8o THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



districts and increasing the number of enumerators, as is the 

 present tendency. An enumerator, working for a few days, ac- 

 quires speed a7id accuracy as a matter of experience, and his 

 second week's work is of vastly greater value than his first few 

 days' service. It might he well, therefore, to so subdivide the coun- 

 try into enumeration districts that each enumerator would have 

 at least four or five thousand people to enumerate, instead of an 

 average of two thousand, as under the present method. If the 

 districts were enlarged, the number of supervisors should be 

 greatly increased. The present law provides for one hundred and 

 seventy-five supervisors ; that of 1880 provided for one hundred 

 and fifty. It would seem to be a prudent measure to provide for 

 at least one thousand supervisors, which body, with a reduced 

 number of enumerators, could take greater pains with all parts of 

 the enumeration ; and if supervisors could be selected with special 

 reference to their fitness and enumerators could be tested by the 

 use of a preliminary schedule relating to their own families and 

 perhaps one or two neighboring families, results would be secured 

 which would defy criticism. With such changes there should 

 come a change of date for the enumeration. The count of the 

 people is now made as of the 1st of June — under the present 

 law, the first Monday in June. The changes in the habits of the 

 people necessitate a change of date. More and more every year 

 people leave the town for the country, and this change occurs 

 about the time of the enumeration. The date should be changed 

 to a period of the year when the population is more thoroughly 

 fixed or more thoroughly housed in permanent homes. Could 

 the date be carried forward to the autumn, a great gain would be 

 made in the accuracy of the enumeration — not perhaps in the total 

 for the whole country, but in the total for each State and city. 

 Certainly the results would be far more satisfactory to all con- 

 cerned, even though the change in the total population of the 

 United States did not exceed a few thousand. Each State wants 

 its own: political and social reasons demand that this should 

 be so. 



Perhaps the very worst form of the present system is the tem- 

 porary nature of the service. As the census year comes in sight 

 each decade, a Census Office is created by law, the organization 

 to be taken entirely from new material, from the head to the foot. 

 Of course, the aim always is in securing a superintendent to select 

 some one who has had more or less experience or is supposed to 

 be more or less competent in census work ; but then comes the 

 greater difficulty, the selection of the forces. A good business 

 man at the head of the Census Office — one of excellent adminis- 

 trative and executive abilities, without knowledge of statistics — 

 would handle a census, in all probability, as well as or better 



