THE CENSUS AND TEE FORESTS. 775 



Nor if we could have a more frequent census would it, perhaps, 

 be desirable. We should not have time to become acquainted with 

 the facts ascertained by one census, and to see their bearing upon our 

 life and present occupations, before another census would be at our 

 door with its claims upon our attention, because possibly necessitating 

 some important change in our plans or pursuits. 



With the growth of the country, the census constantly becomes a 

 greater and more complicated matter. It was a comparatively simple 

 affair at first. It was little more than the enumeration of the popula- 

 tion of the country, for the purpose of apportioning direct taxes in 

 the several States, and also the representatives in the national Con- 

 gress. For the latter purpose the respective numbers of whites and 

 blacks were given, three fifths of the latter being counted, during the 

 existence of slavery, in determining the quota of representation for 

 each State. 



A noticeable fact in regard to the census of the United States 

 is, that it is the result of a constitutional ordinance, the very first 

 article of the Constitution providing for a general enumeration of 

 the population within three years from the convening of the first 

 session of Congress, and again during every subsequent decade. The 

 first census was consequently taken in 1790. It gave the names of 

 heads of families, the number of free white males above and below 

 sixteen years of age, the number of females, and the number of slaves. 

 Subsequent censuses have extended the classification so as to give the 

 number of persons of any specified age, from one year upward to a 

 hundred, and in recent years various other particulars. In 1810 the 

 marshals were directed for the first time to make returns of the manu- 

 factures and manufacturing establishments of the country. So, from 

 time to time, the census reports have embraced new facts in regard to 

 the people and the products of their industry. 



The ninth census, that of 1870, was much more full in this respect 

 than any that preceded it. It gave not only the numbers of the peo- 

 ple of all ages and the sexes, but their occupations and the products 

 of their industries, as they had never been given before. Perhaps no 

 country had ever had its material and social condition, its resources 

 and productions, so fully presented to view as were ours by this census. 

 With the experience gained in its compilation, and the satisfaction 

 which its fullness had given, the census of 1880 was undertaken with 

 the design to make it still more full and complete. Among other 

 subjects to which special attention has been given in taking the tenth 

 census is that of our forests. Hitherto the forests have been looked 

 upon chiefly as the source of lumber-supply, and the census has taken 

 account of them only so far as to report the statistics of the lumber- 

 trade, and some of the industries connected with it or derivable from 

 it. But the importance of the forests at once appears when we con- 

 sider that the census of 1870 reported the annual value of sawed 



