us with a correct statement of our condition under the new
impulses and burdens of the nation, an act was passed March 3, 1849,
creating a census board, whose duty it should be to prepare, and cause
to be printed, forms and schedules for the enumeration of the
population, and also for collecting "such information as to mines,
agriculture, commerce, manufactures, education and other topics as will
exhibit a full view of the pursuits, industry, education and resources
of the country; _provided_, the number of said inquiries, exclusive of
enumeration, shall not exceed one hundred." On the same day the
Department of the Interior was established, and all matters relating to
the census were transferred to that department. The census board
reported "an act for taking the seventh and subsequent censuses of the
United States," which became a law May 23, 1850, and under that law the
censuses of 1850, 1860 and 1870 were taken.

However far that law was an improvement upon either of those under which
the preceding censuses were taken, it is now wholly inadequate--so much
so, indeed, that the superintendent of the ninth census (1870) declared,
"It is not possible for one who has had such painful occasion as the
present superintendent to observe the workings of the census law of 1870
to characterize it otherwise than as clumsy, antiquated and barbarous.
The machinery it provides is as unfit for use in the census of the
United States in this day of advanced statistical science as the
smooth-bore muzzle-loading 'queen's arm' of the Revolution would be for
service against the repeating rifle of the present time." It includes
many inquiries which are practically worthless, and excludes many
vitally necessary to an understanding of our social and industrial
condition. Thus the questions, "Has this season produced average crops?"
"What crops are short?" "What are the average wages of a female domestic
per week, without board?" "How much road-tax did you pay, and how?" may
be of some interest, if regarded as conundrums, but are practically of
as little value as the color of one's hair or the average number of
hours one sleeps; while, as matters of fact, the answers to them have
been so unsatisfactory that no attempt has ever been made to classify
them, and in the census of 1870 they were discarded altogether, though
still forming part of the law. Nor is the method required for
ascertaining the facts relating to manufactures of any greater v