was supposed to visit each family in his district and fill out the answers to the questions. The law allowed the distribution of schedules in advance, to be filled out by the head of the household and afterwards collected by the enumerator, but population is so scattered in the United States that little use was made of this method. Enumerators were allowed thirty days, in cities only two weeks, to complete their work; the schedules were then sent to the supervisors, by them inspected (?) and forwarded to the Census Office at Washington. These details are useful in enabling us to form some notion of the probable accuracy of the original returns on which rest all the subsequent figures in regard to population. And the primary consideration here is in regard to the questions contained on the population schedule :-Are they such as the enumerator of ordinary intelligence, dealing with the average person, can hope to get answered? or are they of such a character as either to be incomprehensible or to awaken resentment or suspicion? Our judgment upon this point must be the basis for any critical valuation of the United States census, and it is so important that I can do nothing more useful than to print the full list of questions on the population schedule with some explanation of the reason for each, and some comment on the probable value of the information it would elicit. The questions are as follows-Questions A, B, C, D, and E being at the head, and the numbered ones running down the left-hand side of a sheet fifteen inches long and eleven inches wide, the rest of the space being ruled into columns, one for each member of the family.

Aside from the number of these questions, which makes the work of the enumerator very heavy, there are specific objections to some of them, although it must be confessed that the heart yearns for the knowledge which the correct answer to them would give. Taking them in order, question 2 is useless for any practical purpose because a great many persons will answer it in the affirmative under the vague impression that it will lead to a pension or something of that sort. It is not unlikely that when we come to examine the returns we shall find a new curiosity in statistics, namely, a too great willingness to answer in the affirmative, the reverse of that disinclination to answer at all which the fear of taxation has so often aroused. In question 4 the extension of the colour division to quadroon and octoroon seems to me entirely futile, because the persons interested (belonging to the old slave class or their descendants) will never be able to say how much white blood flows in their veins, and to determine the question by

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1

2

Christian name in full, and initial of middle name.
Surname.

Whether a soldier, sailor, or marine during the civil war (U.S. or Conf.), or widow
of such person.

3 Relationship to head of family.

4

5

6

7

Whether white, black, mulatto, quadroon, octoroon, Chinese, Japanese, or Indian.
Sex.

Age at nearest birthday. If under one year, give age in months.

Whether single, married, widowed, or divorced.

8 Whether married during the census year (June 1, 1889, to May 31, 1890).

9 Mother of how many children, and number of these children living.

06

10

Place of birth.

17

Months unemployed during the census year (June 1, 1889, to May 31, 1890).

16 Profession, trade, or occupation.

18

Attendance at school (in months) during the census year (June 1, 1889, to May 31, 1890).

19 Able to Read.

20 Able to Write.

21 Able to speak English. If not, the language or dialect spoken.

Whether suffering from acute or chronic disease, with name of disease and length of time afflicted.

Whether defective in mind, sight, hearing, or speech, or whether crippled, maimed, or deformed, with name of defect.

23

24

Whether a prisoner, convict, homeless child, or pauper.

25 Supplemental schedule and page.

26

Is the home you live in hired, or is it owned by the head or by a member of the family?

27 If owned by head or member of family, is the home free from mortgage incumbrance?

28

If the head of family is a farmer, is the farm which he cultivates hired, or is it owned by him or by a member of his family?

29 If owned by head or member of family, is the farm free from mortgage incumbrance?

30

If the home or farm is owned by head or member of family, and mortgaged, give the post-office address of owner.

the shade of colour of the individual would be contrary to our knowledge of physiological laws. Question 8 is asked in order to attain an approximate marriage-rate. It is one of those inquiries mentioned above which is forced upon the census simply because our federal form of government gives us no means of registering vital statistics for the whole country. Question 9 opens up many possibilities in social study, and there seems to be no reason why it should not be answered in the great majority of cases. The problem of the comparative fruitfulness of women of different race or nationality or social condition may possibly have some light thrown upon it by the combination of this question with the ages and nationality of the women. Questions 10 to 15 (and 21) are forced upon the census by the peculiar make-up of our population, with its large proportion of persons of foreign birth and of foreign descent. If we neglected to get these statistics and combine them with those of sex, age, conjugal condition, occupation, illiteracy, disease, and death we should miss the greatest opportunity for ethnological and sociological investigation which is offered anywhere in the world, besides depriving ourselves of information absolutely essential to our own welfare. The presence of the blacks at the South and of the foreign-born in the North constitute the most important demological problems with which we have to deal. Question 16 will doubtless contend with the usual difficulties of an occupation census, but public opinion would not permit its omission. Question 17 labours under the disadvantage of requiring exact knowledge or memory on the part of the person concerned, and when it is answered by the wife or other member of the family in respect to the husband or father it will probably lack accuracy. I doubt if it will throw any light on the great question of the unemployed. Questions 18 to 20 present but little difficulty in this country except in large cities where numbers of foreigners are congregated, from whom it is difficult to get any information. Questions 22 to 24, and 26 to 30, seemed to awaken more opposition before the census was taken than any others, the first group on the ground that it was cruel and inhuman to ask persons to reveal family sorrows and afflictions, and the second on the ground that it was an invasion of the rights of the citizen to ask him questions about his property. As both of these groups of questions were intended to be the basis for supplementary inquiries, I will speak of them further on.

Such is the explanation of the complicated and unwieldy population schedule which the Census Office sent out and expected

to have answered for every individual in the United States, man, woman, and child, white or black, native or foreign-born, intelligent or ignorant. The final reports will doubtless show failure in many directions. Thus far we have information upon only one point, that is the total population of the United States, which (exclusive of white persons in Indian Territory, Indians on reservations, and Alaska) was 62,622,250. Including the above omissions it will reach a round 63,000,000. This number was less than was commonly expected. Was the common expectation exaggerated, or was the enumeration defective? This is a very important question, for if the enumeration was defective it detracts from the value of all the information contained in the population schedule. It will be much easier to determine this after we get the details of the enumeration, for unless the deficiency is distributed with a wonderful amount of regularity it is scarcely possible but that in some of the relations of sex, age, colour, nationality, occupation, or local distribution, or in comparison with the census of 1880, such glaring inconsistencies will show themselves as to prove that there has been a deficiency. It will be necessary, therefore, to defer final judgment until then, but inasmuch as the Census Office itself has felt the need of defending its figures it may be well to examine the matter superficially. The population of the United States at the last four censuses is shown by the following table :

Now the astonishing thing about this table is that the rate of increase should have fallen from 30 per cent. between 1870 and 1880 to less than 25 per cent. between 1880 and 1890, and this in the face of an enormous immigration during the latter decade amounting to more than five million persons. The explanation of the Census Office is that as a country grows older the natural rate of increase tends to decline; and this is true, but of doubtful application when we consider the amount of land still unoccupied in the United States, and that immigration during the last twenty years has added to the population an enormous number of persons No. 1.-VOL. I

E

in the most productive ages of manhood and womanhood. The second explanation of the Office is that the census of 1870 was grossly defective (especially in the Southern states), so that the rate of increase from 1870 to 1880 was not real. General Walker, the superintendent of the census of 1870 and also of 1880, has acknowledged that this is true. The South was in a disturbed condition during the year 1870, and the census was taken under the old system of employing the marshals of the federal courts as enumerators, and they, during the reconstruction period, were often strangers in the land, and generally incompetent for their duties as census officers. In order to remedy this supposed defect in the figures for 1870, the Census Office takes the rate of increase from 1860 to 1880 and applies it in order to find the true population in 1870. Thereby it reaches a table of the following sort :

This certainly makes a delightfully logical table, for it may at once be admitted that the rate of growth in the United States is decreasing even in the face of an increasing immigration. But the difficulty is with the supposititious figure for 1870. It certainly seems very improbable that the rate of increase during the decade 1860 to 1870, a time of war and small immigration, could have been greater than during the succeeding decade. General Walker has recently re-examined1 the deficiency among the blacks at the census of 1870, and makes it between three and four hundred thousand for the whole country, while the Census Office makes it 512,163 for the Southern states alone, besides a deficiency of 747,915 among the whites of those states. Final judgment on this question must be deferred until we have further details in regard to the population.

(2). Special and Supplementary Inquiries.-There are certain inquiries which are intrusted to the ordinary enumerator, but which lie outside of the population schedule or are supplementary to it. The heavily burdened enumerator, in addition to a number

1 Statistics of the Coloured Race in the United States. Publications of the American Statistical Association, Nos. 11 and 12, 1890.