needs population (and unemployment) data which will show the changes of the past 4 years.

2. As a check upon the number and adequacy of its returns, the Bureau of Internal Revenue needs accurate and detailed population data for minor civil divisions.

3. A major weapon of public-health promotion and the combat of disease is vital statistics. The foundation of birth, death, disease, and health rates of all kinds is population. Accurate rates, because of population shifts, are no longer available. The United States Public Health Service is thus vitally interested in a new population census.

4. Indirectly, because of the influence of unemployment, population movements and changing markets upon Federal expenditures, the Bureau of the Budget has much to gain for its own planning responsibilities from the proposed

census.

DEPARTMENT OF WAR

1. Preparedness for national defense, from the standpoints both of military and industrial mobilization, requires accurate population and employment data, by State and local distribution, and by sex, age, and occupation.

DEPARTMENT OF JUSTICE

1. In local communities, for example, Chicago, law-enforcing agencies have demanded accurate information for small areas concerning social characteristics, such as nationality, age distribution, and school attendance. The growing responsibilities thrown upon the Department of Justice for the war on crime give it a similar interest in the proposed census.

POST OFFICE DEPARTMENT

1. As established by previous administrations, postal routes have become inefficient and unnecessarily costly. This is especially true in rural regions, where changes in routes have not kept pace with road building, improvements in motor transportation, and movements in population. Accurate population data, which take account of changes since 1930, are needed for intelligent improvements in service and reductions in costs.

DEPARTMENT OF THE INTERIOR

1. Unemployment data, by occupations, are essential to location of surplus populations adapted to the subsistence homesteads program.

2. The Office of Education needs population information, by age and occupation, to determine a coherent educational policy, so far as required by the Federal Government. Unemployment data, by occupation, are essential for all vocational and industrial education plans and developments, such as those of the Federal Board for Vocational Education.

3. Reclamation activities should be planned in relation to population distribution, as well as to present agricultural production and to changes in urban markets, which are dependent upon population movements.

FEDERAL EMERGENCY ADMINISTRATION OF PUBLIC WORKS

1. The allocation of funds for public works must be related equitably to population; and also to the need for new construction, which is, in turn, a function both of population size and of the direction and rate of population change. 2. The National Planning Board, for similar reasons, has urgent need of correct population data.

PUBLIC WORKS EMERGENCY HOUSING CORPORATION

1. Housing construction projects can scarcely proceed without knowledge of changing housing needs-which can only be estimated with the aid of new population data.

DEPARTMENT OF AGRICULTURE AND AGRICULTURAL ADJUSTMENT

ADMINISTRATION

1. A census of population is essential to secure accuracy in the quinquennial census of agriculture. The data of the latter, for example, figures on farm acreage and crop acreage, are of major importance for the agricultural rehabilitation program of the United States Department of Agriculture and the Agricultural Adjustment Administration. An inaccurate census of agriculture, according to specialists of the Department, would be worse than useless.

2. The Department and the Agricultural Adjustment Administration have a direct interest in the size and distribution of farm population, especially because of its bearing on agricultural production for the market and for subsistence.

3. Similarly, changes in the urban population and in the rates of its growth bear directly upon the present and potential markets for agricultural products. 4. Almost all of the work of the Bureau of Public Roads, which is closely related to the future of the automobile industry and to planning highway construction in the States, is ultimately dependent upon the distribution of population, data concerning which are of primary importance to the Bureau.

DEPARTMENT OF COMMERCE

1. All phases of commercial and industrial activities with which the Department is concerned have direct dependencies upon population data. The duty of supplying such data falls to this Department. It has no obligation more fundamental or more pressing at the present time. Many of its own policies depend directly upon new population information.

DEPARTMENT OF LABOR

1. From many sources, public and private, this Department is compelled to supply estimates of unemployment. To secure a reliable figure on present unemployment, which will also serve as a bench-mark upon which to base future estimates, is a major administrative need.

2. Data on population and unemployment are basic to an efficient organization and administration of the United States Employment Services.

3. Many of the research studies of the Bureau of Labor Statistics, Children's Bureau, and Women's Bureau, as well as some of the current indexes of the first of these, depend for validity and much of their value upon accurate population data.

INTERSTATE COMMERCE COMMISSION AND FEDERAL RAIL COORDINATOR

1. Require population distribution data, to ascertain equities respecting commodity and passenger rates, to estimate traffic trends, and to reach conclusions respecting such matters as consolidations and competing transportation services. Decisions respecting abandonments of lines offer particular illustrations.

FEDERAL RESERVE BOARD

1. The Board's construction of sensitive economic indexes would be greatly aided by dependable and up-to-date population and employment data.

2. The extent and character of regional, urban-rural and similar population shifts, if accurately determined, would have considerable bearing upon both the general long-term and the daily specific policies of the Board.

FEDERAL TRADE COMMISSION

1. The Commission is called upon to make a considerable variety of studies which employ samples. It therefore needs suitable population data to determine the validity and reliability of its sampling.

UNITED STATES TARIFF COMMISSION

1. Such internal changes as an altered balance between urban and rural population, which a new census might disclose, would affect greatly the Commission's findings and decisions respecting international trade in particular commodities.

FEDERAL POWER COMMISSION

1. Power rates, power distribution, and power control are all closely related to the distribution of population.

FEDERAL RADIO COMMISSION

1. Allocations of licenses are based in part on State and regional populations.

FEDERAL EMPLOYMENT STABILIZATION BOARD

1. Depends, as does the Public Works Administration, upon population information as a basis of determining construction needs.

RECONSTRUCTION FINANCE CORPORATION

1. In making loans to State and local bodies, the Reconstruction Finance Corporation could scarcely neglect the evidence of a population census concerning needs for funds and prospects of repayment.

FEDERAL HOME LOAN BANK BOARD AND FARM CREDIT ADMINISTRATION

1. As with the other financial arms of the Federal Government, the risks and the security involved in loans by these agencies are closely related, directly and indirectly, to the distribution of population within the areas involved.

TENNESSEE VALLEY AUTHORITY

1. The social survey, which the Tennessee Valley Authority regards as basic to its planning, must start with information on population, unemployment, occupations, and agriculture. If a new census is not taken, it may even be found necessary for the Tennessee Valley Authority to conduct its own census of the region.

FEDERAL EMERGENCY RELIEF ADMINISTRATION

1. The allocation of Federal funds for relief is based in part upon population data. The equities require a new census for this purpose. All of the related activities, including research upon the present tendencies and effects, and the long-range implications of Federal relief, in which the Federal Emergency Relief Administration is now engaged, present the same need.

NEEDS OF STATE AND LOCAL GOVERNMENTS

1. An evidence of the wide-spread need of census data for public administrative purposes is contained in the number of governmental units which have recently conducted population and unemployment censuses within their own jurisdictions. (This does not refer to regular State censuses at the mid-decade.) The list includes Massachusetts, Pennsylvania (in large part), Chicago, Syracuse, parts of New York City, and a large, but indefinite, number of municipalities.

2. It is in local units that the most spectacular population changes since 1930 will have occurred. The needs of new population data by local governments for such matters as classification of salaries will be very numerous.

PRIVATE RESEARCH ORGANIZATIONS

1. Such organizations as the National Bureau of Economic Research have extensive needs for population data, and at various times in the past have been impelled to make estimates where official figures were unavailable. There have been such occasions in connection with the studies of the Bureau named upon national income-itself an outstanding illustration of a subject for the exploration of which population data are essential.

Mr. AUSTIN. So far as the census of agriculture is concerned, that is provided for by law, in section 16 of the act providing for the fifteenth decennial census. That is to be a limited census. It will not be nearly as comprehensive as a decennial census. It was not nearly so comprehensive in 1925, when the first one of those middecennial censuses of agriculture was taken and it is not intended to be.

Now, Congress has already made an initial appropriation for the census of agriculture, and the law provides that it be taken as of January 1, 1935.

Congress has appropriated $2,270,000 for the first year's work, which includes the field enumeration, and there is a statement in the record of the committee on Appropriations that it will require $1,850,000 to finish the census of agriculture. That makes a total cost of the census of agriculture of $4,120,000.

Now, the census of 1925, which was the first of these limited censuses, cost $4,415,903.19. We propose to take the present census

of agriculture, a limited census, for $295,903.19 less than it cost us 10 years ago.

The 1930 census of agriculture, which was a comprehensive one, cost the Federal Government $9,182,343.

Mr. FLETCHER. How do you make this one less expensive than the original census?

Mr. AUSTIN. We do not propose to make it as comprehensive as it was before. We propose to limit the number of inquiries on the schedule.

In any census, of course, a large part of the cost is in visiting the homes of the people, whether you are taking a census of population or agriculture.

This is a pretty extensive country. Some of it is closely settled, and in other parts the population is scattered. The cost is based on the time it takes the enumerators to go from home to home, whether they are working on a population census or a census of agriculture. The enumerator's rate of pay is based on the number of reports he secures and the time it takes him to go from place to place.

Mr. FLETCHER. You are paying them less now than before, are you not?

Mr. AUSTIN. We are paying them less than we did in the 1930

census.

Mr. RANKIN. Mr. Austin, do you not think there has been a greater shift in population and in all of the elements enumerated in the last census report within the last 5 years than would ordinarily occur within a period of 10 years?

Mr. AUSTIN. Yes, sir.

Mr. RANKIN. Then, if you are going to take this census, do you not think you should make it a complete census?

Mr. AUSTIN. Mr. Rankin, the last census cost the Federal Government approximately $40,000,000, or, to be exact, $39,630,215. The regular census period was 3 years, and Mr. Steuart, who was my predecessor in office, got an extension of 6 months, so it took 3 year and 6 months' time to complete it. Now, I do not think we need a complete census at this time, and there are several reasons why we should not have it.

The principal one is probably the cost as well as the time that it would take to complete the work. What we propose to do, if this legislation is passed, is this: We propose to finish this census in much less time than we have ever taken a census before. If the statistics we collect are to be worth anything to the emergency organizations of the Federal Government, and that is the primary prupose of the census, we must do the work rapidly.

Mr. FLETCHER. How long do you anticipate it will take?

Mr. AUSTIN. It will take 2 years. What we propose to do is this: There are certain tabulations that will have to be made immediately after the canvass is over, in order to provide totals for the use of the emergency organizations. There may be certain additional refinements of the tabulations for publication. Of course, we have no control over the Government Printing Office as to the time that may be necessary to print all of the reports. That will have to come along after the statistics are tabulated.

Mr. ELLENBOGEN. I have in mind those figures you will have available in December, so that they may be made available for the emerg

« SebelumnyaLanjutkan »