Relation of the Federal Government to Research 



into mansions where their intrusion was resented as an insult, 

 or sought to traverse the bridle paths of extensive districts — 

 districts three or four times as large as could properly be as- 

 signed to single officers — to find hundreds and thousands of log 

 houses in which the poorer part of the jjopulation, white and 

 black, found shelter." 



The Census After 1880 



The Garfield bill which failed in 1869 was passed in 

 1879 and the census of 1880 was taken, again with 

 Walker as Director, under more favorable auspices. 

 Walker chose the supervisors himself. He wrote later : 



Supervisors were appointed from either political party, with 

 the utmost impartiality. And, as they were themselves se- 

 lected without regard to partisan services, they were officially 

 instructed that it would be considered an offense and an abuse 

 of trust if in their own appointment of enumerators they al- 

 lowed partisan motives to appear. The enumerators of 1880, 

 who succeeded to the work of the assistant marshals of 1870, 

 thus freed from supposed obligations to render party services, 

 were largely taken from among school teachers, county, or 

 town clerks, assessors, or other persons having familiarity 

 with figures and facility in writing.^ 



Walker's resolute effort to take the census out of the 

 hands of the party politicians was not greeted with 

 enthusiasm on all sides. In 1881, President-elect Gar- 

 field was seriously considering his old friend Walker 

 for the post of Secretary of the Interior. But the ap- 

 pointment was impossible. James P. Munroe, in his 

 biography of Walker,' quotes a letter from "the noto- 

 rious Dorsey" to Garfield : 



* * * I have heard that General Walker was likely to 

 be appointed Secretary of the Interior. I give all these stories 

 for what they are worth. General Walker is not a Ke- 

 publican. He does not even know himself to what party he 

 belongs, and never did. I went to him once to see about the 

 appointment of two supervisors for Arkansas, and urged him 

 to appoint some of the best Republicans in the State. * * * 

 His reply was that he had held several public offices, but 

 he has never allowed the question of politics to have the least 

 infiuence in making appointments to subordinate positions, and 

 he never should. So I left him, and this nonpartisan charac- 

 teristic of his mind appointed two of the meanest and most 

 disreputable Democrats in the State, one of whom had been 

 indicted on 12 counts for Ku Klusing Republicans. * * ♦ 

 I am not especially anxious to see any of the Walker breed 

 in your administration, in high or low places. We can get 

 along without them, and perhaps in a few generations the 

 political millennium will come, and then they can be taken 

 care of. 



The "political millennium" has come slowly, indeed. 

 In fact, no census since 1880 has been out of party 

 politics. Although the removal of the enumeration 

 from the control of the marshals was a distinct for- 



' Francis A. Walker, Discussions in Economics and Statistics, edited 

 by Davis R. Dewey (New York, Henry Holt & Co., 1899), II, 62-63. 



•Ibid., p. 64. 



'J. Life of Francis A. Walker (New Tork, Henry Holt & Co., 1923), 

 p. 20 i. 



199 



ward step, the ultimate evolution of the working of the 

 act of 1879 was to make the appointments of super- 

 visors a direct perquisite of Members of Congress, 

 with the Director of the Census exercising veto power. 

 This has continued to the present day, even with the 

 Bureau of the Census established as a permanent 

 agency. 



While the district supervisors and the enumerators 

 are often political appointees, progress has been made 

 in removing the huge temporary decennial office force 

 at Washington from political patronage. Although 

 this had been strongly advocated for many years, Con- 

 gress, as usual, exempted these employees from civil 

 service requirements in the act providing for the 1910 

 census. President Theodore Koosevelt vetoed the act 

 and his veto message is a frank revelation of the "de- 

 moralization" of scientific work through the "spoils 

 system" : 



* * * It is of the highest consequence to the country 

 that the statistical work of the census shall be conducted with 

 entire accuracy. This is as important from the standpoint of 

 business and industry as from the scientific standpoint. It is, 

 therefore, in my judgment, essential that the result should not 

 be open to the suspicion of bias on political and personal 

 grounds ; and that it should not be open to the reasonable 

 suspicion of being a waste of the people's money and a fraud. 



Section 7 of the act provides in effect that appointments to 

 the census shall be under the spoils system, for this is the 

 real meaning of the provision that they shall be subject only 

 to noncompetitive examination. The proviso is added that 

 they shall be selected without regard to political party affilia- 

 tions. But there is only one way to guarantee that they shall 

 be selected without regard to politics and on merit, and that 

 is by choosing them after competitive examination from the 

 lists of eligibles provided by the Civil Service (Commission. 

 The present Director of the Census in his last report states 

 the exact fact about these noncompetitive examinations when 

 he says : 



"A noncompetitive examination means that every one of 

 the many thousands who will pass the examinations will have 

 an equal right to appointment, and that personal and political 

 pressure must in the end, as always before, become the deter- 

 mining factor with regard to the great body of these temporary 

 employments. I cannot too earnestly urge that the Director 

 of the Census be relieved from this unfortunate situation." 



To provide that the clerks and other employees shall be 

 appointed after noncompetitive examination, and yet to pro- 

 vide that they shall be selected without regard to political 

 party affiliations, means merely that the appointments shall be 

 treated as the perquisites of the politicians of both parties, 

 instead of as the perquisites of the politicians of one party. 

 I do not believe in the doctrine that to the victor belongs the 

 spoils ; but I think even less of the doctrine that the spoils shall 

 be divided without a fight by the professional politicians on 

 both sides and this would be the result of permitting the bill 

 in its present shape to become a law. Both of the last censuses, 

 the Eleventh and the Twelfth, were taken under a provision of 

 law excluding competition; that is, necessitating the appoint- 

 ments being made under the spoils system. Every man com- 

 petent to speak with authority because of his knowledge of and 

 familiarity with the work of those censuses has stated that 



