650 FRANCIS AMASA WALKER. 



lie gained from legislators and the Administration, by far the most 

 scientific census which this country had yet seen, and it gave him at 

 once a leading* position among the statisticians of the world. He was 

 hampered all through it by the clumsy methods of the past. His experi- 

 ence, however, gave him not only the courage but the power to insist 

 in the Tenth Census, that of 1880, upon th%adoption of more scientific 

 methods. Coming into that census with splendid equipment, General 

 Walker had no great difficulty in inducing Congress to broaden its scoije. 

 He adopted new methods of enumeration ; he got rid of tlie old, bun- 

 gling methods of collecting facts through the United States marshals, 

 and secured the j)ower to appoint an army of enumerators, properly 

 supervised in districts comprehending a certain number of enumeration 

 districts. The census of 1870 was confined to the few topics authorized 

 by the law of 1850, as already stated — population, vital statistics, 

 wealth, and industry — the publications of that census being comprised 

 in four volumes, including a compendium, in one volume. The results 

 of the Tenth Census, however, comprised twenty-two volumes and a 

 compendium (in two parts). General Walker's ambition of 1870 to 

 make a centennial contribution of facts found ample field in 1880. The 

 enthusiasm of the period, perhaps, aided him greatly, but by this vast 

 work he was enabled to show to the country the leading facts relative to 

 its population, its manufactures, and its agriculture, and, in addition, its 

 agencies of transportation; its valuation, taxation, and public indebted- 

 ness ; statistics of its immense systems of transportation, its newspapers, 

 and its shipbuilding. He also presented elaborate reports upon the 

 forest trees of IS'orth America, the petroleum and building-stone indus- 

 tries of the country, the technology of the precious metals, the mining 

 laws and industries of the country; also a technical report upon the 

 the water power of the United States, a magnificent volume upon 

 wages, with reports upon the prices of necessaries of life, trade socie- 

 ties, strikes and lockouts, and other features. 



When it is considered that the census of 1880 was undertaken on 

 such an expansive plan as that outlined, and had to be carried out by 

 a temporary and an untrained force, under the necessity of fighting off 

 those thirsty for position, the magnitude of the work involved seems 

 simply appalling. But General Walker was a great organizer. His 

 experience in bringing together bodies of troops, in superintending the 

 movement of all the impedimenta of a great army, in collecting mate- 

 rials for attack and defense, in handling forces in the field in active 

 conflict, his training as a scientific economist — all these experiences 

 constituted him par excellence the one to carry out the plans of the 

 Tenth Census. He did not carry the work through to comj)letion, in 

 one sense. Called to the presidency of the institute here in Boston, 

 he left the census in the middle of 1881, so far as his official connection 

 with it was concerned, but until the last volume appeared, in 1888, 

 General Walker exercised a supervisory relation to it all. All the text 

 passed through his hands. 



