REPORT

OF

THE SUPERINTENDENT OF THE NINTH CENSUS.

DEPARTMENT OF THE INTERIOR, CENSUS OFFICE,

November 1, 1872.

SIR: I have the honor to advise the Department of the completion of the work of the Ninth Census; and I take the occasion of the annual report, required by law to be rendered at this time, to submit the entire material for the Compendium authorized by the concurrent resolution. of May 31, 1872. The extended tables, to be comprised in the quarto volumes authorized by the resolution of April 19, 1871, are in the hands of the Congressional Printer, and nearly all are in type. Both the text and the tables of the Population volume have been for some time awaiting the completion of the maps designed to illustrate this volume; and it is anticipated that bound copies will be upon the desks of members at the assembling of Congress in December. The two remaining quarto volumes are complete in the Congressional Printing Office; one of them, the volume on Vital Statistics, being in type. Of the other volume, that on the industry of the United States, about one hundred pages remain as yet untouched.

I am advised that it is probable, notwithstanding the enormous pressure on the Printing Office from the legislative matter thrown upon it in the first weeks of the session, that the last of the quarto volumes of the census will be completed early in January.

I cannot pass this point without acknowledging the advantage which this Office has derived from the manner in which its necessarily heavy demands upon the Congressional Printing Office have been met. The intelligent interest taken in the work by the Hon. A. M. Clapp, Congressional Printer, and the zeal and efficiency of his subordinate officers, have amounted to a positive re-enforcement of the Census Office. But for facilities far beyond what any Bureau officer has a right to claim, the publication of the census volumes must have been carried far over into the next year.

In the course of the census, occasion has been found but too frequently to note defects in the act of 1850, under which, notwithstanding the vast changes which the country has undergone, both in the conditions of enumeration and in the proper subjects of statistical inquiry, the census of the United States continues to be taken..

In the report rendered from this Office on the 26th of December of last year, which report is made a part of the Population volume soon to issue from the press, a full discussion was had of the general system of enumeration now in force, while the particular deficiencies in the schedules of 1850, and in the agencies provided for the collection of the material relating thereto, have been discussed in immediate connection. with the individual tables of the several quarto volumes, nearly every important table being prefaced by a body of remarks in which are set forth the errors known or suspected to exist therein, with such explanations as could be afforded of the reason of such errors, whether it be found in the nature of the subject, in the scheme of inquiry, or in the machinery created for the purpose by the act of 1850. The limits of a Compendium will not allow of the reproduction of these remarks at length, nor could they generally be abridged to advantage. It has, therefore, been deemed desirable to accompany the tables of the present publication with references to the extended tables on the same subjects, and the discussions relating thereto, in the several quarto volumes, so that those who have occasion to use the statistics of the census for purposes requiring great exactness of detail and nicety of treatment, may be assisted to consult the fuller reports at libraries and public offices, should they not be personally in possession of them.

The appropriation of $25,000 made at the last session of Congress for preparing and publishing maps for illustrating the quarto volumes of the census, has been expended with results which it is believed will meet the hearty approval of Congress and the country. The greater portion of the maps printed under this appropriation were prepared at the Census Office, out of its own material. For the purpose, however, of illustrating more completely the sanitary and industrial conditions. of the country, certain other maps have been prepared, in respect to which the Census Office has been the recipient of favors from individuals and institutions, whose names and titles the Superintendent feels it a high honor to be allowed to associate with his work. To that eminent and venerable scholar, Professor Joseph Henry, Secretary of the Smithsonian Institution, and to Professor Charles A. Schott, of the Coast Survey Office, acknowledgment is due for maps showing, severally, the annual distribution of rain and the courses of the lines of equal temperature; charts eloquent with instruction upon the agricultural capabilities of the country and the conditions of human life among us. Professor A. Guyot, of Princeton College, through his publishers, Messrs. Scribner, Welford & Co., of New York, kindly placed at the disposal of this Office the plates of his valuable physical map of the country, to which Professor Schott has, with the permission of the Superintendent of the United States Coast Survey, added by far the most complete and accurate series of elevations yet attained. These three maps have been used to illustrate the volume on Vital Statistics.

Professor Charles H. Hitchcock, of Dartmouth College, assisted by

Professor William P. Blake, of New Haven, has prepared a geological map, to be found in the volume on Industry, upon which are laid down eight principal formations, with a comprehensiveness, a precision, and a degree of detail never before attempted in the geological description of the United States. All the work thus kindly contributed to the publications of the census has been reproduced in the best style of the engraving art, and the Superintendent can feel no hesitation in claiming for the results the highest value, both in popular instruction and in the positive increase of scientific knowledge.

Of the maps prepared at the Census Office, seven have been assigned to the illustration of the Population volume, four to the volume on Vital Statistics, and four to the volume on Industry. Most of these maps are double, presenting two distinct subjects, generally selected for purposes of direct contrast. The maps in the Population volume exhibit the density of total population; the distribution severally of the colored and the foreign elements of population; the dispersion over the States of the natives of certain specified foreign countries, viz: Germany, Ireland, Sweden and Norway, England and Wales, China, and British America; the illiteracy and the wealth of each section in contrast; and, finally, the geographical and political divisions of the United States at each period of its existence, from the organization of the Government to the latest census year.

The maps illustrative of the volume on Vital Statistics show the range, and, within the range, the degree of prevalence of four specific diseases, or groups of diseases, viz: 1st, consumption; 2d, typhoid, typhus, and enteric fevers; 3d, malarial diseases; 4th, dysentery, diarrhea, and enteritis.

The maps illustrative of the volume on Industry exhibit the range and degree of cultivation of five principal crops, viz: cotton, corn, wheat, hay, and tobacco, and also the dairy products of each State and section. The possibilities of this style of illustration are practically without limit. The present, as the first attempt of the kind in the United States, may be found to contain faults of treatment in some particulars; but it is not doubted that this will hereafter be an essential part of the census report. A thousand persons will thus obtain, without effort, just and vivid impressions in respect to the most important features of their country, physically, socially, and industrially, where one will, by long and painful study of the tables of the census, create such a series of pictures in his own mind.

The cordiality with which the press and the country have recognized the early publication of the prime results of the census has afforded ample compensation to the Superintendent for all the effort that has been required to accomplish the completion of the work of compilation within two years from the conclusion of the enumeration. There is no reason, however, why, with such modifications of existing laws as would insure that the material should come originally to the Census Office in proper

shape for tabulation, the entire compilation should not be concluded within a year from the date of the first receipt of returns. 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 1850, 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 ought not to be pos sible that another census should be taken under this law: such a thing ought not to be seriously proposed. The country has suffered more than enough already of discredit and of loss on account of the wretched insufficiency and inappropriateness of the provisions of this ill-constructed and outgrown statute.

I do earnestly recommend that the attention of Congress be especially invited to the propriety and expediency of an intermediate census, to be taken in 1875, in preparation for the approaching centennial celebration of the political birth of the nation. A census of the United States taken under a system and with a management which would secure the publication of the results by the 1st of June, 1876, would be a noble monument to erect at the end of a century of the nation's life. It would mark off the first grand stage in an industrial and social progress altogether unprecedented in history, and serve as the starting-point of a fresh career which we have, under Providence, reason to believe shall be greater and happier yet.

Another consideration, which strongly influences me in this recommendation, is the belief that a census in 1875 would secure the taking of the Federal census thereafter at intervals of five years only. The interval of ten years fixed by the Constitution has been found to be far too long for all the uses to which the statistics of the census are put, except only for the redistribution of congressional representation.

So rapid are the internal changes of the country, oftentimes setting calculation at naught, so fierce and vast the growth of the nation as a whole, that the hiatus in the statistical information at the command of the legislator, the pamphleteer, the journalist, and the social and polit ical philosopher, becomes positively painful five or six years after the date of the census. Whoever will call to mind the estimates as to the population and wealth of cities, States, and sections which immediately before the occurrence of the last census were popularly put forth, were made the material of political and industrial speculation, and were even taken as the basis of State and national legislation, will hardly be disposed to question that the cost of a census once in five years would be amply repaid by the light it would shed upon the condition of the people and the progress of the nation in population and wealth. Were the country once to learn by practical experience the advantages of a quin

quennial enumeration, it is not likely that a longer period would ever thereafter be allowed to intervene between the Federal censuses.

In the report rendered from this Office December 26, 1871, mention was made by name of several gentlemen connected with the Office, to whom acknowledgments were due for highly meritorious services. In closing the work of the Ninth Census, it is now my pleasant duty to publicly recognize the zeal and activity of George D. Harrington, esq., the chief clerk of the Bureau, and the intelligent and spirited co-oper ation of Messrs. Henry Stone, C. S. Mixter, and S. A. Galpin. More than a formal acknowledgment is due from me to Mr. S. W. Stocking, the chief of the Division of Results, from whose hands has gone to press every page of the census reports of 1870. A projector by nature, of large resource and indefinite capacity for work, he has 'proved a most valu'able assistant in devising the forms and methods of compilation and of publication. The first clerk appointed at my instance, after my own. appointment as Superintendent, in February, 1870, I respectfully recommend him to you as a person eminently qualified to discharge the duties of census clerk of the Interior Department during the interval between the Ninth and the Tenth Census.

Mr. A. S. Boernstein has "cast" nearly every table of the present census, and has superintended the reading of the proof. One of the most capable printers in the United States, an artist in his craft, the typographical excellence of the series of volumes of which this now submitted is the last, has been in no small measure due to his industry and taste.

To yourself, honored sir, I have again to tender heartfelt thanks for generous and cordial support in the duties of my office.

Very respectfully, your obedient servant,

FRANCIS A. WALKER,

Hon. COLUMBUS DELANO,

Secretary of the Interior.

Superintendent.