s of age."
These results thus confirmed the accuracy of the count of 1890. Efforts
to invalidate the census returns by comparison with the registration
records of Massachusetts cannot be deemed conclusive, since in the
United States, as in Great Britain, the census must be deemed more
accurate and less subject to error than registration records. A strong
argument in favour of the eleventh census, apart from its
self-consistency, is that its results as a whole fit in with the
subsequent state enumerations. In eleven cases such enumerations have
been taken; and on computing from them and the results of the federal
census of 1880 what the population at the date of the eleventh census
should have been, if the annual rate of increase had been uniform, it
appears that in no case, except New York City and Oregon, was the
difference between the enumerations and these estimates over 4%. In
Oregon about 30,000 more people were found in 1890 than the estimate
would lead one to expect; in New York city, about 100,000 less. It seems
not improbable that in the latter, where the difficulties incident to a
count during the summer are almost insurmountable, serious omissions
occurred. Still, such a comparison confirms the accuracy of the eleventh
census as a whole.

The results of the twelfth census (1900) further refute the argument
that would maintain the eleventh census to be inaccurate because it
showed a smaller rate of increase in population during the preceding
decade than had been recorded by other censuses during earlier decades.
The rate of increase during the decade ending in 1900 was even less than
that for the preceding decade; and it is impossible that a falling off
so marked could in two successive enumerations be the result of sheer
inaccuracy. The rate of increase from 1890 to 1900, eliminating from the
computation the population of Alaska, Hawaii, Indian Territory and
Indian reservations, was 20.7; the rate of increase if these places are
included--in which case the figures of the population of Hawaii in 1890
must be taken from the census of the Hawaiian government in that
year--was 21%.

The law regulating the twelfth census deserves to rank with those of
1790, 1850 and 1879 as one of the four important laws relative to
census work. By this law the census office was far more independent
than ever before. Appointments and removals were made by the director
of the census rather than by the secretary of the i