August 8, 1884.] 



SCIENCE. 



119 



THE CENSUS REPORT OF 1880. 



It is now the middle of 1884, — four years 

 since the date of the last census of the United 

 States ; yet the volumes of that census are 

 not all published by the government. Eight 

 volumes have appeared, besides the bulletins 

 issued during the years 1881 and 1882 : viz. , two 

 of the ' Compendium,' containing 1,850 octavo 

 pages, and published early in 1883 ; and six 

 of the quarto volumes, containing from 850 to 

 1,300 pages each, in which are given the more 

 extended tabulations, and the general treatises 

 on population, agriculture, manufactures, trans- 

 portation, cotton-production, etc. The num- 

 ber of these quarto volumes is not positively 

 stated by the census officials, but will probably 

 be twentj\ We ma} 7 consider the first six, 

 however (of which the first four came out in 

 1883, and the other two in 1884) , without wait- 

 ing until the series is complete, which may 

 not be until two years hence. The important 

 volume, which is to contain the ' social statis- 

 tics ' of pauperism, insanity, crime, etc., is 

 not yet in the printers' hands ; and the tables 

 and general treatises on these topics are still 

 subject to alteration by those who are editing 

 them. The same is true of the mortality 

 statistics and many others ; and so liable is 

 the work of editing these tables to be delayed, 

 that it is quite impossible now to say when the 

 final volume will appear. 



There are two ways of looking at a great 

 statistical work of this sort, intended to show 

 the economic and social relations of fifty mil- 

 lions of people, scattered over millions of 

 square miles, in every form of civilization and 

 every mode of living. One way is to consider 

 what has been done to exhibit these statistics, 

 and to be thankful for that ; which must, of 

 necessity, be an immense labor, and exposed 

 to many minor inaccuracies. The other way 

 is to set up a standard of performance in work 

 of this kind, and to criticise what falls short of 

 this standard. The latter would be the true 

 method, if statistical science had yet advanced 

 far enough to enable so great a census as 

 ours was in 1880 to be taken with accurac} T , 

 and reported by persons who understand what 

 they are to do, and how to do it in the same 

 thorough manner in which trained investigators 

 in some special science proceed. But there 

 is as yet no example of census-work done in 

 this manner, and we must not look for it in 

 the work before us. A certain degree of ac- 

 curacy has been attained, though less, we 

 believe, in most instances, than the specialists 

 at the head of each branch of inquiry suppose. 



But the explanations and cautions and quali- 

 fications which they put forth in each of these 

 census volumes, in regard to the tabulations 

 that present their particular topic, will soon 

 convince the casual reader that he must use 

 these statistics with much circumspection, or 

 they will lead him astray There is hardly a 

 point, for example, on which the more elaborate 

 work of this tenth census does not bring out the 

 faults and defects of the earlier ones, and show 

 that even the last preceding census, that of 

 1870, which was taken under the same super- 

 intendent (President Walker of the Institute 

 of technology), was grossly and amusingly 

 wrong in important particulars. 



It is therefore evident at once, that to com- 

 pare the results in 1880 with those in 1870, 

 1860, etc., in order to exhibit the growth of 

 the United States, is only possible in a few 

 general respects, if am- reasonable exactness 

 in the comparison is insisted upon. Some- 

 times this comes from the nature of things, 

 and not alwaj T s from the errors of the enume- 

 rators or tabulators in previous decades. For 

 example : the value of the dollar (by which 

 all products, debts, revenues, property, etc., 

 are measured) was so different in 1870 from 

 what it had been in 1860, and again from what 

 it became in 1880, that it is not possible to 

 make these pecuniary comparisons without 

 great risk of mistake. To take the premium 

 on gold in 1870 as the measure of depreciation 

 for our currency, though this is all we can 

 do, is well known, by those who noted prices 

 and values then as compared with ten years 

 before or since, to be extremely fallacious. 

 The rubber yardstick of the imaginary trades- 

 man, which was sometimes four feet long and 

 sometimes only two, is a fair type of the fluc- 

 tuating and elastic currency \)j which we have 

 had to measure values since the civil war. 



But the fallibility of the men who make up 

 the census schedules, who take the count of 

 men, animals, crops, acres, houses, farms, 

 mills, etc., is the chief source of inaccuracy 

 in any census. It is not possible to foresee 

 exactly what questions ought to be asked, or 

 where to draw the line between attainable and 

 inaccessible facts. The questioner may defeat 

 his own purpose, not only b}' the form, but by 

 the multiplicitj", of his requirements. Nature 

 quickly sets a limit to the power of answering 

 the census inquiries accurately in case of the 

 average citizen or his wife. To go beyond 

 that limit is to invite error and blunder, as the 

 expert tabulator of the answers well knows : 

 he therefore undertakes by his tabulation to 

 amend the defects of the return. But this, also, 



