nsus field was Russia. From 1721, what are known as revisions of
the population were periodically carried out, for military, fiscal and
police purposes; but these were conducted by local officials without
central direction or systematic organization. In 1897 a general census
was taken as synchronously throughout the empire as was found possible.
It embraced a population second to that of India alone, as China,
probably the most populous country in the world, has not yet been
subjected to this test. The inquiry was made in great detail, under
central control, and on a plan sufficiently elastic to suit the
requirements of so varied a country and population. As in India, the
schedules had to be issued in an unusual number of languages, and were
dealt with locally in the earlier stages of tabulation. The principal
regions of which the population is still a matter of mere conjecture are
the Turkish empire, Persia, Afghanistan, China and the Indo-Chinese
peninsula, in Asia, nearly nine-tenths of Africa, and a considerable
portion of South America. (J. A. B.)

UNITED STATES

Modern census-taking seems to have originated in the United States.
Professor von Mayr declares in a recent and authoritative work, "It was
no European state, but the United States of America that made a
beginning of census-taking in the large and true sense of that word,"
and Professor H. Wagner, writing of the censuses of Sweden, said to have
been taken in the 18th century, uses these words, "Since 1749 careful
parish registers have been kept by the clergy and have in general the
value of censuses." The same authority, although mentioning a reported
census of Norway in 1769, indicates his conviction that the first real
census of that country was in 1815. Sweden, Norway and the United States
are the only countries with any claim to have taken the first modern
census, as distinguished from a register of tax-payers, &c., the lineal
descendant of the old Roman census, and the innovation seems to be due
to the United States. If so, the first modern census was the American
census of 1790. At the present date more than three-fifths of the
estimated population of the world has been enumerated in this way. It is
of interest accordingly to note how and why the device originated.

The Federal census, which began in 1790 and has been taken every ten
years since under a mandate contained in the Constitution of the United
States, was the outgrowth of a controv