TRANSACTIONS. 
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ANNUAL REPORT. 
His Excellency, Lucius Fairchild, 
Governor of Wisconsin: 
Sir: —The rapid increase of the United States in wealth 
and population makes the year cf the decennial census one of 
very great interest. 
From the nature of the circumstances under which any cen¬ 
sus must be taken, absolute correctness is, of course, impossi¬ 
ble. Still, the returns are an important approximation to the 
real facts ; and since the average of the circumstances of one 
census-taking will be about as favorable to correctness as those 
of another, the results serve all the purposes of a comparison, 
which is the chief end of their collection. If they do not 
give us with certainty the exact population at any one period, 
the number of acres of land under cultivation, the total acre¬ 
age of the various crops, the average yield, or total product of 
each, they do enable us to learn whether the ratio of increase 
has advanced or diminished; whether agriculture has contin¬ 
ued to engage the energies of its former proportion of the pop¬ 
ulation, and if so, to what particular branch they have been 
most devoted, and in which they have attained the most satis¬ 
factory results. If they fail to inform us of the precise num¬ 
ber of persons and the amount of capital engaged in working 
our mines, in the business of manufacture, and in the various 
1—Ag. Tr. 
