CENSUS 



1250 



CENSUS 



(see CATO). During the empire the emperors 

 exercised the powers of the censor under the 

 name prefect of morals. See PATRICIAN; PLE- 

 BEIAN. 



Modern Censors. In modern usage censor 

 is applied to an officer who examines books, 

 pamphlets, newspaper articles, etc., before they 

 are published, to determine whether or not 

 they contain objectionable matter, and to a 

 similar officer who passes on plays before they 

 are publicly presented. In democratic coun- 

 tries like the United States and Canada, where 

 liberty of the press and freedom of speech are 

 zealously defended, any sort of censorship is 

 generally unpopular and only the stern neces- 

 sities of war would excuse it. Censors usually 

 have considerable power in such countries as 

 Russia, where popular freedom is limited. For 

 the censorship of moving picture displays, see 

 MOVING PICTURE, subhead National Board of 

 Censorship. 



CENSUS, sen'sus, an official counting of all 

 the people of a country or section of country, 

 which may also include statistics relating to 

 age, place of birth, occupation, etc., and data 

 on the various industries. In fact, the word 

 has come to be applied to any gathering of 

 statistics which is carried on by means of 

 direct questioning; that is, by a government 

 enumerator who goes from house to house and 

 obtains his information by personal interviews. 



The first reliable census of a modern Euro- 

 pean nation was taken by Sweden in 1749. 

 Most of the countries of Europe at the present 

 time order an official counting of their popula- 

 tion every ten years. In Germany, where the 

 system was founded by Frederick William I of 

 Prussia, the census is taken every five years. 



The National Census of the United States. 

 In accordance with the Constitution, the first 

 census of the United States was taken within 

 three years after the assembling of the first 

 Congress, and every tenth year since then has 

 been a census year. The first census was com- 

 pleted in 1790; the results were collected in 

 a pamphlet of fifty-six pages, and the total 

 cost was $44,377. Seventeen marshals and 

 200 assistants, who carried their quill pens 

 and ink-horns in their saddle-bags as they made 

 their toilsome journeys through the sparsely- 

 settled country, had the work in charge. 



The records that have survived from the 

 early period show that entries were made on 

 blanks of every conceivable size and form, 

 for the government was too poor in those 

 days to furnish its census-takers with uni- 





formly-ruled blanks. An enumerator of the 

 second census (1800), who ran out of paper 

 before he finished his work, made entries on 

 the back of an old periodical containing an 

 essay by Benjamin Franklin on the Art of 

 Procuring Pleasant Dreams. There are other 

 census relics quite as interesting. 



The census of 1790 made individual records 

 only for heads of families, the members of the 

 families being grouped as free whites, males 

 sixteen years and over, males under sixteen 

 years, females, other free persons, and slaves. 

 Slowly the census broadened its field, and in 

 1850, after considerable experimenting, the 

 service was put on a really informational basis. 

 In that year census-takers began to record 

 every inhabitant by name, and for' the first 

 time there was a complete classification of 

 the people according to age, sex, color, defects, 

 etc. There were, besides, special schedules 

 for agriculture and for manufacturing and 

 mechanical industries. 



The work was taken out of the hands of 

 the marshals in 1880 and placed in charge of a 

 census office at Washington. In 1902 the per- 

 manent Bureau of the Census, now a division 

 of the Department of Commerce, was created 

 by act of Congress. 



The thirteenth census of the United States, 

 that of 1910, the first undertaken after the 

 creation of the permanent bureau, required the 

 services of 55,000 census-takers and 3,000 clerks. 

 The country was divided into 320 districts, 

 each under the control of a supervisor, who 

 had charge of the enumerators in his district. 

 There were four main lines of inquiry popula- 

 tion, agriculture, manufactures and mines and 

 quarries. The facts collected by the army of 

 census-takers are tabulated at the Washington 

 office, by means of remarkably ingenious elec- 

 trical machines. The census reports fill over a 

 dozen large volumes which are for sale at cost 

 price by the Superintendent of Documents of 

 the Government Printing Office, Washington, 

 D. C. Abstracts of the census for any state 

 may be purchased in cloth binding for one dol- 

 lar; extracts of population, agriculture, or the 

 like, may be had in pamphlet form at prices 

 ranging from five cents to fifteen cents. 



State Census. The various states authorize 

 a census every ten years; this is taken about 

 midway between two national census years. 

 The state census follows the main lines of 

 the national census, though in less detail, and 

 special attention is paid to collecting statis- 

 tics on state industries. 



